Search Results (166)

Gastrodia elata, Polygonatum sibiricum, and Poria cocos are traditional Chinese herbs commonly used as both medicinal and food ingredients, traditionally believed to improve liver and kidney functions, replenish vital energy (qi) and blood, and mitigate stress-induced damage. These herbs are combined in the Compound Gastrodia elata Formula (CGEF), a functional food formulation. Amidst growing interest in functional foods, this study explores the cognitive-enhancing effects of CGEF, focusing on cognitive function improvement. Cognitive impairment was induced in ICR mice via chronic sleep restriction. Behavioral assessments including the Y-maze test, object recognition test, Morris water maze test, and Passive avoidance test, were conducted to evaluate CGEF’s effects. Serum levels of inflammatory markers and oxidative stress were quantified while in rat hippocampus tissue expressions of inflammatory, apoptotic, and neuroprotective-related protein markers were analyzed by Western blotting. Neurotransmitter concentrations in both the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex were determined by LC-MS/MS. CGEF significantly alleviated cognitive impairments across all behavioral tests. The underlying mechanisms likely involve a reduction in oxidative stress and peripheral inflammatory factors, and suppression of the TLR2/MyD88/NF-κB signaling cascade in the hippocampus, thereby mitigating neuroinflammation and neuronal apoptosis. Furthermore, CGEF modulated the PI3K/AKT/GSK3β signaling pathway, potentially contributing to neuronal integrity and synaptic plasticity maintenance. CGEF also restored neurotransmitter balance and regulated tryptophan metabolism, further alleviating cognitive deficits associated with sleep disruption. These findings suggest CGEF’s potential as a functional food for reversing cognitive impairments caused by chronic sleep restriction, primarily through its anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects. Full article

Grape leafhoppers (Erythroneura spp.) are major pests in grape cultivation, leading to significant economic losses. Accurate and efficient damage level assessment is crucial for effective pest management and reducing financial impact. In this study, we categorized damage into uninfested leaves and five damage levels (I–V) and constructed a grape leafhopper damage dataset. Based on this dataset, we developed a lightweight detection model for grape leafhopper damage levels, incorporating improvements to the YOLOv8n architecture. The model employs FasterNet as the backbone network to enhance computational efficiency and reduce model complexity. It substitutes for the nearest-neighbor upsampling with CARAFE to improve small target detection capabilities. Additionally, the SE attention mechanism is integrated to optimize leaf feature extraction, thereby enhancing recognition accuracy in complex vineyard environments. The experimental results demonstrate that CSF-YOLO achieves a mAP of 90.15%, which is 1.82% higher than the baseline model, YOLOv8n. Additionally, the model’s inference results can be accessed via mobile devices, demonstrating the feasibility of real-time vineyard pest monitoring. This study provides a solid technical foundation for advancing intelligent pest monitoring systems in vineyards and the development of smart agriculture. Full article

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an immune-mediated chronic and long-term condition that can lead to severe joint damage and disability. It has been shown that doctor–patient interaction and communication can have a significant impact on faster patient diagnosis and treatment outcomes. Primary care (PC) is the first level of patient contact with doctors and the health system. Communication between them is often ineffective, leading to delays in diagnosis, care, and the use of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). The protocols and standards for the treatment of RA are well established by all rheumatology organizations. All of them recommend early initiation of DMARDs, which leads to better long-term outcomes. There are some recommendations that would lead to better optimization of recognition, management, and referral practices. Early diagnosis, effective communication between general practitioners and specialists, and patient education about possible targeted therapies and biological products, as well as subsequent monitoring of therapies and screening for risk factors and comorbidities, will improve patient health and optimize costs. We aimed to offer strategies and possibilities for integrating and optimizing primary care and specialized therapies in RA because proper management will reduce the severity of the disease and even reduce mortality from chronic diseases such as RA. Full article

H₂O₂ plays an important role in oxidative damage and redox signaling. Studies have shown that abnormal levels of H₂O₂ are closely related to the development of cancer. The levels of H₂O₂ in tumor cells are higher than in normal cells. Thus, it is of great importance to develop a fluorescent probe to monitor the level of H₂O₂ in vivo. This work reports a new biotin-guided NIR fluorescent probe, Bio-B-Cy, consisting of boronic acid ester as a H₂O₂-recognition site and biotin as a tumor binding site, which accelerates the fluorescence response to H₂O₂ in vivo. Bio-B-Cy exhibits good sensitivity and selectivity toward H₂O₂. In addition, Bio-B-Cy shows a dose-dependent response to H₂O₂ and the detection limit is 0.14 μM. We further demonstrate that Bio-B-Cy could successfully detect the H₂O₂ in biotin receptor-positive cancer cells and tumor tissues. Based on the results, Bio-B-Cy has the potential to serve as an efficient tool for early diagnosis of cancer. Full article

