AIM: To systematically examine the impact of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) diagnosis on patients' level of social support in a large-scale study. METHODS: Patients evaluated and treated for HCV in a tertiary referra...AIM: To systematically examine the impact of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) diagnosis on patients' level of social support in a large-scale study. METHODS: Patients evaluated and treated for HCV in a tertiary referral center were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Demographic data, functional and emotional status as measured by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD) and the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), severity of liver disease, mode of acquisition, and physical and psychiatric comorbidities were collected from patients or abstracted from the medical record. All participants completed a semi-structured interview, addressing questions of social support. RESULTS: A total of 342 patients (mean age 45.2 years; 37% women) were enrolled. Ninety-two (27%) patients described lower levels of support by family and friends. Nearly half of the participants (45%) noted the loss of at least one relationship due to the disease. Fears related to transmitting the disease (25%) were common and often associated with ignorance or even discrimination by others (19%). Nearly one fifth of the patients did not share information about their disease with others to avoid being stigmatized. Lower levels of social support were significantly associated with living alone, being unemployed, being excluded from antiviral therapy, having psychiatric comorbidities, contracting HCV through intravenous drug use, having high levels of anxiety and depression as measured by the HAD and negative mood state as measured by the SIP. Patients reporting lower levels of social support also noted more physical symptoms as measured by the SIP. CONCLUSION: Patients with hepatitis C often face significant social problems, ranging from social isolation to familial stress. The most common concerns reflect a limited insight of patients and their relatives and friends about the disease, the risk factors for its spread, and about potential consequences. Our data suggest that educational interventions targeting support persons and the stressors identified in our findings may lessen or alleviate the social strains patients with hepatitis C experience.展开更多
A fuzzy neural network model is proposed to evaluate water quality. The model contains two parts: first, fuzzy mathematics theory is used to standardize the samples; second, the RBF neural network and the BP neural n...A fuzzy neural network model is proposed to evaluate water quality. The model contains two parts: first, fuzzy mathematics theory is used to standardize the samples; second, the RBF neural network and the BP neural network are used to train the standardized samples. The proposed model was applied to assess the water quality of 16 sections in 9 rivers in the Shaoguan area in 2005. The evaluation result was compared with that of the RBF neural network method and the reported results in the Shaoguan area in 2005. It indicated that the performance of the proposed fuzzy neural network model is practically feasible in the application of water quality assessment and its operation is simple.展开更多
An effective approach for describing complicated water quality processes is very important for river water quality management. We built two artificial neural network(ANN) models,a feed-forward back-propagation(BP) mod...An effective approach for describing complicated water quality processes is very important for river water quality management. We built two artificial neural network(ANN) models,a feed-forward back-propagation(BP) model and a radial basis function(RBF) model,to simulate the water quality of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers in reaches crossing the city of Chongqing,P. R. China. Our models used the historical monitoring data of biological oxygen demand,dissolved oxygen,ammonia,oil and volatile phenolic compounds. Comparison with the one-dimensional traditional water quality model suggest that both BP and RBF models are superior; their higher accuracy and better goodness-of-fit indicate that the ANN calculation of water quality agrees better with measurement. It is demonstrated that ANN modeling can be a tool for estimating the water quality of the Yangtze River. Of the two ANN models,the RBF model calculates with a smaller mean error,but a larger root mean square error. More effort to identify out the causes of these differences would help optimize the structures of neural network water-quality models.展开更多
Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and the expression level of Cytochrome C (Cyt-c) in mitochondria. Methods: The pathological diagn...Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and the expression level of Cytochrome C (Cyt-c) in mitochondria. Methods: The pathological diagnosis of glioma and tumor classification was by HE staining, and we use immunohistochemistry method to analyse the level of nNOS in different pathological grade glioma and the expression level of Cyt-c in mitochondria meanwhile. Results: The levels of nNOS were highest in grade Ⅲ tumors, moderate in grade Ⅱ tumors, and lowest different in grade I tumors. There was significant difference of the nNOS levels among different pathological grade tumors (P 〈 0.05). Furthermore, the similar phenomenon was observed in the expression level of Cyt-c in mitochondria (P 〈 0.05). Conclusion: The expression level of nNOS and Cyt-c in mitochondria was significantly related to the pathological grade of glioma.展开更多
