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The purpose of this study was to investigate faculty members' usage of Open Educational Resources (OER) as well as the barriers to OER development and usage. 360 faculty members from Zhejiang University (ZJU) in China were randomly selected to complete a survey. The study found that: (1) most of surveyed faculty members rarely utilized OER, while they had some awareness of sharing educational resources; (2) the majority noticed online educational materials published for learning or reference, while they ignored open source software or licensing tools for sharing and reusing resources; (3) lack of time and skills were significant obstacles for faculty members to develop OER, while lack of incentives was a potential obstacle; (4) content, experience, and school factors affected faculty members' OER usage; (5) online teaching experiences impacted incentive to develop OER as well as how to develop OER. It also played a key role in faculty members' perceptions about the experience and habit factors as possible barriers to OER usage. Results of the study implicate that more serious efforts are needed to improve the awareness and development of OER in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study regarding how major preanalytic variables such as processing delay, storage time, and freeze/thaw cycles might affect the detection of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs), which can be used as biomarkers for cancer detection. The study involves identification of levels of microRNAs, including miR346, miR134, & miR934. Also the study highlights the need of biospecimen-focused research on circulating microRNAs before clinical utilization.

The role of excess monomer (i.e., Urea (U) or Formaldehyde (F)) in UF precipitation reaction was investigated at 28°C. The maximum output of the UF resin deposit was found around the U:F molar ratio 1.0:1.0 and this output decreased if excessive urea (or formaldehyde) was used in the reaction system. The excess monomer was considered to decrease the polymerization degree of UF resin deposit and increased the bonding saturation of its copolymerization monomer as well as the solubility of the UF resin deposit. The Influence of the excess monomer on the lamellar crystallinity of the resultant deposit, involving the polymerization degree and bonding saturation of the monomer, was examined. Three different dynamic regions containing excess monomers were revealed according to the behaviors of the deposit nucleation. The density and water absorption of the UF resin particles were finally demonstrated relative to the dynamic regions in their nucleation reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data are scarce regarding the prevalence and risk factors for antenatal suicidal ideation because systematic screening for suicidal ideation during pregnancy is rare. This study reports the prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation during pregnancy. We performed cross-sectional analysis of data from an ongoing registry. Study participants were 2,159 women receiving prenatal care at a university obstetric clinic from January 2004 through March 2010. Multiple logistic regression identified factors associated with antenatal suicidal ideation as measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire. Overall, 2.7% of the sample reported antenatal suicidal ideation. Over 50% of women who reported antenatal suicidal ideation also reported major depression. In the fully adjusted model antenatal major depression (OR = 11.50; 95% CI 5.40, 24.48) and antenatal psychosocial stress (OR = 3.19; 95% CI 1.44, 7.05) were positively associated with an increased risk of antenatal suicidal ideation. We found that being non-Hispanic White was associated with a decreased risk of antenatal suicidal ideation (OR = 0.51; 95% CI 0.26-0.99). The prevalence of antenatal suicidal ideation in the present study was similar to rates reported in nationally representative non-pregnant samples. In other words, pregnancy is not a protective factor against suicidal ideation. Given the high comorbidity of antenatal suicidal ideation with major depression, efforts should be made to identify those women at risk for antenatal suicidal ideation through universal screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming the problem of low accuracy of communication signal recognition by traditional manual feature extraction, an improved SVM recognition method based on information geometry denoising is proposed exploiting the support vector machine (SVM). The proposed method obtains the time-frequency images of different communication signals through the Choi-Williams distribution (CWD) time-frequency transform, and uses the geometric ground distance to accurately measure the difference between pixels for denoising. Then, the AlexNet is used to extract features from the time-frequency maps. Finally, by using the improved SVM based on the information geometry, the classification of communication signal is made to achieve effective classification and recognition. The simulation results show that the recognition rate of the proposed method achieves more than 97% at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, the method is still effective in the case of small samples.

Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a common and frequently occurring disease, and the prevalence and mortality of which are increasing rapidly. Atherosclerosis (AS) is the pathological basis of ischemic CVD. Studies have shown that epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) promotes the progression of AS by secreting exosomes and bioactive substances, but the mechanism of action still needs to be further studied. Objective To perform a bioinformatics analysis of role of EAT in coronary artery disease (CAD) at cellular and molecular levels by identifying the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in EAT to explore the status of immune cell infiltration, and to assess and verify whether EAT is derived from DEGs in exosomes in CAD patients. Methods We downloaded GSE64554 and GSE120774 datasets about EAT from the GEO database and performed a bioinformatics analysis using R language and related packages. We first used R language to screen the DEGs in EAT and CAD patients, then used GO/KEGG enrichment analysis to establish a protein interaction network to explore biological functions of the screened genes and transcription factors potentially involved in their regulation process. After that, we conducted a weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) of EAT in GSE64554 dataset to obtain a gene module related to CAD phenotype, then crossed the hub genes in this module and DEGs in EAT to obtain the key common genes. We used Cibersort to characterize the immune cell infiltration in EAT. Then we obtained DEGs from blood exosomes of CAD patients and healthy controls included in the exoRbase database, crossed DEGs in EAT and blood exosomes to identify the common genes to be used as diagnostic and therapeutic markers for CAD, and their values were tested by qRT-PCR measurement of clinical samples. The selected genes were analyzed by GO/KEGG and Metascape enrichment analyses. Results A total of 1 511 DEGs in EAT of CAD patients were identified, including 956 with up-regulated expression and 555 with down-regulated expression. By crossing the DEGs in EAT and hub genes in modules associated with CAD closely, we identified DDX47, FEM1C, NOL11, SRP54, ABI1, PATL1, BNIP2, C1orf159, and CHCHD4 as key genes in the development of CAD. Immune cell infiltration analysis showed that the abundance of immature CD4+ T cells increased while expression abundance of resting dendritic cells decreased in EAT of CAD patients (P0.05), and decreased F2RmRNA expression level (P

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine knowledge of and experiences with use of their electronic health record (EHR) among mostly Hispanic women during pregnancy and postpartum., Methods: Women who were in the MOMS Orange County prenatal or postpartum home visitation program completed surveys and participated in focus groups. Descriptive and content analyses were used., Results: Twenty-six women participated. Nearly all women (24, 92.3%) knew what health records were and most (80.8%) felt that keeping their records would increase or greatly increase their confidence in caring for themselves and their families. Approximately one third reported already keeping a copy of their health records. Common barriers to accessing and understanding health records included healthcare providers' noncompliance with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, limited EHR adoption, unfriendly patient portals, complicated medical terminology, rushed appointments with healthcare providers, lack of Spanish interpreters, and lack of Spanish-speaking healthcare providers., Clinical Implications: Programs are needed to educate and support women and providers in using health records to promote health literacy, pregnancy management, and patient-provider relationships in underserved populations.

Background: MOMS Orange County is a coordinated home visitation program in which trained paraprofessional home visitors work under the close supervision of registered nurses. This model was developed to address health disparities in birth outcomes in a Hispanic community in Orange County, CA., Purpose: The primary objective was to test the impact of MOMS Orange County on birth outcomes. The second objective was to examine the breadth of prenatal health education topics as a mediator of the relationship between home visits and birth outcomes., Methods: A retrospective cohort design was used. Paraprofessional home visitors collected prenatal and postnatal data during home visits. Only those whose birth outcomes were obtained were included in the analysis (N = 2,027 participants). Regression models were conducted to test the associations between prenatal home visits and birth outcomes, adjusting for 10 covariates., Results: Number of prenatal home visits predicted higher birthweight and greater gestational age at birth. Breadth of health education topics partially mediated the associations between home visits and birthweight. The same mediation was revealed with gestational age at birth., Clinical Implications: The MOMS Orange County prenatal home visitation program may be a promising approach to decrease adverse birth outcomes in disadvantaged communities. Rigorously designed studies are needed to further test this model.