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Background Magnesium-loaded hydroxyapatite (Mg@HAp) is a potential biomaterial for bone healing application but has not been comprehensively synthesized yet. Methods In this study, we utilize phosphatidylcholine (PC)-assisted method for synthesizing Mg@HAp with controllable Mg amount from 1.44 to 10.64 wt%. It is proposed that the negatively charged phosphate functional group of PC could act on cations (i.e. Mg2+ or Ca2+), which provides stable nucleation for the formation of Mg@HAp. Significant findings By optimizing the synthesis conditions, we successfully prepared a Mg@HAp with a relatively low crystallinity which is similar to human bone structure, as evidenced by XRD measurement. The in vitro test of bone cells (MG-63) shows that the release of Mg2+ ions from Mg@HAp enhances cellular proliferation and differentiation. We believe the synthesized Mg@HAp would be a promising biomaterial in orthopedic applications.

Indium gallium zinc oxide/silver/indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO/Ag/IGZO) triple-layer films were deposited on glass substrates using radio frequency (R.F.) magnetron sputtering. We had found that the deposition time (thickness) of Ag had a large effect on the electrical (conductive) and transmittance characteristics of the IGZO/Ag/IGZO triple-layer films. As the SIMS depth profile analysis was conducted on the IGZO/Ag/IGZO triple-layer films, as expected, the thickness of the Ag layer increased with the increase of deposition time. In the visible wavelength region, as the deposition time of Ag layer increased from 10 s to 30 s, the all IGZO/Ag/IGZO triple-layer films revealed the amorphous phase. As the deposition time of Ag layer increased, the maximum transmittance ratio slightly decreased and the wavelength to reveal the maximum transmittance ratio was shifted to lower value. Also, the mobility and carrier concentration increased and the resistivity decreased with increasing deposition times of Ag layer. The triple-layer IGZO/Ag/IGZO films showed impressive transmittance and electrical conductivity and the IGZO/Ag/IGZO triple-layer films with the 25 s Ag deposition time possessed satisfactory optical and electrical properties for potential applications.

A new, physically motivated, basis set expansion method for solving quantum eigenvalue problems with competing interaction potentials is presented. In contrast to the usual dissection of the potential energy into unperturbed and perturbing terms, we divide the kinetic energy into partial terms by modifying the mass factor. The partition scheme results in partial kinetic energies with their effective mass factors. By distributing each partial kinetic energy to a respective potential energy to form a subsystem, the total Hamiltonian is written as the sum of subsystem Hamiltonians. Using a linear combination of the subsystem wave-functions to represent the system wave-function we obtain a set of coupled equations for the expansion coefficients, by solving these energies and wave-functions can be obtained. We demonstrate the solution scheme with a standard model system: a confined harmonic oscillator in a one-dimensional box. With only a few (less than ten) basis functions from each subsystem, we can reproduce the exact solutions very accurately, thus showing the applicability of this method.

Historically, the assessment of nonverbal behaviors such as facial expressions and gestures have relied heavily on observations made with the naked eye. Previous studies have shown that the manual analysis of micro-expressions can be both arduous and time consuming, and often suffers from a low level of reliability. However, new technology may bring forth new opportunities to refine this type of investigation. This research applied three feature extraction algorithms from the field of computer science to assist in measuring subtle dynamic movements in the human face. The Constraint Local Model (CLM) algorithm was employed to detect the faces and track the feature points; coordinates changing position across the frame indicated local facial activity. Based on these features points, facial regions of interest (ROIs) were identified for further analysis by Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Optical Flow (OF). The LBP algorithm was used to extract texture information from the ROIs and measure correlations among frames; OF was used to analyze facial actions based on the main direction and distance of movement. The results of the three methods were then compared with manual coding. The proposed methods, especially OF, proved to be both robust and reliable.

We present a general formulation of our previously developed kinetic energy partition (KEP) method for solving many-bodySchrodinger equations. In atomic physics, as well as in general molecular and solid state physics, solving many-electronSchrodinger equations is a very challenging task, often called Dirac’s challenge. The central problem is how to properly handle the electron–electron Coulomb repulsion interactions. Using the KEP solution scheme, in addition to dividing the kinetic energy into partial terms, the electron–electron Coulomb interaction is also separated into parts to be associated with a “negative mass” kinetic energy term. Therefore, the full Hamiltonian can be expressed as a simple sum of subsystem Hamiltonians, each representing an effective one-body problem. Using a Hartree-like product in constructing the wave-function, we achieve fast convergence in the calculations of the ground state energies. First, the model Moshinsky atoms are used to illustrate the solution procedure. We then apply this new KEP method to harmonium atoms and obtain precise energies with an error less than 5 % using only two basis functions from each subsystem. It is thus very promising that this methodology, when further extended, can be useful for general many-body systems.

