The impact of foreign trading information on emerging futures markets: a study of Taiwan's unique data set

Using a unique dataset from the Taiwan Futures Exchange, this paper investigates whether trading imbalances by foreign investors affect emerging Taiwan futures market in terms of returns and volatility. First, this evidence demonstrates a positive relation between contemporaneous futures returns and net purchases by foreign investors when other market factor effects are controlled. Second, this failure to detect price reversals is inconsistent with the price pressure hypothesis. Third, foreign investors do not exhibit positive feedback trading patterns. Fourth, a bi-directional Granger-causality relationship exists between futures volatility and foreign trading flows. As found for other stock or foreign exchange markets, our empirical results demonstrate that foreign trading flows do have impacts on the return and volatility of developing futures market, suggesting that trading by foreign investors may enhance the information flow of the local futures market.Foreign trading

Lipid-related residual risk and renal function for occurrence and prognosis among patients with first-event acute coronary syndrome and normal LDL cholesterol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We investigated relationship of low levels of high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), high levels of triglycerides, and renal function for the odds, prognosis and survival following acute coronary events among patients with a first event and normal low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A case-control study based on 557 patients and 1086 matched control subjects was conducted. Case patients were followed up for survival with a median of 1.9 years. Participants in the higher quintiles of HDL-C had lower odds to develop acute coronary events (the adjusted odds ratios were 0.24 for the second, 0.24 for the third, 0.10 for the fourth and 0.05 for the fifth quintile). Patients with normal glomerular filtration rate were at a lower risk for all-cause death. However, a reverse association between triglycerides and death risk was found: patients with higher triglycerides were at a lower risk for all-cause death (adjusted relative risk, 0.38 for triglycerides ranging from 82 to 132.9 mg/dL, and 0.14 for triglycerides > = 133 mg/dL).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Low HDL-C was significantly associated with acute coronary events, and triglyceride levels as well as renal function were inversely related to all-cause deaths after the coronary event.</p

PGT-Net: Progressive Guided Multi-task Neural Network for Small-area Wet Fingerprint Denoising and Recognition

Fingerprint recognition on mobile devices is an important method for identity verification. However, real fingerprints usually contain sweat and moisture which leads to poor recognition performance. In addition, for rolling out slimmer and thinner phones, technology companies reduce the size of recognition sensors by embedding them with the power button. Therefore, the limited size of fingerprint data also increases the difficulty of recognition. Denoising the small-area wet fingerprint images to clean ones becomes crucial to improve recognition performance. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end trainable progressive guided multi-task neural network (PGT-Net). The PGT-Net includes a shared stage and specific multi-task stages, enabling the network to train binary and non-binary fingerprints sequentially. The binary information is regarded as guidance for output enhancement which is enriched with the ridge and valley details. Moreover, a novel residual scaling mechanism is introduced to stabilize the training process. Experiment results on the FW9395 and FT-lightnoised dataset provided by FocalTech shows that PGT-Net has promising performance on the wet-fingerprint denoising and significantly improves the fingerprint recognition rate (FRR). On the FT-lightnoised dataset, the FRR of fingerprint recognition can be declined from 17.75% to 4.47%. On the FW9395 dataset, the FRR of fingerprint recognition can be declined from 9.45% to 1.09%

Maintaining the structural integrity of thebamboo mosaic virus 3′ untranslated region isnecessary for retaining the catalytic constant forminus-strand RNA synthesis

Background: Bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV) and the Potato virus X (PVX) are members of the genus Potexvirus andhave a single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome. The 3′-untranslated region (UTR) of the BaMV RNA genomewas mapped structurally into ABC (a cloverleaf-like), D (a stem-loop), and E (pseudoknot) domains. The BaMVreplicase complex that was isolated from the infected plants was able to recognize the 3′ UTR of PVX RNA toinitiate minus-strand RNA synthesis in vitro.Results: To investigate whether the 3′ UTR of PVX RNA is also compatible with BaMV replicase in vivo, weconstructed chimera mutants using a BaMV backbone containing the PVX 3′ UTR, which was inserted in or used toreplace the various domains in the 3′ UTR of BaMV. None of the mutants, except for the mutant with the PVX3′ UTR inserted upstream of the BaMV 3′ UTR, exhibited a detectable accumulation of viral RNA in Nicotianabenthamiana plants. The in vitro BaMV RdRp replication assay demonstrated that the RNA products were generatedby the short RNA transcripts, which were derived from the chimera mutants to various extents. Furthermore, theVmax/KM of the BaMV 3′ UTR (rABCDE) was approximately three fold higher than rABCP, rP, and rDE in minus-strandRNA synthesis. These mutants failed to accumulate viral products in protoplasts and plants, but were adequatelyreplicated in vitro.Conclusions: Among the various studied BaMV/PVX chimera mutants, the BaMV-S/PABCDE that containednon-interrupted BaMV 3′ UTR was the only mutant that exhibited a wild-type level of viral product accumulation inprotoplasts and plants. These results indicate that the continuity of the domains in the 3′ UTR of BaMV RNA wasnot interrupted and the domains were not replaced with the 3′ UTR of PVX RNA in vivo

Consistency of genetic inheritance mode and heritability patterns of triglyceride vs. high density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio in two Taiwanese family samples

