Film‐like conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) are fabricated by the novel strategy of carbazole‐based electropolymerization. The CMP film storing a mass of counterions acting as an anode ...interlayer provides a significant power‐conversion efficiency of 7.56% in polymer solar cells and 20.7 cd A−1 in polymer light‐emitting diodes, demonstrating its universality and potential as an electrode interlayer in organic electronics.
Background:
Fibrosis-related diseases (FRD) include cerebral fibrosis, pulmonary fibrosis, cardiac fibrosis, liver fibrosis, renal fibrosis, peritoneal fibrosis, etc. The effects of fibrosis can be ...severe, resulting in organ dysfunction, functional decline, and even organ failure, which can cause serious health problems.
Aim:
Currently, there is no effective modern medicine for anti-fibrosis in the clinics; however, Chinese medicine has a certain beneficial effect on treating such diseases.
Astragalus Mongholicus
(AM) has rich medicinal value, and its anti-fibrosis effect has been recently investigated. In recent years, more and more experimental studies have been conducted on the intervention of astragaloside IV (AS-IV), astragalus polysaccharide (APS), astragalus flavone, cycloastragalus alcohol, astragalus water extract and other pharmacological components in fibrosis-related diseases, attracting the interest of researchers. We aim to provide ideas for future research by summarizing recent research advances of AM in treating fibrosis-related diseases.
Methods:
A literature search was conducted from the core collections of electronic databases such as Baidu Literature, Sciencen.com, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Science Direct using the above keywords and the pharmacological and phytochemical details of the plant.
Results:
AM can be used to intervene in fibrosis-disease progression by regulating inflammation, oxidative stress, the immune system, and metabolism.
Conclusion:
AS-IV, APS, and astragalus flavone were studied and discussed in detail. These components have high potential anti-fibrosis activity. Overall, this review aims to gain insight into the AM’s role in treating fibro-related diseases.
Fine hand movements require the synergistic contraction of intrinsic and extrinsic muscles to achieve them. In this paper, a Finite Element Digital Human Hand Model (FE-DHHM) containing solid tendons ...and ligaments and driven by the Muscle-Tendon Junction (MTJ) displacements of FDS, FDP and ED measured by ultrasound imaging was developed. The synergistic contraction of these muscles during the finger flexion movements was analyzed by simulating five sets of finger flexion movements. The results showed that the FDS and FDP contracted together to provide power during the flexion movements, while the ED acted as an antagonist. The peak stresses of the FDS, FDP and ED were all at the joints. In the flexion without resistance, the FDS provided the main driving force, and the FDS and FDP alternated in a "plateau" of muscle force. In the flexion with resistance, the muscle forces of FDS, FDP, and ED were all positively correlated with fingertip forces. The FDS still provided the main driving force, but the stress maxima occurred in the FDP at the DIP joint.
Urban freight systems serve as an essential part of city livability. Heavy trucks are critical for urban freight system operation. Although understanding the overall spatial distribution ...characteristics of heavy truck trips is important for urban freight system planning and management, quantifying the spatial distribution characteristics of heavy truck trips remains scarce. In this study, we employ two indices, the flow hierarchy index and the urban centrality index, to quantify the overall spatial distribution characteristics of heavy truck trips from two perspectives: the heavy truck flow hierarchical organization and outflow spatial distribution centrality. We use these approaches to quantify the overall spatial distribution characteristics of heavy truck trips for typical Chinese cities and classify them into four patterns. We further analyze the characteristics and underlying mechanism of each pattern and then calculate the overall heavy truck trip efficiencies for cities in different patterns. Our research offers a framework for quantifying the overall spatial distribution characteristics of urban heavy truck trips and provides policymaking references for the planning and management of urban freight systems.
Shufeng Jiedu capsules (SFJDC), a patented herbal drug composed of eight medicinal plants, is used for the treatment of different viral respiratory tract infectious diseases. Based on its antiviral, ...anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory activity in acute lung injury, SFJDC might be a promising candidate for the treatment of COVID-19.
To evaluate the antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties and to discover the mechanism of action of SFJDC as a potential drug for the treatment of COVID-19. Furthermore, the study should determine the clinical effectiveness of SFJDC for the treatment of COVID-19.
We analyzed the antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects of SFJDC in a HCoV-229E mouse model on lung index, virus load in the lung, the release of cytokines, and on T- and B-lymphocytes. The mechanism of action was further investigated by network analysis. Additionally, we investigated data from a clinical pragmatic real-world study for patients with confirmed COVID-19, to evaluate the clinical effect of SFJDC and to determine the best time to start the treatment.
SFJDC significantly reduced the virus load in the lung of HCoV-229E mice (from 1109.29 ± 696.75 to 0 ± 0 copies/ml), decreased inflammatory factors IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, and IFN-γ in the lung, and increased the amount of CD4+ and CD8+ cells in the blood compared to the model group. Network analysis revealed that SFJDC reduces the activity of NFκB via several signaling pathways. Quercetin, wogonin, and polydatin bind directly to the main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2.
Clinical data showed that SFJDC, added to standard antiviral therapy (AVD), significantly reduced the clinical recovery time of COVID-19 and fatigue (from 3.55 ± 4.09 to 1.19 ± 2.28 days) as well as cough (from 5.67 ± 5.64 to 3.47 ± 3.75) days compared to AVD alone. SFJDC therapy was significantly more effective when used within the first 8 days after the onset of symptoms.
