Search

Copyright of Parasite (1252607X) is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Panel data from China's listed enterprises from 2014–2019 was selected as a sample to study the relationship between enterprise charitable giving, exposure, and enterprise performance in this study. It was revealed that enterprise charitable giving has a U-shaped relationship with enterprise performance. Further research has found that philanthropic exposure plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between charitable giving and enterprise performance. This study provides information on the scale of donation from the perspective of enterprise performance, suggesting new paths for enterprises to improve their performance and help China increase funds for disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board secretaries' characteristics on annual report readability using an original method that evaluates the readability of Chinese characters. Design/methodology/approach: The authors manually collect board secretaries' characteristics from the China Securities Market and Accounting Research database and obtain annual reports from the China Information website. Ordinary least square regression is applied to evaluate the impact, and then robustness tests and additional regression analyses are conducted. Findings: Board secretaries' legal-professional expertise, international expertise and role duality improve annual report readability. However, their political connections are negatively associated with it. The effect of expertise (role duality) is more pronounced for firms with lower ex ante litigation risk (board secretaries with equity holdings). Furthermore, higher readability increases the compensation of board secretaries, whereas lower readability increases their turnover. Finally, annual report readability is positively related to firm performance. Research limitations/implications: The authors only investigate listed firms in China from 2007 to 2017 because of the difficulties of obtaining data and text mining. Practical implications: The authors provide managerial insights for regulators aiming to establish an effective governance mechanism with Chinese characteristics. First, certain requirements for board secretaries' expertise can improve annual report readability. Further, firms can consider appointing board members or senior executives as board secretaries to enhance disclosure quality. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to verify the effect of board secretaries' characteristics on disclosure quality, especially annual report readability. Moreover, this study proposes a novel measure of annual report readability for Chinese texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to develop a novel method to measure the importance of the characteristics closely related to the carrying capacity measurement of coastal parks by using the hierarchical method with the Monte Carlo simulation approach. One big advantage of MCAHP approach is able to effectively avoid the subjectivity of survey responses in the data collection process, leading to more reliable assessment results. Empirical results indicate the newly developed method provides a better framework for identifying the significance of the concerned factors and also produces a significant cost-saving and revenue-increasing outcome for coastal park resource uses and yet enhance tourists' satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The systemic inflammatory response syndrome during the perioperative period of cardiac surgery can lead to serious postoperative complications and significantly increase the hospital mortality rate. Colchicine, a widely used traditional anti-inflammatory drug, has good clinical value in cardiovascular anti-inflammatory therapy. Our preliminary single-centre study had confirmed the protective value of colchicine in patients undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass. For this multicentre investigation, we aim to further validate the anti-inflammatory and organ-protective effects of low-dose colchicine during the perioperative period in a low-risk population., Methods and Analysis: This study is a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. A total of 768 patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery will be enrolled from eight heart centres in China. The participants will be randomly assigned to two groups: the colchicine group will receive low-dose colchicine (0.5 mg once-a-day dosing regimen (QD) orally for 3 days before the surgery and 0.5 mg dosing frequency of every other day (QOD) continuously for 10 days after the surgery), whereas the placebo group will be given starch tablets for the same time and dosage. Primary endpoints are the occurrence of postoperative inflammatory diseases, including postoperative atrial fibrillation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, preoperative myocardial injury and post-pericardiotomy syndrome. Secondary endpoints included laboratory tests on postoperative days 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10, intensive care unit data, APACHE II score, Murray lung injury score, medication-related gastrointestinal reactions, 30-day and 90-day all-cause mortality, surgical data, chest radiograph on postoperative days 1, 2 and 3, and chest CT within 14 days after surgery., Ethics and Dissemination: This research has received approval from the Medical Ethics Committee of Affiliated Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical College (approval number 2023-366-01). The study findings will be made available by publishing them in an open access journal., Trial Registration Number: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT06118034)., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

The gradual acceleration of the aging population in China has led to an increased demand for mobility aids, and the reliability of domestic wheeled walking-aid is one of their important attributes, but there is little research on the reliability of mobility aids. This paper conducts the failure mode, effects and criticality analysis on domestic wheeled walking-aid. By collecting, collating and analyzing the 26 failure modes, the key modules are the chassis and the lifting system. The key modules are obtained, and the failure data is analyzed to find out that the lifetime distribution model is log-normal and the 0.95 lower confidence limit for reliability life of product t 0.9 is 2489.4 hours. The study aims to provide ideas for the reliability analysis of other active medical devices and calls for the formation of a reliability study review point for the industry that meets the requirements of Chinese medical device regulations.

Active medical device is a kind of medical device which is widely used. In order to realize the goal of high-quality development, product with high reliability is a necessary requirement for the domestic active medical device industry. By means of literature research, data collection, field research, materials comprehensive combing and analysis, this paper systematically analyzes and studies the current situations and the existing problems of reliability and evaluation from the dimensions of Chinese active medical device industry policy, enterprise situation and evaluation method. In addition, by considering the technical characteristics of reliability work, concrete suggestions for solving the problems are given from the directions of standard and guiding principle, so as to provide reference for active medical device industry to develop scientific and objective reliability technical standard system and guiding principle, which are in accord with the current characteristics of Chinese active medical device industry and supervision.