BACKGROUND: Triglyceride/HDL cholesterol ratio (TG/HDL-C) is considered as a risk factor for cardiovascular events. Genetic components were important in controlling the variation in western countries. But the mode of inheritance and family aggregation patterns were still unknown among Asian-Pacific countries. This study, based on families recruited from community and hospital, is aimed to investigate the mode of inheritance, heritability and shared environmental factors in controlling TG/HDL-C. RESULTS: Two populations, one from community-based families (n = 988, 894 parent-offspring and 453 sibling pairs) and the other from hospital-based families (n = 1313, 76 parent-offspring and 52 sibling pairs) were sampled. The population in hospital-based families had higher mean age values than community-based families (54.7 vs. 34.0). Logarithmic transformed TG/ HDL-C values, after adjusted by age, gender and body mass index, were for genetic analyses. Significant parent-offspring and sibling correlations were also found in both samples. The parent-offspring correlation coefficient was higher in the hospital-based families than in the community-based families. Genetic heritability was higher in community-based families (0.338 ± 0.114, p = 0.002), but the common shared environmental factor was higher in hospital-based families (0.203 ± 0.042, p < 0.001). Commingling analyses showed that more than one-component distribution models were the best-fit models to explain the variance in both populations. Complex segregation analysis by regressive models revealed that in both samples the best-fit model of TG/HDL-C was the model of environmental effects plus familial correlation, in which significant parent-offspring and sibling correlations were demonstrated. Models of major gene effects were rejected in both samples. CONCLUSION: Variations of TG/HDL-C in the normal ranges were likely to be influenced by multiple factors, including environmental and genetic components. Higher genetic factors were proved in younger community-based families than in older hospital-based families

Prediction model for high glycated hemoglobin concentration among ethnic Chinese in Taiwan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study aimed to construct a prediction model to identify subjects with high glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels by incorporating anthropometric, lifestyle, clinical, and biochemical information in a large cross-sectional ethnic Chinese population in Taiwan from a health checkup center.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The prediction model was derived from multivariate logistic regression, and we evaluated the performance of the model in identifying the cases with high HbA1c levels (> = 7.0%). In total 17,773 participants (age > = 30 years) were recruited and 323 participants (1.8%) had high HbA1c levels. The study population was divided randomly into two parts, with 80% as the derivation data and 20% as the validation data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The point-based clinical model, including age (maximal 8 points), sex (1 point), family history (3 points), body mass index (2 points), waist circumference (4 points), and systolic blood pressure (3 points) reached an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.723 (95% confidence interval, 0.677- 0.769) in the validation data. Adding biochemical measures such as triglycerides and HDL cholesterol improved the prediction power (AUC, 0.770 [0.723 - 0.817], <it>P </it>= < 0.001 compared with the clinical model). A cutoff point of 7 had a sensitivity of 0.76 to 0.96 and a specificity of 0.39 to 0.63 for the prediction model.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A prediction model was constructed for the prevalent risk of high HbA1c, which could be useful in identifying high risk subjects for diabetes among ethnic Chinese in Taiwan.</p

Segregation analysis of apolipoprotein A1 levels in families of adolescents: A community-based study in Taiwan

BACKGROUND: Apolipoprotein (Apo) A1 is a protective factor for cardiovascular events. This study aimed to perform complex segregation analyses of Apo A1 levels in families of adolescents systematically ascertained from the junior high school students in a rural community. Both siblings and parents of the adolescent probands were recruited for the study. Apo A1 concentrations were measured by turbidimetric immunoassay methods. After adjustment for gender, age, body mass index, smoking and drinking status, residual values of Apo A1 were subjected to subsequent analyses. RESULTS: Significant mother-father and parent-offspring correlations were found. Commingling analyses indicated that a four-component distribution model was needed to account for the Apo A1 variation. Segregation analysis using regressive models revealed that the best-fit model of Apo A1 was a model of environmental effect plus familial correlation (heritability = 23.9%), in which a significant mother-father correlation existed. Models containing major gene effect could be rejected. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that variations of Apo A1 levels in the normal range, especially during adolescence, are likely to be influenced by multiple factors without significant contribution from major genes

Total white blood cell count or neutrophil count predict ischemic stroke events among adult Taiwanese: report from a community-based cohort study

BACKGROUND: Evidence about whether white blood cell (WBC) or its subtypes can act as a biomarker to predict the ischemic stroke events in the general population is scanty, particularly in Asian populations. The aim of this study is to establish the predictive ability of total WBC count or subtypes for long-term ischemic stroke events in the cohort population in Taiwan. METHODS: The Chin-Shan Community Cohort Study began from 1990 to 2007 by recruiting 1782 men and 1814 women of Chinese ethnicity. Following a total of 3416 participants free from ischemic stroke events at baseline for a median of 15.9 years; we documented 187 new incident cases. RESULTS: The multivariate relative risk for the comparison of the participants in the fifth and first WBC count quintiles was 1.67 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–2.73; P for trend=0.03), and the corresponding relative risk for neutrophil count was 1.93 (95% CI, 1.13–3.29; P for trend=0.02). The discriminative ability by WBC and neutrophil counts were similar (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.600 for adding WBC, 0.610 for adding neutrophils, 0.595 for traditional risk factor model). In addition, the net reclassification improvement (NRI) values between the neutrophil and white blood cell count models were not significant (NRI, =-2.60%, P=0.35), indicating the similar discrimination performance for both WBC and neutrophil counts. CONCLUSIONS: WBC and neutrophil count had a similar ability to predict the long-term ischemic stroke events among Taiwanese