The prevalence of vascular dementia (VaD) is high among the elderly. Acupuncture, a popular therapeutic method in China, can improve memory, orientation, calculation, and self-managing ability in VaD patients. However, in clinical acupuncture and acupuncture research, the selection of acupoints to treat VaD remains challenging. This study aimed to discover acupoints and acupoint combinations with potential for VaD based on data mining. After database searching and screening for articles on clinical trials evaluating the effects of acupuncture on VaD, 238 acupuncture prescriptions were included for further analysis. Baihui (GV 20), Sishencong (EX-HN 1), Fengchi (GB 20), Shuigou (GV 26), and Shenting (GV 24) appeared most frequently in the modern literature and are potential acupoints for VaD. Combinations between Baihui (GV 20), Sishencong (EX-HN 1), Fengchi (GB 20), Shenting (GV 24), Shuigou (GV 26), and Zusanli (ST 36) were most frequent and represent potential combinations for VaD treatment. These results provide a reference for the selection and combination of acupoints to treat VaD in clinical acupuncture and acupuncture research.

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Follicular helper T (TFH) cells are specialized CD4+ helper T cells that provide help to B cells in humoral immunity. However, the molecular mechanism underlying generation of TFH cells is incompletely understood. Here, we reported that Damage-specific DNA binding protein 1 (Ddb1) was required for expansion of CD4+ helper T cells including TFH and Th1 cells, germinal center response, and antibody response to acute viral infection. Ddb1 deficiency in activated CD4+ T cells resulted in cell cycle arrest at G2-M phase and increased cell death, due to accumulation of DNA damage and hyperactivation of ATM/ATR-Chk1 signaling. Moreover, mice with deletion of both Cul4a and Cul4b in activated CD4+ T cells phenocopied Ddb1-deficient mice, suggesting that E3 ligase-dependent function of Ddb1 was crucial for genome maintenance and helper T-cell generation. Therefore, our results indicate that Ddb1 is an essential positive regulator in the expansion of CD4+ helper T cells.

It is generally accepted that the driving forces of establishing connections among people are social influence and homophily. Both of them eventually lead to the proximity of any two related individuals to some extent. However, a person always can be featured with some attributes different from his/her social networking partners. Accordingly, one person's direct and indirect social relationships are likely to intersect with others at some nodes in social networks. In this work, we study the novel task of identifying the hidden boundary that divides the social network into disjoint social circles according to any pair of nodes which we call social boundary. We put forward two methods to separate the social circles of any two nodes and thus can find out the social boundary. One is based on label propagation and the other is based on perceptron network model. We apply the methods on synthetic and real networks, respectively. Finally, we demonstrate the areas in which it would be applied.

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