The nutraceuticals market is vast, encompassing many different products with inconsistent levels of evidence available to support their use. This overview represents a Western perspective of the ...nutraceuticals market, with a brief comparison with that in China, as an illustration of how individual health supplements increase and decrease in popularity in regional terms. Recent changes in sales patterns, mainly taken from the US market, are summarized and a selection of five newer products, which have not been subject to extensive recent review are profiled: astaxanthin, a carotenoid found in red algae, seafood, salmon and trout, as an antioxidant; cannabidiol, a non‐euphoric marijuana ingredient used as mood enhancer and for painful/inflammatory conditions; modified extracts of ginseng used in new indications including dementia and space travel; monk fruit, a non‐sugar high intensity sweetener and nigella seed, a popular food ingredient and Asian medicine, which has experienced an extraordinary rise in sales recently.
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This article is part of a themed section on The Pharmacology of Nutraceuticals. To view the other articles in this section visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.v177.6/issuetoc
Synchronization and coordination of coupled oscillators are fundamental behaviors in complex dynamical systems. This paper considers the design of coupled harmonic oscillators to generate an ...orbitally stable limit cycle of prescribed oscillation profile. Based on the Floquet theory and averaging techniques, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for nonlinear coupling functions to achieve local exponential convergence to a desired orbit. Unlike globally convergent methods based on contraction analysis, the result applies to oscillators without flow invariance properties. Insights into coordination mechanisms are gained through interpretation of the coupling structure as a directed graph. The theory is illustrated by simple tutorial examples.
The aggregation of variably charged nanoparticles is usually induced by the changes in internal and external conditions, such as solution temperature, pH, particle size, van der Waals force, and ...electrostatic repulsion among particles. In order to explore the effect of pH on the aggregation of variable charge nanoparticles, this paper proposed an extended model based on the 3D on-lattice Cluster-Cluster Aggregation (CCA) model. The extended model successfully established the relationship between pH and sticking probability, and used Smoluchowski theory to calculate the aggregation rate of nanoparticles. The simulation results showed that: (1) the change of the aggregation rate of the variable charge nanoparticles with pH conforms to the Gaussian distribution, (2) the initial particle concentration has a significant effect on the aggregation rate of the nanoparticles, and (3) pH can affect the competition between van der Waals force and electrostatic repulsion between particles, thereby affecting the degree of openness of clusters. The research demonstrated the extended CCA model is valuable in studying the aggregation of the variably charged nanoparticles via transforming the corresponding influence factors into the influence on the sticking probability.
The key trend for future agricultural growth is efficient, green and sustainable high-quality development, and it is crucial to sort out the factors influencing high-quality agricultural development.
...The purpose of this study is to dissect whether environmental regulation has a catalytic effect on quality rural development, through which paths it is driven and whether there is a threshold effect to be further clarified.
In this study, the panel data of 34 provinces in China from 2012 to 2018 are used, and 17 variables are used to construct an evaluation index system, covering four dimensions: agricultural endowment, agricultural output level, agricultural green degree and social sustainability. The high-quality development of agriculture is measured by entropy method. And further, using a baseline regression model and a mediating effects model, we empirically investigated the impact of environmental regulation on high-quality agricultural development and its mechanism of action, and empirically assessed the nonlinear effects of environmental regulation using a threshold regression model.
Environmental control, as noted in the study, considerably assists in the establishment of high-quality agriculture; at the same time, large-scale land management plays a role in mitigating the influence of both. There is a single income threshold impact on rural households between high-quality agricultural growth and environmental regulation, and once that threshold is reached, the influence of high-quality agricultural growth grows. Contribution: According to the research findings, recommendations are made for the design of scientific environmental regulation policies, the establishment of a sound service system for large-scale rural land management, and the establishment of a stable mechanism for rural residents to sustain their income, in order to strengthen the effect of environmental regulation and realize high-quality agricultural growth in China. The marginal contribution of this paper is to enrich the study of the relationship between environmental regulation and high-quality agricultural development, which has theoretical and practical implications for promoting sustainable agricultural development.
