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White-light-emitting diodes (WLED) based on yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) phosphors sintered with glass (PiG) and with silicone (PiS) are compared in terms of their light properties, temperature properties and reliability.The complete YAG phosphor was doped with an encapsulant traditional WLED (PiS WLED), and the WLED was covered with PiG (PiG WLED). PiG was made by sintering glass powder and YAG phosphor at the ratio of 87:13 (%), and the correlated color temperature (CCT) was 5564 K. The CCT of the PiG WLED with the YAG doping concentration of 8.5 wt.% approximated 5649 K. The initial light output of the PiG WLED was 6.4% lower than that of the PiS WLED. Under 1008 h and 350 mA aging, PiG WLED and PiS WLED’ light output, CCT and color rendering index variation rates were all within 1%. In the saturated vapor-pressure test, no sample exhibited red ink infiltration, light nor peeling between the encapsulant and the lead-frame. Compared with that of the PiS WLED, the junction temperature of the PiG WLED reduced from 88.4 °C to 81.3 °C. Thermal resistance dropped from 37.4 °C/W to 35.6 °C/W. The PiG WLED presented a better CIE (Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage) 1931 chromaticity coordinate (x,y) concentration and thermal properties than the PiS WLED.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the major leading cause of kidney failure. To identify the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD), renal function/fibrosis is playing a crucial role. Unfortunately, lack of sensitivities/specificities of available clinical biomarkers are key major issues for practical healthcare applications to identify the renal functions/fibrosis in the early stage of DN. Thus, there is an emerging approach such as therapeutic or diagnostic are highly desired to conquer the CKD at earlier stages. Herein, we applied and examined the application of dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) to identify the progression of fibrosis between wild type (WT) and miR29a transgenic (Tg) mice during streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes. Further, we also validate the potential renoprotective role of miR29a to maintain the renal perfusion, volume, and function. In addition, Ktrans values of DCE-MRI and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of DWI could significantly reflect the level of fibrosis between WT and Tg mice at identical conditions. As a result, we strongly believed that the present non-invasive MR imaging platforms have potential to serveas an important tool in research and clinical imaging for renal fibrosis in diabetes, and that microenvironmental changes could be identified by MR imaging acquisition prior to histological biopsy and diabetic podocyte dysfunction.

A retrospective cohort study was conducted using claims data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance program to assess the effect of diabetic pay-for-performance (P4P) program on major adverse limb events (MALE) and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study included patients with T2DM who had completed or not completed a 1-year P4P program from 2002 to 2013. Propensity-score matching was used to balance the baseline characteristics between groups. The Cox proportional-hazard model and Fine and Gray subdistribution hazard model were used to examine the association between P4P and the risks of MALE, MACE, systemic thromboembolism (ST), heart failure (HF) hospitalization, and all-cause mortality. Patients who underwent the P4P program had a significantly decreased incidence of MALE (2.0% vs. 2.6%, subdistribution hazard ratio [SHR] 0.73, 95% CI 0.71-0.76). Regarding the individual components, the P4P group demonstrated lower risks for foot ulcer (1.1% vs 1.3%, SHR 0.80, 95% CI 0.77-0.84), gangrene (0.57% vs 0.93%, SHR 0.59, 95% CI 0.56-0.63), percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (0.61% vs 0.79%, SHR 0.72, 95% CI 0.68-0.77), and amputation (0.46% vs 0.75%, SHR 0.58, 95% CI 0.55-0.62). In addition, the risks of MACE, ST, HF hospitalization, and all-cause mortality were remarkably lower in the P4P group. The P4P program might significantly reduce critical events of MALE, MACE, ST, HF, and mortality in the diabetic population.

Taiwanese is one of the main languages spoken by Taiwanese. Taiwanese was commonly used language in Taiwan before, but now it is facing the dilemma of declining. Therefore, maintaining traditional culture in the ever-changing trend is a major issue. In this study, we developed the Taiwanese speech recognition system which the Kaldi Toolkit was used to implement. The Taiwanese corpus was collected by Taiwan Taiwanese National Reading Competition and Classmate Recording, and about 11 hours of audio files were collected in total. Because the training data is a small dataset, two data augmentation methods are used to increase the training data, so that the acoustic model can be more robust and more effective training. One method is speed perturbation, which speeds up the original data by 1.1 times and slows it down by 0.9 times. Another method is to use multi-condition training data to simulate the reverberation of the original speech and add background noise. The background noise includes music, speech, and noise. The acoustic model is trained for different hybrid deep neural network architectures which can use the advantages of each neural network by hybrid different neural networks, such as CNN-LSTM-TDNN. In the experimental results, the CER in the domain of language modeling reaches 3.95%, and the CER of the online decoding test is 3.06%. Compared with other research on Taiwanese speech recognition of similar dataset size, the recognition results are better than other studies.

Due to the advantages of non-contact and low-cost, visual heart rate (HR) estimation is attracting more and more scholars to research. Recently, Some studies have shown that deep learning method could be developed for visual HR estimation. In this paper, we proposed an End-to-end deep neural network method for this task. The network is consisted of 2D convolutional (Conv2D) and LSTM (long short-term memory) operations. The Conv2D operation extract spatial feature and LSTM capture temporal information. The input of our model is facial ROI video and output is the predict HR. Experiment demonstrate that the proposed method could estimate HR value precisely.

