Short-term Effects of Air Pollution on Mortality in a Heavily Polluted Chinese City

Since the London fog in 1952, numerous epidemioLogical studies have revealed that both short-term and long-term exposure to air pollutants is associated with the development of diseases[1]. Up to date, the assessment of air quality on health and air quality standard establishment in developing countries were mainly relied on extrapolation based on the results from long-term cohort studies conducted in Europe and North America.

Clinical Observation on the Improved Short-Term Effects of Anti-Tumor Purified Chinese Medicine Injection Ai-Jing for 138 Cases with Malignant Tumors

The subjects of this study were to observe the improved short-term effects of anti-tumor purified Chinese medicine injection Ai-Jing for 138 cases with malignant tumors. This was a multi-center clinical study, and a total of 138 patients included 96 males and 42 females, with the age from 60 to 76 years. Ai-Jing has obtained the Chinese invention patent since 2008 (ZL991-03528.3). A novel technique acupoint injection method was adopted. Except for lung cancer, patients with other malignant tumors were injected once every other day, 2 ml each time. A course of treatment needs 6 Ai-Jing injections, lung cancer patients need 10 - 20 Ai-Jing injections. At the same time, patients were treated with traditional medicine decoction. Due to the limited number of cases, cure rate, recovery rate and remission rate were calculated as a whole, respectively 18.12%, 44.20% and 32.15%. All the invalid patients were lung cancer, accounting for 16.67% of the patients treated with lung cancer, and the total treatment inefficiency was 6.52%. Conclusion: Chinese Medicine Injection Ai-Jing extracts the effective components of anti-cancer and tumorigenesis, and has the effects of anti-cancer and tumorigenesis, anti-inflam-matory and analgesic, and repairing body damage, with small toxic and side effects and low cost.

A comparison of the short-term effects of fixed platform versus rotating high-fiexion prosthesis for the patients with osteoarthrities of knee

Objective To compare the preliminary clinical outcome between fixed platform and rotating high-flexion prosthesis following total knee replacement(TKR).Methods Form January 2007 to December 2009,68 patients with osteoarthritis of

Tumor-feeding artery diameter reduction is associated with improved short-term effect of hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy plus lenvatinib treatment

BACKGROUND Recently,hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy(HAIC)plus lenvatinib has been frequently used to treat unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma(uHCC)in China.In the clinic,the hepatic arteries of some patients shrink significantly during this treatment,leading to improved short-term efficacy.AIM To investigate the relationship between the shrinkage of hepatic arteries and the short-term effect of HAIC plus lenvatinib treatment.METHODS Sixty-seven participants with uHCC were enrolled in this retrospective study.The patients received HAIC every 3 wk,followed by oral lenvatinib after the first HAIC course.Hepatic artery diameters were measured on CT before treatment and after 1 and 2 mo of treatment.Meanwhile,the changes in tumor capillaries were also examined on pathological specimens before and after 1 mo of treatment.The antitumor response after 1,3,and 6 mo of treatment was assessed using the modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors(mRECIST).The relationship between the changes in vessel diameters and the short-term effect of the combination treatment was evaluated by receiver-operating characteristic and logistic regression analyses.RESULTS The hepatic artery diameters were all significantly decreased after 1 and 2 mo of treatment(P<0.001),but there was no difference in the vessel diameters between 1 and 2 mo(P>0.05).The microvessel density in the tumor lesions decreased significantly after 1 mo of combination treatment(P<0.001).According to mRECIST,46,41,and 24 patients had complete or partial responses after 1,3,and 6 mo of treatment,respectively,whereas 21,21,and 32 patients had a stable or progressive disease at these times,respectively.Shrinkage of the tumor-feeding artery was significantly associated with the tumor response after 1,3,and 6 mo of treatment(P<0.001,P=0.004,and P=0.023,respectively);however,changes in other hepatic arteries were not significantly associated with the tumor response.Furthermore,shrinkage of the tumor-feeding artery was an independent factor for treatment efficacy(P=0.001,P=0.001,and P=0.002 and 1,3,and 6 mo,respectively).CONCLUSION The hepatic arteries shrank rapidly after treatment with HAIC plus lenvatinib,and shrinkage of the tumor-feeding artery diameter was closely related to improved short-term efficacy.

