Can Physical Fitness Performance be Used to Predict the BMI Status of First-Year Students? A Case Study from a University in Southern Taiwan

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the physical fitness performance of college freshmen and the BMI body weight status (normal/ abnormal). We conducted case studies and obtained data on 7,160 participants aged 18 years from a university in southern Taiwan. All participants completed four physical fitness tests (seated forward bench, standing long jump, sit-ups, and cardiorespiratory endurance) and BMI assessments with the professional assistance of PE teachers. BMI is used to define the normal and abnormal state of body weight. Logistic regression analysis was used in this study. The results show that the four physical fitness tests currently implemented in college physical education can be used to predict whether the weight of the freshmen is normal. Cardiorespiratory endurance seems to be the most important feature for predicting the type of BMI (normal/abnormal), whether male or female. When the "cardiorespiratory endurance" of freshman students increases by a category, the probability of males belonging to the healthy weight category increases by 4.879 times, and the probability of females increases by 2.927 times. This study provides a new perspective for predicting whether the freshman's body weight is normal or not by using different types of college physical fitness test performance

Phosphorous Diffuser Diverged Blue Laser Diode for Indoor Lighting and Communication.

An advanced light-fidelity (Li-Fi) system based on the blue Gallium nitride (GaN) laser diode (LD) with a compact white-light phosphorous diffuser is demonstrated for fusing the indoor white-lighting and visible light communication (VLC). The phosphorous diffuser adhered blue GaN LD broadens luminescent spectrum and diverges beam spot to provide ample functionality including the completeness of Li-Fi feature and the quality of white-lighting. The phosphorous diffuser diverged white-light spot covers a radiant angle up to 120(o) with CIE coordinates of (0.34, 0.37). On the other hand, the degradation on throughput frequency response of the blue LD is mainly attributed to the self-feedback caused by the reflection from the phosphor-air interface. It represents the current state-of-the-art performance on carrying 5.2-Gbit/s orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed 16-quadrature-amplitude modulation (16-QAM OFDM) data with a bit error rate (BER) of 3.1 × 10(-3) over a 60-cm free-space link. This work aims to explore the plausibility of the phosphorous diffuser diverged blue GaN LD for future hybrid white-lighting and VLC systems

Structural insights into the electron/proton transfer pathways in the quinol : fumarate reductase from Desulfovibrio gigas

Guan, H., Hsieh, Y., Lin, P. et al. Structural insights into the electron/proton transfer pathways in the quinol : fumarate reductase from Desulfovibrio gigas. Sci Rep 8, 14935 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41598-018-33193-

Structural insights into the electron/proton transfer pathways in the quinol:fumarate reductase from Desulfovibrio gigas

The membrane-embedded quinol:fumarate reductase (QFR) in anaerobic bacteria catalyzes the reduction of fumarate to succinate by quinol in the anaerobic respiratory chain. The electron/proton-transfer pathways in QFRs remain controversial. Here we report the crystal structure of QFR from the anaerobic sulphate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio gigas (D. gigas) at 3.6 Å resolution. The structure of the D. gigas QFR is a homo-dimer, each protomer comprising two hydrophilic subunits, A and B, and one transmembrane subunit C, together with six redox cofactors including two b-hemes. One menaquinone molecule is bound near heme b_L in the hydrophobic subunit C. This location of the menaquinone-binding site differs from the menaquinol-binding cavity proposed previously for QFR from Wolinella succinogenes. The observed bound menaquinone might serve as an additional redox cofactor to mediate the proton-coupled electron transport across the membrane. Armed with these structural insights, we propose electron/proton-transfer pathways in the quinol reduction of fumarate to succinate in the D. gigas QFR

Structural insights into the electron/proton transfer pathways in the quinol : fumarate reductase from Desulfovibrio gigas

The membrane-embedded quinol: fumarate reductase (QFR) in anaerobic bacteria catalyzes the reduction of fumarate to succinate by quinol in the anaerobic respiratory chain. The electron/protontransfer pathways in QFRs remain controversial. Here we report the crystal structure of QFR from the anaerobic sulphate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio gigas (D. gigas) at 3.6 Å resolution. The structure of the D. gigas QFR is a homo-dimer, each protomer comprising two hydrophilic subunits, A and B, and one transmembrane subunit C, together with six redox cofactors including two b-hemes. One menaquinone molecule is bound near heme bL in the hydrophobic subunit C. This location of the menaquinone-binding site differs from the menaquinol-binding cavity proposed previously for QFR from Wolinella succinogenes. The observed bound menaquinone might serve as an additional redox cofactor to mediate the proton-coupled electron transport across the membrane. Armed with these structuralinsights, we propose electron/proton-transfer pathways in the quinol reduction of fumarate to succinate in the D. gigas QFR.Guan, H., Hsieh, Y., Lin, P. et al. Structural insights into the electron/proton transfer pathways in the quinol : fumarate reductase from Desulfovibrio gigas. Sci Rep 8, 14935 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41598-018-33193-

Comparison of eight modern preoperative scoring systems for survival prediction in patients with extremity metastasis

BACKGROUND: Survival is an important factor to consider when clinicians make treatment decisions for patients with skeletal metastasis. Several preoperative scoring systems (PSSs) have been developed to aid in survival prediction. Although we previously validated the Skeletal Oncology Research Group Machine-learning Algorithm (SORG-MLA) in Taiwanese patients of Han Chinese descent, the performance of other existing PSSs remains largely unknown outside their respective development cohorts. We aim to determine which PSS performs best in this unique population and provide a direct comparison between these models. METHODS: We retrospectively included 356 patients undergoing surgical treatment for extremity metastasis at a tertiary center in Taiwan to validate and compare eight PSSs. Discrimination (c-index), decision curve (DCA), calibration (ratio of observed:expected survivors), and overall performance (Brier score) analyses were conducted to evaluate these models' performance in our cohort. RESULTS: The discriminatory ability of all PSSs declined in our Taiwanese cohort compared with their Western validations. SORG-MLA is the only PSS that still demonstrated excellent discrimination (c-indexes>0.8) in our patients. SORG-MLA also brought the most net benefit across a wide range of risk probabilities on DCA with its 3-month and 12-month survival predictions. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians should consider potential ethnogeographic variations of a PSS's performance when applying it onto their specific patient populations. Further international validation studies are needed to ensure that existing PSSs are generalizable and can be integrated into the shared treatment decision-making process. As cancer treatment keeps advancing, researchers developing a new prediction model or refining an existing one could potentially improve their algorithm's performance by using data gathered from more recent patients that are reflective of the current state of cancer care

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM