RigiScan data under long-term testosterone therapy: improving long-term blood circulation of penile arteries,penile length and girth,erectile function,and nocturnal penile tumescence and duration

Background: Late-onset hypogonadism (LOH) presents with low serum testosterone (TT) levels and sexual and nonsexual symptoms. Erectile dysfunction affects a man’s self-esteem and as a result partner relationship and quality of life.

Objectives: To investigate the andrological clinical profile outcomes of testosterone therapy (TTh) in men (n?=?88) with symptomatic LOH complaints and symptoms.

Main outcome measures: Erectile function was assessed using the International Index of Erectile Function-5 questionnaire at baseline and at 6 and 12 months of TTh. In addition, penile length was measured at baseline and 12 months. We also evaluated nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT, using RigiScan) and blood flow of cavernous arteries (penile Doppler ultrasonography) at baseline and 12 months of TT.

Materials and methods: Eighty-eight LOH men (M_age 51.1 years) with erectile dysfunction, all with serum TT?<10.4?nmol/L before TTh. Patients received intramuscular long-acting testosterone undecanoate for 12 months.

Results: Following TTh, in all patients, serum TT levels were restored within 3 months to normal levels. Compared with baseline values, erectile function significantly improved at 6 (mean score increase 1.95) and 12 months (mean score increase 2.16). No significant changes in penile length were observed. NPT significantly improved at 12 months in terms of both the frequency (mean increase 1.27 times) and duration of rigidity (mean increase 5.12?min). As regards the blood flow of the cavernous arteries, we observed a significant improvement (decrease of 1.16?cm/s) and end diastolic velocity of the penile arteries.

Conclusion: TTh in men with LOH resulted in improvement of the erectile function, NPT, and to some extent the blood flow of the cavernous arteries.     

高职Visual FoacPro课程教学改革与实践

Visual FoxPr.程序设计是一门实践性和应用性很强的数据库基础课,是教育部全国计算机.等级考试二级的考试科目之一.本文作者以高职经济类专业学生为教学对象,结合高职学生的学习特点、课程特点和教学实践,从教学内容、教学方法、实践教学和考试考核方式四个方面进行了教学改革实践.本文阐述了作者在Visual FoxPro程序设计课程教学改革中的探索与实践经验,值得借鉴.     

Compensation in the smog: Air quality and corporate executive compensation stickiness

Air quality has become an important external factor affecting the social economy, however, little attention has been paid to whether and how air quality can affect corporate behavior. By making a linkage between air quality and corporate executive compensation stickiness, we shed new light on the current literature. First, most of the current studies focus on the impact of the economy on the natural environment, while our research provides empirical evidence that there is a reversed mechanism, which natural environment also could affect the development of society. Second, although various factors have been studied, which could have an impact on executive compensation stickiness, most of them focus on the traits of corporates, we expand the extant studies to the natural environment. Finally, our research also could inspire the policymaker by indicating that bad air quality could crowd out senior managers and experts, which finally damage the development of the economy. Based on the air quality data of China's listed companies in 2006-2016, this paper examines the impact of air pollution on executive compensation contracts. It shows that smog pollution increases the cost of enterprise's manpower replacement, which also provides more opportunistic interpretation space for the executives with declining performance. Therefore, in the listed companies with poor air quality, the top managers would possess advantages in the process of making the payment contracts. Specifically drawing on the mechanism of compensation stickiness, we argue that there would be a positive relationship between air pollution and top managers' compensation stickiness for several reasons. First, air pollution causes harm to employees' health, therefore, managers would like to ask more about compensation. Second, in the regions with air pollution, people are likely to move out rather than move in, which limits the supply of the human resource. Hence, the firms in those cities become more difficult to replace the existing managers. Finally, current researches indicated that air pollution should be responsible for lower working efficiency, which offers an excuse to low-performance managers and then enhances the degree of compensation stickiness. Further, we investigate whether managerial ownership, political promotion, and the perks of managers may influence the relationship between air pollution and top managers' compensation stickiness. Using the samples of China's listed companies in 2006-2016, we provide empirical evidence that there is a significant relationship between air pollution and top managers' compensation stickiness. The setting of non-cash compensation in the executive compensation contract plays an important moderate role in the relationship between air quality and salary stickiness. Further, we also find that the impact of air quality on executive pay stickiness can be partially mitigated through managerial ownership, political promotion, and the perks of managers, which fully supports our hypothesis as above. In order to make sure that our results are robust, we also make several additional tests. First, the impact of air pollution on corporate behavior could not happen in the current year until more than one year later, therefore, we retest our hypothesis by using alternative variables which measure the compensations in the next year and the empirical tests show that our results remain. Second, although air pollution could affect the compensation of top managers, a mutual effect still could be existed. To reduce the threats of potential endogenous problems, we use both PSM (propensity score matching) and IV (instrumental variable) in the additional tests and it indicates that our results remain robust. Finally, the fluctuation of price could be an alternative explanation to managers ‘ compensation stickiness, hence, we reconstruct the variable related to revenue by CPI (consumer price index) and our findings are still evidenced by this empirical test. We also try to identify the boundaries to our findings. In the section of further research, we focus on the moderating effects of external environments. First, although air pollution enhances the cost of replacing a top manager, the cost of seeking jobs also could be enhanced in a given setting for employees. In the further analysis, we find that in the period of the financial crisis when it could be difficult for managers to find another job, the impact of air pollution becomes insignificant. Similarly, the impact of air pollution becomes insignificant in the samples of leading companies. An explanation for this phenomenon is that it would be difficult for the managers in the leading company to find a better job in the market. Finally, we also find that the years that the firm has been listed and the CEO has serviced for the firm also could have a moderating effect on the relationship between air pollution and managers’ salary. The conclusions of this paper not only expand our understanding of how air pollution affects corporate behavior but also expand the researches on the antecedent factors of executive compensation. Finally, this study also provides a theoretical reference for local governments to make policies to balance environmental protection and economic development. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.     

