Relationship between genetic polymorphisms of metabolizing enzymes CYP2E1, GSTM1 and Kazakh's esophageal squamous cell cancer in Xinjiang, China

AIM: To analyze the relationship between genetic polymorphisms of metabolizing enzymes CYP2E1, GSTM1 andKazakh's esophageal squamous cell cancer in China.METHODS: The genotypes of cytochromes P450 (CYP) 2E1 and glutathione S-transferase (GST) M1 were investigated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) following PCR in 104 Kazakh's patients with esophageal cancer (EC) and 104 non-cancer controls.RESULTS: The frequency of CYP2E1 c1/c1 genotype was significantly higher in patients with cancer (77.9%) thanin control subjects (24.0%) (P＜0.05; OR, 11.13; 95%CI,5.84-21.22). The difference of GSTM1 null was significantly more frequent in the cancer (34.6%) vsthe control group (3.8%) (P＜0.05; OR, 13.24; 95%CI, 4.50-38.89). On the other hand, the combination of GSTM1 presence and CYP2E1 c1/c1 genotypes increased the risk for cancer (P＜0.05;OR, 13.42; 95%CI, 6.29-28.3).CONCLUSION: The CYP2E1 c1/c1, GSTM1 deletion genotypes are genetically susceptible biomarkers for ESCC in Kazakh population. Individuals with allele c1 of RsaI polymorphic locus for CYP2E1 may increase the risk of ESCC. Moreover, CYP2E1 wild type (c1/c1) increased thesusceptibility to ESCC risk in Kazakh individuals with GSTM1 presence genotype.

Stability Problems in Road and Pipeline Constructions and Their Mitigation——Examples from Sakhalin and Azerbaijan

The paper gives two examples of larger construction projects with typical stability problems. The first example is from Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. It is connected with a construction of oil and gas pipelines through the mountainous terrain in Makarov region. The region has an active geotectonic history and is highly affected by uncontrolled erosion and extensive landslips. Basic principles of landslide hazard mitigation are presented. The second example is from a motorway construction in Azerbaijan. This motorway leads from Baku to Russia through a seismo-tectonically active area at the toe of Caucasian mountains and in some places is situated in deep cuts at the toe of high slopes. This unsuitable routing, together with seismic activity, led to a slope stability failure of a slope affected by recent tectonic movements near the village of Devechi. Stability conditions and designed remedy measures are presented.

Flow-Induced Acoustic Resonances in Exhaust Gas Economizer Tube Banks

To investigate the conditions under which acoustic resonances occur, staggered arrays of closely spaced rigid tubes were tested in a wind tunnel under various flow velocities. The author investigated the Strouhal numbers at which flow periodicities occur, the relation between these Strouhal numbers and those at which acoustic resonances occur, and the effects of Reynolds number and longitudinal tube spacings on the occurrence of acoustic resonance. This investigation showed the following： （1） Acoustic resonance can be produced at a frequency well removed from that of vortex shedding. The results also show evidence of vortex shedding and acoustic resonance existing simultaneously but at different frequencies. （2） Acoustic resonance behavior is consistent with that of a self-excited system. （3） A new model of this phenomenon provides an improved procedure for avoiding acoustic resonances in closely spaced tube banks.

Testing Point of Care Portable Data Capture in a Hospital HIV Transmission Prevention Programme and Experience from Computerized Patient Management in a Sub-Saharan Clinic Setting

Clinicians involved in HIV/AIDS （Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome） prevention of mother to child transmission （PMTCT） programme and research activities can benefit from the advantages that computerized systems add to medical practice even in resource constrained sub-Saharan clinic settings. Their continued use of paper based systems presents clinical data management and patient care challenges. A portable point of care data capture electronic system and a computerized clinic patient management system （CCPMS） were implemented to remedy these challenges. PMTCT report compilation was easier with the portable data collection system whose data were found to be more complete and accurate with a 0.83% error rate compared to a 4.1% error rate in the paper registers. A resounding majority of clinicians preferred using the new CCPMS with many of the view that it improved drug inventory and general clinic management with a positive effect on patient care.

