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This paper investigates the relationship between candidates’ online popularity and election results, as a step towards creating a model to forecast the results of Taiwanese elections even in the absence of reliable opinion polls on a district-by-district level. 253 of 354 legislative candidates of single-member districts in Taiwan’s 2016 general election had active public Facebook pages during the election period. Hypothesizing that the relative popularity of candidates’ Facebook posts will be positively related to their election results, I calculated each candidate’s Like Ratio (i.e. proportions of all likes on Facebook posts obtained by candidates in their district). In order to have a measure of online interest without the influence of subjective positivity, I similarly calculated the proportion of daily average page views for each candidate’s Wikipedia page. I ran a regression analysis, incorporating data on results of previous elections and available opinion poll data. I found the models could describe the result of the election well and reject the null hypothesis. My models successfully predicted 80% of winners in single-member districts and were effective in districts without local opinion polls with a predictive power approaching that of traditional opinion polls. The models also showed good accuracy when run on data for the 2014 Taiwanese municipal mayors election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up until now montane cloud forest (MCF) in Taiwan has only been mapped for selected areas of vegetation plots. This paper presents the first comprehensive map of MCF distribution for the entire island. For its creation, a Random Forest model was trained with vegetation plots from the National Vegetation Database of Taiwan that were classified as “MCF” or “non-MCF”. This model predicted the distribution of MCF from a raster data set of parameters derived from a digital elevation model (DEM), Landsat channels and texture measures derived from them as well as ground fog frequency data derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. While the DEM parameters and Landsat data predicted much of the cloud forest’s location, local deviations in the altitudinal distribution of MCF linked to the monsoonal influence as well as the Massenerhebung effect (causing MCF in atypically low altitudes) were only captured once fog frequency data was included. Therefore, our study suggests that ground fog data are most useful for accurately mapping MCF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing prices in many Asian cities have grown rapidly since mid-2000s, leading to many reports of bubbles. However, such reports remain controversial as there is no widely accepted definition for a housing bubble. Previous studies have focused on indices, or assumed that home prices are lognomally distributed. Recently, Ohnishi et al. showed that the tail-end of the distribution of (Japan/Tokyo) becomes fatter during years where bubbles are suspected, but stop short of using this feature as a rigorous definition of a housing bubble. In this study, we look at housing transactions for Singapore (1995 to 2014) and Taiwan (2012 to 2014), and found strong evidence that the equilibrium home price distribution is a decaying exponential crossing over to a power law, after accounting for different housing types. We found positive deviations from the equilibrium distributions in Singapore condominiums and Zhu Zhai Da Lou in the Greater Taipei Area. These positive deviations are dragon kings, which thus provide us with an unambiguous and quantitative definition of housing bubbles. Also, the spatial-temporal dynamics show that bubble in Singapore is driven by price pulses in two investment districts. This finding provides a valuable insight for policymakers on implementation and evaluation of cooling measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) is often the main piece of information used in fisheries stock assessment; however, the catch and effort data that are traditionally compiled from commercial logbooks can be incomplete or unreliable due to many reasons. Pacific bluefin tuna (PBF) is a seasonal target species in the Taiwanese longline fishery. Since 2010, detailed catch information for each PBF has been made available through a catch documentation scheme. However, previously, only market landing data with a low coverage of logbooks were available. Therefore, several nontraditional procedures were performed to reconstruct catch and effort data from many alternative data sources not directly obtained from fishers for 2001–2015: (1) Estimating the catch number from the landing weight for 2001–2003, for which the catch number information was incomplete, based on Monte Carlo simulation; (2) deriving fishing days for 2007–2009 from voyage data recorder data, based on a newly developed algorithm; and (3) deriving fishing days for 2001–2006 from vessel trip information, based on linear relationships between fishing and at-sea days. Subsequently, generalized linear mixed models were developed with the delta-lognormal assumption for standardizing the CPUE calculated from the reconstructed data, and three-stage model evaluation was performed using (1) Akaike and Bayesian information criteria to determine the most favorable variable composition of standardization models, (2) overall R2 via cross-validation to compare fitting performance between area-separated and area-combined standardizations, and (3) system-based testing to explore the consistency of the standardized CPUEs with auxiliary data in the PBF stock assessment model. The last stage of evaluation revealed high consistency among the data, thus demonstrating improvements in data reconstruction for estimating the abundance index, and consequently the stock assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of mortality and loss of disability-adjusted life years in developed countries. This study derived a dietary pattern using an a priori method and additionally derived dietary patterns using a posteriori methods, and assessed the relationship with CVD risk factors in Taiwanese middle-aged and elderly adults. Methods: Cross-sectional analyses of 62,965 subjects aged 40 years and above from