Decentralization and growth: Do informal institutions and rule of law matter?

We develop a model of the interactions among decentralization, informal institutions and the rule of law. The model sheds light on the ambiguous empirical results reported in the literature regarding the growth effects of the policy of devolving fiscal responsibility to local governments. We find that the distribution of civicness within a country determines the magnitude of the effects of decentralization on its regional convergence, as well as whether decentralization fosters or dampens the country’s national growth. We perform a series of simulated “reforms” using Monte Carlo methods parameterized using OECD countries data set. We then test our findings using a panel data set of 23 OECD countries covering the period 1975–2010. We find that the short and the long run growth effect of decentralization policy depends on the size of the policy reform and can range from extremely negative to positive depending on the rule of law, the level of social capital and its regional dispersion, in line with the model predictions.     

Increased visceral adiposity index associated with sexual dysfunction in men

Objective: Visceral adipose index (VAI) is a novel parameter for the evaluation of visceral obesity. As we know that obesity is a risk factor for erectile dysfunction (ED). So, in this study, we compared the VAI levels between the men with ED and without ED.

Materials and method: A total of 177 men were included in the study. Ninety-five men with ED and 82 men without ED (control). All men were evaluated for ED by Index of Erectile Function-5 items (IIEF-5). VAI levels were calculated using body mass index, high density lipoprotein and tryglyceride levels.

Results: Mean age was 53.5 (38–69) in men who have ED and 53.1 (34–69) in control. The men with ED had higher body mass index (BMI), triglyceride (TG) levels, higher waist circumference (WC) and lower high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels. Mean VAI level was 5.18?±?2.50 in study group and 3.47?±?1.76 in control goup, respectively. VAI levels were statistically higher in men with ED (p?Discussion: The simplicity of WC and BMI measurement and TG and HDL assessment, make VAI an easily applicable index for the evaluation of visceral fat dysfunction. VAI can be useful index for the evaluation and calculation of erectile dysfunction risk.     

醒脑静注射液救治急性有机磷农药中毒昏迷的疗效分析

目的:探讨醒脑静注射液救治急性有机磷农药中毒昏迷的疗效。方法:选择2012年1月-2014年10月本院收治的急性有机磷农药中毒昏迷患者46例作为研究对象,采用随机数字表法将其分为治疗组与对照组。对照组20例给予常规基本治疗,治疗组26例在对照组基础上采用醒脑静注射液治疗。观察比较两组的治疗效果。结果:治疗组抢救成功率、病死率、平均昏迷时间及并发症发生情况均优于对照组,两组比较差异均有统计学意义(P<0.05)。结论:醒脑静注射液治疗急性有机磷农药中毒昏迷疗效确切。     

On Approximate Graph Colouring and MAX-k-CUT Algorithms Based on the θ-Function

The problem of colouring a k-colourable graph is well-known to be NP-complete, for k 3. The MAX-k-CUT approach to approximate k-colouring is to assign k colours to all of the vertices in polynomial time such that the fraction of `defect edges' (with endpoints of the same colour) is provably small. The best known approximation was obtained by Frieze and Jerrum (1997), using a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation which is related to the Lovász -function. In a related work, Karger et al. (1998) devised approximation algorithms for colouring k-colourable graphs exactly in polynomial time with as few colours as possible. They also used an SDP relaxation related to the -function.In this paper we further explore semidefinite programming relaxations where graph colouring is viewed as a satisfiability problem, as considered in De Klerk et al. (2000). We first show that the approximation to the chromatic number suggested in De Klerk et al. (2000) is bounded from above by the Lovász -function. The underlying semidefinite programming relaxation in De Klerk et al. (2000) involves a lifting of the approximation space, which in turn suggests a provably good MAX-k-CUT algorithm. We show that of our algorithm is closely related to that of Frieze and Jerrum; thus we can sharpen their approximation guarantees for MAX-k-CUT for small fixed values of k. For example, if k = 3 we can improve their bound from 0.832718 to 0.836008, and for k = 4 from 0.850301 to 0.857487. We also give a new asymptotic analysis of the Frieze-Jerrum rounding scheme, that provides a unifying proof of the main results of both Frieze and Jerrum (1997) and Karger et al. (1998) for k 0.     

唐前传记文学的生命价值

唐前传记文学之所以能走向永恒 ,首先由于传主本身具有生命价值 ,其次传主个体生命已融入到民族生命之中 ,对民族精神的塑造起了重要作用 ,同时传记作品具有美感效应 ,给人以生命的启迪和美的享受。     

论农村市场的开拓

本文认为 ,开拓农村市场是我国扩大内需 ,提高经济增长速度的关键。笔者就我国农村市场发育的现状及存在的问题 ,发育缓慢的原因 ,以及开拓农村市场的对策进行了理论阐述     

论知识经济下无形资产的本质特征及管理

在知识经济条件下 ,经济的繁荣不是直接取决于资源、硬件技术的数量和规模 ,而是依赖于知识或有效信息的积累和利用 ,因而企业无形资产的管理显得十分重要。本文阐述了知识经济下无形资产的本质特征 ,并对如何加强无形资产管理提出了一些看法