Commentary on the Regulation of Viral Proteins in Autophagy Process

The ability to subvert intracellular antiviral defenses is necessary for virus to survive as its replication occurs only in the host cells. Viruses have to modulate cellular processes and antiviral mechanisms to their own advantage during the entire virus life cycle. Autophagy plays important roles in cell regulation. Its function is not only to catabolize aggregate proteins and damaged organelles for recycling but also to serve as innate immunity to remove intracellular pathogenic elements such as viruses. Nevertheless, some viruses have evolved to negatively regulate autophagy by inhibiting its formation. Even more, some viruses have employed autophagy to benefit their replication. To date, there are more and more growing evidences uncovering the functions of many viral proteins to regulate autophagy through different cellular pathways. In this review, we will discuss the relationship between viruses and autophagy and summarize the current knowledge on the functions of viral proteins contributing to affect autophagy process

Delayed Airway Obstruction after Internal Jugular Venous Catheterization in a Patient with Anticoagulant Therapy

Delayed onset of neck hematoma following central venous catheterization without arterial puncture is uncommon. Herein, we present a patient who developed a delayed neck hematoma after repeated attempts at right internal jugular venous puncture and subsequent enoxaparin administration. Progressive airway obstruction occurred on the third day after surgery. Ultrasound examination revealed diffuse hematoma of the right neck, and fibreoptic examination of the airway revealed pharyngeal edema. After emergent surgical removal of the hematoma, the patient was extubated uneventfully

Kaluza-Klein Structure Associated With Fat Brane

It is known that the imposition of orbifold boundary conditions on background scalar field can give rise to a non-trivial vacuum expectation value (VEV) along extra dimensions, which in turn generates fat branes and associated unconventional Kaluza-Klein (KK) towers of fermions. We study the structure of these KK towers in the limit of one large extra dimension and show that normalizable (bound) states of massless and massive fermions can exist at both orbifold fixed points. Closer look however indicates that orbifold boundary conditions act to suppress at least half of bound KK modes, while periodic boundary conditions tend to drive the high-lying modes to the conventional structure. By investigating the scattering of fermions on branes, we analytically compute masses and wavefunctions of KK spectra in the presence of these boundary conditions up to one-loop level. Implication of KK-number non-conservation couplings on the Coulomb potential is also examined.Comment: RevTex4, 29 pages, 7 ps figures, new references adde

Slow conduction and gap junction remodeling in murine ventricle after chronic alcohol ingestion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Long-term heavy alcohol drinkers are prone to the development of cardiac arrhythmia. To understand the mechanisms, we evaluated the cardiac structural and electrophysiological changes in mice chronically drinking excessive alcohol.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Male C57BL/6J mice were given 36% alcohol in the drinking water. Those given blank water were used as control. Twelve weeks later, the phenotypic characteristics of the heart, including gap junctions and electrical properties were examined. In the alcohol group the ventricles contained a smaller size of cardiomyocytes and a higher density of capillary networks, compared to the control. Western blots showed that, after drinking alcohol, the content of connexin43 (Cx43) protein in the left ventricle was increased by 18% (p < 0.05). Consistently, immunoconfocal microscopy demonstrated that Cx43 gap junctions were up-regulated in the alcohol group with a disorganized distribution, compared to the control. Optical mapping showed that the alcohol group had a reduced conduction velocity (40 ± 18 vs 60 ± 7 cm/sec, p < 0.05) and a higher incidence of ventricular tachyarrhythmia (62% vs 30%, p < 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Long-term excessive alcohol intake resulted in extensive cardiac remodeling, including changes in expression and distribution of gap junctions, growth of capillary network, reduction of cardiomyocyte size, and decrease of myocardial conduction.</p

Comparison of the Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome Between the Criteria for Taiwanese and Japanese and the Projected Probability of Stroke in Elderly Hypertensive Taiwanese

