SNR Enhancement for Comparator-Based Ultra-Low-Sampling Φ-OTDR System Using Compressed Sensing.

The large amount of sampled data in coherent phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) brings heavy data transmission, processing, and storage burdens. By using the comparator combined with undersampling, we achieve simultaneous reduction of sampling rate and sampling resolution in hardware, thus greatly decreasing the sampled data volume. But this way will inevitably cause the deterioration of detection signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to the quantization noise's dramatic increase. To address this problem, denoising the demodulated phase signals using compressed sensing, which exploits the sparsity of spectrally sparse vibration, is proposed, thereby effectively enhancing the detection SNR. In experiments, the comparator with a sampling parameter of 62.5 MS/s and 1 bit successfully captures the 80 MHz beat signal, where the sampled data volume per second is only 7.45 MB. Then, when the piezoelectric transducer's driving voltage is 1 Vpp, 300 mVpp, and 100 mVpp respectively, the SNRs of the reconstructed 200 Hz sinusoidal signals are respectively enhanced by 23.7 dB, 26.1 dB, and 28.7 dB by using compressed sensing. Moreover, multi-frequency vibrations can also be accurately reconstructed with a high SNR. Therefore, the proposed technique can effectively enhance the system's performance while greatly reducing its hardware burden.

[Status and perspective of soil fauna eco-geography in China]. / ä¸­å›½åœŸå£¤åŠ¨ç‰©ç”Ÿæ€åœ°ç†å­¦ç ”ç©¶çŽ°çŠ¶ä¸Žå±•æœ›.

As regulators of the surface land processes, soil fauna communities are the vital foundations for healthy terrestrial ecosystems. Soil fauna have been studied in China for more than 70 years. Great progresses have been achieved in exploring soil fauna species composition and geographical distribution patterns. Soil fauna eco-geography, as a bridge between soil fauna geographic patterns and ecosystem services, has a new development opportunity with the deep recognition of soil fauna ecological functions. Soil fauna eco-geography research could be partitioned into four dimensions including the spatio-temporal patterns of: 1) the apparent characteristics of soil fauna community, such as species composition, richness and abundance; 2) the intrinsic characteristics of soil fauna community, such as dietary and habits; 3) soil fauna-related biotic and abiotic interactions especially those indicating drivers of soil fauna community structure or shaping the roles of soil fauna in ecosystems; and 4) soil fauna-related or -regulated key ecological processes. Current studies focus solely on soil fauna themselves and their geographical distributions. To link soil fauna geography more closely with ecosystem services, we suggested that: 1) converting the pure biogeography studies to those of revealing the spatio-temporal patterns of the soil fauna-related or regulated key relationships and ecological processes;2) expanding the temporal and spatial scales in soil fauna geographical research;3) exploring the integrated analysis approach for soil fauna-related data with multi-scales, multi-factors, and multi-processes;and 4) establishing standard reference systems for soil fauna eco-geographical researches. Hence, the change patterns of ecological niche of soil fauna communities could be illustrated, and precision mani-pulations of soil fauna communities and their ecological functions would become implementable, which finally contributes to ecosystem health and human well-being.

Topological photonic crystal nanowire array laser with bulk states.

A topological photonic crystal InGaAsP/InP core-shell nanowire array laser with bulk states operating in the 1550 nm band is proposed and simulated. By optimizing the structure parameters, high Q factor of 1.2 × 105 and side-mode suppression ratio of 13.2 dB are obtained, which are 28.6 and 4.6 times that of a uniform nanowire array, respectively. The threshold and maximum output are 17% lower and 613% higher than that of the uniform nanowire array laser, respectively, due to the narrower nanowire slits and stronger optical confinement. In addition, a low beam divergence angle of 2° is obtained due to the topological protection. This work may pave the way for the development of high-output, low-threshold, low-beam-divergence nanolasers.

Exposure to high concentrations of triphenyl phosphate altered functional performance, liver metabolism and intestinal bacterial composition of aquatic turtles.

