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Sentiment Quantification aims to detect the overall sentiment polarity of users from a set of reviews corresponding to a target. Existing methods equally treat and aggregate individual reviews’ sentiment to judge the overall sentiment polarity. However, the confidence of each review is not equal in sentiment quantification where sentiment perturbation arising from high- and low-confidence reviews may degrade the accuracy of Sentiment Quantification. Specifically, fake reviews with deceptive sentiments are low confidence, which perturbs the overall sentiment prediction. Whereas, some reviews generated by responsible users are high confidence. They contain authoritative suggestions so they should be emphasized in Sentiment Quantification. In this paper, we design and build COSE, a confidence-aware sentiment quantification framework, which can measure the confidence of individual reviews to eliminate sentiment perturbation and facilitate sentiment quantification. We design a Review Graph that achieves review confidence modeling in an unsupervised manner and obtains review confidence representations. Moreover, we develop a dynamic fusion attention mechanism, which produces sentiment “de-perturbation” vectors to eliminate the sentiment perturbation based on the confidence representations. Extensive experiments on large-scale review datasets validate the significant superiority of COSE over the state-of-the-art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate one-day hospitalization for trans-rectal ultrasound guided prostate (TRUSP) biopsy. Materials and methods: From September 2009 to September 2012, 218 consecutive patients hospitalized for TRUSP biopsy in our hospital were enrolled. All were hospitalized for observation for one day after the procedure. Patients who were not discharged on the planned date or who were re-admitted were categorized as the “changed hospitalization plan” group. Perioperative laboratory data and variables were checked and recorded for statistical analysis to examine the differences between patients with and without changed hospitalization plan. The causes of changing hospitalization plans were recorded for descriptive analysis. Results: There were 202 (92.7%) patients discharged on the planned date and 16 (7.3%) for whom the hospitalization plan was changed. There were no statistical significances in laboratory tests between the groups; age was the only variable that was statistically significantly different (p = 0.032), especially in patients aged over 77 (p = 0.033).The most common causes of changing the hospitalization plan were urinary retention (n = 10, 4.6%) and fever (n = 6, 2.8%) which included sepsis (n = 3, 1.4%). Two of the three patients with sepsis were re-hospitalized. Conclusion: Age over 77 was the only significant risk factor for changed hospitalization plan. However, Postoperative fever was uncommon in patients hospitalized for one day for TRUSP biopsy. Prolonged admission to prevent rare cases of sepsis may be not reasonable.

This study aimed to investigate the potential relationship between urinary metals copper (Cu), arsenic (As), strontium (Sr), barium (Ba), iron (Fe), lead (Pb) and manganese (Mn) and grip strength. We used linear regression models, quantile g-computation and Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) to assess the relationship between metals and grip strength. In the multimetal linear regression, Cu (β = −2.119), As (β = −1.318), Sr (β = −2.480), Ba (β = 0.781), Fe (β = 1.130) and Mn (β = −0.404) were significantly correlated with grip strength (P < 0.05). The results of the quantile g-computation showed that the risk of occurrence of grip strength reduction was −1.007 (95% confidence interval: −1.362, −0.652; P < 0.001) when each quartile of the mixture of the seven metals was increased. Bayesian kernel function regression model analysis showed that mixtures of the seven metals had a negative overall effect on grip strength, with Cu, As and Sr being negatively associated with grip strength levels. In the total population, potential interactions were observed between As and Mn and between Cu and Mn (P interactions of 0.003 and 0.018, respectively). In summary, this study suggests that combined exposure to metal mixtures is negatively associated with grip strength. Cu, Sr and As were negatively correlated with grip strength levels, and there were potential interactions between As and Mn and between Cu and Mn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the genes regulating the synthesis of sugar esters in tobacco, transcriptome sequencing analysis was performed on tobacco glandular hair cells and bundle sheath cells, and RT-qPCR was used for verification. The results showed that 11 962 differentially expressed genes were obtained, of which 5145 were up-regulated and 6817 were down-regulated. GO annotation of differentially expressed genes showed that the up-regulated genes mainly included biological processes (2265), molecular functions (1169), and cellular components (363), with a total of 3793 GO terms. Based on the assignment of KEGG pathway, the sequence was mapped to 122 metabolic pathways. Glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, starch and sucrose metabolism, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis related to glycoester synthesis were highly enriched, and acyl sugar pathway in glandular hairs was significantly up-regulated. By comparing with the tobacco reference genome, 12 up-regulated acyltransferase genes were identified in glandular hair cells. RT-qPCR results showed that the expression of 11 genes was higher than that of the control. The expression of gene 63826, gene 16194 and gene 37511 increased by 195.79 times, 166.23 times and 132.65 times, respectively. The above 11 genes may be involved in regulating the synthesis of sugar esters in glandular hair cells, providing a basis for further verification of gene function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To access the safety and efficacy of tubeless percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL). Materials and methods: Since January 2001, 1000 consecutive tubeless PCNLs performed at our hospital were enrolled into this retrospective chart review. The average age of the patients (659 males and 341 females) was 54.4 ± 12.6 years, and 55 patients were 75 years old or older. The stone characteristics were 490 non-complete staghorn kidney stones, 218 ureteral stones, 119 kidney + ureteral stones and 173 complete staghorn stones. The mean stone size was 3.5 ± 2.0 cm, and 200 patients had stone size ≥5.0 cm. The average operative time was 78.0 ± 29.4 minutes. The stone free rates were 78.8%, 100%, 84.9% and 45.0% for kidney, ureter, kidney + ureter and complete staghorn stones, respectively, with an overall stone free rate of 78.3%. The average postoperative hospital stay was 3.6 ± 2.1 days, and the blood transfusion rate was 2.4%. Postoperative fever was noted in 104 patients, and urosepsis was noted in 13 patients. Pulmonary complication included hydrothorax in 5 patients, hemothorax in 2 patients, pneumothorax in 2 patients and acute pulmonary edema in 1 patient. Cadiovascular complications included congestive heart failure in 1 patient and pneumomediastinum in 1 patient. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that sith adequate hemotasis, tubeless modification is a safe modality for PCNL.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the efficacy of second-line versus first-line antibiotics in the prevention of postoperative fever after tubeless percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL). Methods: Three hundred consecutive tubeless PCNL procedures performed at our hospital between August 2010 and December 2013 were enrolled in this study. The efficacy of second-line antibiotics in the prevention PCNL-related urinary traction was reviewed by retrospective chart review. Results: The overall postoperative fever rate was 12% (36 of 300 procedures). The second-line antibiotic prophylaxis was provided in 32 procedures according to preoperative urine culture data or physician's judgment. The first-line prophylactic antibiotic was used in 268 procedures with postoperative fever in 29 procedures (10.8%). The second-line prophylactic antibiotic was used in 32 procedures with postoperative fever in seven procedures (21.9%). No significance difference of postoperative fever rate between first-line or second-line prophylactic antibiotic was found (P = 0.069). Conclusions: The second-line prophylactic antibiotic use for tubeless PCNL does not offer additional benefit over the first-line prophylactic antibiotic in the prevention of postoperative fever or shortening of the postoperative hospital stay.

