Investigating the Possibility of Intervertebral Disc Regeneration Induced by Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor-Stimulated Stem Cells in Rats

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is a multifactorial process that is influenced by contributions from genetic predisposition, the aging phenomenon, lifestyle conditions, biomechanical loading and activities, and other health factors (such as diabetes). Attempts to decelerate disc degeneration using various techniques have been reported. However, to date, there has been no proven technique effective for broad clinical application. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GCSF) is a growth factor cytokine that has been shown to enhance the availability of circulating hematopoietic stem cells to the brain and heart as well as their capacity for mobilization of mesenchymal bone marrow stem cells. GCSF also exerts significant increases in circulating neutrophils as well as potent anti-inflammatory effects. In our study, we hypothesize that GCSF can induce bone marrow stem cells differentiation and mobilization to regenerate the degenerated IVD. We found that GCSF had no contribution in disc regeneration or maintenance; however, there were cell proliferation within end plates. The effects of GCSF treatment on end plates might deserve further investigation

A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE FROM DIFFERENT RUNNING SLOPE ON THE ANGLES OF LIMB JOINTS

This study focuses on an analysis and comparison of the hip, knee, and ankle joint angle changes and differences during the stance and swing phase of the running gait cycle while running on the same uphill or downhill gradient as well as the lower joint angle changes while running on different uphill or downhill inclines or on level ground. This study should also provide insight into whether or not there is a significant difference between the lower joint angle patterns while running on slopes of different steepness, which in turn can serve as a reference for runners and coaches for uphill or downhill running training or workout exercises. For this study we employed a high-speed camera, which allows us to capture the running motion cycles of the sagittal plane of test subjects while running on different uphill or downhill gradients. Motion analysis software was employed for data compilation, while a comparative analysis was conducted by utilizing statistical software. After extensive discussions and analysis, we reached the following conclusions: 1. Slope gradient changes have a significant impact on hip joint angles during the stance phase. The steeper the incline is, the greater is the difference between the hip joint angles. 2. Slope gradient changes have a significant effect on joint angle changes during the swing phase. The steeper the uphill gradient, the smaller are the hip, knee, and ankle joint angles, while steeper downhill gradients lead to larger hip and knee joint angles. 3. A comparison of the changes of all joint angles during uphill, downhill, and level ground running reveals that angle changes during uphill running are greater than during downhill running. It can be inferred that this phenomenon is caused by the fact that the number of muscle groups involved in uphill running is larger than in downhill running

How the Design Leadership and Strategic Design Drive New Value in Enterprises and Organizations

Today's design has shifted from the original primary pursuit of appearance and function to processes and systems, creating new meanings for corporate strategies, products and services. Nowadays, enterprises are increasingly paying attention to the power of design, and regard design as the main innovation method and incorporate it into the organizations. Design began to be considered a key role at the top of large organizations. Although people recognize that design can bring good effects to enterprises and organizations, and there is growing interest in cultivating design thinking, what are the leaders who can lead enterprises, organizations and have design thinking? Their characteristics and how to formulate and plan strategic design still not fully elucidated. Therefore, this research uses related theories to understand the way of thinking and characteristics of design leaders, only in this way we formulate good strategic design for enterprises and organizations, and become an indispensable and important help in today rapidly changing world

SPEECH ENHANCEMENT BASED ON SPARSE THEORY UNDER NOISY ENVIRONMENT

[[abstract]]Recently, the sparse algorithm for sparse enhancement is more and more popular issues. In this paper, we classify the process of the sparse theory to enhance speech signal into two parts, one is for dictionary training part and the other is signal reconstruction part. We focus on the White Gaussian Noise. Clean speech dictionary D is trained by K-SVD algorithm. The orthogonal matching pursuit(OMP) algorithm is used to obtain the sparse coefficients X of clean speech dictionary D. Denoising performance of the experiments shows that our proposed method is superior than other methods in SNR, LLR, SNRseg and PESQ.[[sponsorship]]National Taipei University[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20150718~20150719[[booktype]]電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Tokyo, Japa

