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This study focuses on "digital learning sheets" by exploring the effects of different design strategies of the digital learning sheet on visitors' motivation and learning outcomes. This study chose the woodcraft themed exhibition as a case study, adopting the learning sheet design principles proposed by Hooper-Greenhill in order to design three types of digital learning sheets for this exhibition. A control group of students who did not use the sheets and three experimental groups of students who used the sheets were invited to visit the exhibition for the purpose of examining the impact of different strategies of digital learning sheet design on the "learning motivation" and "learning outcomes" of the visitors. The study results show that among the four learning motivations of Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction, the digital learning sheet designed with the "principle of sensory exploration of physical objects" had the highest effectiveness among the various design strategies. In terms of three aspects of learning outcomes: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor, the three types of digital learning design strategies do not produce significant differences in the affective impact on children. As for Cognitive and Psychomotor, students learn best when they use digital learning sheets designed with the "design principle of sensory and exploration of physical objects". The results of this study will provide future exhibition planners, digital learning designers, and educators with precise and practical references.

Abstract Three novel asymmetric Ir(III) complexes have been rationally designed to optimize their emitting dipole orientations (EDO) and enhance light outcoupling in blue phosphorescent organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs), thereby boosting their external quantum efficiency (EQE). Bulky electron‐donating groups (EDGs), namely: carbazole (Cz), di‐tert‐butyl carbazole (tBuCz), and phenoxazine (Pxz) are incorporated into the tridentate dicarbene pincer chelate to induce high degree of packing anisotropy, simultaneously enhancing their photophysical properties. Angle‐dependent photoluminescence (ADPL) measurements indicate increased horizontal transition dipole ratios of 0.89 and 0.90 for the Ir(III) complexes Cz‐dfppy‐CN and tBuCz‐dfppy‐CN, respectively. Analysis of the single crystal structure and density functional theory (DFT) calculation results revealed an inherent correlation between molecular aspect ratio and EDO. Utilizing the newly obtained emitters, the blue OLED devices demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving a maximum EQE of 30.7% at a Commission International de l'Eclairage (CIE) coordinate of (0.140, 0.148). Optical transfer matrix‐based simulations confirmed a maximum outcoupling efficiency of 35% due to improved EDO. Finally, the tandem OLED and hyper‐OLED devices exhibited a maximum EQE of 44.2% and 31.6%, respectively, together with good device stability. This rational molecular design provides straightforward guidelines to reach highly efficient and stable saturated blue emission.

Abstract Background Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of interconnected risk factors that significantly increase the likelihood of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Taurine has emerged as a potential therapeutic agent for MetS. This meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) aimed to evaluate the effects of taurine supplementation on MetS-related parameters. Methods We conducted electronic searches through databases like Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane CENTRAL, and ClinicalTrials.gov, encompassing publications up to December 1, 2023. Our analysis focused on established MetS diagnostic criteria, including systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglyceride (TG), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). Meta-regression explored potential dose-dependent relationships based on the total taurine dose administered during the treatment period. We also assessed secondary outcomes like body composition, lipid profile, and glycemic control. Results Our analysis included 1024 participants from 25 RCTs. The daily dosage of taurine in the studies ranged from 0.5 g/day to 6 g/day, with follow-up periods varying between 5 and 365 days. Compared to control groups, taurine supplementation demonstrated statistically significant reductions in SBP (weighted mean difference [WMD] = −3.999 mmHg, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −7.293 to −0.706, p = 0.017), DBP (WMD = −1.509 mmHg, 95% CI = −2.479 to −0.539, p = 0.002), FBG (WMD: −5.882 mg/dL, 95% CI: −10.747 to −1.018, p = 0.018), TG (WMD: −18.315 mg/dL, 95% CI: −25.628 to −11.002, p

Abstract Using a transfer printing technique, we imprint a layer of a designated near-infrared fluorescent dye BTP-eC9 onto a thin layer of Pt(II) complex, both of which are capable of self-assembly. Before integration, the Pt(II) complex layer gives intense deep-red phosphorescence maximized at ~740 nm, while the BTP-eC9 layer shows fluorescence at > 900 nm. Organic light emitting diodes fabricated under the imprinted bilayer architecture harvest most of Pt(II) complex phosphorescence, which undergoes triplet-to-singlet energy transfer to the BTP-eC9 dye, resulting in high-intensity hyperfluorescence at > 900 nm. As a result, devices achieve 925 nm emission with external quantum efficiencies of 2.24% (1.94 ± 0.18%) and maximum radiance of 39.97 W sr−1 m−2. Comprehensive morphology, spectroscopy and device analyses support the mechanism of interfacial energy transfer, which also is proved successful for BTPV-eC9 dye (1022 nm), making bright and far-reaching the prospective of hyperfluorescent OLEDs in the near-infrared region.