Abstract: Among the diverse medical education systems in China, the 8-year program is dedicated to cultivating physician scientists. Although the research ability of senior students in 8-year medical programs is a pivotal quality, it remains unclear. This study aimed to clarify the current status and challenges of students' research experience, abilities, and outputs.A multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in 5 medical schools in northern China. Electronic questionnaires were sent to 235 randomly chosen fifth-grade or sixth-grade 8-year-program medical students. A total of 211 responses were collected and analyzed using SPSS 22.0.Only 13.3% of participants chose research as their future career goal. Students generally felt that conducting research was stressful and difficult. The greatest obstacle was a lack of time due to heavy workloads. The 2 major motivations for research were graduation and/or future employment (75.8%) and research interest (24.2%). More than half of the students (142, 67.3%) had research experience by the time of the survey, among whom 84 students already had research outputs. A higher proportion of students with outputs was motivated by the requirements for graduation or employment compared to students without outputs (71.4% vs 55.2%, P  =  .046).Senior 8-year-program medical students in China generally had high pressure to conduct research and devoted their efforts to overcome these challenges. More guidance and novel encouragement to enhance students' initiative and interest in research could be provided by medical schools and educators in the future., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Chinese black pork is preferred by consumers due to its unique organoleptic characteristics, which are closely related to lipids and volatiles. The primary aim of this study was to reveal key lipids and volatiles for the differentiation of Duroc × (Landrace × Yorkshire) (DLY), and Beijing Heiliu and Laiwu black (BHLB) pork. Here, lipid and volatile profiles were comprehensively characterized and compared using untargeted lipidomic and volatilomic analysis. The BHLB pork showed higher intramuscular fat content (p < 0.05). The content of total monounsaturated fatty acids, along with C16:1, C17:1, C18:1, and C20:1, was higher in BHLB pork compared with DLY pork (p < 0.05). Lipidomic analysis showed that DLY and BHLB pork significantly differed in lipids at the class and molecular levels. The BHLB pork had significantly more triglyceride and less lysophosphatidylcholine compared with DLY pork (p < 0.05). In positive and negative modes, 34 and 21 potential lipid markers, respectively, were selected for the discrimination of DLY and BHLB pork. In addition, volatilomic analysis showed that DLY and BHLB pork were well distinguished, and 13 volatiles were considered as potential discriminatory markers. Our findings provide a comprehensive lipidomic and volatilomic profiles characteristic of BHLB pork and will hopefully provide an important basis for the effective identification of Chinese black pork., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Background: China has initiated a medical pricing reform to combat the overuse of drugs and relieve the financial burden of patients. This paper aims to analyze the effect of medical pricing reform on revenue structure and healthcare expenditure of county public hospitals in Guangdong province., Methods: Based on the monthly data from January 2013 to August 2019, we use interrupted time series design to evaluate the effects of medical pricing reform on healthcare expenditure in both outpatients and inpatients. A counterfactual is also established to examine the net effect of the policy., Results: The proportion of drug revenue decreased from 35 % to 2015 to 29.7 % in 2019, and the revenue from medical services and inspection increased 3.2 and 3 % respectively. Meanwhile, the increasing trend of total expenditure and its main components is slowed down, especially the drug expense and medical consumable expense for inpatients after the Zero Mark-up Drug policy (coefficient = -18.76, p < 0.01; coefficient = -13.41, p < 0.01, respectively). However, the growth of inspection expense for outpatients continues to increase, while the healthcare expenditure for inpatients experiences an instant increase after the Zero Mark-up Medical Consumables policy. In terms of the net effect, most of healthcare expenditure in both outpatient and inpatient experienced a negative net growth from 2015 to 2019., Conclusions: The medical pricing reform is a valuable attempt in controlling the unreasonable increase of medical expenses. In the meantime, the unexpected increase in inspection expenditure and insufficient compensation from medical service adjustment should draw the attention of the policymakers.

Endometriosis is a common estrogen-dependent inflammatory disease characterized by the presence of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterine cavity, which causes infertility and pelvic pain. Polymorphisms in MALAT1 have been demonstrated to play crucial roles in many diseases. However, the roles of MALAT1 polymorphisms in the etiology of endometriosis have not been well documented. We genotyped three MALAT1 polymorphisms in 555 endometriosis patients and 535 female control participants using quantitative polymerase chain reaction with TaqMan probes. To estimate the associations between MALAT1 polymorphisms and endometriosis risk, an unconditional logistic regression model was conducted to calculate an odds ratio (OR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI), adjusting for age, abortion history, number of deliveries, Body Mass Index (BMI), and The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage. We found that the MALAT1 rs591291 C > T polymorphism significantly enhanced endometriosis risk (heterogeneous: adjusted OR = 1.36, 95% CI = 1.00-1.85, P = 0.050; homogenous: adjusted OR = 1.55, 95% CI = 1.03-2.33, P = 0.037; dominant: adjusted OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.05-1.88, P = 0.021). In stratification analyses, these associations were more predominant in the patients younger than 35 years old, with a relatively high number of deliveries and with a BMI between 25 and 29.9. Compared with wild-type CCG haplotype carriers, individuals with TCC haplotypes had a higher risk of developing endometriosis. The MALAT1 rs591291 C > T polymorphism was associated with a significant increase in endometriosis risk., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of Reproduction. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)