Long-term survival following heart transplantation is possible

Objective:To determine whether long-term survival(>10 years) after heart transplantation is possible and identify complications influencing long-term survival.Methods:We analyzed clinical outcomes in the group of 21 patients who had undergone heart transplantation at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University since 1992 and 4 of them survived more than 10 years.Results:Nine patients are still alive with normal left ventricular function,and 4 of them have survived more than 10 years.The longest survival patient has lived more than 18 years after transplantation,whose survival is the longest in China and in Asia.We have also found that there has been a high incidence of complications,such as rejection episodes during the first 6 months,and transplant vasculopathy in the long-term survival patients.Conclusion:Long-term survivors maintain normal hemodynamic function of their allografts,and long-term survival following cardiac transplantation is possible.Aggressive preventive and therapeutic measures are essential to limit the risk factors for development of complications such as rejection episodes and transplant vasculopathy,and enable long-term survival after cardiac transplantation.

Detection of Human Papillomaviral Infection on Kazakh Patients with Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Xinjiang

OBJECTIVE To investigate the detection rate of humanpapilloma virus (HPV) DNA in the Kazakh esophageal carcinoma(EC) patients of Xinjiang.METHODS We detected the prevalence of a HPV gene in tumortissues from 318 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).Tumor tissues were kept in formalin and embedded in paraffin.One hundred seventeen samples used crude cell suspension, whilethe other 201 used the method of DNA extraction with phenol-Tris/chloroform. We analyzed the relevance to EC of Kazakh's inXinjiang.RESULTS In the ESCC samples of Kazakh's in Xinjiang, totaldetection rate for HPV DNA was 64.5% (205/318). The positiverate of HPV in group of crude cell suspensions was 82.9% (97/117)compared with the rate of 53.7% (108/201) in the group of DNAextraction. The results in the two groups showed significantdiffference (x^2 = 5.711, P < 0.05).CONCLUSION HPV DNA infection may be one of the mostimportant factors related to EC of Kazakh's in Xinjiang.

A reliable power management scheme for consistent hashing based distributed key value storage systems

Distributed key value storage systems are among the most important types of distributed storage systems currently deployed in data centers. Nowadays, enterprise data centers are facing growing pressure in reducing their power consumption. In this paper, we propose GreenCHT, a reliable power management scheme for consistent hashing based distributed key value storage systems. It consists of a multi-tier replication scheme, a reliable distributed log store, and a predictive power mode scheduler （PMS）. Instead of randomly placing replicas of each object on a number of nodes in the consistent hash ring, we arrange the replicas of objects on nonoverlapping tiers of nodes in the ring. This allows the system to fall in various power modes by powering down subsets of servers while not violating data availability. The predictive PMS predicts workloads and adapts to load fluctuation. It cooperates with the multi-tier replication strategy to provide power proportionality for the system. To ensure that the reliability of the system is maintained when replicas are powered down, we distribute the writes to standby replicas to active servers, which ensures failure tolerance of the system. GreenCHT is implemented based on Sheepdog, a distributed key value storage system that uses consistent hashing as an underlying distributed hash table. By replaying 12 typical real workload traces collected from Microsoft, the evaluation results show that GreenCHT can provide significant power savings while maintaining a desired performance. We observe that GreenCHT can reduce power consumption by up to 35%-61%.

Effect of Cavities inside Tube Banks on Acoustic Resonance

In the present paper the attention is focused on the effect of small cavities inside in-line tube banks on acoustic resonance which occurred in the two-dimensional model of boiler. We measured the sound pressure level, the amplitude and the phase delay of acoustic pressures and the gap velocity. As a result, we found many peak frequencies of sound pressure level with different Strouhal numbers, mainly about S1=0.15, 0.26 and 0.52. The variation of SPL for S,=0.26, 0.52 components in the tube banks with cavities was the same as the result of no cavities. The existence of cavities inside in-line tube banks caused the resonance of St=0.15. And the acoustic resonance of the first mode in the transverse direction was generated if the small cavities existed inside the tube banks. This resonance was not generated from the tube banks of no cavities. The resonance onset velocity in the transverse mode was fairly slower than that of no cavities. It was easy to generate acoustic resonance when there were small cavities inside in-line tube banks.