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The purpose of this Digest is to explore the evidence suggesting the effectiveness of literacy instruction through communicative and visual arts. It discusses the communicative and visual arts in literacy instruction; television and multiple media as instructional tools; using dramatic activities in language arts classrooms; and teaching language arts through comics. It concludes that when educators expand their methods of literacy instruction to include television, drama, multimedia, comics and other formats, they may be able to reach more students in the language arts classroom and better meet students' different learning styles than would be the case using purely traditional teaching methods. (Contains 17 references.) (RS)

The use of literature circles has been discussed in a variety of academic journals, conference papers, and workshops. Teachers at all grade levels use literature circles as a vehicle through which students learn to: think critically about literature; express their thoughts in oral and written forms; and better enjoy their literacy experiences. This digest aims to introduce some procedures for implementing literature circles and to review some recent findings regarding the benefits of literature circles on students' learning. In discussing the procedure for implementing literature circles, the digest considers reading material selection, community building, the number of students in each circle, preparation for discussion, and sharing and discussion. The digest also focuses on benefits of literature circles which some students have identified, including stronger reader-text relationships; improved classroom climate; enhanced degrees of gender equity and understanding; and a learning environment more conducive to the needs and abilities of English language users. (Contains 12 references.) (NKA)

Philosophical and methodological differences exist regarding how best to instruct and encourage young children to read and write. In America, teaching reading and writing to young children has always been an area of controversy and debate, and it remains so today. The purpose of this digest is to review various studies and to identify essential elements of effective early literacy classroom instruction. The digest first discusses phonemic awareness instruction as a precursor for teaching reading and writing. It then considers the benefits of positive adult-child relationships and the necessity of a print-rich environment. The digest states that the early childhood curriculum should be filled with integrated language explorations and with reading and writing activities. It also suggests that teachers should vary teaching strategies according to children's needs. The digest concludes that when children are encouraged to learn independently, and when teachers, parents, and communities work together to build optimal environments for that learning, children's success in reading and writing can be expected. (NKA)

Computer algorithms are extensively utilized in hospitals for the purpose of achieving expedited and precise disease identification from medical data. The objective of this study is to propose a deep-learning (DL) framework to classify the chosen digital skin image (DSI) database into psoriasis and molluscum with better accuracy.

Introduction:Nocturnal enuresis (NE), often known as bedwetting, is a common condition in children and, as a result, they may have subsequent social impairments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) in children with NE.Methods:International databases with laser- and NE-related keywords were searched, and only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that used any type of LLLT to treat NE and compared it with any type of control intervention were included. Eleven studies using laser acupuncture therapy (LAT), involving 927 participants, were included for a systematic review. A meta-analysis was conducted using full and partial response-rate variables. The analysis was performed using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, and the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool and Grading of Recommendations Assessment Development and Evaluation recommendations for quality of evidence were used to rate all included publications.Results:The LAT groups showed significant improvement, compared with control groups when full response rates were analyzed. There was no significant difference between the groups treated with LAT and the groups who underwent medication therapy alone when full response rates were analyzed. Red and infrared wavelengths and continuous waves were the most commonly used LAT modalities, and lower abdomen and back acupoints were the most-common sites.Conclusions:LAT seems to be an effective and safe treatment for NE; however, the quality of evidence available in the literature was relatively low. More-rigorous and higher-quality trials are needed to investigate this treatment modality further.

MSX1mutations have been known to cause human tooth agenesis (TA) with or without orofacial clefts. However, its roles during the whole processes of tooth development are not fully understood. This study aimed to characterize a four-membered TA family carrying a novel MSX1mutation and investigate the disease mechanism.

Byline: Jiann-Chyuan Wang, Chia-Hui Lin, Kuen-Hung Tsai This paper has three main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to analyse the major trends in the development of Taiwan's hi-tech industries, and the supply and demand gap. Secondly, it examines the policies adopted by the government to address the shortage of hi-tech talent in Taiwan, by reforming the education system, strengthening on-the-job training, encouraging the recruitment of overseas talent and promoting the flow of talent between industry and academia. Thirdly, empirical analysis is undertaken to estimate labour demand deriving from the implementation of Taiwan's Regional Operation Center. The results of the empirical research show that, over the next three years, the shortage of manpower in the high tech sector will be most serious among companies in the electronics and electrical machinery industries. It is anticipated that engineers will be in particularly short supply, followed by senior technical personnel.