Organophosphorus flame retardants, such as triphenyl phosphate (TPhP), exist ubiquitously in various environments owing to their widespread usage. Potential toxic effects of residual flame retardants on cultured non-fish species are not concerned commonly. TPhP-induced physiological and biochemical effects in an aquatic turtle were evaluated here by systematically investigating the changes in growth and locomotor performance, hepatic antioxidant ability and metabolite, and intestinal microbiota composition of turtle hatchlings after exposure to different TPhP concentrations. Reduced locomotor ability and antioxidant activity were only observed in the highest concentration group. Several metabolic perturbations that involved in amino acid, energy and nucleotide metabolism, in exposed turtles were revealed by metabolite profiles. No significant among-group difference in intestinal bacterial diversity was observed, but the composition was changed markedly in exposed turtles. Increased relative abundances of some bacterial genera (e.g., Staphylococcus, Vogesella and Lawsonella) probably indicated adverse outcomes of TPhP exposure. Despite having only limited impacts of exposure at environmentally relevant levels, our results revealed potential ecotoxicological risks of residual TPhP for aquatic turtles considering TPhP-induced metabolic perturbations and intestinal bacterial changes.

Childhood Trauma and Depressive Level Among Chinese College Students in Guangzhou: The Roles of Rumination and Perceived Stress.

OBJECTIVE: Although previous studies have validated the effect of childhood trauma on depressive level, few studies have utilized the diathesis-stress theory to investigate the specific roles of perceived stress and rumination in the pathway between childhood trauma and depression in Chinese college students. This study aims to demonstrate the mediation effect of perceived stress and the moderation effect of rumination in the pathway between childhood trauma and depressive level in Chinese college students. METHODS: A total of 995 Chinese college students in Guangzhou were included in this study by recruitment advertisement from October to December 2021. And they were asked to finish four self-report questionnaires, including Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, Perceived Stress Scale, the 22-item Ruminative Response Scale, and Beck Depression Scale-II. Then the data were analyzed with Mplus 8.3. RESULTS: Results revealed significant correlations among childhood trauma, perceived stress, rumination and depressive level. Further analyses revealed that perceived stress played a mediation role between childhood trauma and depressive level (estimate=0.09, standard error [SE]=0.02, t=5.93, 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.06-0.12), and rumination played a moderation role between childhood trauma and perceived stress (estimate=-0.17, SE=0.06, t=-2.86, 95% CI=-0.28- -0.05]) as well as between childhood trauma and depressive level (estimate=0.10, SE=0.04, t=2.74, 95% CI=0.03-0.16). CONCLUSION: These results revealed the mediation effect of perceived stress and the moderation effect of rumination in the pathway between childhood trauma and depressive level in Chinese college students, which helped us to understand how the childhood trauma influenced the depressive level and gave us multi-dimensional indications for reducing the effect of childhood trauma on depressive level.

Incidence, prevalence, and medical costs of pressure injuries in Taiwan from 2001 to 2015: Results of a retrospective cohort study.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This study aims to analyse the trends in the incidence, prevalence and medical costs of pressure injuries (PIs) among genders in Taiwan. BACKGROUND: The treatment of PIs is complex and costly, often leading to complications and increased mortality. This issue significantly impacts healthcare quality and incurs substantial medical and social costs, warranting attention. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Database to obtain and calculate the incidence, prevalence, and medical costs of PIs in the country between 2001 and 2015 as well as to analyse high-risk groups and the medical care utilisation of patients following the STROBE reporting guidelines. RESULTS: Between 2001 and 2015, 15,327 incident case of PIs were diagnosed. During the study period, the prevalence rate of PIs per 100,000 population rose from 26.3 to 189.6, with approximately 11.5%-16.3% of patients undergoing surgical debridement. The PIs prevalence rate increased by 7.2-fold, and hospitalisation costs accounted for 91.7%-96.0% of the total medical costs. Patients with older age, comorbidities, poorer financial status and lower education levels were found to be likely to develop PIs. These predisposing factors differed between males and females. The prevalence of PIs was higher in patients ≥75 years old than in patients from other age groups. Moreover, PI-related medical expenses have been increasing annually. CONCLUSIONS: In Taiwan, the rising incidence of PIs is driving up medical costs. Effective care and prevention of PIs necessitate a comprehensive plan from the entire healthcare system. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This research fills a gap in the available data on the incidence, prevalence, and medical costs of PIs in Taiwan and Asia. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: The findings can be used to help develop clinical guidelines for preventive education and treatment of PIs.

[Advances in the Effects of Microplastics on Soil N2O Emissions and Nitrogen Transformation].

