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We report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on urological surgeries and hospital policies at two hospitals in Japan and Taiwan.We retrospectively surveyed the number of surgeries every 3 months in the Urology Department of Kobe University Hospital (KUH), Kobe, Japan before (January 2019-March 2020) and after (April 2020-September 2021) the COVID-19 outbreak, and in the Urology Department of Shuang Ho Hospital, Taipei Medical University (SHH-TMU), Taiwan before (January 2021-March 2021) and after (April 2021-September 2021) the outbreak, and compared the averages and types of surgery.In Kobe, COVID-19 patients were stratified such that other regional hospitals gave priority to treating COVID-19 while KUH gave priority to treating non-COVID-19 patients. In KUH, the number of surgeries did not change significantly, 237.2 ± 29.6 versus 246.3 ± 20.8 (p = 0.453). In Taiwan COVID-19 patients increased sharply in May 2021, and teaching hospitals in Taiwan were obliged to provide 20% of their total beds for COVID-19 patients. At SHH-TMU, there was a 33.3% drop in the number of surgeries during April-June 2021 compared to the pre-pandemic average. However, no significant changes were observed, 423.4 ± 68.4 versus 373 ± 91.0 (p = 0.298), because of the subsequent success in controlling the COVID-19 infection.The comparison of infection control measures between the two countries revealed that while both KUH and SHH-TMU successfully maintained the number of surgeries, the reasons for this were different for each.

While studies on the damaging effects of PM2.5 air pollution are abundant, studies seeking to understand the factors that influence human behaviors for the avoidance of exposure to PM2.5 are lacking. Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) can be used to investigate the effects of Attitudes (AT), Subjective Norms (SN), and Perceived Behavioral Controls (PBC) in the Behavioral Intentions (BI) of parents with young children against exposure to PM2.5. Questionnaires, based on the TPB used to predict BI, were distributed to 610 parents in Taipei City and New Taipei City. Our results revealed that the AT of both groups had a significant positive predictive effect on their PBC and BI. While the SN of the Taipei group affected BI directly, there was no significant effect on the BI from the SN of the New Taipei group. Using path analysis, Taipei City and New Taipei City groups had different BI paths: All five hypotheses are statistically significant and form four paths in the Taipei City group. While only four hypotheses in the New Taipei City group formed three paths and no path for SN-BI. Both groups formed behaviors that were based on the SN/PBC around them, which ultimately contributed to the BI of their protective behaviors.

In this digital era, young children spend a considerable amount of time looking at telephone, tablet, computer and television screens. However, preventative eye health behavior education could help avoid and relieve asthenopia. The effects of parental influence on their children’s eye health behavior through the preschool eye health education intervention program were examined. The Health Belief Model was used to develop parental involvement strategy and eye health curriculum. The study was conducted in a large public preschool with five branches in Beijing, China. A total of 248 parent–child pairs participated in the baseline and follow-up surveys, of which 129 were in the intervention group and 119 were in the comparison group. The generalized estimating equation analysis results indicated that parental involvement in preschool-based eye health intervention on screen uses had positive influence on parents’ eye health knowledge, cues to action, and parenting efficacy. The intervention program also had positive effects on the increasing level of children’s eye health knowledge, beliefs, cues to action, self-efficacy, and behaviors. The results supported the implementation of a preschool-based eye health intervention program with parental involvement, which could potentially enhance children’s and parents’ eye health beliefs and practices.

To investigate the role of sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling and epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) in bladder cancer progression and invasion. We cultured three bladder cancer cell lines, muscle-invasive T24 and 5637, and non-muscle-invasive KK47, in the presence of a recombinant-Shh (r-Shh) protein or cyclopamine, a Shh signaling inhibitor, to investigate proliferation and expression of EMT markers. Wound-healing assays and transwell assay were performed to evaluate cell invasion and migration. Mice were then inoculated with bladder cancer cells and treated with cyclopamine. Mouse tumor samples were stained for Shh signaling and EMT markers. R-Shh protein enhanced cell proliferation, whereas cyclopamine significantly suppressed cell proliferation, especially in invasive cancer (5637 and T24) (p

