A Study of the effect of coating variations on resolution performance in the single-phase association product plates

Most people conceive of lithography as a planographic method of printing. In point of fact, only some of the original lithographic plates had truly planographic surfaces. Most lithographic plates used in industry today do not have the same material in the image and non-image areas, so they are called double-phase plates . Because of light undercutting and the roughness of the grain structure of the carrier, the use of conventional double-phase plates for fine image reproduction, where resolution is the main concern, has been limited. The purpose of this study was to determine the image formation mechanism of single-phase plates (i.e. plates with image and non-image areas on the same plane and made of the same material . ) by investigating the resolution performance of Association Product plates. There are good reasons to believe that Association Product plates give better resolution than conventional double-phase plates. A comparative study of the resolving power of Association Product plates and commonly used double phase plates provides information about the quantitative difference of resolution between these two types of plates. In choosing to study the image-forming mechanism from the coating variations point-of-view, it was hoped to arrive at a demonstrable independence of plate resolving power from plate coating thickness in the single-phase plate. Results of the experiment showed that coating thickness and grain structure of the plate base does not affect the resolving power of this type of plate. The main factor which directly affects the resolving power is the exposure time

A study of color image quality with respect to screen angle arrangement in multicolor halftone printing

The advantage of using a single screen-angle (Dot-on-Dot) reproduction for multicolor halftone printing is a sharper reproduction with the decrease, of. a rosette pattern in all image areas. The purpose of this study was to quantify the differences of color image quality between conventional reproduction using four screen-angles and a single screen-angle printing technique. In addition, the influence of screen frequency to the final color image quality in the Dot-on-Dot printing was also investigated. The results of this study confirmed that there is a linearity of image quality for all color halftone printing regardless of the arrangement of the screen angle. Test results also indicated that Dot-on-Dot was preferable to the conventional four screenangle technique at the low screen frequency. Under different reproduction circumstances, input image quality and reproduction screen frequency have different weight toward determining the quality of the final reproduction

ESTIMATION THE PREFERENCE OF ECOTOURISM FOR GAOMEI WETLAND IN TAIWAN

Gaomei Wetland is not only the biggest grassy coastal wetland, but also a wild‐animal protecting area, located on the west‐central coast of Taiwan.Wetlands are considered as one of the most important natural resource, which offer a lot of benefits for human and other creatures. However, it is believed that over-intensive recreational activities in Gaomei Wetland should be responsible for serious damages on natural environment and ecosystem. This study takes Gaomei wetland as an example, and aims to estimate its landscape and ecological services values through Choice experiment. The results of this research showed that Gaomei landscape’s economic value is $2.06 million (USD) per year, and$1.54 million (USD) for its value of ecological services. These findings can help to bring up the awareness of natural resource preservation, and hopefully to keep Gaomei Wetland substantial. The results also indicated that visitors with undergraduate degree or above were willing to pay $6.43 (USD) per year for entry fee to enjoy sunset scenery in Gaomei wetland

Extracting transcription factor binding sites from unaligned gene sequences with statistical models

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) are crucial in the regulation of gene transcription. Recently, chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by cDNA microarray hybridization (ChIP-chip array) has been used to identify potential regulatory sequences, but the procedure can only map the probable protein-DNA interaction loci within 1–2 kb resolution. To find out the exact binding motifs, it is necessary to build a computational method to examine the ChIP-chip array binding sequences and search for possible motifs representing the transcription factor binding sites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a program to find out accurate motif sites from a set of unaligned DNA sequences in the yeast genome. Compared with MDscan, the prediction results suggest that, overall, our algorithm outperforms MDscan since the predicted motifs are more consistent with previously known specificities reported in the literature and have better prediction ranks. Our program also outperforms the constraint-less Cosmo program, especially in the elimination of false positives.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this study, an improved sampling algorithm is proposed to incorporate the binomial probability model to build significant initial candidate motif sets. By investigating the statistical dependence between base positions in TFBSs, the method of dependency graphs and their expanded Bayesian networks is combined. The results show that our program satisfactorily extract transcription factor binding sites from unaligned gene sequences.</p

