Background: Pre-eclampsia has long been considered as a disease that disappears after the removal of the placenta. It has now been shown that its symptoms can persist for months after giving birth. Objectives: To stud...Background: Pre-eclampsia has long been considered as a disease that disappears after the removal of the placenta. It has now been shown that its symptoms can persist for months after giving birth. Objectives: To study the evolution of proteinuria and renal function in women with pre-eclampsia. Patients and Methods: An analytical prospective study was carried out in the Hospitalization Unit of the Gynecology Department of the Teaching Hospital of Cocody (Abidjan) from May 3, 2021 to November 15, 2021. It focused on the follow-up of proteinuria and renal function in 50 women who had pre-eclampsia during their pregnancy, in the three months following their delivery. Results: The average age of the patients was 30.38 ± 6 years (range 18 and 40 years). Thirty-two percent were nulliparous and 62% had no risk factors for pre-eclampsia. The diagnosis of pre-eclampsia was made in 52% of cases before 37 weeks of amenorrhea. Sixty-two percent had Grade 3 arte-rial hypertension. The average proteinuria/creatininuria ratio was 3592.08 ± 7009.57 mg/g and 32% of women had glomerular grade proteinuria. The mean serum creatinine was 13.61 ± 12.62 mg/l. AKI (Acute Renal Failure) was present in 30% of women. All patients had received a central antihypertensive drug of which 88% were a calcium channel blocker. For the delivery mode, a Caesarean section was performed in 88% of cases. In the three months postpartum, 40% of women had persistent hypertension, 58% had persistent proteinuria and 6% had persistent impaired renal function. Prematurity (p = 0.0091), IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) (p = 0.0012) and IUFD (intrauterine fetal death) (p = 0.0012) were associated with the persistence of proteinuria at M3 postpartum. Conclusion: Symptoms of pre-eclampsia do not automatically disappear after the delivery. Proteinuria and renal failure can persist beyond three months after the delivery and require treatment by a nephrologist.展开更多
Pomegranate rind is abundantly available as a waste material. Pomegranate Rind Extract (PRE) can be applied to cotton fabrics for its natural colours, as a mordanting agent and also for imparting certain functional pr...Pomegranate rind is abundantly available as a waste material. Pomegranate Rind Extract (PRE) can be applied to cotton fabrics for its natural colours, as a mordanting agent and also for imparting certain functional properties such as fire retardancy and antimicrobial properties. This paper reviews the feasibility of Pomegranate Rind Extract to improve the functional properties of cellulosic fabrics. Studies show that varying concentrations and higher temperatures that were used to apply the extract on the fabric, resulted in enhanced functional properties. At a particular concentration, the treated fabric showed a 15 times lower burning rate in comparison with the control fabric. Also, antimicrobial efficacy has been observed against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Due to the natural colouring material, it can be used as a natural dye on cotton material. The fire retardancy of pomegranate rind extract was tested on jute material under varying alkalinity. Research has indicated that pomegranate rind extract could be used to dye polyamide as well. The rubbing and wash fastness of the finished fabrics is good. The light fastness was fair, and its antibacterial efficiency against tested bacteria was good.展开更多
AIM To explore the risk factors of developing chronic pancreatitis(CP) in patients with acute pancreatitis(AP) and develop a prediction score for CP.METHODS Using the National Health Insurance Research Database in Tai...AIM To explore the risk factors of developing chronic pancreatitis(CP) in patients with acute pancreatitis(AP) and develop a prediction score for CP.METHODS Using the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan, we obtained large, population-based data of 5971 eligible patients diagnosed with AP from 2000 to 2013. After excluding patients with obstructive pancreatitis and biliary pancreatitis and those with a follow-up period of less than 1 year, we conducted a multivariate analysis using the data of 3739 patients to identify the risk factors of CP and subsequently develop a scoring system that could predict the development of CP in patients with AP. In addition, we validated the scoring system using a validation cohort.RESULTS Among the study subjects, 142 patients(12.98%) devel-oped CP among patients with RAP. On the other hand, only 32 patients(1.21%) developed CP among patients with only one episode of AP. The multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of recurrent AP(RAP), alcoholism, smoking habit, and age of onset of < 55 years were the four important risk factors for CP. We developed a scoring system(risk score 1 and risk score 2) from the derivation cohort by classifying the patients into low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk categories based on similar magnitudes of hazard and validated the performance using another validation cohort. Using the prediction score model, the area under the curve(AUC) [95% confidence interval(CI)] in predicting the 5-year CP incidence in risk score 1(without the number of AP episodes) was 0.83(0.79, 0.87), whereas the AUC(95%CI) in risk score 2(including the number of AP episodes) was 0.84(0.80, 0.88). This result demonstrated that the risk score 2 has somewhat better prediction performance than risk score 1. However, both of them had similar performance between the derivation and validation cohorts.CONCLUSION In the study,we identified the risk factors of CP and developed a prediction score model for CP.展开更多
