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OBJECTIVE: To investigate the risk factors for poor prognosis of neonatal bacterial meningitis. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed for the clinical data of 152 children with neonatal bacterial meningitis. According to their prognosis, they were divided into a good prognosis group with 122 children and a poor prognosis group with 30 children. The two groups were compared in terms of general status, initial symptoms, and laboratory findings, and the risk factors for poor prognosis were analyzed. RESULTS: Compared with the good prognosis group, the poor prognosis group had a significantly higher proportion of children with a very low birth weight, a peripheral blood white blood cell count (WBC) of < 5×10(9)/L or > 20×10(9)/L, a C-reactive protein level of > 50 mg/L, a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) WBC of > 500×10(6)/L, a CSF glucose level of < 1 mmol/L, or a CSF protein level of > 2 g/L, as well as significantly higher positive rates of blood culture and/or CSF culture, Gram-positive bacteria, and Streptococcus agalactiae (P < 0.05). The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that a CSF glucose level of < 1 mmol/L and a CSF protein level of > 2 g/L were independent risk factors for poor prognosis of neonatal bacterial meningitis. CONCLUSIONS: A CSF glucose level of < 1 mmol/L and a CSF protein level of > 2 g/L are risk factors for poor prognosis of neonatal bacterial meningitis.

Urumqi, a megacity located in an arid region, was selected as the object for this study. The level of economic development, population size, the efficiency of the industrial water use and the water resource development as well as utilization level were comprehensively considered. Through constructing all factor decomposition model, Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method was used to conduct decomposition analyses on the factors that caused the changes in total water consumption and water use efficiency in Urumqi from 1995 to 2012. The relative contribution rates of various positively driving factors and inhibitory factors were calculated, and their influence levels and directions were measured. The results indicated that the level of economic development and water use intensity, and the effects of industrial water use structures, economic level, and water use intensity were the determining factors that influenced the water use consumption and efficiency respectively. The results obtained from this study could provide guidance for the studies on the correct understanding of the relationship between the process of water utilization and the process of economic development in this oasis city and for promoting the social and economic development and for increasing the ensuring ability of water resources. The adjustment of industrial structures and the upgrading of industrial technologies caused certain inhibitory effects on the total water consumption but these effects were not strong. Other methods used as the supplements are needed for relaxation of the sharp contradictions between the demand and supply of water resources. The amount of water supply per capital had inhibitory effects to a certain extent on water resource utilization efficiency. The efficiency of water resource utilization can be increased through controlling water resources supply to artificially create the shortage of water resource supply so that the contradictions between the increasing demand on water use for social and economic development and the water supply shortage can be effectively alleviated.

A method for the accurate determination of mercury content in gas condensates is of significance in the applications of condensates. In this paper, a simple and rapid method for the determination of mercury in gas condensates using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry was established. The effects of experimental conditions including extraction reagent, sample mass, extraction time in water bath, and membrane filtration treatment were investigated. A sample mass of 1.00 g, 10 mL of aqua regia as pretreatment reagent, and boiling water bath time of 60 min were selected as the optimal pretreatment conditions. After hydrophilic membrane filtering, the obtained solution was diluted 10 times using 3% (v/v) nitric acid and the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry determination was conducted. The method detection limit was 0.4 ng g−1, and the relative standard deviation range was from 2.8% to 5.4% for the samples of different natures. Both standard addition recovery experiments and comparison results with a microwave-assisted digestion method indicated that the proposed method was reliable for the determination of mercury in gas condensates.

Hafnium content and its change are of significance in geochemistry and cosmochemistry; however, the determination of hafnium has always been problematic in analytical chemistry. In this paper, a new idea is proposed for the determination of hafnium in geochemical samples, including rocks, soils, and stream sediments. Through the comparison of two conventional open-type acid digestion methods (HF-HNO3-HClO4 and HF-HNO3-H2SO4), it was found that although neither of these methods could fully digest the zirconium and hafnium in a sample, the zirconium and hafnium digestion behaviors in one sample were consistent in the 60 experimental geochemical reference materials with different properties, so the experimentally determined Zr/Hf ratio in solution could be used to calculate the hafnium content in a sample. In addition, possible mass spectral interferences during the determination of zirconium and hafnium by high resolution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HR-ICPMS) were studied, and it was found that the mass spectral interferences of the selected isotopes (90)Zr and (178)Hf could be neglected. The mass spectral behaviors of (90)Zr and (178)Hf were also very consistent during the determination by HR-ICPMS. Since the hafnium content was calculated using the ratio value, all of the errors (including the errors in weighing process, the accidental errors during operation and the instrument fluctuation in the determination) of the Zr/Hf ratio could be effectively reduced or even eliminated. The relative standard deviation of the actual samples was lower than 3.2%, and the detection limit of the method (considering the dilution effect and matrix effect during measurement of the Zr/Hf ratio and zirconium content) was 0.04 μg/g. The proposed method could satisfy the requirement for the determination of hafnium in geochemical samples.