Research on microplastics (MPs) is gaining more attention in the soil environment, but their impact on soil microbiota and related nitrogen processes remains poorly understood. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is one of the important greenhouse gases of the nitrogen cycle in agricultural soil, which mainly originates from microbial-mediated nitrogen (N) transformation processes. Microplastics can influence soil nitrogen transformation, as well as nitrogen-related functional enzymes and genes, and its enrichment may profoundly affect the N2O emissions in soil. However, because of the complexity of the properties of MPs, variations in experimental conditions, and spatial-temporal scales, the results on the effects of MPs on soil N2O emissions, nitrogen content, enzymes activities, and nitrogen functional genes remain inconsistent. Additionally, there is a lack of research conducted at broader experimental scales (e.g., pot scale), from diverse perspectives (e.g., denitrification or DNRA), and using advanced techniques (e.g., stable isotope approaches) to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Therefore, to comprehend the environmental risk of MPs on soil from multiple perspectives, this review summarized the impact of MPs on soil N cycling from previous published research to provide a knowledge basis and gain holistic insights into the potential impact of soil microplastic enrichment on N2O emission patterns in agricultural soils under climate change conditions.

Polysaccharide hydrogel containing silver nanoparticle@catechol microspheres with photothermal, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities for infected-wounds repair.

Anti-infection hydrogels have recently aroused enormous attraction, particularly in the treatment of chronic wounds. Herein, silver nanoparticle@catechol formaldehyde resin microspheres (Ag@CFRs) were fabricated by one-step hydrothermal method and subsequently encapsulated in hydrogels which were developed by Schiff base reaction between aldehyde groups in oxidized hyaluronic acid and amino groups in carboxymethyl chitosan. The developed polysaccharide hydrogel exhibited microporous structure, high swelling capacity, favorable mechanical strength, enhanced tissue adhesion and photothermal activities. Additionally, the hydrogel not only ensured long-term and high-efficiency antibacterial performance (99.9 %) toward E. coli and S. aureus, but also realized superior cytocompatibility in vitro. Moreover, based on the triple antibacterial strategies endowed by chitosan, silver nanoparticles and the photothermal properties of catechol microspheres, the composite hydrogel exhibited excellent anti-infection function, significantly downregulated inflammatory factors (TNF-α and IL-1ß) and promoted in vivo infected-wound healing. These results demonstrated that the polysaccharide hydrogel containing Ag@CFRs has great potential for infected-wounds repair.

Three chemosensory proteins enriched in antennae and tarsi of Rhaphuma horsfieldi differentially contribute to the binding of insecticides.

Antennae and legs (primarily the tarsal segments) of insects are the foremost sensory organs that contact a diverse range of toxic chemicals including insecticides. Binding proteins expressed in the two tissues are potential molecular candidates serving as the binding and sequestering of insecticides, like chemosensory proteins (CSPs). Insect CSPs endowed with multiple roles have been suggested to participate in insecticide resistance, focusing mainly on moths, aphids and mosquitos. Yet, the molecular underpinnings underlying the interactions of cerambycid CSPs and insecticides remain unexplored. Here, we present binding properties of three antenna- and tarsus-enriched RhorCSPs (RhorCSP1, CSP2 and CSP3) in Rhaphuma horsfieldi to eight insecticide classes totaling 15 chemicals. From the transcriptome of this beetle, totally 16 CSP-coding genes were found, with seven full-length sequences. In phylogeny, these RhorCSPs were distributed dispersedly in different clades. Expression profiles revealed the abundant expression of RhorCSP1, CSP2 and CSP3 in antennae and tarsi, thus as representatives for studying the protein-insecticide interactions. Binding assays showed that the three RhorCSPs were tuned differentially to insecticides but exhibited the highest affinities with hexaflumuron, chlorpyrifos and rotenone (dissociation constants <13 µM). In particular, RhorCSP3 could interact strongly with 10 of tested insecticides, of which four residues (Tyr25, Phe42, Val65 and Phe68) contributed significantly to the binding of six, four, three and four ligands, respectively. Of these, the binding of four mutated RhorCSP3s to a botanical insecticide rotenone was significantly weakened compared to the wildtype protein. Furthermore, we also evidenced that RhorCSP3 was a broadly-tuned carrier protein in response to a wide variety of plant odorants outside insecticides. Altogether, our findings shed light on different binding mechanisms and odorant-tuning profiles of three RhorCSPs in R. horsfieldi and identify key residues of the RhorCSP3-insecticide interactions.

