Taiwan's COVID-19 response : the interdependence of state and private sector institutions

During 2020, Taiwan's facemask policy formed a critical part of its relatively successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also served to showcase capacities for coordinated action by state and business actors. This article demonstrates that Taiwan's ability to rapidly increase facemask production called for the government and key industry players to overcome a series of cooperation challenges. The authors show that the effective industry response required concerted action in three domains: the state sector, business–government cooperation, and cooperation among private firms. This article makes two contributions. First, it differentiates the dynamics attached to coordination, commitment and collective action challenges that actors in public and private sectors needed to overcome in order to deliver on the policy. Second, it contributes to the literature by endorsing the view that business–government cooperation and private sector coordination are complementary and interdependent. The findings presented here further illustrate the evolution of Taiwan's state institutions in their capacity to take on new tasks and modes of interaction with private sector actors.Peer reviewe

Reliability Driven Synthesis of Sequential Circuits

Coordinated Science Laboratory was formerly known as Control Systems LaboratorySemiconductor Research Corporation / SRC 95-DP-109Joint Services Electronics Program / N00014-90-J-127

SPIRITS 15c and SPIRITS 14buu: Two Obscured Supernovae in the Nearby Star-Forming Galaxy IC 2163

SPIRITS---SPitzer InfraRed Intensive Transients Survey---is an ongoing survey of nearby galaxies searching for infrared (IR) transients with Spitzer/IRAC. We present the discovery and follow-up observations of one of our most luminous ($M_{[4.5]} = -17.1\pm0.4$ mag, Vega) and red ($[3.6] - [4.5] = 3.0 \pm 0.2$ mag) transients, SPIRITS 15c. The transient was detected in a dusty spiral arm of IC 2163 ($D\approx35.5$ Mpc). Pre-discovery ground-based imaging revealed an associated, shorter-duration transient in the optical and near-IR (NIR). NIR spectroscopy showed a broad ($\approx 8400$ km s$^{-1}$), double-peaked emission line of He I at $1.083 \mu$m, indicating an explosive origin. The NIR spectrum of SPIRITS 15c is similar to that of the Type IIb SN 2011dh at a phase of $\approx 200$ days. Assuming $A_V = 2.2$ mag of extinction in SPIRITS 15c provides a good match between their optical light curves. The IR light curves and the extreme $[3.6]-[4.5]$ color cannot be explained using only a standard extinction law. Another luminous ($M_{4.5} = -16.1\pm0.4$ mag) event, SPIRITS 14buu, was serendipitously discovered in the same galaxy. The source displays an optical plateau lasting $\gtrsim 80$ days, and we suggest a scenario similar to the low-luminosity Type IIP SN 2005cs obscured by $A_V \approx 1.5$ mag. Other classes of IR-luminous transients can likely be ruled out in both cases. If both events are indeed SNe, this may suggest $\gtrsim 18\%$ of nearby core-collapse SNe are missed by currently operating optical surveys.Comment: 19 pages, 7 Figures, 4 Table

High-Frequency Ultrasound Imaging to Evaluate Liver Fibrosis Progression in Rats and Yi Guan Jian Herbal Therapeutic Effects

The animals used in liver fibrosis studies must usually be sacrificed. Ultrasound has been demonstrated to have the ability to diagnose hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis in experimental small-animal models. However, few studies have used high-frequency ultrasound (HFU, 40 MHz) to monitor changes in the rat liver and other hollow organs longitudinally. In this study, liver fibrosis was induced by administering dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) in SD rats, aged 8 weeks, for three consecutive days per week for up to 4 weeks. A Chinese herbal medicine Yi Guan Jian (YGJ) was orally administered (1.8 g/kg daily) to DMN-induced liver fibrosis rats for 2 weeks. Compared with the normal control rats, rats treated with DMN for either 2 weeks or 4 weeks had significantly lower body weights, liver indexes and elevation of hydroxyproline, GOT, and GPT contents. YGJ herbal treatment remarkably prevented rats from DMN-induced liver fibrosis. The HFU scoring results among the normal controls, 2-week DMN-treated rats, 4-week DMN-treated rats, and combined 2-week YGJ therapy with 4-week DMN-treated rats also reached statistical significance. Thus, HFU is an accurate tool for the longitudinal analysis of liver fibrosis progression in small-animal models, and the YGJ may be useful in reversing the development of hepatic fibrosis

Minimum-Cost QoS-Constrained Deployment and Routing Policies for Wireless Relay Networks

With the continued evolution of wireless communication technology, relaying is one of the features proposed for the 4G LTE Advanced (LTE-A) system. The aim of relaying is to enhance both coverage and capacity. The idea of relays is not new, but relaying is being considered to ensure that the optimum performance is achieved to enable the expectations or good quality of service (QoS) of the users to be met while still keeping capital expenditure (CAPEX) within the budgeted bounds of operators. In this paper, we try to stand for an operator to propose a solution that determines where and how many relays should be deployed in the planning stages to minimize the development cost. In the planning stages, we not only derive a multicast tree routing algorithm to both determine and fulfill the QoS requirements to enhance throughput, but we also utilize the Lagrangian relaxation (LR) method in conjunction with optimization-based heuristics and conduct computational experiments to evaluate the performance. Our contribution is utilizing the LR method to propose an optimal solution to minimize the CAPEX of operators to build up a relay network with more efficiency and effectiveness and the QoS can be guaranteed by service level agreement

MicroRNA Regulation of Cell Lineages in Mouse and Human Embryonic Stem Cells

SummaryCell fate decisions of pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells are dictated by activation and repression of lineage-specific genes. Numerous signaling and transcriptional networks progressively narrow and specify the potential of ES cells. Whether specific microRNAs help refine and limit gene expression and, thereby, could be used to manipulate ES cell differentiation has largely been unexplored. Here, we show that two serum response factor (SRF)-dependent muscle-specific microRNAs, miR-1 and miR-133, promote mesoderm formation from ES cells but have opposing functions during further differentiation into cardiac muscle progenitors. Furthermore, miR-1 and miR-133 were potent repressors of nonmuscle gene expression and cell fate during mouse and human ES cell differentiation. miR-1's effects were in part mediated by translational repression of the Notch ligand Delta-like 1 (Dll-1). Our findings indicate that muscle-specific miRNAs reinforce the silencing of nonmuscle genes during cell lineage commitment and suggest that miRNAs may have general utility in regulating cell-fate decisions from pluripotent ES cells