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) has attracted much attention in recent years. This research proposes to apply rPPG to the fitness training scenario, enabling non-contact measurement of the subject's heart rate during training. Currently, most existing approaches suffer from a major weakness, i.e. the subject's body needs to remain stably while conducting measurement, which significantly hinders practical applications of the approach. The main purpose of this paper is to build a training system based on rPPG and fitness machines to provide users with better ergonomic exercise experiences. We have built a spinning bike system that combines a camera and an adaptive controller based on heart rate feedback for tracking the desired exercise intensity. Fuzzy control is introduced in the feedback control loop by considering heart rate and heart rate variability simultaneously for better representation of the physical status. Some preliminary results are briefly presented. This research demonstrates promising performance improvement by combining rPPG heart rate estimation and fitness machine control.

In this paper, an intelligent overtaking system is developed, which includes overtaking possibility strategy (OPS), autonomous overtaking control scheme, and then successfully implemented on an autonomous vehicle. The OPS is based on the image recognition technology for detecting surrounding vehicles and lane lines, and further calculate the time to lane crossing (TLC) as the basis of overtaking or keep within your lane. Thus, this research can implement two functions, such as lane following and overtake. An autonomous overtaking control scheme using the successive linearization based model predictive control is developed to derive the appropriate throttle, brake and steering angle actuators for a car. This control approach can provide stable and safety overtaking maneuvers effectively. Finally, the proposed system has been incorporated into an electrical golf car and tested in a real-road environment, where the communication of the whole sensors, actuators as well as vehicle control unit (VCU) are used the controller area network (CAN) bus to realize control and data collection. Some of the experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of using the overtaking strategies by considering various traffic situations.

This paper proposes a novel traction control system (TCS) based on feedback sensing of multi‐state of electric scooters (i.e. vehicle‐road inclination, vehicle yaw rate, vehicle lateral fo...

This paper develops a modular multilevel inverter which integrates driving/braking control schemes in a unit for electric vehicles. The multiple driving components are used to balance surg...

BACKGROUND: Interactions between endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) through the Notch signal pathway causing diabetic microvasculopathy have been reported. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the effect of high glucose on VSMCs through the Notch-2 signaling pathway could induce extracellular matrix (ECM) accumulation, VSMC proliferation and migration and thus directly mediate diabetic macrovasculopathy. METHODS: Rat smooth muscle cells (SV40LT-SMC Clone HEP-SA cells) were cultured in different concentrations of D-glucose to evaluate the impact of high glucose on ECM accumulation including fibronectin and collagen I measured by Western blot analysis, and on VSMC proliferation and migration evaluated by MTT assay and wound healing assay. The expression of Notch-2 intra-cellular domain (Notch-2 ICD) protein was also checked in high glucose-stressed VSMCs. N-[N-(3,5-difluorophenacetyl)-l-alanyl]-S-phenylglycine t-butyl ester (DAPT), an inhibitor of γ-secretase, was used to modulate the Notch-2 signaling pathway. RESULTS: High glucose (D-glucose 25 mM) induced fibronectin and collagen I expressions in VSMCs, promoted VSMC proliferation/migration, and enhanced the expression of Notch-2 ICD. DAPT inhibited Notch-2 signal to abolish the expressions of fibronectin and collagen I in VSMCs, and also prevented the proliferation/migration of VSMCs under high glucose (D-glucose 25 mM) stress. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that high glucose can enhance the Notch-2 signaling pathway thereby directly mediating diabetic macrovasculopathy. Blocking the Notch-2 signaling pathway decreased fibronectin and collagen I expressions secreted by VSMCs, and reduced the proliferation and migration of VSMCs under high glucose stress. Inhibition of Notch-2 signaling represents a promising target for treating diabetic macrovasculopathy.

Signal frequency estimation is a fundamental issue in the domain of signal processing. In this paper, we proposed a novel framework, named FreqEnet (Frequency estimation network), for estimating frequency based on deep learning method. The signal frequency estimation refers to as a regression issue and predict it with LTSM module. The framework is exceedingly concise, consisted of only three LSTM and one fully connect layers, and the running time is less than 0.3 ms on CPU (i7-7700, 3.60 GHz). Two periodic signals are generated for training our model. In addition, uniform and Gauss white noise are introduce to original signal for evaluating the robustness and generalization of the framework. In addition, the proposed method performs extremely excellence in processing latent. Even if given only one periodic piece of signal, the method could predicts a precise result. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FreqEnet achieves competitive performance of estimating frequency.

Aim and objectives To examine the relationship between illness representations and quality of life, and to test whether illness representations can predict quality of life, in patients with hemodialysis. Background Illness representations are interpretations of and actions taken by individuals when faced with threats to their health. Exploring relationship of illness representations and quality of life in patients with hemodialysis may help patients self-manage their illness and improve their quality of life. Methods A cross-sectional correlation design was used (the checklist STROBE was chosen for this study). The study setting was a hemodialysis center in a teaching hospital. A total of 172 surveys were completed. The inventory comprised demographic data, illness data, the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life. Results The illness representations of the surveyed patients fell in the middle range of being not too optimistic or pessimistic. Overall quality of life of patients is moderate. The predictors of quality of life included living status, source of income, and two illness representation elements. Conclusions This study revealed an association between illness representations and quality of life in patients with hemodialysis. New knowledge provided by this study can assist healthcare professionals caring for patients with a Chinese cultural background. Relevance to clinical practice Illness representation assessment could be added to clinical care standards, and patients living with family or without family could be given different interventions.

