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This dissertation examines the Taiwanese Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) paradigm and a central facet of the current government project to ensure the long-term survival of traditional performing arts: the Important Traditional Performing Art Transmission Plan (Transmission Plan). It aims to answer the following questions: (1) How does Taiwan, despite its international isolation and lack of official cross-border networks, construct a heritage governance system to sustain traditional preforming arts? (2) How do different actors participate in and negotiate with each other in the Taiwanese ICH paradigm? (3) How do traditional performance groups from different ethno-linguistic communities, transmitting a wide variety of professional and amateur genres, mediate and negotiate issues of tradition, authenticity, belief, creativity, value, and sustainability in their transmission practices? (4) How do traditional performance artists/groups respond to the nation’s strategies of employing heritage as a resource for nation-building, cultural diplomacy and exchange? (5) How can the rather unusual case-study of Taiwan help us test assumptions developed from the experiences of nations linked into the dominant UNESCO-driven paradigm of heritage conservation, and assist us in refining contemporary thought and practice in the field of cultural sustainability? By illustrating the bureaucratization of traditional performing arts from case studies of the Indigenous groups, Han Chinese amateur music clubs, and Han Chinese professional theatrical troupes, this dissertation proposes five premises on which Taiwan’s current ICH policy and practice are based, and that together differentiate it from analogous policy and practice in other nations. First, it involves scholars to an unusual extent. Second, the self-conscious pursuit of “authenticity” is less emphasized than in many other countries. Third, Taiwan’s items of ICH are often a hybrid mixture of forms representing multicultural inte

Although paternal age has been linked to certain psychiatric disorders, the nature of any causal relationship remains elusive. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess the magnitude of a wide range of offsprings psychiatric risk conferred by paternal age, leveraging a pedigree inferred from covered-insurance relationship (accuracy >98%) in Taiwans single-payer compulsory insurance program. We also examined whether there is an independent role of paternal age and explored the potential effect of parental age difference. A total cohort of 7,264,788 individuals born between 1980 and 2018 were included; 5,572,232 with sibling(s) were selected for sibling-comparison analyses and 1,368,942 and 1,044,420 children with information of paternal-grandparents and maternal-grandparents, respectively, were selected for multi-generation analyses. Using inpatient/outpatient claims data (1997-2018), we identified schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder (BPD), attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder (MDD), eating disorder (ED), substance use disorder (SUD), mental retardation (MR), tic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, and somatoform disorder. We identified suicides using death certificates. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the paternal/maternal/grand-paternal age association with psychiatric risk in the offspring. The total cohort and sibling-comparison cohort resulted in similar estimates. Paternal age had a U-shaped relationship with offsprings MDD, ED, SUD, and anxiety. A very young maternal age (<20 years) was associated with markedly higher risk in offsprings SUD, MR, and suicide. Older paternal age (>25 years) was linearly associated with offsprings schizophrenia, autism, BPD, ADHD, MDD, ED, SUD, MR, OCD, anxiety, and suicide. Older grand-paternal age was linearly associated with offsprings schizophrenia, autism, ADHD, and MR. Dissimilar parental age was positively associated with offsprings ADH

Mu-Chun Yang,1,2 Yao-Kuang Wu,2,3 Chou-Chin Lan,2,3 Mei-Chen Yang,2,3 Sheg-Kang Chiu,2,4 Ming-Yieh Peng,4 Wen-Lin Su2,3 1Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan, Republic of China; 2School of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan, Republic of China; 3Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China; 4Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Wen-Lin Su, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, 289 Jianguo Road, Xindian District, New Taipei City, 23142, Taiwan, Republic of China, Tel +886-2-66289779, Fax +886-2-66289009, Email williamsu2007@gmail.comPurpose: Patients with septicemia caused by vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) bacteremia have higher mortality rates than patients infected by VSE. Vancomycin or teicoplanin is selected as the antibiotic stewardship intervention to cover methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections before blood culture reveals VRE bacteremia in critically ill patients with Gram-positive cocci (GPC) bacteremia; this may require linezolid or daptomycin treatment instead. We thus evaluated antibiotic stewardship practices, such as appropriate timing of antibiotic use in GPC bacteremia, and clinical outcomes of critically ill patients with VRE infection.Patients and Methods: This retrospective study enrolled 191 critically ill patients with enterococcal bacteremia at the Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital during January 1, 2019–December 31, 2020. Demographic and clinical characteristics, as well as disease outcomes and appropriate antibiotic use after GPC bacteremia diagnosis, were

