Maternal Demographic and Psychosocial Factors Associated with Low Birth Weight in Eastern Taiwan

The relationship between birth weight and maternal sociodemographic characteristics was examined in a sample from two teaching hospitals in eastern Taiwan. Using a structured questionnaire, we conducted face- to-face interviews with women at antenatal clinics between 1998 and 1999 in Hualien City. One year later, we took the outcome of pregnancy from medical records and birth certificates from the Public Health Bureau of Hualien County. Of the 1,128 single live births, 6.8% had low birth weight (LBW) using the World Health Organization cut-off of 2,500 g. LBW was more common in teenage (< 20 years), older (> 30 years), first-time, and unmarried mothers; those with basic/intermediate educational attainment; and residents of aboriginal districts. Teenage pregnancies were more likely than those in adults to be unplanned, and such mothers had smoking or alcohol-drinking behavior. Prevention of teenage pregnancy is crucial to lower LBW rates in eastern Taiwan. For adult mothers, basic or intermediate educational attainment, residence in an aboriginal district, and first-term pregnancy were significant factors associated with LBW, after adjustment for other psychosocial attributes, such as psychologic distress and poor family support. Thus, we should pay more attention when caring for pregnant women with such sociodemographic characteristics, and ensure that they have adequate prenatal care and can adopt a healthy lifestyle

Paclitaxel liposomes exert radio-sensitization effect on breast cancer cell line SK-BR-3 by regulating expressions of apoptotic proteins

Purpose: To study the radio-sanitization effect of paclitaxel liposomes on breast cancer cells, SK-BR-3.Methods: Breast cancer cell line SK-BR-3 was cultured and made into a cell suspension. Four groups of cells were used: control and radiotherapy groups, paclitaxel group, and paclitaxel liposome + radiotherapy group (combination group). The growth inhibitory effects of the different treatments on SKBR-3 cells were determined with CCK-8 method. Apoptosis in each group was evaluated with flow cytometry, while Western blotting was employed to assay Bcl-2, Caspase-3 and Bax protein levels.Results: There were marked inhibitory effect on growth of SK-BR-3 cells in drug, radiotherapy and combination groups, relative to control, while apoptosis was greater in combination group than in drug and radiotherapy groups (p &lt; 0.05). The Bcl-2 protein level was higher in radiotherapy, drug and combination groups than in control group, while Caspase-3 and Bax proteins were markedly higher thancontrol values (p &lt; 0.05).Conclusion: Paclitaxel liposomes exert radio-sensitization effect on SK-BR-3 by regulating the levels of apoptotic proteins. This provides a basis for research and development of new drugs. Keywords: Paclitaxel liposomes, Apoptotic proteins, Breast cancer, SK-BR-3, Radiotherapy, Sensitization, Bcl-2, Caspase-3, Ba

GROUND REACTION FORCE ANALYSIS FOR DIFFERENT FEET POSITION IN BASKETBALL DEFENSIVE-SHUFFLE

INTRODUCTION: There are several steps for defending in basketball competition. Defender must shuffle toward lateral rear to defend. We want to understand how the different defensive steps works when defence. The purpose of this study was to collect the ground reaction force while defender shuffling toward lateral rear to find the differences of the different feet position, which we can find the optimal strategy to stop opponent cutting and moving

Width-tuned magnetic order oscillation on zigzag edges of honeycomb nanoribbons

Quantum confinement and interference often generate exotic properties in nanostructures. One recent highlight is the experimental indication of a magnetic phase transition in zigzag-edged graphene nanoribbons at the critical ribbon width of about 7 nm [G. Z. Magda et al., Nature \textbf{514}, 608 (2014)]. Here we show theoretically that with further increase in the ribbon width, the magnetic correlation of the two edges can exhibit an intriguing oscillatory behavior between antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic, driven by acquiring the positive coherence between the two edges to lower the free energy. The oscillation effect is readily tunable in applied magnetic fields. These novel properties suggest new experimental manifestation of the edge magnetic orders in graphene nanoribbons, and enhance the hopes of graphene-like spintronic nanodevices functioning at room temperature.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

LibreFace: An Open-Source Toolkit for Deep Facial Expression Analysis

Facial expression analysis is an important tool for human-computer interaction. In this paper, we introduce LibreFace, an open-source toolkit for facial expression analysis. This open-source toolbox offers real-time and offline analysis of facial behavior through deep learning models, including facial action unit (AU) detection, AU intensity estimation, and facial expression recognition. To accomplish this, we employ several techniques, including the utilization of a large-scale pre-trained network, feature-wise knowledge distillation, and task-specific fine-tuning. These approaches are designed to effectively and accurately analyze facial expressions by leveraging visual information, thereby facilitating the implementation of real-time interactive applications. In terms of Action Unit (AU) intensity estimation, we achieve a Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) of 0.63 on DISFA, which is 7% higher than the performance of OpenFace 2.0 while maintaining highly-efficient inference that runs two times faster than OpenFace 2.0. Despite being compact, our model also demonstrates competitive performance to state-of-the-art facial expression analysis methods on AffecNet, FFHQ, and RAFDB. Our code will be released at https://github.com/ihp-lab/LibreFaceComment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by WACV 2024 Round 1. (Application Track

Study on the fracture regularity of extra thick and hard roof in “short-face” mining and its blasting weakening technology

Based on the 211113 “short face” of Xinji No. 2 Mine of China Coal Group, this study investigated the weakening regularity of blasting vibration and rock bursting of roof through FLAC3D numerical simulation on the basis of the hard roof fracture regularity through theoretical analysis. The results show that the vibration frequency of the hard roof increases linearly with the increase of the distance from the source, and the vibration amplitude decreases exponentially with the increase of the distance from the source within 20 m from the blasting relief hole. Based on the above results, from the three indexes of controlling the amplitude, frequency and duration of pressure relief blasting vibration, it is proposed that the roof on the 211113 “short face” needs to be controlled by the advanced overlying strata weakening technology, and the parameters of advanced deep hole pre-splitting blasting are optimized. After the roof was weakened by the advanced deep-hole pre-splitting blasting, it can basically fall with mining. The blasting method can effectively avoid the phenomenon of large-area “hanging arch” and effectively prevent the occurrence of rock burst