Abstract Viral infections remain a major risk in immunocompromised pediatric patients, and virus-specific T cell (VST) therapy has been successful for treatment of refractory viral infections in prior studies. We performed a phase II multicenter study (NCT03475212) for the treatment of pediatric patients with inborn errors of immunity and/or post allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant with refractory viral infections using partially-HLA matched VSTs targeting cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, or adenovirus. Primary endpoints were feasibility, safety, and clinical responses (>1 log reduction in viremia at 28 days). Secondary endpoints were reconstitution of antiviral immunity and persistence of the infused VSTs. Suitable VST products were identified for 75 of 77 clinical queries. Clinical responses were achieved in 29 of 47 (62%) of patients post-HSCT including 73% of patients evaluable at 1-month post-infusion, meeting the primary efficacy endpoint (>52%). Secondary graft rejection occurred in one child following VST infusion as described in a companion article. Corticosteroids, graft-versus-host disease, transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy, and eculizumab treatment correlated with poor response, while uptrending absolute lymphocyte and CD8 T cell counts correlated with good response. This study highlights key clinical factors that impact response to VSTs and demonstrates the feasibility and efficacy of this therapy in pediatric HSCT.

In Taiwan, preservation and training policies of intangible cultural assets are highly valued by the government. In this study, lacquerware art craft education as intangible cultural heritage is the subject of this study. We conducted in-depth interviews and secondary data collection to obtain research data and carried out a grounded theory data analysis method through expert meetings to explore the passing on education strategy of "lacquerware art craft" in Taiwan. Firstly, based on Bloom's educational objectives, the study analyzed three aspects of lacquer art education: cognitive, affection and skill, and proposed a "Lacquerware Art Passing-On Education Framework Diagram". Later, the analysis results of the grounded theory enable us to summarize the "Lacquerware art value and learning structure diagram". In this structure, it reveals that the Lacquerware artist's way of thinking about the craft levels can echo the system of the Three Extremes of the Tao in the Book of Changes and divide the value levels of creation into the levels of tools of livelihood, way of living and philosophy of life.

Abstract Ir(III) carbene complexes have been explored as one of the best blue phosphors for their high performance. Herein, the authors designed and synthesized a series of blue‐emitting Ir(III) phosphors (f‐ct9a–c), featuring fac‐coordinated cyano‐imidazo[4,5‐b]pyridin‐2‐ylidene cyclometalates. These Ir(III) complexes exhibit true‐blue emission with a peak maximum spanning 448–467 nm, with high photoluminescence quantum yields of 81–88% recorded in degassed toluene. Moreover, OLED devices bearing phosphors f‐ct9a and f‐ct9b deliver maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEmax) of 25.9% and 30.3%, together with Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIEx,y) coordinates of (0.157, 0.225) and (0.142, 0.169), respectively. Remarkably, the f‐ct9b‐based device displays an incredible EQE of 29.0% at 5000 cd·m−2. The hyper‐OLED device based on f‐ct9b and ν‐DABNA exhibits an EQEmax of 34.7% and CIEx,y coordinates of (0.122, 0.131), affirming high potentials in achieving efficient blue electroluminescence.

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been widely acknowledged as a core element of today's foreign language education. However, even though the importance of intercultural language teaching is commonly recognized among adult learners and at the post-secondary level, teachers of adolescent English learners often find it hard to effectively incorporate culture into English learning because of the lack of an instructional model facilitating their students' intercultural development and English learning experiences. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether integrating intercultural learning into an online EFL curriculum can elevate teenage EFL students' L2 motivation, intercultural communicative competence, and English proficiency. The researchers used a quasi-experimental design by randomly selecting two eighth-grade classes in a secondary school in northern Thailand, with one class designated as the experimental group (N = 31) and the other as the control group (N = 28). The effects of this teaching experiment were then examined using both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings demonstrated that the students in the experimental group showed a greater improvement compared with those of the students in the control group after an 8-week, interculturally embedded English curriculum. The results suggested that ICC is conducive to adolescent EFL students' intercultural development as well as their English learning motivation and outcome. The applications of ICC-based EFL instruction in similar contexts are discussed.