(1) Background: The C-type lectin domain family 4 member M (CLEC4M, also known as L-SIGN) is a crucial pathogen-recognition receptor for the dengue virus (DENV). Our previous study has exhibited a polymorphism in its extracellular neck region, specifically within the long tandem repeats of exon 4, which correlates with DHF in DENV infection and causes liver damage. (2) Methods: Using monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MDDCs) and SK-HEP1 liver endothelial cell lines to compare viral replication relative to L-SIGN expression. (3) Results: Results indicated that SK-HEP1 cells were more susceptible to DENV infection than MDDCs, and L-SIGN transfection significantly increased viral replication in SK-HEP1 cell lines. The study also found that L-SIGN-enhanced DENV infection is mediated by the decrease in monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) but not interferon gamma inducible protein-10 (IP-10). These findings reveal that L-SIGN-induced DENV infection leads to reduced MCP-1 levels, which, in turn, enhances DENV replication velocity. (4) Conclusions: This study offers insights into the molecular mechanisms of DENV replication and identifies potential therapeutic targets involving MCP-1 and L-SIGN pathways. Full article

Background: Osteoarticular deformities or contractures in institutionalized elderly individuals, described as acquired deforming hypertonia (ADH), have a multifactorial origin. The reported prevalence of ADH in French Caucasian patients in long-term care units (LTCUs) is 25.6%. To date, ADH in the Caribbean population has never been studied. We aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of ADH in such a population. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional observational study of a French Caribbean population in Martinique in which patients aged 75 years or older were institutionalized in LTCUs during the study period. Data extraction from the medical files of eligible LTCU patients was conducted to assess the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and impact of ADH on patients’ daily care. The assessments were performed collaboratively between the patients’ geriatric team and a PM&R physician. Results: In total, 81 patients were included, with an ADH prevalence of 77.8%. Reported ADH was bilateral (86%) or multiple (66% of patients had ≥5 ADH) and was responsible for major alterations in terms of hygiene, dressing, pain, and skin damage. ADH patients had a high level of dependence (GMP = 924), and this level of dependence was significantly associated with the presence of at least one ADH (p < 0.001) regardless of prior disease. Conclusions: The incidence of ADH in our Caribbean population seems twice as high as that in Caucasian patients, underlining the necessity for this nosological framework to be better recognized, particularly in an insular context. Local campaigns for the prevention and recognition of ADH must be considered, and targeted multidisciplinary protocols need to be established for adapted care in all institutions receiving elderly people. Full article

The control of water levels in various environments is very important for predicting flooding and mitigating flood damages. Generally, water level device gauges are used to measure water levels, but the structural setting of reservoirs presents significant challenges for the installation of water level device gauges. Therefore, the solution to this problem is to apply image recognition methods using water level device gauges. In this paper, we present an intelligent water level estimation system considering water level device gauge image recognition and a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). We carried out experiments in a water reservoir to evaluate the proposed system. From the experimental results, we found that the proposed system can estimate the water level via the object recognition of numbers and symbols on the water level device gauge. Full article

As the first line of host immune defense, innate immunity plays a key role in warding off foreign pathogens and damage. Drosophila melanogaster, as a classical model animal for more than 100 years, is an important research model for studying innate immunity. In recent years, scientists have made remarkable progress in the recognition mechanisms of innate immunity, the mechanisms of effector molecules, and the modes of their response at the cellular and tissue levels. However, the interaction between innate immunity and other physiological functions remains relatively novel and has yet to be systematically explored. Here, we first briefly discuss the link between the innate immunity system and physiological regulation, from several representative perspectives such as sleep, insulin, and brain function. Then, using Drosophila as a model, we provide an overview of the physiological system and specifically summarize the research on the regulation of physiology by innate immunity, covering sleep, lipid metabolism, development, neurodegenerative diseases, memory, feeding, lifespan, movement, and antioxidation. This review provides valuable perspectives into how innate immunity influences other physiological processes, providing a deeper understanding of the complex roles underlying innate immunity. Full article