Composite photocatalysts comprising graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) and graphene materials were synthesized and evaluated in the photocatalysis of bisphenol A (BPA) with a focus on elucidating the reaction mechanism. Embedding reduced graphene oxide (rGO) to g-C3N4 significantly accelerated the photocatalysis rate of BPA by three folds under visible light irradiation at neutral pH. We showed that rGO synthesized in intimate contact with g-C3N4 increased the surface areas and electrical conductivity of the g-C3N4 composites and promoted the electron-hole pair separation. The BPA photodegradation mechanism involved selective oxidants as superoxide (O2•−) and singlet oxygen (1O2) that were formed through one-electron reduction of O2 and the unique oxidation of O2•− by photogenerated hole (h+), respectively. The synthesized photocatalyst exhibited superior visible light photoreactivity to that of N-doped P25 TiO2, good photo-stability and reuse potential, and was operative in complex wastewater. rGO embedded g-C3N4 achieved good photomineralization of BPA at 80% in 4 h compared to 40% of bare g-C3N4. This study sheds light on the photocatalysis mechanism of BPA with a metal-free, promising rGO/g-C3N4 photocatalyst.

Two novel 16-membered tetraene marcolides, bafilomycins N (1) and O (2), along with two known analogues, JBIR-100 (3) and bafilomycin K (4) were produced from isolate GIC10-1, a Streptomyces sp. strain that was originally cloned from bacterial communities associated with marine sponge Theonella sp. The structures of new bafilomycins 1 and 2 were established by using spectroscopic methods and comparing the spectroscopic data with those of known related metabolites. Compounds 1 and 2 were proven to be the first 14-methylbafilomycins to be isolated. Cytotoxicity of these compounds toward various cancer cell lines also is described.

Solution representation is an important aspect of the development of a meta-heuristic. However, most meta-heuristics focus on the algorithm aspect rather than the solution representation. As the scale of the optimization problem under study rises, the solution representation becomes ever more crucial because the computational performance tends to deteriorate for three reasons: (1) increased landscape complexity, (2) exponential growth of search space, and (3) costly function evaluation. In this study, data compression of solution representation is explored to improve the performance of meta-heuristics in terms of compression efficiency and solution quality. A proposed new data compression scheme – variable-length solution representation compression for meta-heuristics – is developed and tested against benchmarked problem instances from the quadratic assignment problem library (QAPLIB) and additional large problem instances. The analyzed results indicate that the compressed solution representation scheme under a meta-heuristic framework performs well against the QAPLIB and large problem instances with less space complexity and computation time.

A facile route to the synthesis of γ-sulfonyl lactones 5 and β-sulfonyl styrenes 6 has been developed, achieving moderate to good yields via the (1) NaH mediated Michael addition of β-ketosulfones 3 and methyl acrylate in refluxing THF and (2) NaBH4 mediated stereoselective reduction/lactonization of δ-ketoesters 4 in boiling MeOH, or (3) boron trifluoride etherate mediated ring-opening of lactones 5 in MeOH at reflux.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of nonylphenol (NP), a widely used surfactant, on the reproductive performance of male Brown Tsaiya ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) (MBBTDs). Mature MBBTDs (n=100) were treated with NP by daily gavaging of 0, 1 (NP1), 10 (NP10) and 250 (NP250) mg/kg-BW/d for 14 wk. Semen quality, fertilization rate and specific factors in blood plasma were measured. Weights of organs were also measured at 14 wk after NP administration. Ducks from each treatment (n=4) were continually treated with NP thereafter for 12 mo to observe changes of tissue ultrastructure by microscopic examination. The results showed that ducks treated with amounts of NP of greater than 1mg NP/kg BW/d (NP1) for 14 wk had decreased sperm viability (32.3%) compared to those in the control group (74.1%, P0.05). The fertilization rate of ducks treated with 250mg NP/kg-BW/d (NP250) for 14 wk was reduced (21.0%) compared to the control group (74.5%, P0.05). Plasma aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities were also greater in NP250 group at the 14th wk post-treatment. Plasma testosterone concentrations were increased by NP1 treatment at the 14th wk post-treatment. Administration at dosage 250mg NP/kg-BW/d for 12 mo resulted in reduced sperm counts (P0.05) and histopathological changes, such as dilated seminiferous tubules (P0.05) and degenerated spermatocytes (P0.05). These findings strongly suggest that NP adversely affects the reproductive performance of MBBTDs.