Robotic stabilization of a therapeutic radiation beam with respect to a dynamically moving tumor target can be accomplished either by moving the radiation source, the patient, or both. As the ...treatment beam is on during this process, the primary goal is to minimize exposure of normal tissue to radiation as much as possible when moving the target back to the desired position. Due to the complex mechanical structure of 6 degree-of-freedom (6DoF) robots, it is not intuitive as to what 6 dimensional (6D) correction trajectory is optimal in achieving such a goal. With proportional-integrative-derivative (PID) and other controls, the potential exists that the controller may generate a trajectory that is highly curved, slow, or suboptimal in that it leads to unnecessary exposure of healthy tissue to radiation. This work investigates a novel feedback planning method that takes into account a robot's mechanical joint structure, patient safety tolerances, and other system constraints, and performs real-time optimization to search the entire 6D trajectory space in each time cycle so it can respond with an optimal 6D correction trajectory.
Computer simulations were created for two 6DoF robotic patient support systems: a Stewart-Gough platform for moving a patient's head in frameless maskless stereotactic radiosurgery, and a linear accelerator treatment table for moving a patient in prostate cancer radiation therapy. Motion planning was formulated as an optimization problem and solved at real-time speeds using the L-BFGS algorithm. Three planning methods were investigated, moving the platform as fast as possible (platform-D), moving the target along a straight-line (target-S), and moving the target based on the fastest descent of position error (target-D). Both synthetic motion and prior recorded human motion were used as input data and output results were analyzed.
For randomly generated 6D step-like and sinusoidal synthetic input motion, target-D planning demonstrated the smallest net trajectory error in all cases. On average, optimal planning was found to have a 45% smaller target trajectory error than platform-D control, and a 44% smaller target trajectory error than target-S planning. For patient head motion compensation, only target-D planning was able to maintain a ≤0.5mm and ≤0.5deg clinical tolerance objective for 100% of the treatment time. For prostate motion, both target-S planning and target-D planning outperformed platform-D control.
A general 6D target trajectory optimization framework for robotic patient motion compensation systems was investigated. The method was found to be flexible as it allows control over various performance requirements such as mechanical limits, velocities, acceleration, or other system control objectives.
The hypoxia-inducible factor-1α/endoplasmic reticulum stress signaling pathway (HIF-1α/ERS) has a crucial role in the pathogenetic mechanism of pulmonary fibrosis (PF). However, the upstream ...regulatory mediators of this pathway remain unclear. In the present study, by conducting bioinformatics analysis, we found that Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) expression was decreased in the lung tissues of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) as compared to that in patients with non-IPF. Furthermore, KLF4 expression was significantly reduced (p = 0.0331) in bleomycin-induced fibrotic HFL-1 cells. Moreover, in mice with bleomycin-induced PF, the degree of fibrosis was significantly reduced in mice overexpressing KLF4 as compared to that in wild-type mice. In mice and HFL-1 cells, KLF4 overexpression significantly reduced bleomycin-induced protein expression of HIF-1α (p = 0.0027) and ERS markers, particularly p-IRE1α (p = 0.0255) and ATF6 (p = 0.0002). By using the JASPAR database, we predicted that KLF4 has five binding sites for the HIF-1α promoter. The results of in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that KLF4 may inhibit PF through the HIF-1α/ERS pathway. This finding could guide the development of future therapies for PF and facilitate the identification of appropriate biomarkers for routine clinical diagnosis of PF.
•A theoretical expression of PEDL as a function of SAR and EC was derived.•Effects of SAR and EC on surface potential of soil particle were quantified.•Changes of theoretical PEDL with SAR and EC ...agree with measured Ks values.•Infiltration rate can be arbitrarily adjusted by PEDL for a given soil.
Sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) and electrolyte concentration (EC) can significantly affect water movement in soil. However, the theoretical mechanisms behind it are rarely studied. In the present study, an analytical function between electrostatic repulsive pressure (PEDL) and SAR/EC was derived in Na-Ca mixed electrolyte solutions or soil water. Soil water SAR and EC controls PEDL through surface potential and midpoint potential between two adjacent soil particles, which consequently influences the saturated soil hydraulic conductivity (Ks). Theoretical calculations show that the PEDL decreases with increasing EC and increases with increasing SAR, and the reduction in Ks is correlated with the repulsive PEDL. Five soils of different dominant clay minerals, specifically kaolinite (K), illite (I) and montmorillonite (M), were used to investigate the relationship between PEDL and change of Ks. The soils were packed in columns and leached with a serial of solutions (constant EC values of 0.5, 1, and 2 ds m−1, respectively) with increasing SAR from 0 to infinity. Our study showed that the Ks decreases with increasing PEDL. At the inflection point of the percent of Ks reduction (Kred) vs. PEDL curve, the critical PEDL values are 8.358 ∼ 8.569 atm and Kred > 92% for the Mungana soil (M), Yarrandoo soil (M, K) and Dunholm soil (M), while the average critical PEDL value is about 12.34 atm and Kred is only ∼51.75% for the Urrbrae soil (I) and Timberlea soil (K). For a given soil, the PEDL is the determinant factor, while other factors such as soil texture and clay type can also affect Ks.
To assess the ability of procalcitonin (PCT)-a promising marker for coinfections-to predict coinfections in patients with COVID-19.
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, PubMed, Embase, Web of ...Science, Cochrane, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang were searched to identify eligible studies (up to August 30, 2021). Articles that reported the predictive value of PCT for coinfections in patients with COVID-19 were included. Individual and pooled sensitivities and specificities were reported, and I
was used to test heterogeneity. This study was prospectively registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) database (registration number: CRD42021283344).
Five studies involving a total of 2775 patients reported the predictive value of PCT for coinfections in patients with COVID-19. The sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve of PCT in predicting coinfections in the pooled studies were 0.60 (95% CI 0.35-0.81, I
= 88.85), 0.71 (95% CI 0.58-0.81, I
= 87.82), and 0.72(95% CI 0.68-0.76) respectively.
Although PCT has limited predictive value for coinfections in patients with COVID-19, lower PCT levels seem to indicate a decreased probability of having a coinfection.
Frailty has been increasingly identified as a risk factor of adverse outcomes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The prevalence and impact of frailty on health outcomes in people with ...COPD require clarification.
PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library and Web of Science (January 1, 2002, to July 1, 2022) were comprehensively searched to identify studies related to frailty and COPD. Comparisons were made between people who did and did not have frailty for pulmonary function, dyspnea severity, 6-minute walking distance, activities of daily life, and mortality.
Twenty studies (9 cross-sectional, 10 cohort studies,1 clinical trial) from Europe (9), Asia (6), and North and South America (4), Oceania (1) involving 11, 620 participants were included. The prevalence of frailty was 32.07% (95% confidence interval (CI) 26.64-37.49) with a range of 6.43-71.70% based on the frailty tool used. People with frailty had lower predicted forced expiratory volume in the first second (mean difference - 5.06%; 95%CI -6.70 to -3.42%), shorter 6-minute walking distance (mean difference - 90.23 m; 95%CI -124.70 to -55.76), poorer activities of daily life (standardized mean difference - 0.99; 95%CI -1.35 to -0.62), higher CAT(COPD Assessment Test) score(mean difference 6.2; 95%CI 4.43 to 7.96) and mMRC (modified Medical Research Council) grade (mean difference 0.93; 95%CI 0.85 to 1.02) compared with those who did not (P < 0.001 for all). Meta-analysis showed that frailty was associated with an increased risk of long-term all-cause mortality (HR 1.68; 95% CI 1.37-2.05; I
= 0%, P < 0.001).
Frailty is prevalent in people with COPD and linked with negative clinical outcomes including pulmonary function, dyspnea severity, exercise capacity, quality of life and mortality.
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