Trichothecenes with cytotoxic activity and benzene derivatives with hypolipidemic activity from trichothecium sp.

Five trichothecenes including a new one, together with two previously undescribed benzene derivatives were isolated from the solid culture of Trichothecium sp. Their structures were established by 1D and 2D NMR data in conjunction with HR-ESI-MS analysis. Compounds 1-5 exhibited cytotoxicity against MCF-7 cell lines at various levels ranging from IC50 of 7.23 to 16.95 µM. Compound 6 decreased the concentration of blood lipids in zebra fish at the concentration of 20 µM.

Canopy nitrogen deposition enhances soil ecosystem multifunctionality in a temperate forest.

Nitrogen (N) deposition affects ecosystem functions crucial to human health and well-being. However, the consequences of this scenario for soil ecosystem multifunctionality (SMF) in forests are poorly understood. Here, we conducted a long-term field experiment in a temperate forest in China, where N deposition was simulated by adding N above and under the canopies. We discover that canopy N addition promotes SMF expression, whereas understory N addition suppresses it. SMF was regulated by fungal diversity in canopy N addition treatments, which is largely due to the strong resistance to soil acidification and efficient resource utilization characteristics of fungi. While in understory N addition treatments, SMF is regulated by bacterial diversity, which is mainly because of the strong resilience to disturbances and fast turnover of bacteria. Furthermore, rare microbial taxa may play a more important role in the maintenance of the SMF. This study provides the first evidence that N deposition enhanced SMF in temperate forests and enriches the knowledge on enhanced N deposition affecting forest ecosystems. Given the divergent results from two N addition approaches, an innovative perspective of canopy N addition on soil microbial diversity-multifunctionality relationships is crucial to policy-making for the conservation of soil microbial diversity and sustainable ecosystem management under enhanced N deposition. In future research, the consideration of canopy N processes is essential for more realistic assessments of the effects of atmospheric N deposition in forests.

DNA Damage-Induced Apoptosis Suppressor Triggers Progression and Stemness of Glioma by Enhancing Lymphoid Enhancer-Binding Factor 1 Expression.

Background: DNA damage-induced apoptosis suppressor (DDIAS) has recently been discovered to induce cancer progression, but its functions and mechanisms in glioma have not been well studied. Methods: DDIAS expression in glioma tissues was analyzed by the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis server (GEPIA) and the Gene Expression database of Normal and Tumor tissue 2 (GENT2) databases. The role of DDIAS in glioma progression was studied by short hairpin RNA (shRNA) targeting DDIAS. The effects of DDIAS on glioma cell viability, cell proliferation, invasion, migration, and tumor sphere formation were determined by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), EdU, Transwell, tumor spheroid formation, extreme limiting dilution analysis assays in vitro and xenograft model construction in vivo. In addition, RNA sequencing and further functional experiments were used to analyze the DDIAS regulatory mechanism in glioma. Results: We found that DDIAS was highly expressed in glioma and that upregulated DDIAS indicated poor prognosis. Functionally, DDIAS knockdown inhibited glioma cell viability, cell proliferation, invasion and migration in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. In addition, lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 (LEF1) was identified as the downstream effector of DDIAS by RNA sequencing. DDIAS downregulation inhibited LEF1 mRNA and protein expression. The expression of DDIAS and LEF1 was positively correlated, and LEF1 overexpression rescued the inhibitory phenotype induced by DDIAS downregulation. We further showed that DDIAS downregulation inhibited cyclin A1, vimentin and the stemness-related factor CD133 and decreased the sphere formation capability, but these features were rescued by upregulation of LEF1. Conclusion: Taken together, these findings suggest that DDIAS promotes glioma progression and stemness by inducing LEF1 expression, proving that DDIAS may be a potential target for the treatment of glioma.

Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Traditional Chinese Exercise and Osteoarthritis.

