Graft-versus-host disease after liver transplantation:A comprehensive literature review

AIM： To determine the factors affecting mortality in pa- tients who developed graft-versus-host disease （GvHD） after liver transplantation （LT）. METHODS： We performed a review of studies of GvHD following LT published in the English literature and ac- cessed the PubMed, Medline, EBSCO, EMBASE, and Google Scholar databases. Using relevant search phras- es, 88 articles were identified. Of these, 62 articles con- raining most of the study parameters were considered eligible for the study. Risk factors were first examined using a univariate Kaplan-Meier model, and variables with a significant association （P 〈 0.05） were then sub- jected to multivariate analyses using a Cox proportional- hazards model. RESULTS： The 61 articles reported 87 patients, 58 male and 29 female, mean age, 40.4 ± 15.5 years （range： 8 mo to 74 years）, who met the inclusion criteria for the present study. Deaths occurred in 59 （67.8%） patients, whereas 28 （32.2%） survived after a mean follow-up period of 280.8 ± 316.2 d （range： 27-2285 d）. Among the most frequent symptoms were rash （94.2%）, fever （66.6%）, diarrhea （54%）, and pancytopenia （54%）. The average time period between LT and first symptom on- set was 60.6 ± 190.1 d （range： 2-1865 d）. The Kaplan- Meier analysis revealed that pancytopenia （42.8% vs 59.3%, P = 0.03）, diarrhea （39.2% vs 61.0%, P = 0.04）, age difference between the recipient and the donor （14.6 ± 3.1 years vs 22.6 ± 2.7 years, P 〈 0.0001）, and time From first symptom occurrence to diagnosis or treatment （13.3 ± 2.6 mo vs 15.0 ± 2.3 mo, P 〈 0.0001） were significant factors affecting mortality, whereas age, sex, presence of rash and fever, use of immunosuppressive agents, acute rejection before GvHD, etiological causes, time of onset, and donor type were not associated with mortality risk. The Cox proportional-hazards model, de- termined that an age difference between the recipient and donor was an independent risk Factor （P = 0.03; hazard ratio, 7.395, 95% confidence interval, 1.2-46.7）. CONCLUSION： This study showed that an age differ- ence between the recipient and donor is an independent risk factor for mortality in patients who develop GvHD after LT.

Roux-en-Y reconstruction does not require gastric decompression after radical distal gastrectomy

AIM: To determine whether routine nasogastric (NG) decompression benefitted patients undergoing radical gastric surgery. METHODS: Between January 1998 and December 2008, 519 patients who underwent distal gastrectomy for gastric cancer were retrospectively divided into 2 time-period cohorts; those treated with Billroth Ⅱ (BⅡ) reconstruction in the first 6 years and those with Roux-en-Y (RY) reconstruction in the last 5 years. In the latter group, the patients were further divided into 2 subgroups; with and without nasogastric decompression.RESULTS: Postoperatively, there were no significant differences in the number of anastomotic leaks between the 3 groups. In the tubeless RY group, time to semiliquid diet was significantly shorter than in the other 2 groups (4.4 d ± 1.4 d vs 7.2 d ± 1.3 d and 5.9 d ± 1.2 d, P = 0.005). The length of postoperative stay was significantly increased in patients with BⅡ reconstruction compared with patients with RY reconstruction with/without NG decompression (15.4 d ± 4.3 d in BⅡ group vs 12.6 d ± 3.1 d in decompressed RY and 11.4 d ± 3.4 d in the tubeless RY group, P = 0.035). The postoperative pneumonia rate was lowest in the tubeless group and highest in the BⅡ group (1.4% vs 4.6%, P = 0.01). Severe sore throat was noted in 59 (20.7%) members of the BⅡ group, 18 (17.4%) members of the decompressed RY group and 6 (4.2%) members of the tubeless RY group. Fewer patients in the tubeless group complained of severe sore throat (P = 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study provides support for abandoning routine NG decompression in patients undergoing subtotal gastrectomy with Roux-en-Y gastrojejunostomy.

Cultural Literacy and World Literature： A Case Study

How much more can be gained from a piece of World Literature when the reader is semiotically literate in the culture that produced the work？ What are the implications of introducing the element of cultural literacy into the teaching of world literature, and how might culturally contextualizing the narrative enhance the reading experience for those who may not be familiar with the national culture that produced the work？ This paper examines these questions using as a case study The Tale of Genji （n.d.）, a novel from llth century Japan and ＂La Troisi6me Jeunesse de Madame Prune＂ （1905）, a French text set in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. Using examples taken from each writer＇s text, the author will show how a knowledge of both the target culture and the time period in which the work was produced can serve as a critical tool for analyzing the text; the former text shall be used to argue for an integration of a cultural anthropology element into the teaching of world literature, while the latter example shall be used to argue for the importance of contextualizing a text within its historical creation period. In concluding, the author shall examine the ways in which including an element of cultural literacy can lead to a truly interdisciplinary, trans-national, and trans-linguistic understanding of a particular literary text.