This paper introduces black photoresist specially designed for making black layers on flexible film. Flexibility, broad tapered profile, high optical density (OD) and high electric resistance are achieved. The flexibility is suitable for film type devices and the high electric resistivity is likely suitable for black matrix (BM) and micro light emitted diode (LED).

Fine copper circuit on flexible substrate is highly demanded components for flexible displays. Two methods have been developed for making high resolution (7um, L/S) circuits with copper thickness up to 10 um: positive‐tone photolithography/wet etching, and semi‐additive photolithography/plating/flash etching processes. High throughput roll‐to‐roll process can be applied using both methods with proprietary positive‐tone photoresists for manufacturing flexible backplane and connector circuits.

Applying common photolithography process to flexible substrate with novel formulated lithographic chemicals, flexible touch sensor film can be manufactured by roll‐to‐roll process. Extremely fine copper pattern (<2um) could be obtained without using fine mask pattern and with no copper damaging. With proprietary low temperature curing flexible black matrix photoresist to make the fringe, all layers of metal mesh touch sensor can be integrated onto one film substrate to achieve true flexible touch for flexible displays. This integrated solution is enabled by four new formulated materials: one low temperature curing black matrix photoresist for fringe, one flexible positive‐tone photoresist and one copper etchant for fine circuit patterning, and one low temperature curing clear photoresist for passivation.

The Taiwan Green Building Rating System is composed of the four categories of Ecology, Energy Saving, Waste Reduction and Health. There are also nine indicators, which are mainly guidelines but fail to consider humanity and the aesthetics of the buildings and urban environment. Based on a review of relevant literature and professional seminars, the questionnaire that was edited according to proposals relating to Green Building Aesthetics made by professionals in the field and then used to analyze the current relationship between green buildings, humanity and aesthetics in Taiwan. It is hoped, that this will enable us to fully explore the impact of humanity and aesthetics on Taiwan Green Buildings, while further demonstrating the importance of humanity and aesthetics. According to the questionnaire results, 76.8% of the respondents disagreed as well as kind of agreed and disagreed with the idea that the current Green Buildings in Taiwan has comprised of the concepts of Humanity and Aesthetics; 72.1% of the respondents considered Humanity and Aesthetics to the rating of Green Building very important and important; 81.2% of the public extremely agreed and agreed with the idea that Humanity and Aesthetics should be included in Green Building. The findings of this research indicated that most of the public considered that there were only few Humanity and Aesthetics considerations in the current Green Buildings in Taiwan and agreed that it was important to include Humanity and Aesthetics in Green Buildings.

AbstractWe establish simultaneous equations on investment, financing and hedging decisions to explore the interactions between these decisions, and to determine whether such interactions are affected by firm size. The empirical results reveal that when firm size is not taken into consideration, the interactions between investment and hedging decisions, and financing and hedging decisions are found to be positive; the interactions between investment and financing decisions are negative. However, when type of firm size is included within the analysis, the results reveal that the smaller the firm, the stronger interactions between their investment, financing and hedging decisions, indicating that firm size is an important factor in the interactions between financial decisions.

AbstractThe rapid spread of influenza virus subtype H1N1 poses a great threat to million lives worldwide. To search for new anti-influenza compounds, we performed molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation to identify potential traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) constituents that could block influenza M2 channel activity. Quinic acid, genipin, syringic acid, cucurbitine, fagarine, and methyl isoferulate all have extremely well docking results as compared to control amantadine. Further de novodrug design suggests that derivatives of genipin and methyl isoferulate could have enhanced binding affinity towards M2 channel. Selected molecular dynamics simulations of M2-derivative complexes show stable hydrogen bond interactions between the derivatives and M2 residues, Ser10 and Ala9. To our best knowledge, this is the first study on the anti-viral activity of the above listed TCM compounds.

Intact amniotic membranes may serve to protect the extremely fragile preterm infant from some of the mechanical forces caused by strong uterine contraction. This article introduces the technique of “en caul” cesarean delivery and reviews the experience of the National Taiwan University Hospital.

To assess the usefulness of quadruple test screening for Down syndrome in Taiwan.

This work reports a novel mixing design that can do fast, batch-typed liquid mixing on a centrifugal platform. Mixing is an important procedure for many applications related to chemical reactors and biological assays, especially in the field of microfluidics. The extremely small sizes of microchannels make it difficult to achieve turbulence to assist mixing. To overcome this problem, a meandering fluidic design on the centrifugal platform is proposed. Centrifual force promotes mixing by inducing lateral flow movement in the circular section and flow focusing effect in the bending section. The degree of mixing was studied for solutions with various viscosities under different rotational speeds. The experimental results showed that this mixer can mix microliter or nanoliter volumes of aqueous solutions within one second.