Cheng-Hao Huang,1,2 Mei-Chen Lin,3,4 I-Ching Chou,5,6 Ching-Liang Hsieh2,7,8 1Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, College of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung City, 40402, Taiwan; 2Department of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung City, 40447, Taiwan; 3Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, 40447, Taiwan; 4College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, 40402, Taiwan; 5School of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung City, 40402, Taiwan; 6Division of Pediatric Neurology, China Medical University Children’s Hospital, Taichung City, 40447, Taiwan; 7Chinese Medicine Research Center, China Medical University, Taichung City, 40402, Taiwan; 8Graduate Institute of Acupuncture Science, China Medical University, Taichung City, 40402, TaiwanCorrespondence: Ching-Liang Hsieh, Graduate Institute of Acupuncture Science, China Medical University, 91 Hsueh-Shih Road, Taichung, 40402, Taiwan, Tel +886-4-22053366 ext. 3128, Fax +886-4-22037690, Email clhsieh@mail.cmuh.org.twBackground: Migraine is a recurrent headache disease that has been identified as a risk factor for subsequent dementia. The present study collected data from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to investigate the incidence of dementia in patients with migraine who did or did not concurrently receive acupuncture treatment.Methods: A 1:1 propensity score method was used to match an equal number of patients (N = 4813) in the acupuncture and nonacupuncture cohorts based on sex, age, migraine diagnosis year, index year, insurance amount, urbanization level, baseline comorbidities, and medication usage. We employed Cox proportional hazards models to evaluate the risk of dementia.Results: Patients with migraine who received acupuncture treatment were found to have a lower risk of dementia (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.40– 0.65) than those who did not undergo

Ya-Ru Liang,1,2,&ast; Chou-Chin Lan,1,3,&ast; Wen-Lin Su,1,3 Mei-Chen Yang,1,3 Sin-Yi Chen,1 Yao-Kuang Wu1,3 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2Graduate Institute of Clinical Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, TaoYuan City, Taiwan; 3School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yao-Kuang Wu, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, No. 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian Dist, New Taipei City, Taiwan, Tel +886-2-66289779 ext 5709, Fax +886-2-66289009, Email drbfci@yahoo.com.twBackground: The decision guild for non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) application in acute respiratory failure (ARF) patients still needs to work out.Methods: Adult patients with acute hypoxemic or hypercapnic respiratory failure were recruited and treated with NPPV or primary invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Patients’ characteristic and clinical outcomes were recorded. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals for baseline characteristics and clinical outcomes. Subgroup analyses by reason behind successful NPPV were conducted to ascertain if any difference could influence the outcome.Results: A total of 4525 ARF patients were recruited in our facility between year 2015 and 2017. After exclusion, 844 IMV patients, 66 patients with failed NPPV, and 74 patients with successful NPPV were enrolled. Statistical analysis showed APACHE II score (aOR = 0.93), time between admission and start NPPV (aOR = 0.92), and P/F ratio (aOR = 1.04) were associated with successful NPPV. When comparing with IMV patients, failed NPPV patients displayed a significantly lower APACHE II score, higher Glasgow Coma Scale, longer

Yao-Kuang Wu,1,2 Wen-Lin Su,1,2 Mei-Chen Yang,1,2 Sin-Yi Chen,1 Chih-Wei Wu,1 Chou-Chin Lan1,2 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chou-Chin Lan, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, No. 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian Dist., New Taipei City, Taiwan, Tel +886-2-66289779 ext 5709, Fax +886-2-66289009, Email bluescopy@yahoo.com.twBackground: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a preventable and treatable disease with an increased mortality rate in recent years, mainly caused by exposure to tobacco smoke. Regular physical activity is thought to diminish the risk of COPD exacerbation, while very few studies investigate the interaction between smoking and physical activity on COPD development. This study aims to investigate the association between smoking status, physical activity and prevalent COPD.Methods: This study analyzed data of adults 20 to 79 years old from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007– 2012.Results: A total of 6404 participants aged 20– 79 were included and divided into four groups by their physical activity levels and smoking status. Amongst, 2819 (43.7%) were physically active non-smokers, 957 (14.8%) were physically inactive non-smokers, 1952 (30.3%) were physically active smokers, and 717 (11.1%) were physically inactive smokers. Prevalence of airflow obstruction were 5.7%, 7.1%, 17.7% and 18.6%, respectively. After adjustment, physically active smokers (aOR=2.71, 95% CI=1.94– 3.80) and physically inactive smokers (aOR=2.70, 95% CI=1.78– 4.09) but not physically active non-smokers were more likely to have airflow obstruction than physically active non-smokers. These associations were similar among most subgroups by age, sex, or BMI

