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Background and Aim: Conventional radiological methods, including transcutaneous ultrasonography (US), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) are non-invasive and recommended for the detection of etiologies of acute biliary pancreatitis (ABP). There are still, however, a number of patients whose etiologies cannot be found by these methods. The value of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) for this population is still unknown. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the role of EUS in exploring the unknown etiology of mild ABP. Methods: The data from patients with mild ABP admitted to Changhai Hospital, Shanghai, China, from June 2006 to December 2009 were retrospectively collected, and the results of the imaging methods in detecting biliary disorders were analyzed. Results: A total of 223 patients with mild ABP underwent both US and CT. Of these, 106 underwent additional MRCP. There were still 37 patients with unknown biliary etiologies, even after the use of the conventional methods mentioned earlier. EUS was conducted in 33 of these patients. Abnormalities associated with the etiology of mild ABP were found in 14 cases (42.4%) confirmed by subsequent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, with biliary stones in 11 cases, biliary sludge in two cases, and ampullary adenocarcinoma in one case. Conclusion: The results suggest that EUS is helpful in the identification of the etiology of mild biliary pancreatitis when conventional radiological imaging is negative or equivocal.

Multiset operation and data transmission are the key operations for privacy preserving data integration because they involve the interaction of participants. This paper proposes an approach which contains anonymous multiset operation and distributed noise generation based on the existing researches and we apply it in data integration. Analysis shows that the improved approach provides security for data integration and has lower overhead than the existing researches.

Conventional radiological methods, including transcutaneous ultrasonography (US), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) are non-invasive and recommended for the detection of etiologies of acute biliary pancreatitis (ABP). There are still, however, a number of patients whose etiologies cannot be found by these methods. The value of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) for this population is still unknown. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the role of EUS in exploring the unknown etiology of mild ABP.The data from patients with mild ABP admitted to Changhai Hospital, Shanghai, China, from June 2006 to December 2009 were retrospectively collected, and the results of the imaging methods in detecting biliary disorders were analyzed.A total of 223 patients with mild ABP underwent both US and CT. Of these, 106 underwent additional MRCP. There were still 37 patients with unknown biliary etiologies, even after the use of the conventional methods mentioned earlier. EUS was conducted in 33 of these patients. Abnormalities associated with the etiology of mild ABP were found in 14 cases (42.4%) confirmed by subsequent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, with biliary stones in 11 cases, biliary sludge in two cases, and ampullary adenocarcinoma in one case.The results suggest that EUS is helpful in the identification of the etiology of mild biliary pancreatitis when conventional radiological imaging is negative or equivocal.

In this paper, we propose a novel energy fairness mechanism based on relay selection for cooperative MAC protocol. By changing the method of cooperation nodes selection, a round robin scheme is adopted to choose a relay node from all qualified nodes. The new mechanism improves the fairness of energy consumption of cooperation nodes, and studies the tradeoff between fairness of energy consumption and throughput performance. Theory analysis and simulation results prove that the proposed energy fairness mechanism can average the nodes energy consumption relatively and extend the system survival time with maintaining a certain system throughput.

Acute pancreatitis (AP) usually causes acute lung injury, which is also known as acute pancreatitis associated lung injury (APALI). This study aimed to investigate whether captopril pretreatment was able to protect lung against APALI via inhibiting angiotensin II (Ang II) production and suppressing Rho/ROCK (Rho kinase) pathway in rats. Severe AP (SAP) was introduced to rats by bile–pancreatic duct retrograde injection of 5% sodium taurocholate. Rats were randomly divided into three groups. In the sham group, sham operation was performed; in the SAP group, SAP was introduced; in the pre-cpl + SAP group, rats were intragastrically injected with 5 mg/kg captopril 1 hour prior to SAP induction. Pathological examination of the lung and pancreas, evaluation of pulmonary vascular permeability by wet/dry ratio and Evans Blue staining, detection of serum amylase, Western blot assay for Ang II receptor type 1 (AT1), RhoA, ROCK (Rho kinase), and MLCK (myosin light chain kinase) were performed after the animals were sacrificed at 24 hours. After the surgery, characteristic findings of pancreatitis were observed, accompanied by lung injury. The serum amylase, Ang II, and lung expression of AT1, RhoA, ROCK, and MLCK increased dramatically in SAP rats. However, captopril pretreatment improved the histological changes, reduced the pathological score of the pancreas and lung, inhibited serum amylase and Ang II production, and decreased expression of AT1, RhoA, ROCK, and MLCK in the lung. These findings suggest that captopril pretreatment is able to protect the lung against APALI, which is, at least partially, related to the inhibition of Ang II production and the suppression of the Rho/ROCK pathway.