Columnaristerol A ( 1 ), a rare natural 19-norsterol possessing a 10β-hydroxy group was isolated from the Formosan octocoral Nephthea columnaris , and its structure was elucidated by spectroscopic methods. Sterol 1 was found to be a cytotoxic agent that exhibited in vitro moderate cytotoxic activity against MOLT-4 and SUP-T1 human leukemia–lymphoma cell lines.

Two new eunicellin-type diterpenoids, cladieunicellins R ( 1 ) and S ( 2 ), were isolated from the octocoral Cladiella tuberculosa and their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic methods. Eunicellin 1 was proven to be the first 2,6-hemiketal eunicellin and 2 was found to exhibit moderate cytotoxicity toward the MOLT-4, K562, and SUP-T1 cells.

Tin triflate-promoted one-pot intramolecular annulation of α-geranyl or α-farnesyl β-ketosulfones 3–4 affords the respective bicyclic or tricyclic sulfonyl dihydropyrans 5–6 in moderate to good yields via a cascade cation-olefin-carbonyl carbocyclization process. The starting materials 3 and 4 were obtained by K2CO3-mediated α-geranylation or α-farnesylation of β-ketosulfones 1 with bromides 2a or 2b. The structures of the key products were confirmed by X-ray crystallography.

Eight new briarane diterpenoids, designated briarenolides M–T (1–8), were isolated from an octocoral identified as Briareum sp. The structures of briaranes 1–8 were established by spectroscopic methods and by comparison of the spectroscopic data with those of known analogues. The relationship between 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts of 2-hydroxybriaranes possessing of (A) a Δ3,5(16)-conjugated diene moiety or (B) a Δ3,5-conjugated diene moiety are described. Briarenolides M (1), P (4), S (7), and T (8) were found to inhibit the accumulation of the pro-inflammatory inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) protein and briarenolides N (2), P (4), and T (8) were found to inhibit the accumulation of the pro-inflammatory cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) protein in LPS (lipopolysaccharide)-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophage cells.

A new 16-membered diene macrolide, bafilomycin M ( 1 ), was produced from a Streptomyces sp. GIC10-1, which was originally isolated from a marine sponge Theonella sp. The structure of 1 was established by spectroscopic methods and this compound was found to exhibit cytotoxicity toward K-562, HL-60, SUPT-1, and LNCaP tumor cells with IC 50 values 0.060, 0.011, 0.047, and 0.389 μg/mL, respectively.

Objective To report the oncologic outcomes of upper tract urothelial carcinoma treated with laparoscopic nephroureterectomy and pluck method for distal ureter resection. Materials and methods Between May 2004 and November 2015, 118 patients with upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma received laparoscopic radical nephroureterectomy with endoscopic bladder cuff excision at our institution. The medical records were reviewed retrospectively for clinical and pathological results. Cox regression analyses were performed on factors related to oncological outcomes. Results The median follow-up was 26 months. Bladder recurrence was found in 27 patients (22.9%), extravesical retroperitoneal recurrence in four patients (3.4%), and metastases in 17 patients (14.4%). Multivariate analyses showed that male sex was associated with higher bladder recurrence [odds ratio (OR) = 2.2; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02–4.78; p = 0.045)], tumor size had significant correlation with locoregional recurrence (OR = 1.29; 95% CI, 1.07–3.43; p = 0.029), tumor stage was significantly correlated with subsequent metastasis (OR = 2.08; 95% CI, 1.21–3.56; p = 0.008) and overall survival (OR = 1.84; 95% CI, 1.06–3.22 ; p = 0.031), and tumor size correlated significantly with cancer-specific survival (OR = 2.57; 95% CI, 1.16–5.72; p = 0.021). Conclusions Tumor size and tumor stage were significantly associated with survival (cancer-specific and overall survival) in patients receiving nephroureterectomy with pluck method.

In order to achieve the data accuracy on carbon emission from the suppliers, a complete carbon footprint inventory must be compiled at each supplier's site. Generally speaking, to collect the carbon emission inventory, data from various sources must be obtained, resulting in consumption of many resources from enterprises and suppliers. Therefore, to perform the compilation efficiently, a more systematic method for visiting suppliers is required. The carbon footprint inventory routing problem, based the vehicle routing problem (VRP), explores the selection of appropriate suppliers for inventory compilation after the carbon emission reaches a certain accuracy level and determination of the efficient carbon emission inventory route. In this study, the VRP is modified for the selection of the suppliers. Furthermore, by applying the sensitivity analysis, this study discusses the replacement of primary data by secondary data and development of the decision method that can be used to evaluate the route optimization, efficiency maximization, and cost minimization for carbon footprint inventory routing planning.