A sensorless driving/braking control system for electric vehicles is explained in the present paper. In the proposed system, a field-oriented control (FOC) was used to integrate driving and braking controls in a unified module for reducing the cost of hardware and simultaneously incorporating functional flexibility. An antilock braking system can swiftly halt a vehicle during emergency braking. An electromagnetic reverse braking scheme that provided retarding torque to a running wheel was developed. The scheme could switch the state of the MOSFETs used in the system by alternating the duty cycle of pulse width modulation to adjust the braking current generated by the back electromotive force (EMF) of the motor. In addition, because the braking energy required for the electromagnetic braking scheme is related only to the back EMF, the vehicle operator can control the braking force and safely stop an electric vehicle at high speeds. The proposed integrated sensorless driving and electromagnetic braking system was verified experimentally.

Topological materials have become promising materials for next-generation devices by utilizing their exotic electronic states. Their exotic states caused by spin-orbital coupling usually locate on the surfaces or at the edges. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) is a powerful tool to reveal the local electronic structures of condensed matters. Therefore, STS provides us with an almost perfect method to access the exotic states of topological materials. In this topical review, we report the current investigations by several methods based on the STS technique for layered topological material from transition metal dichalcogenide Weyl semimetals (WTe2 and MoTe2) to two dimensional topological insulators (layered bismuth and silicene). The electronic characteristics of these layered topological materials are experimentally identified.

Tubulointerstitial fibrosis is a major pathological hallmark of diabetic nephropathy. Increasing evidence has shown that epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of renal proximal tubular cells plays a crucial role in tubulointerstitial fibrosis. Herein, we aimed to elucidate the detailed mechanism of EMT in renal tubular cells under high glucose (HG) conditions, and to investigate the potential of licorice, a medicinal herb, to inhibit HG-induced EMT. Our results showed that renal tubular epithelial cells (normal rat kidney cell clone 52E, NRK-52E) exposed to HG resulted in EMT induction characterized by increased fibronectin and -SMA (alpha-smooth muscle actin) but decreased E-cadherin. Elevated levels of cleaved Notch2, MAML-1 (mastermind-like transcriptional coactivator 1), nicastrin, Jagged-1 and Delta-like 1 were also concomitantly detected in HG-cultured cells. Importantly, pharmacological inhibition, small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated depletion or overexpression of the key components of Notch2 signaling in NRK-52E cells supported that the activated Notch2 pathway is essential for tubular EMT. Moreover, we found that licorice extract (LE) with or without glycyrrhizin, one of bioactive components in licorice, effectively blocked HG-triggered EMT in NRK-52E cells, mainly through suppressing the Notch2 pathway. Our findings therefore suggest that Notch2-mediated renal tubular EMT could be a therapeutic target in diabetic nephropathy, and both LE and de-glycyrrhizinated LE could have therapeutic potential to attenuate renal tubular EMT and fibrosis.

Treatment for glomerular diseases has been extrapolated from the experience of other autoimmune disorders while the underlying pathogenic mechanisms were still not well understood. As the classification of glomerular diseases was based on patterns of juries instead of mechanisms, treatments were typically the art of try and error. With the advancement of molecular biology, the role of the immune agent in glomerular diseases is becoming more evident. The four-hit theory based on the discovery of gd-IgA1 gives a more transparent outline of the pathogenesis of IgA nephropathy (IgAN), and dysregulation of Treg plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of minimal change disease (MCD). An epoch-making breakthrough is the discovery of PLA2R antibodies in the primary membranous nephropathy (pMN). This is the first biomarker applied for precision medicine in kidney disease. Understanding the immune system’s role in glomerular diseases allows the use of various immunosuppressants or other novel treatments, such as complement inhibitors, to treat glomerular diseases more reasonable. In this era of advocating personalized medicine, it is inevitable to develop precision medicine with mechanism-based novel biomarkers and novel therapies in kidney disease.

Environmental-friendly three-dimensional (3D) multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) grown from the montmorillonite (MMT) and graphene oxide (GO) without adding metal catalysts are the first investigation for the supercapacitor electrode application, which dramatically reduces the noble and rare metal needs. Growth mechanisms of as-synthesized CNT-based MMTs (MCNTs) and CNT-based GOs- (GCNTs) via thermal chemical vapor deposition are suggested that the Ni ion nuclear seeds are self-arranged and intercalated spontaneously into the substrate surfaces and template layers. In addition, the maximum energy densities of MCNT and GCNT electrodes are 63.8 Wh/kg at 0.02 kW/kg and 147 Wh/kg at 0.09 kW/kg, respectively. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy spectrum exhibits the charge transfer resistance significantly decreases with fabricating 3D active composite materials, indicating the mass transfer limitation in the low-frequency area and the charge transfer of kinetic controlling in the high-frequency domain. The Bode-phase angle at 78.6° of the GCNT electrode indicates ideal capacitive behavior. Frequencies of MCNT and GCNT electrodes at a phase angle of 45° are 0.27 and 0.11 Hz, corresponding to the calculated time relaxation constants of 3.70 and 9.09, respectively. MCNT and GCNT composites are clear to enhance a more surface accessible region for electrolyte ions and electron conductivity with the increasing CNT content. After 2000 continuous cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge-discharge cyclic experiments, specific capacitance retentions with a 5% error bar of 3D MCNT and GCNT electrodes achieve 122.3 and 75.2%, 127.6 and 85.3%, respectively. As both electrodes, less metal usage is friendly to the environment, and in addition, layered fabrication is beneficial for production and further follow-up recycle separation of energy devices. Non-blending 3D MCNT and GCNT composites possess the potential to be the prospective materials for further energy storage application.

