The Chinese version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ (PedsQL™) 3.0 Asthma Module: reliability and validity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has been recognized as an important health outcome measurement for pediatric patients. One of the most promising instruments in measuring pediatric HRQOL emerged in recent years is the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL™). The PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module, one of the PedsQL™disease-specific scales, was designed to measure HRQOL dimensions specifically tailored for pediatric asthma. The present study is aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module was translated into Chinese following the PedsQL™ Measurement Model Translation Methodology. The Chinese version scale was administered to 204 children with asthma and 337 parents of children with asthma from four Triple A hospitals. The psychometric properties were then evaluated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The percentage of missing value for each item of the scale ranged from 0.00% to 8.31%. All child self-report subscales and parent proxy-report subscales approached or exceeded the minimum reliability standard of 0.70 for alpha coefficient, except 3 subscales of Young Child (aged 5-7) self-report (alphas ranging from 0.59 to 0.68). Test-retest reliability was satisfactory with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) which exceeded the recommended standard of 0.80 in all subscales. Correlation coefficients between items and their hypothesized subscales were higher than those with other subscales. The PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module distinguished between outpatients and inpatients. Patients with mild asthma reported higher scores than those with moderate/severe asthma in majority of subscales. The intercorrelations among the PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module subscales and the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales were in medium to large effect size. The child self-report scores were consistent with the parent proxy-report scores.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The Chinese version of the PedsQL™ 3.0 Asthma Module has acceptable psychometric properties, except the internal consistency reliability for Young Child (aged 5-7) self-report. Further studies should be focused on testing responsiveness of the Chinese version scale in longitudinal studies, evaluating the reliability and validity of the scale for the patients with severe asthma or teens independently, and assessing HRQOL of children with asthma in other areas.</p

Automated 3D Scenes Reconstruction Using Multiple Stereo Pairs from Portable Four-Camera Photographic Measurement System

An effective automatic 3D reconstruction method using a portable four-camera photographic measurement system (PFCPMS) is proposed. By taking advantage of the complementary stereo information from four cameras, a fast and highly accurate feature point matching algorithm is developed for 3D reconstruction. Specifically, we first utilize a projection method to obtain a large number of dense feature points. And then a reduction and clustering treatment is applied to simplify the Delaunay triangulation process and reconstruct a 3D model for each scene. In addition, a 3D model stitching approach is proposed to further improve the performance of the limited field-of-view for image-based method. The experimental results tested on the 172 cave in Mogao Grottoes indicate that the proposed method is effective to reconstruct a 3D scene with a low-cost four-camera photographic measurement system

Effect of budesonide aerosol inhalation on postoperative complications and foreign body sensation in the throat of goiter resection patients

Purpose: To study the effect of budesonide aerosol inhalation on postoperative complications and foreign-body sensation in the throat of patients who underwent goiter resection.Methods: One hundred and twenty patients who underwent goiter resection at The Affiliated Hospital of Putian University (Fujian, China) from January 2019 to January 2020 were included in the study, and then equally and randomly assigned to groups A and B. During the perioperative period, group A patients were given budesonide aerosol inhalation, while group B patients received aerosol inhalation of equivalent volume of normal salineectively. Postoperative complication rate (CR), complication pain scores, scores on mucosal response in the throat, and scores on foreign body sensation in the throat were determined for both groups.Results: Postoperative complications in patients were hoarseness, sore throat and cough. Group A had significantly lower postoperative CR, lower complication pain scores, lower scores on mucosal response in the throat, and lower scores on foreign body sensation in the throat, when compared to group B (p &lt; 0.001).Conclusion: Budesonide aerosol inhalation in patients who underwent goiter resection is effective in relieving throat injury from general anesthesia, minimizing likelihood of postoperative complications, and easing foreign-body sensation in the throat. Thus, this strategy may be suitable for the management of postoperative complications

An Efficient Feature Extraction Scheme for Mobile Anti-Shake in Augmented Reality

In recent years, augmented reality on mobile devices has become popular. Mobile shakes are the most typical type of interference in mobile augmented reality. To negate such interference, anti-shake is an urgent requirement. To enhance anti-shake efficiency, we propose an efficient feature extraction scheme for mobile anti-shake in augmented reality. The scheme directly detects corners to avoid the non-extreme constraint such that the efficiency of feature extraction is improved. Meanwhile, the scheme only updates the added corners during mobile shakes, which improves the accuracy of feature extraction. In the experiments, the memory consumption of existing methods is almost double compared to that in our scheme. Further, the runtime of our scheme is only half of the runtime of the existing methods. The experimental results demonstrate that our scheme performs better than the existing classic methods on mobile anti-shake in terms of memory consumption, efficiency, and accuracy