An accurate assessment of the property value is very important to make a deal, property tax, and mortgage for loan. The mass appraisal system has been developed in some foreign countries, especially in American for a ...An accurate assessment of the property value is very important to make a deal, property tax, and mortgage for loan. The mass appraisal system has been developed in some foreign countries, especially in American for a long time. In Taiwan, we still have few experiences in using computer-assisted mass appraisal system, especially using artificial neural network (ANN). This article has two objectives: (1) to illustrate application of ANN to the Kaohsiung property market by the method of back-propagation. The study is based on the properties data of sales price, we also use multiple regressions in the same data; (2) to evaluate the performance of two models by using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and hit ratio (HR). This paper finds that using artificial neural network (ANN) is able to overcome multiple regressions' methodological problems and also get better performance than multiple regression model (MRA). These results are useful in helping local government to assess their assessment value.展开更多
Solid electrolyte based-resistive memories have been considered to be a potential candidate for future information technology with applications in non-volatile memory, logic circuits and neuromorphic computing. A cond...Solid electrolyte based-resistive memories have been considered to be a potential candidate for future information technology with applications in non-volatile memory, logic circuits and neuromorphic computing. A conductive filament model has been generally accepted to be the underlying mechanism for the resistive switching. However, the growth dynamics of such conductive filaments is still not fully understood. Here, we explore the controllability of filament growth by correlating observations of the filament growth with the electric field distribution and several other factors. The filament growth behavior has been recorded using in situ transmission electron microscopy. By studying the real- time recorded filament growth behavior and morphologies, we have been able to simulate the electric field distribution in accordance with our observations. Other factors have also been shown to affect the filament growth, such as Joule heating and electrolyte infrastructure. This work provides insight into the controllable growth of conductive filaments and will help guide research into further functionalities of nanoionic resistive memories.展开更多
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most common retinal diseases world-wide. It has a complex pathology that involves the vasculature of the inner retina and breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier. Extensive res...Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most common retinal diseases world-wide. It has a complex pathology that involves the vasculature of the inner retina and breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier. Extensive research has determined that DR is not only a vascular disease but also has a neurodegenerative component and that essentially all types of ceils in the retina are affected, leading to chronic loss of visual function. A great deal of work using animal models of DR has established the loss of neurons and pathology of other cell types, including supporting glial cells. There has also been an increased emphasis on measuring retinal function in the models, as well as further validation and extension of the animal studies by clinical and translational research. This article will attempt to summarize the more recent developments in research towards understanding the complexities of retinal neurodegeneration and functional vision loss in DR.展开更多
Ant colonies self-organize to solve complex problems despite the simplicity of an individual ant's brain. Pavement ant Tetramorium caespitum colonies must solve the problem of defending the ter- ritory that they patr...Ant colonies self-organize to solve complex problems despite the simplicity of an individual ant's brain. Pavement ant Tetramorium caespitum colonies must solve the problem of defending the ter- ritory that they patrol in search of energetically rich forage. When members of 2 colonies randomly interact at the territory boundary a decision to fight occurs when: 1) there is a mismatch in nest- mate recognition cues and 2) each ant has a recent history of high interaction rates with nestmate ants. Instead of fighting, some ants will decide to recruit more workers from the nest to the fighting location, and in this way a positive feedback mediates the development of colony wide wars. In ants, the monoamines serotonin (5-HT) and octopamine (OA) modulate many behaviors associated with colony organization and in particular behaviors associated with nestmate recognition and ag- gression. In this article, we develop and explore an agent-based model that conceptualizes how in- dividual changes in brain concentrations of 5-HT and OA, paired with a simple threshold-based de- cision rule, can lead to the development of colony wide warfare. Model simulations do lead to the development of warfare with 91% of ants fighting at the end of 1 h. When conducting a sensitivity analysis, we determined that uncertainty in monoamine concentration signal decay influences the behavior of the model more than uncertainty in the decision-making rule or density. We conclude that pavement ant behavior is consistent with the detection of interaction rate through a single timed interval rather than integration of multiple interactions.展开更多
Gamma-aminobutyric acid(GABA) contributes substantially to neurocognitive function as an important inhibitory neurotransmitter in the human cerebral cortex. However, the pathophysiology of disorders such as epilepsy a...Gamma-aminobutyric acid(GABA) contributes substantially to neurocognitive function as an important inhibitory neurotransmitter in the human cerebral cortex. However, the pathophysiology of disorders such as epilepsy are not well understood, since GABA agonists are not quite effective in treating epilepsy. Knowledge of the mechanism of action of GABA would contribute to review previously proposed anti-epileptic processes by GABA agonists. In this study based on recent experiments on GABAergic astrocytes, we developed a modified GABAergic astrocyte model, and successfully simulated a long-lasting Ca^(2+) oscillation in astrocytes after 0.5-s stimulation of GABAergic transmission. We then incorporated this GABAergic astrocyte model into a classical Ullah-Schiff seizure model and surprisingly found that this GABAergic astrocyte model functions to hinder the anti-epileptic action of GABA agonists, thereby explaining their low efficiency in previous experiments. These results also update our knowledge of the mechanism of action of GABA and the effects of astrocytes on physiological and pathological functions of the brain.展开更多