Diabetic nephropathy is one of the leading causes of end-stage renal disease and creates heavy healthcare burdens globally. Dysfunction of mesangial cells and podocytes contributes to diabetic nephropathy. Dysregulation of signaling involved in renal development and regeneration may cause diabetic kidney damages. Growing evidences suggest the importance of dysregulated dickkopf-1 (DKK1)/Wnt/ β-catenin signaling pathways in the pathogenesis of diabetic glomerular injuries. The inhibition of Wnt signaling in injured mesangial cells is likely attributed to the high glucose-induced Ras/Rac1 dependent superoxide formation. When DKK1, the cellular inhibitor of Wnt signaling, binds to the Kremen-2 receptor, depositions of extracellular matrix increase in the mesangium of diabetic kidneys. Additionally, reactivation of Notch-1 signaling has been implicated in podocytopathy during diabetic proteinuria development. Knocking down Notch-1 alleviates vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression, nephrin repression and proteinuria in diabetic kidneys. It is also found that epigenetic modulations by histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4) and miR-29a could lead to diabetic nephropathy. High glucose increases the expression of HDAC4, which causes deacetylation with subsequent ubiquitination of nephrin. Overexpression of miR-29a in diabetic transgenic mice would decrease the expression of HDAC4 and stabilize nephrin. Surprisingly, reprogramming or reactivation of signaling involved in renal development or regeneration often brings about diabetic glomerular sclerosis in mesangial cells and podocytes. Better knowledge about modifications of embryonic stem cell signaling will have a chance to implement strategically focused pharmacological research programs aiming to the development of new drugs for diabetic kidney injuries.

Implementation of a multifunctional contactless bidirectional charging and discharging system with the aid of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect for car parking guidance is proposed. Traditional Hall effect sensors can detect magnetic flux changes. However, if the changes are not significant enough to induce detectable interference voltage, there will be error detection. To remedy, a GMR sensor may detect tiny changes in the magnetic field, which will produce a larger change in resistance; this resistance is less susceptible to external noise influence while generating a relatively stable signal level. As a novel application, our research task combines a GMR sensor, a flexible magnetic stripe constituted by GMRs, a microprocessor and a wireless inductive power/data transfer module to realize a positioning control system for the parking lot's microgrid. Real-world experiments are conducted to verify the proposed approach.

Background Synthesis of a variety of biological circuits for specific functional purposes has made a tremendous progress in recent years. The ultimate goal of combining molecular biology and engineering is to realize a functional biocomputer. To address this challenge, all previous efforts work toward building up the bio-computer as the ultimate goal. To this aim, there should be a key module, named control unit (CU), to direct a serious of logic or arithmetic operations within the processor. Methods This research task develops a bio-CU to work with a bio-ALU, which is realized from the combination of previously developed genetic logic gates to fulfill the kernel function of CPU as those done in the silicon computer. Results A possible framework of the bio-CPU has demonstrated how to connect a bio-CU with a bio-ALU to conduct a fetch-decode-execute cycle of a macro instruction. It presents not only capability of 4-bit full adder but coordination of related modules in biocomputer. Conclusions We have demonstrated computer simulation for applications of the genetic circuits in biocomputer construction. It’s expected to inspire follow-up study to synthesize potential configurations of the future biocomputer.

Subspace clustering methods based on self-expressiveness model have recently attracted much attention. However, there exists a gap between subspace-preserving coefficient and the final clustering result due to the lack of graph connectivity. The problem has not been well tackled in the published literature. This paper significantly improves the graph connectivity by adding an effective projection step to the recently proposed method SSC-OMP. With this projection step, it is possible to establish a theoretical guarantee that the subspace-preserving condition leads directly to the exact clustering result, which bridges the gap. Moreover, the potential advantage of the proposed algorithm over prior methods is its robustness to noise. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach enjoys a high clustering accuracy and a fast processing speed in comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms.

Wireless battery charging has been becoming a recent trend in mobile devices. However, there are relatively less research efforts focusing on the large power applications. It is a major drawback of the battery charging in traditional electric vehicles which relies on the use of a plug-in charging device. This paper proposes a wireless power and bidirectional data transmission scheme, data related to battery status, vehicle identification number, or emergency messages that can be mutually transmitted between two isolated units via the same LC tank. The primary unit employs an inverter to yield alternating current and power flow to the load via mutual inductance. The secondary unit transfers data by adjusting current of load, and the primary unit receives data based on the zero-voltage switching method. The primary unit transfers command by trimming the current's curve and the secondary unit receives command and make decoding using the period of carrier wave. It is worth to mention that the design scheme enables it to handle the situation of emergency by sending back the message to the primary unit to make an emergency halt.

Smart manufacturing based on cyber-physical manufacturing systems (CPMS) has become the development trend and been widely recognized all over the world. Throughout the development trend of CPMS, one of the key issues is industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) with the characteristics of automation, smart connected, real-time monitoring, and collaborative control. Along with the permeation and applications of advanced technologies in manufacturing, massive amounts of data have been generated in the manufacturing process. However, the current 3th generation mobile network (3G), 4G and other communication technologies cannot meet the demands of CPMS for high data rate, high reliability, high coverage, low latency, etc., which hinders the development and implementation of CPMS. As a future advanced wireless transmission technology, 5G has a significant potential to promote IIoT and CPMS. Based on the architecture and characteristics of 5G wireless communication technology, this paper proposes the architecture of 5G-based IIoT, and describes the implementation methods of different advanced manufacturing scenarios and manufacturing technologies under the circumstances of three typical application modes of 5G, respectively, i.e., enhance mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communication (mMTC), ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC). Besides, the characteristics, key technologies and challenges of the 5G based IIoT are also analyzed.