Background: Despite its widespread use, the use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) alone as a screening biomarker for prostate cancer (PCa) leads often to unwarranted prostate biopsy, over-diagnosis, and consequently, over-treatment, because of its limited specificity. There are reports that the apoptosis inhibitor of macrophage (AIM), secreted mainly by macrophages and epithelial cells, is upregulated during inflammation and facilitates immune recognition of cancerous cells by blocking human regulator of complement activation. Objective: These controversies around the PSA utility necessitate a reexamination of its use as a screening tool. More so, despite the suggested implication of AIM in anticancer immunosurveillance, there is a dearth of information on its role in therapy response, disease progression, and clinical outcomes of patients with PCa. These inform the present study to probe the nature and role of AIM/PSA signaling in anticancer immunity and prognosis in PCa. Methods: A combination of bioinformatics-aided statistical analyses, gene function annotation, and immune infiltrate analyses, coupled with tissue staining, and function assays, namely migration, invasion, and clonogenicity assays, we employed. Results: We demonstrated that AIM and PSA expression levels are inversely correlated in PCa clinical samples and cell lines, with AIMlowPSAhigh defining PCa, compared to AIMhighPSAlow in normal samples. Concomitant aberrant PSA and significantly suppressed AIM expression levels positively correlated with high-grade disease and characterized by advanced stage prostate cancer, regardless of mutation status. We found that a high PSA/AIM ratio is associated with disease recurrence in patients with prostate cancer but is equivocal for overall survival. In addition, PSA-associated AIM suppression is implicated in the enhanced ‘metastability’ of PCa and a high AIM/PSA ratio is associated with strong castration-induced regression. CRISPR-mediated AIM knockout was associated with higher PSA expression while ectopic expression of AIM significantly attenuated the migration and invasive capability of PC3 and DU145 cells. Interestingly, compared to normal samples, we observed that AIM, biomarkers of T-cell activation and M1 phenotype markers are co-suppressed in PCa samples. Conclusion: Herein, we demonstrate that AIM/CD5L binds to PSA and that a high PSA/AIM ratio defines advanced stage PCa (regardless of mutation status), is implicated in enhanced metastability, and associated with disease recurrence, while a high AIM/PSA ratio is associated with strong castration-induced regression. More so, the ectopic expression of AIM significantly enhances the anticancer effect of Pembrolizumab and elicits an increased CD8+ T-cell count in AIMhiPSAloPDL1+ PCa cases that are respondent to Pembrolizumab treatment.

This exploratory study aims to fill the gap by adopting Hirose’s two-phase decision-making model with the theory of social networks to explore the environmentally friendly attitudes and environmental behavioral intentions toward pro-environmental behaviors of the citizen scientists who participated in the Bird Survey in Taoyuan’s Farm Ponds Project. The Bird Survey in Taoyuan’s Farm Ponds Project is a systematic citizen science project founded in 2003 with the aim to identify existing and potential irrigation ponds that are important to creating waterbird refuges to secure habitats for wintering waterbirds in anthropogenically influenced areas. The participation in this project itself can be considered as a form of pro-environmental behavior. A total of 24 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants of the Bird Survey in Taoyuan’s Farm Ponds Project. Qualitative data showed that participants mentioned six variables (i.e., perceived seriousness, ascription of responsibility, belief in the effectiveness, feasibility evaluation, cost–benefit evaluation, and social norms evaluation) of the two-phase decision-making model in relation to environmentally friendly attitudes and environmental behavioral intention. Findings also revealed three key variables (i.e., social networks, learning and growth, and belonging and contribution) in the theory of social networks that are associated with environmentally friendly attitudes and environmental behavioral intention. Based on the findings, it is proposed that the social needs variables are incorporated as an extension to the two-phase decision-making model to offer a more comprehensive explanation of pro-environmental behavior.

With the occurrence of rapid global economic growth concerns about waste and its related effects on the environment are on the rise. There has been an increasing focus towards sustainable development and waste recycling as part of environmental sustainability strategies, and the encouraging of recycling behavior has received considerable attention from various environmental stakeholders. While numerous studies have used grounded theories such as the theory of planned behaviors and the norm activation model to examine environmental behaviors, a lack of consideration of other important variables in these studies has been revealed. This study aimed to address this gap by adopting the comprehensive action determination model, which comprises a wider group of influencing variables related to norms, intentions, situations, and habits. This model was tested using structural equation modelling with a sample of 386 valid questionnaires collected from Taipei City residents in the domain of recycling behaviors. Results indicated that awareness had a positive influence on personal norms towards recycling behaviors, social norms had a positive influence on personal norms towards recycling behaviors, attitudes had a positive influence on recycling intentions, social norms had a positive influence on recycling intentions, personal norms had a positive influence on recycling intentions, perceived behavior control had a positive influence on recycling intentions, recycling intentions had a positive influence on recycling behavior, and recycling habits had a positive influence on recycling behavior. However, findings did not support the positive impact of perceived behavioral control on recycling behavior.