As the demand for wind energy continues to grow at exponential rate, reducing operation and maintenance (O & M) costs and improving reliability have become top priorities in wind turbine maintenance strategies. Pr...As the demand for wind energy continues to grow at exponential rate, reducing operation and maintenance (O & M) costs and improving reliability have become top priorities in wind turbine maintenance strategies. Prediction of wind turbine failures before they reach a catastrophic stage is critical to reduce the O & M cost due to unnecessary scheduled maintenance. A SCADA-data based condition monitoring system, which takes advantage of data already collected at the wind turbine controller, is a cost-effective way to monitor wind turbines for early warning of failures. This article proposes a methodology of fault prediction and automatically generating warning and alarm for wind turbine main bearings based on stored SCADA data using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The ANN model of turbine main bearing normal behavior is established and then the deviation between estimated and actual values of the parameter is calculated. Furthermore, a method has been developed to generate early warning and alarm and avoid false warnings and alarms based on the deviation. In this way, wind farm operators are able to have enough time to plan maintenance, and thus, unanticipated downtime can be avoided and O & M costs can be reduced.展开更多
Objective:To investigate the relationship between variation of HBV preS genes and clinical consequencesof HBV infection. Methods: We selected 3 groups (3 in each) of HBV infected individuals including those of acutein...Objective:To investigate the relationship between variation of HBV preS genes and clinical consequencesof HBV infection. Methods: We selected 3 groups (3 in each) of HBV infected individuals including those of acuteinfection with complete recovery, chronic HBV carriers and chronic severe hepatitis B. The preS genes were amplified from serum samples with half nested PCR. The PCR products were cloned into M13 vectors and 10 cloneswere randomly selected for each individual and sequenced with standard methods. A total of 90 clones were sequenced and analyzed by DNA homological comparison. Results: The characteristics of the preS genes were significantly different in HBV-infected individuals with different clinical consequences.①As for acute hepatitis B, thepreS function domains were stable and no changes in epitopes for T and B cells were found. ②For chronic HBVcarriers, the function domains within preS proteins showed potentially changes with epitope drifts of T and B cellsbecause of the high variation of HBV preS genes. ③For chronic severe hepatitis B, there were special changes inthe function domains of B cells. The abnormally high immune response would cause severe liver injury in these individuals. Conclusion: This study provides experimental evidence for researches about the possible association ofvariation of preS1/S2 functional regions with clinical consequences.展开更多
Wind farm power prediction is proposed based on adaptive feature weight entropy fuzzy clustering algorithm.According to the fuzzy clustering method,a large number of historical data of a wind farm in Inner Mongolia ar...Wind farm power prediction is proposed based on adaptive feature weight entropy fuzzy clustering algorithm.According to the fuzzy clustering method,a large number of historical data of a wind farm in Inner Mongolia are analyzed and classified.Model of adaptive entropy weight for clustering is built.Wind power prediction model based on adaptive entropy fuzzy clustering feature weights is built.Simulation results show that the proposed method could distinguish the abnormal data and forecast more accurately and compute fastly.展开更多
Like most roots and tubers, taro (Colocasia esculenta) corms have a short shelf-life due to the high moisture content, which aggravates their post-harvest losses. They also contain high amounts of calcium oxalates, li...Like most roots and tubers, taro (Colocasia esculenta) corms have a short shelf-life due to the high moisture content, which aggravates their post-harvest losses. They also contain high amounts of calcium oxalates, limiting their use in food applications. To help add value and diversify the use of taro corms as well as curb food losses, various strategies have been proposed, such processing of the corms into flour. This study aimed at evaluating the total oxalate content and techno-functional properties of taro flour as affected by the pre-gelatinization conditions (i.e., method and time). Pre-gelatinized taro flour was prepared by subjecting peeled and cleaned taro corms to roasting (190°C), boiling (100°C), and steaming (100°C) for 10 min, 20 min and 30 min, respectively, for each method, followed by drying at 55°C and milling. Generally, all the properties of flour were significantly affected by the pre-gelatinization conditions (P 0.05). The total oxalate content of the pre-gelatinized taro flour ranged from 33.26 to 76.90 mg/100g. Pre-gelatinization by boiling significantly reduced the oxalate content (56.7%), while roasting resulted in the least reduction (36.2%). The flour colour i.e. L<sup>*</sup>, hue, and chroma ranged from 38.47° - 70.30°, 42.64° - 69.43°, and 7.78° - 10.58°, respectively. Roasting resulted in flour with the largest L<sup>*</sup> (70.30°) and hue angle (69.43°). Boiling also resulted in flour with the highest bulk density (BD) (0.86 g/cm<sup>3</sup>) and the lowest water solubility index (WSI) (9.39%). Steamed flour had the highest water absorption index (WAI) (3.81 g/g), water holding capacity (WHC) (4.59 g/g), and swelling capacity (SC) (4.86 g/g). This study shows that pre-gelatinization (i.e. by boiling, steaming or roasting) significantly affects the total oxalate content and techno-functional properties of taro flour, which in turn influences its use in other food applications thus increasing the utilization and production of taro simultaneously.展开更多
Object: Functional MRI is frequently applied to lateralize language in pre-surgical planning, with potential to localize functionally important cortex too. Here we present BOLD signal activation maps and related funct...Object: Functional MRI is frequently applied to lateralize language in pre-surgical planning, with potential to localize functionally important cortex too. Here we present BOLD signal activation maps and related functional connectivity, in response to three commonly administered fMRI language tasks. Methods: Datasets from 55 pre-surgical fMRI studies were analyzed. Verbal response naming, covert word generation and passive listening tasks were administered in all studies. Single-subject analyses, group analyses and region-of-interest analyses were conducted, and a multi-subject functional connectivity analysis was performed. Results: Single-subject analyses revealed that clinically important language regions were activated in all but three patients using the panel of tasks. Group analyses revealed significant bilateral BOLD signal increases in anterior and posterior language regions in response to verbal response naming and bilateral signal increase in posterior language regions only in response to passive listening. Covert word generation activated anterior language regions bilaterally and posterior language cortex in the dominant hemisphere. Functional connectivity analyses confirmed that activated regions were significantly correlated in all tasks. Conclusion: The findings of single-subject and group analyses add to the evidence supporting the use of a panel of fMRI tasks to map the language network for pre-surgical planning. Our findings support the additional use of functional connectivity analysis in routine language mapping to add to the localization value to fMRI. In addition, the results of our investigation demonstrate these three commonly applied tasks reliably activate unique aspects of the language network, which advocates closer individual inspection, guided by the surgical intervention planned.展开更多
文摘Background: Pre-eclampsia has long been considered as a disease that disappears after the removal of the placenta. It has now been shown that its symptoms can persist for months after giving birth. Objectives: To study the evolution of proteinuria and renal function in women with pre-eclampsia. Patients and Methods: An analytical prospective study was carried out in the Hospitalization Unit of the Gynecology Department of the Teaching Hospital of Cocody (Abidjan) from May 3, 2021 to November 15, 2021. It focused on the follow-up of proteinuria and renal function in 50 women who had pre-eclampsia during their pregnancy, in the three months following their delivery. Results: The average age of the patients was 30.38 ± 6 years (range 18 and 40 years). Thirty-two percent were nulliparous and 62% had no risk factors for pre-eclampsia. The diagnosis of pre-eclampsia was made in 52% of cases before 37 weeks of amenorrhea. Sixty-two percent had Grade 3 arte-rial hypertension. The average proteinuria/creatininuria ratio was 3592.08 ± 7009.57 mg/g and 32% of women had glomerular grade proteinuria. The mean serum creatinine was 13.61 ± 12.62 mg/l. AKI (Acute Renal Failure) was present in 30% of women. All patients had received a central antihypertensive drug of which 88% were a calcium channel blocker. For the delivery mode, a Caesarean section was performed in 88% of cases. In the three months postpartum, 40% of women had persistent hypertension, 58% had persistent proteinuria and 6% had persistent impaired renal function. Prematurity (p = 0.0091), IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) (p = 0.0012) and IUFD (intrauterine fetal death) (p = 0.0012) were associated with the persistence of proteinuria at M3 postpartum. Conclusion: Symptoms of pre-eclampsia do not automatically disappear after the delivery. Proteinuria and renal failure can persist beyond three months after the delivery and require treatment by a nephrologist.