Hybrid grey model to forecast monitoring series with seasonality

The grey forecasting model has been successfully applied to many fields. However, the precision of GM(1,1) model is not high. In order to remove the seasonal fluctuations in monitoring series before building GM(1,1) model, the forecasting series of GM(1,1) was built, and an inverse process was used to resume the seasonal fluctuations. Two deseasonalization methods were presented , i.e., seasonal index-based deseasonalization and standard normal distribution-based deseasonalization. They were combined with the GM(1,1) model to form hybrid grey models. A simple but practical method to further improve the forecasting results was also suggested. For comparison, a conventional periodic function model was investigated. The concept and algorithms were tested with four years monthly monitoring data. The results show that on the whole the seasonal index-GM(1,1) model outperform the conventional periodic function model and the conventional periodic function model outperform the SND-GM(1,1) model. The mean Absolute error and mean square error of seasonal index-GM(1,1) are 30.69% and 54.53% smaller than that of conventional periodic function model, respectively. The high accuracy, straightforward and easy implementation natures of the proposed hybrid seasonal index-grey model make it a powerful analysis technique for seasonal monitoring series.

On-line Monitoring for Phosphorus Removal Process and Bacterial Community in Sequencing Batch Reactor

For efficient energy consumption and control of effluent quality, the cycle duration for a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) needs to be adjusted by real-time control according to the characteristics and loading of waste-water. In this study, an on-line information system for phosphorus removal processes was established. Based on the analysis for four systems with different ecological community structures and two operation modes, anaerobic-aerobic process and anaerobic-anaerobic process, the characteristic patterns of oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) and pH were related to phosphorous dynamics in the anaerobic, anoxic and aerobic phases, for determination of the end of phosphorous removal. In the operation mode of anaerobic-aerobic process, the pH profile in the anaerobic phase was used to estimate the relative amount of phosphorous accumulating organisms (PAOs) and glycogen accumulat-ing organisms (GAOs), which is beneficial to early detection of ecology community shifts. The on-line sensor val-ues of pH and ORP may be used as the parameters to adjust the duration for phosphorous removal and community shifts to cope with influent variations and maintain appropriate operation conditions.

Effect of Adsorbent Diameter on the Performance of Adsorption Refrigeration

Adsorbents are important components in adsorption refrigeration. The diameter of an adsorbent can affect the heat and mass transfer of an adsorber. The effect of particle diameter on effective thermal conductivity was investigated. The heat transfer coefficient of the refrigerant and the void rate of the adsorbent layer can also affect the effective thermal conductivity of adsorbents. The performance of mass transfer in the adsorber is better when pressure drop decreases. Pressure drop decreases with increasing permeability. The permeability of the adsorbent layer can be improved with increasing adsorbent diameter. The effect of adsorbent diameter on refrigeration output power was experimentally studied. Output power initially increases and then decreases with increasing diameter under different cycle time conditions. Output power increases with decreasing cycle time under similar diameters.

Probabilistic model for remain passenger queues at subway station platform

The remain passenger problem at subway station platform was defined initially,and the period variation of remain passenger queues at platform was investigated through arriving and boarding analyses.Taking remain passenger queues at platform as dynamic stochastic process,a new probabilistic queuing method was developed based on probabilistic theory and discrete time Markov chain theory.This model can calculate remain passenger queues while considering different directions.Considering the stable or variable train arriving period and different platform crossing types,a series of model deformation research was carried out.The probabilistic approach allows to capture the cyclic behavior of queues,measures the uncertainty of a queue state prediction by computing the evolution of its probability in time,and gives any temporal distribution of the arrivals.Compared with the actual data,the deviation of experimental results is less than 20%,which shows the efficiency of probabilistic approach clearly.

New key-stream generation scheme based on Henon chaotic system

As known to all that Henon chaotic system is not appropriate for generating the key-streams because it has non-uniformly distributed output signal, a new key-stream generation scheme based on Henon chaotic system is presented. In order to get the key-streams with good statistics and long enough cycle length, a specific method for dividing the enon attractor into numerous non-overlapping sub-regions, and a new one-to-one mapping strategy between the divided sub-regions and elements of dynamically generated matrix consisting of O＇s and l＇s are proposed. Experimental results demonstrate that the generated key-streams are with long enough cycle length and very sensitive to the initial values and secret keys. For example, key-streams with the cycle length of 10^32 can easily be obtained. Moreover, even if the fluctuation to the initial values or secret keys is as small as 10^- 14 uncorrelated key-streams will be generated. Experimental results also demonstrate that the generated key-streams have good randomness and they can pass all the standard criteria specified in FIPS PUB 140^-2 with no less than 98%.

