Study on the Protective Mechanism of Acupuncture Regulating ICAM-5 mRNA Expression in Rats with Ischemic Stroke

Objective: The objective is to investigate whether acupuncture can protect brain by regulating the expression of ICAM-5 mRNA in brain tissue. Methods: Male SD rats were used to construct a middle cerebral artery occlusion reperfusion injury (Middle cerebral artery occlusion, MCAO) model, and the rats were randomly divided into 4 groups, namely the normal group (group A) and the sham operation group (group B), MCAO group (group C), MCAO + acupuncture group (group D);real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was used to detect the expression of ICAM-5 mRNA in the brain tissue of the ischemic area, and HE staining and TUNEL were used to detect the level of neuronal apoptosis to evaluate the therapeutic effect. Results: Acupuncture can improve neuronal morphology and reduce neuronal apoptosis in rats with ischemic stroke. RT-qPCR: compared with group A and group B, the expression level of ICAM-5 mRNA in the brain tissues of group C and group D decreased, while compared with group C, The expression of ICAM-5 mRNA in the brain tissue of group D was significantly up-regulated (P < 0.05). There was no statistical difference between group A and group B (P > 0.05). Conclusion: The effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of ischemic stroke may achieve neuroprotection by up-regulating the expression level of ICAM-5 mRNA.

Experimental Study on the Effect of Acupuncture on ERM/PI3/Akt Signal Pathway in Rats with Ischemic Stroke

Objective: To observe the effect of acupuncture on the expression of ERM/PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in the brain tissue around the infarct focus of ischemic stroke model rats. Methods: According to the block randomization method, 80 male SD rats were divided into normal group (n = 10), sham operation group (n = 24), model group (n = 23) and acupuncture group (n = 23). The normal group was bred routinely without any intervention. In the sham operation group, only the skin was cut to find and the nerves and blood vessels were stripped and sutured. The model group and the acupuncture group were sutured to prepare the MCAO model. After the model was successfully established, acupuncture of the acupuncture group rats was given once a day, and the needles were kept for 30 minutes each time. The rats in the sham operation group and the model group only imitated capture and return, and were treated with acupuncture for 2 consecutive courses, each course was 5 days, and the two courses were rested for 2 days. After that, Western blot was used to detect ERM, changes in the concentration of PI3K and Akt proteins. Results: Compared with the normal group, the expression levels of ERM, PI3K, and Akt proteins in the sham operation group were reduced. Compared with the sham operation group, the expression levels of ERM, PI3K, and Akt proteins in the model group were significantly down-regulated. Compared with the model group, the protein expression levels of ERM, PI3K and Akt were significantly up-regulated in the acupuncture group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Acupuncture can significantly up-regulate the expression of ERM, PI3K and Akt proteins, and its effect mechanism may be related to the transduction of ERM/PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in cells.

Measurement of public awareness of climate change in China:based on a national survey with 4,025 samples

Just before the new round of UN climate change conference in Bonn, a survey report, named as the Climate Change in the Chinese Mind 2017, was released in Beijing. The investigation was conducted in the form of a computer-assisted telephone survey with a sample size of 4,025 samples, covering 332 prefecture-level administrative units and four municipalities in China.Urban-rural proportion and sex proportion were specially taken into account, so as to demonstrate the Chinese public awareness objectively. The investigation measures the public awareness from six aspects, which includes climate change beliefs, impacts, response, policies, actions, and the assessment of the effectiveness of climate communication. This article presents the key findings of the survey and provides further insights behind the data.

Pointwise manifold regularization for semi-supervised learning

Manifold regularization(MR)provides a powerful framework for semi-supervised classification using both the labeled and unlabeled data.It constrains that similar instances over the manifold graph should share similar classification out-puts according to the manifold assumption.It is easily noted that MR is built on the pairwise smoothness over the manifold graph,i.e.,the smoothness constraint is implemented over all instance pairs and actually considers each instance pair as a single operand.However,the smoothness can be pointwise in nature,that is,the smoothness shall inherently occur“everywhere"to relate the behavior of each point or instance to that of its close neighbors.Thus in this paper,we attempt to de-velop a pointwise MR(PW_MR for short)for semi-supervised learning through constraining on individual local instances.In this way,the pointwise nature of smoothness is preserved,and moreover,by considering individual instances rather than instance pairs,the importance or contribution of individual instances can be introduced.Such importance can be described by the confidence for correct prediction,or the local density,for example.PW.MR provides a different way for implementing manifold smoothness Finally,empirical results show the competitiveness of PW_MR compared to pairwise MR.