Osteoporosis is associated with a poor quality of life and mortality. Proteinuria contributes to vitamin D deficiency and osteoblast dysfunction. The correlation between estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and bone density still remains elusive. Therefore, we sought to investigate whether reduced eGFR or proteinuria are independently associated with the osteoporotic risk.We conducted a cross-sectional study using community-based health survey data from January 2004 to December 2008 in southern Taiwan. Positive proteinuria was defined as presence of 1+ or more urinary proteins on the dipstick. The bone density was measured by calcaneal quantitative ultrasound (QUS). Subjects with T-score ≤ -2.5 were considered as osteoporotic.A total of 21,271 subjects of whom 11.3% had proteinuria were analyzed. Proteinuric participants were older, predominantly male, and more likely to have diabetes, hypertension, or exercise less regularly (P0.001). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that male sex, body mass index, regular exercise, eGFR and high density lipoprotein-cholesterol were positively correlated with QUS T-scores, whereas age, systolic blood pressure and proteinuria were negatively associated with QUS T-scores (P0.01). Compared with subjects in the highest eGFR tertile, those in the middle and the lowest groups had adjusted ORs for osteoporosis of 1.31 (95% CI: 1.20-1.44) and 2.46 (1.73-3.48), respectively. Additionally, the fully adjusted ORs of osteoporosis were 1.15 (1.02-1.32) and 1.18 (1.05-1.33) for participants with 1+ and ≥2+ proteinuria, respectively.Reduced eGFR and proteinuria are significantly associated with risk for osteoporosis.

Background and aims Renal dysfunction is a potent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, including stroke. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of admission estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) levels on short-term (1-month) and long-term (1-year) mortality in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Methods From the Taiwan Stroke Registry data, we classified ischemic stroke patients, identified from April 2006 to December 2015, into 5 groups by eGFR at admission: ≥ 90, 60–89, 30–59, 15–29, and Results Among 52,732 ischemic stroke patients, 1480 died within one month. The 1-month mortality rate was over 5-fold greater in patients with eGFR Conclusions After acute ischemic stroke, patients with reduced eGFR are at elevated risks of short-term and long-term deaths in a graded relationship.

In recent years, brushless DC motors (BLDCMs) have replaced brushed DC motors in the design of electric scooters (ESs). This study proposes a new antilock braking system (ABS) based on a slip ratio estimator for ES utilising the braking force generated by the BLDCM when electrical energy is released to the virtual load, yielding an effect analogous to the ABS control in gas-powered vehicles. Compared with mechanical ABS, the proposed design possesses the advantage of rapid torque responses because no mechanical parts needed. Current control design is used to adjust the braking torque, and the sliding-mode control strategy is adopted to regulate the slip ratio to attain the optimal road adhesion during emergency braking. A variety of experiments are conducted for functional and performance verification.

Background Radiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of prostate cancer. Despite that sophisticated techniques of radiotherapy and radiation combined with chemotherapy were applied to the patients, some tumors may recur. Therefore, the study investigated the effect of dihydroisotanshinone I (DT) and the combination treatment of 5 μM DT and 5Gy irradiation (IR) against the migration ability of prostate cancer cells. Methods DT and the combination treatment were studied for its biological activity against migration ability of prostate cancer cells with transwell migration assay. Subsequently, we tried to explore the underlying mechanism with ELISA, flow cytometry and Western’s blotting assay. Results The results showed that DT and the combination treatment substantially inhibited the migration ability of prostate cancer cells. DT and the combined treatment can decrease the ability of macrophages to recruit prostate cancer cells. Mechanistically, DT and the combination treatment reduced the secretion of chemokine (C-C Motif) Ligand 2 (CCL2) from prostate cancer cells. We also found that DT treatment induced the cell cycle of prostate cancer cells entering S phase and increased the protein expression of DNA damage response proteins (rH2AX and phosphorylated ataxia telangiectasia-mutated [ATM]) in DU145 cells and PC-3 cells. Conclusions DT displays radiosensitization and antimigration effects in prostate cancer cells by inducing DNA damage and inhibiting CCL2 secretion. We suggest that DT can be used as a novel antimetastatic cancer drug or radiosensitizer in the armamentarium of prostate cancer management.

The digital revolution of noncontact physiological signal monitoring in clinical and home health care is underway, and deep learning techniques are incredibly popular. Camera-based physiological signal monitoring for adults has made considerable progress in recent years. However, most of existing methods and datasets are developed for adult subjects, and until now, there has been no neonatal public database that is collected for developing deep learning method. Thus, in this paper, we introduce a large-scale newborn baby database, named NBHR (newborn baby heart rate estimation database), to fill the abovementioned knowledge gap. A total of 9.6 h of clinical videos (1130 videos totaling 921 GB) and reference vital signs are recorded from 257 infants at 0–6 days old. The facial videos and corresponding synchronized physiological signals, including photoplethysmograph information, heart rate, and oxygen saturation level, are recorded in our database. This large-scale database could be used to develop deep learning methods to estimate heart rate or oxygen saturation levels. Furthermore, a multitask deep learning method, called NBHRnet, is proposed to estimate heart rate based on the NBHR database, and the model is succinct that it can be deployed on a computer without GPUs. The experimental results indicate that NBHRnet yields competitive performance in predicting infant heart rate, with a mean absolute error of 3.97 bpm and a mean absolute percentage error of 3.28%; additionally, it can estimate heart rate almost instantaneously (2 s/60 frames). Our datasets are freely publicly available by request.

