Stellar color regression: a spectroscopy based method for color calibration to a few mmag accuracy and the recalibration of Stripe 82

In this paper, we propose a spectroscopy based Stellar Color Regression (SCR) method to perform accurate color calibration for modern imaging surveys, taking advantage of millions of stellar spectra now available. The method is straightforward, insensitive to systematic errors in the spectroscopically determined stellar atmospheric parameters, applicable to regions that are effectively covered by spectroscopic surveys, and capable of delivering an accuracy of a few millimagnitudes for color calibration. As an illustration, we have applied the method to the SDSS Stripe 82 data (Ivezic et al; I07 hereafter). With a total number of 23,759 spectroscopically targeted stars, we have mapped out the small but strongly correlated color zero point errors present in the photometric catalog of Stripe 82, and improve the color calibration by a factor of 2 -- 3. Our study also reveals some small but significant magnitude dependence errors in z-band for some CCDs. Such errors are likely to be present in all the SDSS photometric data. Our results are compared with those from a completely independent test based on the intrinsic colors of red galaxies presented by I07. The comparison as well as other tests shows that the SCR method has achieved a color calibration internally consistent at a level of about 5 mmag in u-g, 3 mmag in g-r, and 2 mmag in r-i and i-z, respectively. Given the power of the SCR method, we discuss briefly the potential benefits by applying the method to existing, on-going, and up-coming imaging surveys.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables, ApJ in pres

Efficacy of antiviral therapy during the second or the third trimester for preventing mother-to-child hepatitis B virus transmission: a systematic review and meta-analysis

For pregnant women with high viral load, antiviral therapy has been administered in addition to active and passive immune prophylaxis as a crucial adjunctive therapy to interrupt mother-to-child hepatitis B virus (HBV) transmission (MTCT). However, the time of antiviral therapy onset remains controversial. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to compare the efficacy of antiviral therapy during the second or the third trimester for prevention of HBV vertical transmission. We searched nine databases for observational studies and randomized controlled trials that enrolled pregnant women with positive HBsAg treated with antivirals. The outcomes of interest were maternal HBV-DNA levels prior to delivery and the rates of HBV MTCT. We included nine studies that enrolled 1,502 pregnant women. The average HBV-DNA level before treatment was approximately 8 log10 copies/ mL. Compared to the onset of antiviral intervention in the third trimester, the beginning of treatment in the second trimester distinctly reduced maternal predelivery HBV-DNA levels. However, no significant difference in HBV MTCT was found between the second and third trimester groups. Furthermore, the subgroup analysis showed that there were no significant differences between groups beginning treatment at different times (second or third trimester) with regard to HBV MTCT or other evaluated endpoints. For pregnant women with HBVDNA levels less than or equal to 8 log10 copies/mL, the beginning of antiviral treatment can be delayed until the third trimester

Two-Stage Hybrid Supervision Framework for Fast, Low-resource, and Accurate Organ and Pan-cancer Segmentation in Abdomen CT

Abdominal organ and tumour segmentation has many important clinical applications, such as organ quantification, surgical planning, and disease diagnosis. However, manual assessment is inherently subjective with considerable inter- and intra-expert variability. In the paper, we propose a hybrid supervised framework, StMt, that integrates self-training and mean teacher for the segmentation of abdominal organs and tumors using partially labeled and unlabeled data. We introduce a two-stage segmentation pipeline and whole-volume-based input strategy to maximize segmentation accuracy while meeting the requirements of inference time and GPU memory usage. Experiments on the validation set of FLARE2023 demonstrate that our method achieves excellent segmentation performance as well as fast and low-resource model inference. Our method achieved an average DSC score of 89.79\% and 45.55 \% for the organs and lesions on the validation set and the average running time and area under GPU memory-time cure are 11.25s and 9627.82MB, respectively

