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The author should give careful consideration to the study eligibility criteria of systematic reviews (SRs) and follow it after review protocol development to reduce the possibility of manipulation of inclusion. Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of differences in study eligibility criteria between non-Cochrane SRs and their pre-registered protocols on PROSPERO, and determined what changes were involved as well as whether those changes were explained. We searched the protocols registered on PROSPERO platform in the year of 2018 and then selected these protocols which full-text have been published up to June 9, 2020. A random sample (n = 100) was included. Published full-texts were identified through the protocol's final publication citation. The following five key components of study eligibility criteria were compared: participants, intervention(s)/exposure(s), comparator(s), types of study design, and outcome(s). A total of 90% of included SRs exhibited differences in study eligibility criteria, and 59/90 altered in no less than two key components. Only one SR reported and explained the rationale for changes to the individual key component (the definition of exposure). The "Outcome(s)" exhibited the greatest variation, with changes in 61% of the SRs. The "Comparator(s)/control" exhibited the smallest variation, with changes in 20% of the SRs. Differences in study eligibility criteria between the non-Cochrane SRs and their protocols registered on PROSPERO were widespread but were seldom explained. Authors themselves, PROSPERO platform, as well as peer-review journals and their peer-reviewers should play a role in further improving transparency.

Objective: The main objective of this systematic review was to investigate the factors influencing the development of coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Wan Fang Date, CBM, CNKI, and VIP databases were systematically searched to select the relevant literature. The quality of the incorporated studies was assessed with reference to the Newcastle‐Ottawa Scale. Stata16 was adopted to summarise the odds ratios, risk ratios, hazard ratios, and 95% confidence intervals for meta‐analysis. Results: A total of 29 studies were included in this analysis, wherein the average age of RA patients was 50.5–81 years and the proportion of women was 44.4%–92%. The present meta‐analysis suggested that increased CAD risk in RA patients was associated with age, male gender, smoking, glucocorticoids, Health Assessment Questionnaire scores, hyperlipidaemia, hypertension, diabetes, and C‐reactive protein concentration. Conclusion: The present systematic review revealed the influencing factors of secondary CAD in RA patients, some of which could reduce the risk of secondary CAD through effective interventions, such as smoking cessation, exercise, and medications. However, the effects of age, RA severity, and different medication subgroups on CAD risk stratification warrant further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrical resistivity method is widely used in near-surface mineral exploration. At present, the deterministic algorithm is commonly employed in three-dimensional (3-D) electrical resistivity inversion to obtain subsurface electrical structures. However, the accuracy and efficiency of deterministic inversion rely on the initial model. In practice, obtaining an initial model that approximates the true subsurface electrical structures remains challenging. To address this issue, we introduce a broad learning (BL) network to determine the initial model and utilize the limited memory quasi-Newton (L-BFGS) algorithm to conduct the 3-D electrical resistivity inversion task. The powerful mapping capability of the BL network enables one to find the model that elucidates the actual observed data. The single-layer BL network makes it efficient and easy to realize, leading to much faster network training compared to that using the deep learning network. Both the synthetic and field experiments suggest that the BL framework could effectively obtain the initial model based on observed data. Furthermore, in comparison to using a homogeneous medium as the initial model, the L-BFGS inversion with the BL framework-designed initial model improves the inversion accuracy of subsurface electrical structures and expedites the convergence speed of the iteration. This study provides an effective approach for fast initial model design in a data-driven manner when the prior information is unavailable. The proposed method can be useful in high-precision imaging of near-surface mineral electrical structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' knowledge and application of model play an important role in students' development of modeling ability and scientific literacy. In this study, we investigated Chinese chemistry teachers' knowledge and application of models. Data were collected through test questionnaire and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The result indicated as follows: (1) Chemistry teachers' knowledge of some known chemistry models was limited; (2) Chemistry teachers preferred those models that were vivid when they chose models; (3) Teachers' modeling process was incomplete; (4) Teachers adopted a general pattern when applying models in chemistry teaching. The findings have implications for teacher education.

Graphs are widely used to present scientific information. Information presented in graphs can be classified into three kinds: explicit information, tacit information, and conclusive information. Reading information from graphs requires not only science content knowledge and understanding but also general logical reasoning. This study examined the abilities of reading various kinds of scientific information among students in different grades in China. The participants were 288 students in grades 9, 10, and 11. An instrument developed by the researchers and teachers was used to measure students' graph reading abilities. Results indicated that: (a) students' abilities of reading the three kinds of scientific information improved with grade; (b) students in different grades showed significant differences in reading all kinds of information except for the topics and special segments of the graphs for explicit information, tacit information requiring using mathematics tools, and conclusive information from comparison; and (c) as a whole, students of the same grade showed variation in their abilities of reading different kinds of information but the patterns of difference among the three kinds of information for the three grades were similar. This study has many implications for science education in China. It may help teachers understand students' thinking approaches to graphs and foster their abilities of interpreting them, and further inform future studies on how to adopt and design graphs in science textbooks. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures, and 9 graphs.)