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Purpose: Psychological distress is common among patients with acute diseases and is associated with a poorer prognosis. Early detection and intervention are important for high‐risk individuals. Design and Methods: This retrospective study used the five‐item Brief Symptom Rating Scale (BSRS‐5) to assess psychological distress and evaluate whether proactive intervention may reduce distress levels among hospitalized patients in a single medical center in northern Taiwan. Findings: Of the patients, 10.7% were found to have varying degrees of emotional distress (BSRS‐5 ≥ 6). After providing integrated medical care for patients with psychological distress, the degree of stress decreased significantly (p < 0.001). These results were consistent across subgroups. Practice Implications: The results highlight that proactive assessment and appropriate interventions may reduce patients' psychological distress during their course of hospitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of metal‐enhanced fluorescence (MEF) of rhodamine dye by gold sub‐micro hexagonal plates were studied. A multilayered avidin–biotin complex was designed and used as a spacer to connect the fluorophore and the sub‐microplate. Fluorescence lifetime image microscopy (FLIM) combined with time‐correlated single‐photon counting was used to obtain lifetime images and intensities of dye on single particles. Gold hexagon plates ~900 nm were synthesized, and the avidin–biotin complexes were placed layer‐by‐layer for up to 4 layers onto the sub‐microplates. All emission curves of fluorophore displayed biexponential decay with short lifetimes of 18–23 ps and long lifetimes of 249, 271, 304, and 348 ps for 1–4 layers on gold sub‐microplates, respectively. Using the kinetic model of energy transfer between fluorophore and nanoparticles to explain the coupling mechanism, we found that the excited fluorophore transferred energy mostly to the high‐order modes for the 1‐layered avidin–biotin complexes enclosing gold nanospheres, consequently resulting in a non‐emissive pathway. The 4‐layered samples had the highest emission intensity because, at those distances, the enhancement by the gold sub‐microplates during plasmonic excitation remained high and became comparable to the energy quenching rate. Using the composed complexes, the MEF effect achieved the maximal enhancement in this system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: A submucosal injection is usually required to improve the efficacy and safety of endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR). This study aimed to evaluate the performance of 3.3% sodium carboxymethyl starch (Na‐CMS) solution, a novel submucosal injection solution, for ESD and EMR. Methods: Na‐CMS, normal saline (NS) and two commercially available agents (sigMAVisc and Eleview) were injected into the esophageal submucosa of randomly grouped pigs. The level of submucosal elevation was examined. Subsequently, ESD or EMR procedures using 3.3% Na‐CMS or NS as submucosal injections were performed in the gastrointestinal tract of the pigs. Results: Submucosal elevation was significantly higher and more sustained in the 3.3% Na‐CMS group than in the controls (P < 0.05). The volume required for ESD or EMR was significantly lower in the 3.3% Na‐CMS group than in the NS group (ESD: 12.21 ± 4.09 mL vs 28.25 ± 8.02 mL, P < 0.001; EMR: 3.99 ± 1.98 mL vs 7.15 ± 3.67 mL, P = 0.001). The ESD resection time was significantly shorter in the 3.3% Na‐CMS group than in the NS group (16.58 ± 7.30 min vs 25.29 ± 11.89 min, P = 0.004). Hemorrhage after ESD in the 3.3% Na‐CMS group was less severe than that in the NS group (P = 0.006). Conclusion: 3.3% Na‐CMS is an effective, safe and low‐cost submucosal injection solution and holds promise as preferable agent for submucosal injection in ESD and EMR procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an enhanced ant colony optimization with dynamic mutation and ad hoc initialization, ACODM-I, for improving the accuracy of Takagi-Sugeno-Kang- (TSK-) type fuzzy systems design. Instead of the generic initialization usually used in most population-based algorithms, ACODM-I proposes an ad hoc application-specific initialization for generating the initial ant solutions to improve the accuracy of fuzzy system design. The generated initial ant solutions are iteratively improved by a new approach incorporating the dynamic mutation into the existing continuous ACO (ACOR). The introduced dynamic mutation balances the exploration ability and convergence rate by providing more diverse search directions in the early stage of optimization process. Application examples of two zero-order TSK-type fuzzy systems for dynamic plant tracking control and one first-order TSK-type fuzzy system for the prediction of the chaotic time series have been simulated to validate the proposed algorithm. Performance comparisons with ACOR and different advanced algorithms or neural-fuzzy models verify the superiority of the proposed algorithm. The effects on the design accuracy and convergence rate yielded by the proposed initialization and introduced dynamic mutation have also been discussed and verified in the simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a meandered printed loop antenna for the fourth generation (4G) mobile system applications. Using a coupling strip connected with a 50 Ω microstrip fed-line on front side, the loop antenna on back side is excited and a half wavelength (0.5 λ) resonant mode and its higher modes are successfully resonated. A plane copper strip connected at top of the loop antenna is used to increase the antenna's path and to decrease the lower operation band to cover LTE 700 band. Two 15 nH ceramic chip inductors, which are embedded in the loop antenna, are used to decrease the antenna's 1 and 1.5 λ resonant modes. The 0.5, 1, and 1.5 λ resonant modes get together to form a broad lower operation band (693-1031 MHz) for LTE 700 and GSM 850/900 applications. Beside, the antenna's higher resonant modes are also excited to form a broad higher operation band (1668-2781 MHz) for DCS, PCS, UMTS, LTE 2300, LTE 2500, and WLAN applications. The proposed antenna also has an advantage of small size, which is 114 × 50 mm2 including a loop antenna of 14 × 50 mm2 and a ground plane of 100 × 50 mm2. With the advantages of board band, compact size, low cost, and good performance, the proposed antenna appears to be an optimal candidate for the 4G mobile applications. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:2157-2163, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26997 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a compact printed meander loop antenna for the fourth generation (4G) mobile system applications.The total length of the meander loop operates a one-wavelength resonant mode (mode 1) at 774 MHz. To increase the antenna's operation bandwidth, this article uses coupled-fed feeding method that contains a coupling patch connected with a 50-Ω microstrip feed line. By applying the coupled-fed method, a new one-wavelength resonant mode (mode 2) is excited. After carefully adjusted the size of coupling patch, the frequency of mode 2 shifts to 904 MHz combining with mode 1 to form dual broad operations bands. The measured dual broad bands from 658 to 963 MHz and from 1658 to 2693 MHz can be applied in the 4G mobile system, especially for the long-term evolution application. The two resonant modes are resonated by 1λ loop type that has less influence by changing the size of ground plane. The antenna portion and overall dimensions of the proposed antenna are 20 × 60 × 0.8 mm3 and 120 × 60 × 0.8 mm3 suitable for today's mobile phone application. With the advantages of board band, compact size, low cost, and good performance, the proposed antenna appears to be a promising candidate for the 4G mobile applications. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:1900-1907, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26927 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the equivalent circuit of the ring-like resonator with different impedance is simply modeled as the parallel GLC lumped element. We then investigated the equivalent lumped elements of the ring-like resonator with different width of the ring (i.e., different impedance of the ring) by using the transmission-line analysis. The resonant frequency shifts to higher frequency when the width of the ring structure is increased. It is noted that when the width of the ring structure is large enough, the resonant frequency of the ring structure will be very close with that of the patch structure. The circuit simulated results from the extracted element values are in good agreement with the full-wave simulation results and the measured results. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 615–618, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24130 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]