Objective:To assess the effectiveness of a 6-month Ba Duan Jin exercise program in improving the balance of community-dwelling older adults.Methods:A two arms, parallel-group, cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted in 1 028 community residents aged 60-80 years in 40 communities in 5 provinces of China. Participants in the intervention group (20 communities, 523 people) received Ba Duan Jin exercise 5 days/week, 1 hour/day for 6 months, and three times of falls prevention health education, and the control group (20 communities, 505 people) received falls prevention health education same as the intervention group. The Berg balance scale (BBS) score was the leading outcome indicator, and the secondary outcome indicators included the length of time of standing on one foot (with eyes open and closed), standing in a tandem stance (with eyes open and closed), the closed circle test, and the timed up to test.Results:A total of 1 028 participants were included in the final analysis, including 731 women (71.11%) and 297 men (28.89%), and the age was (69.87±5.67) years. After the 3-month intervention, compared with the baseline data, the BBS score of the intervention group was significantly higher than the control group by 3.05 (95% CI: 2.23-3.88) points ( P<0.001). After the 6-month intervention, compared with the baseline data, the BBS score of the intervention group was significantly higher than the control group by 4.70 (95% CI: 4.03-5.37) points ( P<0.001). Ba Duan Jin showed significant improvement ( P<0.05) in all secondary outcomes after 6 months of exercise in the intervention group compared with the control group. Conclusions:This study showed that Ba Duan Jin exercise can improve balance in community-dwelling older adults aged 60-80. The longer the exercise time, the better the improvement.

Objective:This study aims to obtain the prevalence and features associated with Violence Against Children (VAC) in China and, thus, formulate a prevention strategy.Methods:The mortality-related data of VAC was sourced from the National Disease Surveillance Points System (DSP) during 2013-2021. We analyzed the DSP data regarding children aged 0-17 years old who died from violence. The hospital cases of VAC was sourced from the National Injury Surveillance System (NISS), 2013-2021. We analyzed the data from NISS with the parameter of "intentional injury" caused by VAC in children aged between 0-17 years. Using robust linear regression, we analyze the time trend in the proportion of violence incidence. To understand the variations in the incidence of different types of violence across genders, we apply the chi-square test and adjusted Pearson residuals.Results:The overall trend of death caused by VAC has declined; it was reduced to 0.14/100 000 in 2021 from 0.33/100 000 in 2013. In 2021, male VAC mortality (0.15/100 000) was higher than females (0.13/100 000). The proportion of VAC cases to all injury cases has declined from 3.34% in 2013 to 2.29% in 2021. Among 9 344 VAC cases supervised by hospitals in 2021, the number of males (7 503 cases) was around 4 times that of females (1 841 cases), and the top three modes of violence were blunt tools (64.77%), falls (7.46%) and sharp instruments (6.18%), and 45 cases of sexual violence included 38 girls and 7 boys.Conclusions:The declining death rate due to VAC may be related to the benign development of Chinese society. Prevention strategies targeting training in parenting skills and problem-solving should be prioritized.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy and safety of different antiviral and antifibrotic regimens in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and hepatic fibrosis and the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) associated with these therapies. METHODS: A total of 840 patients with CHB and concurrent hepatic fibrosis, who received antiviral therapy in Nanfang Hospital between June, 2010 and June, 2018, were enrolled in this follow-up cohort study. The patients were assigned to 3 cohorts matched for gender, age (difference≤5 years), HBeAg status and liver stiffness measurement (LSM) for treatment with one of the 3 antiviral drugs, namely entecavir, tenofovir dipivoxil and adefovir dipivoxil; each cohort was divided into 2 groups, with one of the groups having a combined treatment with Fufang Biejiaruangan tablet. The cumulative negative conversion rate of HBV DNA, normalization rate of ALT, hepatic fibrosis regression and the incidence of HCC were compared among the 3 cohorts and across the 6 groups at 144 weeks. RESULTS: A total of 749 patients were available to follow-up at 144 weeks. Compared with the baseline data, the cumulative negative conversion rate of HBV DNA increased gradually and the abnormal rate of ALT decreased significantly over time during the treatment in all the 6 groups (all < 0.001). Compared with the any of the antiviral drugs used alone, the combined treatments all resulted in significantly better antifibrotic effects (χ=11.345, χ=10.160, χ=6.358; all < 0.05). At 144 weeks, the incidence of HCC were 2.2%, 1.7%, 1.7% and 3.3% in enecavir group, enecavir with Biejiaruangan tablet group, adefovir group, and adefovir with Biejiaruangan tablet group, respectively, showing no significant difference between the two cohorts (4 groups; χ=6.813, =0.138). None of the patients in the 2 groups with tenofovir treatment had HCC by the end of the observation. CONCLUSIONS Antiviral therapy combined with antifibrotic therapy can effectively reverse hepatic fibrosis and reduce the incidence of HCC in patients with CHB; among the 3 antiviral drugs, tenofovir dipivoxil can be a better option for reducing the incidence of HCC in these patients.
Antiviral Agents ; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular ; etiology ; DNA, Viral ; Follow-Up Studies ; Hepatitis B e Antigens ; Hepatitis B virus ; Hepatitis B, Chronic ; complications ; Humans ; Liver Cirrhosis ; complications ; Liver Neoplasms ; etiology ; Prospective Studies