SummaryBackgroundThe cutoff of abdominal circumference for metabolic syndrome (MS) defined by the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) of Taiwan for Taiwanese (men, 90cm; women, 80cm) and by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) for Japanese (men, 85cm; women, 90cm) differs. This study aimed to examine the impact of this difference on the prevalence of MS and the impact of an MS diagnosis on the projected risk of stroke in hypertensive Taiwanese.MethodsMS was examined in a sample of 3,472 hypertensive patients (aged 55–80 years; 1,709 women) across Taiwan. The 10-year probability of stroke estimated from the Framingham equation was compared between MS and non-MS patients.ResultsThe prevalence of MS using the BHP criteria was 59.2% using the BHP criteria (95% confidence interval, CI, 57.6–60.8%; men, 52.5%; women, 66.1%) and 48.9% by the IDF criteria (95% CI, 47.2–50.5%; men, 61.3%; women, 36.1%). Both criteria showed that, compared with non-MS, MS has higher predicted 10-year probability of stroke (BHP, 0.153 ± 0.115 vs. 0.133 ± 0.105; IDF, 0.159 ± 0.109 vs. 0.132 ± 0.112; both p < 0.001) because of the difference in women (BHP, 0.143 ± 0.124 vs. 0.102 ± 0.091; IDF, 0.147 ± 0.121 vs. 0.118 ± 0.110; both p < 0.001) rather than men (BHP, p = 0.21; IDF, p = 0.29).ConclusionBoth criteria demonstrate that MS is highly prevalent in elderly hypertensive patients in Taiwan. Additionally in women, but not men, the predicted probability of stroke is higher in MS than in non-MS patients. The diagnosis of MS is potentially useful for identifying elderly hypertensive females with an elevated risk of stroke in Taiwan

Critical Acceptance Factors of Cloud-Based Public Health Records

Personal health records (PHR) is a tool that can be used to assist patients in health management, and cloud-based PHR is expected to effectively integrate medical resources and information, elevate overall healthcare quality, and reduce unnecessary medical costs. This study tends to explore the factors that affect users’ intention to use with regard to the Microsoft HealthVault hybrid cloud health system in Taiwan. A research model combined with Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Task-Technology Fit (TTF) models as well as perceived risks and trust is proposed including 10 hypotheses. After conducting a series survey, in total, 254 valid questionnaires in Taiwan were received. Some preliminary findings are discussed, and it is hoped that this model can be used to explore the key factors influencing usage intent toward the HealthVault

Construction and verification of digital electronics contestants' indicators for vocational education in Taiwan

No AbstractKeywords: competency indicator, digital electronics, important-performance analysis, skill competitio

Critical Factors of Adopting Enterprise Application Integration Technology: An Empirical Study on Larger Hospitals

As hospitals extend their service scope, they adopt more information systems. These systems are implemented in different timelines and the interfaces of databases become varied. Frequently, the exchange of information between various systems requires additional coordination or even manual input for unifying data. To embrace automation, the solution is to adopt enterprise application integration (EAI) technology, the middleware, to convert data from among various information systems to enable an efficient flow of data in the hospital. In this paper, we discuss and verify the impact factors on the integration levels of EAI by surveying larger hospitals above the regional level in Taiwan and testing a proposed research model. The findings of this study show that information technology infrastructure, hospital size, external pressure, internal pressure, and external support significantly affect the EAI level

Hafnium oxide-based ferroelectric thin-film transistor with a-InGaZnO channel fabricated at temperatures \u3c= 350°C

HfO2-based ferroelectric materials integrated with oxide-based thin-film transistors have been considered as potential candidates for back-end-of-line compatible ferroelectric field-effect transistors, which can be vertically stacked on silicon CMOS circuits to realize high-density neural network applications. However, the formation of ferroelectric orthorhombic phase in HfO2-based materials usually requires an annealing temperature of 400°C or higher. In this work, ferroelectric thin-film transistors (Fe-TFTs) were developed by monolithically integrating HfZrO2 (HZO) ferroelectric capacitors with amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs at a maximum processing temperature of 350°C on a glass substrate. A butterfly-shaped C-V curve was clearly observed in the low-temperature annealed metal-HZO-metal capacitor, indicating the formation of ferroelectricity in the HZO layer, as shown in Fig. 1. The positive and negative coercive voltages were 3 V and -2.4 V, respectively. The dielectric constant was 20.65. The field-effect mobility, threshold voltage, subthreshold swing and on/off current ratio of the a-IGZO TFT extracted from the transfer characteristics shown in Fig. 2 were 6.15 cm2V-1s-1, 1.5 V, 0.1 V/dec and 4.3´107, respectively. Fig. 3 shows the transfer hysteresis curves of the low-temperature Fe-TFTs in a metal-ferroelectric-metal-insulator-semiconductor configuration. The Fe-TFTs exhibited large hysteresis memory windows of 2.8 V and 3.8 V when the area ratios between ferroelectric capacitors and gate insulators (AFE / ADE) were 1/8 and 1/12, respectively. The result shows a great potential for back-end-of-line compatible memory applications. Please click Download on the upper right corner to see the full abstract