Since December 2019, novel coronavirus infected pneumonia emerged in Wuhan city and rapidly spread throughout China. In severe novel coronavirus pneumonia cases, the number of platelets, their ...dynamic changes during the treatment, platelet‐to‐lymphocyte ratio (PLR) were a concern. We sought to describe the platelet feature of these cases. Single‐center case series of the 30 hospitalized patients with confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID)‐19 in Huizhou municipal central hospital from January 2020 to February 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. Demographic, clinical, blood routine results, other laboratory results, and treatment data were collected and analyzed. Outcomes of severe patients and nonsevere patients were compared. Univariate analysis showed that: age, platelet peaks, and PLR at peak platelet were the influencing factors in severe patients, multivariate analysis showed that the PLR value at peak platelet during treatment was an independent influencing factor in severe patients. The average hospitalization day of patients with platelet peaks during treatment was longer than those without platelet peaks (P < .05). The average age of patients with platelet peaks during treatment was older than those without platelet peaks (P < .05). The patients with significantly elevated platelets during treatment had longer average hospitalization days. And the higher PLR of patients during treatment had longer average hospitalization days. Single‐center case series of the 30 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID‐19 in Huizhou Municipal Central Hospital, presumed that the number of platelets and their dynamic changes during the treatment may have a suggestion on the severity and prognosis of the disease. The patient with markedly elevated platelets and longer average hospitalization days may be related to the cytokine storm. The PLR of patients means the degree of cytokine storm, which might provide a new indicator in the monitoring in patients with COVID‐19.
Challenges of Big Data analysis Fan, Jianqing; Han, Fang; Liu, Han
National science review,
06/2014, Volume:
1, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Big Data bring new opportunities to modern society and challenges to data scientists. On the one hand,Big Data hold great promises for discovering subtle population paterns and heterogeneities that ...are not possible with small-scale data. On the other hand, the massive sample size and high dimensionality of Big Data introduce unique computational and statistical challenges, including scalability and storage botleneck, noise accumulation, spurious correlation, incidental endogeneity and measurement errors.hese challenges are distinguished and require new computational and statistical paradigm. his paper gives overviews on the salient features of Big Data and how these features impact on paradigm change on statistical and computational methods as well as computing architectures. We also provide various new perspectives on the Big Data analysis and computation. In particular, we emphasize on the viability of the sparsest solution in high-conidence set and point out that exogenous assumptions in most statistical methods for Big Data cannot be validated due to incidental endogeneity. hey can lead to wrong statistical inferences and consequently wrong scientiic conclusions.
We consider the problem of uncertainty assessment for low dimensional components in high dimensional models. Specifically, we propose a novel decorrelated score function to handle the impact of high ...dimensional nuisance parameters. We consider both hypothesis tests and confidence regions for generic penalized M-estimators. Unlike most existing inferential methods which are tailored for individual models, our method provides a general framework for high dimensional inference and is applicable to a wide variety of applications. In particular, we apply this general framework to study five illustrative examples: linear regression, logistic regression, Poisson regression, Gaussian graphical model and additive hazards model. For hypothesis testing, we develop general theorems to characterize the limiting distributions of the decorrelated score test statistic under both null hypothesis and local alternatives. These results provide asymptotic guarantees on the type I errors and local powers. For confidence region construction, we show that the decorrelated score function can be used to construct point estimators that are asymptotically normal and semiparametrically efficient. We further generalize this framework to handle the settings of misspecified models. Thorough numerical results are provided to back up the developed theory.
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been rapidly transmitted in China, Macau, Hong Kong, and other Asian and European counterparts. This COVID-19 epidemic has aroused increasing attention ...nationwide. Patients, health professionals, and the general public are under insurmountable psychological pressure which may lead to various psychological problems, such as anxiety, fear, depression, and insomnia. Psychological crisis intervention plays a pivotal role in the overall deployment of the disease control. The National Health Commission of China has summoned a call for emergency psychological crisis intervention and thus, various mental health associations and organizations have established expert teams to compile guidelines and public health educational articles/videos for mental health professionals and the general public alongside with online mental health services. In addition, mental health professionals and expert groups are stationed in designated isolation hospitals to provide on-site services. Experts have reached a consensus on the admission of patients with severe mental illness during the COVID-19 outbreak in mental health institutions. Nevertheless, the rapid transmission of the COVID-19 has emerged to mount a serious challenge to the mental health service in China.
