Purchasing Power Parity and Country Characteristics: Evidence from Time Series Analysis

This paper investigates the relationships between country characteristics and the validity of PPP. We use three alternative time series methods to test for the stationarity of real exchange rates for each of the 72 countries over the period from 1976 to 2005. Our result shows that the evidence of PPP exhibits geographic difference. It is most likely to find stationary real exchange rates for European countries, whereas it is least likely to obtain the result of supporting PPP for Asian countries. We then use a probit regression model to examine if county characteristics are related to the validity of PPP. The probit regression result reveals that the validity of PPP decreases with inflation rate and increases with nominal exchange rate volatility.Purchasing power parity, Country characteristics, Unit root tests

Phase and Amplitude Responses of Narrow-Band Optical Filter Measured by Microwave Network Analyzer

The phase and amplitude responses of a narrow-band optical filter are measured simultaneously using a microwave network analyzer. The measurement is based on an interferometric arrangement to split light into two paths and then combine them. In one of the two paths, a Mach-Zehnder modulator generates two tones without carrier and the narrow-band optical filter just passes through one of the tones. The temperature and environmental variations are removed by separated phase and amplitude averaging. The amplitude and phase responses of the optical filter are measured to the resolution and accuracy of the network analyzer

Identification of overexpressed cytokines as serum biomarkers of hepatitis C virus-induced liver fibrosis using bead-based flexible multiple analyte profiling

Hepatic inflammation is the stimulator to activate hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and triggers fibrogenesis. Cytokines are produced during liver inflammation and maybe considered as liver fibrosis biomarker. The aim of this study was to investigate whether cytokines can be used as reliable biomarkers of liver fibrosis using flexible multi-analyte profiling (xMAP). A total of 61 chronic hepatitis C patients with different severity of liver fibrosis were enrolled. Liver biopsy was used as standard to assess the severity of fibrosis according to METAVIR classification. Afterward, 15 samples from healthy controls were analyzed and totally 50 cytokines were screened using flexible multi-analyte profiling to discover differential biomarkers. Finally, levels of protein expressions of individual stages of liver fibrosis were measured. In histological examination, the necroinflammatory score (histology activity index, HAI) was increased from F1 to F4 stage in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients, indicating that inflammation was accompanied with the progression of liver fibrosis. Using flexible multi-analyte profiling, four serum cytokines, including IFN-α2 (p=0.023), GRO-α (p=0.013), SCF (p=0.047) and SDF-1α p=0.024), were identified under antibody specific recognition and elevated with HAI score. This study reveals the relationship between cytokines and liver fibrosis, and demonstrated that IFN-α2, GRO-α, SCF and SDF-1 α may be used as biomarkers to predict liver fibrosis. The overexpressed cytokines may play a role in the progression of liver fibrosis and deserves further investigation.Keywords: Cytokine, flexible multi-analyte profiling, hepatitis C virus, liver fibrosisAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 11(29), pp. 7535-7541, 29 April, 201

Conserved charged amino acid residues in the extracellular region of sodium/iodide symporter are critical for iodide transport activity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sodium/iodide symporter (NIS) mediates the active transport and accumulation of iodide from the blood into the thyroid gland. His-226 located in the extracellular region of NIS has been demonstrated to be critical for iodide transport in our previous study. The conserved charged amino acid residues in the extracellular region of NIS were therefore characterized in this study.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fourteen charged residues (Arg-9, Glu-79, Arg-82, Lys-86, Asp-163, His-226, Arg-228, Asp-233, Asp-237, Arg-239, Arg-241, Asp-311, Asp-322, and Asp-331) were replaced by alanine. Iodide uptake abilities of mutants were evaluated by steady-state and kinetic analysis. The three-dimensional comparative protein structure of NIS was further modeled using sodium/glucose transporter as the reference protein.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All the NIS mutants were expressed normally in the cells and targeted correctly to the plasma membrane. However, these mutants, except R9A, displayed severe defects on the iodide uptake. Further kinetic analysis revealed that mutations at conserved positively charged amino acid residues in the extracellular region of NIS led to decrease NIS-mediated iodide uptake activity by reducing the maximal rate of iodide transport, while mutations at conserved negatively charged residues led to decrease iodide transport by increasing dissociation between NIS mutants and iodide.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This is the first report characterizing thoroughly the functional significance of conserved charged amino acid residues in the extracellular region of NIS. Our data suggested that conserved charged amino acid residues, except Arg-9, in the extracellular region of NIS were critical for iodide transport.</p

