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A simple and stable cataluminescence (CTL) sensing platform based on a single sensing material for effective and rapid detection of aldehydes is an urgent need due to growing concerns for the environment, security, and health. Here, an effective and user-friendly identification method is successfully proposed to determine six common aldehydes of homologous compounds via a heterothermic CTL sensor system. Using Gd2O3 with excellent catalytic activity as a sensing material, thermodynamic and kinetic insights into the interactions between Gd2O3 and aldehydes at different temperatures were extracted and integrated to generate a unique constellation profile for each tested aldehyde, whereby achieving their effective and prompt determination. Moreover, the sensor system allowed the quantitative analysis of aldehydes with detection limits of 0.001, 0.009, 0.011, 0.011, 0.007, and 0.003 µg mL-1. Significantly, the sensor system had an excellent stability of up to 30 days. The CTL sensing platform was constructed based on a thermal regulation strategy that can provide a new approach to chemical agent identification.

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The domains of cancer therapy, disease prevention, and health care greatly benefit from the use of herbal medicine. Herbal medicine has become the mainstay of developing characteristic agriculture in the planting area increasing year by year. One of the most significant factors in affecting the quality of herbal medicines is the pesticide residue problem caused by pesticide abuse during the cultivation of herbal medicines. It is urgent to solve the problem of detecting pesticide residues in herbal medicines efficiently and rapidly. In this review, we provide a comprehensive description of the various methods used for pesticide residue testing, including optical detection, the enzyme inhibition rate method, molecular detection methods, enzyme immunoassays, lateral immunochromatographic, nanoparticle-based detection methods, colorimetric immunosensor, chemiluminescence immunosensor, smartphone-based immunosensor, etc. On this basis, we systematically analyze the mechanisms and some of the findings of the above detection strategies and discuss the challenges and prospects associated with the development of pesticide residue detection tools.

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The energy harvesters used in self-powered wireless sensing technology, which has the potential to completely solve the power supply problem of the sensing nodes from the source, usually require mechanical movement or operate in harsh environments, resulting in a significant reduction in device lifespan and reliability. Therefore, the influencing factors and failure mechanisms of the operating status of self-powered wireless sensors were analyzed, and an innovative evaluation index system was proposed, which includes 4 primary indexes and 13 secondary indexes, including energy harvesters, energy management circuits, wireless communication units, and sensors. Next, the weights obtained from the subjective analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and objective CRITIC weight method were fused to obtain the weights of each index. A self-powered sensor evaluation scheme (FE-SPS) based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was implemented by constructing a fuzzy evaluation model. The advantage of this scheme is that it can determine the current health status of the system based on its output characteristics. Finally, taking vibration energy as an example, the operational status of the self-powered wireless sensors after 200 h of operation was comprehensively evaluated. The experimental results show that the test self-powered wireless sensor had the highest score of "normal", which is 0.4847, so the evaluation result was "normal". In this article, a reliability evaluation strategy for self-powered wireless sensor was constructed to ensure the reliable operation of self-powered wireless sensors.

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OBJECTIVE: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapies have been widely used for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) for thousands of years. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the curative efficacy and safety of TCM for treating AGA. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of TCM for the treatment of AGA through March 2019 were systematically identified in 4 English databases, namely, PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science, and 4 Chinese databases, namely, Sino-Med, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), and WanFang. Quality assessment and data analysis were performed by Review Manager 5.3.5, and Stata 15.1 was used to cope with publication bias. RESULTS: 30 RCTs involving 2615 patients were randomly divided into a TCM group and a conventional medicine (CM) group. The results showed that the total efficacy rate (TER) of the TCM group was significantly higher than that of the control group (OR = 3.34, 95% CI = 2.75-4.05, P < 0.00001). The total symptom score (TSS) of the TCM group was markedly reduced when compared with the CM group (SMD = -0.86; 95% CI = -1.19, -0.53; P < 0.00001). The microelement levels (Fe2+, Zn2+, and Cu2+) in hair were significantly improved when complemented with TCM therapy. In addition, no significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of adverse events (OR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.29-1.05, P=0.07). CONCLUSIONS: In view of the effectiveness and safety of TCM, the present meta-analysis suggests that TCM could be recommended as an effective and safe adjuvant therapy for the treatment of AGA by improving the TER, symptoms, serum testosterone levels, and microelement levels. However, long-term and higher-quality RCTs are needed to overcome the limitations of the selected studies and more precisely interrogate the efficacy and safety of TCM.

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Background: Vascular dementia (VD) is a common type of disease in the elderly. Numerous clinical trials have suggested that hyperbaric oxygen is an effective and safe complementary therapy for aging-related disorders. However, there is no reliable systematic evidence regarding hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for the treatment of VD. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of HBOT in treating VD. Methods: We methodically retrieved the clinical studies from eight databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, Sino-Med, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), and WanFang) from their inception to November 2018. RevMan 5.3.5 was used for quality assessment and data analysis. Stata 15.1 was employed for publication bias detection and sensitivity analysis. Results: Twenty-five randomized clinical trials (RCTs) involving 1,954 patients met our inclusion criteria. These articles researched the HBOT + oxiracetam + conventional therapy (CT) vs. oxiracetam + CT (n = 13), HBOT + butylphthalide +CT vs. butylphthalide + CT (n = 5), HBOT + donepezil + CT vs. donepezil + CT (n = 4), HBOT + nicergoline + CT vs. nicergoline + CT (n = 2) and HBOT + CT vs. CT (n = 1). The results indicated that additional HBOT strikingly improved the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (MD = 4.00; 95% CI = 3.28-4.73; P < 0.00001), activities of daily living (ADL) (MD = -5.91; 95% CI = -6.45, -5.36; P < 0.00001) and ADL by Barthel index (BADL) (MD = 13.86; 95% CI = 5.63-22.10; P = 0.001) and increased the total efficacy rate (TEF) (OR = 4.84, 95% CI = 3.19-7.33, P < 0.00001). The adverse events rates were not statistically significant between the HBOT and CT groups (OR = 0.85, 95% CI = 0.26-2.78, P = 0.79). Conclusion: In view of the effectiveness and safety of HBOT, the present meta-analysis suggested that HBOT can be recommended as an effective and safe complementary therapy for the treatment of VD. Protocol Registration: PROSPERO (ID: CRD42019117178). Available online at: http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42019117178.