Fatty Acid Composition of Taiwanese Human Milk

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to analyze quantitatively the fatty acid composition of the milk of Taiwanese women.MethodsTwo hundred and sixty-nine human milk specimens were obtained from 240 Taiwanese mothers, aged 19-41 years, and subjected to chromatographic analysis.ResultsMilk specimens were pooled by the mothers' districts of residence and lactation stages, at 0-11 days, 22-45 days, 46-65 days and 66-297 days after delivery. The fatty acid composition was expressed as weight percentage of all fatty acids detected with C8-C24 chain length. More than 80% of the fatty acids were composed of lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic acids. The amount of saturated fatty acid was 36.7%. With regard to essential fatty acids, the amount of linoleic acid (LA) was 22% and that of linolenic acid (ALA) was 1.8%, both levels being higher than in human milk from Western countries. However, the ratio of LA/ALA remained at 13:1 for the whole duration of lactation. It has been reported that mothers with high fish consumption have a high content of docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid in their milk, and we found this phenomenon occurring in our study. The percentage of docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid in Taiwanese human milk was 0.79% and 0.17%, respectively.ConclusionFatty acid composition in human milk varies during lactation. With regard to essential fatty acids, the amount of LA was 22% and that of ALA was 1.8%, both levels being higher than in human milk from Western and other Asian countries

Rhodiola crenulata extract for prevention of acute mountain sickness: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial

BACKGROUND: Rhodiola crenulata (R. crenulata) is widely used to prevent acute mountain sickness in the Himalayan areas and in Tibet, but no scientific studies have previously examined its effectiveness. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study to investigate its efficacy in acute mountain sickness prevention. METHODS: Healthy adult volunteers were randomized to 2 treatment sequences, receiving either 800 mg R. crenulata extract or placebo daily for 7 days before ascent and 2 days during mountaineering, before crossing over to the alternate treatment after a 3-month wash-out period. Participants ascended rapidly from 250 m to 3421 m on two separate occasions: December 2010 and April 2011. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of acute mountain sickness, as defined by a Lake Louise score ≥ 3, with headache and at least one of the symptoms of nausea or vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, or difficulty sleeping. RESULTS: One hundred and two participants completed the trial. There were no demographic differences between individuals taking Rhodiola-placebo and those taking placebo-Rhodiola. No significant differences in the incidence of acute mountain sickness were found between R. crenulata extract and placebo groups (all 60.8%; adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.69–1.52). The incidence of severe acute mountain sickness in Rhodiola extract vs. placebo groups was 35.3% vs. 29.4% (AOR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.90–2.25). CONCLUSIONS: R. crenulata extract was not effective in reducing the incidence or severity of acute mountain sickness as compared to placebo. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01536288

Game Solving with Online Fine-Tuning

Game solving is a similar, yet more difficult task than mastering a game. Solving a game typically means to find the game-theoretic value (outcome given optimal play), and optionally a full strategy to follow in order to achieve that outcome. The AlphaZero algorithm has demonstrated super-human level play, and its powerful policy and value predictions have also served as heuristics in game solving. However, to solve a game and obtain a full strategy, a winning response must be found for all possible moves by the losing player. This includes very poor lines of play from the losing side, for which the AlphaZero self-play process will not encounter. AlphaZero-based heuristics can be highly inaccurate when evaluating these out-of-distribution positions, which occur throughout the entire search. To address this issue, this paper investigates applying online fine-tuning while searching and proposes two methods to learn tailor-designed heuristics for game solving. Our experiments show that using online fine-tuning can solve a series of challenging 7x7 Killall-Go problems, using only 23.54% of computation time compared to the baseline without online fine-tuning. Results suggest that the savings scale with problem size. Our method can further be extended to any tree search algorithm for problem solving. Our code is available at https://rlg.iis.sinica.edu.tw/papers/neurips2023-online-fine-tuning-solver.Comment: Accepted by the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023

Electroacupuncture at the Zusanli (ST-36) Acupoint Induces a Hypoglycemic Effect by Stimulating the Cholinergic Nerve in a Rat Model of Streptozotocine-Induced Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus

Animal studies have shown that electroacupuncture (EA) at Zusanli (ST-36) and Zhongwan (CV-12) acupoints reduces plasma glucose concentrations in rats with type II diabetes. However, whether EA reduces plasma glucose levels in type I diabetes is still unknown. In this study, we explore the various non-insulin-dependent pathways involved in EA-induced lowering of plasma glucose. Streptozotocin (STZ) (60 mg kg−1, i.v.) was administered via the femoral vein to induce insulin-dependent diabetes in non-adrenalectomized and in adrenalectomomized rats. EA (15 Hz) was applied for 30 min to bilateral ST-36 acupoints after administration of Atropine (0.1 mg kg−1 i.p.), Eserine (0.01 mg kg−1 i.p.), or Hemicholinium-3 (5 μg kg−1 i.p.) in non-adrenalectomized rats. Rats administered acetylcholine (0.01 mg kg−1 i.v.) did not undergo EA. Adrenalectomized rats underwent EA at bilateral ST-36 acupoints without further treatment. Blood samples were drawn from all rats before and after EA to measure changes in plasma glucose levels. Expression of insulin signaling proteins (IRS1, AKT2) in atropine-exposed rats before and after EA was measured by western blot. Atropine and hemicholinium-3 completely blocked the plasma glucose lowering effects of EA, whereas eserine led to a significant hypoglycemic response. In addition, plasma glucose levels after administration of acetylcholine were significantly lower than the fasting glucose levels. In STZ-adrenalectomized rats, EA did not induce a hypoglycemic response. EA stimulated the expression of IRS1 and AKT2 and atropine treatment blocked the EA-induced expression of those insulin signaling proteins. Taken together, EA at the ST-36 acupoint reduces plasma glucose concentrations by stimulating the cholinergic nerves

Delayed Suspicion, Treatment and Isolation of Tuberculosis Patients in Pulmonology/Infectious Diseases and Non-Pulmonology/Infectious Diseases Wards

Background/PurposeDelayed diagnosis and isolation increases the risk of nosocomial transmission of tuberculosis (TB). To assess the risk of delayed management of TB, we analyzed the risk factors of prolonged delay in isolation of smear-positive TB patients in pulmonology/infectious diseases and other wards in a tertiary teaching hospital.MethodsWe enrolled smear-positive TB patients aged > 16 years with delayed respiratory isolation following hospitalization. Medical records were reviewed retrospectively. Time intervals between admission, order of sputum acid-fast staining, initiation of anti-tuberculous treatment and isolation were compared between pulmonology/infectious diseases wards (PIWs) and other wards. Risk factors were analyzed in patients with prolonged isolation delay of > 7 days in individual groups.ResultsIsolation was delayed in 191 (73.7%) of 259 hospitalized smear-positive TB patients. Median suspicion, treatment and isolation delays were 0, 3 and 4 days in PIWs and 1, 5 and 7 days in other wards. For patients admitted to non-PIWs, atypical chest radiographs, symptoms without dyspnea or not being admitted from the emergency department (ED) were risk factors for prolonged isolation delay exceeding 7 days. The only risk factor for delayed isolation in patients admitted to PIWs was age ≥ 70 years.ConclusionDelays in suspicion, treatment and isolation of TB patients were longer in non-PIWs. Clinicians should be alert to those admitted to non-PIWs with atypical chest radiographs, atypical symptoms, or not admitted from the ED

Radial Pressure Pulse and Heart Rate Variability in Heat- and Cold-Stressed Humans

This study aims to explore the effects of heat and cold stress on the radial pressure pulse (RPP) and heart rate variability (HRV). The subjects immersed their left hand into 45°C and 7°C water for 2 minutes. Sixty healthy subjects (age 25 ± 4 yr; 29 men and 31 women) were enrolled in this study. All subjects underwent the supine temperature measurements of the bilateral forearms, brachial arterial blood pressure, HRV and RPP with a pulse analyzer in normothermic conditions, and thermal stresses. The power spectral low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) components of HRV decreased in the heat test and increased in the cold test. The heat stress significantly reduced radial augmentation index (AIr) (P < .05), but the cold stress significantly increased AIr (P < .01). The spectral energy of RPP did not show any statistical difference in 0 ~ 10 Hz region under both conditions, but in the region of 10 ~ 50 Hz, there was a significant increase (P < .01) in the heat test and a significant decrease in the cold test (P < .01). The changes in AIr induced by heat and cold stress were significantly negatively correlated with the spectral energy in the region of 10 ~ 50 Hz (SE10−50 Hz) but not in the region of 0 ~ 10 Hz (SE0−10 Hz). The results demonstrated that the SE10−50 Hz, which only possessed a small percentage in total pulse energy, presented more physiological characteristics than the SE0−10 Hz under the thermal stresses