Electron Transport in Graphene-Based Double-Barrier Structure under a Time Periodic Field

The transport property of electron through graphene-based double-barrier under a time periodic field is investigated. We study the influence of the system parameters and external field strength on the transmission probability. The results show that transmission exhibits various kinds of behavior with the change of parameters due to its angular anisotropy. One could control the values of transmission and conductivity as well as their distribution in each band by tuning the parameters.

A Forward-Secure Multi-Receiver Signcryption Scheme

In order to protect historical ciphertext when the private key leaked in the broadcasting system,the forward-secure multi-receiver signcryption scheme is designed based on the generic graded multilinear mapping encoding structure,which effectively prevents illegal access from intruder to the ciphertext in the past time period when the private key in current time period is revealed.Through the generalization of the existing multilinear mapping encoding system,it proposes the generic graded multilinear mapping encoding structure and the generic graded decision Diffie-Hellman problem.Because of the generic graded multilinear mapping encoding system adopted,almost all candidate multilinear mapping encoding systems can automatically adapt to our scheme.Under the assumption of generic graded decision Diffie-Hellman problem,it has proved that the scheme has the information confidentiality and unforgeability in the current time period.After putting forward the security model of forward-secure multi-receiver signcryption scheme,and under the assumption of generic graded decision Diffie-Hellman problem,it has proved that the scheme has the message forward-confidentiality and forward-unforgeability.Compared with other forward-secure public key encryption schemes,the relationship between our scheme and time periods is sub-linear,so it is less complex.

A Radio Communication System for Neuronal Signals

To collect neuronal activity data from awake, freely behaving animals, we developed miniature telemetry recording system. The integrated system consists of four major components： l） Microelectrodes and micro-driver assembly, 2） analog front end （AFE）, 3） programmable system on chip （PSoC）, and 4） ra- dio transceiver and the LabVIEW were used as a platform for the graphic user interface. The result showed the system was able to record and analyze neuronal recordings in freely moving animals and lasted continuously for a time period of a week or more. This is very useful for the study of the interdisciplinary research of neu- roscience and information engineering techniques. The circuits and architecture of the devices can be adapted for neurobiology and research with other small animals.

Modeling of Atmospheric Phenomena Using Non-homogeneous Poisson Process

The PPNH （non-homogenous Poisson processes） are frequently used as models for events that come about randomly in a given time period, for example, failure times, time of accidents occurrences, etc. In this work, PPNH is used to model monthly maximum observations of urban ozone corresponding to a period of five years from the meteorological stations of Merced, Pedregal and Plateros, located in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. The interest data are the times in which the observations surpassed the permissible level of ozone of 0.11 ppm, settled by the Mexican Official Norm （NOM-020-SSA 1-1993） to preserve public health.

A Study of Burial Patterns and Symbolism With Reference to Harappan Sites in India

Since time and beyond, when humans first developed the understanding of staying in communities, a sense of affection and adoration grew towards fellow beings. The law of nature of the cycle of life gave rise to the belief in life after death and a sense of intimidation for the same, gave way to supernatural beliefs. Such beliefs gave rise to multifarious customary activities. A study to understand them on the basis of symbolism has paved the way for simplification of the complex rituals, and hence, perceive the prevalent socio-cultural aspects of those times.

The influence of pH value and adding pulverized fuel ash on the SBR treatment system

According to a great deal of experimental findings and theoretical analysis, when the COD of inlet is 1 000-1 200 mg/L, NH3--N is 200~250 mg/L, the periodic time of operation is 24 h, the aeration time is 16 h and the sludge density is 5 000-7 000 mg/L, COD of outlet is 150-200 mg/L, NH3--N is less than 25 mg/L, the volume load of COD and NH3--N remove 0.50 and 0.12 kg/（m3od） respectively. Meanwhile, studied the influence of various crafts parameter change on the treating effect and absorbing the yielding water of the SBR reactor with pulverized coal ash for improving the removing effect of COD and chromaticity further.

A Modified Multi-Agent System for Simple Assembly Line Balancing

In this paper, a modified multi-agent system for assembly line balancing is proposed. Each worker in the assembly line is regarded as an agent, and two neighboring agents exchange information about the allocated tasks. To balance the workload, an agent with a smaller workload sends a request message to his/her neighboring agent, who has a larger workload, to exchange tasks between them. Without any centralized control mechanism, each agent behaves to achieve their goal, which is to balance the workload. A tabu list and cooling control are also incorporated. However, the effectiveness of the previous system is limited, and the system depends on problems to be solved. As such, a modified system is proposed. In the proposed system, the cycle time is used when considering the proposal of exchange of allocated tasks instead of the task time allocated to the neighboring workers. Also, in the proposed system, the length of tabu list is determined dynamically based on the current number of possible exchanges, and the best cycle time in the search with cooling at medium speed is recorded for the second search that is finished when the current cycle time reaches the recorded cycle time. The effectiveness of the modified system is investigated by solving problems for various conditions. The results show that the proposed system is effective regardless of the problems that are encountered.

