Association of Elevated Serum Lipoprotein(a), Inflammation,Oxidative Stress and Chronic Kidney Disease with Hypertension in Non-diabetes Hypertensive Patients

Hypertension is the most common cardiovascular risk factor. Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)], inflammation, oxidative stress and chronic kidney disease (CKD) exacerbate the response to tissue injury and acts as markers of the vascular disease, especially in glomerulosclerosis. We compared the clinical characteristics of 138 non-diabetes hypertensive women (ndHT) patients with 417 non-diabetes normotensive subjects and tested the association of hypertension with Lp(a), inflammation, CKD and oxidative stress by using multiple logistic regression. BP, BMI, waist circumference, creatinine, Lp(a), inflammation and malondialdehyde levels were significantly higher and CKD state in the ndHT patients (p < 0.05). Multiple logistic regression showed hypertension associated with increased Lp(a), inflammation, ORs and 95 % CIs were 2.52 (1.33, 4.80), 2.75 (1.44, 5.27) after adjusting for their covariates. Elevated serum Lp(a) and inflammation levels concomitants with increased oxidative stress and CKD were the major risk factors associated with hypertension and implications for the increased risk of HT and vascular disease.     

基于B/S模式的海量数据报表的实现

本文基于海量数据和网络打印速度之间的矛盾问题,通过几种报表实施方案的对比,提出了利用操纵Excel引擎方式解决网络打印海量数据报表问题的方法。以某煤矿企业考勤综合管理系统的考勤报表为应用背景,研究了基于B/S模式的海量数据报表的实现过程,讨论了客户端与服务器端的设置方式。应用证明该方法切实可行,可以有效地解决网络打印海量数据报表效率低的问题。     

The effect of extremely high glucose concentrations on 21 routine chemistry and thyroid Abbott assays: interference study

Introduction

Extremely high glucose concentrations have been shown to interfere with creatinine assays especially with Jaffe method in peritoneal dialysate. Because diabetes is the fastest growing chronic disease in the world, laboratories study with varying glucose concentrations. We investigated whether different levels of glucose spiked in serum interfere with 21 routine chemistry and thyroid assays at glucose concentrations between 17-51 mmol/L.

Materials and methods

Baseline (group I) serum pool with glucose concentration of 5.55 (5.44-5.61) mmol/L was prepared from patient sera. Spiking with 20% dextrose solution, sample groups were obtained with glucose concentrations: 17.09, 34.52, and 50.95 mmol/L (group II, III, IV, respectively). Total of 21 biochemistry analytes and thyroid tests were studied on Abbott c8000 and i2000sr with commercial reagents. Bias from baseline value was checked statistically and clinically.

Results

Creatinine increased significantly by 8.74%, 31.66%, 55.31% at groups II, III, IV, respectively with P values of < 0.001. At the median glucose concentration of 50.95 mmol/L, calcium, albumin, chloride and FT4 biased significantly clinically (-0.85%, 1.63%, 0.65%, 7.4% with P values 0.138, 0.214, 0.004, < 0.001, respectively). Remaining assays were free of interference.

Conclusion

Among the numerous biochemical parameters studied, only a few parameters are affected by dramatically increased glucose concentration. The creatinine measurements obtained in human sera with the Jaffe alkaline method at high glucose concentrations should be interpreted with caution. Other tests that were affected with extremely high glucose concentrations were calcium, albumin, chloride and FT4, hence results should be taken into consideration in patients with poor diabetic control.Key words: assay interference, glucose interference, preanalytical phase, creatinine, Jaffe kinetic assay, thyroid function tests     

Parsimonious translation models for information retrieval

In the KL divergence framework, the extended language modeling approach has a critical problem of estimating a query model, which is the probabilistic model that encodes the user’s information need. For query expansion in initial retrieval, the translation model had been proposed to involve term co-occurrence statistics. However, the translation model was difficult to apply, because the term co-occurrence statistics must be constructed in the offline time. Especially in a large collection, constructing such a large matrix of term co-occurrences statistics prohibitively increases time and space complexity. In addition, reliable retrieval performance cannot be guaranteed because the translation model may comprise noisy non-topical terms in documents. To resolve these problems, this paper investigates an effective method to construct co-occurrence statistics and eliminate noisy terms by employing a parsimonious translation model. The parsimonious translation model is a compact version of a translation model that can reduce the number of terms containing non-zero probabilities by eliminating non-topical terms in documents. Through experimentation on seven different test collections, we show that the query model estimated from the parsimonious translation model significantly outperforms not only the baseline language modeling, but also the non-parsimonious models.     

An empirical study of query expansion and cluster-based retrieval in language modeling approach

The term mismatch problem in information retrieval is a critical problem, and several techniques have been developed, such as query expansion, cluster-based retrieval and dimensionality reduction to resolve this issue. Of these techniques, this paper performs an empirical study on query expansion and cluster-based retrieval. We examine the effect of using parsimony in query expansion and the effect of clustering algorithms in cluster-based retrieval. In addition, query expansion and cluster-based retrieval are compared, and their combinations are evaluated in terms of retrieval performance by performing experimentations on seven test collections of NTCIR and TREC.     

民国济南公路史小考

20世纪30年代之前,山东政局动荡,公路建设虽有规划但难以实施,公共交通事业也仍以马车、人力车及自行车为主。韩复榘主鲁后,对全省公路颇有建设,并借华北运动会在济召开之机,修缮济南市内公路。龙洞与灵岩寺是济南近郊的两处名胜,抗战前山东建设厅多方筹款修通了济南市至龙洞和灵岩寺的汽车路并开通了游览专线。至20世纪30年代中期,济南至全省各地的长途运输事业也有了长足发展,促进了山东经济格局及社会的变迁。     

Using A Split-ballot Survey to Explore the Robustness of the 'MIP' Question in Agenda-Setting Research: A Methodological Study

Three aspects of the ‘most important problem’ questionused in agenda-setting research to measure issue salience amongthe public were examined. A split-ballot design in a state-widesurvey compared versions of the public agenda with a socialframe of reference versus a personal frame of reference, versionsusing the traditional term ‘problem’ versus ‘issue’,and the effects of question order. High correlations betweenthe different versions were found in all three sets of comparisons.     

Critical factors influencing secondary school pupil’s decisions to study computing in tertiary education: Gender differences

This paper aims to determine the factors affecting the decisions of both male and female secondary school pupils whether or not to pursue undergraduate studies in Computing. It is based on research conducted in Greece, on a sample of 248 pupils, 135 of whom were female. All were aged 17 and about to decide on their future undergraduate studies. Questionnaires were used, addressing issues in the following four main categories: a) the reasons pupils chose/rejected Computing, b) how family and friends, the media and the school environment contribute to their decision, c) how pupils perceived their future after studying Computing and d) how pupils perceived the profile of a computer professional in terms of gender.

迈克尔·富兰教育变革思想述评

加拿大学者迈克尔·富兰多年从事教育变革的理论和实践研究,著有大量关于教育变革思想方面的书籍,并就为什么需要变革、需要怎样的变革、怎样变革以及怎样变革更有效等问题进行了系统的研究.本文分为迈克尔·富兰教育变革思想产生的背景、主要内容以及对当今中国基础教育课程改革的启示三个部分,意图对迈克尔·富兰教育变革思想及其现实意义进行述评.