Sustaining Quality Assessment Processes in User-Centred Health Information Portals

Information portals are quality-controlled intermediaries, through which consumers can access online information of high relevance and quality. Developing and maintaining a portal’s content repository involves resource identification, selection and description processes undertaken by domain experts. Among these processes, the less standardised, manual quality assessment procedures are highlighted, where new solutions are imperative to solve its scalability and sustainability issues. Results of a qualitative analysis implicate that quality assessment is fundamentally a subjective issue that needs human intervention. For this reason, this research proposes a semi-automated quality assessment approach, in which a user-centred quality framework, an indicator-based quality model and a decision support tool are devised to address the identified domain expert needs for intelligent support. The system development methodology within design science framework is adopted by this research and the tool prototyping within the context of health information portals is underway to evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed approach

Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Success in Female Entrepreneurship

At present China is in the period of a market economy and modern social transition. Why has the number of women entrepreneurs increased? What leads women to leave their jobs and start their own businesses? Social capital is fundamental resources for women to be self-employed, with key resources of mobilization in female entrepreneur being directly determined by her amount of social capital which concerns corporate existence and business development. However, for a longtime, due to structural and other factors, opportunities are extremely limited for women access to social capital and gender differences in social capital set women entrepreneurs in a marginal status. Therefore，The purpose of the study was to identify the perceived personal characteristics and social capital within each woman who and how pursued entrepreneurship. Constructing social capital and enhancing the organizations network resources for the expansion of women entrepreneurship space has become essential in the context of constructing harmonious society

Oximetry with the NMR signals of hemoglobin Val E11 and Tyr C7

The NMR visibility of the signals from erythrocyte hemoglobin (Hb) presents an opportunity to assess the vascular PO2 (partial pressure of oxygen) in vivo to gather insight into the regulation of O2 transport, especially in contracting muscle tissue. Some concerns, however, have arisen about the validity of using the Val E11 signal as an indicator of PO2, since its intensity depends on tertiary structural changes, in contrast to the quaternary structure changes associated with relaxed (R) and tense (T) transition during O2 binding. We have examined the Val E11 and Tyr C7 signal intensity as a function of Hb saturation by developing an oximetry system, which permits the comparative analysis of the NMR and spectrophotometric measurements. The spectrophotometric assay defines the Hb saturation level at a given PO2 and yields standard oxygen-binding curves. Under defined PO2 and Hb saturation values, the NMR measurements have determined that the Val E11 signal, as well as the Tyr C7 signal, tracks closely Hb saturation and can therefore serve as a vascular oxygen biomarker

Single fiber laser based wavelength tunable excitation for CRS spectroscopy

We demonstrate coherent Raman spectroscopy (CRS) using a tunable excitation source based on a single femtosecond fiber laser. The frequency difference between the pump and the Stokes pulses was generated by soliton self-frequency shifting (SSFS) in a nonlinear optical fiber. Spectra of C-H stretches of cyclohexane were measured simultaneously by stimulated Raman gain (SRG) and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) and compared. We demonstrate the use of spectral focusing through pulse chirping to improve CRS spectral resolution. We analyze the impact of pulse stretching on the reduction of power efficiency for CARS and SRG. Due to chromatic dispersion in the fiber-optic system, the differential pulse delay is a function of Stokes wavelength. This differential delay has to be accounted for when performing spectroscopy in which the Stokes wavelength needs to be scanned. CARS and SRG signals were collected and displayed in two dimensions as a function of both the time delay between chirped pulses and the Stokes wavelength, and we demonstrate how to find the stimulated Raman spectrum from the two-dimensional plots. Strategies of system optimization consideration are discussed in terms of practical applications

Two variants on T2DM susceptible gene HHEX are associated with CRC risk in a Chinese population

Increasing amounts of evidence has demonstrated that T2DM (Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus) patients have increased susceptibility to CRC (colorectal cancer). As HHEX is a recognized susceptibility gene in T2DM, this work was focused on two SNPs in HHEX, rs1111875 and rs7923837, to study their association with CRC. T2DM patients without CRC (T2DM-only, n=300), T2DM with CRC (T2DM/CRC, n=135), cancer-free controls (Control, n=570), and CRC without T2DM (CRC-only, n=642) cases were enrolled. DNA samples were extracted from the peripheral blood leukocytes of the patients and sequenced by direct sequencing. The χ(2) test was used to compare categorical data. We found that in T2DM patients, rs1111875 but not the rs7923837 in HHEX gene was associated with the occurrence of CRC (p= 0.006). for rs1111875, TC/CC patients had an increased risk of CRC (p=0.019, OR=1.592, 95%CI=1.046-2.423). Moreover, our results also indicated that the two variants of HEEX gene could be risk factors for CRC in general population, independent on T2DM (p< 0.001 for rs1111875, p=0.001 for rs7923837). For rs1111875, increased risk of CRC was observed in TC or TC/CC than CC individuals (p<0.001, OR= 1.780, 95%CI= 1.385-2.287; p<0.001, OR= 1.695, 95%CI= 1.335-2.152). For rs7923837, increased CRC risk was observed in AG, GG, and AG/GG than AA individuals (p< 0.001, OR= 1.520, 95%CI= 1.200-1.924; p=0.036, OR= 1.739, 95%CI= 0.989-3.058; p< 0.001, OR= 1.540, 95%CI= 1.225-1.936). This finding highlights the potentially functional alteration with HHEX rs1111875 and rs7923837 polymorphisms may increase CRC susceptibility. Risk effects and the functional impact of these polymorphisms need further validation

Categorical encoding of decision variables in orbitofrontal cortex

A fundamental and recurrent question in systems neuroscience is that of assessing what variables are encoded by a given population of neurons. Such assessments are often challenging because neurons in one brain area may encode multiple variables, and because neuronal representations might be categorical or non-categorical. These issues are particularly pertinent to the representation of decision variables in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)-an area implicated in economic choices. Here we present a new algorithm to assess whether a neuronal representation is categorical or non-categorical, and to identify the encoded variables if the representation is indeed categorical. The algorithm is based on two clustering procedures, one variable-independent and the other variable-based. The two partitions are then compared through adjusted mutual information. The present algorithm overcomes limitations of previous approaches and is widely applicable. We tested the algorithm on synthetic data and then used it to examine neuronal data recorded in the primate OFC during economic decisions. Confirming previous assessments, we found the neuronal representation in OFC to be categorical in nature. We also found that neurons in this area encode the value of individual offers, the binary choice outcome and the chosen value. In other words, during economic choice, neurons in the primate OFC encode decision variables in a categorical way