Lun-Yu Jao,1,2 Po-Chun Hsieh,3 Yao-Kuang Wu,1,2 Mei-Chen Yang,1,2 Chih-Wei Wu,1,2 Chung Lee,1,2 I-Shiang Tzeng,4 Chou-Chin Lan1,2 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 3Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation; School of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 4Department of Research, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chou-Chin Lan, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian District, New Taipei City, Taiwan, 23142, Tel +886-2-6628-9779 ext. 2259, Fax +886-2-6628-9009, Email bluescopy@yahoo.com.twBackground: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often involves the cardiopulmonary dysfunction that deteriorates health-related quality of life (HRQL) and exercise capacity. Work efficiency (WE) indicates the efficiency of overall oxygen consumption (VO2) during exercise. This study investigated whether different WEs have different effects on pulmonary rehabilitation (PR).Methods: Forty-five patients with stable COPD were scheduled for PR. The PR programs consisted of twice-weekly sessions for three months. These patients were comprehensively evaluated by cardiopulmonary exercise testing and COPD assessment test (CAT) before and after PR. We compared these parameters between patients with a normal versus poor WE.Results: Twenty-one patients had a normal WE and twenty-four patients had a poor WE (< 8.6 mL/min/watt). Patients with a poor WE had earlier anaerobic metabolism, a poorer oxygen pulse, lower exercise capacity, more exertional dyspnea, and a poorer HRQL than those with a normal WE. PR improved exercise capacity, HRQL, anaerob

The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature was to analyze and evaluate the impact of prematurity and accelerated weight gain on the risk of childhood and adolescent obesity. CINAHL, Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science databases were searched until December 2019 which yielded 19 studies with a total of 169,439 children enrolled were systematically reviewed. The results revealed that preterm infants had a greater likelihood of childhood obesity (defined as BMI ≥95th percentile for age-sex), than term infants (OR = 1.19, 95% CI [1.13, 1.26]). However, no difference of childhood obesity was found between "small for gestational age"(SGA) and "appropriate for gestational age"(AGA) among preterms. Accelerated weight gain (defined as weight gain velocity during first two years after birth) significantly increased the likelihood of subsequent childhood obesity among preterms (aOR = 1.87, 95% CI [1.57, 2.231]). In conclusion, accelerated weight gain at infancy among preterm children may be a critical contributor to obesity in later life. Establishing optimal growth trajectories and timely referral to health care providers may be of clinical importance.

Yao-Kuang Wu,1,2 Wen-Lin Su,1,2 Mei-Chen Yang,1,2 Sin-Yi Chen,1 Chih-Wei Wu,1 Chou-Chin Lan1,2 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chou-Chin LanDivision of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, No. 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian District, New Taipei City, TaiwanTel +886-2-66289779 ext 5709Fax +886-2-66289009Email bluescopy@yahoo.com.twBackground: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory disease with exacerbations causing hospitalizations, morbidity, and mortality. COPD exacerbation causes a substantial health impact, and its subtypes might differ in prognosis and treatment response.Methods: This study evaluated the factors of COPD exacerbations and explored the probabilities of frequent severe COPD exacerbations. Categorical and continuous variables between groups were compared. The hazard ratio (HR) and the probability of no hospital readmission were also estimated.Results: A total of 617 COPD patients were enrolled and comprised the frequent exacerbator (N = 226) and the non-frequent exacerbator (N = 391) groups. The frequent exacerbator group significantly displayed a higher eosinophil count (EC; p=0.004), a higher percentage of the frequent severe acute exacerbation history before the index hospitalization (IH; p < 0.001), a lower FEV1 value (p=0.001), and a higher triple combination inhaler prior and following the IH (p < 0.001 and p=0.002) than the non-frequent exacerbator one. Increasing age (aOR of 1.02), higher EC (aOR of 1.09), and lower FEV1 value (aOR of 0.72) were significantly associated with an increased hospital readmission risk. The readmission rate and risk were higher in patients with a history of frequent severe acute exacerbation (aHR of 3.38) than thos