The challenging competitive situation in the market forces the organizations to recognize the crucial role of branding. Many studies focused on financial and customer perspectives and ignored the ...importance of employee-based brand building in the organization. Employee-based brand equity plays a vital role in increasing organizational performance. Hence, this study puts effort into brand-building and recognized many factors that develop employee-based brand equity for organizations. This study examines the role of internal knowledge dissemination and employees-based brand equity through brand identification and emotional attachment. This study also assesses the direct relationship between internal knowledge dissemination and brand identification, internal knowledge dissemination and emotional attachment, brand identification and employee-based brand equity, and emotional attachment and employee-based brand equity. For this purpose, this study adopts a convenient sampling technique and questionnaire survey method and gathered data with 712 sample sizes from employees of various clothing brands in China. For empirical examination of the data, this study considers the partial least square structural equation modeling technique and analyzed data using the Smart PLS 3.3.3 software. The outcomes revealed that internal knowledge dissemination negatively influences employee-based brand equity. This study finds a positive direct association between internal knowledge dissemination and brand identification, internal knowledge dissemination and emotional attachment, brand identification and employee-based brand equity, and emotional attachment and employee-based brand equity. Moreover, this study finds that emotional attachment and brand identification positively mediate the relationship between internal knowledge dissemination and employee-based brand equity. The findings of this study provide an insight to the organizations that effective dissemination of the internal knowledge enhances employees’ brand identification and their emotional attachments. Consequently, these positive attributes of employees play a constructive role in creating employee-based brand equity. This study also has some valuable theoretical and practical implications.
Despite the increasing resolution, forcing on the mean circulation by resolved waves in general circulation models is not yet converging. Parameterization of the forcing remains a major source of ...model uncertainty. This study examines the scale invariance of zonal spectra of momentum flux and wave forcing, and shows that it can be used to quantify the forcing by unresolved waves with knowledge of the resolved ones in global models. The result reveals the leading order importance of the small-scale wave forcing, which is in general agreement with that required for obtaining the zonal mean wind climatology. It is also found that wave and mean flow interaction is important in maintaining the robust spectral structure. This method may provide a strategy to design physically consistent and scale-aware parameterization schemes for scale invariant quantities, when a model has sufficient resolution to partially resolve their spectra.
Conspectus Synthetic proteins are expected to go beyond the boundary of recombinant DNA expression systems by being flexibly installed with site-specific natural or unnatural modification structures ...during synthesis. To enable protein chemical synthesis, peptide ligations provide effective strategies to assemble short peptide fragments obtained from solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) into long peptides and proteins. In this regard, chemoselective peptide ligation represents a simple but powerful transformation realizing selective amide formation between the C-terminus and N-terminus of two side-chain-unprotected peptide fragments. These reactions are highly chemo- and regioselective to tolerate the side-chain functionalities present on the unprotected peptides, highly reactive to work with millmolar or submillimolar concentrations of the substrates, and operationally simple with mild conditions and accessible building blocks. This Account focuses on our work in the development of serine/threonine ligation (STL), which originates from a chemoselective reaction between an unprotected peptide with a C-terminal salicylaldehyde (SAL) ester and another unprotected peptide with an N-terminal serine or threonine residue. Mechanistically, STL involves imine capture, 5-endo-trig ring–chain tautomerization, O-to-N 1,5 acyl transfer to afford the N,O-benzylidene acetal-linked peptide, and acidolysis to regenerate the Xaa–Ser/Thr linkage (where Xaa is the amino acid) at the ligation site. The high abundance of serine and threonine residues (12.7%) in naturally occurring proteins and the good compatibility of STL with various C-terminal residues provide multiple choices for ligation sites. The requisite peptide C-terminal SAL esters can be prepared from the peptide fragments obtained from both Fmoc-SPPS and Boc-SPPS through four available methods (a safety-catch strategy based on phenolysis, direct coupling, ozonolysis, and the n + 1 strategy). In the synthesis of proteins (e.g., ACYP enzyme, MUC1 glycopeptide 40-mer to 80-mer, interleukin 25, and HMGA1a with variable post-translational modification patterns), both C-to-N and N-to-C sequential STL strategies have been developed through selection of temporal N-terminal protecting groups and proper design of the switch-on/off C-terminal SAL ester surrogate, respectively. In the synthesis of cyclic peptide natural products (e.g., daptomycin, teixobactin, cyclomontanin B, yunnanin C) and their analogues, intramolecular head-to-tail STL has been implemented on linear peptide SAL ester precursors containing four to 10 amino acid residues with good efficiency and minimized oligomerization. As a thiol-independent chemoselective ligation complementary to native chemical ligation, STL provides an alternative tool for the chemical synthesis of homogeneous proteins with site-specific and structure-defined modifications and cyclic peptide natural products, which lays foundation for chemical biology and medicinal studies of those molecules with biological importance and therapeutic potential.
