Trends in global clinical trial registration: an analysis of numbers of registered clinical trials in different parts of the world from 2004 to 2013.

OBJECTIVES: To analyse developments (and their causes) in the number and proportion of clinical trials that were registered in different parts of the world after the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced in 2004 that it would require registration of clinical trials as a condition for publication. SETTING: The International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). DESIGN: The ICTRP database was searched for all clinical trials that were registered up to 31 December 2013. RESULTS: The ICTRP database contained data on 186,523 interventional clinical trials. The annual number of registered clinical trials increased from 3294 in 2004 to 23,384 in 2013. Relative to the number of clinical trial research publications, the global number of registered clinical trials increased fivefold between 2004 and 2013, rising particularly strongly between 2004 and 2005. In certain regions, especially Asia, the annual number of registered trials increased more gradually and continued to increase up to 2013. In India and Japan, two countries with marked but more gradual increases, these increases only happened after several local measures were implemented that encouraged and enforced registration. In most regions, there was a trend toward trials being registered at local registries. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical trial registration has greatly improved transparency in clinical trial research. However, these improvements have not taken place equally in all parts of the world. Achieving compliance with registration requires a coalescence of global and local measures, and remains a key challenge in many countries. Poor quality of registered trial data and the inaccessibility of trial protocols, results and participant-level data further undermine the potential benefits of clinical trial registration. National and regional registries and the ICTRP have played a leading role in achieving the successes of trial registration to date and should be supported in addressing these challenges in the future

An analysis of the demand for imported foreign television programs in China

The purpose of this study is to analyze the demand for imported foreign television programs in China in the next 5 years. The Chinese TV market is a large market with 360 TV stations that need to import numerous foreign TV programs to serve a variety of audiences. This study was created via survey to discover how regular consumers think and feel about the foreign television programs and utilized field interviewing to determine their attitudes and needs for imported overseas television programs. In addition, online secondary quantitative data was applied to analyze the imported TV programs in China from 2008 - 2011. During the past decade, many international film festivals and television awards ceremonies are held in China, as well as some TV communication panels conducted in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, China has become the largest television program trading market in Asia. Thus it is important to understand the relevant trading information.M.S., Television Management -- Drexel University, 201

Human Theory of Mind Inference in Search and Rescue Tasks

The ability to make inferences about other’s mental state is referred to as having a Theory of Mind (ToM). Such ability is the foundation of many human social interactions such as empathy, teamwork, and communication. As intelligent agents being involved in diverse human-agent teams, they are also expected to be socially intelligent to become effective teammates. To provide a feasible baseline for future social intelligent agents, this paper presents a experimental study on the process of human ToM reference. Human observers’ inferences are compared with participants’ verbally reported mental state in a simulated search and rescue task. Results show that ToM inference is a challenging task even for experienced human observers

Comparison of cerebrospinal fluid space between probable normal pressure hydrocephalus and Alzheimer’s disease

IntroductionIdiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (INPH) is a potentially reversible syndrome characterized by complex symptoms, difficulty in diagnosis and a lack of detailed clinical description, and it is difficult to distinguish from Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The objective of this study was to design a method for measuring the actual amount of hydrocephalus in patients with INPH and to evaluate INPH.MethodsAll subjects underwent a 3D T1-weighted MRI. Statistical parametric mapping 12 was used for preprocessing images, statistical analysis, and voxel-based morphometric gray matter (GM) volume, white matter (WM) volume, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume analysis. The demographic and clinical characteristics of the groups were compared using a t-test for continuous variables and a chi-square test for categorical variables. Pearson’s correlation analysis and Bonferroni’s statistic-corrected one-way ANOVA were used to determine the relationship among demographic variables. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to assess the accuracy of the callosal angle (CA), WM ratio, and CSF ratio in distinguishing probable INPH from AD.ResultsThe study included 42 patients with INPH, 32 patients with AD, and 24 healthy control subjects (HCs). There were no differences among the three groups in basic characteristics except for Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). There was a correlation between the intracranial CSF ratio and CA. The WM ratio and CSF ratio in patients with INPH and AD were statistically different. Furthermore, the combination of CA, WM ratio, and CSF ratio had a greater differential diagnostic value between INPH and AD patients than CA alone.ConclusionINPH can be accurately assessed by measuring intracranial CSF ratio, and the addition of WM ratio and CSF ratio significantly improved the differential diagnostic value of probable INPH from AD compared to CA alone

Multi-tissue integrative analysis of personal epigenomes

Evaluating the impact of genetic variants on transcriptional regulation is a central goal in biological science that has been constrained by reliance on a single reference genome. To address this, we constructed phased, diploid genomes for four cadaveric donors (using long-read sequencing) and systematically charted noncoding regulatory elements and transcriptional activity across more than 25 tissues from these donors. Integrative analysis revealed over a million variants with allele-specific activity, coordinated, locus-scale allelic imbalances, and structural variants impacting proximal chromatin structure. We relate the personal genome analysis to the ENCODE encyclopedia, annotating allele- and tissue-specific elements that are strongly enriched for variants impacting expression and disease phenotypes. These experimental and statistical approaches, and the corresponding EN-TEx resource, provide a framework for personalized functional genomics

The progress and development of antidepressants

Major depressive disorder is a common emotional mood disorder disease, which mainly manifests as depression, cognitive impairment, weakened volition activities, loss of appetite, and sleep disorders. Depression is a common mental disorder affecting more than 264 million people worldwide. There are many antidepressant drugs in clinic, e.g., tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, selective serotonin (5-HT) reuptake inhibitors and selective norepinephrine (NA) reuptake inhibitors. Although great progress has been made in the research of new antidepressant drugs, the current clinical use of drugs still has many shortcomings, e.g., the unmet efficiency, slow onset of action, and multiple adverse reactions, which are difficult to meet the requirements of the increasing number of the depressed patients. This article mainly focuses on the development process of antidepressant drugs and compares their effects. Specifically, the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor as a new antidepressant has a good effect, which is worthy of further study. These results shed light for providing a research idea for the study of new antidepressants

Spatial differentiation of urban economic resilience and its influencing factors: evidence from Baidu migration big data

Under the development pattern of the “double cycle”, optimizing urban economic resilience is tremendously meaningful to improving a city’s affordability and the adaptability of the economy and to promoting the Chinese economy to develop with high quality. Based on Baidu migration big data perspective, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and multi-scale geographical weighted regression (MGWR) model were used to analyze the spatial characteristics and driving factors of economic resilience in 287 Chinese cities in 2019. The results show that (1) the number of low-level economically resilient cities is the largest and distributed continuously, while the number of high-level economically resilient cities is the lowest and distributed in clusters and blocks; (2) compared with the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, the population accumulation characteristic of the Beijing- Tianjin-Hebei region is relatively slow; (3) Both net inflow of population after spring festival and daily flow scale are significantly correlated with urban economic resilience, and the former will affect urban economic resilience; and (4) the spatial heterogeneity of each factor driving is significant, and they have different impact scales. The impact intensity is as follows: net population inflow > innovation ability > public financial expenditure > financial efficiency > urban size. First published online 07 February 202