The objective of this study was to explore the mediators of environmental protective behaviors in Christians in Taiwan. Questionnaire data from a total of 699 participants were collected and subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis. The results revealed that the environmental behaviors of Taiwanese Christians are affected by their faith in three aspects. First, private environmental behaviors are associated with church attendance. Second, the awareness of environmental consequences generates a stewardship belief, which results in a willingness to sacrifice for the environment, private environmental behaviors, and political environmental activism. Finally, stewardship belief is also associated with political environmental activism.

The objective of the research was to explore and compare the differences in potential creative thinking that media richness had on learners in creativity training through two different types of communication formats, computer-mediated communication, and face-to-face communication. The results indicated that the computer-mediated communication format performed better than the face-to-face in terms of the fluency, flexibility, and originality dimensions of creative thinking. The computer-mediated communication format also had a greater level of media richness perception (i.e., use of multiple cues, language diversity, and personal focus of the medium) than the face-to-face format. In terms of the combined effectiveness of computer-mediated communication, and face-to-face formats, the use of multiple cues, language variety of perception of media richness had direct effects on the fluency of creativity. There was also a positive correlation between the elaboration of creativity and the use of multiple cues, language variety, and personal focus of the medium in the perception of media richness. Furthermore, language variety was correlated with creativity and flexibility. The research findings highlighted the importance of the availability of immediate feedback on media richness, whereas creativity cognition should focus on the breadth and depth of the information, which contributes to enhancing the creativity of individuals or a group of employees.

Vegetation successions of coastal wetlands were influenced by the changes in relative surface elevation and soil salinity. In this study, the vegetation successions of coastal wetlands in southern Laizhou Bay and the factors influencing the successions were investigated by quadrat survey. The changes of relative surface elevation and soil salinity in coastal wetlands of the study region were caused by climate change, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, sedimentation, neotectonism, storm surge, seawater intrusion, invasion of Spatina alterniflora, and utilization of underground brine. The changes led to the regressive vegetation succession of coastal wetlands without the protection of sea embankment and the progressive vegetation succession of coastal wetlands with the protection of sea embankment. The invasion of S. alterniflora resulted in the regressive vegetation succession of wetlands in the riparian zone. The successions weakened the coastal wetlands’ ecological capacities of carbon sequestration, pollutant purification, and resisting marine disasters, decreasing their species diversity. Some measures were proposed to resist the adverse impact of successions, such as introducing passenger water, storing water in flood season, digging 200 hm2 of ponds, and planting Salix matsudana and Tamarix chinensis around the ponds.

Objective Tubeless percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) offers several advantages over standard PCNL, including a shorter hospital stay, less analgesic requirement, and less postoperative pain. Using a fibrin sealant to seal the nephrostomy tract had become a widely accepted technique at the conclusion of tubeless PCNL. Our objective is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of tubeless PCNL using hemostatic matrix. Materials and methods This is a retrospective review of PCNL database at our hospital between June 2014 and March 2016. During this period, a total of 139 PCNLs were performed, including 41 with tubeless technique with adjunct of hemostatic matrix (Floseal; Baxter, Deerfield, IL, USA) at the conclusion of the PCNL procedure. The standard PCNL group and the tubeless PCNL group were compared in terms of demographic characteristics, perioperative data, stone characteristics, and complication rate. Results Of all 123 patients included in this study, 41 underwent tubeless PCNL. Demographic data of the two groups were comparable except for a higher proportion of male patients in the tubeless PCNL group (73.2% vs. 53.7%). Stone characteristics were also comparable in the two groups. Perioperative variables, including operative time, drop of serum hemoglobin level, and perioperative complication rate, revealed no statistical difference between the two groups. Tubeless PCNL was associated with less postoperative pain, less analgesic requirement, and a shorter hospital stay (p Conclusion Tubeless PCNL with adjunct use of a hemostatic sealant can be considered as a safe treatment option for renal calculi with favorable outcome, without an increase in complications. Compared with standard PCNL, tubeless PCNL with hemostatic sealant use is associated with less pain, use of fewer narcotic agents, and a shorter hospital stay.