In electronic systems, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is one of the core modules in the modern silicon computer. As for a bio-computer, one would need a mechanism for storage of bio-information named 'data', which, in binary logic, has two levels, logical high and logical low, or in the normalised form, '1' and '0'. This study proposes a possible genetic DRAM based on the modified electronic configuration, which uses the biological reaction to fulfil an equivalent RC circuit constituting a memory cell. The authors implement fundamental functions of the genetic DRAM by incorporating a genetic toggle switch for data hold. The results of simulation verify that the basic function can be used on a bio-storage module for the future bio-computer.

Renal fibrosis is the final common pathological feature in a variety of chronic kidney disease. Trichostatin A (TSA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, reportedly attenuates renal fibrosis in various kidney disease models. However, the detailed molecular action of TSA in ameliorating renal fibrotic injury is not yet fully understood. In a cultured renal fibroblastic cell model, we showed that TGF-β1 triggers upregulation of α-SMA and fibronectin, two hallmarks of myofibroblastic activation. During the course of TGF-β1 treatment, activation of Smad2/3, p38, ERK, JNK and Notch-2 was also detected. Under the conditions, administration of TSA significantly decreased TGF-β1-stimulated expression of α-SMA, fibronectin, phospho-JNK, and cleaved Notch-2; however, the levels of phospho-Smad2/3, phospho-p38 and phospho-ERK remained unchanged. Pharmacological inhibition of different signaling pathways and genetic knockdown of Notch-2 further revealed JNK as an upstream effector of Notch-2 in TGF-β1-mediated renal fibrosis. Consistently, we also demonstrated that administration of TSA or a γ-secretase inhibitor RO4929097 in the mouse model of unilateral ureteral obstruction significantly ameliorated renal fibrosis through suppression of the JNK/Notch-2 signaling activation. Taken together, our findings provide further insights into the crosstalk among different signaling pathways in renal fibrosis, and elucidate the molecular action of TSA in attenuating fibrogenesis.

A hybrid stepper motor (HSM) can be practically driven by open-loop control, however, it is definitely not enough for the increasing demands on precision control in wide industry applications. In this study, a practical control scheme, consisting of model predictive control (MPC) and extended Kalman filter (EKF), is presented for controlling a sensorless hybrid stepper motor (HSM). Numerical simulations and real-world experiments are conducted to show the performance and effectiveness of the proposed strategy. To extend the practical usage of the presented design, the proposed strategy has been utilized to control an auxiliary adjuster for stereotactic frame fixation system for use in the precise clinical neurosurgery operation.

We present the transport characteristics of individual silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs) grown on Ag(110). By lifting up a single SiNR with a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope tip, a nanojunction consisting of tip, SiNR and Ag is fabricated. In the differential conductance spectra of the nanojunctions fabricated by this methodology, a peak appears at the Fermi level which is not observed in the spectra measured either for the SiNRs before being lifted up or the clean Ag substrate. We discuss the origin of the peak as it relates to the SiNR.

// Pey-Jium Chang 1, 2, 3 , Yao-Hsu Yang 4, 5, 6, 7 , Pau-Chung Chen 6, 8 , Lee-Wen Chen 9, 10 , Shie-Shan Wang 10 , Ying-Ju Shih 1 , Li-Yu Chen 1 , Chi-Jen Chen 5 , Chien-Hui Hung 1 and Chun-Liang Lin 2, 3 1 Graduate Institute of Clinical Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Chang-Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan 2 Department of Nephrology, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 3 Kidney and Diabetic Complications Research Team (KDCRT), Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 4 Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 5 Center of Excellence for Chang Gung Research Datalink, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 6 Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, National Taiwan University College of Public Health, Taipei, Taiwan 7 School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan 8 Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan 9 Department of Respiratory Care, Chang-Gung University of Science and Technology, Chiayi, Taiwan 10 Department of Pediatric Surgery, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan Correspondence to: Pey-Jium Chang, email: peyjiumc@mail.cgu.edu.tw Chun-Liang Lin, email: linchunliang@adm.cgmh.org.tw Keywords: Kaposi’s sarcoma, diabetes, KSHV, high glucose, lytic replication Received: February 13, 2017 Accepted: June 18, 2017 Published: July 28, 2017 ABSTRACT Patients with diabetes are generally prone to pathogen infection and tumor progression. Here, we investigated the potential association between diabetes and Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), a tumor linked to infection with Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV). By using Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database, we found that diabetes is statistically associated with increased risk of KS in a case-control study. Since a high level of blood sugar is the hallmark of diabetes, we determined whether high glucose promotes both KSHV reactivation and infection, which are crucial for KS pathogenesis. Our results showed that high glucose significantly increases lytic reactivation of KSHV but not Epstein-Barr virus, another related human oncogenic gammaherpesvirus, in latently infected cells. Activation of the transcription factor AP1 by high glucose is critically required for the onset of KSHV lytic reactivation. We also demonstrated that high glucose enhances susceptibility of various target cells to KSHV infection. Particularly, in endothelial and epithelial cells, levels of specific cellular receptors for KSHV entry, including integrin α3β1 and xCT/CD98, are elevated under high glucose conditions, which correlate with the enhanced cell susceptibility to infection. Taken together, our studies implicate that the high-glucose microenvironment may be an important predisposing factor for KS development.