Shih-Hsing Yang,1 Mei-Chen Yang,2,3 Yao-Kuang Wu,2,3 Chih-Wei Wu,2,3 Po-Chun Hsieh,4 Chan-Yen Kuo,5 I-Shiang Tzeng,5 Chou-Chin Lan2,3 1Department of Respiratory Therapy, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 3School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 4Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation; School of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 5Department of Research, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chou-Chin LanDivision of Pulmonary Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian City, New Taipei City, 23142, TaiwanTel +886-2-6628-9779 Ext. 2259Fax +886-2-6628-9009Email bluescopy@yahoo.com.twIntroduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive disease with deteriorating cardiopulmonary function that decreases the health-related quality of life (HRQL) and exercise capacity. Patients with COPD often have cardiovascular and muscular problems that hinder oxygen uptake by peripheral tissues, resulting in poor oxygen consumption efficiency. It is important to develop new physiological parameters to evaluate oxygen consumption efficiency during activities and to evaluate its association with exercise capacity and HRQL. Work efficiency (WE) measures oxygen consumption efficiency during exercise. We hypothesize that patients with poor WE should have exercise intolerance and poor HRQL. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between WE and exercise capacity, HRQL and other cardiopulmonary parameters.Patients and Methods: Seventy-eight patients with COPD were evaluated with spirometry, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and assessment of dyspnea score and HRQL (using the St. George’s Respi

Im März 2019 veröffentlichte die Baumarkt-Kette Hornbach ein Werbevideo "So riecht das Frühjahr" auf der Online-Video-Plattform YouTube, welches nicht nur zu einer hitzigen Online-Debatte in der Kommentarspalte führte, sondern auch eine transnationale Empörungswelle in verschiedenen Medien auslöste. Anhand des brisanten Medienereignisses wurde der schmale Grat zwischen Humor und Invektivität insbesondere in Bezug auf den globalen Kontext im Rahmen eines interdisziplinär gestalteten Workshops thematisiert. Dabei stand die Diskussion über die methodische Vielfältigkeit, aber auch über Herausforderungen in der Analyse digitaler Kommunikationen im Vordergrund. In diesem Workshopbericht gebe ich einen Überblick über die gemeinsame Arbeit am Material und die Inhalte der Vorträge sowie von deren Diskussion. Das Programm beinhaltete Vorträge zur Invektivitätsheuristik in digitaler Kommunikationsforschung von Heike GRESCHKE, zur ethnomethodologischen Analyse visueller Daten von Ruth AYAß und zur medienlinguistischen Mehr-Ebenen-Kommentaranalyse von Jannis ANDROUTSOPOULOS. Ich zeige, dass aus dem multiperspektivischen Austausch von Methoden und Theorien viele Möglichkeiten zur Untersuchung invektiver Phänomene resultieren., In March 2019, the German DIY store chain Hornbach published on the online video hosting platform YouTube, an advertisement named "The Smell of Spring." The video led to a heated online debate and triggered a transnational wave of indignation in various media. Based on this explosive media event, the fine line between humor and invective particularly in relation to the global context, was addressed in an interdisciplinary workshop. The discussions focused on methodological diversity and the challenges in the analysis of digital communication. In this report I give an overview of the joint work and document the presentations and discussions. The program included lectures on invectivity heuristics in digital communication research by Heike GRESCHKE, ethnomethodological analysis of visual data by Ruth AYAß, and media-linguistic multi-level analysis of commentary by Jannis ANDROUTSOPOULOS. In addition to the summary of the lecture series, I also outline how the multi-perspective exchange of methods and theories reveals and brings together a multitude of possibilities for investigating invective phenomena.

We present a new embedding-based framework for zero-shot learning (ZSL). Most embedding-based methods aim to learn the correspondence between an image classifier (visual representation) and its class prototype (semantic representation) for each class. Motivated by the binary relevance method for multi-label classification, we propose to inversely learn the mapping between an image and a semantic classifier. Given an input image, the proposed Image-Guided Semantic Classification (IGSC) method creates a label classifier, being applied to all label embeddings to determine whether a label belongs to the input image. Therefore, semantic classifiers are image-adaptive and are generated during inference. IGSC is conceptually simple and can be realized by a slight enhancement of an existing deep architecture for classification; yet it is effective and outperforms state-of-the-art embedding-based generalized ZSL approaches on standard benchmarks.