Objective To explore the value of transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) combined with imaging techniques in the diagnosis of benign and malignant prostate nodules.Methods Totally 170 suspected prostate carcinoma patients were selected and treated with TRUS before puncture.Taking pathological results as the gold standard,the accuracy,specificity,sensitivity,positive predictive value and negative predictive value of transrectal power Doppler ultrasound (PDI),transrectal realtime tissue elastography (TRTE) and PDI combined with TRTE in diagnosis of benign and malignant prostate nodules were compared.Results In the diagnosis of prostate cancer by PDI,the sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value,negative predictive value and accuracy were 72.9％,74.3％,78.7％,67.9％ and 73.5％ respectively,while for the TRTE were 73.9％,78.4％,81.6％,69.9％ and 75.9％,and there were no significant differences (P ＞ 0.05).PDI combined with TRTE was able to increase the sensitivity (94.8％),negative predictive value (90.9％) and accuracy (82.9％) for diagnosis of prostate nodules (P ＜0.05).Conclusion Transrectal PDI and TRTE can be used as a single indicator of benign and malignant prostate nodules.The combination of the two methods can gain high sensitivity,negative predictive value aud accuracy.

Objective To explore the value of transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) combined with imaging techniques in the diagnosis of benign and malignant prostate nodules.Methods Totally 170 suspected prostate carcinoma patients were selected and treated with TRUS before puncture.Taking pathological results as the gold standard,the accuracy,specificity,sensitivity,positive predictive value and negative predictive value of transrectal power Doppler ultrasound (PDI),transrectal realtime tissue elastography (TRTE) and PDI combined with TRTE in diagnosis of benign and malignant prostate nodules were compared.Results In the diagnosis of prostate cancer by PDI,the sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value,negative predictive value and accuracy were 72.9％,74.3％,78.7％,67.9％ and 73.5％ respectively,while for the TRTE were 73.9％,78.4％,81.6％,69.9％ and 75.9％,and there were no significant differences (P ＞ 0.05).PDI combined with TRTE was able to increase the sensitivity (94.8％),negative predictive value (90.9％) and accuracy (82.9％) for diagnosis of prostate nodules (P ＜0.05).Conclusion Transrectal PDI and TRTE can be used as a single indicator of benign and malignant prostate nodules.The combination of the two methods can gain high sensitivity,negative predictive value aud accuracy.

Objective To analyze the burden and changes caused by burns among Chinese population,from 1990 to 2013.Methods Using the G20 data and the China national and subnational data from GBD2013,this study deemed to comprehensively show the burden caused by burns and the change from 1990 to 2013,using the indicators of death and DALY.Results In 2013,the standardized mortality of burns in Chinese was 0.88/100 000,with the standardized DALY rate of burn as 30.58/100 000.The ratio of DALY between males and females was 1.85 ∶ 1.Among the G20 countries,China ranked 16 for the standardized DALY rate,according to the top down order.The highest death rate was seen in the age group of 70 and over,followed by age group of 5,which had the highest DALY rate and followed by the 70 or older age group.In different provinces,Guizhou presented the highest DALY rate (50.24/100 000),with Aomen area the lowest (6.16/100 000).From 1990 to 2013,the burden of burn reduced generally.Both the standardized rates on death and DALY reduced by 68.10％ and 76.95％ respectively,more in females than in males.Standardized rates on death and DALY reduced among all the age groups,with the rates of reduction increasing by age.From 1990 to 2013,the DALY rate decreased in all the provinces.Conclusions The burden of burn decreased in Chinese population during 1990-2013.However,the burden of burn among children,elderly and males were still relatively high that called for closer attention.