// Ching-Yuan Wu 1, 2 , Jong-Yuh Cherng 3 , Yao-Hsu Yang 1, 2 , Chun-Liang Lin 4, 5 , Feng-Che Kuan 6 , Yin-Yin Lin 1 , Yu-Shih Lin 7 , Li-Hsin Shu 1 , Yu-Ching Cheng 1 , Hung Te Liu 1 , Ming-Chu Lu 6 , Jthau Lung 8 , Pau-Chung Chen 9, 17 , Hui Kuan Lin 10, 11, 12, 13 , Kuan-Der Lee 6, 16 and Ying-Huang Tsai 14, 15 1 Department of Chinese Medicine, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 2 School of Chinese medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Tao-Yuan, Taiwan 3 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan 4 Departments of Nephrology, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 5 Kidney and Diabetic Complications Research Team (KDCRT), Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 6 Department of Hematology and oncology, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 7 Department of Pharmacy, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan 8 Department of Medical Research and Development, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi branch, Taiwan 9 Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, National Taiwan University College of Public Health, Taipei, Taiwan 10 Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA 11 Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC, USA 12 Graduate Institute of Basic Medical Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan 13 Department of Biotechnology, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan 14 Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan, Department of Respiratory Therapy, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan 15 Chang-Gung University College of Medicine, Taoyuan, Taiwan 16 Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Medical University Hospital, Taiwan 17 Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan Correspondence to: Ying-Huang Tsai, email: chestmed@adm.cgmh.org.tw Ching-Yuan Wu, email: smbepigwu77@gmail.com Keywords: dihydroisotanshinone I, macrophage, lung cancer, Skp2, CCL2 Received: February 15, 2017 Accepted: June 10, 2017 Published: June 28, 2017 ABSTRACT In traditional Chinese medicine, Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge (danshen) is widely used in the treatment of numerous cancers. However, its clinical effort and mechanism in the treatment of advanced lung cancer are unclear. In our study, the in vivo protective effort of danshen in patients with advanced lung cancer were validated using data from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. We observed in vitro that dihydroisotanshinone I (DT), a bioactive compound in danshen, exerts anticancer effects through many pathways. First, 10 μM DT substantially inhibited the migration ability of lung cancer cells in both macrophage and macrophage/lung cancer direct mixed coculture media. Second, 10 μM DT repressed the phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), the protein expression of S-phase kinase associated protein-2 (Skp2), and the mRNA levels of STAT3-related genes, including chemokine (C–C motif) ligand 2 (CCL2). In addition, 10 μM DT suppressed the macrophage recruitment ability of lung cancer cells by reducing CCL2 secretion from both macrophages and lung cancer cells. Third, 20 μM DT induced apoptosis in lung cancer cells. Furthermore, DT treatment significantly inhibited the final tumor volume in a xenograft nude mouse model. In conclusion, danshen exerts protective efforts in patients with advanced lung cancer. These effects can be attributed to DT-mediated interruption of the cross talk between lung cancer cells and macrophages and blocking of lung cancer cell proliferation.

We investigated the impact of serum cholesterol levels on 30-day mortality after ischemic stroke in dialysis patients.From the Taiwan Stroke Registry data, we identified 46,770 ischemic stroke cases, including 1101 dialysis patients and 45,669 nondialysis patients from 2006 to 2013.Overall, the 30-day mortality was 1.46-fold greater in the dialysis group than in the nondialysis group (1.75 versus 1.20 per 1000 person-days). The mortality rates were 1.64, .62, 2.82, and 2.23 per 1000 person-days in dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of 120 mg/dL, 120-159 mg/dL, 160-199 mg/dL, and ≥200 mg/dL, respectively. Compared to dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of 120-159 mg/dL, the corresponding adjusted hazard ratios of mortality were 4.20 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.01-17.4), 8.06 (95% CI = 2.02-32.2), and 6.89 (95% CI = 1.59-29.8) for those with cholesterol levels of 120 mg/dL, 160-199 mg/dL, and ≥200 mg/dL, respectively.Dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of ≥160 mg/dL or 120 mg/dL on admission are at an elevated hazard of 30-day mortality after ischemic stroke.

The major drawback of the battery charging in traditional electric vehicles is the use of plug-in charging devices. The aim of this paper is to propose a wireless battery charging method, in addition to power transfer, data related to battery status, vehicle ID code, or emergency messages can be simultaneously transferred between the grid and vehicle. This work applies inductive power transfer to complete the charging system. The proposed control system can monitor the operating status on the secondary (vehicle) side in real time and adjust charging current depending on the battery status. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism is able to make an immediate stop, if there is any contingency, such as overcharging voltage or current. This will be beneficial to efficient and safety concern during the charging process.

Swimming, turning, and whip-sweeping propulsion for carangiform locomotion of a fish robot are investigated by means of a 4-link planar tail and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)-like model. It is observed that excellent acceleration occurs when a whip sweeping behavior has been applied to the fish tail. The forward speed can even increases twice to the nominal swimming via the simulation study. The efficient movement is thus incorporated to the fish robot for agile movement. The robot's swimming patterns realize the effect in terms of the forward swimming, turning swimming, acceleration increasing, descended swimming, ascended swimming, depth regulating, and self-stabilization. Verification is accomplished by incorporating the 4-link planar tail, AUV-like model, and a two degree-of-freedom (DOF) barycenter mechanism. The four-link planar tail and 2-DOF barycenter mechanism act, respectively, as the thrust generator and stabilizing actuator for the fish robot. Sliding mode control (SMC) has been applied for three-dimensional (3D) trajectory tracking. Simulation results illustrate satisfactory performances of the fish robot in terms of the fish-like behaviors and maneuverability, which are due to the consequence of the mimicked predator-fish behaviors and performance robustness of the SMC for trajectory tracking under ocean current perturbations and modeling uncertainties.