Jeremy D Kidd, 1, 2 Jennifer L Smith, 1 Mei-Chen Hu, 1 Eva M Turrigiano, 2 Adam Bisaga, 1, 2 Edward V Nunes, 1, 2 Frances R Levin 1, 2 1Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA; 2Division on Substance Use Disorders, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USACorrespondence: Jeremy D Kidd Email Jeremy.Kidd@nyspi.columbia.eduPurpose: Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) is an evidence-based framework for assessing and addressing risky substance use. This study evaluated the substance-related attitudes of medical students who participated in an Enhanced Pre-Clinical SBIRT Curriculum designed to reduce stigma, help students empathize with the experiences of people using alcohol and drugs, understand substance use in-context, and feel more optimistic about efforts to prevent and treat substance use disorders (SUDs).Methods: Students (N=118; 73.8% of eligible) completed the Attitudes and Opinions Survey for alcohol and drugs before and after this 2-year, multi-modality curriculum. The authors classified attitudes as “positive” or “negative” and grouped students by pre-post attitudinal change: persistently negative, persistently positive, negative-to-positive, positive-to-negative. Using chi-square tests, the authors assessed differences by sex, race/ethnicity, and whether students had a family member or friend with an SUD.Results: Most students (> 90%) reported persistently positive attitudes regarding physicians in recovery, societal contributions of patients with SUDs; ability to learn from such patients; and general attitudes toward SUD treatment. This skewed distribution precluded the investigation of subgroup differences. Fewer students reported persistently positive attitudes regarding SUD patients’ healthcare utilization (alcohol 58.5%; drug 57.8%) and impact on other patients’ care (alcohol 73.7%; drug 72.4%), compared to other attitud

Chih-Wei Wu,1,2 Po-Chun Hsieh,3,4 Mei-Chen Yang,1,2 I-Shiang Tzeng,5 Yao-Kuang Wu,1,2 Chou-Chin Lan1,2 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2Faculty of Medicine, School of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 3Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 4Department of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, School of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 5Department of Research, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chou-Chin Lan; Yao-Kuang WuDivision of Pulmonary Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, No. 289, Jianguo Road, Xindian District, New Taipei City 23142, TaiwanTel +886-2-6628-9779 ext. 2259Fax +886-2-6628-9009Email bluescopy@yahoo.com.tw; drbfci@yahoo.com.twIntroduction: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at an increased risk of cardiovascular comorbidities such as pulmonary hypertension or heart failure. Impaired cardiovascular function often has a significant impact on patients with COPD. Oxygen pulse (O2P) is a surrogate for stroke volume. However, studies regarding O2P, health-related quality of life (HRQL), and exercise capacity in patients with COPD are lacking. We aimed to confirm the association between O2P, HRQL, exercise capacity, severe exacerbation of COPD, and other parameters in exercise testing.Materials and methods: This study included 79 patients with COPD who underwent lung function testing, a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET), Borg Dyspnea Scale evaluation, completion of the St. George’s Respiratory Questionnaire, and echocardiography. Cardiovascular comorbidities, COPD-related hospitalizations, and emergency room visits were recorded. We compared these parameters between two groups of patients: those wit

This work addresses the task of multilabel image classification. Inspired by the great success from deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for single-label visual-semantic embedding, we exploit extending these models for multilabel images. Specifically, we propose an image-dependent ranking model, which returns a ranked list of labels according to its relevance to the input image. In contrast to conventional CNN models that learn an image representation (i.e. the image embedding vector), the developed model learns a mapping (i.e. a transformation matrix) from an image in an attempt to differentiate between its relevant and irrelevant labels. Despite the conceptual simplicity of our approach, experimental results on a public benchmark dataset demonstrate that the proposed model achieves state-of-the-art performance while using fewer training images than other multilabel classification methods.