Background Epidemiological studies have shown that diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with an increased risk of cancer. The aim of this study was to examine the association of diabetes with subsequent internal cancers in an arsenic-exposed area where the prevalence of diabetes is remarkably higher than in the general Taiwan population. Methods The southwestern cohort was recruited from blackfoot disease (BFD) endemic townships with high arsenic levels in their well water, while the northeastern cohort was recruited from four townships in the Lanyang Basin with low-to-moderate arsenic level in their well water. These two cohorts were combined and a total of 9525 subjects were recruited for the analysis. The disease status of the subjects, including diabetes, hypertension or dyslipidemia, was ascertained through linkage with the computerized Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI) database, while the cancer status of the subjects was ascertained through linkage with National Cancer Registry and via the NHI database for major illness/injury certificates/catastrophic illness cards. The subjects were followed from study entry through December 31, 2009. Cox regression analysis with time-dependent DM status was used to determine the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for developing internal malignancies. Results Diabetic patients had a 58% higher risk of any site internal cancer compared to non-DM individuals (HR, 1.58; 95% CI: 1.39–1.79) after adjusting for age, sex, education level, cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, geographical location, cumulative arsenic exposure and history of hypertension or dyslipidemia. A significant association of DM with cancers of the stomach (HR, 1.75; 95% CI: 1.12–2.76), colon (HR, 1.76; 95% CI: 1.20–2.59), liver (HR, 2.46; 95% CI: 1.81–3.34), pancreas (HR, 2.80; 95% CI: 1.30–6.20) and lungs (HR, 1.35; 95% CI: 1.04–1.76) was observed. The association with lung, bladder and kidney cancer was largely confined to diabetic patients with arsenic level in consumed water ≧500 μg/L, while the association with other cancer sites did not show such an effect. With the adjustment of arsenic exposure, marked attenuation for the association was observed, suggesting high level arsenic exposure plays an important role in the development of diabetes mellitus and concomitantly lung, bladder and kidney cancer.

A novel norcembranoidal diterpene, sinulanorcembranolide A (1), which was found to possess a new carbon skeleton, was isolated from an octocoral identified as Sinularia gaweli. The structure of 1 was elucidated by spectroscopic methods. Sinulanorcembranolide A (1) was proven to be the first norcembranoidal diterpene with carbon–carbon linages between C-5/13 and C-7/12. A plausible biosynthetic pathway of 1 was proposed.

Three new clovane-related sesquiterpenoids, rumphellclovanes C–E (1–3), and a new natural clovane, clovan-2,9-dione (4), were isolated from a gorgonian coral Rumphella antipathies. The structures of clovanes 1–4 were elucidated by spectroscopic methods and by comparison of the spectral data with those of related analogues. Rumphellclovane C (1) was proven to be the first clovane-type sesquiterpenoid containing an e-lactone moiety. A plausible biosynthetic pathway between clovanes 1 and 2 was proposed. Clovane 4 displayed significant inhibitory effects on the generation of superoxide anion and the release of elastase by human neutrophils.

A dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) is concerned with finding a set of facility layouts across multiple time periods that minimizes the total cost of material flows and rearrangement costs. Unlike other heuristic approaches that focus mainly on the searching aspect, this research takes another approach by streamlining the data structure of solution representation to improve the solution swapping and storing activities within a meta-heuristic framework. The experimental results from testing the data encoding and decoding schemes on a DFLP data set have been quite promising in terms of solution quality and computational time.

A total of 499 Salmonella isolates including 9 serovars from humans and various animal hosts were collected to compare prevalence of integron and antimicrobial resistance. The integron and gene cassette were detected by PCR, and then the gene cassette type was further determined by sequencing and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. The antimicrobial susceptibility test was conducted by disk diffusion method. The positivity percentage of class 1 integron and the diversity of gene cassettes carried by integron were quite different in various Salmonella serovars, especially comparing those from animals to humans. After sequencing and RFLP analysis, it was identified eight gene cassette types. The gene cassette type D carrying ampicillin/streptomycin resistance genes was the most common one (42.2%) in the integron-positive isolates. More diversity of gene cassette types was identified in humans comparing to that in animals. Several gene cassette types were identified for the first time in some Salmonella serovars. In this study, 31.5% (157/499) of the isolates were multi-resistant to ampicillin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin, sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline (ACSSuT). S. Choleraesuis isolates with the cassette type A1, but S. Typhimurium isolates with the cassette type E1, were frequently associated with ACSSuT-resistant (80.6% and 72.7%, respectively). There was a significant association between the presence of class 1 integron and quinolone resistance in S. Choleraesuis isolates, but not in S. Typhimurium. Our findings imply that transmission efficiency of various gene cassettes through the integron could be different in various Salmonella serovars.