基金Veterans Administration Health Services Research and Development Merit Review Entry Program Career Development Award and a Cardiovascular Institutional Research Fellowship, University of Iowa, funded by the National Institute of Health, No. HL07121
文摘AIM: To systematically examine the impact of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) diagnosis on patients' level of social support in a large-scale study. METHODS: Patients evaluated and treated for HCV in a tertiary referral center were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Demographic data, functional and emotional status as measured by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD) and the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), severity of liver disease, mode of acquisition, and physical and psychiatric comorbidities were collected from patients or abstracted from the medical record. All participants completed a semi-structured interview, addressing questions of social support. RESULTS: A total of 342 patients (mean age 45.2 years; 37% women) were enrolled. Ninety-two (27%) patients described lower levels of support by family and friends. Nearly half of the participants (45%) noted the loss of at least one relationship due to the disease. Fears related to transmitting the disease (25%) were common and often associated with ignorance or even discrimination by others (19%). Nearly one fifth of the patients did not share information about their disease with others to avoid being stigmatized. Lower levels of social support were significantly associated with living alone, being unemployed, being excluded from antiviral therapy, having psychiatric comorbidities, contracting HCV through intravenous drug use, having high levels of anxiety and depression as measured by the HAD and negative mood state as measured by the SIP. Patients reporting lower levels of social support also noted more physical symptoms as measured by the SIP. CONCLUSION: Patients with hepatitis C often face significant social problems, ranging from social isolation to familial stress. The most common concerns reflect a limited insight of patients and their relatives and friends about the disease, the risk factors for its spread, and about potential consequences. Our data suggest that educational interventions targeting support persons and the stressors identified in our findings may lessen or alleviate the social strains patients with hepatitis C experience.
基金Supported by the National Key Research Program of China (No. 2003CCA00200)the Open Research Foundation of State KeyLab of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science(No.2005C012).
文摘A fuzzy neural network model is proposed to evaluate water quality. The model contains two parts: first, fuzzy mathematics theory is used to standardize the samples; second, the RBF neural network and the BP neural network are used to train the standardized samples. The proposed model was applied to assess the water quality of 16 sections in 9 rivers in the Shaoguan area in 2005. The evaluation result was compared with that of the RBF neural network method and the reported results in the Shaoguan area in 2005. It indicated that the performance of the proposed fuzzy neural network model is practically feasible in the application of water quality assessment and its operation is simple.
基金Funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 59778021)
文摘An effective approach for describing complicated water quality processes is very important for river water quality management. We built two artificial neural network(ANN) models,a feed-forward back-propagation(BP) model and a radial basis function(RBF) model,to simulate the water quality of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers in reaches crossing the city of Chongqing,P. R. China. Our models used the historical monitoring data of biological oxygen demand,dissolved oxygen,ammonia,oil and volatile phenolic compounds. Comparison with the one-dimensional traditional water quality model suggest that both BP and RBF models are superior; their higher accuracy and better goodness-of-fit indicate that the ANN calculation of water quality agrees better with measurement. It is demonstrated that ANN modeling can be a tool for estimating the water quality of the Yangtze River. Of the two ANN models,the RBF model calculates with a smaller mean error,but a larger root mean square error. More effort to identify out the causes of these differences would help optimize the structures of neural network water-quality models.
基金Supported by grants from the Education Office of Liaoning Province Foundation (No. 20061008)Liaoning Provincial Science and Technology Foundation (No. 2006401013-3)Dr. Start Fund of Liaoning Province(No. 20072099)
文摘Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and the expression level of Cytochrome C (Cyt-c) in mitochondria. Methods: The pathological diagnosis of glioma and tumor classification was by HE staining, and we use immunohistochemistry method to analyse the level of nNOS in different pathological grade glioma and the expression level of Cyt-c in mitochondria meanwhile. Results: The levels of nNOS were highest in grade Ⅲ tumors, moderate in grade Ⅱ tumors, and lowest different in grade I tumors. There was significant difference of the nNOS levels among different pathological grade tumors (P 〈 0.05). Furthermore, the similar phenomenon was observed in the expression level of Cyt-c in mitochondria (P 〈 0.05). Conclusion: The expression level of nNOS and Cyt-c in mitochondria was significantly related to the pathological grade of glioma.
