Research & practice of digital technology to boost the reform of English teaching in secondary vocational schools in key counties

There are many researches on the education reform of primary and secondary schools and universities in China, but there is almost no research on the reform of English teaching in secondary vocational education of key national minority counties in Guangxi. This paper discusses the introduction of innovative English classroom teaching models and teaching methods in developed areas, promoting the application of digital technology in secondary vocational English teaching, focusing on the reform of student-centered classroom teaching model, and improves the English learning performance and English level of secondary vocational students in key counties supported by the Nation. This article has mainly used data literature summarization, empirical research method, comparative analysis methods. It can get the result that basing on the requirements of secondary vocational talents under the background of digital age, this thesis extracts the core elements of improving the quality and level of English teaching in secondary vocational schools and carries out effective classroom teaching reform. There is practical significance for the new measures to improve the level of minority secondary vocational education and promote educational equity

Learning Two-Stream CNN for Multi-Modal Age-related Macular Degeneration Categorization

This paper tackles automated categorization of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a common macular disease among people over 50. Previous research efforts mainly focus on AMD categorization with a single-modal input, let it be a color fundus image or an OCT image. By contrast, we consider AMD categorization given a multi-modal input, a direction that is clinically meaningful yet mostly unexplored. Contrary to the prior art that takes a traditional approach of feature extraction plus classifier training that cannot be jointly optimized, we opt for end-to-end multi-modal Convolutional Neural Networks (MM-CNN). Our MM-CNN is instantiated by a two-stream CNN, with spatially-invariant fusion to combine information from the fundus and OCT streams. In order to visually interpret the contribution of the individual modalities to the final prediction, we extend the class activation mapping (CAM) technique to the multi-modal scenario. For effective training of MM-CNN, we develop two data augmentation methods. One is GAN-based fundus / OCT image synthesis, with our novel use of CAMs as conditional input of a high-resolution image-to-image translation GAN. The other method is Loose Pairing, which pairs a fundus image and an OCT image on the basis of their classes instead of eye identities. Experiments on a clinical dataset consisting of 1,099 color fundus images and 1,290 OCT images acquired from 1,099 distinct eyes verify the effectiveness of the proposed solution for multi-modal AMD categorization

The Expected Number of Background Disease Events during Mass Immunization in China

It is critical to distinguish events that are temporarily associated with, but not caused by, vaccination from those caused by vaccination during mass immunization. We performed a literature search in China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Pubmed databases. The number of coincident events was calculated based on its incidence rate and periods after receipt of a dose of hypothesized vaccine. We included background incidences of Guillain-Barre´ syndrome, anaphylaxis, seizure, sudden adult death syndrome, sudden cardiac death, spontaneous abortion, and preterm labour or delivery. In a cohort of 10 million individuals, 7.71 cases of Guillain-Barre´ syndrome would be expected to occur within six weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases. Even for rare events, a large number of events can be expected in a short period because of the large population targeted for immunization. These findings may encourage health authorities to screen the safety of vaccines against unpredictable pathogens

A quantitative analysis of the mass media coverage of genomics medicine in China: A call for science journalism in the developing world

Science journalism is a previously neglected but rapidly growing area of scholarship in postgenomics medicine and socio-technical studies of knowledge-based innovations. Science journalism can help evaluate the quantity and quality of information flux between traditional scientific expert communities and the broader public, for example, in personalized medicine education. Newspapers can play a crucial role in science and health communication, and more importantly, in framing public engagement. However, research on the role of newspaper coverage of genomics-related articles has not been readily available in resource-limited settings. As genomics is rapidly expanding worldwide, this gap in newspaper reportage in China is therefore an important issue. In order to bridge this gap, we investigated the coverage of genomics medicine in eight major Chinese national newspapers, using the China Core Newspapers Full-text Database (CCND) and articles in scientific journals in PubMed from 2000 to 2011. Coverage of genomics medicine in these eight official government Chinese newspapers has remained low, with only 12 articles published per newspaper per year between 2000 and 2011. Between 2000 and 2011, over a 40-fold difference was observed in the number of genomics medicine-related articles in PubMed, as compared to that in newspapers. The numbers of genomics-related articles among the eight major newspapers from 2000 to 2011 were significantly different (p=0.001). Commentary/mini reviews and articles about gene therapy for specific diseases were most frequently published in 2006 and 2011. In parallel, we observed that cancer gene therapy, new susceptibility gene locus, and gene technology revolution were the top three thematic strands addressed in the newspapers, even though their volume remained low. This study reports on the under-representation of newspaper coverage of genomics medicine in China, despite the vast growth of scientific articles in journals in this knowledge domain. This underscores the need to enhance collaboration between scientists, medical professionals, and journalists as an important strand of overall communications efforts in disseminating genomic medicine knowledge to larger audiences. Yet a substantive question remains to be examined: would traditional journalism, alone, be adequate to address the advances and challenges in genomics medicine in the media? Conversely, should we invest in science journalism programs as a subspecialty in biomedicine so scientists and clinicians acquire the twin scholarship of science/clinical medicine and journalism in their formative education

