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Purpose Bulimia nervosa (BN)is characterized by recurrent binge-eating episodes and inappropriate compensatory behaviors. This study investigated alterations in resting-state surface-based neural activity in BN patients and explored correlations between brain activity and eating behavior. Methods A total of 26 BN patients and 28 healthy controls were enrolled. Indirect measurement of cerebral cortical activity and functional connectivity (FC) analyses were performed in Surfstat. A principal component analysis (PCA) model was used to capture the commonalities within the behavioral questionnaires from the BN group. Results Compared with the healthy control group, the BN group showed decreased surface-based two-dimensional regional homogeneityin the right superior parietal lobule (SPL). Additionally, the BN group showed decreased FC between the right SPL and the bilateral lingual gyrus and increased FC between the right SPL and the left caudate nucleus and right putamen. In the FC-behaviorassociation analysis, the second principal component (PC2) was negatively correlated with FC between the right SPL and the left caudate nucleus. The third principal component (PC3) was negatively correlated with FC between the right SPL and the left lingual gyrus and positively correlated with FC between the right SPL and the right lingual gyrus. Conclusion We revealed that the right SPL undergoes reorganization with respect to specific brain regions at the whole-brain level in BN. In addition, our results suggest a correlation between brain reorganization and maladaptive eating behavior. These findings may provide useful information to better understand the neural mechanisms of BN. Level of evidence Level V, descriptive study.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the leading malignancy associated with cancer-related deaths worldwide. Many studies have indicated that mucin (MUC) expression plays an important role in cancer metastasis and recurrence.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the third most common female cancer in Taiwan. EZH2 plays an important role in cancer development through transcriptional repression by chromatin remodeling. However, the expression of EZH2 in breast cancer is highly correlated with tumorigenesis, and patient survival is not matched to TNBC. Furthermore, it has not been determined if specific EZH2 genetic variants are associated with breast cancer risk. In this paper, we evaluated the survival of different types of breast cancer. The results indicated that a lower expression of EZH2 led to poor survival of TNBC patients. Therefore, we aimed at studying the relationship between genetic polymorphisms of EZH2 and susceptibility to TNBC in Taiwan. Four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of EZH2 (rs6950683, rs2302427, rs3757441, and rs41277434) were analyzed by real-time PCR genotyping in 176 patients with TNBC and 1000 cancer-free controls. The results showed that TNBC patients under 60 years old who carried a TC or CC genotype at EZH2 rs6950683 and re3757441 had a tumor size of 20 mm or smaller (T1). Thus, this study is the first to examine the age and mutant genes associated with EZH2 SNPs in TNBC progression and development in Taiwan.

TRIM37 dysregulation has been observed in several cancer types, implicating its possible role in tumorigenesis. However, the role of TRIM37 in pancreatic cancer progression remains unclear. In the present study, we observed that TRIM37 knockdown resulted in reduced proliferation, clonogenicity, migration, and invasion ability of pancreatic cancer cells. Furthermore, an in vivo study using an orthotopic syngeneic animal model further confirmed that reduced expression of TRIM37 in cancer cells suppressed tumor growth in vivo. Moreover, in mice bearing TRIM37 knockdown pancreatic cancer cells, the proportion of CD11b+F4/80+MHCIIlow immunosuppressive macrophages was significantly reduced in tumor milieu, which might be due to the regulatory role of TRIM37 in cytokine production by pancreatic cancer cells. Collectively, these findings suggest a key role of TRIM37 in promoting pancreatic cancer progression.