“准官员”的晋升机制：来自中国央企的证据

Using political mobility data for 189 leaders from China’s central state-owned enterprise (CSOEs) in 2008-2011, for the first time this paper investigates the mechanism of political turnover for leaders as quasi-government officers in CSOEs. We find that: (1) the likelihood of promotion of these leaders increases with their economic performance measured as growth rate of operating revenue, while the likelihood of demotion decreases with their economic performance; (2) these leaders with CCP central committee member have higher probability of promotion than their counterpart; (3) these leaders with Ph.D. degree have higher probability of promotion than their counterpart; (4) compared to growth rate of operating revenue, growth rate of maintaining and increasing the value of state capital has no significant effect on promotion; (5) the compensation linked to position in CSOEs has no impact on leaders’ promotion, which indicates that leaders in CSOEs look more likely government officials rather than professional managers

A Review and Reflection on the Use and Abuse of Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database

Empirical research has called for intensive use of disaggregated data. One of the most heavily used data set in studying the corporate behavior and performance in China is Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database. As we will show, this data set suffers from data matching problems as well as measurement errors, unrealistic outliers and definition ambiguities etc., all of which practically lead to research results thereupon that are at best questionable. In this article, we briefly summarize the data set, selectively review its uses in previous studies, address some critical issues regarding its usage, and propose some remedies and recommendations

“准官员”的晋升机制：来自中国央企的证据

Using political mobility data for 189 leaders from China’s central state-owned enterprise (CSOEs) in 2008-2011, for the first time this paper investigates the mechanism of political turnover for leaders as quasi-government officers in CSOEs. We find that: (1) the likelihood of promotion of these leaders increases with their economic performance measured as growth rate of operating revenue, while the likelihood of demotion decreases with their economic performance; (2) these leaders with CCP central committee member have higher probability of promotion than their counterpart; (3) these leaders with Ph.D. degree have higher probability of promotion than their counterpart; (4) compared to growth rate of operating revenue, growth rate of maintaining and increasing the value of state capital has no significant effect on promotion; (5) the compensation linked to position in CSOEs has no impact on leaders’ promotion, which indicates that leaders in CSOEs look more likely government officials rather than professional managers

Abnormal Plasma Levels of Steroids and Their Ratios in Patients With Prurigo Nodularis: A Pilot Study

Background: It has been suggested that cortisol levels are abnormal in chronic urticaria and atopic dermatitis, but other steroids, such as dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and testosterone, are still unknown, and whether these hormones affect the maintenance of skin homeostasis or the pathogenesis of skin diseases is not fully understood. Limited data are available on steroid levels in prurigo nodularis (PN)-related research, and no study has examined the association between pruritus severity and steroid levels in PN patients.Aims: This pilot study aimed to investigate the differences in the levels of five steroids combined with their ratios in plasma between PN patients and controls and to examine the associations between the biomarkers and pruritus severity.Methods: Plasma concentrations of five steroids, including cortisol, cortisone, testosterone, progesterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), in 36 patients with PN were compared with concentrations in thirty-six and matched healthy controls. The concentrations of steroids were quantitated using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The PN symptoms, including pruritus severity, pain, and life quality, were assessed with the use of the visual analog scale, prurigo score index, numerical rating scale, and verbal rating scale and dermatology life quality index scores.Results: In comparison with controls, PN patients had lower levels of plasma cortisol and cortisone, which negatively correlated with PN symptoms. PN patients had higher levels of cortisone and testosterone to cortisol, which positively correlated with pruritus severity. Additionally, there were no significant differences in plasma concentrations of DHEA and testosterone between the two groups. We found no correlation between plasma concentrations of DHEA and testosterone and pruritus severity.Conclusion: This pilot study suggests that there may be abnormalities in peripheral blood levels of cortisol, and cortisone and the ratios of cortisone and testosterone to cortisol in patients with PN, and they are related to pruritus severity. The plasma concentrations of testosterone and DHEA may be not abnormal in PN patients and may not be associated with pruritus severity