Lamb-wave-based structural health monitoring is widely employed to detect and localize damage in composite plates; however, interpreting Lamb wave signals remains challenging due to their dispersive characteristics. Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) demonstrate a significant capability for pattern recognition within these signals relative to other machine learning models, CNNs frequently encounter difficulties in capturing all the underlying patterns when the damage severity varies. To address this issue, we propose a multiscale, one-dimensional convolutional neural network (MS-1D-CNN) to assess the damage severity and localize damage in laminated plates. The MS-1D-CNN is capable of learning both low- and high-level features, enabling it to distinguish between minor and severe damage. The dataset was obtained experimentally via a sparse array of four lead zirconate titanates, with signals from twelve paths fused and downsampled before being input into the model. The efficiency of the model was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score metrics for severity identification, along with the mean squared error, mean absolute error, and $R^2$ for damage localization. The experimental results indicated that the proposed MS-1D-CNN outperformed support vector machine and artificial neural network models, achieving higher accuracy in both identifying damage severity and localizing damage with minimal error. Full article

Sarcoidosis is a multi-system granulomatous disease of unknown etiology. In genetically susceptible individuals, the precipitating factors generate, via immunity mechanisms, a host granulomatous response. The granuloma, for unknown reasons thus far, may resolve or may persist and lead to organ damage and fibrosis. Infectious agents, occupational exposure, obesity, smoking and genetic factors are implicated in the pathogenesis of sarcoidosis. Macrophages are important in granuloma formation, and their M1/M2 phenotype is associated with the prognosis of the disease. CD4⁺ T helper cells play a central role in the pathogenesis of sarcoidosis. The major contributors appear to be Th1 and Th17.1 cells, whose microenvironmental behavior is dictated by the secretions of macrophages and dendritic cells. Higher levels of Th1 and Th17.1 cells are associated with chronic disease and resistance to corticosteroid treatment. In recent years, advances in the phenotyping of sarcoidosis with the help of HRCT, PET-CT and lung function tests have provided us with a better understanding of the disease. Genetic phenotyping performed by the GenPhenReSa consortium and the SAGA study has led to the recognition of new, distinct phenotypes. The reconstitution of dysregulated autophagy through persistent m-TORC-1 pathways may be a new treatment target in sarcoidosis. Full article

Anthropic activities have significantly elevated cadmium levels, making it a significant stressor in aquatic ecosystems. Present in high concentrations across water bodies, cadmium is known to bioaccumulate and biomagnify throughout the food chain. While the toxic effects of cadmium on the organs and tissues of aquatic species are well-documented, little is known about its impact on sensory systems crucial for survival. Consequently, this study investigated the impact of short-term exposure (96 h) to 25 µM cadmium chloride on the olfactory system of adult zebrafish. The research aimed to assess structural and functional changes in the zebrafish’s olfactory lamellae, providing a deeper understanding of how cadmium affects the sense of smell in this aquatic species. After exposure, cyto-anatomical alterations in the lamellae were analysed using light microscopy and immunocytochemistry. They revealed severe lamellar edema, epithelial thickening, and an increased number of apoptotic and crypt cells. Rodlet and goblet cells also increased by 3.5- and 2.5-fold, respectively, compared to control lamellae, and collagen density in the lamina propria increased 1.7-fold. Cadmium upregulated metallothioneins and increased the number of PCNA-positive cells. The olfactory function was assessed through a behavioural odour recognition test, followed by a recovery phase in which zebrafish exposed to cadmium were placed in clean water for six days. The exposed fish performed poorly, failing to reach food in five consecutive trials. However, lamellar damage was reduced after the recovery period, and their performance improved, becoming comparable to the control group. These results suggest that cadmium disrupts the sense of smell, and that recovery is possible after short-term exposure. This evidence sheds light on aspects of animal survival that are often overlooked when assessing environmental pollution. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a serious risk to the economic viability of companies and the sustainability of employment in the restaurant sector, a high-impact activity for the economy and employment in Mexico and Spain. This paper analyzes the causes of the prolonged and intense damage to companies and employees via multilevel analysis techniques and a qualitative, inductive methodology drawing on multiple sources. Research propositions posit that the sectoral structure, management practices, and institutional actions during and after the pandemic are predictors of recovery or continued losses. The balanced result of these three levels of analysis, in a severe crisis situation, such as the global pandemic, reveals that the combination of low institutional protection at the macro level, a hostile industry structure at the meso level, and a focus solely on economic sustainability as the primary business objective resulted in widespread resignation and put survival at risk, particularly for smaller companies and entrepreneurs. Analysis of the firms’ and stakeholders’ actions also shed light on the inter-relations, such as the negative effect of macro general policies on a fragmented, asymmetric meso level. Inter-relations among customers and firms’ behavior gave insights that could increase resilience before general critical events. Finally, the balanced results recommend a simultaneous effort from firms and policy makers to make possible a profound change while addressing the sector’s shortcomings. Firms’ effort in managing key assets, such as human capital, to acquire the capacity for the flexibility, adaptability, and innovation essential for change and renewal, must be endorsed by institutional support and customer recognition of the contributions of this singular service and cultural industry. Full article

