Background: Transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) is an innovative, non-invasive therapy that stimulates the contraction of paralyzed muscles in the upper limbs, promoting functional recovery. Several studies have demonstrated the efficacy of TEAS in restoring upper limb function. This study aims to evaluate the impact of TEAS on upper limb motor recovery after stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDisentangling the mechanisms underlying community assembly is a central topic in community ecology and an important prerequisite for bioassessment. The relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes is expected to change among organisms relying on different dispersal modes and may vary considerably through time. However, how seasonal change and dispersal modes will interplay to influence community assembly remains to be demonstrated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurrent methods for the asymmetric α-sulfenylation of carbonyls cannot be applied to acyclic carbonyls that have two similar substituents at the α-position. This research demonstrated that the electrophilic sulfenylation of geometry-defined acyclic β,β-disubstituted enesulfinamides using -aryl or -alkyl benzenethiosulfonates can be highly stereoselective. This process results in enantioenriched α,α-disubstituted α-sulfenylated ketone surrogates with sulfur-containing acyclic tetrasubstituted carbon stereocenters bearing two electronically and sterically similar substituents (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding diversity patterns and underlying drivers is one of the central topics in the fields of biogeography and community ecology. Aquatic macroinvertebrates are widely distributed in various wetlands and play vital ecological roles. Previous studies mainly have focused on macroinvertebrate diversity in a single type of wetland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Rhizosphere microorganisms are vital in plants' growth and development and these beneficial microbes are recruited to the root-zone soil when experiencing various environmental stresses. However, the effect of white grub (Maladera verticalis) larvae feeding on the structure and function of rhizosphere microbial communities of aerobic rice (Oryza sativa L.) is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the relative role of dispersal dynamics and niche constraints is not only a core task in community ecology, but also becomes an important prerequisite for bioassessment. Despite the recent progress in our knowledge of community assembly in space and time, patterns and processes underlying biotic communities in alpine glacierized catchments remain mostly ignored. To fill this knowledge gap, we combined the recently proposed dispersal-niche continuum index (DNCI) with traditional constrained ordinations and idealized patterns of species distributions to unravel community assembly mechanisms of different key groups of primary producers and consumers (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To observe the therapeutic effect of electroacupuncture (EA) on neurogenic urinary retention rats, so as to explore the underlying mechanism of EA in treating neurogenic urinary retention by focusing on 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase 1 (PDK1)/protein kinase B (Akt)/hyperpolarization activated cyclic nucleotide-gated cation channel 4 (HCN4) pathway.
Methods: Female SD rats were randomly divided into sham operation, model, EA, PDK1 inhibitor, HCN4 blocker and EA + HCN4 blocker groups, with 20 rats in each group. The model of sacral spinal cord injury was established by modified Hassan Shaker spinal cord transection method.
Background: For patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer (LA-NPC), concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) is the standardized treatment. However, whether a weekly or triweekly cisplatin regimen should be used during CCRT is controversial. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to explore differences in the effects and toxicities of the two regimens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Concurrent chemoradiotherapy has long been a standardized therapy for localized advanced nasopharyngeal cancer. It is widely used in clinical applications. In contrast, NCCN guidelines highlight that the efficacy of concurrent chemoradiotherapy for stage II nasopharyngeal cancer in the new era of intensity-modulated radiotherapy has not been defined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnthropogenic disturbances have become one of the primary causes of biodiversity decline in freshwater ecosystems. Beyond the well-documented loss of taxon richness in increasingly impacted ecosystems, our knowledge on how different facets of α and β diversity respond to human disturbances is still limited. Here, we examined the responses of taxonomic (TD), functional (FD) and phylogenetic (PD) α and β diversity of macroinvertebrate communities to human impact across 33 floodplain lakes surrounding the Yangtze River.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccurate assessment of life history and population ecology of widespread species in ultra-eutrophic freshwater lakes is a prerequisite for understanding the mechanisms by which widespread species respond to eutrophication. Freshwater pulmonate () is widespread and abundant in many eutrophic water bodies in Asia. Despite its key roles in eutrophic lake systems, the information on life history and population ecology of is lacking, especially in ultra-eutrophic freshwater plateau lakes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLateral hydrological connectivity (LHC) is a key process in maintaining aquatic biodiversity in river floodplain ecosystems. However, the effects of LHC loss on aquatic biodiversity are rarely studied. Here, we evaluated, for the first time, the responses of multiple facets (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough environmental filtering and spatial structuring are commonly regarded as two key factors shaping community dynamics, their relative contribution remains unknown for numerous aquatic ecosystems, particularly highly dynamic floodplain lakes. This issue is here addressed by examining the seasonal metacommunity dynamics of freshwater fishes in Lake Dongting, a large subtropical lake of the middle Chang-Jiang basin in southern China. Physicochemical variables and fish assemblages were recorded at 20 sampling sites during the wet, normal, and dry seasons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZhong Nan Da Xue Xue Bao Yi Xue Ban
April 2022
Objectives: Electroacupuncture can enhance autophagic flow, promote neuronal regeneration, axonal and myelin remodeling to achieve the protection of spinal cord injury, but its role in neurogenic urine retention is not completely clear. This study aims to investigate whether the mechanism of electroacupuncture in the treatment of neurogenic urine retention is through autophagy mediated by adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase (AMPK)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway.
