Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa in contemporary Taiwan: A multiple-case qualitative investigation from a cultural-contextual perspective

Grounded in a cultural and contextual perspective, the current study examined the lived experiences and the recovery pathways of three Taiwanese women diagnosed with various subtypes of anorexia nervosa, at varying stages of their recovery. Specifically, using a multiple-case qualitative method, this study explored the complex, dynamic interactions of sociocultural factors and forces (i.e., cultural, familial, and societal influences) that impinge upon the three Taiwanese female participants in relation to living with anorexia nervosa in contemporary Taiwan. Data were collected based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the participants and relevant written materials and journal entries provided by these participants. The data were first analyzed within each case and then again across all cases. Accordingly, we present the results of the study by illustrating each participant’s story and narrative of struggling with and recovering from anorexia. We then describe three main culturally-related themes that emerged from the cross-case analysis, which pertain specifically to the recovery process of the participants under the East-West ‘biculturalism’ in Taiwan: 1) anorexia as a function of the conflictual bicultural self; 2) recovery as a pathway towards an integrated bicultural self; and 3) the paradoxical roles of Chinese cultural heritage in anorexia and recovery. Findings of the study highlight the role of local cultural factors/forces, including Chinese familism, Confucianism, filial piety, face-saving, gender role prescriptions, biculturalism, Westernization, and self-relation-coordination, in affecting and shaping Taiwanese women’s struggling with anorexia. Implications and recommendations for future research and clinical interventions are discussed

Parents' views of self-management for children with moderate to severe persistent asthma

AbstractObjectivesChildren with moderate to severe persistent asthma, including those with asthma attacks more than once daily, asthma symptoms at night more than once a week, or asthma attacks that affect activities and sleep, may have irregular and recurrent symptoms until adolescence. Such symptoms may affect quality of life and even cause death. This study explored the self-management experiences of children with asthma in Hualien City, Taiwan, based on the views expressed by their parents.Materials and methodsThis study used a qualitative inquiry of 15 parents of children with asthma, in order to understand the children's self-management experiences.ResultsThe findings from this study, as derived from content analysis, showed the following six domains of self-management: (1) knowledge of asthma; (2) use of asthma medications; (3) issues related to physical exercise; (4) self-care in daily life; (5) prevention and handling of asthmatic episodes; and (6) other issues related to asthma.ConclusionThe results of the study can help health professionals understand the self-management experiences of families who have a child with persistent asthma, which in turn could provide appropriate guidelines and valuable information for development of self-management programs for children with asthma

A critical review on sustainable biochar system through gasification: energy and environmental applications

This review lays great emphasis on production and characteristics of biochar through gasification. Specifically, the physicochemical properties and yield of biochar through the diverse gasification conditions associated with various types of biomass were extensively evaluated. In addition, potential application scenarios of biochar through gasification were explored and their environmental implications were discussed. To qualitatively evaluate biochar sustainability through the gasification process, all gasification products (i.e., syngas and biochar) were evaluated via life cycle assessment (LCA). A concept of balancing syngas and biochar production for an economically and environmentally feasible gasification system was proposed and relevant challenges and solutions were suggested in this review

Mesenchymal stem cell secretes microparticles enriched in pre-microRNAs

10.1093/nar/gkp857Nucleic Acids Research381215-22

Polyamines and hyposaline stress in Ulva fasciata 167 Bot

Abstract. This study was conducted to investigate changes of free polyamine levels in response to hyposaline stress in Ulva fasciata Delile. Free putrescine, spermidine, and spermine are present in this alga. As salinity decreased from 30 to 5, specific growth rate (%/d), TTC reduction activity, net photosynthetic O 2 evolution rate and chlorophyll levels decreased. Plants grown at 5 bleached except the basal part near rhizoidal portion. Free putrescine maintained at a constant level at salinity over the range of 10~30 and increased three fold following 5 treatment. Free spermidine also increased when salinity fell below 15. In plants grown at 5, free putrescine and spermidine accumulation in the basal part was less than in the remaining part. Free spermine levels increased as salinity decreased from 30 to 10, but dropped sharply at 5. Both α-difluoromethylarginine (0.2 mM) and D-arginine (1 mM), inhibitors of arginine decarboxylase (EC 4.1.1.19), and also both α-difluoromethylornithine (0.2 mM) and α-methylornithine (0.2 mM), inhibitors of ornithine decarboxylase (EC 4.1.1.17), inhibited the 5-induced free putrescine accumulation. Overall, the present results suggest that an extreme hyposaline condition (5) induced a significant accumulation of free putrescine and spermidine in U. fasciata and that ADC and ODC each contributed to free putrescine accumulation. The relationships between accumulated putrescine and hyposaline injury are discussed

台湾の大学における日本語教育の沿革に関する一考察 : 特に第二次大戦後に焦点を当てて

The Japanese language education in overseas territory started, first time in history, in Taiwan as a national policy. It is already over a century since then. For the initial 50 years, the Japanese language education was made as a colonial mother tongue. In the beginning of next 60 years, the Japanese language education has been suppressed by Taiwan government until Taiwan is democratized and the Japanese language education in Taiwan is normalized. On the contrary, due to the recovery and the prosperity of Japanese economy after World War II, Japanese language education has been wide spread all over the world, and currently enormous number of people are studying the language. The purpose of this paper is to examine the change, the status quo, and the prospect of Japanese language education policy at university in Taiwan

Differentiation of Foot-and-Mouth Disease-Infected pigs from Vaccinated Pigs Using Antibody-Detecting Sandwich ELISA

The presence of serum antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) can differentiate FMDV-infected animals from vaccinated animals. In this study, a sandwich ELISA was developed for rapid detection of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) antibodies; it was based on an Escherichia coli-expressed, highly conserved region of the 3ABC nonstructural protein of the FMDV O/TW/99 strain and a monoclonal antibody derived from the expressed protein. The diagnostic sensitivity of the assay was 98.4%, and the diagnostic specificity was 100% for naïve and vaccinated pigs; the detection ability of the assay was comparable those of the PrioCHECK and UBI kits. There was 97.5, 93.4 and 66.6% agreement between the results obtained from our ELISA and those obtained from the PrioCHECK, UBI and CHEKIT kits, respectively. The kappa statistics were 0.95, 0.87 and 0.37, respectively. Moreover, antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the serotypes A, C, Asia 1, SAT 1, SAT 2 and SAT 3 were also detected in bovine sera. Furthermore, the absence of cross-reactions generated by different antibody titers against the swine vesicular disease virus and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was also highlighted in this assay's specificit

A Temporal Frequent Itemset-Based Clustering Approach For Discovering Event Episodes From News Sequence

When performing environmental scanning, organizations typically deal with a numerous of events and topics about their core business, relevant technique standards, competitors, and market, where each event or topic to monitor or track generally is associated with many news documents. To reduce information overload and information fatigues when monitoring or tracking such events, it is essential to develop an effective event episode discovery mechanism for organizing all news documents pertaining to an event of interest. In this study, we propose the time-adjoining frequent itemset-based event-episode discovery (TAFIED) technique. Based on the frequent itemset-based hierarchical clustering (FIHC) approach, our proposed TAFIED further considers the temporal characteristic of news articles, including the burst, novelty, and temporal proximity of features in an event episode, when discovering event episodes from the sequence of news articles pertaining to a specific event. Using the traditional feature-based HAC, HAC with a time-decaying function (HAC+TD), and FIHC techniques as performance benchmarks, our empirical evaluation results suggest that the proposed TAFIED technique outperforms all evaluation benchmarks in cluster recall and cluster precision