Effect of Herbal Prescriptions in Accordance with Pattern Identification in Acute Cerebral Infarction Patients: Based on Fire-Heat Pattern

Objectives. This study was conducted to verify the necessity of corresponding prescription to the diagnosed pattern in acute cerebral infarction patients. Methods. We studied cerebral infarction patients hospitalized within 30 days after the ictus. Forty-four clinical indicators, Motricity Index (MI) score, Scandinavian Stroke Scale (SSS) score, and herbal prescriptions were checked twice, two weeks apart. The probability of each pattern was calculated based on the clinical indicators. Changes in MI score, SSS score, and the probability of fire-heat pattern were compared between the pattern-prescription correspondence group and the noncorrespondence group. Results. Increments of MI score and SSS score in the correspondence group were significantly greater than those of the noncorrespondence group (p=0.003, p=0.001) while the baseline score of the two groups showed no significant difference. Probability of fire-heat pattern decreased significantly in the correspondence group (p=0.013) while the noncorrespondence group showed no significant difference after the treatment. Conclusion. Acute cerebral infarction patients who are diagnosed as fire-heat pattern showed better improvement in dysfunctions caused by the disease when they took the pattern corresponding prescriptions. This study provides evidence for the necessity and usefulness of pattern identification in Traditional Korean Medicine

Case studies with mathematical modelling of free radical multicomponent bulk/solution polymerizations. Part 1.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of the article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Macromolecular Science, Part A: Pure and Applied Chemistry, 52:9, 659-698, DOI: 10.1080/10601325.2015.1063861In part 1 of this series of two extensive overviews of multi-component polymerization case studies, we present mathematical modelling results with experimental confirmations. The case studies are from free-radical, bulk and/or solution polymerizations, covering the range from homo- to hexa-polymerization at both regular and elevated temperature levels, i.e., without and with possible depropagation steps. The model eventually tackles complex polymerization features, ranging from conversion-time histories to more esoteric multi-component composition and/or sequence length profiles. Part 2 of the series will describe more complicated situations with depropagation and composition control policies, all relying solely on a unique monomer/polymer database of physico-chemical properties and other characteristics, with no further parameter adjustment. These database items will be cited in tables in part 2 of the series.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Canada Research Chair (CRC) program; BASF, German

Influence of Herbal Complexes Containing Licorice on Potassium Levels: A Retrospective Study

To observe the influence of these complexes on potassium levels in a clinical setting, we investigated the influence of herbal complexes containing licorice on potassium levels. We retrospectively examined the medical records of patients treated with herbal complexes containing licorice from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2010. We recorded the changes in the levels of potassium, creatinine, and blood urea nitrogen and examined the differences between before and after herbal complexes intake using a paired t-test. In addition, we investigated the prevalence of hypokalemia among these patients and reviewed such patients. We identified 360 patients who did not show significant changes in the levels of potassium and creatinine (P=0.815, 0.289). We observed hypokalemia in 6 patients. However, in 5 patients, the hypokalemia did not appear to be related to the licorice. Thus, we could suggest that herbal complexes containing licorice do not significantly influence the potassium levels in routine clinical herbal therapies. However, we propose that follow-up examination for potassium levels is required to prevent any unpredictable side effects of administration of licorice in routine herbal medicine care

Parental control and college students' depressive symptoms: A latent class analysis.

We examined how maternal and paternal parental control (helicopter parenting, behavioral control, and psychological control) among college students are related to their depressive symptoms. We collected data from college students who attended a private university in Upstate New York (n = 455) and analyzed it using three-step latent class analysis. Latent class analysis identified four parental control latent classes: weak parental control, strong psychological control, strong helicopter parenting, and strong parental control. College students in the weak parental control class reported lower depressive symptoms than those in strong psychological control and strong parental control classes. In addition, college students in the strong helicopter parenting class reported lower depressive symptoms than those in strong psychological control and strong parental control classes. College students' depressive symptoms were not significantly different between weak parental control and strong helicopter parenting classes. Future researchers are encouraged to continue to acknowledge the characteristics of different forms of parental control and their influence on college students' quality of life in the transition to adulthood, considering the unique approaches of both parents

Mining the Blogosphere for Top News Stories Identification

The analysis of query logs from blog search engines show that news-related queries occupy a significant portion of the logs. This raises a interesting research question on whether the blogosphere can be used to identify important news stories. In this paper, we present novel approaches to identify important news story headlines from the blogosphere for a given day. The proposed system consists of two components based on the language model framework, the query likelihood and the news headline prior. For the query likelihood, we propose several approaches to estimate the query language model and the news headline language model. We also suggest several criteria to evaluate the news headline prior that is the prior belief about the importance or newsworthiness of the news headline for a given day. Experimental results show that our system significantly outperforms a baseline system. Specifically, the proposed approach gives 2.62% and 10.19% further increases in MAP and P@5 over the best performing result of the TREC'09 Top Stories Identification Task.1113sciescopu

Results of paired comparison test of depressive symptoms across latent classes.

Results of paired comparison test of depressive symptoms across latent classes.</p

Associations between latent classes and depressive symptoms.

Associations between latent classes and depressive symptoms.</p