Abdominal Tuberculosis in Adult: 10-Year Experience in a Teaching Hospital in Central Taiwan

Background/PurposeTuberculosis (TB) is an important communicable disease worldwide. The clinical presentation of abdominal TB often mimics various gastrointestinal disorders and may delay accurate diagnosis. In this study, we conducted a 10-year retrospective study to investigate the clinical manifestations, treatment responses and outcomes of abdominal TB.MethodsThis retrospective study recruited patients presenting between January 1998 and December 2007; all patients ≥ 18 years of age with a diagnosis of abdominal TB were enrolled. Patient charts were thoroughly reviewed and clinical specimens were processed in the laboratory using the BBL MycoPrep System and BACTEC MGIT 960 Mycobacterial Detection System. Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex was confirmed by acid fast stain and the BD ProbeTec ET System.ResultsDuring the study period, 34 patients were diagnosed with abdominal TB. The mean age was 55+18 years. Fourteen patients (41%) had no risk factors; however, 20 patients (59%) had at least one risk factor. Abdominal pain (94.1%), abdominal fullness (91.2%), anorexia (88.2%) and ascites (76.5%) were the most common presenting symptoms. The peritoneum (88%) was the most commonly involved site. Patients with risk factors such as liver cirrhosis, end-stage renal disease and diabetes mellitus had a higher positive rate of acid-fast stain and mycobacterial culture from abdominal specimens (p = 0.02 and 0.05, respectively). The crude mortality rate was 9% and the attributed mortality rate was 3%.ConclusionIn an endemic area like Taiwan, regardless of whether a patient has risk factors for TB, abdominal TB should be seriously considered as a differential diagnosis when a patient presents with gastrointestinal symptoms and unexplained ascites

Association of Serum Phosphate and Related Factors in ESRD-Related Vascular Calcification

Vascular calcification is common in ESRD patients and is important in increasing mortality from cardiovascular complications in these patients. Hyperphosphatemia related to chronic kidney disease is increasingly known as major stimulus for vascular calcification. Hyperphosphatemia and vascular calcification become popular discussion among nephrologist environment more than five decades, and many researches have been evolved. Risk factors for calcification are nowadays focused for the therapeutic prevention of vascular calcification with the hope of reducing cardiovascular complications

Automatic Cephalometric Landmark Detection on X-Ray Images Using Object Detection

We propose a new deep convolutional cephalometric landmark detection framework for orthodontic treatment. Our proposed method consists of two major steps: landmark detection using a deep neural network for object detection, and landmark repair to ensure one instance per landmark class. For landmark detection, we modify the loss function of the backbone network YOLOv3 to eliminate the constrains on the bounding box and incorporate attention mechanism to improve the detection accuracy. For landmark repair, a triangle mesh is generated from the average face to eliminate superfluous instances, followed by estimation of missing landmarks from the detected ones using Laplacian Mesh. Trained and evaluated on a public benchmark dataset from IEEE ISBI 2015 grand challenge, our proposed framework obtains comparable results compared to the state-of-the-art methods for cephalometric landmark detection, and demonstrates the efficacy of using a deep CNN model for accurate object detection of landmarks defined by only a single pixel location

Discovery of serum biomarkers of alcoholic fatty liver in a rodent model: C-reactive protein

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Excessive consumption of alcohol contributes to alcoholic liver disease. Fatty liver is the early stage of alcohol-related liver disease. The aim of this study was to search for specific serological biomarkers of alcoholic fatty liver (AFL) compared to healthy controls, non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and liver fibrosis in a rodent model.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Serum samples derived from animals with AFL, NAFL, or liver fibrosis were characterized and compared using two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis. A matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight tandem mass spectrometer in conjunction with mascot software was used for protein identification. Subsequently, Western blotting and flexible multi-analyte profiling were used to measure the expressions of the putative biomarkers present in the serum of animals and clinical patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Eight differential putative biomarkers were identified, and the two most differentiated proteins, including upregulated C-reactive protein (CRP) and downregulated haptoglobin (Hp), were further investigated. Western blotting validated that CRP was dramatically higher in the serum of AFL compared to healthy controls and other animals with liver disease of NAFL or liver fibrosis (<it>p </it>< 0.05). Moreover, we found that CRP and Hp were both lower in liver fibrosis of TAA-induced rats and clinical hepatitis C virus-infected patients.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest that increased levels of CRP are an early sign of AFL in rats. The abnormally elevated CRP induced by ethanol can be used as a biomarker to distinguish AFL from normal or otherwise diseased livers.</p