Glycogen phosphorylase isoenzyme BB in the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction: a meta-analysis

Background

Early diagnosis is crucial for management of patients with suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Among innovative and promising biomarkers, the recent interest raised on glycogen phosphorylase isoenzyme BB (GPBB) has prompted us to perform a meta-analysis of published studies.

Materials and methods:

A systematic electronic search was carried out on PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar, with no date restriction, to retrieve all articles that have investigated the early diagnostic performance of GPBB in patients with suspected AMI, and directly reported or allowed calculation of sensitivity and specificity. A meta-analysis of the reported sensitivity and specificity of each study and pooled area under the curve (AUC) was then performed by random effect approach. Heterogeneity was assessed by I-square statistics.

Results:

Eight studies were finally selected for analysis (941 subjects; 506 cases and 435 controls), with a high heterogeneity (I-squared, 86.3%). The resulting pooled estimates and 95% confidence interval were 0.854 (0.801–0.891) for sensitivity, 0.767 (0.713–0.815) for specificity, 0.826 (0.774–0.870) for negative predictive value, 0.802 (0.754–0.844) for positive predictive value, and 0.754 (0.602–0.907) for AUC. In those studies that have simultaneously assessed GPBB and a troponin immunoassay, the combination of these biomarkers did not significantly improve the performance of troponin alone.

Conclusion:

GPBB does not meet the current requirements for an efficient diagnosis of AMI when used as a stand-alone test, whereas its combination with troponin merits further investigation in larger trials.     

Probabilistic topic modeling in multilingual settings: An overview of its methodology and applications

Probabilistic topic models are unsupervised generative models which model document content as a two-step generation process, that is, documents are observed as mixtures of latent concepts or topics, while topics are probability distributions over vocabulary words. Recently, a significant research effort has been invested into transferring the probabilistic topic modeling concept from monolingual to multilingual settings. Novel topic models have been designed to work with parallel and comparable texts. We define multilingual probabilistic topic modeling (MuPTM) and present the first full overview of the current research, methodology, advantages and limitations in MuPTM. As a representative example, we choose a natural extension of the omnipresent LDA model to multilingual settings called bilingual LDA (BiLDA). We provide a thorough overview of this representative multilingual model from its high-level modeling assumptions down to its mathematical foundations. We demonstrate how to use the data representation by means of output sets of (i) per-topic word distributions and (ii) per-document topic distributions coming from a multilingual probabilistic topic model in various real-life cross-lingual tasks involving different languages, without any external language pair dependent translation resource: (1) cross-lingual event-centered news clustering, (2) cross-lingual document classification, (3) cross-lingual semantic similarity, and (4) cross-lingual information retrieval. We also briefly review several other applications present in the relevant literature, and introduce and illustrate two related modeling concepts: topic smoothing and topic pruning. In summary, this article encompasses the current research in multilingual probabilistic topic modeling. By presenting a series of potential applications, we reveal the importance of the language-independent and language pair independent data representations by means of MuPTM. We provide clear directions for future research in the field by providing a systematic overview of how to link and transfer aspect knowledge across corpora written in different languages via the shared space of latent cross-lingual topics, that is, how to effectively employ learned per-topic word distributions and per-document topic distributions of any multilingual probabilistic topic model in various cross-lingual applications.     

Student Characteristics That Predict Persistence in Community College Online Courses

Abstract

This study examined the student characteristics of learning style, locus of control, computer experience and access, and online course experience on persistence of community college students in online courses. An online survey instrument based on the Barsch Learning Style Inventory (1996 Barsch, J. 1996. Barsch learning style inventory, Novato, CA: Academic Therapy Publications.  [Google Scholar]), the Abbreviated Measure of Internal–External Locus of Control (1974), and a computer experience scale that was developed by the researchers was completed by 225 students enrolled in online courses at five Florida community colleges. Logistic regression analysis identified a three-variable model (auditory learning style, grade point average, and basic computer skills) that was significant in predicting online student success. Academic and student support interventions are suggested for community college students who may be affected by these predictors.     

苏联现代高等学校图书馆

<正> 目前苏联全国共有高等学校891所(其中综合性大学68所),在校学生人数已超过600万.这些高等学校分布于200多座城市.在高等学校的教学和科学研究活动中,图书馆起着重要的作用.图书馆工作的主要方向是积极参与教学过程,及时为学生提供必需的图书文献,为科学研究提供高效率的、全面的情报服务.因此,今日的高校图书馆已看作是同时执行公共图书馆、科学图书馆和学校图书馆多种职能的复合体.     

The effects of middle-school career intervention on students’ career readiness

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - The study examines the effectiveness of a career intervention in middle schools. The intervention was organized in eight...     

From solo-run to mainstream thinking: project-based learning in engineering design

The paper begins with an overview of project-based learning (PBL) teaching and assessment methods that have been developed as an integral part of a 4-year undergraduate engineering degree programme in Galway, Ireland. The course described was first introduced as a ‘solo-run’ by the author in 1989. The paper goes on to describe comprehensive changes affecting higher educational establishments in Ireland and, in particular, those changes currently taking root in Galway. One such change is the encouragement to introduce a variety of teaching and assessment methods, including PBL. From ‘solo-run’ towards accepted mainstream thinking—interesting times!     

Policy change in higher education: the New Zealand experience

For over one hundred years, the structure of the New Zealand education system has been basically stable. After re-election in 1987, however, the Labour government initiated a major reform of the system, from early childhood to tertiary. Although the pace of change has been great, most of the changes are only recently in place or, in the case of the tertiary sector, not yet fully operative. It is, then, too early to assess the consequences of the changes except rather intuitively. Nevertheless, this is an opportune moment to begin to document and analyze the changes in the tertiary sector.