Current knowledge and attitudes about organ donation and transplantation among Chinese university students.

Current attitudes toward organ donation among university students in mainland China and the differences in attitudes between Chinese students in mainland China versus overseas are unknown. To address these issues, we conducted a cross-sectional survey using questionnaires among 922 Chinese undergraduates from mainland China and overseas regions of the world. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Student t tests, chi-square tests, and a logistic regression analysis. We found that blood donors showed significantly better awareness of heart, liver, lung, skin, and tendon donation among commonly transplanted organs/tissues. As to the willingness for cadaveric organ donation, 61.3% of respondents consented, 8.5% objected, and 30.3% answered "not sure." The percentage holding an organ donor card was 15.7% among students from Hong Kong; 3.0%, mainland China; 2.8%, Macau; 2.6%, Taiwan, and 4.0%, other regions of the world. In a logistic regression analysis, female students (odds ratio [OR], 2.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.35 to 3.72) and blood donors (OR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.10 to 3.32) did, but age and study specialty (medical vs nonmedical) did not show significantly more positive attitudes toward cadaveric organ donation. Compared with students from mainland China, overseas Chinese students from various regions did not show significantly different attitudes toward cadaveric organ donation. In summary, blood donors among university students have a greater knowledge of transplantation and a more positive attitude toward organ donation. Since university students are an important source of blood donors in China, they will be a potential pool of organ donors in the future.

Focus measurement with a simple pattern design.

The increasingly smaller depth of focus of advanced lithographic tools requires that the position of best focus be determined to ensure accuracy and efficiency. We present what we believe is a novel bar in bar that is drawn on a conventional chrome binary mask to translate focal errors into center-to-center shifts of outer and inner bars. An overlay measurement tool can easily measure this shift. A symmetrical center-to-center shift against best focus is created during defocus, and this shift can be well fitted by a second-order polynomial equation. Simply differentiating the fitted equation leads to an accurate and reliable focus value, with a maximum error of less than 0.05 microm. The proposed technique can also be employed to evaluate the tilt, field curvature, and astigmatism of advanced lithographic tools.

[Epidemiological trend in late stage of control in Malayan filariasis endemic areas with Anopheles anthropophagus as main vector].

During 1982-1990, a longitudinal observation on prevalence trend of malayan filariasis has been made in endemic areas with An. anthropophagus as the main vector. A total of 22,795 person-times of blood examination were made, and 30,439 An. anthropophagus and 10,061 An. sinensis were dissected respectively. The microfilaraemia rate dropped from 1.0% to 0.14%, and the infection rate of An. anthropophagus decreased from 0.74% to 0.09% in 3 endemic villages, while no positive case or infected vector occurred in 5 villages where microfilaraemia cases were absent since the beginning of the study. In a cross-sectional survey, 855 villages of 17 counties has been monitored for 10 years. Out of 213,934 person-times of blood examination, only 56 were positive, the average microfilaraemia rate being 0.0262%, and 94.64% of the positive had already been detected before 1986. Based on these data, it has been suggested that in endemic areas with An. anthropophagus as main vector, when the microfilaraemia rate dropped to less than 1% after control, there was no indication that the rate would upgrade during the survey period. A decline trend of the transmission of malayan filariasis, therefore, has been exhibited.