Objective To evaluate the radiosensitization effect and micro CT imaging of multifunctional gold nanoparticles in lung adenocarcinoma A549 tumor-bearing mouse models.Methods The tumor-bearing mice were injected with gold nanoparticles and irradiated with different energy levels of 160 kV and 6 MV X-ray.The tumor volume changes were measured.Intra-tumoral injection of gold nanoparticles was administered and micro CT scan was performed at different time points to observe the imaging and retention time of gold nanoparticles in the tumor tissues.Results The tumor volume did not significantly differ between the control and gold nanoparticles groups (P=0.941).The tumor volume in the 6 MV X-ray combined with gold nanoparticles group was slightly reduced compared with that in the 6 MV X-ray group with no statistical significance (P=0.730).The tumor volume in the 160 kV X-ray combined with gold nanoparticles group was significantly smaller than that in the 160 kV X-ray group (P=0.026).Micro CT scan demonstrated that gold nanoparticles could be deposited in the tumors for 30 d and yielded excellent imaging effect.No gold nanoparticles-induced toxicity was observed.Conclusions Multifunctional gold nanoparticles exert significant radiosensitization effect in the lung adenocarcinoma A549 transplanted tumors irradiated with 160 kV X-ray.Stable CT imaging of the gold nanoparticles-injected tumors can be used as a potential method for mapping and delineating the target area in tumor-guided radiotherapy.

OBJECTIVETo study relationships between the main active ingredients and physical and chemical parameters of dangguibuxue decoction, and to explore the feasibility of characterization the quality of decoction by physical and chemical parameters.

METHODSolutions of ferulic acid and astragaloside with different concentrations were prepared, of which physical and chemical parameters such as surface tension, pH value and conductivity, etc were determined at 25 degrees C. And polynomial regression analysis was used to analyze these data.

RESULTWith the increase of concentration of ferulic acid, pH value was decreased and conductivity was increased. And surface tension was decreased in the aqueous solution of astragaloside. In the combined solution of ferulic acid and astragaloside, ferulic acid was the main influencing pH value and conductivity, while astragaloside was the main factor influencing surface tension.

CONCLUSIONOn one hand, astragaloside concentration has a significant correlation with surface tension, but almost no correlation with pH value and conductivity. On the other hand, ferulic acid concentration has a strong correlation with pH value and conductivity, but almost no correlation with surface tension. In addition, each parameter has strong anti-interference ability and almost didn't change with the addition of another material. These preliminary results suggested that such characteristic parameters could be used to characterize the decoction quality.

Chemical Phenomena ; Coumaric Acids ; analysis ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry ; Surface Tension

Objective: To investigate the effect of peripheral nerve block combined with venous fast track anesthesia on elderly patients undergoing lower extremity orthopedic surgery. Methods: From September 2015 to December 2017, 64 senile patients with lower extremity orthopedic surgery in the Fifth Hospital of Ningbo were selected in the research.According to the different methods of anesthesia, the patients were divided into observation group (30 cases, application of combined intravenous peripheral nerve block and fast track anaesthesia), and the control group (34 cases, application of simple intravenous general anesthesia). The heart rate, average arterial pressure, spontaneous breathing recovery time, extubation time, complication rate and cognitive function scores of the two groups were compared. Results: The heart rate and average arterial pressure of T1 and T3 in the observation group were significantly lower than those in the control group (P<0.05). The spontaneous breathing recovery time[(8.32±3.26)min] and extubation time[(9.69±4.29)min] in the observation group were significantly shorter than those in the control group[(18.24±5.23)min and (27.24±4.58)min](t=8.961, 15.756, all P<0.05). The incidence rate of postoperative complications in the observation group (3.33%) was significantly lower than that in the control group (20.59%)(χ²=4.338, P<0.05). The cognitive function score of the observation group was significantly higher at 4 h and 8 h after surgery than that of the control group (t=6.745, 8.494, all P<0.05). Conclusion Peripheral nerve block combined with intravenous fast-track anesthesia is very feasible for elderly patients undergoing lower limb orthopedic surgery.The time for patients to recover from spontaneous breathing and extubation is shorter, and the risk of complications such as delirium, restlessness, nausea and vomiting is lower.

Feature extraction methods and classifier selection are two critical steps in heart sound classification. To capture the pathological features of heart sound signals, this paper introduces a feature extraction method that combines mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) and power spectral density (PSD). Unlike conventional classifiers, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was chosen as the classifier for this study. In terms of experimental design, we compared different PSDs across various time intervals and frequency ranges, selecting the characteristics with the most effective classification outcomes. We compared four statistical properties, including mean PSD, standard deviation PSD, variance PSD, and median PSD. Through experimental comparisons, we found that combining the features of median PSD and MFCC with heart sound systolic period of 100-300 Hz yielded the best results. The accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, and F1 score were determined to be 96.50%, 99.27%, 93.35%, 99.60%, and 96.35%, respectively. These results demonstrate the algorithm's significant potential for aiding in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease.
Humans ; Heart Sounds ; Neural Networks, Computer ; Algorithms ; Heart Defects, Congenital

The human brain undergoes rapid development during childhood, with significant improvement in a wide spectrum of cognitive and affective functions. Mapping domain- and age-specific brain activity patterns has important implications for characterizing the development of children’s cognitive and affective functions. The current mainstay of brain templates is primarily derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and thus is not ideal for mapping children’s cognitive and affective brain development. By integrating task-dependent functional MRI data from a large sample of 250 children (aged 7 to 12) across multiple domains and the latest easy-to-use and transparent preprocessing workflow, we here created a set of age-specific brain functional activity maps across four domains: attention, executive function, emotion, and risky decision-making. Moreover, we developed a toolbox named Developmental Brain Functional Activity maps across multiple domains that enables researchers to visualize and download domain- and age-specific brain activity maps for various needs. This toolbox and maps have been released on the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse website (http://www.nitrc.org/projects/dbfa). Our study provides domain- and age-specific brain activity maps for future developmental neuroimaging studies in both healthy and clinical populations.