Analgesic nanomedicines for the treatment of chronic pain

Chronic pain is a major cause of suffering that often accompanies diseases and therapies,affecting approximately 20%of individuals at some point in their lives.However,current treatment modalities,such as anesthetic and antipyretic analgesics,have limitations in terms of efficacy and side effects.Nanomedical technology offers a promising avenue to overcome these challenges and introduce new therapeutic mechanisms.This article reviews the recent research on nanomedicine analgesics,integrating analyses of neuroplasticity changes in neurons and pathways related to the transition from acute to chronic pain.Furthermore,it explores potential future strategies using nanomaterials,aiming to provide a roadmap for new analgesic development and improved clinical pain management.By leveraging nanotechnology,these approaches hold the potential to revolutionize pain treatment by delivering targeted and effective relief while minimizing side effects.

Experimental and numerical studies of the blast-induced overbreak and underbreak in underground roadways

Overbreak and underbreak are the crucial problems during the blasting excavation of underground tunnels owing to their effects on the construction costs and operational safety.A critical challenge facing overbreak and underbreak control is the difficulty in developing guidelines with respect to various and complex engineering conditions.In this study,a series of field measurements of overbreak and underbreak using the Focus^(S)150 laser scanner were performed in a deep roadway of the Kaiyang phosphate mine,China.The distri-bution and extent of the overbreak and underbreak surrounding the roadway contour were accurately analyzed in accordance with the collected point cloud data.Subsequently,a simplified three-dimensional model was established to simulate the blasting excavation of pre-stressed roadway using the explicit dynamic analysis code LS-DYNA.A comparison of numerical and measurement results revealed that the proposed model was a reliable tool to simulate the overbreak and underbreak induced by blasting excavation.Thereafter,the influ-ences of uncontrollable geological factors such as in situ stress conditions and controllable blasting factors including contour hole spac-ing(S),charge concentration(b)and decoupled coefficient(f)as well as stemming were further numerically investigated.The simulation results indicated that the lateral pressure coefficient significantly affected the distribution pattern of the overbreak and underbreak,while the stress magnitude contributed to their extents.Moreover,a comparison of the simulation findings and the field measurement data indicated that the minimal extents of the overbreak and underbreak corresponding the optimal contour blasting results were obtained at S=0.70 m,b=0.9 kg/m and f=2.5,respectively.Furthermore,the contour blastholes stemmed with sand created smaller damage to the periphery rock mass of roadway and enhanced the utilization efficiency of explosive energy.The research findings of this study pro-vide important implications for similar blasting excavation projects.

Progressive LiDAR Adaptation for Road Detection

Despite rapid developments in visual image-based road detection, robustly identifying road areas in visual images remains challenging due to issues like illumination changes and blurry images. To this end, LiDAR sensor data can be incorporated to improve the visual image-based road detection,because LiDAR data is less susceptible to visual noises. However,the main difficulty in introducing LiDAR information into visual image-based road detection is that LiDAR data and its extracted features do not share the same space with the visual data and visual features. Such gaps in spaces may limit the benefits of LiDAR information for road detection. To overcome this issue, we introduce a novel Progressive LiDAR adaptation-aided road detection(PLARD) approach to adapt LiDAR information into visual image-based road detection and improve detection performance. In PLARD, progressive LiDAR adaptation consists of two subsequent modules: 1) data space adaptation, which transforms the LiDAR data to the visual data space to align with the perspective view by applying altitude difference-based transformation; and 2) feature space adaptation, which adapts LiDAR features to visual features through a cascaded fusion structure. Comprehensive empirical studies on the well-known KITTI road detection benchmark demonstrate that PLARD takes advantage of both the visual and LiDAR information, achieving much more robust road detection even in challenging urban scenes. In particular, PLARD outperforms other state-of-theart road detection models and is currently top of the publicly accessible benchmark leader-board.

