Clinical features and risk factors of acute hepatitis E with severe jaundice

AIM:To compares the clinical features of patients infected with hepatitis E virus(HEV) with or without severe jaundice.In addition,the risk factors for HEV infection with severe jaundice were investigated.METHODS:We enrolled 235 patients with HEV into a cross-sectional study using multi-stage sampling to select the study group.Patients with possible acute hepatitis E showing elevated liver enzyme levels were screened for HEV infection using serologic and molecular tools.HEV infection was documented by HEV antibodies and by the detection of HEV-RNA in serum.We used χ2 analysis,Fisher's exact test,and Student's t test where appropriate in this study.Significant predictors in the univariate analysis were then included in a forward,stepwise multiple logistic regression model.RESULTS:No significant differences in symptoms,alanine aminotransferase,aspartate aminotransferase,al-kaline phosphatase,or hepatitis B virus surface antigen between the two groups were observed.HEV infected patients with severe jaundice had significantly lower peak serum levels of γ-glutamyl-transpeptidase(GGT)(median:170.31 U/L vs 237.96 U/L,P = 0.007),significantly lower ALB levels(33.84 g/L vs 36.89 g/L,P = 0.000),significantly lower acetylcholine esterase(CHE) levels(4500.93 U/L vs 5815.28 U/L,P = 0.000) and significantly higher total bile acid(TBA) levels(275.56 μmol/L vs 147.03 μmol/L,P = 0.000) than those without severe jaundice.The median of the lowest point time tended to be lower in patients with severe jaundice(81.64% vs 96.12%,P = 0.000).HEV infected patients with severe jaundice had a significantly higher viral load(median:134 vs 112,P = 0.025) than those without severe jaundice.HEV infected patients with severe jaundice showed a trend toward longer median hospital stay(38.17 d vs 18.36 d,P = 0.073).Multivariate logistic regression indicated that there were significant differences in age,sex,viral load,GGT,albumin,TBA,CHE,prothrombin index,alcohol overconsumption,and duration of admission between patients infected with acute hepatitis E with and without severe jaundice.CONCLUSION:Acute hepatitis E patients may naturally present with severe jaundice.

Radar emitter signal recognition based on multi-scale wavelet entropy and feature weighting

In modern electromagnetic environment, radar emitter signal recognition is an important research topic. On the basis of multi-resolution wavelet analysis, an adaptive radar emitter signal recognition method based on multi-scale wavelet entropy feature extraction and feature weighting was proposed. With the only priori knowledge of signal to noise ratio(SNR), the method of extracting multi-scale wavelet entropy features of wavelet coefficients from different received signals were combined with calculating uneven weight factor and stability weight factor of the extracted multi-dimensional characteristics. Radar emitter signals of different modulation types and different parameters modulated were recognized through feature weighting and feature fusion. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the presented algorithm has a high recognition rate. Additionally, when the SNR is greater than-4 d B, the correct recognition rate is higher than 93%. Hence, the proposed algorithm has great application value.

Multi-Domain Collaborative Recommendation with Feature Selection

Collaborative f iltering, as one of the most popular techniques, plays an important role in recommendation systems. However,when the user-item rating matrix is sparse,its performance will be degenerate. Recently,domain-specific recommendation approaches have been developed to address this problem.The basic idea is to partition the users and items into overlapping domains, and then perform recommendation in each domain independently. Here, a domain means a group of users having similar preference to a group of products. However, these domain-specific methods consisting of two sequential steps ignore the mutual benefi t of domain segmentation and recommendation. Hence, a unified framework is presented to simultaneously realize recommendation and make use of the domain information underlying the rating matrix in this paper. Based on matrix factorization,the proposed model learns both user preferences of multiple domains and preference selection vectors to select relevant features for each group of products. Besides, local context information is utilized from the user-item rating matrix to enhance the new framework.Experimental results on two widely used datasets, e.g., Ciao and Epinions, demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model.

