Comparative efficacy of various exercise interventions on sleep in patients with cognitive impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Sleep disturbances are an early indicator of cognitive impairment and exacerbate its progression. While pharmacological treatments for sleep disorders exist, their side-effect profile includes an increased risk of falls and the potential to exacerbate cognitive impairment. Non-pharmacological treatments such as physical exercise should be considered.

Drier August and colder September slow down the delaying trend of leaf senescence in herbaceous plants on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Plant phenological shifts on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) have gained considerable attention over the last few decades. However, temporal changes in plant autumn phenology and the main driving factors remain uncertain. Most previous studies used satellite-derived phenological transition dates and climatic statistics during the preseason, which have relatively large uncertainties and may mask some important climate change characteristics at the intra-annual scale, thus affecting exploration of the underlying phenological change causes.

Adaptive parameter estimation for the expanded sandwich model.

An expanded-sandwich system is a nonlinear extended block-oriented system in which memoryless elements in conventional block-oriented systems are displaced by memory submodels. Expanded-sandwich system identification has received extensive attention in recent years due to the powerful ability of these systems to describe actual industrial systems. This study proposes a novel recursive identification algorithm for an expanded-sandwich system, in which an estimator is developed on the basis of parameter identification error data rather than the traditional prediction error output information.

Plasma β-amyloid, tau, neurodegeneration biomarkers and inflammatory factors of probable Alzheimer's disease dementia in Chinese individuals.

Background: Plasma-derived β-amyloid, tau, and neurodegeneration (ATN) biomarkers can accurately diagnose Alzheimer's disease (AD) and predict its progression. Few studies have investigated the relationship between plasma biomarkers and changes in plasma inflammatory markers in clinically diagnosed AD.

Methods: Seventy-four participants were recruited, including 30 mild-to-moderate AD dementia patients and 44 normal controls (NC).

Structural alignment guides oriented migration and differentiation of endogenous neural stem cells for neurogenesis in brain injury treatment.

Radial glia (RG) cells that align in parallel in the embryonic brain are found to be able to guide the directed migration of neurons in response to brain injury. Therefore, biomaterials with aligned architectures are supposed to have positive effects on neural migration and neurogenic differentiation for brain injury repair that are rarely addressed, although they have been widely demonstrated in spinal cord and peripheral nerve system. Here, we present a highly biomimetic scaffold of aligned fibrin hydrogel (AFG) that mimics the oriented structure of RG fibers.

Declined trend in herbaceous plant green-up dates on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau caused by spring warming slowdown.

There has been much debate on the temporal change trend and existence of a turning point in spring green-up date (GUD) of plants on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Most previous studies on the QTP used remote sensing data, which have large uncertainties. In this study, using a large amount of long-term ground observation data at 27 phenological stations across the QTP (1694 GUD records), we showed that on the whole, QTP herbaceous plant GUD insignificantly advanced during 1982-2017.

Two-Way: A Novel Method for Identifying the Anatomy During Uniportal Thoracoscopic Segmentectomy.

Because the segmental bronchi and vessels are commonly variable and complicated, it is difficult to correctly identify them. Misidentification of the segmental anatomy could result in the failure of segmentectomy and conversion to other surgical procedures such as bisegmentectomy or lobectomy. We describe a novel method to identify the target segmental vessels and bronchi by exposing the adjacent segmental anatomy during uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic segmentectomy, which could help to reduce the chance of misidentification.

Identification of Key Pathways and Genes in L4 Dorsal Root Ganglion (DRG) After Sciatic Nerve Injury via Microarray Analysis.

: Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) has devastating consequences. Dorsal root ganglion as a pivotal locus participates in the process of neuropathic pain and nerve regeneration. In recent years, gene sequencing technology has seen rapid rise in the biomedicine field.

Investigation of temperature-dependent photoluminescence in multi-quantum wells.

Photoluminescence (PL) is a nondestructive and powerful method to investigate carrier recombination and transport characteristics in semiconductor materials. In this study, the temperature dependences of photoluminescence of GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs multi-quantum wells samples with and without p-n junction were measured under both resonant and non-resonant excitation modes. An obvious increase of photoluminescence(PL) intensity as the rising of temperature in low temperature range (T < 50 K), is observed only for GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs quantum wells sample with p-n junction under non-resonant excitation.

Photoelectrochemical properties of a series of electrostatically self-assembled films based on sandwich-type polyoxometalates and a bichromophore hemicyanine dye.

A series of photoelectric conversion films consisting of sandwich-type polyoxometalates [P(2)W(18)M(4)(H(2)O)(2)O(68)](10-) (P(2)W(18)M(4), M=Ni, Cu, Zn) and a bichromophore hemicyanine of (E)-1,1'-(hexane-1,6-diyl)bis(4-(4-(dimethylamino)styryl)pyridinium) bromide (H(6)) were prepared on quartz and indium-tin-oxide (ITO)-coated glass substrates by electrostatic self-assembly. The UV-visible absorption spectroscopy showed that the films were uniformly deposited with the visible absorption bands for H(6) in the films exhibiting different extents of bathochromic shifts with respect to H(6) aqueous solution. The (P(2)W(18)M(4)/H(6))(n) films exhibited cathodic photocurrents as irradiated with white light.

Speckle reducing bilateral filter for cattle follicle segmentation.

Background: Ultrasound imaging technology has wide applications in cattle reproduction and has been used to monitor individual follicles and determine the patterns of follicular development. However, the speckles in ultrasound images affect the post-processing, such as follicle segmentation and finally affect the measurement of the follicles. In order to reduce the effect of speckles, a bilateral filter is developed in this paper.

[Indirect determination of Vc with flame atomic absorption spectrometry].

In the present paper, a new method for indirect determination of Vc by atomic absorption spectrometry is proposed, based on the reducing properties of Ag+. The effects of temperature, reaction time and use level of Ag+ on the experiment were studied. Room-temperature and reaction time of 35 minutes were chosen.

Speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion for 3D ultrasound images.

This paper presents an approach for reducing speckle in three dimensional (3D) ultrasound images. A 2D speckle reduction technique, speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD), is explored and extended to 3D. 3D SRAD is advantageous in that, like 2D SRAD, it keeps the advantages of the conventional anisotropic diffusion and the traditional speckle reducing filter, the Lee filter, by exploiting the instantaneous coefficient of variation (ICOV).