An understanding of the environmental value-action gap between public servants at the central and local governments is essential for the effective implementation of environmental policies, which is limited in the extant literature. This study has adopted the norm activation model to explore the pro-environmental behaviors of public servants at the central and local governments in Taiwan. A total of 7567 valid questionnaires were collected, and significant differences were evident between public servants at the central (n = 3400) and local (n = 4167) governments in personal norms, awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and pro-environmental behaviors. Findings revealed that personal norms were the key factors predicting pro-environmental behaviors of public servants at both the central and local governments. Results also indicated that the awareness of consequences by public servants at the central government had a direct effect on their pro-environmental behaviors, which in turn had a significant effect on their ascription of responsibility. In contrast, awareness of consequences by public servants at the local government had no significant direct effect on their pro-environmental behaviors and had only a weak positive effect on their ascription of responsibility.

This paper proposes an algorithm for eliminating motion artifacts in heart rate monitoring using a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor. No additional hardware, such as accelerometers or other reference signals, is needed. The algorithm improves the quality of PPG signals by implementing a comb filter during signal processing. The proposed slow–fast adaptive comb filter (SFACF) distinguishes motion artifacts in PPG signals based on harmonic and continuous features of the heart rate. The effectiveness of fundamental and harmonic frequency enhancement in real time is experimentally demonstrated, with the heart rate updated every second. The performance of the SFACF, which does not require additional reference signals, is compared with those of adaptive noise cancellation (ANC) and spectral peak search-comb filtering (SPS-CF). It is found that for a low-quality PPG signal, the SFACF outperforms ANC and SPS-CF. Finally, measurements obtained using a commercial heart rate monitor and the proposed algorithm are shown to be highly correlated.

Small signal modeling of multiple phase switching scheme for paralleling different rated power systems is presented. It can parallel different rated power subsystems easily. For reducing power dissipation, it replaced isolated output diode with MOSFET. For fast switching at output MOSFET, the stability needs to be checked. In this paper, we use isolated flyback converters to be power systems.

Purpose: Direct vision internal urethrotomy (DVIU) is the most common surgical intervention for anterior urethral strictures. We evaluated the long-term outcome and success rate of optic urethrotomy in patients treated in our hospital who had recurrent anterior urethral strictures, according to different predisposing causes and stricture sites. The aim is to find the success rate of optic urethrotomy in patients treated who had recurrent anterior urethral strictures. Materials and Methods: This study is a retrospective chart review. From January 2000 to August 2017, 232 patients received internal optic urethrotomy for anterior urethral strictures in our hospital. A retrospective chart review of all patients involved in the study was performed. Median follow-up period after receiving the first urethrotomy procedure was 91 months (range: 8–204 months). The Kaplan–Meier method was used to analyze the success rate of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth urethrotomy procedures. Results: Of the 232 patients who underwent at least two procedures of urethrotomy, 150 (64.65%) were included in the study. The success rate of the first urethrotomy procedure was 0%, with a mean time to recurrence of 20 months. For the second urethrotomy, the success rate was 53%, with a mean time to recurrence of 22.5 months. For the third urethrotomy, the success rate was 40%, with a mean time to recurrence of 16.1 months. For the fourth and fifth urethrotomy procedures, the success rate was 39% and 18%, with a mean time to recurrence of 17.9 and 10.2 months, respectively. Patients who had anterior urethral stricture related to previous surgery (surgery-related) had a better outcome (success rate, 87.3%) than patients with strictures stemming from other causes (P = 0.003). No association was found between preoperative infection, the age of the patient, and the site of the strictures and the success rate of the procedure. Conclusion: The patient population was older and had a longer-term follow-up, compared with previous studies, but even with repeated DVIU, the surgery-related stricture group had a higher success rate of urethrotomy than the groups with different etiology. In patients with pelvic fracture or infection, repeated urethrotomy may not be recommended as first-line treatment for recurrent anterior urethral stricture.