The conversion of 3hydroxy1propen1ylboronates to substituted enamides and enol benzoates is readily achieved in a onepot procedure consisting of a regiocontrolled Mitsunobu reaction with convenient nucleophiles, followed by allylboration of aldehydes. © WileyVCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2009

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of ligands for programmed cell death 1 (PD-L) in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS: One hundred sixty-four patients with SLE and 160 healthy controls were enrolled in our study. The PD-L1 and PD-L2 polymorphisms were determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)/direct sequencing or restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)-PCR. RESULTS: The genotype distributions of PD-L2 47103 C/T polymorphisms in patients with SLE were significantly different from those of the controls (p = 0.003). The genotype frequency of PD-L2 47103 T/T, in comparison with 47103 C/C, was significantly increased in patients with SLE when compared with that of the controls (odds ratio 2.5, 95% confidence interval 1.4-4.4, p = 0.001). A similar finding could also be found in the allele frequency of PD-L2 47103 T (SLE vs control, OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.3-2.4, p = 0.001). There were no significant differences in the genotype and allele frequencies of PD-L1 polymorphisms between the patients and controls. CONCLUSION: PD-L2 47103 T may be associated with susceptibility to SLE in Taiwan.

Type 2 diabetes has rapidly reached an epidemic proportion becoming a major threat to global public health. PPAR agonists have emerged as a leading class of oral antidiabetic drugs. We report a structure biology analysis of novel indole-based PPAR agonists to explain the structure−activity relationships and present a critical analysis of reasons for change in selectivity with change in the orientation of the same scaffolds. The results would be helpful in designing novel PPAR agonists.

A series of novel indole-based PPAR agonists is described leading to discovery of 10k, a highly potent PPAR pan-agonist. The structural biology and molecular docking studies revealed that the distances between the acidic group and the linker, when a ligand was complexed with PPARγ protein, were important for the potent activity. The hydrophobic tail part of 10k makes intensive hydrophobic interaction with the PPARγ protein resulting in potent activity.

Aerospace industry is a value-added and technology integrated industry. Sheet metal parts are important portion of aerostructures. The sheet metal production line combines five different routing types together. This study tries to make a comparison between job shop layout and cellular layout with lean concept. According to precedence diagram of sheet metal fabrication process, the model and measurement indicators can be constructed. The simulation software SIMPROCESS is then used to simulate the real-world cases under dynamic conditions. After the verification and validation process, we analyze the results that collected by simulation and provide the suggestions for the layout of aerospace sheet metal process.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of cytochrome p450 1A1 (CYP1A1) and manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) gene polymorphisms with susceptibility to Behçet's disease (BD) in Taiwan. METHODS: The polymorphisms of CYP1A1 and MnSOD genes were determined in 51 patients with BD and 91 healthy controls by polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism methods. RESULTS: The frequencies of CYP1A1 4889G and 4887A were significantly increased in patients with BD. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the frequencies of MnSOD gene polymorphisms between patients with BD and controls. Linkage disequilibrium was found between CYP1A1 4889G and CYP1A1 6235C in controls and patients with BD. However, a similar finding could not be found between CYP1A1 4889G and 4887A. We also found that the association of CYP1A1 4889G with BD was dependent on the presence of CYP1A1 4887A. On the other hand, the association of CYP1A1 4887A with BD was dependent on the presence of CYP1A1 4889G. An additive effect of CYP1A1 4889G and 4887A on the susceptibility to BD could be found. CONCLUSION: Simultaneous presence of CYP1A1 4889G and 4887A is associated with development of BD in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 microsatellite allele (TNFR2ms) and TNFR2 exon 6 polymorphisms in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Taiwan. Methods. TNFR2ms was determined in 114 patients with RA and 75 healthy controls by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and electrophoresis with sequencing gel. The TNFR2 exon 6 polymorphisms were also simultaneously measured by PCR restriction fragment length polymorphism method. RESULTS: The phenotypic and allelic frequencies of TNFR2ms 18 were significantly lower in patients with RA than in controls. The genotype frequency of TNFR2ms 16/18 was also significantly decreased in patients. In contrast, the phenotypic and allelic frequencies of TNFR2ms 15 showed a trend to be increased in patients with RA. There were no significant differences in the frequencies of various TNFR2ms and exon 6 polymorphisms concerning presence and absence of rheumatoid factor, bone erosion, rheumatoid nodules, or Sjögren's syndrome manifestation. Conclusion. TNFR2ms 18 may have a protective effect on the development of RA in Taiwanese, while TNFR2ms 15 tends to have a precipitating effect. TNFR2 exon 6 polymorphisms are not related to susceptibility for RA. TNFR2ms and exon 6 polymorphisms were not associated with the clinical manifestations of RA in Taiwanese. A synergistic effect for susceptibility to RA was found between TNFR2ms 15 and HLA-DR4.