The Chinese version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ (PedsQL™) Family Impact Module: cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A pediatric chronic health condition not only influences a child's life, but also has impacts on parent health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and family functioning. To provide care and social support to these families, a psychometrically well-developed instrument for measuring these impacts is of great importance. The present study is aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the PedsQL™ Family Impact Module.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The cross-cultural adaptation of the PedsQL™ Family Impact Module was performed following the PedsQL™ Measurement Model Translation Methodology. The Chinese version of the PedsQL™ Family Impact Module was administered to 136 parents of children with asthma and 264 parents of children with heart disease from four Triple A hospitals. The psychometric properties such as feasibility, internal consistency reliability, item-subscale correlations and construct validity were evaluated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The percentage of missing item responses was less than 0.1% for both asthma and heart disease sample groups. The Chinese version of the PedsQL™ Family Impact Module showed ceiling effects but had acceptable reliability (Cronbach's Alpha Coefficients were higher than 0.7 in all the subscales except "Daily Activities" in the asthma sample group). There were higher correlation coefficients between items and their hypothesized subscales than those with other subscales. The asthma sample group reported higher parent HRQOL and family functioning than the heart disease sample group. In the heart disease sample group, parents of outpatients reported higher parent HRQOL and family functioning than parents of inpatients. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the instrument had marginally acceptable construct validity with some Goodness-of-Fit indices not reaching the standard indicating acceptable model fit.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The Chinese version of the PedsQL™ Family Impact Module has adequate psychometric properties and could be used to assess the impacts of pediatric asthma or pediatric heart disease on parent HRQOL and family functioning in China. This instrument should be field tested on parents of children with other chronic medical conditions in other areas. Construct validity tested by confirmatory factor analysis and test-retest reliability should be further assessed.</p

Bergenin suppresses the growth of colorectal cancer cells by inhibiting PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway

Purpose: To investigate anticancer effects of bergenin on human colorectal cancer cell lines.Methods: Human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line HCT116 was treated with various concentrations of bergenin for 24 and 48 h. Cell viability, apoptosis, cell cycle arrest and reactive oxygen species (ROS) level were analyzed by MTT, flow cytometry and fluorescent dye assays, respectively. DNA damage-associated protein expressions were analyzed by Western blotting.Results: Bergenin significantly suppressed the viability of HCT116 cells. Moreover, bergenin induced cells to accumulate in G1 phase and resulted in DNA breaks in HCT116 cells. It also led to marked accumulation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), a breaker of DNA strand in HCT116 cells. Interestingly, bergenin inhibited PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.Conclusion: Bergenin effectively suppresses the growth of colorectal  adenocarcinoma by inducing generation of intracellular ROS, DNA damage and consequent G1 phase arrest via inhibition of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.Keywords: Bergenin, Colorectal cancer, DNA damage, Cell cycle arrest,  PI3K/AKT/mTO

Synergistic and complementary safety supervision mode in coal mines: a case of coal mining companies in China

Učinkovit sigurnosni nadzor jamči sigurnu proizvodnju rudnika ugljena. Međutim, tradicionalni način nadzora u kineskim rudnicima ugljena ne može u potpunosti ostvariti sinergijske i dopunske učinke elemenata (tj. sigurnosne inspektore) sustava sigurnosnog nadzora, što uzrokuje informaciju, primjenu i resurs kao izolirani otočić. Kako bi se prevladali ovi nedostaci i poboljšala učinkovitost sigurnosnog nadzora, u ovom je istraživanju istražena sinergijska i dodatna metoda sigurnosnog nadzora (SCSSM - Synergistic and Complementary Safety Supervision Mode). Nakon analize primjenjivosti sinergijske i dopunske ideje upravljanja, ova studija kreativno je predstavila predloženu ideju sigurnosnog nadzora u rudniku ugljena. Na osnovu nedostataka postojećeg načina sigurnosnog nadzora i prednosti sinergijskog i dopunskog upravljanja, uspostavljen je SCSSM i osigurana njegova nedvojbena metoda rada. Konačno, novi način sigurnosnog nadzora primijenjen je u Xinwen Mining Groupu Xin Julong Co., Ltd. s određenom metodom primjene i usporednom analizom. Rezultati pokazuju da novi način sigurnosnog nadzora koristi manje resursa sigurnosnog nadzora nego tradicionalni. U međuvremenu, poboljšani su učinkovitost provjere i ispravljanja skrivenih opasnosti te ograničeni kapacitet projekta. Štoviše, broj nesreća je smanjen, što ima značajnu sigurnosnu, ekonomsku i društvenu korist. Ova studija može ostvariti sinergijske i dopunske učinke elemenata sigurnosnog nadzora radi poboljšanja razine nadzora nad sigurnošću rudnika ugljena te ima veliku vrijednost popularizacije i primjene.Effective safety supervision guarantees coal mine safety production. However, the traditional supervision mode in Chinese coal mines cannot fully realize the synergistic and complementary effects of elements (i.e., safety inspectors) of safety supervision system, which causes information-isolated island, application-isolated island, and resource-isolated island. To overcome these deficiencies and improve the efficiency of safety supervision, a synergistic and complementary safety supervision mode (SCSSM) was explored in this study. After the applicability analysis of the synergistic and complementary management idea, this study creatively introduced the proposed idea to the safety supervision in the coal mine. On the basis of the deficiencies of the existing safety supervision mode and the advantages of synergistic and complementary management, the SCSSM was then established and its definite operation method was also provided. Finally, the new safety supervision mode was applied in Xinwen Mining Group Xin Julong Co., Ltd. with definite implementation method and comparative analysis. Results show that the new safety supervision mode uses lesser safety supervision resources than the traditional one. Meanwhile, the checking and rectification efficiency of hidden dangers and the project qualified rate are improved. Moreover, the number of accidents is reduced, which has significant safety, economic, and social benefits. This study can realize the synergistic and complementary effects of elements of safety supervision to improve the level of coal mine safety supervision and has high value of popularization and application