An overview of systematic reviews of acupuncture for Parkinson's disease.

Background: Many systematic reviews (SRs) have reported the efficacy of acupuncture in improving Parkinson's disease (PD), but the quality of evidence is unknown. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively summarize and objectively evaluate the evidence of acupuncture for PD.

Methods: Seven databases were searched to retrieve SRs on the acupuncture for PD.

Thermotropic "Plumber's Nightmare"-A Tight Liquid Organic Double Framework.

Gyroid, double diamond and the body-centred "Plumber's nightmare" are the three most common bicontinuous cubic phases in lyotropic liquid crystals and block copolymers. While the first two are also present in solvent-free thermotropics, the latter had never been found. Containing six-fold junctions, it was unlikely to form in the more common phases with rod-like cores normal to the network columns, where a maximum of four branches can join at a junction.

Thioxanthone Functionalized NanoTiO Composites as Photocatalyst for Degradation of Organic Dyes.

Titanium dioxide (TiO) photocatalytic technology has the advantages of high catalytic activity, high chemical stability, nontoxicity, and low cost. Therefore, it finds widespread applications in the degradation of organic pollutants in water, antibacterial, environmental purification, and other fields. In this study, we have obtained a photocatalyst by modifying nanoTiO with the photosensitizer thioxanthone.

The efficacy of acupuncture for trigeminal neuralgia: an overview of systematic reviews.

Background: Many systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analysis (MAs) have reported the efficacy of acupuncture treatment for primary trigeminal neuralgia (PTN), but the quality of evidence is unknown and therefore needs to be evaluated comprehensively.

Methods: Eight electronic databases were searched from their inception until January 5, 2024. The methodological quality, reporting quality, and risk of bias of the included SRs were assessed by the assessment of multiple systematic reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2), the Risk of Bias in Systematic Reviews (ROBIS) tool, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for Alzheimer's disease: an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Objective: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative condition that significantly impacts both individuals and society. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) as a treatment for AD by summarizing the evidence from systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs).

Methods: SRs/MAs of rTMS for AD were collected by searching Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed, CNKI, VIP, Sino-Med, and Wanfang databases.

Supertwisted Chiral Gyroid Mesophase in Chiral Rod-Like Compounds.

Among the intriguing bicontinuous self-assembled structures, the gyroid cubic is the most ubiquitous. It is found in block and star polymers, surfactants with or without solvent, in thermotropic liquid crystals with end- or side-chains, and in biosystems providing structural color and modelling cell mitosis. It contains two interpenetrating networks of opposite chirality and is thus achiral if, as usual, the content of the two nets is the same.

Three-Dimensional Polyoxometalate Organic Frameworks with One-Dimensional Channels Constructed by Multiple Helical Chains Based on 22-Core Ln/Mn/Mo Clusters for Proton Conduction.

Two unique 22-core sandwich {[MnMoO]Ln[MnMoO]} (Ln = La or Pr) units have been assembled, featuring an undisclosed {MnMo} cluster. This assembly is subsequently integrated into two three-dimensional polyoxometalate organic frameworks, which exhibit one-dimensional hydrophilic hexagonal channels formed by six intertwined 6 helical chains, leading to effective proton conduction primarily facilitated by an abundance of water molecules within the channels.

Assembly of Lanthanide-Containing 3D [MnMoO]-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks and Oxidative Desulfurization Performance.

Lanthanide-containing polyoxometalate-based metal-organic frameworks (POMOFs) not only enjoy intriguing architectures but also have good application prospects as catalysts. Herein, three novel three-dimensional (3D) POMOFs with the formulas of {H[Ln(2,6-pydc)(HO)(MnMoO)]·2HO} (Ln = La(), Pr(), Nd()) have been synthesized based on Waugh-type [MnMoO] anions and pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylate (2,6-Hpydc). Compounds - are isomorphic, and there are two kinds of one-dimensional (1D) helical chains with opposite handedness staggered into two-dimensional (2D) layers.