Temporal Variations in Sea of Clouds and Their Relation with Meteorological Factors in Yandang Mountains

Based on data of meteorological elements in the meteorological station in North Yandang Mountains during 1960- 2013,temporal variations in days of sea of clouds over Yandang Mountains in nearly 50 years and their relation with air temperature,precipitation,relative humidity and wind speed were analyzed. The results showed that annual average days of sea of clouds over Yandang Mountains were 164. 92 d,and the maximum and minimum were 215 and 58 d,so there was a big difference between various years. The days of sea of clouds were the most in spring,and average days of sea of clouds（ average days of sea of clouds with low cloud cover ≥80%） were 50. 89 d（ 32. 77 d）,while they were the least in autumn. There was an obvious positive correlation between the days of sea of clouds and relative humidity. Precipitation occurred the day before or on the day when sea of clouds with low cloud cover ≥80% formed. On the day when sea of clouds with low cloud cover ≥80% appeared,average relative humidity was ≥80%,and average wind speed was ≤4. 5 m/s.

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors in a cohort of Chinese patients in Hong Kong

AIM： To investigate the prevalence and clinical pattern of gastrointestinal stromal tumors （GISTs） in Hong Kong Chinese, and to assess the impact of introduction of CD117 on the disease incidence. METHODS： From the database of the Department of Pathology of Yan Chai Hospital, 47 patients, with GISTs from September 1995 to December 2003 were included in this study. Ten GISTs were diagnosed before the introduction of CD117. The clinical features, tumor characteristics, and treatment were analyzed. Factors predicting tumor related death or recurrence were studied with Cox proportional hazard model. RESULTS： The patients included 26 males and 21 females, with a mean age of 66.6 years （SD 13.1, range 29-87 years）. The estimated prevalence of GISTs was 13.4-15.6 per 100 000 people, with an annual inddence of 1.68-1.96 per 100 000 people. The annual incidence of GISTs before and after the introduction of CD117 was 1.1 per 100 000 people and 2.1 per 100 000 people respectively. Stomach （34 patients, 72.3%） was the most common location for the tumor, followed by the small intestine （8 patients, 17.0%）, esophagus （2 patients, 4.3%）, omentum （2 patients, 4.3%） and colon （1 patient, 2.1%）. Thirty-one patients （66%） had complete tumor resection. Eleven out of 16 deaths （23%） were tumor-related. The median survival time was 26 too. Five-year survival rate was 61.3%. The significant factors associated with tumor-related death or recurrence were incomplete resection, tumor size 5 cm or above, invasion to the adjacent organ or presence of metastasis, CONCLUSION： The incidence of GIST in Hong Kong is comparable to that in the United States but lower than that in Finland. The true incidence of GISTs could be underestimated before the introduction of CD117. Incomplete resection, tumor size 5 cm or above, invasion to the adjacent organ or presence of metastasis are factors predicting tumor-related death or recurrence.

Simulated impacts of 3D urban morphology on urban transportation in megacities: case study in Beijing

Urban morphology and morphology change and their impacts on urban transportation have been studied extensively in planar urban space.The essential feature of urban space,however,is its three-dimensionality(3D),and few studies have been conducted from a 3D perspective,overly limiting the accuracy of studies on the relationships between urban morphology and transportation.The aim of this paper is to simulate the impacts of 3D urban morphologies on urban transportation under the Digital Earth framework.On the basis of the principle that population distribution and movement are largely confined by 3D urban morphologies,which affect transportation,high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery and a thematic vector data-set were used to extract urban morphology and transportation-related variables.With a combination of three research methods-factor analysis,spatial regression analysis and Euclidean allocation-we provide an effective method to construct a simulation model.The paper indicates three general results.First,building capacity in the urban space has the most significant impact on traffic condition.Second,obvious urban space otherness,reflecting both use density characteristics and functional character-istics of urban space,mostly results in heavier traffic flow pressure.Third,no single morphology density indicator or single urban structure indicator can reflect its contribution to the pressure of traffic flow directly,but a combination of these different indicators has the ability to do so.