Abstract Background Thoracotomy is considered the standard surgical approach for the management of pulmonary metastases in osteosarcoma (OST). Several studies have identified the advantages of a thoracoscopic approach, however, the clinical significance of thoracotomy compared to thoracoscopy is yet to be evaluated in a randomized trial. Aims The primary aim was to determine the survival outcomes in OST patients based on surgical approach for pulmonary metastasectomy (PM) and secondary aim was to assess the post‐operative morbidities of OST PM through various surgical approaches. Materials and Methods We conducted a single institution retrospective study to compare survival outcomes and surgical morbidity according to the surgical approach of the management of pulmonary metastases in patients with OST. Results Sixty‐one patients with OST underwent PM. Twenty‐one patients were metastatic at diagnosis and underwent PM during primary treatment; nine had thoracotomy, six thoracoscopy, and six combined thoracoscopy with thoracotomy (CTT). Forty‐three patients with first pulmonary relapse or progression underwent PM; 18 had thoracotomy, 16 thoracoscopy and nine CTT. There was no difference in survival between surgical approaches. There were significantly more postoperative morbidities associated with thoracotomy for initial PM (pain and postoperative chest tube placement), and for PM at first relapse (pneumothoraces, pain, Foley catheter use and prolonged hospitalizations). Conclusion Our study demonstrates that patients with OST pulmonary metastases have comparable poor outcomes despite varying surgical approaches for PM. There were significantly more postoperative morbidities associated with thoracotomy for PM. Surgical bias and other competing risks could not be assessed given the limitations of a retrospective study and may be addressed in a prospective trial evaluating surgical approach for PM in OST.

Abstract Efficient Förster energy transfer from a phosphorescent sensitizer to a thermally activated delayed fluorescent terminal emitter constitutes a potential solution for achieving superb blue emissive organic light-emitting diodes, which are urgently needed for high-performance displays. Herein, we report the design of four Ir(III) metal complexes, f-ct1a ‒ d, that exhibit efficient true-blue emissions and fast radiative decay lifetimes. More importantly, they also undergo facile isomerization in the presence of catalysts (sodium acetate and p-toluenesulfonic acid) at elevated temperature and, hence, allow for the mass production of either emitter without decomposition. In this work, the resulting hyper-OLED exhibits a true-blue color (Commission Internationale de I’Eclairage coordinate CIEy = 0.11), a full width at half maximum of 18 nm, a maximum external quantum efficiency of 35.5% and a high external quantum efficiency 20.3% at 5000 cd m‒2, paving the way for innovative blue OLED technology.

Ciliates are an important ecological component in the microbial food web, but few studies have been conducted on the spatial distribution of small-sized planktonic ciliate communities in the East China Sea (ECS). Investigating ciliate communities using conventional morphological approaches is particularly difficult for the small, fragile, and naked species. Therefore, we applied DNA metabarcoding analysis to explore the spatial pattern of small-sized planktonic ciliate community structure within the surface, deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM), and bottom layers. Results showed the cosmopolitan species, Leegaardiella sp., was dominant and widespread in the ECS. The relative abundance of the mixotrophic family Tontonnidae decreased in the deeper layer. We characterized water masses of the ECS using environmental variables. In nano-sized ciliate communities, non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plots revealed a correlation with temperature, salinity, density, and depth. The circulation patterns were similar to cluster analysis results, suggesting that hydrographic conditions shaped small-sized ciliate community composition.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a multifactorial disease influenced by genetic, environmental, and immunological factors. Genetic polymorphisms in the interleukin-10 (IL-10) gene have been implicated in PCa susceptibility, development, and progression. This study aims to assess the contributions of three IL-10 promoter single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), A-1082G (rs1800896), T-819C (rs3021097), and A-592C (rs1800872), to the risk of PCa in Taiwan. The three IL-10 genotypes were determined using PCR-RFLP methodology and were evaluated for their contributions to PCa risk among 218 PCa patients and 436 non-PCa controls. None of the three IL-10 SNPs were significantly associated with the risks of PCa (p all > 0.05) in the overall analyses. However, the GG at rs1800896 combined with smoking behavior was found to significantly increase the risk of PCa by 3.90-fold (95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 1.28–11.89, p = 0.0231). In addition, the rs1800896 AG and GGs were found to be correlated with the late stages of PCa (odds ratio [OR] = 1.90 and 6.42, 95% CI = 1.05–3.45 and 2.30–17.89, p = 0.0452 and 0.0003, respectively). The IL-10 promoter SNP, A-1082G (rs1800896), might be a risk factor for PCa development among smokers and those at late stages of the disease. These findings should be validated in larger and more diverse populations.