文摘Pomegranate rind is abundantly available as a waste material. Pomegranate Rind Extract (PRE) can be applied to cotton fabrics for its natural colours, as a mordanting agent and also for imparting certain functional properties such as fire retardancy and antimicrobial properties. This paper reviews the feasibility of Pomegranate Rind Extract to improve the functional properties of cellulosic fabrics. Studies show that varying concentrations and higher temperatures that were used to apply the extract on the fabric, resulted in enhanced functional properties. At a particular concentration, the treated fabric showed a 15 times lower burning rate in comparison with the control fabric. Also, antimicrobial efficacy has been observed against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Due to the natural colouring material, it can be used as a natural dye on cotton material. The fire retardancy of pomegranate rind extract was tested on jute material under varying alkalinity. Research has indicated that pomegranate rind extract could be used to dye polyamide as well. The rubbing and wash fastness of the finished fabrics is good. The light fastness was fair, and its antibacterial efficiency against tested bacteria was good.
文摘AIM To explore the risk factors of developing chronic pancreatitis(CP) in patients with acute pancreatitis(AP) and develop a prediction score for CP.METHODS Using the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan, we obtained large, population-based data of 5971 eligible patients diagnosed with AP from 2000 to 2013. After excluding patients with obstructive pancreatitis and biliary pancreatitis and those with a follow-up period of less than 1 year, we conducted a multivariate analysis using the data of 3739 patients to identify the risk factors of CP and subsequently develop a scoring system that could predict the development of CP in patients with AP. In addition, we validated the scoring system using a validation cohort.RESULTS Among the study subjects, 142 patients(12.98%) devel-oped CP among patients with RAP. On the other hand, only 32 patients(1.21%) developed CP among patients with only one episode of AP. The multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of recurrent AP(RAP), alcoholism, smoking habit, and age of onset of < 55 years were the four important risk factors for CP. We developed a scoring system(risk score 1 and risk score 2) from the derivation cohort by classifying the patients into low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk categories based on similar magnitudes of hazard and validated the performance using another validation cohort. Using the prediction score model, the area under the curve(AUC) [95% confidence interval(CI)] in predicting the 5-year CP incidence in risk score 1(without the number of AP episodes) was 0.83(0.79, 0.87), whereas the AUC(95%CI) in risk score 2(including the number of AP episodes) was 0.84(0.80, 0.88). This result demonstrated that the risk score 2 has somewhat better prediction performance than risk score 1. However, both of them had similar performance between the derivation and validation cohorts.CONCLUSION In the study,we identified the risk factors of CP and developed a prediction score model for CP.
文摘As the demand for wind energy continues to grow at exponential rate, reducing operation and maintenance (O & M) costs and improving reliability have become top priorities in wind turbine maintenance strategies. Prediction of wind turbine failures before they reach a catastrophic stage is critical to reduce the O & M cost due to unnecessary scheduled maintenance. A SCADA-data based condition monitoring system, which takes advantage of data already collected at the wind turbine controller, is a cost-effective way to monitor wind turbines for early warning of failures. This article proposes a methodology of fault prediction and automatically generating warning and alarm for wind turbine main bearings based on stored SCADA data using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The ANN model of turbine main bearing normal behavior is established and then the deviation between estimated and actual values of the parameter is calculated. Furthermore, a method has been developed to generate early warning and alarm and avoid false warnings and alarms based on the deviation. In this way, wind farm operators are able to have enough time to plan maintenance, and thus, unanticipated downtime can be avoided and O & M costs can be reduced.