SFJDC might be a promising drug for the treatment of COVID-19, but large-scale randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trials are needed to complement the real-world evidence. It might be beneficial to start SFJDC treatment as early as possible in suspected cases of COVID-19.
Atherosclerosis is a complex chronic inflammatory disease that remains one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. A previous study reported that glaucocalyxin A (GLA), a natural ...ent‐Kaurane diterpenoid triptolide, exhibits anti‐atherosclerotic activity. However, the underlying molecular mechanism has not yet been explored. In the present study, we evaluated the anti‐atherosclerotic effect of GLA and the underlying mechanism in vitro. Human coronary artery smooth muscle cells (HCASMCs) were stimulated by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to induce oxidative stress and inflammation. The results showed that GLA pretreatment improved the viability of H2O2‐induced HCASMCs. The increased reactive oxygen species production and decreased superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase activities in H2O2‐induced HCASMCs were reversed by GLA pretreatment. In addition, GLA treatment suppressed the H2O2‐induced expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, NADPH oxidase (NOX) 2, and NOX4 in HCASMCs. Moreover, treatment with GLA reduced the production of several inflammatory cytokines, including tumour necrosis factor‐alpha, interleukin (IL)‐6, and IL‐1β in H2O2‐induced HCASMCs. Furthermore, GLA treatment suppressed the phosphorylation of p38, as well as inactivating the NF‐κB signalling pathway. These findings suggested that GLA protected against H2O2‐induced oxidative stress and inflammation via inhibition of p38 phosphorylation and NF‐κB activation in HCASMCs.
Many viruses, enveloped or non-enveloped, remodel host membrane structures for their replication, assembly and escape from host cells. Herpesviruses are important human pathogens and cause many ...diseases. As large enveloped DNA viruses, herpesviruses undergo several complex steps to complete their life cycles and produce infectious progenies. Firstly, herpesvirus assembly initiates in the nucleus, producing nucleocapsids that are too large to cross through the nuclear pores. Nascent nucleocapsids instead bud at the inner nuclear membrane to form primary enveloped virions in the perinuclear space followed by fusion of the primary envelopes with the outer nuclear membrane, to translocate the nucleocapsids into the cytoplasm. Secondly, nucleocapsids obtain a series of tegument proteins in the cytoplasm and bud into vesicles derived from host organelles to acquire viral envelopes. The vesicles are then transported to and fuse with the plasma membrane to release the mature virions to the extracellular space. Therefore, at least two budding and fusion events take place at cellular membrane structures during herpesviruses assembly and egress, which induce membrane deformations. In this review, we describe and discuss how herpesviruses exploit and remodel host membrane structures to assemble and escape from the host cell.
Epigenetic modification, especially DNA methylation, plays a nonnegligible role in the occurrence and development of tumors. Increasing studies are indicating that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) ...plays a considerable anti-tumor role by regulating the process of DNA methylation modification. Studies on TCM regulating DNA methylation modification mostly focus on the whole genome and abnormal methylation status by active ingredients or single compounds and Chinese herb formula (CHF). The balance and overall concept of TCM theory coincides with the balance of DNA methylation modification in the tumor environment. Regardless of how TCM modulates epigenetics in tumor, it has been shown to bet a class of potentially reliable epigenetic drug.
Fashion style recognition of clothing images facilitates the clothing retrieval and recommendation in E-commerce. It is still a challenging task because the clothing images of same style may have ...diverse visual appearances. Existing fashion style recognition methods utilize deep neural networks to classify clothing images based on pixel-level or region-level features. However, these features of local regions lack the semantics of fashion issues and make the style recognition sensitive to clothing appearance changing. To tackle this problem, we construct Design Issue Graphs (DIGs) with clothing attributes to form global and semantic representations of fashion styles, and propose a joint fashion style recognition model which consists of two convolutional neural networks based on clothing images and DIGs. The experiments on DeepFashion data sets validate that the proposed model is effective to recognize the clothing fashion styles of diverse appearances. The integration of DIGs into Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) achieves 1.75%, 0.99%, 1.03%, 1.53% improvements for multi-style recognition and 1.22%, 2.06%, 1.58%, 2.20% improvements for certain style recognition in the evaluations of accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score on average respectively.
Metal-free catalysts show environmental friendliness and cost-effectiveness, as well as less susceptibility to poisoning over metal and metal oxide catalysts. In this respect, we present the ...synthesis and characterization of metal-free mesoporous nitrogen- and boron-codoped nanocarbon (meso-N,B/C), which exhibits good catalytic performance with conversion of 89% and selectivity of 83% toward amide synthesis from primary alcohols using NH4OAc as an ammonia resource under an oxygen atmosphere. The facile codoping synthetic strategy was executed by pyrolysis of nitrogen-enriched ligand 4,5-diazafluorene-9-one azine (DAA) and H3BO3 as a nitrogen and boron content modulator, respectively. Significantly, control experiments revealed that the reaction proceeded through direct oxidative dehydrogenation of hemiaminal after aldehyde-ammonia condensation, which was remarkably different from that in the previous literature. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations further demonstrate that the selective preference for benzamide largely benefits from the strong adsorption and enhanced activity of oxygen molecules via the interaction with a B atom doped in the catalyst. The active sites in the meso-N,B/C catalyst are proposed to be B atom bonded with N within the graphitic carbon sheets. This founding opens up avenues for the development of modified carbon materials on metal-free catalysis.
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