The impact of endoscopic sinus surgery and aspirin desensitization on psychological burden in aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease

Background:Aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease(AERD)is an aggressive inflammatory disorder of the upper and lower respiratory tract.Corticosteroids,leukotriene modifiers,endoscopic sinus surgery(ESS),aspirin(ASA)desensitization,and biological immu-nomodulators are currently used to treat the disorder.Objective:The objective of this study was to determine the psychosocial impact of ESS and ASA desensitization on AERD patients.Methods:All AERD patients who underwent complete ESS were divided into two cohorts based on ASA desensitization status.The psychosocial metrics of the SNOT-22 were collected and analyzed at the following time points:pre-operative,1-month,3-month,6-month,and 12-month after ESS.Results:One hundred and eighty-four AERD patients underwent ESS from November 2009 to November 2018.From this group,130 patients underwent ASA desensitization(AD cohort)and 54 patients remained non-desensitized(ND cohort).AD patients showed a significantly greater reduction in total SNOT-22 scores over the study period compared to ND patients(p=0.0446).Analysis of SNOT-22 psychosocial metrics showed a significantly greater improvement in patient productivity in the AD cohort when compared to the ND cohort(p=0.0214).Further,a sub-group analysis accounting for subject attrition showed a significantly greater improvement in both productivity and concentration in AD patients when compared to the ND cohort(productivity:p=0.0068;concentration:p=0.0428).Conclusions:ESS followed by ASA desensitization decreases the overall psychosocial burden in AERD patients with a significant improvement in perceived productivity and concentration.This has significant implications given the psychosocial impact of chronic diseases.

Classification on Grade, Price, and Region with Multi-Label and Multi-Target Methods in Wineinformatics

Classifying wine according to their grade,price,and region of origin is a multi-label and multi-target problem in wineinformatics.Using wine reviews as the attributes,we compare several different multi-label/multitarget methods to the single-label method where each label is treated independently.We explore both single-label and multi-label approaches for a two-class problem for each of the labels and we explore both single-label and multi-target approaches for a four-class problem on two of the three labels,with the third label remaining a twoclass problem.In terms of per-label accuracy,the single-label method has the best performance,although some multi-label methods approach the performance of single-label.However,multi-label/multi-target metrics approaches do exceed the performance of the single-label method.

CHINESE LABOUR CORPS

James Palmer looks at the legacy of Chinese laborers in WWI and the complex history of China in a world at war

MANICHEAN MIDDLE KINGDOM

In the eyes of history, this long dead Persian religion burned brightly and then faded away—but not before changing the political landscape of ancient China

The World of Judge Dee

James Palmer delves into the works of Robert van Gulik and his immortal Judge Dee to look at how this odd character has survived over the centuries

MARTYRS' ANTHEM

The tale behind China's national anthem is one of tragedy and loss, a story that runs through the lifeblood of China's history

SCI-FI WITH SOCIALIST CHARACTERISTICS

Chinese science fiction served an important function in China’s recent turbulent past社会主义特色的中国科幻小说The People’s Republic of China has long worshipped science.But science-fiction has had a harder time of it.Fantasies of interplanetary travel go back millennia in China,but it was the experience of colonialism combined with the opening up to the outside world that drove Chinese sci-fi authors.