文摘Objective:To investigate the relationship between variation of HBV preS genes and clinical consequencesof HBV infection. Methods: We selected 3 groups (3 in each) of HBV infected individuals including those of acuteinfection with complete recovery, chronic HBV carriers and chronic severe hepatitis B. The preS genes were amplified from serum samples with half nested PCR. The PCR products were cloned into M13 vectors and 10 cloneswere randomly selected for each individual and sequenced with standard methods. A total of 90 clones were sequenced and analyzed by DNA homological comparison. Results: The characteristics of the preS genes were significantly different in HBV-infected individuals with different clinical consequences.①As for acute hepatitis B, thepreS function domains were stable and no changes in epitopes for T and B cells were found. ②For chronic HBVcarriers, the function domains within preS proteins showed potentially changes with epitope drifts of T and B cellsbecause of the high variation of HBV preS genes. ③For chronic severe hepatitis B, there were special changes inthe function domains of B cells. The abnormally high immune response would cause severe liver injury in these individuals. Conclusion: This study provides experimental evidence for researches about the possible association ofvariation of preS1/S2 functional regions with clinical consequences.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under contact(61233007)
文摘Wind farm power prediction is proposed based on adaptive feature weight entropy fuzzy clustering algorithm.According to the fuzzy clustering method,a large number of historical data of a wind farm in Inner Mongolia are analyzed and classified.Model of adaptive entropy weight for clustering is built.Wind power prediction model based on adaptive entropy fuzzy clustering feature weights is built.Simulation results show that the proposed method could distinguish the abnormal data and forecast more accurately and compute fastly.
文摘Like most roots and tubers, taro (Colocasia esculenta) corms have a short shelf-life due to the high moisture content, which aggravates their post-harvest losses. They also contain high amounts of calcium oxalates, limiting their use in food applications. To help add value and diversify the use of taro corms as well as curb food losses, various strategies have been proposed, such processing of the corms into flour. This study aimed at evaluating the total oxalate content and techno-functional properties of taro flour as affected by the pre-gelatinization conditions (i.e., method and time). Pre-gelatinized taro flour was prepared by subjecting peeled and cleaned taro corms to roasting (190°C), boiling (100°C), and steaming (100°C) for 10 min, 20 min and 30 min, respectively, for each method, followed by drying at 55°C and milling. Generally, all the properties of flour were significantly affected by the pre-gelatinization conditions (P 0.05). The total oxalate content of the pre-gelatinized taro flour ranged from 33.26 to 76.90 mg/100g. Pre-gelatinization by boiling significantly reduced the oxalate content (56.7%), while roasting resulted in the least reduction (36.2%). The flour colour i.e. L<sup>*</sup>, hue, and chroma ranged from 38.47° - 70.30°, 42.64° - 69.43°, and 7.78° - 10.58°, respectively. Roasting resulted in flour with the largest L<sup>*</sup> (70.30°) and hue angle (69.43°). Boiling also resulted in flour with the highest bulk density (BD) (0.86 g/cm<sup>3</sup>) and the lowest water solubility index (WSI) (9.39%). Steamed flour had the highest water absorption index (WAI) (3.81 g/g), water holding capacity (WHC) (4.59 g/g), and swelling capacity (SC) (4.86 g/g). This study shows that pre-gelatinization (i.e. by boiling, steaming or roasting) significantly affects the total oxalate content and techno-functional properties of taro flour, which in turn influences its use in other food applications thus increasing the utilization and production of taro simultaneously.
文摘Object: Functional MRI is frequently applied to lateralize language in pre-surgical planning, with potential to localize functionally important cortex too. Here we present BOLD signal activation maps and related functional connectivity, in response to three commonly administered fMRI language tasks. Methods: Datasets from 55 pre-surgical fMRI studies were analyzed. Verbal response naming, covert word generation and passive listening tasks were administered in all studies. Single-subject analyses, group analyses and region-of-interest analyses were conducted, and a multi-subject functional connectivity analysis was performed. Results: Single-subject analyses revealed that clinically important language regions were activated in all but three patients using the panel of tasks. Group analyses revealed significant bilateral BOLD signal increases in anterior and posterior language regions in response to verbal response naming and bilateral signal increase in posterior language regions only in response to passive listening. Covert word generation activated anterior language regions bilaterally and posterior language cortex in the dominant hemisphere. Functional connectivity analyses confirmed that activated regions were significantly correlated in all tasks. Conclusion: The findings of single-subject and group analyses add to the evidence supporting the use of a panel of fMRI tasks to map the language network for pre-surgical planning. Our findings support the additional use of functional connectivity analysis in routine language mapping to add to the localization value to fMRI. In addition, the results of our investigation demonstrate these three commonly applied tasks reliably activate unique aspects of the language network, which advocates closer individual inspection, guided by the surgical intervention planned.