代谢综合征基础与临床系列研究——GRGDSP/7E3对动脉粥样硬化内皮细胞MMPs的mRNA表达的影响

目的了解GRGDSP/7E3对基质金属蛋白酶（MMP-2,MMP-9）mRNA表达的影响。方法体外培养人脐静脉内皮细胞,分别用酶谱法和逆转录聚合酶链式反应（RT-PCR）检测MMP-2,MMP-9活性和mRNA表达。待细胞融合成单层后,分别加入无血清培养基、静息期血小板、活化后血小板及interleukin-1β（IL-1β）,共同培养60min后,洗去血小板,内皮细胞继续培养6h。上清液及细胞分别用于酶谱法检测MMP-2和MMP-9活性,以及RT-PCR分析mRNA表达。结果内皮细胞与活化血小板共同培养后,酶谱法显示：与对照组相比,未活化的血小板轻微诱导MMP-2和MMP-9分泌,而活化状态的血小板能显著诱导这二者的分泌,与IL-1β的作用相当;而且还可以见到62kDaMMP-2活化形式。加入阻断剂GRGDSP以及GPⅡb/Ⅲa单克隆抗体（7E3）作用后检测发现,MMP-2和MMP-9分泌减少。与活化血小板共同培养后的内皮细胞表面表达uPAR和MT1-MMP以及上清液中MMP-2的mRNA与对照组相比明显增高,而静息状态的血小板作用不显著。加入GRGDSP或7E3后,mR-NA的表达降低。结论①活化状态的血小板与IL-1β的作用相当,能显著诱导MMP-2和MMP-9分泌;能明显增高内皮细胞（EC）-uPAR和MT1-MMP及上清液中MMP-2mRNA的表达;②GPⅡb/Ⅲa阻断剂可能抑制血小板在不稳定斑块部位聚集、粘附等一系列炎症反应。     

A graphical summary of disparities in health care and related summary measures

In order to assess the effectiveness of government programs designed to reduce disparities in the health care minority groups receive relative to the majority white population, a proper statistical measure should be used. This article proposes a measure of and its accompanying graph, which is readily interpretable and is not affected by the number of minority subgroups examined.     

A simulation study of a discrete-time multiserver retrial queue with finite population

In this paper, we deal with a discrete-time multiserver retrial queue with finite population. Firstly, we study the Markov chain at the epochs immediately after slot boundaries making emphasis on the computation of its steady-state distribution. Then, the main performance measures are investigated. Besides, we simulate the waiting time of a customer in the retrial group under three different queueing policies. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the analysis.     

Asthma Patients' Activities and Air Pollution: A Semiparametric Censored Regression Analysis

Asthma patients' health status may be especially sensitive to some types of air pollution, but the evidence on this is mixed. We explore the effects of ground-level ozone on asthma patient's activities, breaking apart the usual aggregated category of leisure into indoor and outdoor activities, and differentiating those by whether the activities were active or inactive. Applying the semiparametric censored estimation method we demonstrate that even though the period over which activities were observed was relatively low in ozone levels, there is a significant impact of ozone on a few activities. The (non-ozone) economic and demographic variables in the model play significant roles in explaining the allocation of time among seven activities, suggesting the suitability of the approach for other household decision-making contexts.     

Bayesian locally optimal design of knockout tournaments

The elimination or knockout format is one of the most common designs for pairing competitors in tournaments and leagues. In each round of a knockout tournament, the losers are eliminated while the winners advance to the next round. Typically, the goal of such a design is to identify the overall best player. Using a common probability model for expressing relative player strengths, we develop an adaptive approach to pairing players each round in which the probability that the best player advances to the next round is maximized. We evaluate our method using simulated game outcomes under several data-generating mechanisms, and compare it to random pairings, to the standard knockout format, and to two variants of the standard format.     

Predicting body fat using weight–height indices

While body fat is the most accurate measure of obesity, its measurement requires special equipment that can be costly and time consuming to operate. Attention has thus typically focused on the easier to calculate body mass index (BMI). However, the ability of BMI to accurately identify obesity has been increasingly questioned. This paper focuses attention on whether more general body mass indices are appropriate measures of body fat. Using a data set of body fat, height, and weight measurements, general models are estimated which nest a wide variety of weight–height indices as special cases. In the absence of a race and gender categorisation, the conventional BMI was found to be the appropriate index with which to predict body fat. When such a categorisation was made, however, the BMI was never selected as the appropriate index. In general, predicted female body fat was some 10 kg higher than that of a male of identical build and predicted % body fat was over 11 percentage points higher, but age effects were smaller for females. Considerable racial differences in predicted body fat were found for males, but such differences were less marked for females. The implications of this finding for interpreting recent research on the effect of obesity on health, society, and economic factors are considered.     

Optimal scaling of Metropolis algorithms: Heading toward general target distributions

The authors provide an overview of optimal scaling results for the Metropolis algorithm with Gaussian proposal distribution. They address in more depth the case of high‐dimensional target distributions formed of independent, but not identically distributed components. They attempt to give an intuitive explanation as to why the well‐known optimal acceptance rate of 0.234 is not always suitable. They show how to find the asymptotically optimal acceptance rate when needed, and they explain why it is sometimes necessary to turn to inhomogeneous proposal distributions. Their results are illustrated with a simple example.     

Estimating the distribution function using k-tuple ranked set samples

The basic assumption underlying the concept of ranked set sampling is that actual measurement of units is expensive, whereas ranking is cheap. This may not be true in reality in certain cases where ranking may be moderately expensive. In such situations, based on total cost considerations, k-tuple ranked set sampling is known to be a viable alternative, where one selects k units (instead of one) from each ranked set. In this article, we consider estimation of the distribution function based on k-tuple ranked set samples when the cost of selecting and ranking units is not ignorable. We investigate estimation both in the balanced and unbalanced data case. Properties of the estimation procedure in the presence of ranking error are also investigated. Results of simulation studies as well as an application to a real data set are presented to illustrate some of the theoretical findings.