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common disease in geriatric rehabilitation medicine caused by the progressive destruction of articular cartilage. Traditional Chinese exercise (TCE) is an important component of traditional sports in China and aims to stretch the musculoskeletal tract and relieve joint pain. Bibliometrics can help researchers find suitable partners and understand the research hotspots and trends in a certain field. However, there is still a lack of bibliometric analysis in the field of TCE and OA. Methods: All the literature was obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The last search was performed on July 28, 2023. The bibliometric indicators, such as publications, citations, and H-index, were recorded. Bibliometrix and CiteSpace were used for visualization analysis. In addition, randomized controlled trials were included to summarize the exercise prescription of TCE for OA. Results: A total of 170 articles were included. The field of OA with TCE had great development potential and was in the rising period. The countries, institutions, and authors with the most publications were the United States, Tufts Medical Center, and Harvey WF, respectively. The most popular journal was Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. The recent burst keywords in this field were mainly "hip", "pilot", and "risk". Tai Chi was the most studied TCE with the most detailed content of exercise prescription, followed by Baduanjin and Wuqinxi. Conclusion: Our study provides a basis for researchers in this field to choose appropriate partner and academic journals. Moreover, pain, muscle strength, and quality of life management of elderly OA patients are research hotspots in this field. The intervention of hip OA risk through TCE is expected to become a research direction for emerging teams. The TCE prescription we summarized can better provide researchers with more treatment details.

Why emotional neglect brings suicidal ideation? The mediating effect of meaning in life and the moderating effect of post-stress growth.

BACKGROUND: Emotional neglect during childhood has long-lasting negative effects on individuals, and it is often hidden and unrecognized. Previous research has not fully understood its unique effects on mental health outcomes, especially when considering the co-occurrence with other forms of maltreatment. The meaning-making coping and growth model suggests that individuals achieve positive psychological outcomes by constructively integrating negative experiences into their self-concept, which may be a protective mechanism against the detrimental effects of emotional neglect. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the relationship between emotional neglect and suicidal ideation among undergraduates, accounting for the presence of emotional abuse and physical neglect, and to investigate the mediating role of meaning in life and the moderating role of post-stress growth in this relationship. METHODS: A self-reported survey was conducted with 3132 undergraduate students from a university in South China. The survey assessed emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, suicidal ideation, post-stress growth, and meaning in life. RESULTS: Meaning in life partially mediated the relationship between emotional neglect and suicidal ideation. Post-stress growth moderated the association between emotional neglect and the sense of meaning in life, in particular the moderation effect was stronger when emotional abuse was weaker. CONCLUSIONS: Meaning in life mediated the relationship between emotional neglect and suicide ideation. Post-stress growth moderated the mediation effect such that it was weakened among individual with a higher level of post-stress growth. This study contributes to the understanding of the psychopathological processes following emotional neglect and the development of positive personal changes thereafter.

Nacre-inspired starch-based bioplastic with excellent mechanical strength and electromagnetic interference shielding.

Bioplastics have aroused significant interest in researchers to relieve the serious environmental pollution caused by the ubiquity of petroleum-based plastics. However, it remains a great challenge to construct functional bioplastics with excellent mechanical strength, water resistance, and heat resistance. Inspired by the interesting structure of nacre, a novel starch-based bioplastic was prepared via a self-assembly technique, using 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxy-oxidized cellulose nanofibers modified starch, nano-montmorillonite, and reduced graphene oxide as raw materials. Due to the unique layered structure and rich interfacial interaction, the starch-based bioplastic exhibited excellent mechanical properties, while the tensile strength was up to 37.39 MPa. Furthermore, it represented outstanding water resistance, heat resistance, repairability, renewability and biodegradability. Especially, the starch-based bioplastic demonstrated a strong electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE), which was higher than 35 dB with a thickness of 0.5 mm. These powerful properties provided the possibility for functional applications of starch-based bioplastics.

Deeply Supervised Block-Wise Neural Architecture Search.

Neural architecture search (NAS) has shown great promise in automatically designing neural network models. Recently, block-wise NAS has been proposed to alleviate deep coupling problem between architectures and weights existed in the well-known weight-sharing NAS, by training the huge weight-sharing supernet block-wisely. However, the existing block-wise NAS methods, which resort to either supervised distillation or self-supervised contrastive learning scheme to enable block-wise optimization, take massive computational cost. To be specific, the former introduces an external high-capacity teacher model, while the latter involves supernet-scale momentum model and requires a long training schedule. Considering this, in this work, we propose a resource-friendly deeply supervised block-wise NAS (DBNAS) method. In the proposed DBNAS, we construct a lightweight deeply-supervised module after each block to enable a simple supervised learning scheme and leverage ground-truth labels to indirectly supervise optimization of each block progressively. Besides, the deeply-supervised module is specifically designed as structural and functional condensation of the supernet, which establishes global awareness for progressive block-wise optimization and helps search for promising architectures. Experimental results show that the DBNAS method only takes less than 1 GPU day to search out promising architectures on the ImageNet dataset with less GPU memory footprint than the other block-wise NAS works. The best-performing model among the searched DBNAS family achieves 75.6% Top-1 accuracy on ImageNet, which is competitive with the state-of-the-art NAS models. Moreover, our DBNAS family models also achieve good transfer performance on CIFAR-10/100, as well as two downstream tasks: object detection and semantic segmentation.