Lines of evidence suggest trivalent influenza vaccination may be associated with Guillain–Barre syndrome (GBS), an immune-mediated acute inflammatory neuropathy. On the other hand, this vaccination protects against influenza infection, which has been demonstrated as a trigger of GBS. To clarify the net effect of trivalent influenza vaccines on GBS, we conducted a retrospective nationwide nested case–control study using the database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance program. We identified 182 hospitalized patients with GBS aged ≥50 years from 2007 to 2015 as the cases, and 910 hospitalized patients, matched by gender, age, date of hospitalization, comorbidities, and medications, as the control subjects. Nearby and remote exposures of vaccination were defined as subjects who had received trivalent influenza vaccine 42 (nearby exposure) and 90 days (remote exposure) before the date of hospitalization, respectively. We found 7 (3.85%) GBS patients and 26 (2.86%) matched control subjects who demonstrated nearby exposures of influenza vaccine (odds ratio: 1.46, 95% confidence interval: 0.56–3.78). Seventeen (9.34%) GBS patients were exposed to influenza vaccines remotely, while the number of remote exposure of influenza vaccines in matched control subjects was 72 (7.91%, odds ratio: 1.26, 95% confidence interval: 0.67–2.38). These results do not support an association between trivalent influenza vaccine and GBS among the patients aged ≥50 years.

This paper examines an account of a practitioner-initiated transformation of workplace-based social relationship within a grassroots adult education institution. This tripartite relationship among adult students, staff and teachers, abbreviated as AST, is a major driving force for activities and missionary functioning of the XinZhuang Community University (XZ-CU) and thus constitutes an indication of conjoint collaboration. Grafted from historical context and the development stage of AST, the initiative and the intervention focused on redefining AST relationship from a distributed leadership perspective and represents a democratic core and alternative to school leadership that would render new opportunity to create "democratic structures and processes" that a Democratic School advocated. This work has led to the conception and practice of joint educational experiment with elementary schools. The objectives of this research (as a professional engagement) are two-fold: first, to outline the major observables of this engagement, including reviews of facilitating the evolution of AST relationship in past three years. Second, with the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and its variant as the theoretical lens for framing and understanding the phenomena, we then identify the critical contradictions and concerted efforts of transformation, along with outcomes that emerged and artefacts employed, as well as further impacts of school reform on structures and processes.

Based on the significant effects of enzyme treatment on tobacco and its products, the research achievements of enzyme treatment in tobacco quality improvement, aroma production, and harm reduction in recent years were reviewed as follows. The weak links and problems in the research of biological enzymes were analyzed. Significant progress had been made in the research of enzymatic degradation of starch and pectin in tobacco leaves, with composite enzymes being more effective than single enzymes. The combination of laccase and protease had a better effect on treating tobacco stems than single. At the same time, treatments with acid, alkali, and steam explosion could significantly improve the enzymatic hydrolysis effect. In the process of reconstituted tobacco leaf concentrate using raw materials for tobacco thin slice preparation, biological enzymes were more effective, with advantages such as short processing time, high efficiency, and significant effects. In terms of aroma production, it was mainly achieved by producing substances that could participate in the Maillard reaction or catalyze the production of aroma precursors. In terms of harm reduction of cigarettes, it was mainly achieved by reducing the content of tobacco specific Nitrosamine and smoke free radicals and other harmful substances. In the future, in-depth research can be carried out from the aspects of structural characterization and characteristics of tobacco biomacromolecules, creation of tobacco enzyme preparations and analysis of catalytic mechanism, so as to further promote the research and application of biological enzymes in tobacco aroma enhancement, quality improvement and harm reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]