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γδT have functions of innate and adaptive immunity, with the potential to induce durable responses while being well-tolerated, with limited adverse effects, making it attractive as a tool for immunotherapy. γδT faces challenges as a frontline tool in clinical oncology, with limited response rates due to difficulties in reaching tumor sites with consistent cytotoxic activity and strength. Modulated Electro-hyperthermia (mEHT) is a loco-regional treatment, whereby energy-transmission from an electromagnetic field selectively targets the plasma membrane of tumor cells, inducing apoptosis and activating immune cells. We hypothesized that mEHT could enhance therapeutic effects by drawing γδT to tumor cells, while also rendering tumor cells to be more susceptible to cytotoxic effects. In this study, NOD/SCID mice harboring subcutaneous human HepG2 tumors were treated with intravenous injections of γδT after mEHT treatment. This method increased infiltration of γδT into the tumor site, significantly inhibiting tumor growth as compared to monotherapy with either modality. These data suggest that γδT could mediate a potent anti-tumor effect when combined with mEHT, and provide a strong rationale for combining these modalities in clinical application for cancer treatment.

Purpose To evaluate the association between the use of statins and/or metformin and patient survival in prostate cancer patients in Taiwan. Subjects and methods Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients who had hyperlipidemia and received radiotherapy were identified from the National Health Insurance Research Database 2000-2010. The survival rate was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to examine the association of mortality. Sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the risk of mortality in patients with diabetes. Results The study included 567 patients. Patients who used statins or metformin after prostate cancer diagnosis had longer average survival times (9.3 years and 8.1 years, respectively; P=0.001) compared with patients who persistently used or used the medicines prior to cancer diagnosis. Multivariate Cox regression analysis found that patients treated with statins after cancer diagnosis were significantly associated with a lower risk of mortality (aHR =0.24, 95% CI =0.09-0.66) compared to patients who did not use statins during the study period. Patients treated with metformin after cancer diagnosis were significantly associated more with an increased risk of mortality (aHR =6.78, 95% CI =2.45-18.77) compared to patients who did not use metformin during the study period. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the average survival time was similar among different medicine use groups in patients with diabetes. Conclusion The finding suggests that statins and metformin use after prostate cancer diagnosis may increase survival in patients with hyperlipidemia and radiotherapy.

Endocrine dysfunction is known to occur after traumatic brain injury. The purpose of this study was to examine the incidence of various endocrine dysfunctions after a stroke. The Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) was searched from 2001 to 2011 for patients with a diagnosis of stroke. Stroke patients were matched by diagnosis date, age, and sex to patients without a stroke. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were performed to compare the incidence of goiter, acquired hypothyroidism, thyroiditis, pituitary dysfunction, and disorders of the adrenal glands between stroke and non-stroke patients. There were 131,951 patients in the stroke group, and 131,951 in the matched non- stroke group (mean age 66.1 ± 14.9 years). Stroke patients had significantly higher risk of acquired hypothyroidism (crude hazard ratio [cHR] = 1.65, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.44, 1.90; adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 1.65, 95% CI: 1.42, 1.91), pituitary dysfunction (cHR = 2.32, 95% CI: 1.79, 2.99; aHR = 1.92, 95% CI: 1.46, 2.52), and disorders of the adrenal glands (cHR = 1.79, 95% CI: 1.52, 2.12; aHR =1.62, 95% CI: 1.36, 1.92) than non-stroke patients. Pituitary dysfunction and disorders of the adrenal glands were found in both hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke patients, while hypothyroidism was seen in ischemic stroke patients only. No significant association was found for goiter and thyroiditis. In conclusions, stroke survivors have an approximately 2-fold increased risk of developing acquired hypothyroidism, pituitary dysfunction, or disorders of the adrenal glands. These risks should be taken into account in the management of patients who have ischemic or hemorrhagic strokes. Graphical Abstract.