文摘An accurate assessment of the property value is very important to make a deal, property tax, and mortgage for loan. The mass appraisal system has been developed in some foreign countries, especially in American for a long time. In Taiwan, we still have few experiences in using computer-assisted mass appraisal system, especially using artificial neural network (ANN). This article has two objectives: (1) to illustrate application of ANN to the Kaohsiung property market by the method of back-propagation. The study is based on the properties data of sales price, we also use multiple regressions in the same data; (2) to evaluate the performance of two models by using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and hit ratio (HR). This paper finds that using artificial neural network (ANN) is able to overcome multiple regressions' methodological problems and also get better performance than multiple regression model (MRA). These results are useful in helping local government to assess their assessment value.
文摘Solid electrolyte based-resistive memories have been considered to be a potential candidate for future information technology with applications in non-volatile memory, logic circuits and neuromorphic computing. A conductive filament model has been generally accepted to be the underlying mechanism for the resistive switching. However, the growth dynamics of such conductive filaments is still not fully understood. Here, we explore the controllability of filament growth by correlating observations of the filament growth with the electric field distribution and several other factors. The filament growth behavior has been recorded using in situ transmission electron microscopy. By studying the real- time recorded filament growth behavior and morphologies, we have been able to simulate the electric field distribution in accordance with our observations. Other factors have also been shown to affect the filament growth, such as Joule heating and electrolyte infrastructure. This work provides insight into the controllable growth of conductive filaments and will help guide research into further functionalities of nanoionic resistive memories.
文摘Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most common retinal diseases world-wide. It has a complex pathology that involves the vasculature of the inner retina and breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier. Extensive research has determined that DR is not only a vascular disease but also has a neurodegenerative component and that essentially all types of ceils in the retina are affected, leading to chronic loss of visual function. A great deal of work using animal models of DR has established the loss of neurons and pathology of other cell types, including supporting glial cells. There has also been an increased emphasis on measuring retinal function in the models, as well as further validation and extension of the animal studies by clinical and translational research. This article will attempt to summarize the more recent developments in research towards understanding the complexities of retinal neurodegeneration and functional vision loss in DR.
文摘Ant colonies self-organize to solve complex problems despite the simplicity of an individual ant's brain. Pavement ant Tetramorium caespitum colonies must solve the problem of defending the ter- ritory that they patrol in search of energetically rich forage. When members of 2 colonies randomly interact at the territory boundary a decision to fight occurs when: 1) there is a mismatch in nest- mate recognition cues and 2) each ant has a recent history of high interaction rates with nestmate ants. Instead of fighting, some ants will decide to recruit more workers from the nest to the fighting location, and in this way a positive feedback mediates the development of colony wide wars. In ants, the monoamines serotonin (5-HT) and octopamine (OA) modulate many behaviors associated with colony organization and in particular behaviors associated with nestmate recognition and ag- gression. In this article, we develop and explore an agent-based model that conceptualizes how in- dividual changes in brain concentrations of 5-HT and OA, paired with a simple threshold-based de- cision rule, can lead to the development of colony wide warfare. Model simulations do lead to the development of warfare with 91% of ants fighting at the end of 1 h. When conducting a sensitivity analysis, we determined that uncertainty in monoamine concentration signal decay influences the behavior of the model more than uncertainty in the decision-making rule or density. We conclude that pavement ant behavior is consistent with the detection of interaction rate through a single timed interval rather than integration of multiple interactions.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.11472202)
文摘Gamma-aminobutyric acid(GABA) contributes substantially to neurocognitive function as an important inhibitory neurotransmitter in the human cerebral cortex. However, the pathophysiology of disorders such as epilepsy are not well understood, since GABA agonists are not quite effective in treating epilepsy. Knowledge of the mechanism of action of GABA would contribute to review previously proposed anti-epileptic processes by GABA agonists. In this study based on recent experiments on GABAergic astrocytes, we developed a modified GABAergic astrocyte model, and successfully simulated a long-lasting Ca^(2+) oscillation in astrocytes after 0.5-s stimulation of GABAergic transmission. We then incorporated this GABAergic astrocyte model into a classical Ullah-Schiff seizure model and surprisingly found that this GABAergic astrocyte model functions to hinder the anti-epileptic action of GABA agonists, thereby explaining their low efficiency in previous experiments. These results also update our knowledge of the mechanism of action of GABA and the effects of astrocytes on physiological and pathological functions of the brain.