Locus of control is a crucial factor in pro-environmental behavior. However, studies on pro-environmental behavior investigating the predisposing factors of internal locus of control are limited. Therefore, the objective of this study further explored the predisposing factors of locus of control and revealed that emotional stability may be a predisposing factor for internal locus of control and pro-environmental behavior. A questionnaire survey was conducted in Taiwan (n = 473) and the responses were explored using structural equation modeling path analysis. The results revealed that emotional stability can promote pro-environmental behavior through the mediation effect of internal locus of control, indicating that emotional stability is a predisposing factor for locus of control-generated pro-environmental behavior. Thus, the study results indicated that people with higher emotional stability and a stronger internal locus of control are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Hence, to promote pro-environmental behavior through environmental protection education, people&rsquo, s self-control awareness must be strengthened to enable them to remain calm and peaceful.

A new coarse-time Global Positioning System (GPS) positioning algorithm based on the use of Doppler and code-phase measurements is proposed and described. The proposed method was demonstrated to be essential for reducing the time to first fix and the power consumption in a GPS receiver. Only 1 ms of data is required to obtain a positioning fix with accuracy comparable to that of the traditional GPS navigation algorithm. The algorithm is divided into two parts. In the first part, the Doppler measurement of the GPS signal is used to determine the coarse user position. With proper constraints, the required time accuracy for the Doppler measurements can be relaxed to be as long as 12 h. In the second part of the algorithm, the accurate user position is calculated by means of the 1 ms code-phase data. The traditional tracking process is no longer necessary in the proposed algorithm. Using the acquired 1-ms code-phase measurement, the positioning accuracy was determined to be approximately a few tens of meters in our experimental results. However, if the data length is extended to 10 ms, the positioning accuracy can be improved to within 10---20 m, which is similar to that of the traditional GPS positioning method. Various experiments were conducted to verify the usefulness of the proposed algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a novel method to generate pseudo-random-noise (PRN) bits for navigation applications. In the present method, the code sequence generator is constructed based on two chaotic logistic maps running parallel and starting from independent initial conditions. The logistic map is a simple mathematical model that shows bewildering complex behavior. By appro-priately setting the initial conditions, the PRN sequence is then generated by comparing the outputs of both logistic maps. Several simulations are set up to verify the correlation properties of the pseudo-random bit generator (PRBG). The result shows that the code sequences generated by the proposed PRBG have great auto- and cross-correlation properties, which are very similar to the PRN sequences used by GPS navigation system. The RPBG sequences are therefore suitable for signal ranging that is used comprehensively in the navigation system. On the other hand, the chaotic nature of the proposed PRBG codes can provide more secure communication than the traditional PRN sequences. The proposed PRN sequences are well suitable to be incorporated with the so-called chaotic shift keying (CSK) modulation.

Survivin is an inhibitor of apoptosis protein and also plays a important role in the development of several malignancies. To investigate the association between survivin promoter –31 G/C (rs9904341) polymorphism and bladder cancer (BC) risk. A total of 200 pathologically confirmed BC cases and 200 unrelated cancer-free controls were recruited in Chiayi Christian Hospital from August 2002 to May 2009. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method was used to determine the –31 G/C polymorphism at survivin promoter region. There was a significant difference in the frequency distribution of survivin promoter –31 G/C polymorphism in BC cases as compared to controls. Among BC cases, individuals with the C/C genotype of survivin promoter have a significantly higher prevalence of invasive (T2-T4) or high-grade (G2-G3) tumors as compared to those who carried the G/G genotype. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the survivin promoter –31 G/C polymorphism was not only associated with clinical stage and pathological grade but also involved in the development of bladder cancer.

In this paper, we are going to introduce an analyzing procedure which could automatically handle the acquired Pseudo-random noises with serious Gaussian interferences, turning them into useful information such as position, trace, etc. The procedure we developed involves some of the high-order statistics, statistical signal process, machine learning algorithm, and clustering method. Combination of all of these lead to a useful automatic bee tracing system.

We earlier proposed a novel on-line denoising structure which utilized the adaptive filter to improve the wavelet shrinkage and did acquire some positive results. In this paper, we will have a further discussion based on this structure. Topics include parameter adjustments, LMS non-causal cases, the decision of both DWT level and mother wavelet, and RLS algorithm. Based on these discussions, we will be able to fine tune our denoising structure and come up with better results.

