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Self-management is essential for patients who require regular hemodialysis treatment. This study aimed to explore the relationships between social support, sense of coherence (SOC), and self-management in hemodialysis patients and to examine whether SOC plays a mediating role. In a cross-sectional study, 402 hemodialysis patients from four tertiary hospitals were recruited. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Social support, SOC, and self-management were significantly correlated with each other. The proposed model provided a good fit to the data. Social support had a direct effect on self-management and SOC, partially mediated the effect of social support on self-management (β = 0.248, p = 0.001). Social support and SOC explained 69% of the variance in self-management. Our findings indicate that health care providers can enhance social support with an emphasis on strengthening SOC strategies to better improve self-management in hemodialysis patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-sectional study assessed the overall symptom burden, including the prevalence, frequency, severity, and distress of symptoms among hemodialysis patients, and explored the relationship between demographic characteristics, clinical variables, self-management, sense of coherence, social support, and symptom burden in these patients. Herein, a regression analysis was performed to determine associations with symptom burden. The mean score of symptom burden among the participants (n = 382) was 74.12, with an average number of 12 symptoms. The analysis revealed that self-management, sense of coherence, and social support were negatively associated with the overall symptom burden. The multiple regression model showed that 48.6% of the variance in symptom burden was explained by meaningfulness, emotional management, daily urine output, subjective support, gender, and manageability. These findings contribute to the knowledge of symptom burden among hemodialysis patients and some new predictors (self-management, sense of coherence, and social support) of their symptom burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through active sense, intelligent analysis and feedback control, Internet of Things enforces the identification, monitoring and management of objects, which is successfully applied in many areas. However, there exists some issues in the development, such as decentralization, disorder, lack of system programming, duplicate construction, etc. We review the history of Internet of Things, analyze its technology architecture and related work. Then, the framework of IRC4IOT(Intelligent Resource Center for Internet of Things)is proposed to provide fundamental support for enabling the resources sharing, improving the resources utilization, and solving redundant construction through the convergence, integration, analysis and rebuilding of resources. The key technologies of how to join sensor devices into resource center and how to integrate and manage the resources are discussed. Finally, the cases in agriculture Internet of Things demonstrate the effect of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to facilitate on demand resource sharing and cross-organizational collaboration in E-Government systems, the paper proposes a cloud-service based framework (EGovCloud), which utilizes the virtual resource repository to realize resource physically distributed storage and logically centralized management. E-Government metadata specifications are constructed as a unified semantic infrastructure and therefore support cross-organizational heterogeneous resource sharing and management. We explore the architecture of EGovCloud and the key technologies involved, and demonstrate the applications in constructing E-Government systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) are known to have large necrotic core in their coronary plaque compared to non-DM patients. We assessed coronary plaque composition in patients with angina and with/without DM according to glucose control., Methods: Study subjects consisted of 114 non-DM patients, 14 well-controlled DM patients (hemoglobin A1c [HbA1c] <7.0%), and 37 poorly controlled DM patients (HbA1c ≥ 7%) who underwent virtual histology intravascular ultrasound (VH-IVUS) examinations of culprit lesions., Results: The DM patients had longer lesion length (20.2 ± 7.8 mm vs 17.0 ± 7.3 mm; P=.013) than non-DM patients. The plaque volume was highest in the poorly-controlled DM patients (188.9 ± 92.6 mm(3)) compared with the non-DM patients (144.1 ± 92.3 mm(3); P=.011) and the well-controlled DM patients (151.7 ± 82.4 mm(3); P=.194). The well-controlled DM patients had less dense calcium (0.33 ± 0.14 mm(3)/mm vs 0.71 ± 0.60 mm(3)/mm; P=.020) and less necrotic core (0.71 ± 0.48 mm(3)/mm vs 1.30 ± 0.94 mm(3)/mm; P=.029) than the poorly-controlled DM patients and had similar amounts of dense calcium and necrotic core with non-DM patients, whereas fibrous and fibro-fatty volume showed no significant differences among the groups., Conclusion: Coronary plaque composition and plaque volume in well-controlled DM patients are similar to those in non-DM patients and both groups had less dense calcium and necrotic core volume than the poorly-controlled DM patients. These findings suggest hyperglycemia control is important in DM patients with angina.

Background and Objectives: Hypercholesterolemia is a key factor in the development of atherosclerosis. We sought to evaluate the relation between hypercholesterolemia and plaque composition in patients with coronary artery disease., Subjects and Methods: Study subjects consisted of 323 patients (mean 61.5 years, 226 males) who underwent coronary angiography and virtual histology-intravascular ultrasound examination. Patients were divided into two groups according to total cholesterol level: hypercholesterolemic group (≥200 mg/dL, n=114) and normocholesterolemic group (<200 mg/dL, n=209)., Results: Hypercholesterolemic patients were younger (59.7±13.3 years vs. 62.6±11.5 years, p=0.036), than normocholesterolemic patients, whereas there were no significant differences in other demographics. Hypercholesterolemic patients had higher corrected necrotic core volume (1.23±0.85 mm(3)/mm vs. 1.02±0.80 mm(3)/mm, p=0.029) as well as percent necrotic core volume (20.5±8.5% vs. 18.0±9.2%, p=0.016) than normocholesterolemic patients. At the minimal lumen area site, percent necrotic core area (21.4±10.5% vs. 18.4±11.3%, p=0.019) and necrotic core area (1.63±1.09 mm(2) vs. 1.40±1.20 mm(2), p=0.088) were also higher than normocholesterolemic patients. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that total cholesterol level was an independent factor of percent necrotic core volume in the culprit lesion after being adjusted with age, high density lipoprotein-cholesterol , hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking and acute coronary syndrome (beta 0.027, 95% confidence interval 0.02-0.053, p=0.037)., Conclusion: Hypercholesterolemia was associated with increased necrotic core volume in coronary artery plaque. This study suggests that hypercholesterolemia plays a role in making plaque more complex, which is characterized by a large necrotic core, in coronary artery disease.