Methods: A rat model of neurogenic urine retention after sacral spinal cord injury was established.
A Mannich reaction of deprotonated, highly enantioenriched α,α-disubstituted --butanesulfinyl ketimines with isatin-derived ketimines was developed to prepare 3-amino-3-substituted oxindoles bearing an acyclic quaternary stereogenic carbon substituted with two sterically similar groups. The excellent stereocontrol of the deprotonation enabled the formation of metalloenamine intermediates with stereodefined geometry, while the precise facial selectivity of the C-C bond formation allowed the construction of contiguous quaternary and tetrasubstituted stereocenters with excellent stereoselectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConversion of forests to urban land-use in the processes of urbanization is one of the major causes of biotic homogenization (i.e., decline in beta diversity) in freshwater ecosystems, threating ecosystem functioning and services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRiver floodplain ecosystems host one of the highest freshwater molluscan biodiversity on Earth. However, multiple human disturbances, such as loss of hydrological connectivity and deterioration of water quality, are seriously threatening most floodplain lakes throughout the world. Given the high imperilment rate of freshwater molluscs but the scarcity of studies examining the anthropogenic effects on this fauna, we test the response of mollusc assemblages to river-lake disconnection and eutrophication in 30 lakes in the Yangtze River floodplain, China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper we investigate the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) empowering leadership and corporate entrepreneurship. In addition, the mediating role of information elaboration in top management teams (TMTs) and the moderating role of environmental dynamism are examined. Drawing on the information exchange/sharing perspective, we hypothesize that CEO empowering leadership has a positive effect on corporate entrepreneurship, and TMT information elaboration mediates the relationship above.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExpansion of agricultural and urban areas and intensification of catchment land-use increasingly affect different facets of biodiversity in aquatic communities. However, understanding the responses of taxonomic and functional diversity to specific conversion from natural forest to agriculture and urban land-use remains limited, especially in subtropical streams where biomonitoring programs and using functional traits are still under development. Here, we conducted research in a subtropical stream network to examine the responses of macroinvertebrate taxonomic and functional diversity to different types of land-use in central China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is generally recognized that dispersal mode can affect the relative role of environmental and spatial factors in structuring biotic communities. Disentangling the effects of dispersal mode on metacommunity structuring is essential to understanding the mechanisms of community assembly. Despite high seasonal variation in assemblage structure and phenological features of lotic macroinvertebrates, few studies examined the seasonal changes in the relative contribution of environmental and spatial processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEffects of commercial sand mining on aquatic diversity are of increasing global concern, especially in parts of some developing countries. However, understanding of this activity on the diversity of macroinvertebrates remains focused on the α component of species diversity, rather than community functioning. Thus, there remains much uncertainty regarding how each component of taxonomic (TD) and functional (FD) diversity respond to the activity both in freshwater and marine environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEffect of revascularization in the treatment of thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO) and the predictive value of serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), interleukin-1 (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) of risk factors of amputation were investigated. From April 2012 to August 2015, a total of 117 patients with TAO admitted to the First Hospital of Lanzhou University were selected. Patients treated with revascularization combined with prostaglandin sodium and cilostazol were enrolled in group A (67 patients), and patients treated with sodium and cilostazol were enrolled in group B (50 patients).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnraveling the ecological factors that control variation in local community structure in space and time is fundamental to metacommunity ecology. In this scenario, environmental filtering and spatial processes are recognized as important drivers of community assembly, yet their relative importance is anticipated to vary for biological communities in different seasons, network positions and organisms with distinct dispersal modes. In this study, we used a dataset (macroinvertebrate communities and environmental variables) collected in different seasons from the Ganjiang River in China to test the above ideas.
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