3D FACE MODEL CONSTRUCTION BASED ON KINECT FOR FACE RECOGNITION

[[abstract]]We propose a simpler and faster method to recognize face. First, we use Kinect to detect frontal face and get depth image information with face, then we portrayed face in OpenGL to construct a three-dimensional face model based on the depth information. The face model also retains texture information of the original face images, and to create a complete change depth of face. It has a good result of repairing the distortion in side face. We can get a set face images with different angles by the method proposed, In recognition part, we use PCA(Principal Component Analysis) to reduce the dimensions, and classified with SVM(Support Vector Machine). The experiments show that the side face recognition can have good results.[[sponsorship]]National Taipei University[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20150718~20150719[[booktype]]電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Tokyo, Japa

LLM4TS: Two-Stage Fine-Tuning for Time-Series Forecasting with Pre-Trained LLMs

In this work, we leverage pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance time-series forecasting. Mirroring the growing interest in unifying models for Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision, we envision creating an analogous model for long-term time-series forecasting. Due to limited large-scale time-series data for building robust foundation models, our approach LLM4TS focuses on leveraging the strengths of pre-trained LLMs. By combining time-series patching with temporal encoding, we have enhanced the capability of LLMs to handle time-series data effectively. Inspired by the supervised fine-tuning in chatbot domains, we prioritize a two-stage fine-tuning process: first conducting supervised fine-tuning to orient the LLM towards time-series data, followed by task-specific downstream fine-tuning. Furthermore, to unlock the flexibility of pre-trained LLMs without extensive parameter adjustments, we adopt several Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) techniques. Drawing on these innovations, LLM4TS has yielded state-of-the-art results in long-term forecasting. Our model has also shown exceptional capabilities as both a robust representation learner and an effective few-shot learner, thanks to the knowledge transferred from the pre-trained LLM

A Real Time Hand Gesture Recognition System Based on DFT and SVM

[[abstract]]Vision based band gesture recognition provides a more nature and powerful means for human-computer interaction. A fast detection process of hand gesture and an effective feature extraction process are presented. The proposed a hand gesture recognition algorithm comprises four main steps. First use Cam-shift algorithm to track skin color after closing process. Second, in order to extract feature, we use BEA to extract the boundary of the hand. Third, the benefits of Fourier descriptor are invariance to the starting point of the boundary, deformation, and rotation, and therefore transform the starting point of the boundary by Fourier transformation. Finally, outline feature for the nonlinear non-separable type of data was classified by using SVM. Experimental results showed the accuracy is 93.4% in average and demonstrated the feasibility of proposed system.[[incitationindex]]EI[[booktype]]電子版[[booktype]]紙

Competition and Integration Strategy Analysis of Advertisement-Supported Social Networked Related Services

Social networking related services (SNS) become increasingly popular communication and interaction mediums over internet. As most of the SNS are free, the providers generate revenues from advertising and other extension services. This paper investigates the advertising strategy and the strategic of compatibility and co-opetition between two social networking related services.. Utilizing game theoretic model, we show that the providers will benefit from both service and business integration, however, the users are always worse when SNS services are compatibly connected. The users will always gain from the quality (features) competition, however, brand competition may hurt the customers as more disturbing ads will be exerted. In general, business integration will result in a higher diversity if ads exerted in two IM services

BIOMECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF THE GRAB AND TRACK SWIMMING STARTS

The aim of this study was to compare the grab and track competitive swimming starts. Twelve male college competitive swimmers (six used the grab start and six the track start) participated in this study. Data were collected from two video cameras (60Hz) above water. The video data were digitized and analysis was performed with the Kwon3D Motion Analysis system. No significant differences existed between the two groups for flight time and distance, time to 12m, takeoff velocity and angle, entry velocity and angle and the center of mass at highest position above water. The track start had the centre of mass on the block more towards the rear and a shorter block time (