Advances in the application of action learning in nursing practice

AbstractIn this paper, we elucidate the concept and characteristics of action learning as well as summarize the reflexivity, cooperativeness, and subjectivity of this approach. Furthermore, we describe the effects and limitations of action learning when applied in nursing management, nursing education, and clinical practice, among various fields

Comparing the diagnostic accuracy of five common tumour biomarkers and CA19-9 for pancreatic cancer: a protocol for a network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy

Introduction: Surgical resection is the only curative treatment for patients with resectable pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, 80%–85% of patients present with locally advanced or metastatic unresectable pancreatic cancer at the time of diagnosis. Detection of pancreatic cancer at early stages remains a great challenge due to lack of accurate detection tests. Recommendations in existing clinical practice guidelines on early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer are inconsistent and based on limited evidence. Most of them endorse measuring serum CA19-9 as a complementary test, but also state that it is not recommended for diagnosing early pancreatic cancer. There are currently no other tumour-specific markers recommended for diagnosing early pancreatic cancer. This study aims to evaluate and compare the accuracy of five common tumour biomarkers (CA242,carcino-embryonic antigen (CEA)), CA125, microRNAs and K-ras gene mutation) and CA19-9 and their combinations for diagnosing pancreatic cancer using network meta-analysis method, and to rank these tests using a superiority index. Methods and analysis: PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials will be searched from inception to April 2017. The search will include the above-mentioned tumour biomarkers for diagnosing pancreatic cancer, including CA19-9. The risk of bias for each study will be independently assessed as low, moderate or high using criteria adapted from the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2. Network meta-analysis will be performed using STATA V.12.0 and R software V.3.4.1. The competing diagnostic tests will be ranked by a superiority index. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval and patient consent are not required since this study is a network meta-analysis based on published studies. The results of this network meta-analysis will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication

Changes of Acylating Stimulating Protein (ASP) and Blood Lipid in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

Objective: To study the changes of acylating stimulating protein (ASP) and blood lipid in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Method: There were three groups,25 cases of acute myocardial infarction patients (acute myocardial infarction group), 32 cases of coronary heart disease patients without myocardial infarction (CHD group) and 30 cases of healthy people (control group). They respectively detected the ASP, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and analyzed the correlation between them. Results: (1) ASP, TG, TC and LDL-C of acute myocardial infarction group and coronary heart disease group were significantly higher than those of control group, while HDL-C was lower than control group, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). (2) TG in coronary heart disease group was higher than that in acute myocardial infarction group, while ASP, TC, LDL-C and HDL-C had no significant difference. Conclusion: ASP and blood lipid are risk factors of CHD, ASP can be used as risk index of CHD. There was no significant difference in plasma ASP between patients with acute myocardial infarction and patients with coronary heart disease without myocardial infarction. ASP cannot be used as a surrogate marker of acute myocardial infarction

Triaqua­bis­{2-meth­oxy-6-[(phenyl­iminium­yl)meth­yl]phenolate-κO 1}manganese(II) dinitrate

The crystal structure of the title compound, [Mn(C14H13NO2)2(H2O)3](NO3)2, is comprised of two Schiff base 2-meth­oxy-6-(N-phenyl­carboximido­yl)phenol (HL) ligands and three coordinated water mol­ecules. The MnII ion lies on a twofold axis that bis­ects one water O atom. The coordination sphere of the five-coordinate Mn atom is completed by the two monodentate HL ligands and three coordinated water mol­ecules binding through their O atoms, affording a distorted tetra­gonal–pyramidal geometry. In the phenolate ligands, the hy­droxy H atom transfers to the imine N atom. This H atom is also involved in an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond that imposes a nearly planar conformation on each ligand, with dihedral angles of 2.78 (3) and 2.43 (5)° between the aromatic rings of each ligand. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

SAR Target Detection Method Based On Empirical Mode Decomposition

Abstract. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is a new signal processing theory, and it is very much fitting for non-stationary signal processing, such as radar signal. So this paper proposes the new synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image target detection algorithm after analyzing the characteristics of EMD and SAR images. The proposed method performs the EMD operation, feature extraction, election and fusion, which can reduce the affection of speckle. Experimental results show that the proposed method is very effective