The brain receives sensory information about food, evaluates its desirability and value, and responds with approach or withdrawal. The evaluation process of food in the brain with obesity may involve a variety of neurocircuit abnormalities in the integration of internal and external information processing. There is a lack of consistency of the results extant reported for aberrant changes in the brain with obesity that prohibits key brain alterations to be identified. Moreover, most studies focus on the observation of neural plasticity of function or structure, and the evidence for functional and structural correlations in the neuronal plasticity process of obesity is still insufficient. The aims of this article are to explore the key neural structural regions and the hierarchical activity pattern of key structural nodes and evaluate the correlation between changes in functional modulation and eating behavior. Forty-two participants with obesity and 33 normal-weight volunteers were recruited. Gray matter volume (GMV) and Granger causality analysis (GCA) were performed using the DPARSF, CAT12, and DynamicBC toolbox. Compared with the normal weight group, the obesity group exhibited significantly increased GMV in the left parahippocampal gyrus (PG). The obesity group showed decreased causal inflow to the left PG from the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right calcarine, and bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA). Decreased causal outflow to the left OFC, right precuneus, and right SMA from the left PG, as well as increased causal outflow to the left middle occipital gyrus (MOG) were observed in the obesity group. Negative correlations were found between DEBQ-External scores and causal outflow from the left PG to the left OFC, and DEBQ-Restraint scores and causal inflow from the left OFC to the left PG in the obesity group. Positive correlation was found between DEBQ-External scores and causal outflow from the left PG to the left MOG. These results show that the increased GMV in the PG may play an important role in obesity, which may be related to devalued reward system, altered behavioral inhibition, and the disengagement of attentional and visual function for external signals. These findings have important implications for understanding neural mechanisms in obesity and developing individual-tailored strategies for obesity prevention.

Mobile phones have become a necessity of modern life and are used for various tasks, including audio calls, text messaging, Web surfing, video streaming, gaming, and payments. Most of these tasks consume significant battery power, which makes public charging services increasingly important. Therefore, there are many public places and private stores have started to provide free charging services. However, there are several issues that restrict the popularity of public charging service. First, people cannot easily find charging spots. Second, there is no effective way to monitor charging status and manage the chargers. Third, a free charging service increases business expenses. To address these issues, we developed a Internet of Things (IoT)-based wireless charging service system, which is called AnyCharge. There are five major components of AnyCharge: 1) a Wi-Fi enabled wireless charger; 2) an IoT gateway; 3) a cloud-based management platform; 4) a secure Wi-Fi auto-connection algorithm; and 5) a mobile app. The charger is connected to an IoT gateway through Wi-Fi using our secure auto-connection algorithm, and the gateways are linked to the cloud server using message queue telemetry transport. The administrators can monitor and control chargers using the management platform. In addition, Android and iOS apps have been created to allow users to locate free chargers and find the shortest route to the nearest charging spot. We initiated a large-scale experimental deployment in Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Japan. More than 200 chargers have been installed in different places, including restaurants, hospitals, telecom stores, and hotels. Statistics shows that there is a strong demand for public charging services.

Cigarette smoke is a known risk factor for urothelial carcinoma (UC). However, there is limited information about the distributions and effects of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on smoking-related UC risk. With this hospital-based case-control study, we explored the associations between urinary levels of cotinine and VOC metabolites (acrylamide, 1,3-butadiene, and benzene) and the risk of UC. Urological examinations and pathological verifications were used to confirm the diagnoses of UC. All study participants provided smoking-related information via questionnaires and face-to-face interviews; they also provided urine samples for the measurement of VOC metabolites, cotinine, and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), which was used as an indicator of oxidative stress. We applied multiple logistic regression analysis to estimate the risk of UC, and we found that levels of urinary cotinine and 8-OHdG were higher in the UC group than in the control group. Furthermore, urinary levels of VOC metabolites, including N-acetyl-S-(2-carbamoylethyl)-L-cysteine (AAMA), N-acetyl-S-(2-carbamoyl-2-hydroxyethyl)-L-cysteine, N-acetyl-S-(4-hydroxy-2-buten-1-yl)-L-cysteine-3, trans,trans-muconic acid (t,t-MA), and S-phenylmercapturic acid (SPMA), increased with increasing levels of urinary cotinine. After adjusting for potential risk factors, dose–response relationships were observed between UC risk and urinary levels of AAMA, t,t-MA, SPMA, and 8-OHdG. Participants with high urinary levels of cotinine, AAMA, t,t-MA, SPMA, and 8-OHdG had risks of UC that were 3.5- to 6-fold higher than those of participants with lower levels. Future, large-scale investigations of the risks of UC should be explored, and repeated measurement of VOC metabolites should be assessed.

