No abstract

Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of parenteral nutritional support with ω-3 PUFAs–based lipid emulsions in patients after liver resection. Methods: A total of 119 patients were randomly assigned to the immunonutrition (IM) group (n = 59) and control group (n = 60). The IM group was continuously given Omegaven® 10% 100 mL/day rather than regular nutrition for five days postoperatively. Venous blood samples were obtained from all subjects before surgery and D1, D3 and D7 after surgery. Results: No significant difference was found in baseline characteristics of the two groups. On D1 after surgery, no statistically significant differences were observed in the blood sample tests between the two groups. On D3 after surgery, the levels of white blood cell count (WBC), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST) and total bilirubin (TBil) were dramatically decreased in the IM group (t = 3.065, p = 0.003; t = 2.149, p = 0.034; t = 5.313, p= 0.001; and t = 2.419, p = 0.017, respectively). Furthermore, on D7 after surgery, not only could a significant decrease be observed in the IM group concerning the levels of WBC, ALT and TBil (t = 3.025, p = 0.003; t = 2.094, p = 0.038; and t = 2.046, p = 0.043, respectively), but it was also seen in the level of Δprothrombintime (PT) (t = 2.450, p = 0.016). An increase in the level of prealbumin (Pre-Alb) in the IM group was observed on D7 after surgery (t = 2.237, p = 0.027). The frequency of total complications in the IM group were significantly lower than in the control group (χ2 = 4.225, p = 0.040 and χ2 = 3.174, p = 0.075). The trend favored the IM group in reducing the total infective complications rate (χ2 = 3.174, p = 0.075). A significant decrease in the duration of the hospital stay after surgery was also observed in the IM group (t = 2.012, p = 0.047).Conclusion: ω-3 PUFAs–based lipid emulsions for treatment of patients after hepatectomy are safe and effective in controlling inflammation, protecting liver function, and consequently reducing the rate of total complications and the duration of the hospital stay.

No abstract

Simultaneous derivation of multiple ionospheric parameters from the incoherent scatter power spectra in the F 1 region is difficult because the spectra have only subtle differences for different combinations of parameters. In this study, we apply a particle swarm optimizer (PSO) to incoherent scatter power spectrum fitting and compare it to the commonly used least squares fitting (LSF) technique. The PSO method is found to outperform the LSF method in practically all scenarios using simulated data. The PSO method offers the advantages of not being sensitive to initial assumptions and allowing physical constraints to be easily built into the model. When simultaneously fitting for molecular ion fraction (f m ), ion temperature (T i ), and ratio of ion to electron temperature (γ T ), γ T is largely stable. The uncertainty between f m and T i can be described as a quadratic relationship. The significance of this result is that T i can be retroactively corrected for data archived many years ago where the assumption of f m may not be accurate, and the original power spectra are unavailable. In our discussion, we emphasize the fitting for f m , which is a difficult parameter to obtain. PSO method is often successful in obtaining f m , whereas LSF fails. We apply both PSO and LSF to actual observations made by the Arecibo incoherent scatter radar. The results show that PSO method is a viable method to simultaneously determine ion and electron temperatures and molecular ion fraction when the last is greater than 0.3.