The Uyghur population and genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes: potential role for variants in CAPN10, APM1 and FUT6 genes

Genome-wide association studies have successfully identified over 70 loci associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in multiple populations of European ancestry. However, the risk attributable to an individual variant is modest and does not yet provide convincing evidence for clinical utility. Association between these established genetic variants and T2DM in general populations is hitherto understudied in the isolated populations, such as the Uyghurs, resident in Hetian, far southern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. In this case–control study, we genotyped 13 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 10 genes associated with diabetes in 130 cases with T2DM and 135 healthy controls of Uyghur, a Chinese minority ethnic group. Three of the 13 SNPs demonstrated significant association with T2DM in the Uyghur population. There were significant differences between the T2DM patients and controls in the risk allele distributions of rs3792267 (CAPN10) (P = 0.002), rs1501299 (APM1) (P = 0.017), and rs3760776 (FUT6) (P = 0.031). Allelic carriers of rs3792267-A, rs1501299-T, and rs3760776-T had a 2.24-fold [OR (95% CI): 1.35–3.71], 0.59-fold [OR (95% CI): 0.39–0.91], 0.57-fold [OR (95% CI): 0.34–0.95] increased risk for T2DM respectively. We further confirmed that the cumulative risk allelic scores calculated from the 13 susceptibility loci for T2DM differed significantly between the T2DM patients and controls (P = 0.001), and the effect of obesity/overweight on T2DM was only observed in the subjects with a combined risk allelic score under a value of 17. This study observed that the SNPs rs3792267 in CAPN10, rs1501299 in APM1, and rs3760776 in FUT6 might serve as potential susceptible biomarkers for T2DM in Uyghurs. The cumulative risk allelic scores of multiple loci with modest individual effects are also significant risk factors in Uyghurs for T2DM, particularly among non-obese individuals. This is the first investigation having observed/found genetic variations on genetic loci functionally linked with glycosylation associated with the risk of T2DM in a Uyghur population. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Foundation for Cellular and Molecular Medicine

The indirect efficacy comparison of DNA methylation in sputum for early screening and auxiliary detection of lung cancer: A meta-analysis

Background: DNA methylation in sputum has been an attractive candidate biomarker for the non-invasive screening and detection of lung cancer. Materials and Methods: Databases including PubMed, Ovid, Cochrane library, Web of Science databases, Chinese Biological Medicine (CBM), Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, Vip Databases and Google Scholar were searched to collect the diagnostic trials on aberrant DNA methylation in the screening and detection of lung cancer published until 1 December 2016. Indirect comparison meta-analysis was used to evaluate the diagnostic value of the included candidate genes. Results: The systematic literature search yielded a total of 33 studies including a total of 4801 subjects (2238 patients with lung cancer and 2563 controls) and covering 32 genes. We identified that methylated genes in sputum samples for the early screening and auxiliary detection of lung cancer yielded an overall sensitivity of 0.46 (0.41–0.50) and specificity of 0.83 (0.80–0.86). Combined indirect comparisons identified the superior gene of SOX17 (sensitivity: 0.84, specificity: 0.88), CDO1 (sensitivity: 0.78, specificity: 0.67), ZFP42 (sensitivity: 0.87, specificity: 0.63) and TAC1 (sensitivity: 0.86, specificity: 0.75). Conclusions: The present meta-analysis demonstrates that methylated SOX17, CDO1, ZFP42, TAC1, FAM19A4, FHIT, MGMT, p16, and RASSF1A are potential superior biomarkers for the screening and auxiliary detection of lung cancer

The Genetic Associations and Epistatic Effects of the CCR5 Promoter and CCR2-V64I Polymorphisms on Susceptibility to HIV-1 Infection in a Northern Han Chinese Population