Yi-Chih Huang,1,2 Mei-Chen Yang1,2 1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, 2The School of Medicine, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan Purpose: To investigate associations between occupational inhalation risks and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) levels in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).Patients and methods: Data of 16,486 subjects who had undergone spirometry with pre-bronchodilator and post-bronchodilator lung function assessment were retrieved from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007–2012 database. After excluding 2,638 subjects with missing spirometry values, data of 13,336 subjects were included for analysis. Factors associated with occupational inhalation, FeNO levels and COPD were analyzed using logistic regression analysis.Results: COPD was associated with occupational exposures to mineral dusts, organic dusts, exhaust fumes, other fumes, and second-hand smoking (P<0.05). Long-term exposure to these occupational hazards carried significantly higher risk for subjects with COPD than for controls (crude odds ratios [ORs]: mineral dusts: 2.364, organic dusts: 2.427, exhaust fumes: 2.728, other fumes: 2.144). In subgroup analysis, COPD correlated positively with long-term exposures to organic dusts and exhaust fumes in subjects with FeNO ≤50 ppb (ORs 1.361 and 1.314, respectively); conversely, COPD correlated negatively with intermediate to long-term exposures to organic dusts and exhaust fumes in those with FeNO >50 ppb (ORs 0.058 and 0.210, respectively).Conclusion: Occupational exposures to airborne pollutants carries higher risk of COPD than non-exposure and the risk is higher the longer the duration of exposure. Exposure–response relationships are inconsistent in subjects with suspected asthmatic airway inflammation (FeNO ≥50 ppb). More careful risk a

Salmonella and Vibrio species were isolated and identified from Litopenaeus vannamei cultured in shrimp farms. Shrimp samples showed occurrence of 3.3% of Salmonella and 48.3% of Vibrio. The isolates were also screened for antibiotic resistance to oxolinic acid, sulphonamides, tetracycline, sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, norfloxacin, ampicillin, doxycycline hydrochloride, erythromycin, chloramphenicol, and nitrofurantoin. Salmonella enterica serovar Corvallis isolated from shrimp showed individual and multiple antibiotic resistance patterns. Five Vibrio species having individual and multiple antibiotic resistance were also identified. They were Vibrio cholerae (18.3%), V. mimicus (16.7%), V. parahaemolyticus (10%), V. vulnificus (6.7%), and V. alginolyticus (1.7%). Farm owners should be concerned about the presence of these pathogenic bacteria which also contributes to human health risk and should adopt best management practices for responsible aquaculture to ensure the quality of shrimp.

This study investigates an efficient algorithm for image segmentation with a global constraint based on the Bhattacharyya measure. The problem consists of finding a region consistent with an image distribution learned a priori. We derive an original upper bound of the Bhattacharyya measure by introducing an auxiliary labeling. From this upper bound, we reformulate the problem as an optimization of an auxiliary function by graph cuts. Then, we demonstrate that the proposed procedure converges and give a statistical interpretation of the upper bound. The algorithm requires very few iterations to converge, and finds nearly global optima. Quantitative evaluations and comparisons with state-of-the-art methods on the Microsoft GrabCut segmentation database demonstrated that the proposed algorithm brings improvements in regard to segmentation accuracy, computational efficiency, and optimality. We further demonstrate the flexibility of the algorithm in object tracking.

N-and C-domains of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) gp41 are demonstrated to play an important role in HIV-entry and prevention. In addition, the V3 loop on gp120 was identified as the principal neutralizing determinant (PND). Based on the fact that a combination of several monoclonal antibodies to different neutralizing epitopes showed great protection against intravenous challenge and vaginal transmission of pathogenic HIV-1/Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) chimeric virus on macaques, three candidate peptide-vaccines were prepared and used in combination to induce high levels of multiantibodies against HIV-1. The three peptides contained important functional regions on HIV-1 gp160. The N-domain peptide (P1: aa550-579) and C-domain peptide (P2: aa633-662) of gp41 and V3 peptide (P3: aa301-328) of gp120 were conjugated with bovine serum albumin (BSA) using the glutaraldehyde method. After the vaccination course, each of the three candidate peptide-vaccines induced strong antibody response in rabbits. The three vaccines used in combination induced high levels of multiantibodies against the peptides of the N-and C-domains and the V3 loop, with the titer of antibodies up to 1 : 6400-1 : 25 600 in rabbit sera in comparison with the titer of 1 : 800-1 : 3200 induced by rgp41 or rgp160. Our results indicate that immunogenicities of the N-and C-domains and the V3 loop in these three candidate peptide-vaccines were clearly stronger than those induced by rgp41 or rgp160, and these peptide-vaccines used in combination synchronously induced high levels of multiantibodies against HIV-1, suggesting that used in combination they may provide a new vaccine-strategy to induce strong multi-antiviral activity.