A single-exposure microscopic profilometry using artificial neural network (ANN) was developed for 3-D profile reconstruction of precise surface geometry. Optical profilometry is an important technique widely applied in many fields. However, in addition to optical aberration of the microscope itself, tilting of a local testing surface can affect the direction of the reflected light, thus causing undesired measurement errors. To overcome these problems, various methods or optical strategies have been developed, but most of them suffer from undue measurement errors attributed to the local surface gradient formed by the measured point and its neighboring surface geometry. This study proposed a novel method that combined diffractive image microscopy (DIM) with ANN. To train the ANN model, diffractive images of various surface orientations were collected for learning the complex mapping relationships between diffractive images and their corresponding surface orientations. The proposed method could simultaneously measure the height, tilting angle and tilting direction of a local surface. 3-D surface reconstruction by the proposed method required no prior knowledge of neighboring geometric information adjacent to the measured point. Using the developed approach achieved a surface height repeatability of 0.257 μm and a surface inclined angle repeatability of 0.037°, evidencing the realization of precise 3-D microscopic profilometry.

Abnormal activities in reward-related regions are associated with overeating or obesity. Preliminary studies have shown that changes in neural activity in obesity include not only regional reward regions abnormalities but also impairments in the communication between reward-related regions and multiple functional areas. A recent study has shown that the transitions between different neural networks are nonrandom and hierarchical, and that activation of particular brain networks is more likely to occur after other brain networks. The aims of this study were to investigate the key nodes of reward-related regions in obese males and explore the hierarchical integrated processing of key nodes. Twenty-four obese males and 24 normal-weight male controls of similar ages were recruited. The fMRI data were acquired using 3.0 T MRI. The fMRI data preprocessing was performed in DPABI and SPM 12. Degree centrality analyses were conducted using GRETNA toolkit, and Granger causality analyses were calculated using DynamicBC toolbox. Decreased degree centrality was observed in left ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and right parahippocampal/hippocampal gyrus in group with obesity. The group with obesity demonstrated increased effective connectivity between left vmPFC and several regions (left inferior temporal gyrus, left supplementary motor area, right insular cortex, right postcentral gyrus, right paracentral lobule and bilateral fusiform gyrus). Increased effective connectivity was observed between right parahippocampal/hippocampal gyrus and left precentral/postcentral gyrus. Decreased effective connectivity was found between right parahippocampal/hippocampal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule. This study identified the features of hierarchical interactions between the key reward nodes and multiple function networks. These findings may provide more evidence for the existing view of hierarchical organization in reward processing.

Objective This study aimed to investigate regional neural activity and regulation of patterns in the reorganized neural network of obesity and explore the correlation between brain activities and eating behavior. Methods A total of 23 individuals with obesity and 23 controls with normal weight were enrolled. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired using 3.0-T MRI. Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and functional connectivity (FC) analyses were conducted using Data Processing Assistant for resting-state fMRI and Resting-State fMRI Data Analysis Toolkit (REST). Results The group with obesity showed increased amplitude of low-frequency values in left fusiform gyrus/amygdala, inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus, and bilateral caudate but decreased values in right superior temporal gyrus. The group with obesity showed increased FC between left caudate and right superior temporal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus/amygdala and left ITG, right caudate and left fusiform gyrus/amygdala, and right caudate and left hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus. Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire-Emotional scores were positively correlated with FC between left hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus and right caudate but negatively correlated with FC between left fusiform gyrus/amygdala and left ITG. Conclusions The study indicated the reorganized neural network presented as a bilateral cross-regulation pattern across hemispheres between reward and various appetite-related functional processing, thus affecting emotional and external eating behavior. These results could provide further evidence for neuropsychological underpinnings of food intake and their neuromodulatory therapeutic potential in obesity.