Fibrillarin is a conserved nucleolar SnoRNP with a diverse N-terminal glycine- and arginine-rich (GAR) domain in most eukaryotes. This region in human fibrillarin is known to contain modified dimethylarginines. In this report we demonstrate that recombinant murine fibrillarin is a substrate for protein arginine methyltransferase, including the purified recombinant enzyme (rat PRMT1 and yeast RMT1) and the protein methyltransferases present in lymphoblastoid cell extracts. Our results of protease digestion, methylation competition reactions, and immunoblotting with a methylarginine-specific antibody all indicate that the methylation of fibrillarin is in the N-terminal GAR domain and arginyl residues are modified. Finally, amino acid analyses revealed that the modification of recombinant murine fibrillarin forms methylarginines, mostly as dimethylarginines.

Protein arginine methyltransferase was recently identified to be associated with some proteins in signal transduction pathways.N-Arginine methylation in RNA binding proteins with arginine- and glycine-rich RGG motifs is known to be the major protein methylation in cells. Considering that arginine methylation might be involved in certain human disorders, we used human lymphoblastoid cells that can be easily prepared from lymphocytes as a model system to study the methylation. Lymphoblastoid cells grown in the presence of 20 μM indirect methyltransferase inhibitor adenosine dialdehyde (AdOx) for 72 h appeared to accumulate high levels of hypomethylated proteins for the endogenous protein methyltransferase or recombinant glutathionS-transferase-fused yeast arginine methyltransferase (RMT1). Analysis of methyl-accept- ing polypeptides in AdOx-treated lymphoblastoid cells by SDS–PAGE and fluorography showed that many polypeptides between 29,000 and 90,000 Da were methylated by the endogenous methyltransferase. A few polypeptides could be methylated to a higher extent upon the addition of yeast GST–RMT1 fusion protein. A peptide (GGRGRGGGF) could compete for the majority of the methyl-accepting protein substrates in the AdOx-treated lymphoblastoid cell extracts, whether or not exogenous yeast RMT1 was included in the reaction. When the arginine residues in the peptide were replaced by lysine, no competition was observed. The results indicated that the protein methyl acceptors in lymphoblastoid cells share similar RGG motifs and that arginine residues should be the site of methylation.

To present a rare case of fetal nonfamilial proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD) diagnosed as early as 21 weeks' gestation.

To present intensive intrauterine treatment of recurrent early onset fetal erythroblastosis due to anti-M alloimmunization.

Schicht für Schicht gemischt: Ein gemischtvalentes Uransilicat mit Uran in drei verschiedenen Oxidationszuständen wurde durch Hydrothermalsynthese hergestellt. Die Struktur enthält Uransilicat‐Ebenen mit Uranophan‐Topologie, die durch UO6‐Oktaeder verknüpft sind; dabei entsteht eine zweidimensionale Schichtstruktur mit Natriumionen in und zwischen den Schichten (siehe Struktur).

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Fe0.74Sn5nanospheres are synthesized from a mixture of Sn nanospheres (obtained by reduction of SnCl2with NaBH4in tetraethylene glycol at 170 °C) and FeCl3in tetraethylene glycol (205 °C, 2 h).

Colorless thin‐plate crystals of the β‐form (II) are synthesized as shown.

Black lamellar crystals of the title compound, which contains three unique uranium sites for U4+, U5+, and U5+/U6+ions, are hydrothermally prepared from an aqueous mixture of UO3, SiO2, NaOH, and CsF in the molar ratio Na/Cs/U/Si = 10:5:0.5:6 (autoclave, 170 MPa, 600 °C, 2 d, 23% yield).

Colorless block crystals of compounds (III) are solvothermally prepared and their structures are determined by single crystal XRD.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 200 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 200 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 200 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 200 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract, please click on HTML or PDF.

For Abstract see ChemInform Abstract in Full Text.