The many advantages of Distributed Database (DDB) systems can only be achieved through proper DDB designs. Since designing a DDB is very difficult and expert designers are relatively few in number, "good" DDB design methodologies and associated computer-aided design tools are needed to help designers cope with design complexity and improve their productivity. Unfortunately, previous DDB design research focused on solving subproblems of data distribution design in isolation. As a result, past research on a general DDB design methodology offered only methodological frameworks that, at best, aggregate a set of non-integrated design techniques. The conventional separation of logical design from fragmentation design is problematic, but has not been fully analyzed. This dissertation presents the SEER-DTS methodology developed for the purposes of overcoming the methodological inadequacies of conventional design methodologies, resolving the DDB design problem in an integrated manner and facilitating design automation. It is based on a static semantic data model, SEER (Synthesized Extended Entity-Relationship Model) and a dynamic data model, DTS (Distributed Transaction Scheme), which together provide complete and consistent modeling mechanisms for acquiring/representing DDB design inputs and facilitating DDB schema design. In this methodology, requirement/distribution analysis and conceptual design are integrated and logical and fragmentation designs are combined. "Semantics-based" design techniques have been developed to allow for end-user design specifications and seamless design schema transformations, thereby simplifying design tasks. Towards our ultimate goal of design automation, an architectural framework for a computer-aided DDB design system, Auto-DDB, was formulated and the system was prototyped. As part of the developmental effort, a real-world DDB design case study was conducted to verify the applicability of the SEER-DTS methodology in a manual design mode. The

This thesis describes measurement-based models based on real error- data collected on a multi-processor system. Models development from the raw error-data to the estimation of cumulative reward is described. A workload/ reliability model is developed based on low-level error and resource usage data collected on an IBM 3081 system during its normal operation in order to evaluate the resource-usage/error/recovery process in a large mainframe system. Thus, both normal and erroneous behavior of the system are modeled. The results provide an understanding of the different types of errors and recovery processes. The measured data show that the holding times in key operational and error states are not simple exponentials and that a semi-Markov process is necessary to model the system behavior. A sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the significance of using a semi-Markov process, as opposed to a Markov process, to model the measured system. A software reliability model is also developed based on low-level error data from the MVS operating system running on an IBM 3081 machine to describe the software error and recovery process., Sponsored in part by NASA. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was redacted.

This dissertation investigates the impact of the stock market mispricing on corporate investment decisions for the UK stock market over the period from 1994 to 2012. In order to analyze this effect thoroughly, the market to book ratio is decomposed into firm level mispricing, industry level mispricing and growth opportunities components. The results of the dissertation show that only the growth component determines the investment decisions while holding the financial slack factors constant. Inconsistent with my predictions, neither the firm level mispricing nor the industry level mispricing has minimal power in explaining the changes in corporate investments. This might be due to the unique characteristics of chosen stock market and period.

This dissertation investigates the impact of the stock market mispricing on corporate investment decisions for the UK stock market over the period from 1994 to 2012. In order to analyze this effect thoroughly, the market to book ratio is decomposed into firm level mispricing, industry level mispricing and growth opportunities components. The results of the dissertation show that only the growth component determines the investment decisions while holding the financial slack factors constant. Inconsistent with my predictions, neither the firm level mispricing nor the industry level mispricing has minimal power in explaining the changes in corporate investments. This might be due to the unique characteristics of chosen stock market and period.

This dissertation investigates the impact of the stock market mispricing on corporate investment decisions for the UK stock market over the period from 1994 to 2012. In order to analyze this effect thoroughly, the market to book ratio is decomposed into firm level mispricing, industry level mispricing and growth opportunities components. The results of the dissertation show that only the growth component determines the investment decisions while holding the financial slack factors constant. Inconsistent with my predictions, neither the firm level mispricing nor the industry level mispricing has minimal power in explaining the changes in corporate investments. This might be due to the unique characteristics of chosen stock market and period.

This dissertation investigates the impact of the stock market mispricing on corporate investment decisions for the UK stock market over the period from 1994 to 2012. In order to analyze this effect thoroughly, the market to book ratio is decomposed into firm level mispricing, industry level mispricing and growth opportunities components. The results of the dissertation show that only the growth component determines the investment decisions while holding the financial slack factors constant. Inconsistent with my predictions, neither the firm level mispricing nor the industry level mispricing has minimal power in explaining the changes in corporate investments. This might be due to the unique characteristics of chosen stock market and period.