This paper aims to address one of the many problems existing in current facial recognition techniques using tensor (TensorFace Algorithm and its extensions). Current methods rasterize facial images as vectors, which result in a loss of spatial structure information of facial images. In this paper, we propose a method called Sp-Tensor to extend TensorFace by applying the sub-pattern technique. Advantages of the proposed method include: (1) a portion of spatial structure and local information of facial images is preserved; (2) dramatically reduce the computation complexity than other existing methods when building the model. The experimental results demonstrate that Sp-Tensor has better performance than the original TensorFace and Sp-PCA1, especially for facial images with un-modeled views and light conditions.

Discriminant information (DI) plays a critical role in face recognition. In this paper, we proposed a second-order discriminant tensor subspace analysis (DTSA) algorithm to extract discriminant features from the intrinsic manifold structure of the tensor data. DTSA combines the advantages of previous methods with DI, the tensor methods preserving the spatial structure information of the original image matrices, and the manifold methods preserving the local structure of the samples distribution. DTSA defines two similarity matrices, namely within-class similarity matrix and between-class similarity matrix. The within-class similarity matrix is determined by the distances of point pairs in the same class, while the between-class similarity matrix is determined by the distances between the means of each pair of classes. Using these two matrices, the proposed method preserves the local structure of the samples to fit the manifold structure of facial images in high dimensional space better than other methods. Moreover, compared to the 2D methods, the tensor based method employs two-sided transformations rather than single-sided one, and yields higher compression ratio. As a tensor method, DTSA uses an iterative procedure to calculate the optimal solution of two transformation matrices. In this paper, we analyzed DTSA's connections to 2D-DLPP and TSA, theoretically. The experiments on the ORL, Yale and YaleB facial databases show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A novel 2-ketobriarane diterpenoid, briarenolide E (1), was isolated from an octocoral Briareum sp. The structure of briarane 1 was elucidated by interpretations of spectral data. Compound 1 displayed modestly inhibitory effects on the generation of superoxide anions and the release of elastase by human neutrophils.

A novel ubiquinone derivative, pseudoalteromone A ( 1 ), possessing a 9C nor-monoterpenoid moiety was produced from a marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas sp. CGH2XX. This bacterium is originally isolated from a cultured-type octocoral Lobophytum crassum . The structure of ubiquinone 1 was established by spectroscopic methods. Pseudoalteromone A ( 1 ) exhibited significant cytotoxicity toward the MOLT-4 (human acute lymphoblastic leukemia, IC 50 = 3.764 μg/mL) cells and displayed a significant inhibitory effect (inhibition rate 45.1%) on the release of elastase by human neutrophils at a concentration of 10 μg/mL.

1. Subject and sourceThegorgoniancoralidentifiedasMenellasp.(Plexauridae)usedinthisinvestigationwascollectedbytrawlingoffthecoastof southern Taiwan in December 2004 at a depth of 100 m. This organism was identified by comparison with previousdescriptions (Fabricius and Alderslade, 2001). A voucher specimen (NMMBA-TW-GC-005) was deposited in the NationalMuseum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, Taiwan.2. Previous workA series of secondary metabolites, including steroids (Deng et al., 1997; Zhang et al., 2006; Chai et al., 2010), guaianelactones (Zhang et al., 2004; Li et al., 2008), briarane diterpenoids, menellin A (a highly oxygenated racemate with C8skeleton) (Chai et al., 2010), picolinic acid N-methyl betaine (Li et al., 1996; Deng et al., 1997), n-hexadecanol, 9H-purin-6-amino-N-dimethyl, thymidine (Deng et al., 1997), and batyl alcohol (Deng et al., 1993, 1997) were isolated from variousgorgonian corals belonging togenus Menella, collected off the South China Sea. In our studies on the chemical constituents ofa gorgonian identified as Menella sp., collected off the waters of Taiwan, various sesquiterpenoids featuring guaiane, linde-nane, and germacrane-type carbon skeletons, containing a