Quantification of heat and constituent transport by gravity waves (GWs) in global models is challenging due to limited model resolutions. Current parameterization schemes suffer from ...oversimplification and often underestimate the transport rate. In this study, a new approach is explored to quantify the effective vertical eddy diffusion by using a high‐resolution Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) simulation based on scale invariance. The WACCM simulation can partially resolve the mesoscale GW spectrum down to 250 km horizontal wavelength, and the heat flux and the effective vertical eddy diffusion by these waves are calculated directly. The effective vertical diffusion by the smaller‐scale, unresolved waves, is then deduced based on scale invariance, following the method outlined by H.‐L. Liu (2019) in quantifying GW momentum flux and forcing. The effective vertical diffusion obtained is generally larger than that obtained from parameterizations, and is comparable with that derived from observations in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere region.
Plain Language Summary
Atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) may transport heat and chemical species in the vertical direction. Such transport, often measured in terms of an effective diffusion over the large‐scale background atmosphere, can be important in controlling the exchange of energy and mass between the lower and upper atmosphere, but quantification of the transport process is challenging because GWs are not well resolved or not resolved at all in global models. Previous formulation to approximate the transport tends to oversimplify the process, and can lead to model biases. In high‐resolution models, the larger scale part of the GWs are resolved and the transport by these waves can be directly calculated from simulation results. This study shows that the transport flux of heat follows scale invariance—a statistical similarity over scales—within the resolved mesoscale range. This scale invariance is used to derive the transport flux by the unresolved waves. It is shown that the transport by the unresolved waves can contribute significantly to the total wave transport. The effective diffusion coefficient derived from this study is comparable to values obtained from observations.
Key points
Vertical heat flux follows scale invariance with a shallow spectrum
Effective vertical diffusion by resolved and unresolved waves are calculated using scale invariance
The diffusion coefficient is comparable with values obtained from observations
We study the response of the thermosphere and ionosphere to the dissipation of gravity waves (GWs) excited by a deep convective plume on 1 October 2005 at 52.5°W, 15.0°S, and 2120 UT in Brazil. Those ...small‐ and medium‐scale GWs which reach the thermosphere dissipate at z ∼ 120–250 km in a direction opposite to the background wind ∼(1–2) density scale heights below. This localized momentum deposition creates horizontal thermospheric body forces that have large sizes and amplitudes and generates large‐scale secondary GWs and large‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (LSTIDs) that propagate globally away from the body force in all directions except that perpendicular to the force direction. For the convective plume at 2120 UT, the secondary GWs have horizontal wavelengths of λH ∼ 2100–2200 km, periods of τr ∼ 80 min, horizontal phase speeds of cH ∼ 480–510 m/s, density perturbations as large as ∣ρ′/∣ ∼ 3.6–5% at z = 400 km, relative O perturbations as large as ∼2–2.5% at z = 300 km, and total electron content perturbations as large as ∼8%. This transfer of momentum from local, relatively slow, small scales at the tropopause to global, fast, large scales in the thermosphere is independent of geomagnetic conditions. The various characteristics of these large‐scale waves may explain observations of LSTIDs at magnetically quiet times. We also find that this body force creates a localized “mean” horizontal wind in the direction of the body force. For the plume at 2120 UT, the wind is southward with an estimated maximum of vmax ∼ −400 m s−1 that is dissipated after ∼4 h. We also find that the induced body force direction varies throughout the day, depending on the winds in the lower thermosphere.
Recently, more than 300 Chinese patients with psychiatric disorders were diagnosed with the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Possible reasons quoted in the report were the lack of caution ...regarding the COVID-19 outbreak in January and insufficient supplies of protective gear. We outlined major challenges for patients with psychiatric disorders and mental health professionals during the COVID-19 outbreak, and also discussed how to manage these challenges through further mental health service reform in China.
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