一个新的中医研究范式:从非线性动力学的角度解读中医

西方对中医的研究多是利用随机控制试验来检验其疗效。通过讨论,认为这类研究有其局限性。同时探讨一种新的研究范式,即非线性动力学理论。认为这一理论能够提供理论依据来设计适合中医特征的临床试验,并可望得出为西方医学界所接受的研究结果。

SELECTED PAPERS FROM IEEE/CIC ICCC 2017

The IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communication in China(ICCC)has been globally recognized as one of the important annual international conference held by the IEEE Communication Society(Com Soc)and China Institute of Communication(CIC)in China.The sixth IEEE/CIC ICCC 2017 was held in the magnificent city of Qingdao,China,22-24 October,

Perovskite photodetector-based single pixel color camera for artificial vision

Narrowband red,green,blue self-filtering perovskite photodetectors and a broadband white photodetector are incorporated into a single pixel imaging camera to mimic the long-,medium-,and short-wavelength cone cells and rod cells in human visual system,leading to the demonstration of high-resolution color images in diffuse mode.

To “tell or not to tell”——Exploring disclosure about medicine use by people living with sleep disorders

Objective: To explore the difference in rates and reasons for disclosure of either conventional or complementary medicine(CM) to healthcare practitioners between people living with sleep disorders(SDs) and those without SDs.Methods: A cross-sectional survey(N = 2019 adults) that measured sociodemographic characteristics,health status, health service utilisation, health literacy and health communication(medicine disclosure)of a representative sample of Australians was conducted. Data from participants reporting an SD(n = 265)were compared to those not reporting an SD to assess measures of health communication and disclosure about medicine use.Results: Overall, rates of medicine disclosure to both conventional and CM practitioners were high, in respondents with(70%) and without an SD(57%). Those reporting an SD had higher expectations of their conventional health practitioner’s knowledge of CM, associated clinical decision-making skills, and approval of CM use, and held a higher degree of concern about drug interactions(P < 0.05). The main reasons cited for disclosing CM use to conventional health practitioners and conventional medicine use to CM practitioners were “I want them to fully understand my health status” and“I was concerned about drug interactions with the CMs used.”Conclusion: The high rate of medicine use disclosure by people with SDs is driven by an intention to inform their healthcare practitioner about their health status and concerns about potential medicine interactions. Therefore, research about the expectations that people with an SD have of their conventional healthcare practitioners’ knowledge of CM and CM-drug interactions requires further examination.Likewise, further examination of CM practitioner’s conventional medicine knowledge is encouraged.

Building a dense surface map incrementally from semi-dense point cloud and RGB images

Building and using maps is a fundamental issue for bionic robots in field applications. A dense surface map, which offers rich visual and geometric information, is an ideal representation of the environment for indoor/outdoor localization, navigation, and recognition tasks of these robots. Since most bionic robots can use only small light-weight laser scanners and cameras to acquire semi-dense point cloud and RGB images, we propose a method to generate a consistent and dense surface map from this kind of semi-dense point cloud and RGB images. The method contains two main steps： （1） generate a dense surface for every single scan of point cloud and its corresponding image（s） and （2） incrementally fuse the dense surface of a new scan into the whole map. In step （1） edge-aware resampling is realized by segmenting the scan of a point cloud in advance and resampling each sub-cloud separately. Noine within the scan is reduced and a dense surface is generated. In step （2） the average surface is estimated probabilistically and the non-coincidence of different scans is eliminated. Experiments demonstrate that our method works well in both indoor and outdoor semi-structured environments where there are regularly shaped objects.

One Chinese political donation does not a scandal make

Let’s be clear.Efforts by any country to subvert Australia should be investigated,monitored and brought to light Yes,let’s ban donations from non-citizens.Let’s go further still-my own suggestion-and ban any donations that might reasonably be suspected as seeking to influence Australian foreign policy.However,almost a week after ABC’s Four Corners screened its episode Power and Influence: