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Rumors, as a typical social phenomenon in real life, have a negative impact on the harmony of the society. When people hear rumors, they may not resonate with rumors because they do not trust them during the process of rumors transmission. Thus, they will not spread rumors. The essential difference between chord mechanism and spreader mechanism is that spreaders will spread regardless of whether they think it is true or false. The chord needs to believe that the rumor is true in order to keep spreading it, otherwise they become immune to spreading it. Therefore, this paper proposes a new Spreader-Chord-Ignorant-Restorer (SCIR) model, which considers that the trust may affect the level of empathy. Since the level of trust affects the spread of rumors and the extent to which the immune person trusts the rumor is different, the connecting edges from the restorer to the chord and the restorer to the ignorant were added to the model. First, the basic reproductive number $R_{(0)}$ is derived by the next generation matrix method and thus equilibriums are obtained. Then, the global stability of the rumor-free equilibrium $E_{(0)}$ and the persistence of rumor propagation are proved in detail during the theoretical analysis.

Treatment of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) currently relies on the use of antiretroviral drugs. Little is known about Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) outcomes in patients living with AIDS. We conducted a cohort study to investigate long-term survival among CHM-treated AIDS patients. Patients were poor farmers who contracted HIV-1 infection when selling blood in the 1990s. Symptoms of AIDS included recurring respiratory tract infections with a clinical diagnosis of pneumonia, swollen lymph nodes and weight loss. 385 patients with AIDS were included and 165 of them used a 16-herb formula for 14 days to 9 months. The eight-year survival rate was 87% for the CHM users and 34% for the non-users (increased survival probability for CHM user, 9.6; 95% CI = 6.0–15.4; p < 0.0001). Survival probability further increased 14.6-fold (95% CI = 8.2–26.1), when excluding the users who received CHM for less than three months. Zero deaths were found in patients who used CHM for six to nine months. All the survivors regained their body weight and none of them experienced a relapse of AIDS or any severe adverse events. After the CHM treatment for an average of 3.6 months, the plasma HIV load was 74.7% lower (paired t-test, p = 0.151) and the number of blood CD4+ lymphocytes increased from 253 to 314 (paired t-test, p = 0.021). Without life-long medication, CHM may be beneficial for long-term survival of AIDS patients.

Ginseng is a very commonly used natural product in the world, and its two main species are Asian ginseng and American ginseng. Ginseng is an adaptogenic botanical that reportedly protects the body against stress, stabilizes physiological processes, and restores homeostasis. Previously, different animal models and contemporary research methodologies have been used to reveal ginseng’s biomedical activities in different body systems and the linked mechanisms of actions. However, human clinical observation data on ginseng effects have attracted more attention from the general public and medical community. In this paper, after an introduction of the phytochemistry of ginseng species, we review positive ginseng clinical studies, mainly conducted in developed countries, performed over the past 20 years. The reported effects of ginseng are presented in several sections, and conditions impacted by ginseng include diabetes; cardiovascular disorders; cognition, memory, and mood; the common cold and flu; cancer fatigue and well-being; quality of life and social functioning, etc. Administration of ginseng demonstrated a good safety record in humans. Although encouraging beneficial effects obtained from clinical data, using the study treatment regimen, the reported ginseng effects in general only ranged from mild to moderate. Nonetheless, these beneficial effects of ginseng could be a valuable add-on therapy for patients receiving standard drug treatments. Additionally, as a dietary supplement, ginseng possesses an important role in maintaining and promoting human health. We believe that the quality of future ginseng trials should be improved, particularly by providing detailed herbal phytochemistry and quality control information. With solid effectiveness data obtained from a well-designed, carefully executed ginseng clinical trial, this meritoriously herbal medicine will be widely used by consumers and patients.

Homeostasis is an important and common biological phenomenon wherein an output variable does not change very much as an input parameter is varied over an interval. It can be studied by restricting attention to homeostasis points — points where the output variable has a vanishing derivative with respect to the input parameter. In a feedforward network, if a node has a homeostasis point then downstream nodes will inherit it. This is the case except when the downstream node has a bifurcation point coinciding with the homeostasis point. We apply singularity theory to study the behavior of the downstream node near these homeostasis-bifurcation points. The unfoldings of low codimension homeostasis-bifurcation points are found. In the case of steady-state bifurcation, the behavior includes multiple homeostatic plateaus separated by hysteretic switches. In the case of Hopf bifurcation, the downstream node may have limit cycles with a wide range of near-constant amplitudes and periods. Homeostasis-bifurcation is therefore a mechanism by which binary, switch-like responses or stable clock rhythms could arise in biological systems.

Current model for circadian rhythms is wrong both theoretically and practically. A new model, called yin yang model, is proposed to explain the mechanism of circadian rhythms. The yin yang model separate circadian activities in a circadian system into yin (night activities) and yang (day activities) and a circadian clock into a day clock and a night clock. The day clock is the product of night activities, but it promotes day activities; the night clock is the product of day activities, but it promotes night activities. The clock maintains redox or energy homeostasis of the internal environment and allows temporal separations between biological processes with opposite impacts on the internal environment of a circadian system.

Developing drugs to treat gastric acid related illnesses such as ulcers and acid reflux disease is the leading focus of pharmaceutical companies. In fact, expenditure for treating these disorders is highest among all illnesses in the US. Over the last few decades, a class of drugs known as a proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) appeared on the market and are highly effective at abating gastric illnesses by raising stomach pH (reducing gastric acid levels). While much is known about the action of PPIs, there are still open questions regarding their efficacy, dosing and long-term effects. Here we extend a previous gastric acid secretion model developed by our group to incorporate a pharmacodynamic/pharmacokinetic model to study proton pump inhibitor (PPI) action. Model-relevant parameters for specific drugs such as omeprazole (OPZ), lansoprazole (LPZ) and pantoprazole (PPZ) were used from published data, and we conducted simulations to study various aspects of PPI treatment. Clinical data suggests that duration of acid suppression is dependent on proton pump turnover rates and this is supported by our model. We found the order of efficacy of the different PPIs to be OPZ>PPZ>LPZ for clinically recommended dose values, and OPZ>PPZ=LPZ for equal doses. Our results indicate that a breakfast dose for once-daily dosing regimens and a breakfast-lunch dose for twice-daily dosing regimens is recommended. Simulation of other gastric disorders using our model provides atypical applications for the study of drug treatment on homeostatic systems and identification of potential side-effects.

The functioning of the mathematical model for the regulation of agonistic antagonistic couples (MRCAA) is first recalled: it intends to simulate normal and pathological states concerning some biological (im)balances, just as a control method allowing to reestablish the balances, if necessary. Using the MRCAA in the frame of AA networks, it was permitted to obtain strange attractors (SA). By approaching in that manner the problem of chaotic dynamics, we may understand that SA have important characteristics other than their aperiodicity. Their topology in the phase-space has equally to be considered. The position of a SA in the phase-space allows us to simulate the functioning of a biological system; if this does not correspond to the physiological position, we consider it as an imbalanced SA. Therefore, SA could take the place in biological modelling of limit-cycles, which were perhaps an approximation of these SA. Then, the problem of correction of these imbalances should be considered. Using the mathematical model of AA networks, it was possible to propose an outline as yet theoretical of this problem: how can we model imbalanced SA, then how can the balance be restored from a method already used in the correction of imbalanced limit-cycles? By this technique, SA have also became quasi-periodic attractors, but this was not the result which was particularly wished.

This paper mainly concerns chaotic dynamics (CD) and the problems elicited by the control of corresponding systems. However, given that we will use a general model (or a model of function in the sense proposed by Rosen), i.e., the “model for the regulation of agonistic antagonistic couples” (MRAAC), it has seemed firstly necessary to recall the structure of this model and also to establish a comparison between the results of computer simulations with this model and the results of the control in concrete systems (bipolar or paradoxically unilateral therapies in bio-medicine).

The following topics are under this section:

• ASIA-PACIFIC — Shedding Light on COVID-19 Vaccine Development
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Community-led Interventions for Improving Blood Pressure Control
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Importance of Redox Homeostasis in Potential Treatment of Disease
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Novel Processor Architecture to Solve Complex Mathematical Problems
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Uncovering Mechanisms of the Human Biological Clock
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Discovery of Healthy Stomach Stem Cells Reveals Cancer Origins
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Cataloguing Cancer “fingerprints” to Map Cancer Genomes
• ASIA-PACIFIC — Creating a Circular Economy using Greenhouse Gases
• REST OF THE WORLD — Guide for Liquid Biopsy in Individual Glioblastoma Patients
• REST OF THE WORLD — Multi-purpose use of Breast and Kidney Cancer Drugs
• REST OF THE WORLD — The Two Faces of Immune Cells
• REST OF THE WORLD — Fine Particle Air Pollution Linked to Development of Kidney Disease

Rodents are optimal real-world foragers that regulate internal states maintaining a dynamic stability with their surroundings. How these internal drive based behaviors are regulated remains unclear. Based on the physiological notion of allostasis, we investigate a minimal control system able to approximate their behavior. Allostasis is the process of achieving stability with the environment through change, opposed to homeostasis which achieves it through constancy. Following this principle, the so-called allostatic control system orchestrates the interaction of the homeostatic modules by changing their desired values in order to achieve stability. We use a minimal number of subsystems and estimate the model parameters from rat behavioral data in three experimental setups: free exploration, presence of reward, delivery of cues with reward predictive value. From this analysis, we show that a rat is influenced by the shape of the arena in terms of its openness. We then use the estimated model configurations to control a simulated and real robot which captures essential properties of the observed rat behavior. The allostatic reactive control model is proposed as an augmentation of the Distributed Adaptive Control architecture and provides a further contribution towards the realization of an artificial rodent.

In complex adaptive systems (CASs), the relaxation based on intra-individual interactions and the adaptation based on sub-individual variations are two fundamental processes entangled to induce great complexity. We analyze the system evolution under multicellular homeostatic regulations coupled with various mutation strategies in computational tumorigenesis as a typical instance to clarify the coupling effect of relaxation and adaptation in CASs. Through visualizing the system dynamics on a synthesized fitness landscape which results from the superposition of the phase diagram and the individual fitness landscape, we entertain a simple theoretical framework that not only helps analyze our simulated multicellular dynamics but is potentially applicable to a broader class of problems in CASs where relaxation and adaptation intertwine. It is stressed that the nonadaptive relaxation process has the essential role in shaping the selective pressure of adaptation as well as in defining the final state of the evolution, whereas it is the rigidity of mutation strategy that determines the complexity of the dynamical process.

In this review, we aim to present our hypothesis about the neural development of affect. According to this view, affect develops at a multi-layered process, and as a mediator between drives, emotion and cognition. This development is parallel to the evolution of the brain from reptiles to mammals. There are five steps in this process: (1) Because of the various environmental challenges, changes in the autonomic nervous system occur and homeostasis becomes destabilized; (2) Drives arise from the destabilized homeostasis; (3) Drives trigger the neural basis of the basic emotional systems; (4) These basic emotions evolve into affect to find the particular object to invest the emotional energy; and (5) In the final stage, cognition is added to increase the possibility of identifying a particular object. In this paper, we will summarize the rationale behind this view, which is based on neuroscientific proofs, such as evolution of autonomic nervous system, neural basis the raw affective states, the interaction between affect and cognition, related brain areas, related neurotransmitters, as well as some clinical examples.

We propose an artificial endocrine system (AES) for extracting the knowledge from database so that effective and reliable decision rules can be constructed. The proposed AES mimics the functionality of biological endocrine system (BES) to some extent. A mathematical model is proposed for expressive representation of endocrine system as well as for homeostasis. Further, different aspects of our proposed "Artificial endocrine system for knowledge discovery" (AESKD) have been compared with state of art classifiers e.g., support vector machine, neural network, radial basis function (RBF) network and K-NN for some bench mark datasets.

Photobiomodulation (PBM) has been reported to have effects on respiratory burst of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs), but little focus was on the individual differences of human PMNs. The latter was investigated in this study. The PMNs were isolated from peripheral blood of 13 volunteers (10 ordinary persons, 3 athletes) and treated by red light (640 ± 15 nm) from light emitting diodes (RLED) at 50, 100, 300, 500 and 1000 J/m² for 100 seconds, respectively. Blood samples of athletes were extracted at different running stages in 10 km non-interrupted long-distance running, before running, 1 hour after running began, just finishing the running, resting for 1 hour and 2 hours after running. The PMN respiratory burst was assessed by the nitroblue tetrazolium test. It was found that there were three types of RLED PBM on the respiratory burst of 3 types of PMNs, respectively, inducing for the subactivated PMNs, inhibiting for the overactivated PMNs and none for the PMNs in homeostasis. It was then concluded that there may be RLED PBM on dysfunctional human PMNs while none on those in homeostasis, and RLED at 300 J/m² for 100 seconds may have bi-direction modulation on PMN respiratory burst.

Photobiomodulation (PBM) is a modulation of monochromatic light or laser irradiation (LI) on biosystems. It is reviewed from the viewpoint of extraocular phototransduction in this paper. It was found that LI can induce extraocular phototransduction, and there may be an exact correspondence relationship of LI at different wavelengths and in different dose zones, and cellular signal transduction pathways. The signal transduction pathways can be classified into two types so that the Gs protein-mediated pathways belong to pathway 1, and the other pathways such as protein kinase Cs-mediated pathways and mitogen-activated protein kinase-mediated pathways belong to pathway 2. Almost all the present pathways found to mediate PBM belong to pathway 2, but there should be a pathway 1-mediated PBM. The previous studies were rather preliminary, and therefore further work should be done.

Function-specific homeostasis (FSH) has been defined as a negative-feedback response of a biosystem to maintain its interior function-specific conditions so that the function is perfectly performed. There is no photobiomodulation of intranasal low intensity laser therapy (ILILT) on a function in its FSH, but ILILT could modulate a function far from its FSH. This rehabilitation has been found to be mediated by the ratio of intracellular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD⁺) and its reduced form NADH, NAD⁺/NADH, and then sirtuin 1 (SIRT1). There might be FSH-specific NAD⁺/NADH (FSN) and SIRT1 activity (FSA). ILILT might enhance NAD⁺/NADH and SIRT1 activity until they arrive at FSN and FSA, respectively. The NAD⁺/NADH and SIRT1 activity of related cells of many athletic diseases such as upper respiratory tract infection, asthma, osteoarthritis, exercise-induced muscle damage, wound, traumatic brain injury, and osteoporosis are lower than FSN and FSA, respectively. Therefore, there may be therapeutic effects of ILILT on those athletic diseases. Furthermore, many phenomena and the ILILT mechanism have been integrated to support the prophylaxis effects of ILILT on the swine-origin influenza A (H1N1).