Whispering is an important mode of human speech, but no end-to-end recognition results for it were reported yet, probably due to the scarcity of available whispered speech data. In this paper, we present several approaches for end-to-end (E2E) recognition of whispered speech considering the special characteristics of whispered speech and the scarcity of data. This includes a frequency-weighted SpecAugment policy and a frequency-divided CNN feature extractor for better capturing the high-frequency structures of whispered speech, and a layer-wise transfer learning approach to pre-train a model with normal or normal-to-whispered converted speech then fine-tune it with whispered speech to bridge the gap between whispered and normal speech. We achieve an overall relative reduction of 19.8% in PER and 44.4% in CER on a relatively small whispered TIMIT corpus. The results indicate as long as we have a good E2E model pre-trained on normal or pseudo-whispered speech, a relatively small set of whispered speech may suffice to obtain a reasonably good E2E whispered speech recognizer., Comment: Accepted to IEEE SLT 2021

Purpose To evaluate the association between the use of statins and/or metformin and patient survival in prostate cancer patients in Taiwan. Subjects and methods Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients who had hyperlipidemia and received radiotherapy were identified from the National Health Insurance Research Database 2000–2010. The survival rate was estimated by the Kaplan–Meier method. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to examine the association of mortality. Sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the risk of mortality in patients with diabetes. Results The study included 567 patients. Patients who used statins or metformin after prostate cancer diagnosis had longer average survival times (9.3 years and 8.1 years, respectively; P=0.001) compared with patients who persistently used or used the medicines prior to cancer diagnosis. Multivariate Cox regression analysis found that patients treated with statins after cancer diagnosis were significantly associated with a lower risk of mortality (aHR =0.24, 95% CI =0.09–0.66) compared to patients who did not use statins during the study period. Patients treated with metformin after cancer diagnosis were significantly associated more with an increased risk of mortality (aHR =6.78, 95% CI =2.45–18.77) compared to patients who did not use metformin during the study period. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the average survival time was similar among different medicine use groups in patients with diabetes. Conclusion The finding suggests that statins and metformin use after prostate cancer diagnosis may increase survival in patients with hyperlipidemia and radiotherapy.

A high-speed and high-light-output-power InGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar light-emitting transistors (HBLETs) at 968-nm wavelength employing indium molybdenum oxide (IMO) contact are demonstrated in this letter. The IMO contact exhibits a low electrical resistivity of \(3.5 \times 10^{\mathrm {\mathbf {-4}}}~\Omega \) -cm accompanied with an extremely high optical transmittance of 99% at 968 nm, which can be ascribed to larger valence difference between In 3+ matrix and Mo 6+ dopants. As compared to HBLET with conventional AuGe contact, HBLET with IMO contact shows a higher forward voltage and higher series resistance. However, at the corresponding injection current level, HBLET with IMO contact produces a light output power with a rate of \(5.7~\mu \) W/mA, which is twice of \(2.7~\mu \) W/mA for HBLET with AuGe contact. In addition, HBLET with IMO contact exhibits a 3-dB optical bandwidth of 649 MHz, which is correlated to a carrier recombination lifetime of 245 ps. The successful incorporation of an IMO contact into an HBLET can improve the optical output extraction significantly without the expense of losing modulation speed.

Purpose To investigate serum markers associated with radiation pneumonitis (RP) grade ≥3 in patients with lung cancer who were treated with radiation therapy. Methods and Materials Pretreatment serum samples from patients with stage Ib-IV lung cancer who developed RP within 1 year after radiation therapy were analyzed to identify a proteome marker able to stratify patients prone to develop severe RP by surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). Dosimetric parameters and 3 biological factors were compared. Results Serum samples from 16 patients (28%) with severe RP (grade 3-4) and 42 patients (72%) with no or mild RP (grade 0-2) were collected for analysis. All patients received a median of 54 Gy (range, 42-70 Gy) of three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy with a mean lung dose (MLD) of 1502 cGy (range, 700-2794 cGy). An m/z peak of 11,480 Da was identified by SELDI-TOF-MS, and serum amyloid A (SAA) was the primary splitter serum marker. The receiver operating characteristic area under the curve of SAA (0.94; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.87-1.00) was higher than those of C-reactive protein (0.83; 95% CI, 0.72-0.94), interleukin-6 (0.79; 95% CI, 0.65-0.94), and MLD (0.57; 95% CI, 0.37-0.77). The best sensitivity and specificity of combined SAA and MLD for predicting RP were 88.9% and 96.0%, respectively. Conclusions Baseline SAA could be used as an auxiliary marker for predicting severe RP. Extreme care should be taken to limit the lung irradiation dose in patients with high SAA.

