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Nitrogen foam fluids play an increasingly important role in oil displacement and profile control and water shutoff. In this paper, taking the H9-05 well group of SY Oilfield as an example, we systematically conducted a numerical simulation study of nitrogen foam flooding in a high water-cut stage of a high-porosity and high-permeability reservoir. Considering structures, a three-dimensional geological model of the target layer is constructed. The remaining oil is scattered, the oil well rows are relatively concentrated, the angle wells are more, and the oil well rows are less (related to the water injection time). The main oil layers are heavily washed and scattered. The remaining oil saturation of H4, H5, H9 and H12 oil layers is low. The remaining oil of HI and H3 oil layers is relatively rich due to poor reservoir physical properties. The influencing factors of nitrogen foam profile control effect were analyzed, the influencing factors of nitrogen foam profile control effect were analyzed, including injection mode, injection stage, surfactant concentration, gas-liquid ratio, and PV value of main slug injection. Studies have shown that the optimal main slug should be divided into three small slugs for injection. The best injection time should be before the water cut of the H9-05 well group reaches 90% to 91%. The optimum range of the mass concentration of the main slug surfactant should be 0.75% to 1.0%. According to the numerical simulation results, the gas-liquid ratio of the main slug should be controlled in the range of 0.7~1.5. The PV number of the main slug should be between 0.15PV and 0.2PV when the maximum oil increase is obtained with a lower injection cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to investigatewhether platelet-derived growth factorD(PDGF-D) is a prognostic biomarker and is associated with platinum resistance in epithelial ovarian cancer, which has not been studied by others previously. Methods: In this study, we detected expression of PDGF-D in ovarian cancer tissues through immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. Furthermore, we analyzed the association between PDGF-D expression and clinicopathological features including prognosis in epithelial ovarian cancer. Statistical analyses were performed by using χ2 test, log-rank test, Cox regression test, and Kaplan-Meier method. Results: High PDGF-D expression is positively correlated with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage (P < 0.001), histologic grade (P< 0.001), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.022), and poor prognosis (P < 0.001). Platelet-derived growth factor D in platinum-resistant cases is overexpressed compared with that in platinum-sensitive cases (P < 0.001). Obstetrics stage (P = 0.029) and PDGF-D overexpression (P < 0.001) are independently correlated with platinum resistance. Conclusions: Our study indicates that PDGF-D overexpression is an independent predictor of platinum-based chemotherapy resistance and that it may also be a potential biomarker for targeted therapy and poor prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To compare the agreement between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results and postsurgical pathologic findings for tumor size evaluation in cervical cancer patients before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) treatment. Methods: The study analyzed the agreement between pretreatment MRI results and postsurgical pathologic findings about the tumor size in 100 cervical cancer patients without NACT and 397 cervical cancer patients with NACT, respectively. Results: In general, the agreement between pretreatment MRI results and postsurgical pathologic findings of tumor size was 0.855 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.763Y0.909) in cervical cancer patients without NACT, whereas the agreement between posttreatment MRI results and postsurgical pathologic findings was 0.503 (95% CI, 0.421Y0.576). Only 62.72% (249/397) of patients who underwent NACT treatment have the same chemotherapy response evaluation results; the J coefficient was 0.384(95% CI, 0.310Y0.457) between posttreatment MRI and postsurgical pathologic findings. We still found International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage is associated with the chemotherapy response evaluation. Conclusions: Our data suggest that pretreatment MRI can be a surrogate indicator for postsurgical pathologic findings. However, posttreatmentMRI could not be a surrogate indicator for postsurgical pathologic findings. The chemotherapy response evaluation based on onlyMRI is not so reliable. More indicators should be developed for chemotherapy response evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the papers published in journals indexed by SCI/SSCI between 2008 and 2012, we studied the interdisciplinarity of iSchools and visualized publication portfolios among different journals and clusters. The findings indicate that the iSchools can be seen as interdisciplinary environments from a macroscopic perspective, but each individual iSchool has its own strengths and specializations. In many cases, the 'i' in the individual 'iSchool' can only be interpreted as 'information' not 'interdisciplinary'. The results also show that LIS-related journals still occupy the most important position in the research output of iSchools, although some iSchools with strong computer science background are members of this organization. This work is compared to earlier analyses and provides a different view of the state of the interdisciplinarity of iSchools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To systematically assess the outcomes and effectiveness of Prescription Automatic Screening System (PASS) on rational drug use in China. Methods: All studies that evaluated the effects of PASS in Chinese hospitals were electronically searched. Metaanalysis was used to assess the outcomes of intervention effects. Results: Twelve articles that appraised the interventions related to PASS were identified. All studies used before-after designs. Risk ratio was chosen as the effect size index. Heterogeneity was large (I² > 50%) in all main analyses. Effect sizes were pooled using random effects. Compared with the control group, the pooled effect sizes were 0.60 (95% CI, 0.52-0.70) for the outcome of the incident of inpatient irrational drug use (n - 5), 0.75 (95% CI, 0.59-0.96) for the outcome of the incident of outpatient patient irrational drug use (n = 2), and 0.29 (95% Cl, 0.10-0.86) for the outcome of the incidence of black-light warning orders (n = 6). Conclusions: Interventions related to PASS was associated with the reduction of irrational drug use and medication errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many factors that affect transfer efficiency of cloned embryos developed from somatic cells. Such factors as expression of estrus, embryo stage, transfer time and season were investigated in this paper. The estrus method had no significant effect on pregnancy rates following cloned embryo transfer. The highest rate of pregnancy was observed in either fresh or frozen-thawed embryos at the day 6 stage. Different stages of cloned embryos had no significant difference (fresh embryos P = 0.2607, frozen-thawed embryos P = 0.0652) in terms of pregnancy rates after transfer. The pregnancy rate after cloned embryo transfer was the best in autumn, which reached 16.06%, and had a significant difference compared to those in other seasons (P < 0.05). The following was in spring, but it had no difference in between summer and winter (P > 0.05). The results indicated that a higher pregnancy rate was obtained from transfer of cloned embryos developed from somatic cell nuclear transfer in water buffaloes in autumn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In clinical trials, subjects are often classified into ordered categories (eg, worsening, no change, and improvement) based on their post-treatment clinical response changes from baseline. The usual approach in using a multinomial model for assessing treatment effects between treatment groups is not efficient because it demands intense computation to evaluate the corresponding probabilities across these ordered categories. In this study, we propose to model the response probabilities via a parametric form, and the comparison of these probabilities is translated into the comparison of the associated model parameters. Maximum likelihood estimates are then derived and the required sample size for achieving a desired statistical power at a prespecified level of significance is also obtained. A simulation study is performed to evaluate finite sample size performance. An example concerning the evaluation of the efficacy of a test treatment for subjects with moderate to severe Crohn disease that is refractory to steroids and immunosuppressants is presented to illustrate the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]