Androgen receptor (AR) is closely associated with the occurrence and progression of breast cancer; however, the clinical significance of it in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) has been controversial. There is a limited amount of research regarding the effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on AR expression. By examining the expression of AR in patients with TNBC, the aim of the present study is to explore the clinical significance of AR and provide evidence for AR-directed treatment in TNBC. A total of 188 patients with primary TNBC with complete medical records were included in this retrospective study. Tumor sections from 41 patients (21.8%) were positive for AR, which was more often detected in small tumors (P=0.042) and cases with no lymph node involvement (P=0.032). Among them, 102 were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). A total of 17 patients (16.7%) exhibited pathological complete response. However, the patient response was irrelevant to AR expression. Matched pathological tissues before and after NAC were collected for 49 cases, suggesting an enrichment of AR-expressing tumors following chemotherapy (P=0.008). Further analysis indicated that AR expression had no correlation with the disease-free and overall survival of patients with general TNBC; rather, it predicted a poor survival of the patients with stage III TNBC in comparison with those at earlier stages (P=0.035). AR expression occurs more often in small TNBC tumors or in cases with no lymph node metastasis. It is associated with a poor prognosis of the patients with advanced stages of tumors.

Using the proposed high-pressure pressed powder pellet technique, a coal sample was pressed into an ideal pellet without binders, which provides a solution to the poor self-binding quality of coal for the determination by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF). The pellet produced by this method was more compact and smoother, which was particularly meaningful for spectrometer, where the sample is placed over the tube window. Additionally, the high-pressure sample preparation technique effectively eliminated the effect of falling powder and contamination in the Measuring chamber of the spectrometer. Wavelength Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (WDXRF) was applied successfully to the determination of carbon, nitrogen and ash content in coal samples. This could provide an alternative method for the rapid analysis of carbon, nitrogen and ash content in the coal rather than the combustion method or the high-frequency infrared absorption with a slow ashing method. Furthermore, WDXRF could provide simultaneous determination of other major, minor and trace elements by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The XRF results indicated that the sensitivity, precision, and limit of detection for most components were improved when the coal sample was pressed at 1600kN compared with preparation at 400kN.

To reduce the limit of detection (LOD) and allow the accurate determination of Ge, a dry ashing method was performed to enrich the Ge in plant samples. A method for the determination.of trace Ge in plant samples by HG-AFS was established. Study of the effect of temperature on the ashing of plant samples showed that no volatile loss of Ge occurred even at 900 °C. Additional experiments indicated that a 4 h burning process at 600 °C would be sufficient to fully ash the plant samples. Various digestion methods (involving nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, and sulfuric acid digestion methods) for ashed samples were investigated. High-temperature ashing with large sample weights was used, which could reduce the reagent doses and the method's LOD effectively and simultaneously, the precision of the method was improved. The method's LOD was 0.27 ng · g(-1), and the relative standard deviation was 3.99%-6.81%. Verified with national biological reference materials (grade I), the proposed method was accurate and reliable.