Stroke affects over 12 million people annually, leading to high mortality, long-term disability, and substantial healthcare costs. Although East Asian herbal medicines are widely used for stroke treatment, the pathways of operation they use remain poorly understood. Our study investigates the neuroprotective properties of Astragalus mongholicus (AM) in acute ischemic stroke using photothrombotic (PTB) and transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) mouse models, as well as an in vitro oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) model. Post-OGD treatment with AM improved cell viability in mouse neuroblastoma cells, likely by reducing reactive oxygen species (ROS). Mice received short-term (0–2 days) or long-term (0–27 days) AM treatment post-stroke. Infarct size was assessed using a 2,3,5-triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining procedure alongside magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Neuroprotective metabolites including inositol (Ins), glycerophosphocholine+phosphocholine (GPc+ PCh), N-acetylaspartate+N-acetylaspartylglutamate (NAA+NAAG), creatine + phosphocreatine (Cr+PCr), and glutamine+glutamate (Glx) were analyzed via magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Gliosis was assessed using GFAP and Iba-1 immunohistochemical markers, while neurological deficits were quantified with modified neurological severity scores (mNSS). Motor and cognitive functions were assessed using cylinder, rotarod, and novel object recognition (NOR) tests. AM treatment significantly reduced ischemic damage and improved neurological outcomes in both acute and chronic stages of PTB and tMCAO models. Additionally, AM increased neuroprotective metabolites levels, reduced gliosis, and decreased oxidative stress, as evidenced by reduced inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). These findings highlight the antioxidant properties of AM and its strong therapeutic potential for promoting recovery after ischemic stroke by alleviating neurological deficits, reducing gliosis, and mitigating oxidative stress. Full article

Eogystia hippophaecolus (Hua, Chou, Fang et Chen) is a drilling pest that damages sea buckthorn, leading to substantial ecological and economic losses in areas where sea buckthorn is cultivated in China. Pheromone lures are widely used to monitor and trap male moths; however, the olfactory recognition mechanisms in male moths require further investigation. In this study, we characterized odorant receptor genes using phylogenetics, gene expression, sequence analyses and molecular docking. A phylogenetic analysis using the maximum likelihood method revealed that odorant receptor co-receptor (EhipOrco) genes clustered with other lepidopteran Orco genes, while pheromone receptor (EhipPR) genes clustered with other lepidopteran PR genes, suggesting that these genes have similar functions. The expression levels of 27 odorant receptor (EhipOR) genes in five tissues of male adults were analyzed using qPCR. Nine EhipOR genes were specifically expressed in the antennae, while several EhipOR genes were highly expressed in the head, feet, and external genitalia. As determined using molecular docking, EhipPR1–3 bound strongly to the primary sex pheromone components of E. hippophaecolus. Additionally, EhipPR1–3 demonstrated a strong binding affinity for longifolene among sea buckthorn volatiles. This study provides a foundation for future functional research on EhipORs and the olfactory recognition mechanisms of E. hippophaecolus. Full article

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an inflammatory disease causing neurodegeneration. One of the consequences of inflammation is an elevated blood level of fibrinogen (Fg). Earlier we found that extravasated Fg induced an increased expression of neuronal nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) p65. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE), an inhibitor of NF-κB, on Fg-induced neurodegeneration in vitro and in mice with mild-to-moderate TBI. Primary mouse brain cortical neurons were treated with Fg (0.5 or 1 mg/mL) in the presence or absence of CAPE. A cortical contusion injury -induced model of TBI in C57BL/6 mice was used. Mice were treated with CAPE for two weeks. The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and neuronal viability were assessed. Mice memory was assessed using novel object recognition and contextual fear conditioning tests. The generation of ROS and viability of neurons in vitro and in the brain samples were assessed. Data showed that CAPE attenuated the Fg-induced generation of ROS and neuronal death. CAPE improved the cognitive function of the mice with TBI. The results suggest that Fg-induced generation of ROS could be a mechanism involved in cognitive impairment and that CAPE can offer protection against oxidative damage and neurodegeneration. Full article