This paper aims to study the heart rate monitoring using Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor. No additional hardware such as accelerometers has been used in our algorithm. The heart rate has a fundamental and harmonic structure. The cepstrum-based is useful for detecting harmonics. This paper proposes a signal approach based on the cepstrum analysis to enhance the periodic spectral components. The algorithm could effectively improve the quality of the PPG signals. The cepstrum-based method is helpful for distinguishing motion artifacts from PPG signal. The effectiveness of the fundamental and harmonic frequency enhancement in real time is experimentally demonstrated. The experiment results show that the heart rate estimation error can be reduced significantly.

A peak load multi-phase switching scheme for paralleling different rated power systems operated in isolated flyback converters is presented. The small signal model and limitation are also derived. It can operate without current sharing compensator and it does not need to consider the tolerance of components in current feedback loop of each subsystem. Furthermore, different rated output power subsystems can be paralleled and composed of a large power system by this scheme.

In this thesis, we use dual quaternion to replace rotation matrix R and translation vector which expressed object's transformation in usual. The best benefit of dual-quaternion is that it is able to handle rotation and translation simultaneously and apply continuous product of dual quaternion operating with a kind of special vector–dual vector to express a serious of rotation and translation. We find that dual quaternion has special relationship in 3-D transformation and 2-D image plane, and use this relationship to estimate object's transformation from 2-D observing image. Because of the benefit of dual quaternion–easily to handle and express a serious of transformation, we make above estimation more practically and reality using dual-quaternion. At last, we design a simulation to prove our method has better practicality and is more convenient to estimate 3-D transformation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the after-effects of an acute bout of moderate intensity aerobic cycling exercise on neuroelectric and behavioral indices of efficiency of three attentional networks: alerting, orienting, and executive (conflict) control. Thirty young, highly fit amateur basketball players performed a multifunctional attentional reaction time task, the attention network test (ANT), with a two-group randomized experimental design after an acute bout of moderate intensity spinning wheel exercise or without antecedent exercise. The ANT combined warning signals prior to targets, spatial cueing of potential target locations and target stimuli surrounded by congruent or incongruent flankers, which were provided to assess three attentional networks. Event-related brain potentials and task performance were measured during the ANT. Exercise resulted in a larger P3 amplitude in the alerting and executive control subtasks across frontal, central and parietal midline sites that was paralleled by an enhanced reaction speed only on trials with incongruent flankers of the executive control network. The P3 latency and response accuracy were not affected by exercise. These findings suggest that after spinning, more resources are allocated to task-relevant stimuli in tasks that rely on the alerting and executive control networks. However, the improvement in performance was observed in only the executively challenging conflict condition, suggesting that whether the brain resources that are rendered available immediately after acute exercise translate into better attention performance depends on the cognitive task complexity.

In GPS positioning, the user position is derived by the pseudo-range measurements and the user-satellite geometric matrix. When the satellite constellation changed, either gaining or losing satellites, it may cause the user position biases. The instantaneous biases in position solution are not desirable in some applications. An algorithm called position bias filter has been proposed to solve the problem. Also, a modified algorithm is designed to reduce the computation burden of original algorithm by a recursive method. In this paper, we propose a closed-form algorithm for eliminating the user position biases. The algorithm remains the low computation in a few satellites change (less than four) of satellite constellation without recursive calculation.

Background NAD(P)H:quinine oxidoreductase ( NQO1 ) plays an important role in the metabolism of several carcinogens contained in cigarettes. Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) expression had been detected in urinary bladder tumors. The aim of this study was to investigate the interaction of iNOS and NQO1 on bladder cancer (BC) risk stratified by cigarette smoking status. Methods A total of 159 BC patients and 150 cancer-free controls were recruited from December 2003 to November 2004. Genotyping of NQO1 rs1800566 polymorphism and iNOS (CCTTT)n pentanucleotide repeat polymorphism was determined using the polymerase chain reaction-restricted fragment length polymorphism and sequencing method. The odds ratio and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated as a measure of the joint effect of NQO1 rs1800566 and iNOS (CCTTT)n polymorphisms on BC risk among cigarette smokers. Results Compared with study participants carrying the C/C genotype of NQO1 gene, those with C/T and T/T genotypes had a significantly increased BC risk of 1.8 (95% CI = 1.1–2.9). Among cigarette smokers, those who carried the 12-repeat allele of iNOS (CCTTT)n polymorphism had a significantly increased BC risk of 2.7 (95% CI = 1.0–6.7). Furthermore, a significant combined effect of the C/T and T/T genotypes of NQO1 gene and the 12-repeat allele of iNOS (CCTTT)n repeat polymorphism on BC was found among cigarette smokers (odds ratio = 4.4, 95% CI = 1.3–14.9). Conclusion Our findings suggest that a significant combined effect of NQO1 C/T and T/T genotypes and the 12-repeat allele of iNOS (CCTTT)n polymorphism on BC exists, especially in those with the habit of cigarette smoking.