We demonstrate a metal-semiconductor-metal Pd/GaN hydrogen sensor with a porous-like mixture of Pd and SiO2. Beside the symmetrically bidirectional sensing characteristics with a widespread voltage regime ranging at least from −5 to 5 V, a high sensing response of 8 × 105 and 7.7 × 106 corresponding to a Schottky barrier height variation of 352 and 411 meV is obtained in a 4890-ppm H2/N2 ambience at a voltage of −1.5 and −5 V, respectively. A highly efficient dissociation of hydrogen molecules due to an enhanced catalytic activity of the mixture explains the improved performance. Furthermore, dynamic responses by alternately switching the voltage polarity and introducing and removing hydrogen-containing gases are also included to evaluate the proposed device as a high sensing response and low power sensor. These statements are an example of what a properly prepared meeting abstract should look like. Proper column and margin measurements are also indicated.

Indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) films are deposited on glass substrates by co-sputtering In2Ga2ZnO7 and In2O3 targets. The structural, electrical, and optical properties of the IGZO films have been discussed as functions of substrate temperature and rf power supplied to the In2O3 target (Prf, In2O3). From x-ray diffraction patterns, a halo peak around 34° is observed, which is attributed to the amorphous-like ZnkIn2O3+k structure. The electrical resistivity decreases with increasing substrate temperature and Prf, In2O3. The optimum resistivity is 7.16 × 10 -4 Ω-cm obtained at 175 ° substrate temperature and 20 W Prf,In2O3. The optical characteristics indicate that IGZO films are direct-transition type semiconductors. The optical band gap energy widens with increasing In2O3 content in the IGZO films. The optical transmittance of films deposited with 10-W Prf, In2O3 is higher than 99% in the wavelength region from 516 to 535 nm.

In this letter, self-assembled polystyrene nano-spheres with a diameter of 193 nm were used to fabricate the 3-D colloidal-photonic-crystal (CPC) bottom reflector for blue GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Experimentally, the key point is the hydrophilic treatment of substrate and immediately to disperse the suspension into the substrate at 30 °C. The equilibrium between the particle transport and crystallization in the aqueous solution helps CPCs to form a faced-centered-cubic phase when the solution temperature decreases. This will lead to the improvement of reflectivity due to reduced defects, such as dislocations and vacancies, in the CPCs. The light output intensity of the LEDs fabricated with a well-controlled 3-D-CPC bottom reflector increases by 219% compared to that of conventional LEDs without it.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text, Cancer survival correlates not only with the features of primary malignancy but also with the degree of underlying comorbidities. Of the multiple methods used for evaluating the impact of comorbidities on survival, the Charlson and Elixhauser methods are most common. This study compared these 2 comorbidity measures for predicting survival in oral cancer patients. Using the Taiwan National Health Insurance claims data (2008–2011), we acquired data regarding patients’ characteristics, comorbidities, and survival from 3583 oral cancer patients. Comorbidity was classified according to both the Charlson comorbidity and Elixhauser comorbidity based on the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision. The Elixhauser comorbidity score and Charlson comorbidity score were also calculated. The prediction of survival was determined using measures of discrimination, including the Akaike information criterion and Harrell C (C-statistic). The mean age of the study cohort was 52 ± 10 years, and 94.9% of the patients were male. The median follow-up time was 30.1 months, and the 3-year overall survival was 61.6%. Elixhauser comorbidity method added higher discrimination, compared with the Charlson comorbidity method (Harrell C, 0.677 vs 0.651). Furthermore, the Elixhauser comorbidity score outperformed the Charlson comorbidity score in continuous variable (Harrell C, 0.654 vs 0.646) and category (Harrell C, 0.658 vs 0.645). The Elixhauser method is a superior comorbidity risk-adjustment model for oral cancer survival prediction. Utilization of the Elixhauser comorbidity method may be encouraged for risk adjustment in oral cancer study.

