Effectiveness of Yijinjing exercise in the treatment of early-stage knee osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial protocol.

Introduction: Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is still a challenging degenerative joint disease with high morbidity and disease burden. Early-stage KOA, the focus of this study, could present a Window of Opportunity to arrest the disease process and reduce the disease burden. Yijinjing exercise is an important part of physical and psychological therapies in Traditional Chinese Exercise and may be an effective treatment.

5-ALA-photodynamic therapy in refractory vulvar lichen sclerosus et atrophicus.

Objective: As a chronic inflammatory skin disease of unknown etiology, vulvar leukoplakia mainly affects postmenopausal and peri-menopausal females. The main clinical manifestations of vulvar lichen sclerosus et atrophicus (VLSA) include itching, burning pain, and sexual dysfunction, which can lead to a decline in the quality of life. The existing treatment options include topical corticosteroid ointment, estrogen, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Efficacy of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid (ALA)-Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) in Refractory Vulvar Lichen Sclerosus: Preliminary Results.

BACKGROUND As a chronic inflammatory skin disease of unknown etiology, vulvar lichen sclerosus (VLS) mainly affects postmenopausal and perimenopausal women. The main clinical manifestations of VLS include itching, burning pain, and sexual dysfunction, which can lead to a decline in quality of life. The existing treatment options include topical corticosteroid ointment, estrogen, and traditional Chinese medicine; however, their therapeutic effects on VLS remain unsatisfactory.

Evolution of the statistical distribution in a topological defect network.

The complex networks of numerous topological defects in hexagonal manganites are highly relevant to vastly different phenomena from the birth of our cosmos to superfluidity transition. The topological defects in hexagonal manganites form two types of domain networks: type-I without and type-II with electric self-poling. A combined phase-field simulations and experimental study shows that the frequencies of domains with N-sides, i.

Direct observation of nanoscale Peltier and Joule effects at metal-insulator domain walls in vanadium dioxide nanobeams.

The metal to insulator transition (MIT) of strongly correlated materials is subject to strong lattice coupling, which brings about the unique one-dimensional alignment of metal-insulator (M-I) domains along nanowires or nanobeams. Many studies have investigated the effects of stress on the MIT and hence the phase boundary, but few have directly examined the temperature profile across the metal-insulating interface. Here, we use thermoreflectance microscopy to create two-dimensional temperature maps of single-crystalline VO2 nanobeams under external bias in the phase coexisting regime.

Thermotropic phase boundaries in classic ferroelectrics.

High-performance piezoelectrics are lead-based solid solutions that exhibit a so-called morphotropic phase boundary, which separates two competing phases as a function of chemical composition; as a consequence, an intermediate low-symmetry phase with a strong piezoelectric effect arises. In search for environmentally sustainable lead-free alternatives that exhibit analogous characteristics, we use a network of competing domains to create similar conditions across thermal inter-ferroelectric transitions in simple, lead-free ferroelectrics such as BaTiO3 and KNbO3. Here we report the experimental observation of thermotropic phase boundaries in these classic ferroelectrics, through direct imaging of low-symmetry intermediate phases that exhibit large enhancements in the existing nonlinear optical and piezoelectric property coefficients.

Domain dynamics during ferroelectric switching.

The utility of ferroelectric materials stems from the ability to nucleate and move polarized domains using an electric field. To understand the mechanisms of polarization switching, structural characterization at the nanoscale is required. We used aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy to follow the kinetics and dynamics of ferroelectric switching at millisecond temporal and subangstrom spatial resolution in an epitaxial bilayer of an antiferromagnetic ferroelectric (BiFeO(3)) on a ferromagnetic electrode (La(0.