We determined the relationship between physical self-perception and sport participation in a cohort with good sport skill. 365 participants, including 191 subjects with＞4 years training experiences on various types of sport and 174 subjects without sport training experience, completed Social Physique Anxiety (SPA) Scale and Self-Efficacy for Physical Activity Scale. Sport participation outside office hour, indicated by the product of perceived intensity, duration, and frequency, was self-reported by all subjects. Both self-efficacy levels in participating sport activity and SPA levels were negatively correlated with sport participation for the subjects without sport training experience after controlled for gender. However, this relationship vanished when the subjects confined to the subjects with sport training experience. The novel finding of the study is that linear relationship between SPA and sport participation diminished in cohort with good sport skill, suggesting a value of sport skill acquisition for counterbalancing SPA.

In this thesis, we use dual quaternion to solve relative orientation, which replaces the traditional way of coplanarity condition and least square solution. Through proposing Linearized Iteration Method, we use only one camera to deal with this problem. Through use of dual quaternion, we find the relative orientation by comparing the projection of lines respect to 2-D Camera systems.

An 89-year-old male presented with dysuria and oliguria. He had a history of benign prostate hyperplasia and neurogenic bladder under long-term Foley catheter use of 10 years. Recurrent urinary tract infections had occurred since then. The laboratory data showed acute renal failure with a blood urea nitrogen (BUN) of 57 mg/dL, creatinine 3.61 mg/dL (baseline renal function 6 months before admission, BUN 22 mg/dL, creatinine 0.89 mg/dL). Abdominal computed tomography revealed a 7 × 4.8 cm giant vesicle stone occupying almost the entire urinary bladder with bilateral hydronephrosis (Figure 1). Open vesicolithotomy was performed. The extirpated stone was composed of ammonium magnesium phosphate. The hydronephrosis was quickly relieved, and the patient's renal function returned to normal range 3 days after surgery. Fig. 1 (A) The abdominal computed tomography revealed a 7 × 4.8 cm giant vesicle stone occupying almost the entire urinary bladder with bilateral hydronephrosis (arrow). (B) The CT scan in the bone window revealed stratified lamellar structure. Urinary bladder stones account for about 5% of urinary calculi [1], but a giant vesical calculus is rare in the recent urological practice. It is usually seen in males but seldom in females due to the lower incidence of obstructive uropathy [2]. Urinary bladder stones are usually composed of calcium oxalate or magnesium ammonium phosphate [1]. The break section of the stone in the presenting case revealed a central core and irregularly progressively increased stratified lamellar structure (Figure 2). This structure might prove the theory of stone formation, which describes the initial nidus from infected material, foreign body or calculus passed from the upper urinary tract [1,3] and facilitated by recurrent urinary infection. Moreover, urinary tract infection promotes the condensation and formation of stones, and the growing stone predisposes to urinary tract infection, which might become a vicious cycle. Fig. 2 The break section of the stone revealed a central core and irregularly progressively increased stratified lamellar structure. The risk factors for urinary stone formation include urinary stasis (benign prostate hyperplasia, urethral stricture, bladder neck contracture, neurogenic bladder), urinary tract infection and foreign bodies [1–3]. The symptoms consist of dysuria, haematuria, and even urinary outlet obstruction which leads to urinary retention, hydronephrosis and oliguria [1–3]. The techniques for removal of huge bladder stones include cystolitholapaxy, percutaneous cystolitholapaxy and open suprapubic vesicolithotomy. Relieving urinary stasis and eliminating infection are vital for the prevention of stone formation. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.