This work presents a novel microscopic profilometry using diffraction image correlation, which is appropriate for in-situ automated optical inspection (AOI). In contrast to the traditional confocal microscopy, the developed technique replaces the detector pinhole by observing and matching the diffraction patterns. Thus accurate surface depth detection can be achieved by eliminating time-consuming vertical scanning operation. The development is the first attempt in optics to use image correlation between the pre-calibrated database of diffraction images and the measured one of the detecting object surface. The feasibility of the method has been theoretically verified by scalar diffraction theory, then verified by experimental testing. Also, a depth response curve with the physical meaning of similarity is introduced and interpreted. Meanwhile, multi-point lateral scanning in one field of view (FOV) is achieved by quickly switching micromirrors on the digital micromirror device (DMD), thus the quasi full-field 3-D reconstruction can be acquired by combining tens of captured images. Verified experimentally, a 3-D reconstruction with sub-micrometer vertical resolution can be realized, with a tunable lateral resolution.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most lethal forms of cancer as the overall five-year survival rate was less than 5%. More than 90% of PDAC patients harbor Kras mutation, but only mutant Kras is insufficient to give rise to PDAC. Inflammation is essential to cooperate with mutant Kras for the initiation of pancreatic precancerous lesion, and attracted M1-polarized macrophages-induced inflammation are known to contribute to the process. Among TRIM family proteins, TRIM37 is the only protein containing MATH domain that endows it being able to interact with proteins containing TRAF domain, indicating its possible role in regulating pattern recognition receptor-, TNFR- and cytokine-mediated signaling pathways. We have observed that, when TRIM37 was knocked-down, macrophage cytokines production, such as IL-1β, IFN-β, IL-12, TNF-a, IL-6 and CCL-2 in response to LPS was reduced, and the regulation was both epigenetically and non-epigenetically. Interestingly, pro-inflammatory cytokines also upregulated TRIM37 expression in macrophages. Thus our data implicated that upregulated TRIM37 that positively regulate macrophage cytokine production might contribute to the initiation of PDAC. However, when macrophages were co-cultured with pancreatic cancer cells, the expression level of TRIM37 in macrophages were downregulated, this led to the loss of its ability in maintaining macrophages in a stable M1 phenotype, and instead, skewing the macrophages into a M2 phenotype, which promotes cancer progression. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that during pancreatic cancer development, the expression of TRIM37 in macrophages are differential regulated to favor cancer development and progression.

The goal of this work is to prepare antimicrobial, corrosion-resistant and low-cost Cu65Zn35 brass film on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fabric by high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS), which is known to provide high-density plasma, so as to generate a strongly adherent film at a reduced substrate temperature. The results reveal that the brass film grows in a layer-plus-island mode. Independent of their deposition time, the obtained films retain a Cu/Zn elemental composition ratio of 1.86 and exhibit primarily an α copper phase structure. Oxygen plasma pre-treatment for 1 min before coating can significantly increase film adhesion such that the brass-coated fabric of Grade 5 or Grade 4–5 can ultimately be obtained under dry and wet rubbing tests, respectively. However, a deposition time of 1 min suffices to provide effective antimicrobial properties for both Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. As a whole, the feasibility of using such advanced HIPIMS coating technique to develop durable antimicrobial textile was demonstrated.

In this study, we have adopted factors such as intellectual capital, financial ratios and corporate governance variables to construct a financial distress forecasting model by logistic regression. Furthermore, we employ the criteria of minimizing the sum of the two error probability in models I and II to determine the optimal threshold value, so as to increase the forecasting ability of a financial crisis forecasting model. We have taken 54 electronics companies listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) and Over the Counter (OTC) during the periods from 2012 to 2015 to be our observation. 18 companies out of the 54 has been financially distressed in 2015. The results show that we could effectively construct a lower threshold value on the basis of the dynamic threshold value to carry out early warning (such as p = 0.32 ∼ 0.43 < p = 0.5) than those in terms of the traditional one half rule. The total error prediction probability could be reduced by 8.33% to 30.56%. In addition, the empirical evidence shows that after adding the intellectual capital variables, it could enhance the forecasting power.

A full-field microprofilometry involving innovative image correlation was developed for profile measurement without vertical scanning. High-speed optical inspection has become critical for confirming precise dimensions in semiconductor fabrication such as microbumping in 3D stacked ICs and precision manufacturing. A digital micromirror device (DMD) is designed to serve as a point-light-source array in a quasiconfocal optical configuration and perform lateral scanning to minimize signal crosstalk between neighboring testing points. More importantly, multiple diffractive images are detected and measured with a prebuilt depth-correlated database to extract the height information of a tested surface. A 100-nm repeatability can be realized in the absence of a detector pinhole and without vertical scanning, thus achieving high-speed submicrometer-scale surface profilometry.