Enantiomers Self-Sort into Separate Counter-Twisted Ribbons of the Liquid Crystal─Antiferrochirality and Parachirality.

The recently discovered orthorhombic liquid crystal (LC) phase of symmetry is proving to be widespread. In this work, a chiral hydroxybutyrate linkage is inserted into the molecular core of hexacatenar rodlike compounds, containing a thienylfluorenone fluorophore. In addition to more usual tools, the methods used include grazing-incidence X-ray scattering, modulated differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), flash DSC with rates up to 6000 K/s, and chiro-optical spectroscopies using Mueller matrix method, plus conformational mapping.

Substituents Regulate the Cyclization of Conjugated Alkynes to Accurately Construct Cyclo-()-[3]dendralenes.

Substituent-regulated cyclization of conjugated alkynes with acid catalysis was developed in this paper, and it provides a straightforward synthesis of cyclic-()-[3]dendralenes. Depending on the electronic effect of the aromatic ring pairing, a variety of phosphinyl quintuplet/hexa cyclo-[3]dendralenes with diverse substitution patterns are accessible, with good efficiency and high stereoselectivity. This self-cyclization process achieves the first precise construction of a phosphinylcyclo-()-[3]dendralene from conjugated alkynes to aromatization.

Construction of Water-Stable Rare-Earth Organic Frameworks with Ambient High Proton Conductivity Based on Zirconium Sandwiched Heteropolytungstate.

Water-stable proton-conducting materials owning excellent performances at ambient temperatures are currently one of the crucial challenges. Herein, four water-stable three-dimensional polyoxometalate-based rare-earth organic frameworks have been successfully synthesized and formulated as H{Ln(L)(HO)[Zr(OH)(PWO)]}·15HO (-) (Ln = La (), Ce (), Pr (); L = 3,5-pyridine dicarboxylic acid), which are the first examples of MOFs constructed by a zirconium sandwiched polyoxoanion. There are abundant coordinated water molecules functionalizing the Pr centers, and simultaneously, plenty of lattice water molecules are fitted into the channel of the framework.

Multi-Party Cryptographic Key Distribution Protocol over a Public Network Based on a Quick-Response Code.

In existing cryptographic key distribution (CKD) protocols based on computational ghost imaging (CGI), the interaction among multiple legitimate users is generally neglected, and the channel noise has a serious impact on the performance. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a multi-party interactive CKD protocol over a public network, which takes advantage of the cascade ablation of fragment patterns (FPs). The server splits a quick-response (QR) code image into multiple FPs and embeds different "watermark" labels into these FPs.

Progress in traditional Chinese medicine and natural extracts for the treatment of lupus nephritis.

Lupus nephritis (LN) is an autoimmune disease with multiple system involvement and is also one of the most serious forms of organ damage in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which is mainly caused by the formation and deposition of immune complexes in glomeruli. More than 50% of SLE patients have clinical manifestations of renal damage. At present, the treatment of lupus nephritis is mainly based on glucocorticoids and immunosuppressants.

A case of antiferrochirality in a liquid crystal phase of counter-rotating staircases.

Helical structures continue to inspire, prompted by examples such as DNA double-helix and alpha-helix in proteins. Most synthetic polymers also crystallize as helices, which relieves steric clashes by twisting, while keeping the molecules straight for their ordered packing. In columnar liquid crystals, which often display useful optoelectronic properties, overall helical chirality can be induced by inclusion of chiral chemical groups or dopants; these bias molecular twist to either left or right, analogous to a magnetic field aligning the spins in a paramagnet.

Gradient-Descent-like Ghost Imaging.

Ghost imaging is an indirect optical imaging technique, which retrieves object information by calculating the intensity correlation between reference and bucket signals. However, in existing correlation functions, a high number of measurements is required to acquire a satisfied performance, and the increase in measurement number only leads to limited improvement in image quality. Here, inspired by the gradient descent idea that is widely used in artificial intelligence, we propose a gradient-descent-like ghost imaging method to recursively move towards the optimal solution of the preset objective function, which can efficiently reconstruct high-quality images.