the Mei Jau (MJ) database collected between 2003 and 2012 in Taiwan. Diet was assessed using a 22 item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Using this information, three dietary patterns were generated. The a priori diet was labeled the Taiwanese dietary pattern and was derived using hypothesized effect of 22 food groups, while two a posteriori dietary patterns, “vegi-fruits” and “meat-processed”, were derived using principal component analysis. The association between dietary patterns and a range of CVD risk factors (i.e. blood lipids, blood glucose and C-reactive protein) was evaluated using linear regression. Results: The results showed that high intake (Q5, quintile 5) of Taiwanese diet was negatively associated with CVD risk factors at (p < 0.001, model 3), but not with triacylglycerol. In addition, high intake of vegi-fruit dietary pattern (Q5) was negatively associated with CVD risk factors (p < 0.001), but not with high-density lipoprotein, while high consumption of meat-processed dietary pattern (Q5) was positively associated with CVD risk factors (p < 0.001), but negatively related with triacylglycerol in Q3 level and no association with C-reactive protein. Conclusion: A negative association was observed between Taiwanese or vegi-fruit dietary patterns and CVD risk factors, while a positive association was found between meat-processed dietary pattern and CVD risk factors. The findings suggested that a diet rich in vegetables and fruits has a beneficial effect in the management of CVD risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prognostic assessment in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains controversial. Using the Italian Liver Cancer (ITA.LI.CA) database as a training set, we sought to develop and validate a new prognostic system for patients with HCC.Methods and Findings: Prospective collected databases from Italy (training cohort, n = 3,628; internal validation cohort, n = 1,555) and Taiwan (external validation cohort, n = 2,651) were used to develop the ITA.LI.CA prognostic system. We first defined ITA.LI.CA stages (0, A, B1, B2, B3, C) using only tumor characteristics (largest tumor diameter, number of nodules, intra- and extrahepatic macroscopic vascular invasion, extrahepatic metastases). A parametric multivariable survival model was then used to calculate the relative prognostic value of ITA.LI.CA tumor stage, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status, Child-Pugh score (CPS), and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in predicting individual survival. Based on the model results, an ITA.LI.CA integrated prognostic score (from 0 to 13 points) was constructed, and its prognostic power compared with that of other integrated systems (BCLC, HKLC, MESIAH, CLIP, JIS). Median follow-up was 58 mo for Italian patients (interquartile range, 26-106 mo) and 39 mo for Taiwanese patients (interquartile range, 12-61 mo). The ITA.LI.CA integrated prognostic score showed optimal discrimination and calibration abilities in Italian patients. Observed median survival in the training and internal validation sets was 57 and 61 mo, respectively, in quartile 1 (ITA.LI.CA score ≤ 1), 43 and 38 mo in quartile 2 (ITA.LI.CA score 2-3), 23 and 23 mo in quartile 3 (ITA.LI.CA score 4-5), and 9 and 8 mo in quartile 4 (ITA.LI.CA score > 5). Observed and predicted median survival in the training and internal validation sets largely coincided. Although observed and predicted survival estimations were significantly lower (log-rank test, p < 0.001) in Italian than in Taiwanese patients, the ITA.LI.CA score maintained very high discrimination and calibration features also in the external validation cohort. The concordance index (C index) of the ITA.LI.CA score in the internal and external validation cohorts was 0.71 and 0.78, respectively. The ITA.LI.CA score's prognostic ability was significantly better (p < 0.001) than that of BCLC stage (respective C indexes of 0.64 and 0.73), CLIP score (0.68 and 0.75), JIS stage (0.67 and 0.70), MESIAH score (0.69 and 0.77), and HKLC stage (0.68 and 0.75). The main limitations of this study are its retrospective nature and the intrinsically significant differences between the Taiwanese and Italian groups.Conclusions: The ITA.LI.CA prognostic system includes both a tumor staging-stratifying patients with HCC into six main stages (0, A, B1, B2, B3, and C)-and a prognostic score-integrating ITA.LI.CA tumor staging, CPS, ECOG performance status, and AFP. The ITA.LI.CA prognostic system shows a strong ability to predict individual survival in European and Asian populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplace health promotion (WHP) is important to prevent work-related diseases, reduce workplace hazards, and improve personal health of the workers. Health promotion projects were launched through the centers of WHP funded by the Taiwan Bureau of Health Promotion since 2003. Hence, the aim of this study is to evaluate the of WHP programs intervention from 2003 to 2007. The intervention group consisted of 838 business entities which had ever undergone counseling of the three centers in northern, central, and southern Taiwan from 2003 to 2007. The control group was composed of 1000 business entities randomly selected from the business directories of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan. The questionnaire survey included general company profiles and the assessment of workplace health according to the five action areas of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. We have received 447 (53.3%) questionnaires from the intervention group and 97 questionnaires from the control group. The intervention group was more effective in using the external resources and medical consultation, and they had better follow-up rates of the abnormal results of annual health examinations. Compared to the control group, the intervention group had a significantly decreased smoking rate in 246 companies (61.2%) and a reduced second-hand smoke exposure in 323 companies (78.6%) (p<0.001). By means of the intervention of WHP programs, we can enhance the awareness of the enterprises and the employees to improve worksite health and . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Given the shortage of cost-of-illness studies in dementia outside of the Western population, the current study estimated the annual cost of dementia in Taiwan and assessed whether different categories of care costs vary by severity using multiple disease-severity measures. Methods: This study included 231 dementia patient–caregiver dyads in a dementia clinic at a national university hospital in southern Taiwan. Three disease measures including cognitive, functional, and behavioral disturbances were obtained from patients based on medical history. A societal perspective was used to estimate the total costs of dementia according to three cost sub-categories. The association between dementia severity and cost of care was examined through bivariate and multivariate analyses. Results: Total costs of care for moderate dementia patient were 1.4 times the costs for mild dementia and doubled from mild to severe dementia among our community-dwelling dementia sample. Multivariate analysis indicated that functional declines had a greater impact on all cost outcomes as compared to behavioral disturbance, which showed no impact on any costs. Informal care costs accounted for the greatest share in total cost of care for both mild (42%) and severe (43%) dementia patients. Conclusions: Since the total costs of dementia increased with severity, providing care to delay disease progression, with a focus on maintaining patient physical function, may reduce the overall cost of dementia. The greater contribution of informal care to total costs as opposed to social care also suggests a need for more publicly-funded long-term care services to assist family caregivers of dementia patients in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between diabetes mellitus (DM) and tuberculosis (TB) relapse using the nationwide TB registry in Taiwan. We conducted a case-control study nested within a nationwide cohort of all incident cases of pulmonary TB that were notified during 2006–2007 and had completed anti-TB treatment. The relapse of TB was confirmed by bacteriological or pathological findings. For each relapse case, one control was selected from the study cohort matching by time since treatment completion. DM status was ascertained by medical chart review and cross-matching with the National Health Insurance claims database. A total of 305 cases of relapse were identified after a median follow-up of 3 years (relapse rate: 488 per 100,000 person-year; 95% confidence interval (CI): 434–546). Presence of DM during previous anti-TB treatment was 34.0% and 22.7% in cases and controls, respectively. After adjusting for other potential confounders, DM was associated with increased risk of TB relapse (adjusted odds ratio: 1.96, 95% CI: 1.22–3.15). Only one-third of the DM-TB patients in our study received glycaemic monitoring using HbA1c during anti-TB treatment. Presence of DM was independently associated with risk of TB relapse. TB programs should seriously consider rigorous glucose control in DM-TB patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreaks of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 resulted in unprecedented impacts on people's daily life. One of the most significant impacts to people is the fear of contacting the SARS virus while engaging daily routine activity. Here we use data from daily underground ridership in Taipei City and daily reported new SARS cases in Taiwan to model the dynamics of the public fear of the SARS virus during the wax and wane of the SARS period. We found that for each reported new SARS case there is an immediate loss of about 1200 underground ridership (the fresh fear). These daily loss rates dissipate to the following days with an e-folding time of about 28 days, reflecting the public perception on the risk of contacting SARS virus when traveling with the underground system (the residual fear). About 50% of daily ridership was lost during the peak of the 2003 SARS period, compared with the loss of 80% daily ridership during the closure of the underground system after Typhoon Nari, the loss of 50–70% ridership due to the closure of the governmental offices and schools during typhoon periods, and the loss of 60% daily ridership during Chinese New Year holidays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The incidence and prevalence of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) vary widely across the world but data in East Asia is lacking. Uveitis is a serious cause of morbidity in JIA. This study aimed to analyze the incidence and prevalence of JIA, and the characteristics of JIA-associated uveitis in Taiwan. Methods: A population-based cohort study was conducted using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. Each patient was individually tracked from 1999 to 2009 to identify the diagnosis of JIA and uveitis using the International Classification of Diseases diagnostic codes. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the risk factors and complications of uveitis in patients with JIA. Results: The study cohort had 2636 cases of JIA and included juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (57.7%), enthesitis-related arthritis (ERA) (39.2%), and psoriatic arthritis (3.1%). The average annual incidence of JIA and JIA-associated uveitis were 4.93 (range, 3.93–6.23) and 0.25 (range, 0.12–0.37) cases per 100,000 population, respectively. The average period prevalence of JIA was 33.8 cases per 100,000 population. Uveitis occurred in 4.7% of patients with JIA, while JIA-associated uveitis was complicated by cataract (11.2%) and glaucoma (24.8%). Enthesitis-related arthritis was significantly associated with uveitis (OR: 3.47; 95% CI: 2.24–5.37) (p<0.0001). Uveitis diagnosed before JIA was the most significant risk factor for complications of glaucoma or cataract (OR: 3.54; 95% CI: 1.44–8.72) (p = 0.006). Conclusions: The incidence of JIA is low but that of JIA-associated uveitis is increasing. Higher percentage of males in patients with ERA and the strong association between ERA and uveitis are unique for children with JIA in Taiwan. Uveitis diagnosed before arthritis is an important risk factor for complications. Continuous ophthalmologic follow-up is needed for children with JIA or uveitis of unknown etiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]