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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.

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.

Due to the prevalence of 3D printers, many applications of 3D printing have been developed for education in the recent years. Although there are web sites hosting 3D models created by students and allowing them to be shared with others, these systems usually lack educational functions, especially for collaborative learning. On the other hand, most learning management systems do not provide functions needed for sharing and viewing 3D models. In this chapter, a system called 3D model co-learning space (3D MCLS), dedicated to collaborative learning, will be reported. The system allows a user to store, share, display, and discuss 3D models and allows a teacher to manage a group of students in a flexible way. Furthermore, the system can create the thumbnail of a 3D model automatically. It uses tags to organize models into groups according to their attributes or teams in a class. In addition, it provides blind assignments of peer reviews. The authors have implemented such a system and conducted a pilot study to obtain a preliminary evaluation on the usability of the system.

Creatives in animated and real movie productions have been exploring new modalities to visually design filmic sequences before realizing them in studios, through techniques like hand-drawn storyboards, physical mockups or more recently virtual 3D environments. A central issue in using virtual 3D environments is the complexity of content creation tools for non technical film creatives. To overcome this issue, we present One Man Movie, a VR authoring system which enables the crafting of filmic sequences with no prior knowledge in 3D animation. The system is designed to reflect the traditional creative process in film pre-production through stages like (i) scene layout (ii) animation of characters, (iii) placement and control of cameras and (iv) montage of the filmic sequence, while enabling a fully novel and seamless back-and-forth between all stages of the process thanks to real-time engines. This research tool has been designed and evaluated with students and experts from film schools, and should therefore raise a significant interest among Siggraph participants.

In the recent years, due to the prevalence of 3D printers, there have been many applications of 3D printing developed for education such as creating custom-made teaching aids or student art work. Although there are web sites hosting 3D models created by students and allowing them to share and search in the database, these systems usually lack functions of collaborative learning. On the other hand, most learning management systems do not provide functions needed for sharing and viewing 3D models. In this work, we aim to design a system called 3D Model Co-learning Space (3D MCLS), dedicated to collaborative learning allowing students to share 3D models as well as performing blind peer assessment. The system allows a user to store, share, display, and discuss 3D models and allows a teacher to manage a group of students in a flexible way. More specifically, the system can automatically create a thumbnail by computing an optimized view of an uploaded 3D model. It uses tags to organize models into groups according to their attributes or teams in a class for easier access through search. In addition, it can provide blind assignments of peer review and compare the results with self-assessment. We have implemented such a system and conducted a pilot study to obtain a preliminary evaluation on the usability of the system.

Target location is an important task in robotics applications. For different application purposes, the positions of targets are usually described by various coordinate systems. Closed-form formulas that describe the relationships between two coordinate systems serve as a means for coordinate transformation. However, the existence of unavoidable measurement errors and uncertainty makes closed-form formulas less reliable. Besides, the closed-form formulas usually involve operations of matrix inversion and transpose that usually consume a considerable amount of computing resources. This paper defines the problem of coordinate transformation on mobile robots as a regression problem and employs the techniques of gene expression programming to discover the regression models. With such regression models, coordinate transformation can be done by simpler formulas with lower processing costs. The proposed techniques have been implemented and integrated with a four-wheeled robot equipped with vision sensors and have been verified in real environments. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the underlying problem using genetic-based techniques.

Background Discharge disposition planning is vital for poststroke patients. We investigated clinical factors associated with discharging patients to nursing homes, using the Taiwan Stroke Registry data collected from 39 major hospitals. Methods We randomly assigned 21,575 stroke inpatients registered from 2006 to 2008 into derivation and validation groups at a 3-to-1 ratio. We used the derivation group to develop a prediction model by measuring cumulative risk scores associated with potential predictors: age, sex, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart diseases, stroke history, snoring, main caregivers, stroke types, and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). Probability of nursing home care and odds ratio (OR) of nursing home care relative to home care by cumulative risk scores were measured for the prediction. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was used to assess the model discrimination against the validation group. Results Except for hypertension, all remaining potential predictors were significant independent predictors associated with stroke patient disposition to nursing home care after discharge from hospitals. The risk sharply increased with age and NIHSS. Patients with a cumulative risk score of 15 or more had an OR of 86.4 for the nursing home disposition. The AUROC plots showed similar areas under curves for the derivation group (.86, 95% confidence interval [CI], .85-.87) and for the validation group (.84, 95% CI, .83-.86). Conclusions The cumulative risk score is an easy-to-estimate tool for preparing stroke patients and their family for disposition on discharge.

This paper reports a novel approach to the direct observation of Bloch surface waves, wherein a layer of fluorescent material is deposited directly on the surface of a semi-infinite periodic layered cell. A set of surface nano-gratings is used to couple pumping light to Bloch surface waves, while the sample is rotated until the pumping light meets the quasi-phase matching conditions. This study investigated the directional propagation of waves on stripe and circular one-dimensional grating structures by analyzing the dispersion relationship of the first two eigen modes. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme in visualizing Bloch surface waves, which could be extended to a variety of other devices.

The use of total internal reflection within the prism coupling scheme is a simple approach to the generation of surface plasmon polariton waves on a metal/dielectric interface. Unfortunately, an anisotropic layer on a metallic film complicates the derivation of resonance angle. In this study, we present clear Fresnel analysis of a liquid crystal film on a metal surface. Few current simulation packages enable the analysis of multiple layers with a single anisotropic layer. The proposed formulation process is applicable to multi-layered structures.

Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) 17 is a dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by ataxia, cognitive decline, dystonia, and parkinsonism. The disease is caused by unstable cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) trinucleotide expansion mutation coding for polyglutamine tracts in the TATA box-binding protein (TBP), a general transcription initiation factor. Herein, we report a SCA17 case with a phenotype not previously reported, which consisted of progressive ataxia, autonomic dysfunction, parkinsonism, supranuclear palsy and cognitive impairment. Cerebrospinal fluid study and 18F-dopa PET scanning demonstrated dopamine deficiency and nigrostrital degeneration. This case expands the current phenotype associated with SCA17. SCA17 should be considered in the differential diagnosis of cases resembling multiple system atrophy, especially those with atypical features.

A superconducting-qantum-interference-device (SQUID) nondestructive evaluation (NDE) system using a small room-temperature probe is developed for active scanning rather than for a massive movement occurring in a traditional SQUID NDE system. The small room-temperature probe is composed of a quadruple excitation coil and a double D-shaped pickup coil. It is connected to the input coil surrounding a high-Tc rf SQUID, immersed in liquid nitrogen, and shielded by a shielding can. Beyond the NDE function, the SQUID NDE scheme has spatial recognition functions, including the detection of the orientation and depth of a narrow line crack using different parameters, and the scanning of images of large objects with arbitrary shapes. Furthermore, the spatial sensitivity, limited by the size of the probe, reaches up to only 7 µm in the aspect of crack widths and 1 mm in the aspect of spatial intervals for precision NDE on a printed circuit board.