Background Upfront tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) has proved effective for selective advanced lung cancer patients in Taiwan. We hypothesized that early integration of radiotherapy during TKI treatment would decrease the chance of drug resistance and prolong progression-free survival (PFS). Methods This study included 25 patients with stage IIIb or IV non-squamous cell, non-small cell lung cancer (NSqCLC) who responded to upfront TKI treatment. Multi-target radiotherapy was administered during the TKI treatment course. Tomotherapy comprising a hypofractionated schedule with a dose of 40–50 Gy in 16–20 fractions was used for individual metastatic lesions. Results The patients’ median follow-up duration was 30 months (range, 9–62 months). Of the 23 patients who had stage IV disease, 9 had oligometastases (≤5 gross target volumes) and 14 were in the more advanced stages of the disease. Twelve patients received more than 1 cycle of radiotherapy (median, 3; range, 2–6) with TKI being the only systemic treatment before they were salvaged with chemotherapy. The overall response rate after radiotherapy was 84.0%, and the median PFS was 16 months. The 3-year overall survival rate was 62.5% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39.1–85.8%). Toxicities were generally tolerated but it is necessary to prevent radiation-induced pneumonitis. Conclusion We showed that combined first-line TKI therapy and early multi-target radiotherapy are very effective in selected patients that respond to TKI, when the status of mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) are not known before the treatment. Our data may aid expansion of the effectiveness of TKI treatment through radiotherapy in Asian patients with stage IV NSqCLC.

In this study, we systematically investigate the effects of post-annealing on the structural, electrical, and optical characteristics of indium molybdenum oxide (IMO) films. The incorporation of IMO films into organic solar cells (OSCs) is further studied. The optimum content of Mo is 2.36 wt %. Furthermore, a significant improvement in crystallinity, surface morphology, electrical resistivity, and optical transmittance is observed after thermal annealing. The lowest resistivity is obtained with post annealing at 300 °C for 140 s. The OSC utilizing the IMO electrode shows an efficiency of up to 3.77%, which is higher than that of the OSC utilizing the ITO electrode. The diffusion length of the carriers in the OSC is approximately 10 nm. Thus, the higher efficiency can be explained by the smoother surface morphology of the post annealed IMO electrode. These results indicate that the novel IMO films with superior material properties have enormous potential applications for solar cells.

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Inverted zinc oxide photonic crystal structures were fabricated from polystyrene sphere (PSS) template using the sol–gel solution of ZnO by spin-coating method. It is easily able to control and fabricate the photonic crystal structures using the self-organized PSS with a size of 193 nm. The inverted ZnO photonic crystal structures observed show the (111) tendency of the hexagonal compact arrangement formation. The resulting structures possess the photonic band gaps in the near-ultraviolet range and exhibit an enhanced photoluminescence spectrum. The technology can effectively increase the light output intensity or efficiency for the applications of optoelectronic devices.

Background To retrospectively review the outcome of patients with primary or secondary oligometastatic lung cancer, treated with hypofractionated Tomotherapy. Methods Between April 2007 and June 2011, a total of 33 patients with oligometastatic intrapulmonary lesions underwent hypofractionated radiotherapy by Tomotherapy along with appropriate systemic therapy. There were 24 primary, and 9 secondary lung cancer cases. The radiation doses ranged from 4.5 to 7.0 Gy per fraction, multiplied by 8–16 fractions. The median dose per fraction was 4.5 Gy (range, 4.5-7.0 Gy), and the median total dose was 49.5 Gy (range, 45–72 Gy). The median estimated biological effective dose at 10 Gy (BED10) was 71.8 Gy (range, 65.3–119.0 Gy), and that at 3 Gy (BED3) was 123.8 Gy (range, 112.5–233.3 Gy). The mean lung dose (MLD) was constrained mainly under 1200 cGy. The median gross tumor volume (GTV) was 27.9 cm3 (range: 2.5–178.1 cm3). Results The median follow-up period was 25.8 months (range, 3.0–60.7 months). The median overall survival (OS) time was 32.1 months for the 24 primary lung cancer patients, and >40 months for the 9 metastatic lung patients. The median survival time of the patients with extra-pulmonary disease (EPD) was 11.2 months versus >50 months (not reached) in the patients without EPD (p 3) had a better survival than those with larger GTV (>27.9 cm3): >40 months versus 12.85 months (p = 0.047). The patients with ≦2 lesions had a median survival >40 months, whereas those with ≧3 lesions had 26 months (p = 0.065). The 2-year local control (LC) rate was 94.7%. Only 2 patients (6.1%) developed ≧grade 3 radiation pneumonitis. Conclusion Using Tomotherapy in hypofractionation may be effective for selected primary or secondary lung oligometastatic diseases, without causing significant toxicities. Pulmonary oligometastasis patients without EPD had better survival outcomes than those with EPD. Moreover, GTV is more significant than lesion number in predicting survival.