Prosthesis replacement in Mason III radial head fractures: A meta-analysis

AbstractIntroductionThis present study was to evaluate the clinical efficacy of prosthesis replacement (PR) for patients with Mason III radial head fractures (RHF) compared with open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF).MethodsWe retrieved the relevant trials up to September 2013 from several public databases, mainly including PubMed, Embase, Springer, Elsevier Science Direct, Cochrane Library, Google scholar, CNKI and Wanfang database. Weighted mean difference (WMD) or odds ratio (OR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to compare the clinical outcomes between PR and ORIF.ResultsA total of 9 studies including 365 patients with Mason III RHF (169 patients treated with PR and 196 patients treated with ORIF) were reanalyzed in the meta-analysis. The results showed that the patients with Mason III RHF receiving PR, compared with the ORIF ones, had a significantly higher percentage of postoperative excellent and good rate (OR=3.48, 95% CI=1.98 to 6.11, P<0.0001), better Broberg and Morrey elbow scores (WMD=9.79, 95% CI=4.22 to 15.36, P=0.0006) and significantly lower postoperative complications (OR=0.33, 95% CI=0.16 to 0.69, P=0.003).ConclusionsAlthough the results of this study supported the use of PR in the treatment of Mason III RHF in Chinese population with short-term outcomes, the evidences are of low quality and further studies were required for confirming these results in the longer term on other populations.Level of evidenceLevel III. Low power meta-analysis

Boosting Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks with Better Optimizer

Convolutional neural networks have outperformed humans in image recognition tasks, but they remain vulnerable to attacks from adversarial examples. Since these data are crafted by adding imperceptible noise to normal images, their existence poses potential security threats to deep learning systems. Sophisticated adversarial examples with strong attack performance can also be used as a tool to evaluate the robustness of a model. However, the success rate of adversarial attacks can be further improved in black-box environments. Therefore, this study combines a modified Adam gradient descent algorithm with the iterative gradient-based attack method. The proposed Adam Iterative Fast Gradient Method is then used to improve the transferability of adversarial examples. Extensive experiments on ImageNet showed that the proposed method offers a higher attack success rate than existing iterative methods. By extending our method, we achieved a state-of-the-art attack success rate of 95.0% on defense models

Monitoring and controlling index system research for coordinated development of public Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital in city

目的  从服务医院领导层决策的角度出发，构建适用于城市公立中医院的综合性管理控制指标体系，监控医院发展运行状况，预警医疗质量和医院安全等问题，为强化科学决策与管理，促进公立医院协调发展提供工具和思路。对象与方法  以河南省洛阳正骨医院为研究现场，通过文献分析法和专家访谈法构建中医医院管控指标框架，应用Delphi法对指标进行筛选。结果  确立了包括医疗质量、医院安全、中医特色、经营效益、创新能力和人力资源6大维度、20个二级指标，72个三级指标的城市公立中医院管控指标体系。讨论  管控指标体系可操作性强，体现了中医医院运营、发展特色，符合深化公立医院改革方向，对于加强公立中医院科学管理与考评具有重要参考和借鉴价值。Objective:To build a comprehensive monitoring and controlling index system for public Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) hospitals in city from the perspective of service hospital leadership decision, , to monitor the development of the hospital running and to warn medical quality and the security issues, in order to provide ideas for promoting the coordinated development of the hospital, and strengthening scientific management. Subjects and Methods: Based on the study on Luoyang Orthopedics Hospital, we build Chinese Medicine Hospital monitoring and controlling framework of indicators through literature analysis and expert interviews, and use Delphi method for indicators screening. Results: Establish a monitoring and controlling index system for the public TCM Hospitals in city which includes 6 dimensions such as medical quality, hospital safety, characteristics Chinese medicine treatment, operational performance, innovation ability, human resources, 20 second-class indicators, and 72 third-class indicators. Discuss: The quantification and maneuverability of monitoring and controlling index system reflects the operational needs and characteristics of TCM Hospitals and conforms to the national reform orientation for public hospitals, which probably has important reference values in reinforcing the scientific management and evaluation of the public hospitals

Ionic effect on combing of single DNA molecules and observation of their force-induced melting by fluorescence microscopy

Molecular combing is a powerful and simple method for aligning DNA molecules onto a surface. Using this technique combined with fluorescence microscopy, we observed that the length of lambda-DNA molecules was extended to about 1.6 times their contour length (unextended length, 16.2 micrometers) by the combing method on hydrophobic polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA) coated surfaces. The effects of sodium and magnesium ions and pH of the DNA solution were investigated. Interestingly, we observed force-induced melting of single DNA molecules.Comment: 12 page

Keratin/Polyvinyl Alcohol Blend Films Cross-Linked by Dialdehyde Starch and Their Potential Application for Drug Release

Feather keratin (FK) extracted from feathers represents a valuable source of biodegradable and biocompatible polymer. The aim of this study was the development and characterization of blended films based on FK and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) cross-linked by dialdehyde starch (DAS) for a potential drug release application. The compatibility of FK/PVA was improved when cross-linked by DAS: the relative crystallinity of the PVA/FK film slightly decreased, and the enthalpy value for the melting peak decreased by about 50% for the cross-linked films. The total soluble mass of all blend films in water was below 35% at 37 °C, indicating a good stability of the films in water. The results of the Rhodamine B dye (as a model drug) release tests showed that the release rates decreased with increasing DAS content. DAS-induced cross-linking improves several important properties of the FK/PVA films, such as the compactness, the compatibility, and the stability in water. These improvements offer the potential to expand the application of FK films in the biomaterial field