Malakoplakia of Ipsilateral Kidney, Ureter and Bladder

AbstractMalakoplakia is a rare chronic inflammatory disease of the urinary tract, usually caused by Escherichia coli infection. We report a 75-year-old woman who presented with hydronephrosis and pyuria associated with E. coli infection. Abdominal computed tomography revealed several renal stones and severe hydronephrosis of the right kidney. Biopsies of the urinary bladder and ureter revealed erosion and acute inflammation. According to a culture sensitivity test, antimicrobial treatment was prescribed with cephradine 500 mg every 6 hours and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid 100 mg twice daily for 1 month. Because of the advanced hydronephrosis with impaired renal function, a right nephroureterectomy was performed. Malakoplakia of the right kidney, ureter and urinary bladder was confirmed by pathology with Michaelis-Gutmann bodies present in the surgical specimen. The patient tolerated the operation well. She regained a good health status and was regularly followed-up in the urologic department

Securing Mobile Access of Confidential Documents by Integrating Trusted Computing Platforms with Digital Rights Managements

The mature mobile network today empowers mobile employees to access Intranet documents via mobile devices and increases the productivity of company workers. Internal documents transmitted without encryption through the open mobile networks undoubtedly creates security holes for eavesdroppers. A common way to provide preliminary protections for an important document to be accessed outside the Intranet is to transmit the document after encryption. Such mechanisms, however, cannot assure the security of documents because the documents can be decrypted and then forwarded without protections once the ciphering keys were known. Therefore, we propose an approach to enhance the security of transmitted mobile documents, using the idea from digital rights managements. A confidential document is encrypted so that, except the targeted mobile user, none can read the confidential document without proper rights. The proposed approach utilizes the trusted computing platforms (TPM) technology to protect the rights object of a confidential document. A rights object can be as simple as a ciphering key of the document or as complicated as the usage-rules of the document. We use the public key in TPM to encrypt the rights object so that only the dedicated mobile device, i.e. the mobile user, may decrypt the rights object using the private key of the device. A malicious user can never decrypt the rights to access the transmitted document, which is encrypted. Moreover, the usage-rules in the rights object may specify whether the document can be further forwarded or be read more than once, and so on. Therefore, the proposed scheme provides maximum flexibilities for mobile employees to access confidential documents without compromising the security, in addition to the mobility and timeliness of mobile environments

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PLAYER PERFORMANCE AND SALARY IN A PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL LEAGUE

This study aimed to investigate whether teams in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) are paying their players fairly and equitably based on their performance. Possible performance criteria of professional baseball players are gathered from past literature before subjecting these criteria to regression analysis to obtain criteria that are significant and their corresponding weights. The TOPSIS method is then used to calculate player performance value, and with Quadrant Analysis, relationship between player performance and salary is analyzed. These were used to project salary adjustment for these players for the coming season. Finally, to determine the fairness of salary adjustments, this study employed McNemar test to examine whether adjustments are made based on player performance. This study has found innings pitched (IP), earned run average (ERA) and walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) to be significant abilities in evaluating performance of pitchers, while for fielders, significant abilities for performance evaluation were batting average (BA), slugging average (SLG), hits (H) and on base percentage (OBP) . Based on these derived performance evaluation criteria, more than half of these players gave above average performance, yet their salary adjustments were not made accordingly nor were they made based on the above-mentioned criteria.  Article visualizations

Fabrication of Semiconductor with Modified Microstructure for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Under Visible Light

Since sustainable energy and environment emerging as one of the top issues and challenges for humanity, the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution under visible light has attracted increasing attention. Basically the separation and transmission of photogenerated charge carriers are the two main steps of a photocatalytic reaction. They should be key aspects in the design of efficient photocatalysts for solar energy conversion

Different Implications of Paternal and Maternal Atopy for Perinatal IgE Production and Asthma Development

Asthma is a hereditary disease associated with IgE-mediated reaction. Whether maternal atopy and paternal atopy have different impacts on perinatal IgE production and asthma development remains unclear. This paper reviews and summarizes the effects of maternal and paternal atopy on the developmental aspects of IgE production and asthma. Maternal atopy affects both pre- and postnatal IgE production, whereas paternal atopy mainly affects the latter. Maternally transmitted genes GSTP1 and FceRI-beta are associated with lung function and allergic sensitization, respectively. In IgE production and asthma development, the maternal influence on gene-environment interaction is greater than paternal influence. Maternal, paternal, and/or postnatal environmental modulation of allergic responses have been linked to epigenetic mechanisms, which may be good targets for early prevention of asthma