Rapid fabricated in-situ polymerized lignin hydrogel sensor with highly adjustable mechanical properties.

Conductive hydrogels have been widely used as sensors owing to their tissue-like properties. However, the synthesis of conductive hydrogels with highly adjustable mechanical properties and multiple functions remains difficult to achieve yet highly needed. In this study, lignin hydrogel characterized by frost resistance, UV resistance, high conductivity, and highly adjustable mechanical properties without forming by-products was prepared through a rapid in-situ polymerization of acrylic acid/zinc chloride (AA/ZnCl2) aqueous solution containing lignin extract induced by the reversible quinone-catechol redox of the ZnCl2-lignin system at room temperature. Results revealed that the PAA/ZnCl2/lignin hydrogel exhibited mechanical properties with tensile stress (ranging from 0.08 to 3.28 MPa), adhesion to multiple surfaces (up to 62.05 J m-2), excellent frost resistance (-70-20 °C), UV resistance, and conductivity (0.967 S m-1), which further endow the hydrogel as potential strain and temperature sensor with wide monitor range (0-300 %), fatigue resistance, and quick response (70 ms for 150 % strain). This study proposed and developed a green, simple, economical, and efficient processing method for a hydrogel sensor in flexible wearable devices and man-machine interaction fields.

High-Speed and Ultrasensitive Solar-Blind Ultraviolet Photodetectors Based on In Situ Grown ß-Ga2O3 Single-Crystal Films.

Deep-level defects in ß-Ga2O3 that worsen the response speed and dark current (Id) of photodetectors (PDs) have been a long-standing issue for its application. Herein, an in situ grown single-crystal Ga2O3 nanoparticle seed layer (NPSL) was used to shorten the response time and reduce the Id of metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) PDs. With the NPSL, the Id was reduced by 4 magnitudes from 0.389 µA to 81.03 pA, and the decay time (τd1/τd2) decreased from 258/1690 to 62/142 µs at -5 V. In addition, the PDs with the NPSL also exhibit a high responsivity (43.5 A W-1), high specific detectivity (2.81 × 1014 Jones), and large linear dynamic range (61 dB) under 254 nm illumination. The mechanism behind the performance improvement can be attributed to the suppression of the deep-level defects (i.e., self-trapped holes) and increase of the Schottky barrier. The barrier height extracted is increased by 0.18 eV compared with the case without the NPSL. Our work contributes to understanding the relationship between defects and the performance of PDs based on heteroepitaxial ß-Ga2O3 thin films and provides an important reference for the development of high-speed and ultrasensitive deep ultraviolet PDs.

The effect of Fu's subcutaneous needling in treating knee osteoarthritis patients: A randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Fu's subcutaneous needling (FSN) is an acupuncture technique for the treatment of soft tissue diseases. Knee osteoarthritis often involves lower limb muscles. This study aimed to observe and compare the clinical efficacy of Fu's subcutaneous acupuncture and electroacupuncture in the treatment of patients with knee osteoarthritis. METHODS: 62 patients with early or medial stage of knee osteoarthritis were randomly divided into the FSN therapy group or the electroacupuncture(EA) therapy group (1:1). The Lysholm score, range of motion, and equilibrium function were observed over a 3-month follow-up period. A total of 60 participants completed the study. RESULTS: Over the 3 months of follow-up, both treatment regimens showed equally favorable results on all prognostic measures compared with their respective baseline data (P<0.05). Compared with the EA group, the FSN group had a significantly greater improvement in claudication, joint stability, swelling, pain, and ROM after treatment (P<0.05). At 3 months after treatment, the FSN group revealed better scores of claudication, joint stability, swelling, walking up stairs, squatting, pain, ROM, and equilibrium function (forward and backward movement speed, left and right movement speed, movement ellipse area, movement length) compared to the EA group (all P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that FSN can significantly improve the pain symptoms, joint stability, and joint function of patients with knee osteoarthritis, and the clinical efficacy can be maintained at least 3 months after treatment.