This paper presents a new hybrid approach that combines Modified Priority List (MPL) with Charged System Search (CSS), termed MPL-CSS, to solve one of the most crucial power system’s operational optimization problems, known as unit commitment (UC) scheduling. The UC scheduling problem is a mixed-integer nonlinear problem, highly-dimensional and extremely constrained. Existing meta-heuristic UC solution methods have the problems of stopping at a local optimum and slow convergence when applied to large-scale, heavily-constrained UC applications. In the first step of the proposed method, initial hourly optimum solutions of UC are obtained by Modified Priority List (MPL); however, the obtained UC solution may still be possible to be further improved. Therefore, in the second step, the CSS is utilized to achieve higher quality solutions. The UC is formulated as mixed integer linear programming to ensure the tractability of the results. The proposed method is successfully applied to a popular test system up to 100 units generators for both 24-hr and 168-hr system. Computational results show that both solution cost and execution time are superior to those of published methods.

Objectives Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) constitute venous thromboembolism (VTE), which is not fully known in aplastic anemia (AA). Therefore, we investigated the incidence and risk of VTE in AA patients. Methods We conducted a nationwide cohort study to investigate the risk of DVT and PE in patients with AA. We identified patients with newly diagnosed AA as the AA cohort between 2000 and 2010 from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). The initial admission date for AA diagnosis was set as the index date. For each patient with AA, 4 patients without a history of AA, frequency matched by sex, age (every 5-y span), and year of index date, were the non-AA cohort. All patients were followed from the index date to the date of DVT or PE diagnosis, withdrawal from the NHIRD, or the end of 2011. Cox models were used to evaluate the risk of developing DVT and PE in the AA cohort. Results We included 4001 and 15,998 patients in the AA and non-AA cohorts, respectively, and the overall incidence densities of VTE were significantly higher in the AA cohort than in the non-AA cohort (42.3 vs 10.2 per 10,000 person-years). The AA cohort had a 2.56-fold higher risk of VTE (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.81–3.63) than did the non-AA cohort. Conclusion This nationwide cohort study indicated that AA is associated with increased incidence and risk of VTE.

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of end‐stage renal disease. Although dysfunction of podocytes, also termed glomerular visceral epithelial cells, is critically associated with diabetic nephropathy, the mechanism underlying podocyte dysfunction still remains obscure. Here, we identify that KDM6A, a histone lysine demethylase, reinforces diabetic podocyte dysfunction by creating a positive feedback loop through up‐regulation of its downstream target KLF10. Overexpression of KLF10 in podocytes not only represses multiple podocyte‐specific markers including nephrin, but also conversely increases KDM6A expression. We further show that KLF10 inhibits nephrin expression by directly binding to the gene promoter together with the recruitment of methyltransferase Dnmt1. Importantly, inactivation or knockout of either KDM6A or KLF10 in mice significantly suppresses diabetes‐induced proteinuria and kidney injury. Consistent with the notion, we also show that levels of both KDM6A and KLF10 proteins or mRNAs are substantially elevated in kidney tissues or in urinary exosomes of human diabetic nephropathy patients as compared with control subjects. Our findings therefore suggest that targeting the KDM6A–KLF10 feedback loop may be beneficial to attenuate diabetes‐induced kidney injury.

In order to investigate the electronic properties of the semiconducting van der Waals ferromagnet $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{r}}_{2}\mathrm{G}{\mathrm{e}}_{2}\mathrm{T}{\mathrm{e}}_{6}$ (CGT), where ferromagnetic layers are bonded through van der Waals forces, we have performed angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements and density-functional theory $(\mathrm{DFT}+U)$ calculations. The valence-band maximum at the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$ point is located $\ensuremath{\sim}0.2\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{eV}$ below the Fermi level, consistent with the semiconducting property of CGT. Comparison of the experimental density of states with the DFT calculation has suggested that Coulomb interaction between the Cr $3d$ electrons ${U}_{\mathrm{eff}}\ensuremath{\sim}1.1\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{eV}$. The $\mathrm{DFT}+U$ calculation indicates that magnetic coupling between Cr atoms within the layer is ferromagnetic if Coulomb ${U}_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is smaller than 3.0 eV and that the interlayer coupling is ferromagnetic below ${U}_{\mathrm{eff}}\ensuremath{\sim}1.0\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{eV}$. We therefore conclude that, for ${U}_{\mathrm{eff}}$ deduced by the experiment, the intralayer Cr-Cr coupling is ferromagnetic and the interlayer coupling is near the boundary between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic, which means experimentally deduced ${U}_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is consistent with the theoretical ferromagnetic condition.

Purpose To investigate the required sample size for and feasibility of a full-scale randomized controlled trial examining the impact of the “dose” effect of acupuncture in treating sciatica. Patients and methods Fifty-seven patients with sciatica, aged 35–70 years, were recruited and screened. Thirty-one participants were randomly assigned to receive “low-dose” manual acupuncture (MAL) (n= 15) or “high-dose” manual acupuncture (MAH) (n=16). The acupuncture treatment was administered twice weekly for 4 weeks. The primary outcome was the visual analog scale (VAS) score at baseline and after 4 weeks of acupuncture treatment. Secondary outcomes included the Roland Disability Questionnaire for Sciatica (RDQS), the Sciatica Bothersomeness Index (SBI), and the World Health Organization Quality of Life in the Brief Edition (WHOQOL-BREF) scores at baseline and after 4 weeks of acupuncture treatment. Results Thirty patients completed the study. For all patients, acupuncture achieved significant improvement in the VAS (5.48±2.0, p