The Impact of Meteorological Factors on the Short-term Cumulative Effect of Air Particulate in Tianjin

In order to reveal the rapid increase mechanism of particulate concentration in short time,a notion of short-term cumulative effect of air particulate is defined as the significant increase of pollutant concentration in a short time under the condition of breeze,stable weather and constant emission caused by human being's activities. Subsequently,an index of short-term cumulative effect is established with air diffusive equation,and then the macro-scale meteorological situation and micro-scale factors of forming the short-term cumulative effect are discussed with the observation data. The macro-scale meteorological variables contain upper-level weather situations and surface weather situations. The micro-scale factors mainly include the boundary-layer height and boundary-layer stability. The analyses show that boundary-layer factors and weather variables have a significant influence on the short-term cumulative effect. The notion of short-term cumulative effect will play an important role in interpreting the severe pollution weather.

Effect of Short-Term Exposure to Mercuric Chloride on the Air-Breathing Catfish,Heteropneustes fossilis──Ⅱ.Scanning Electron Microscopic Study of the Gill

Alterations in the respiratory epithelium of gills of a catfish, Heteropneustes fossilis by the sublethal and lethal concentrations of HgCl2 have been observcd using scanning electron microscope. Fish exposed to 0.1 ppm shows a thin coat ot mucus, but the continuous layer of mucus is not retained in 0.3 ppm after 24 h of exposure. Epithelial cells of the gill filament are hyperplastic. Other changcs in the respiratory epithelium are contraction of epithelium, formation of interlamellar bridge and diminishing number of microridges. Massive destruction of the respiratory epithelium by deep lesions and sloughing of epithelial layer in 0.5 and 1.0 ppm solutions after 6-12 h of exposure apparently causes death to the fish. SEM observations are well in conformity with the findings made at light microscopic level

Effect of Short-Term Exposure to Mercuric Chloride on the Air-Breathing Catfish,Heteropneustes fossilis──Ⅰ.Light Microscopic Study of the Gill

Histopathological effects of sublethal (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 ppm) and lethal (0.5, 1.0 ppm)solutions of mercuric chloride (HgCl2) have been studied on the gills of the air breathing catfish, Heteropneustes fossilis at the intervals ranging from 6h to 15 days. Thickening of the epithelium, swelling and hyperplasia of the mucous cells, fusion of secondary lamellae, formation of interlamellar bridge and deposition of mucous over the entire surface are some noteworthy features of mercury poisoning in sublethal concentrations. Acute pathological manifestations are formation of subepithelial space, sloughing of the epithelial layer, hemorrhage and hypertrophy of the mucous cells. Causes and impact of these cellular alterations affecting survival of the fish have been discussed

Short-term effect of rehabilitation training on children with neuropathic acontractile sphincter incontinence

Objective To evaluate the short-term effect of pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation training under the guidance of doctors on children with neuropathic acontractile sphincter incontinence ( NASI) . Methods Sixty-eighty children ( aged 4 - 12 mean,7) years with NASI

Control study of short-term curative effect of minimally invasive total hip arthroplasty using metal-on-metal large-diameter femoral head for the elderly patients with femoral neck fractures

Objective To discuss the postoperative curative effects of two surgical techniques of minimally invasive total hip arthroplasty (THA) using metal-on-metal largediameter and conventional diameter femoral head for the elderly patients

Analysis of Characteristics of a Heavy Rainstorm Process in Nanchang City on July 7,2020

Based on the conventional observation data,dual polarization radar data and NCEP reanalysis data,the large-scale circulation background field,mesoscale conditions and formation causes of a heavy rainstorm in Nanchang on July 7,2020 were studied.It was found that this heavy rainstorm occurred under the weather background of the confrontation between the northward air flow behind the trough and the strong southwest warm and humid air flow to the northwest of the subtropical high.The divergence at the upper level,the shear in the middle and low levels,the southward movement of cold air at the low level,unusually abundant water vapor and high unstable energy caused the heavy rainstorm weather.In this process,under the influence of continuous eastward movement of several strong echo cells,an obvious"train effect"was formed in Nanchang,so that the local rainfall was continuous and intense.Moreover,the average of VIL was about 17 kg/m 2,and its variation characteristics were consistent with the variation trend of 5-min rainfall intensity,which had a certain indicator effect on short-term heavy precipitation.The topography of the Meiling Mountain in the west of Nanchang had a great influence on the formation and precipitation distribution of the heavy rain process.There was a strong rainstorm center near the mountain,and the precipitation was obviously larger than that in the plain area.