Cellular pathways are ordinarily diagnosed with pathway inhibitors, related gene regulation, or fluorescent protein markers. They are also suggested to be diagnosed with pathway activation modulation of photobiomodulation (PBM) in this paper. A PBM on a biosystem function depends on whether the biosystem is in its function-specific homeostasis (FSH). An FSH, a negative feedback response for the function to be performed perfectly, is maintained by its FSH-essential subfunctions and its FSH-non-essential subfunctions (FNSs). A function in its FSH or far from its FSH is called a normal or dysfunctional function. A direct PBM may self-adaptatively modulate a dysfunctional function until it is normal so that it can be used to discover the optimum pathways for an FSH to be established. An indirect PBM may self-adaptatively modulate a dysfunctional FNS of a normal function until the FNS is normal, and the normal function is then upgraded so that it can be used to discover the redundant pathways for a normal function to be upgraded.

Clues from psychology indicate that human cognition are not only based on classical probability theory as explained by Kolmogorov’s axioms but additionally on quantum probability. Quantum probabilities lead to the conclusion that our brain adapted to the Everett many-worlds reality trough the evolutionary process. The Everett many-worlds theory views reality as a many-branched tree in which every possible quantum outcome is realized. In this context, one of the cognitive brain functions is to provide a causally consistent explanation of events to maintain self-identity over time. Causality is related to a meaningful explanation. For impossible explanations, causality does not exist, and the identity of the self breaks. Only in meaningful causal worlds may personal identities exist.

The initiation of a humoral immune response to a foreign antigen is a complex biologic process involving the interaction of many cell ypes and their secreted products. Autoimmune diseases, which are characterized by an abnormal activation of the immune system, probably result from the failure of normal self-tolerance mechanisms. The etiology of such illnesses, however, is far from being understood.While there have been extensive studies on the participation of the immune and endocrine systems in autoimmune iseases, few have dealt with nervous system-mediated immunoregulation in such situations. Evidence continues to grow suggesting that nerve growth factor (NGF), first identifiedfor its activity in promoting the growth and differentiation of sensory and sympathetic neurons, may exert a modulatory role on neuroimmunoendocrine functions of vital importance in the regulation of homeostatic processes. Newly detected NGF-responsive cells belong to the hemopoietic-immune system and to populations in the brain involved in neuroendocrine functions. NGF levels are elevated in a number of autoimmune states, along with increased accumulation of mast cells. NGF and mast cells both appear to be involved in neuroimmune interactions and tissue inflammation. Moreover, mast cells themselves synthesize, store, and release NGF, proposing that alterations in normal mast cell behaviors may provoke maladaptive neuroimmune tissue responses whose consequences could have profound implications in inflammatory disease states, including those of an autoimmune nature. This review focuses on these cellular events and presents a working model which attempts to explain the close interrelationships of the neuroendocrinoimmune triade via a modulatory action of NGF.

Ayurveda and Chinese medicine has quite similar concept of health and disease. Each person has a separate body constitution in physical, mental, emotional and spiritual faculties. So, the treatment is individual specific and not common as in the case of modern medicine. Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners treats the patient, not the disease and thus, assures a complete cure. Equilibrium in three humours, seven structural elements and proper evacuation of three waste products ensures good health and imbalance causes disease. The traditional medical practitioner has to maintain the equilibrium for a good health.

The content of ten metals in 15 non-human pathogen bacterial strains grown under 4 different nutrient condition treatments (C-limited, P-limited, N-limited, and Fe-limited) was determined. Results indicated that, independent of the nutrient limitation treatment, the highest metal values in the bacteria were always for iron (Fe), zinc (Zn) and manganese (Mn), and the lowest values were for vanadium (V). Large differences among the species (>1 or 2 orders of magnitude for Fe, chromium (Cr), and Mn) were found in the metal content within a particular nutrient treatment. Significant differences between the species were found for 5 out of 10 of the metals (cobalt (Co), Mn, Fe, nickel (Ni), and copper (Cu)) when comparing each metal content through the species. The content of iron in the Gram + bacteria Bacillus megaterium, B. subtilis and Enterococcus faecium was much higher than in the other bacterial species studied. The implications of these results are considered in the context of literature reports suggesting that the expression of virulence pathways by some bacteria may be regulated by iron.