Objective To explore the disease burden of road injuries in China.Methods The results of Global Burden of Disease 2013 including death rate,disability-adjusted of life years (DALY),years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLL),years lived with disability (YLD),were used to describe the burden caused by road injuries in 2013 and the trends from 1990 to 2013,in China.Results In 2013,there were 313 676 deaths caused by traffic accidents in China.Death rate,rates on DALY,YLL and YLD were 22.52 per 100 000,1 076.54 per 100 000,971.21 per 100 000 and 105.34 per 100 000,respectively.Rates on deaths,YLL and YLD appeared higher in males,pedestrians than in females and other types of road travelers.Burden of injuries caused by traffic accidents was seen higher in those aged 15 to 49-year-old.From 1990 to 2013,the overall death rate on road injuries increased by 0.54 per 100 000 in China,with an increase of 2.34 per 100 000 and 0.81 per 100 000,respectively in males and pedestrians.The rates on DALY,YLL and YLD decreased by 164.21 per 100 000,115.06 per 100 000 and 49.06 per 100 000,respectively.Conclusions During the past 20 years,achievements had been made on road injury prevention and control,with the decrease of disease burden caused by road accidents.Males,young adults and pedestrians should be called for more attention to prevent road injuries.

In this paper, a new calculating method of generalized dimension, based on boxes-coupling principle, is proposed to overcome the edge effects and to improve the capability of the speech endpoint detection which is based on the original calculating method of generalized dimension. This new method has been applied to speech endpoint detection. Firstly, the length of overlapping border was determined, and through calculating the generalized dimension by covering the speech signal with overlapped boxes, three-dimension feature vectors including the box dimension, the information dimension and the correlation dimension were obtained. Secondly, in the light of the relation between feature distance and similarity degree, feature extraction was conducted by use of common distance. Lastly, bi-threshold method was used to classify the speech signals. The results of experiment indicated that, by comparison with the original generalized dimension (OGD) and the spectral entropy (SE) algorithm, the proposed method is more robust and effective for detecting the speech signals which contain different kinds of noise in different signal noise ratio (SNR), especially in low SNR.
Artificial Intelligence ; Humans ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; methods ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Speech ; Speech Production Measurement ; methods ; Speech Recognition Software

Automatic speaker gender identification based on voice feature is an important task in voice processing and analysis fields. In this paper non-linear parameters such as fractal dimension are applied to be one part of feature space for improving the ability of describing speaker gender feature through conventional linear parameters method. Pitch is picked using lifting scheme, and audio fractal dimension is extracted. Then based on Takens theory, the time delay method is used to reconstruct the phase space of fractal dimension sequence. And fractal dimension complexity is obtained by calculating Approximate Entropy. Three dimension feature vectors, including the pitch, the fractal dimension and the fractal dimension complexity, are applied to speaker gender identification. Experiment results show that through adding non-linear parameters, compared with the linear parameter using one dimension only such as pitch, the proposed method is more accurate and robust, and thus provides a new way for speaker gender identification.
Algorithms ; Artificial Intelligence ; Biometry ; methods ; Humans ; Nonlinear Dynamics ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; methods ; Pitch Discrimination ; Sex Characteristics ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Speech ; Speech Acoustics ; Voice

The one-step method was adopted in this study to synthesize aliphatic polyurethane with 4,4-methylene dicyclohexyl diisocyanate(HMDI), 1,4-butanediol (BDO) and poly (tetrahydrofuran) (PTMG). The tests conducted on this material were: FIR spectrum, mechanical properties test, water contact angles test, hemolysis test and platelet adhesion test. Results showed that this material has a good tensile strength up to 30 Mpa, similar to aromaphatic polyurethane. But its tensile elongation, tensile permanent change, hydrophility are better than those of aromaphatic polyurethane. The hemolysis test and platelet adhesion test showed that it has good blood compatibility.
Animals ; Biocompatible Materials ; chemical synthesis ; chemistry ; toxicity ; In Vitro Techniques ; Materials Testing ; Platelet Adhesiveness ; drug effects ; Polyurethanes ; chemical synthesis ; chemistry ; toxicity ; Rabbits ; Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared ; Surface Properties ; Tensile Strength