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Pyxinol, the main metabolite of 20S-protopanaxadiol in human liver, was chosen as a novel skeleton for the development of anti-inflammatory agents. Pyxinol derivatives modified at C-3, C-12, or C-25 and selected stereoisomers were designed, prepared, and investigated for in vitro anti-inflammatory activities. Structure–activity relationship (SAR), focused on skeleton, was analyzed based on their ability to inhibit lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced nitric oxide (NO) synthesis. The preliminary SAR results signified that the biological activity of the pyxinol derivatives is largely dependent on the R/S stereochemistry of pyxinol skeleton and the hydroxy at C-3 is a modifiable position. Among the tested compounds, the 3-oximino­pyxinol (4a) exhibited the most potent NO-inhibitory activity and was even comparable to the steroid drug. Furthermore, compound 4a also significantly decreased LPS-induced TNF-α and IL-6 synthesis and iNOS and COX-2 expressions via the NF-κB pathway. This study proves that pyxinol is an interesting skeleton for anti-inflammatory drug discovery.

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The vehicle position obtained from GPS and dead reckoning is wildly applied to car navigation systems. However, the estimated position has an undesirable error due to the unknown GPS noise. To solve this problem, previous papers presented a method called "map-matching" to correct the position error. In this paper, we proposes a fuzzy ranking map matching algorithm based on measure factor. Comparing with other four algorithms, our algorithm improves in strategies of the error region determination, the road grid index and auto-adapted fuzzy sorting. To be specific, the error rectangle is firstly replaced by the error ellipse to reduce geometrical operation. Secondly, the grid index is adopted to accelerate the speed of filtering candidate road. At last, the relativity function and fuzzy sorting method help to sort the membership degree and to decide the matching road section. For the experiments, we implement a vehicle navigation system of five kinds of vehicle running status to testify the robustness and efficiency of this algorithm. The result shows that 96.7% of the GPS points are matched. In comparison with other algorithms, this algorithm had highest accuracy, which is of importance for vehicle navigation.Index Terms-fuzzy set, measure fuzzy sorting, map matching, vehicle navigation system I.

Background: The coronavirus disease of 2019 poses an unprecedented challenge to health and the financial system, especially the healthcare of patients with cancer. However, the research on the negative effect of the pandemic on the anxiety and depressive symptoms of cancer patients in closed-loop is rarely reported at present. In view of the limitations of previous studies. In this study, we compared the anxiety and depressive symptoms of head and neck cancer patients in the closed-loop management system before and during the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.Methods: In this comparative study, a total of 526 head and neck cancer patients (269 and 257 patients before and during the COVID-19 pandemic) were enrolled in the present study. The two groups of patients' median age (53 years, 52 years), female distribution (70.26%, 66.15%) and male distribution (29.74%, 33.85%) were analyzed before and after the COVID-19 epidemic. They received questionnaires using the standardized data forms of Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) to collect the relevant data of patients for retrospective investigation. For data analysis, either the chisquared test or Fisher's exact test was employed for categorical variables, and we described the time trend of psychological states before and after the outbreak with Cochran-Armitage trend (CAT) test.Results: A total of 526 head and neck cancer patients were included in the final analysis; 26.85% and 50.19% of cases experienced anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 epidemic. In contrast, 18.22% and 33.46% of cases had experienced anxiety and depression before the pandemic. According to the statistical results, the prevalence of anxiety and depression in patients during the COVID-19 epidemic was higher compared to that of patients prior to the pandemic (P=0.018). More importantly, both anxiety and depression incidence trends increased significantly before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 (P=0.000). Conclusions:The present study demonstrates the significant impact of COVID-19 on the psychological states of cancer patients in the case of closed-loop management system, effectively indicating the need for appropriate changes in treatment decisions, enhanced psychotherapy, and interventions to reduce the incidence of anxiety, depression, and even suicide during this pandemic.