[Distribution characteristics of soil water and nutrients in pear orchard and their relationship with yields in loess hilly region].

We analyzed soil water, nutrients, and yields in three different slope sites in the sloping farmland under Yuluxiang pear planted in the loess hilly region of Western Shanxi, across the growth periods and different soil depths. The results showed that: 1) The yield of pear was in the order of high slope site > middle slope site > low slope site. In high slope site, the yield was significantly correlated with soil water content (SWC), soil organic matter (SOM), available potassium (AK), with AK showing the most significant effect.

Association between Human Genetic Variants and the Vaginal Bacteriome of Pregnant Women.

The influence of human genetic variants on the vaginal bacterial traits (VBTs) of pregnant women is still unknown. Using a genome-wide association approach based on the 16S rRNA bacteriome analysis, a total of 72 host genetic variant (single nucleotide polymorphisms [SNPs], indels, or copy number variations [CNVs])-VBT associations were found that reached the genome-wide significance level ( < 5 × 10) with an acceptable genomic inflation factor λ of <1.1.

Gyroid-Nanostructured All-Solid Polymer Films Combining High H Conductivity with Low H Permeability.

Gyroid-nanostructured all-solid polymer films with exceedingly high proton conductivity and low H gas permeability have been created via crosslinking polymerization of mixtures of a zwitterionic amphiphilic monomer and a polymerizable imide-type acid that co-organize into bicontinuous cubic liquid-crystalline phases. The gyroid nanostructures are visualized by reconstructing a 3D electron map from the synchrotron X-ray diffraction patterns. These films exhibit high proton conductivity of the order of 10 S cm and extremely low H gas permeability of the order of 10 mol m m s Pa .

Double-Gyroid Nanostructure Formation by Aggregation-Induced Atropisomerization and Co-Assembly of Ionic Liquid-Crystalline Amphiphiles.

We report a new molecular-design principle for creating double-gyroid nanostructured molecular assemblies based on atropisomerization. Ionic amphiphiles containing two imidazolium rings close to each other were designed and synthesized. NMR data revealed that the rotation of the imidazolium rings is restricted, with an activation energy as high as 63 kJ mol in DMSO-d solution (DFT prediction for a model compound in the vacuum: 90-100 kJ mol ).

Pseudo-thermal imaging by using sequential-deviations for real-time image reconstruction.

Ghost imaging technologies acquire images through intensity correlation of reference patterns and bucket values. Among them, an interesting method named correspondence imaging can generate positive-negative images by only conditionally averaging reference patterns, but still requires full/over sampling to treat the ensemble average of bucket values as a selection criteria, causing a long acquisition time. Here, we propose a sequential-deviation ghost imaging approach, which can realize real-time reconstructions of positive-negative images with a high image quality close to that of differential ghost imaging.

Gyroid structured aqua-sheets with sub-nanometer thickness enabling 3D fast proton relay conduction.

A polymerizable amphiphile having two zwitterionic head-groups has been designed. This compound co-organizes with an acid, bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (HTfN), into a gyroid bicontinuous cubic liquid-crystalline phase. polymerization of this phase has been successfully achieved by UV irradiation in the presence of a photoinitiator, yielding a self-standing gyroid-nanostructured polymer film.

New Type of Columnar Liquid Crystal Superlattice in Double-Taper Ionic Minidendrons.

Wedge-shaped molecules, such as dendrons, are among the most important building blocks for directed supramolecular self-assembly. Here we present a new approach aimed at widening the range and complexity of potential mesophases by introducing double-tapered mesogens. Two series of compounds are presented, both alkali metal salts (Li, Na, Cs) of 3,4,5-tris-alkoxybenzoic acid with a second tapered tris-alkoxyaryl group attached at the end of an alkoxy chain.