Abstract Background Patients with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS) have inferior outcomes compared to patients with embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS) and more effective chemotherapy options are needed for these patients. Vinorelbine is a semisynthetic vinca alkaloid that has clinical activity in relapsed rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) when used alone or in combination with cyclophosphamide. Aims The goal of our study was to evaluate whether RMS histology subtype influences response rate to vinorelbine alone or in combination. Materials & Methods Five Phase 2 trials that enrolled RMS patients were included in the meta‐analysis. Two studies evaluated vinorelbine alone, two studies evaluated vinorelbine in combination with low dose oral cyclophosphamide, and one study evaluated vinorelbine and intravenous cyclophosphamide in combination with temsirolimus or bevacizumab. All RMS patients had relapsed or refractory disease and had received at least one prior therapy. Response was reported according to RECIST1.1 and was defined as a complete or partial response. Response data was obtained from published results or from trial principal investigator. RMS NOS patients were grouped with ERMS patients for this analysis. Summary estimates comparing differences between ARMS and ERMS response rates were generated using a random‐effects model to account for heterogeneity among the studies. Results One hundred fifty‐six enrolled patients evaluable for response were included in the meta‐analysis, 85 ARMS, 64 ERMS and 7 RMS‐NOS. The combined effect generated from the random‐effects model demonstrated a 41% increase (p = 0.001, 95% CI; 0.21–0.60) in response to vinorelbine as a single agent or in combination in patients with ARMS compared to patients with ERMS. There was no significant difference in the rate of progressive disease between patients with ARMS compared to ERMS (p = 0.1, 95%CI; −0.26–0.02). Discussion Vinorelbine is an active agent for the treatment of relapsed or refractory RMS and a meta‐analysis of Phase 2 studies shows that radiographic responses in patients with ARMS were significantly higher than ERMS or RMS‐NOS. Conclusion These data support further investigation of vinorelbine in newly diagnosed patients with RMS particularly those with alveolar histology.

Aiming at the problems in current face image synthesis,such as the lack of diversity of synthetic appearances and expressions,the low reality of the facial expressions and the low synthesis efficiency,this paper proposes a novel face synthesis network model driven by facial geometric feature and attribute label.Given a source face image,a target face image and the attribute(e.g.,hair color,gender,age) label,the new face synthesis model can generate a highly realistic face image which owns the expression of the source face,the identity of the target face and the specified attribute.The new model consists of two parts:facial landmark generator(FLMG) and geometry and attribute aware generator(GAAG).FLMG uses the facial geometric feature points to encode the expression information,and transfers the expression from the source to the target face in the form of feature points.Combining the transferred feature points,the specified attribute label and the target face image,GAAG generates a face image with specified appearance and expression.A novel soft margin triplet perception loss is introduced to GAAG,which can make the synthesized face more natural and keep the identity of the target face well,and makes the GAAG converge faster.Experimental results show that the face images generated by our approach have more diverse appearances and more realistic expressions.In addition,our model only needs to be trained once to realize the transfer between any arbitrary different expressions,so its efficiency is high.

Abstract Asthma is a chronic airway inflammation disease and the diagnosis and treatment strategies remain difficult. MicroRNAs play important roles in many biological and pathological processes including asthma development. There is no study confirming the contribution of genetic variants in miR-145 to asthma etiology. We hypothesize that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the promoter region of miR-145 may be associated with the risk of asthma in Taiwanese. We used a case–control study to test this hypothesis. In 198 asthma patients and 453 healthy controls, the genotypes of miR-145 rs4705342 and rs4705343 were determined, and the associations of miR-145 genotypes with asthma risk and severity were evaluated. The distribution of miR-145 rs4705342 genotypes between asthma patients and non-asthmatic control groups were significantly different (p = 0.0187). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, compared with the wild-type TT genotype, individuals carrying the variant genotypes had progressively decreased risks of asthma: the odds ratio (OR) for the heterogeneous variant genotype (CT) and homozygous variant genotype (CC) was 0.77 (95% CI 0.55–1.10, p = 0.1788) and 0.41 (95% CI 0.21–0.79, p = 0.0102), respectively (p for trend = 0.0187). In allelic test, the C allele was associated with a 31% reduced risk of asthma (OR = 0.69, 95% CI 0.53–0.90, p = 0.0070). In addition, the rs4705342 variant genotypes were correlated with the symptom severity (p = 3 × 10–5). Furthermore, the variant genotypes correlated with lower miR-145-5p expression level in serum (p = 0.0001). As for rs4705343, there was no differential distribution of genotypes between cases and controls. Our data provide evidence for miR-145 rs4705342 to serve as a novel biomarker for asthma risk prediction.

Circadian modulators that exert amplitude-enhancing activity using highthroughput compound screening of small molecules identifies ISX-9, which is shown to augment CaMKIIδ expression, increasing BMAL1 activity via CaMKIIδ-dependent phosphorylation.