Variation in Short-term Temperature Fluctuations Across China During the Past 60 Years

Short-term temperature fluctuations(STFs),including amplitude and frequency fluctuations,are one of the main features of weather and play vital roles in determining the type of ecosystem present.Although temperature fluctuations at different time scales have been extensively discussed,the research on week-scale STFs is lacking.In this study,we developed a method,that can quantify the amplitude and frequency of STFs by the thresholds from all years.We used this method to quantify the amplitude and frequency of the 7-d STFs from 1951 to 2019 across China.Our results indicate that the amplitude of the STF was much higher in the eastern part of China than in the western part,while the frequency of the STF was higher in the middle part than in the southern and northern parts;further-more,the STF was highly dependent on internal factors such as topography.The long-term STF mainly showed a decreasing trend before 1990,which implies that temperature became increasingly stable from the 1950s to the 1990s.The main influencing factors were related to topography since the trends were relatively consistent in space.A case study in Taihu Lake showed that an unstable STF in winter and summer resulted in a smaller bloom area in the following spring and autumn.Our method could eliminate seasonal effects and is capable of analyzing STFs at scales ranging from days to years.Quantifications of the amplitude and frequency also make the STF indicators more comprehensive.Furthermore,the STF increased significantly across most of China after 1990,which implies that temperature is becoming increasingly unstable.The drivers of these STFs are related to human impacts since the trends are different in space.

Initial Labor Market Conditions and Individual Employability

Initial labor market conditions affect how individuals build their human capital and look for jobs and thus can have long-term effects on their income levels,work performance,and career development.Based on data from the Urban Household Survey(UHS)of urban households in China from 1986 to 2009,we perform an empirical test of how initial labor market conditions affect the employability of individuals.Our research shows that people’s future incomes suffer if they start out in an adverse job market.Each percentage point of increase in the unemployment rate at an individual’s entry into the labor market is associated with a two-percentage-point drop in his or her average annual income.Even after looking at different parts of the job market and sample groups,this conclusion still holds.In the context of global economic instability,our findings may assist government policymakers in addressing adverse labor market conditions.

Exploring nonlinear spatiotemporal effects for personalized next point-of-interest recommendation

Next point-of-interest(POI)recommendation is an important personalized task in location-based social networks(LBSNs)and aims to recommend the next POI for users in a specific situation with historical check-in data.State-of-the-art studies linearly discretize the user’s spatiotemporal information and then use recurrent neural network(RNN)based models for modeling.However,these studies ignore the nonlinear effects of spatiotemporal information on user preferences and spatiotemporal correlations between user trajectories and candidate POIs.To address these limitations,a spatiotemporal trajectory(STT)model is proposed in this paper.We use the long short-term memory(LSTM)model with an attention mechanism as the basic framework and introduce the user’s spatiotemporal information into the model in encoding.In the process of encoding information,an exponential decay factor is applied to reflect the nonlinear drift of user interest over time and distance.In addition,we design a spatiotemporal matching module in the process of recalling the target to select the most relevant POI by measuring the relevance between the user’s current trajectory and the candidate set.We evaluate the performance of our STT model with four real-world datasets.Experimental results show that our model outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods.

Misunderstanding of a New Approach to Drug-Placebo Difference Calculation in Short Term Antidepressant-Drug Trials

In clinical trials, drug effect is measured by a difference between subjects who are treated by experimental drug against placebo-treated subjects. In case of binary data, with observing YES/NO on each subject in certain period of time, it is the proportion of subjects who respond in treatment group minus the proportion of responders in placebo group (for example, 50% vs. 30%). However, a greater difference was proposed by Rihmer et al. (2011) [1] with their supporting arguments, in that antidepressant response and placebo response had different mechanisms and there were equal chances for antidepressant responder to be responding to placebo and not responding to placebo at all. Therefore, the authors proposed 50% - 30% * 50% when the response rate in the treatment group and the placebo group are 50% and 30% respectively, resulting in higher drug-placebo difference than traditional understanding of 50% - 30%. In this article, we tried to explain why the authors misunderstood the drug-placebo concept for evaluating drug superiority, their misunderstanding of assumptions of traditional calculation, as well as their wrong reasoning on their proposed approach. All in all, we conclude the traditional approach of 50% - 30% is the right way of evaluating drug-placebo difference and the possible methods to control impact of placebo effect are briefly discussed at the end of this article.

Deep brain stimulation for obsessive-compulsive disorder:A systematic review of worldwide experience after 20 years

