Elevated Plasma Tissue-type Plasminogen Activator (t-PA) and Soluble Throm-bomodulin in Patients Suffering From Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as a Possible Index for Prognosis and Treatment Strategy

To detect the presence of endothelial injury in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome （SARS） via enhanced levels of tissue-type plasminogen activator （t-PA） and soluble thrombomodulin （sTM）. Methods Case patients were from Xuanwu Hospital （Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China）, and all of them met clinical criteria for SARS. Healthy controls were some of the hospital employees. Endothelial injury bio-markers tPA and sTM were detected by commercial ELISA-methods. Results Classic plasma markers of endothelial injury, tPA and sTM significantly elevated in SARS patients in comparison to controls [t-PA： 1.48±0.16 nmol/L versus 0.25±0.03 nmol/L （P〈0.0001）, and sTM： 0.26±0.06 nmol/L versus 0.14±0.02 nmol/L （P〈0.05）]. The only patient who died had extremely high levels of these endothelial injury markers （t-PA： 2.77 nmol/L and sTM： 1.01 nmol/L）. The likelihood ratio analysis indicated the excellent discriminating power for SARS at the optimal cut-point of 0.49 nmol/L for tPA and 0.20 nmol/L for sTM, respectively. Significant numerical correlations were found among these endothelial injury markers in SARS patients. The numerical coefficient of correlation Pearson r between t-PA and sTM was 0.5867 （P〈0.05）. Conclusion Increased plasma concentrations of tPA and sTM in patients with SARS suggest the possibility of endothelial injury. SARS patients might need anticoagulant therapy or fibrinolytic therapy in order to reverse intraalveolar coagulation, microthrombi formation, alveolar and interstitial fibrin deposition. It may not only provide a useful treatment and prognostic index but also allow a further understanding of the pathological condition of the disease.

Exothermic process of cast-in-place pile foundation and its thermal agitation of the frozen ground under a long dry bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway

A number of dry bridges have been built to substitute for the roadbed on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway,China.The aim of this study was to investigate the exothermic process of cast-in-place (CIP) pile foundation of a dry bridge and its harm to the stability of nearby frozen ground.We present 3D heat conduction functions of a concrete pile and of frozen ground with related boundaries.Our analysis is based on the theory of heat conduction and the exponent law describing the adiabatic temperature rise caused by hydration heat.Results under continuous and initial conditions were combined to establish a finite element model of a CIP pile-frozen ground system for a dry bridge under actual field conditions in cold regions.Numerical results indicated that the process could effectively simulate the exothermic process of CIP pile foundation.Thermal disturbance to frozen ground under a long dry bridge caused by the casting temperature and hydration heat of CIP piles was substantial and long-lasting.The simulated thermal analysis results agreed with field measurements and some significant rules relating to the problem were deduced and conclusions reached.

The Global Existence of Solutions for Two Classes of Chemotaxis Models

This paper is concerned with the global existence and uniform boundedness of solutions for two classes of chemotaxis models in two or three dimensional spaces. Firstly, by using detailed energy estimates, special interpolation relation and uniform Gronwall inequality, we prove the global existence of uniformly bounded solutions for a class of chemotaztic systems with linear chemotactic-sensitivity terms and logistic reaction terms. Secondly, by applying detailed analytic semigroup estimates and special iteration techniques, we obtain the global existence of uniformly bounded solutions for a class of chemotactic systems with nonlinear chemotacticsensitivity terms, which extends the global existence results of [6] to other general cases.