The outcome of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection and course to AIDS are variable among individuals. Both chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) and CCR2 gene polymorphisms play essential roles in the susceptibility of HIV-1 infection. To investigate the main and epistatic effects of the CCR5 promoter and CCR2-V64I polymorphisms on HIV-1 infection in the Northern Han Chinese, subjects of 91 HIV-1-infected patients and 91 health controls were recruited. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CCR5 promoter region and CCR2-V64I variants were genotyped. In the single-locus analysis, CCR5 58755-G and CCR5 59653-T alleles were significantly associated with HIV-1 infection (odds ratio [OR]=0.529, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.295-0.948; OR=1.710, 95% CI: 1.039-2.814). After adjustment with age and gender, subjects with the CCR5 59653-CT genotype showed the increased risk of HIV-1 infection compared with those with the wild-type CC genotype (adjusted OR=2.502; 95% CI: 1.332-4.698). No positive association was observed in other SNPs. Haplotype-based association analysis revealed that the haplotype TATGC was associated with the susceptibility to HIV-1 infection (p=0.003). Besides, we found the significant epistatic effects between the CCR5 58755-A/G and CCR5 59029-A/G polymorphisms associated with the lower risk of HIV-1 infection. In addition, we also identified the best three-factor interaction model, including the CCR5 58755-A/G, 59029-A/G, and CCR2-V64I polymorphisms, indicating that there were also strong gene-gene interactions between the CCR5 promoter and CCR2 polymorphisms on the susceptibility of HIV-1 infection. These findings contribute to understanding the genetic mechanism for the susceptibility of HIV-1 infection in Northern Han Chinese

Profiling Plasma Peptides for the Identification of Potential Ageing Biomarkers in Chinese Han Adults

Advancing age is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and cancer, and shows significant inter-individual variability. To identify ageing-related biomarkers we performed a proteomic analysis on 1890 Chinese Han individuals, 1136 males and 754 females, aged 18 to 82 years, using weak cation exchange magnetic bead based MALDI-TOF-MS analysis. The study identified 44 peptides which varied in concentration in different age groups. In particular, apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA1) concentration gradually increased between 18 to 50 years of age, the levels of fibrinogen alpha (FGA) decreased over the same age span, while albumin (ALB) was significantly degraded in middle-aged individuals. In addition, the plasma peptide profiles of FGA and four other unidentified proteins were found to be gender-dependent. Plasma proteins such as FGA, ALB and ApoA1 are significantly correlated with age in the Chinese Han population and could be employed as indicative ageingrelated biomarkers

Needs and views on healthy lifestyles for the prevention of dementia and the potential role for mobile health (mHealth) interventions in China: A qualitative study

Objectives Over the coming decades, China is expected to face the largest worldwide increase in dementia incidence. Mobile health (mHealth) may improve the accessibility of dementia prevention strategies, targeting lifestyle-related risk factors. Our aim is to explore the needs and views of Chinese older adults regarding healthy lifestyles to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) and dementia through mHealth, supporting the Prevention of Dementia using Mobile Phone Applications (PRODEMOS) study. Design Qualitative semi-structured interview study, using thematic analysis. Setting Primary and secondary care in Beijing and Tai’an, China. Participants Older adults aged 55 and over without dementia with an increased dementia risk, possessing a smartphone. Participants were recruited through seven hospitals participating in the PRODEMOS study, purposively sampled on age, sex, living area and history of CVD and diabetes. Results We performed 26 interviews with participants aged 55–86 years. Three main themes were identified: valuing a healthy lifestyle, sociocultural expectations and need for guidance. First, following a healthy lifestyle was generally deemed important. In addition to generic healthy behaviours, participants regarded certain specific Chinese lifestyle practices as important to prevent disease. Second, the sociocultural context played a crucial role, as an important motive to avoid disease was to limit the care burden put on family members. However, time-consuming family obligations and other social values could also impede healthy behaviours such as regular physical activity. Finally, there seemed to be a need for reliable and personalised lifestyle advice and for guidance from a health professional. Conclusions The Chinese older adults included in this study highly value a healthy lifestyle. They express a need for personalised lifestyle support in order to adopt healthy behaviours. Potentially, the PRODEMOS mHealth intervention can meet these needs through blended lifestyle support to improve risk factors for dementia and CVD