BACKGROUND Twenty years after its first use in a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD),the results confirm that deep brain stimulation(DBS)is a promising therapy for patients with severe and resistant forms of the disorder.Nevertheless,many unknowns remain,including the optimal anatomical targets,the best stimulation parameters,the long-term(LT)effects of the therapy,and the clinical or biological factors associated with response.This systematic review of the articles published to date on DBS for OCD assesses the short and LT efficacy of the therapy and seeks to identify predictors of response.AIM To summarize the existing knowledge on the efficacy and tolerability of DBS in treatment-resistant OCD.METHODS A comprehensive search was conducted in the PubMed,Cochrane,Scopus,and ClinicalTrials.gov databases from inception to December 31,2020,using the following strategy:“(Obsessive-compulsive disorder OR OCD)AND(deep brain stimulation OR DBS).”Clinical trials and observational studies published in English and evaluating the effectiveness of DBS for OCD in humans were included and screened for relevant information using a standardized collection tool.The inclusion criteria were as follows:a main diagnosis of OCD,DBS conducted for therapeutic purposes and variation in symptoms of OCD measured by the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive scale(Y-BOCS)as primary outcome.Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics.RESULTS Forty articles identified by the search strategy met the eligibility criteria.Applying a follow-up threshold of 36 mo,29 studies(with 230 patients)provided information on short-term(ST)response to DBS in,while 11(with 155 patients)reported results on LT response.Mean follow-up period was 18.5±8.0 mo for the ST studies and 63.7±20.7 mo for the LT studies.Overall,the percentage of reduction in Y-BOCS scores was similar in ST(47.4%)and LT responses(47.2%)to DBS,but more patients in the LT reports met the criteria for response(defined as a reduction in Y-BOCS scores>35%:ST,60.6%vs LT,70.7%).According to the results,the response in the first year predicts the extent to which an OCD patient will benefit from DBS,since the maximum symptom reduction was achieved in most responders in the first 12-14 mo after implantation.Reports indicate a consistent tendency for this early improvement to be maintained to the mid-term for most patients;but it is still controversial whether this improvement persists,increases or decreases in the long term.Three different patterns of LT response emerged from the analysis:49.5% of patients had good and sustained response to DBS,26.6% were non responders,and 22.5% were partial responders,who might improve at some point but experience relapses during follow-up.A significant improvement in depressive symptoms and global functionality was observed in most studies,usually(although not always)in parallel with an improvement in obsessive symptoms.Most adverse effects of DBS were mild and transient and improved after adjusting stimulation parameters;however,some severe adverse events including intracranial hemorrhages and infections were also described.Hypomania was the most frequently reported psychiatric side effect.The relationship between DBS and suicide risk is still controversial and requires further study.Finally,to date,no clear clinical or biological predictors of response can be established,probably because of the differences between studies in terms of the neuroanatomical targets and stimulation protocols assessed.CONCLUSION The present review confirms that DBS is a promising therapy for patients with severe resistant OCD,providing both ST and LT evidence of efficacy.

RK治疗近视眼的近期疗效

报告放射状角膜切开术（ＲＫ）治疗１４１例２２４只近视眼的近期疗效。术前平均眼屈光度一５．９１Ｄ，平均角膜屈光度４４．１５Ｄ，平均裸眼视力３．８９。术后三天平均眼屈光度为－０。３０Ｄ，平均角膜屈光度３９．５４Ｄ，分别比术前降低５．６１Ｄ和４．６１Ｄ。平均裸眼视力４．８５，比术前提高０．９７。术后三个月时平均眼屈光度－０．７６Ｄ，平均角膜屈光度３９．９３，与术后三天时比较均有回升，裸眼视力亦有下降。经统计学分析，差异有显著性。分组统计表明，近视度数越大，术后屈光度降低越多，但回升幅度也相对较大。本组未出现导致视力障碍的并发症。Ｐ＜ｏ．０５，本组术后３个月时观察，与术后３天时比较，总平均眼屈光度、总平均角膜屈光度与各组平均眼屈光度均有不同程度回升，术前近视度数越大，回升越多。裸眼视力也有回落。经统计学处理，除①组角膜屈光度和裸眼视力外，其改变均有显著性意义。３讨论３．１国外开展ＲＫ已有２０余年的历史，现已证实这是一种安全有效的手术。国内刚刚在近几年广泛开展，已发表的资料也表明了同样的观点（４，５，６）。本组术后三天时观察，三项指标均表明手术的疗效是肯定的，与文献介绍的结果相近（４，５，６）。不同屈光度患者术后的屈?

A phenomenological memristor model for synaptic memory and learning behaviors

Properties that are similar to the memory and learning functions in biological systems have been observed and reported in the experimental studies of memristors fabricated by different materials. These properties include the forgetting effect, the transition from short-term memory（STM） to long-term memory（LTM）, learning-experience behavior, etc. The mathematical model of this kind of memristor would be very important for its theoretical analysis and application design.In our analysis of the existing memristor model with these properties, we find that some behaviors of the model are inconsistent with the reported experimental observations. A phenomenological memristor model is proposed for this kind of memristor. The model design is based on the forgetting effect and STM-to-LTM transition since these behaviors are two typical properties of these memristors. Further analyses of this model show that this model can also be used directly or modified to describe other experimentally observed behaviors. Simulations show that the proposed model can give a better description of the reported memory and learning behaviors of this kind of memristor than the existing model.