Impact of “expanding powers and strengthening counties” reform on basic public education services: Empirical evidence from Sichuan, China

The quality of a country's education system is both an indicator of its present level of development and a predictor of future economic advancement. This study intended to explore the impact of the “expanding power and strengthening counties” reform on the supply of basic public education resources. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to analyze the panel data of 114 counties in Sichuan Province from 2005 to 2017, including 78 counties with expanded powers. The study found that the “expanded power strong counties (EPSC)'' had a significant positive impact on the supply level of funding resources measured by per capita public education expenditure. The time effect of the EPSC on the supply of teacher resources for county public education was manifested as a sharp increase in the supply level in the three years before the reform. The supply level tended to be stable after four years of reform. The economic resources supply level was relatively stable in the first three years and rose sharply after four years. There was a downward trend after the reform for 8 years. The structural effect has shown a more significant incentive effect on the supply of public education resources to strong and weak counties. But compared with the weak counties with lower economic development levels, the strong counties with higher economic development levels have a more noticeable effect of their decentralization reform on improving the supply level of public education resources

Profiling of circulating serum exosomal microRNAs in elderly patients with infectious stress hyperglycaemia

Abstract Background Early diagnosis of hospitalized elderly patients with infectious stress hyperglycaemia (ISH) is clinically important, especially under the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, as without timely prevention and effective treatment, it is likely to deteriorate into septic shock, thus worsening patient survival and complications. Moreover, cumulative studies have showed that patients with COVID‐19 are reported to have a greater prevalence of hyperglycaemia. However, the underlying mechanism remained unknown. Aim and method Systematic screening of specific biomarkers of serum exosome‐derived microRNAs (sE‐miRNAs) from ISH patient has not yet been reported. In this study, sE‐miRNAs were derived from 10 elderly patients with ISH and 5 control patients with disease‐match without hyperglycaemia (non‐ISH). RNA sequencing identified that a total number of 49 sE‐miRNAs with differential expression between ISH and control group. Of which, top 22 miRNAs ranked by sensitivity × specificity were chosen for further research. Moreover, 7 out of 22 miRNAs that related to glucose metabolism or immune disorder were picked up for further validation in an independent cohort consisting of 52 participants (31 ISH and 21 non‐ISH). Result A validation analysis revealed that three miRNAs (hsa‐miR‐21‐5p, hsa‐miR‐335‐5p and hsa‐miR‐28‐3p) were statistically up‐regulated in exosomes from ISH patients. In the validation cohort and discovery cohort, the AUC of three individual miRNAs ranged from 0.73 to 0.88. A logistic model combining three miRNAs achieved an AUC of 0.96. Besides, sE‐miRNAs‐based signatures effectively characterized patients' poor clinical outcome. Survival curve analysis showed that hsa‐miR‐335‐5p, hsa‐miR‐28‐3p but not hsa‐miR‐21‐5p, were significantly closely related to mortality, and the combination of these three miRNAs could also predict patients outcome (p < .05). Conclusion This study depicted the circulating exosomal miRNAs change in ISH patient, which could be used as a promising biomarker to detect ISH at an early stage and predict patients clinical outcome