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Aims Whether the circulating levels of pentraxin 3 (PTX3), an acute phase reactant (APR), are higher in active Takayasu arteritis (TAK), and if so, whether PTX3 is more accurate than C-reactive protein (CRP) in TAK activity assessment has been investigated in this study. Study design Research works such as PubMed, Embase, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Library, and two Chinese literature databases (CNKI and WanFang) were searched for studies conducted till August 30th, 2019. Two investigators searched the studies independently, who evaluated the quality of the study using the Newcastle–Ottawa scale (NOS) and extracted data. Pooled standard mean difference (SMD) and diagnostic indexes, with a 95% confidence interval (CI), were calculated using a random-effect model. Results Totally, 8 studies involving 473 TAK (208 active and 265 inactive TAK) patients and 252 healthy controls were eventually included in the meta-analysis. PTX3 level in the blood in active TAK patients were found to be higher than that in dormant TAK with pooled SMD of 0.761 (95% CI = 0.38–1.14, p<0.0001; I2 = 68%, p of Q test = 0.003). And there was no publication bias. Among the 8 studies, 5 studies identified active TAK with both PTX3 and CRP. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC values of PTX3 in active TAK diagnosis were higher than those of CRP (0.78 [95% CI = 0.65–0.87] vs. 0.66 [95% CI = 0.53–0.77], p = 0.012; 0.85 [95% CI = 0.77–0.90] vs. 0.77 [95% CI = 0.56–0.90], p = 0.033; 0.88 [95% CI = 0.85–0.90] vs. 0.75 [95% CI = 0.71–0.79], p < 0.0001). It showed potential publication bias using Egger’s test (p of PTX3 = 0.031 and p of CRP = 0.047). Conclusions PTX3 might be better than CRP in the assessment of TAK activity. Yet, it should be cautious before clinical use for moderate heterogeneity and potential publication bias of the meta-analysis.

Integrated parameter and tolerance design is a cost-effective method to multiresponse quality improvement. However, previous methods usually ignore model parameter uncertainty, dispersion effect, or correlation among responses. This may lead to the obtained optimal solutions far from the true optimal values of parameters and tolerances. To address the problem, a novel integrated parameter and tolerance design method is proposed to solve correlated multiple response problems under consideration of model parameter uncertainty, the location and dispersion effects of the quality loss, and the tolerance costs simultaneously. As there usually exists uncertainty in the quality loss and tolerance costs, multiobjective optimization is adopted to seek for the robust optimal solutions. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method are illustrated with a practical example and a random simulation example. The results show that the proposed method provides more reasonable results in quality improvement and cost reduction than those of the existing methods. KEYWORDSlocation and dispersion effects, model parameter uncertainty, multiresponse, quality loss, tolerance design | INTRODUCTIONIn today's economy, improving quality and reducing cost are essential for the business enterprise to survive. However, this cannot be achieved without effective quality or process design. An efficient and cost-effective engineering approach of product or process design is advocated by Taguchi, 1 which includes system design, parameter design, and tolerance design. Parameter design is used to reduce variation in quality characteristic first, followed by tolerance design if the variability could not be satisfactorily. For more details on robust parameter design, please see Myers et al. 2 The design factors that are allowed to vary within certain tolerance ranges due to the manufacturing error, and the design factor is supposed to follow a normal distribution in tolerance design. Conventionally, Taguchi's product design approach is known as a sequential method in which the tolerance design is performed after parameter design. Li and Wu 3 and Kim and Cho 4 argued that the sequential design method may obtain a suboptimal solution, and they proposed an integrated parameter and tolerance design (IPTD) approach to optimal parameter and tolerance design simultaneously. The advantage of IPTD is that it can reduce time-to-market, improve quality, and reduce costs by considering manufacturing processes in the early stage of product design.

The player's personality in games has been studied in recently. This study explored whether the game types could affect learner's learning emotions in educational games or not and inferred which kind of game has the potential in education. As a sample, 40 players were recruited to evaluate three electronic games on training players' abilities to use the games. In this paper, the players' heart rate variability (HRV) was recorded through Biofeedback instrument to explore learner's emotions. After evaluating the games' scores by the related scales, three different kinds of games ("Balance", "Rescue" and "Gates of Logic.") are chosen as test materials. The experiment results show three games all arouse the players' an overall positive emotions. The increasing HF and the unchanging LF/HF show the different types' games can arouse the different degrees of pleasure.