The impact of age,BMI and sex hormone on aging males’ symptoms and the international index of erectile function scores

Objective: To analyze the impact of age, BMI and sex hormone on aging males’ symptoms (AMS) and the 5-item version of the international index of erectile function (IIEF-5) scores in middle-aged and elderly Chinese men.

Methods: A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Jiashan County. A total of 969 men, aged between 40 and 80 years old, were admitted. Physical examination and the sex hormones were measured, and AMS and IIEF-5 scores were assessed.

Results: The oneway ANOVA analysis indicated older age groups had higher AMS total-scores, somatic and sexual sub-scores, and lower IIEF5 scores (all p?r_pairwise) analyses showed the significant associations between AMS and age or sex hormone (cFT, Bio-T, SHBG, and LH) levels, and similar for IIEF5. However, when age was adjusted, the correlation coefficients (r_partial) weakened, and correlation significance disappeared, except LH (for AMS: r_partial?=?0.096, p?=?.009; for IIEF-5: r_partial?= ?0.140, p?=?.001). Multiple linear regressions confirmed the influence of increased age and LH on the AMS and IIEF5 scores.

Conclusion: CFT, Bio-T and SHBG failed to yield any additional predicting information when age was adjusted. To improve the male reproductive health, future research should pay more attention on aging-related comorbidities and how to improve general wellness.     

Who is leading the campaign charts? Comparing individual popularity on old and new media

Attention in the mass media is seen as crucial for electoral success. However, most ordinary candidates hardly get any attention in the news. With social media outlets becoming ever more popular, the question is whether the overall asymmetry in attention for candidates still holds today. Do candidates who dominate the traditional media during the campaign also dominate the social media? Or can candidates make up for a lack of mass media coverage by attracting attention on these new media platforms? This paper aims to answer these questions by pairing Twitter activity and Twitter popularity with newspaper attention for a large number of individual candidates in the 2014 Belgian election campaign. We expand the normalization versus equalization debate by not only looking at how much a new medium is used, but also at its success in terms of popularity and audience reach. Our findings show that the two platforms are indeed related, mainly because a small political elite dominates both old and new media. Twitter popularity and Twitter activity (albeit to a lesser extent) are higher among powerful politicians. We elaborate on why these findings are so much in line with the normalization hypothesis.     

A general long-term aging model with different underlying activation mechanisms: Modeling,Bayesian estimation,and case influence diagnostics

In this paper we propose a general cure rate aging model. Our approach enables different underlying activation mechanisms which lead to the event of interest. The number of competing causes of the event of interest is assumed to follow a logarithmic distribution. The model is parameterized in terms of the cured fraction which is then linked to covariates. We explore the use of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to develop a Bayesian analysis for the proposed model. Moreover, some discussions on the model selection to compare the fitted models are given, as well as case deletion influence diagnostics are developed for the joint posterior distribution based on the ψ-divergence, which has several divergence measures as particular cases, such as the Kullback–Leibler (K-L), J-distance, L₁ norm, and χ²-square divergence measures. Simulation studies are performed and experimental results are illustrated based on a real malignant melanoma data.     

群体性事件之伦理辨思

群体性事件是当前影响中国社会稳定的重要因素。个体利益受损与诱因发生、负面道德评价与人群聚集、良心拒绝与暴力反抗的组合,构成了群体性事件演化的微观过程。以此伦理分析为依据,源头阻断群体性事件并有效消除其负面影响,不仅要强调社会管控,还要强调合法性、责任性、回应以及有效等社会管理核心价值的指导作用。     

智库的大众传播操作：由胡佛研究所引申

智库要实现影响舆论、进而影响公共政策的目的,首先必须通过各种大众传播工具对外宣传推广其研究人员和研究成果,使其得到公众的认可。世界著名智库胡佛研究所通过对现代大众传播技术的充分合理运用,进一步提高了其在美国及世界上的地位和影响力,其成功经验,值得我国智库学习借鉴。     

长期执政条件下中国共产党密切联系群众动力研究

社会主义国家普遍实行的是一党长期执政。在我国当前一党执政的新时期、新形势下,中国共产党要坚定党的既定方针,带领中国人民实现中华民族的伟大复兴使命,更加需要同广大的人民群众保持密切的联系。在贯彻落实群众路线时,要切切实实地关注广大百姓的切身利益与实际问题,特别是要建立起一种能够将我党同广大人民群众密切联系起来的长效机制。     

旁观者心态与张爱玲小说的叙事策略

中国文学史对张爱玲一直有某些误解,其中之一就是张爱玲的“冷眼旁观”。她这种貌似清高的创作姿态,给很多读者留下了冷漠薄情的印象。事实上,张爱玲是个“外冷内热”的人,这也正是她的旁观者心态的本质。了解她的旁观者心态的表现与动因对于她的叙事策略研究有很大帮助,也有利于我们进一步了解她的创作在人性、历史、哲学等方面达到的深度。