German Labor Sports Movement in Slovakia and Its Orientation in Period 1918-1938

This is a study of German Labor Sport organizations and unions in Slovakia in the time parameters area 1918-1938 German workers living in Slovakia started to found their own union after 1918. They got a strong support from similar organizations of German workers living in Sudety. The coordinating role was played by the German Socio-Democratic party in Slovakia. The major concentration of these unions was in Bratislava and Eastern Slovakia. Concerning their specialized field, they can be divided into tourism-practising, physical and sport ones However, the union activities were strongly influenced by political parties. Activities of every union were regional and therefore a strong mutual isolation existed

Fortified Financial Forecasting Models Based on Non-Linear Searching Approaches

The paper＇s aim is how to forecast data with variations involving at times series data to get the best forecasting model. When researchers are going to forecast data with variations involving at times series data （i.e., secular trends, cyclical variations, seasonal effects, and stochastic variations）, they believe the best forecasting model is the one which realistically considers the underlying causal factors in a situational relationship and therefore has the best ＂track records＂ in generating data. Paper＇s models can be adjusted for variations in related a time series which processes a great deal of randomness, to improve the accuracy of the financial forecasts. Because of Na＇fve forecasting models are based on an extrapolation of past values for future. These models may be adjusted for seasonal, secular, and cyclical trends in related data. When a data series processes a great deal of randomness, smoothing techniques, such as moving averages and exponential smoothing, may improve the accuracy of the financial forecasts. But neither Na＇fve models nor smoothing techniques are capable of identifying major future changes in the direction of a situational data series. Hereby, nonlinear techniques, like direct and sequential search approaches, overcome those shortcomings can be used. The methodology which we have used is based on inferential analysis. To build the models to identify the major future changes in the direction of a situational data series, a comparative model building is applied. Hereby, the paper suggests using some of the nonlinear techniques, like direct and sequential search approaches, to reduce the technical shortcomings. The final result of the paper is to manipulate, to prepare, and to integrate heuristic non-linear searching methods to serve calculating adjusted factors to produce the best forecast data.

The Straight-Line Depreciation Method Used by Selected Companies and Educational Institutions in the Philippines

The straight-line method in computing for depreciation expense is the prevailing method used in the Philippines. This paper aims to determine the rationale behind the use of this method. The objective of the study is to determine the length of time within which the depreciation method is used, reasons in using the method, the rate of depreciation used by the companies, and the effects of the depreciation expense on their operating expenses. It also determines if the companies＇ decisions to use the straight-line method are influenced by the factors mentioned by Reynolds （196 I）----expected amount of services over the life of assets, the amount and timing of operating costs, the decline in the physical efficiency of the assets, and the rate of return--and if they considered capital investments and tax reduction in using this method. The study shows that companies and educational institutions use the straight-line method of computing depreciation expenses, because it is easy to use in computing the depreciation expenses, in comparing with previous years＇ computations, and in keeping track of the expenses. It is also convenient for tax administration and financial reporting. The rate of depreciation used varies, because the companies and educational institutions use their past experiences in determining the life of fixed assets. The percentage of depreciation to the operating expenses also varies. The companies and educational institutions adhered to the factors mentioned by Reynolds （1961） in choosing the straight-line method of depreciation. The companies did not consider reduction of tax in using the straight-line method.

Simulation and forecast of the red tide's time series characteristics in China seas

Analyzing time series characteristics of red tide is the basis of disaster prevention and mitigation,which is very important to red tide prediction.There are trend comp onents and periodic components in annual time series of occurrence freque ncy and area of red tides,so Gray-Periodic Extensional Combinatorial Model(GPECM)is used to extract these components.The fitting degree of occurrence frequency and area can reach 95.20% and 95.24%,respectively.The performance of GPECM is better than Gray Model,Fourier Series Extension Model,and Holt-Winter Exponential Smoothing Model in model stability.Consequently,it is used to forecast the occurrence frequency and area in 2020 and 2021,and results show that the annual frequency of red tides in 2020 and 2021 can rise to 39 and 41,respectively,and that the annual occurrence area of red tides can rise to 3168 km^(2),which is about 59% more than last year.In 2021,it can fall to 1901 km^(2).