Urumqi is the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the northwestern part of China. The city has witnessed rapid growth in recent years, mostly because of the national and regional policies and its economic and social development. We implemented this study to understand the urban growth of Urumqi City, to forecast its growth tendency for the next two decades and to provide a basis for urban management. The SLEUTH are employed to build the urban growth simulation and forecasting model. We calibrated it with historical data derived from a time series of satellite images. The results showed the utility of the modeling method in explaining the spatial pattern of urban growth. In the future years during the forecast period, Urumqi city should focus on enforcing the urban internal spatial structure optimization and spatial displacement, paying attention to the urban internal differentiation, improving the economic value and utilization of urban land resources, controlling the speed of urban growth, and retaining certain land reserve and development space for the future development. Introduction Urban growth both in population and spatial extent has led to alterations of the landscape [1]. In the last 200 years, while the world population has increased six times, the urban population has multiplied 100 times [2]. As a developing country, China is now witnessing an almost continual large-scale urbanization. It is also occurring in western big cities such as Urumqi. This city is located in the arid and semiarid areas. After three hundred years of development, here gradually formed the oasis ecosystem and the unique urban landscape consists of farmland, forest, roads, residential points, channels, reservoirs and pasture. It has become a megacity in the center of the Eurasian continent. As a central city of international thoroughfare in western China, the city will enter the large-scale development and construction of the new period, with the deepening of China's western development strategy implementation and the economic and social development. With this rapid growth, cities exert a heavy pressure on lands and resources at their periphery [3]. In the decision-making process, land managers need to carefully consider the changes brought about by urban sprawl. This study investigated the value of the combination of spatial modeling, remote sensing, and analysis with spatial metrics for Urumqi urban region between 1975 and 2030. The historical analysis was based on remote sensing observations from archived Landsat MSS, TM and ETM satellite data. Among all documented dynamic models, cellular automata (CA) probably are the most impressive in urban growth modeling in terms of their flexibility, their simplicity in application, their close ties to remote sensing data and geographic information system [4]. The remote sensing-derived data layers were used in parameterization and calibration of the SLEUTH urban growth model, which is one of the CA model [5]. The SLEUTH model was used to predict Urumqi’s urban growth from 2010 to 2030, and to recreate missing historical time periods in the evolution of Urumqi’s urban extent since 1975. A set of spatial metrics was used in a detailed analysis of the growth patterns mapped from the remote sensing data and were extended to interpret and analyze the model’s forecasted growth in the area up to 2030.This paper shows a way of utilizing SLEUTH as an urban growth model, and interpret and analyze the spatial pattern of Urumqi’s future growth reflected in the spatial metrics as applied to forecasts to the year 2030. This analysis is presented at the urban level, rather than the global level in order to clearly identify the mechanisms of urban change at the spatial scale of the modeling, especially in Chinese northwestern area. International Conference on Management Science and Management Innovation (MSMI 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 158 Materials and methods Study Area Urumqi City is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the political, economic, cultural, educational, scientific and technological center of the region. It is located in Urumqi River valley and the downstream alluvial-and-diluvial plain from 86 °37 '33 "E to 88 ° 58' 24"E, and 42°45' 32"N to 44°08'32"N, where there is a natural barrier of city construction on both sides of the hills and mountains. The downtown is located in the middle and lower reaches of the Urumqi River valley, facing the vast alluvial plain in its north direction (Fig. 1). The urban planning control area is 1600 km 2 . At the end of 2013, the permanent population reaches 3.46 million. The GDP in this year is 240 billion yuan, and the GDP per capita is 69.4 thousand yuan which is in the front rank among the other provincial capitals and at the top of the 5 northwestern provincial capitals. After 1990, especially after the West Development Strategy has been carried out in 2000, urban growth developed at an unprecedented level in Urumqi. The built area grows from 49.00km 2 in 1985 to 391.20 km 2 in 2013, with an annual growth rate of 7.70%, far ahead of the cities in other provinces and autonomous regions in Northwest China. Fig. 1 District location and its vicinity area of Urumqi [6] SLEUTH Dynamic Urban Growth Model SLEUTH is a self-modifying probabilistic cellular automata model originally developed by Keith Clarke at the University of California at Santa Barbara. It’s an initial abbreviation for the input data layers: Slope, Land Use, Exclusion, Urban, Transportation, and Hill Shade. The version used in this application, SLEUTH 3.0Beta, consists of an urban growth model (UGM) and an optional Land Cover Deltatron Model (LCDM). The UGM simulates urban growth, which is a non-urban cell will be converted to an urban cell. The LCDM, which is driven by the UGM, simulate land use and land cover change. In this application, only the urban module was utilized, so each cell in the study area had only two possible states: urbanized or non-urbanized. SLEUTH simulates four types of urban growth (Spontaneous growth, New spreading center growth, Edge growth, and Road-influenced growth) controlled through the interactions of five growth coefficients (ranging from 0 to 100): Dispersion, Breed, Spread, Road gravity, and Slope [7]. These growth rules are controlled by five growth parameters: diffusion, breed, spread, road gravity and slope resistance. Each parameter has a range of 0~100 which is dimensionless and shows the importance