Role of Epac1 in pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy

Poster Presentations - Theme 2published_or_final_version15th Research Postgraduate Symposium, Hong Kong, China, 1-2 December 2010. In Abstract - Poster Presentations of 15th Research Postgraduate Symposium, 2010, Theme II, p. 87 Abstract no. 1

Distributed Random Process for a Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Lottery

Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that demonstrated the potential of protocols with no trusted third party. We argue that the security requirements of online lotteries are similar to those of online voting, and propose a novel distributed online lottery protocol that applies techniques developed for voting applications to an existing lottery protocol. As a result, the protocol is scalable, provides efficient verification of the random process and does not rely on a trusted third party nor on assumptions of bounded computational resources. An early prototype confirms the feasibility of our approach

Five times sit-to-stand test completion times among older women: Influence of seat height and arm position

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Sideways walk test: reliability and association with lower limb motor function after stroke

published_or_final_versio

Musculoskeletal strength, balance performance and self-efficacy in elderly Ving Tsun Chinese martial art practitioners: Implications for fall prevention

published_or_final_versio

Suicide in Hong Kong: A case-control psychological autopsy study

Background. The relative contribution of psychosocial and clinical risk factors to suicide among Chinese populations is an important issue. In Hong Kong, this issue requires vigorous examination in light of a 50% increase in suicide rate between 1997 and 2003. Method. Using a case-control psychological autopsy method, 150 suicide deceased were compared with 150 living controls matched by age and gender. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the next-of-kin of the subjects. Data were collected on a wide range of potential risk and protective factors, including demographic, life event, clinical and psychological variables. The relative contribution of these factors towards suicide was examined in a multiple logistic regression model. Results. Six factors were found to significantly and independently contribute to suicide: unemployment, indebtedness, being single, social support, psychiatric illness, and history of past attempts. Conclusions. Both psychosocial and clinical factors are important in suicides in Hong Kong. They seem to have mediated suicide risk independently. In addition, socio-economic adversities seem to have played a relatively important role in the increasing suicide rate in Hong Kong. © 2006 Cambridge University Press.published_or_final_versio

Assessing the fall risk with stay independent questionnaire in people with stroke

202506 bcrcVersion of RecordOthersHong Kong Polytechnic UniversityPublishedC

Balance control, agility, eye-hand coordination, and sport performance of amateur badminton players: A cross-sectional study

© 2019 the Author(s). In this study, balance performance, agility, eye-hand coordination, and sports performance were compared between amateur badminton players and active controls. Thirty young adult badminton players and 33 active controls participated in the study. Static single-leg standing balance (with eyes closed) was measured using a force platform, and dynamic balance was measured using the Y Balance Test (lower quarter). Agility was measured using a hexagon agility test, and eye-hand coordination was measured using a computerized finger-pointing task. Sports performance was quantified by the number of times a shuttlecock fell in a designated area following a badminton serve. The badminton players had superior accuracy in badminton serving (P.05). Amateur badminton players had more favorable sports performance, but not balance performance, agility, or eye-hand coordination, than controls

Transdermal delivery of propranolol hydrochloride through chitosan nanoparticles dispersed in mucoadhesive gel

This study aimed at improving the systemic bioavailability of propranolol-HCl by the design of transdermal drug delivery system based on chitosan nanoparticles dispersed into gels. Chitosan nanoparticles were prepared by ionic gelation technique using tripolyphosphate (TPP) as a cross-linking agent. Characterization of the nanoparticles was focused on particle size, zeta potential, surface texture and morphology, and drug encapsulation efficiency. The prepared freeze dried chitosan nanoparticles were dispersed into gels made of poloxamer and carbopol and the rheological behaviour and the adhesiveness of the gels were investigated. The results showed that smallest propranolol loaded chitosan nanoparticles were achieved with 0.2% chitosan and 0.05% TPP. Nanoparticles were stable in suspension with a zeta potential (ZP) above ±30 mV to prevent aggregation of the colloid. Zeta potential was found to increase with increasing chitosan concentration due to its cationic nature. At least 70% of entrapment efficiency and drug loading were achieved for all prepared nanoparticles. When chitosan nanoparticles dispersed into gel consisting of poloxamer and carbopol, the resultant formulation exhibited thixotropic behaviour with a prolonged drug release properties as shown by the permeation studies through pig ear skin. Our study demonstrated that the designed nanoparticles-gel transdermal delivery system has a potential to improve the systemic bioavailability and the therapeutic efficacy of propranolol-HCl

Adding Linkability to Ring Signatures with One-Time Signatures

We propose a generic construction that adds linkability to any ring signature scheme with one-time signature scheme. Our construction has both theoretical and practical interest. In theory, the construction gives a formal and cleaner description for constructing linkable ring signature from ring signature directly. In practice, the transformation incurs a tiny overhead in size and running time. By instantiating our construction using the ring signature scheme (ACNS 2019) and the one-time signature scheme (TCHES 2018), we obtain a lattice-based linkable ring signature scheme whose signature size is logarithmic in the number of ring members. This scheme is practical, especially the signature size is very short: for $2^{30}$ ring members and 100 bit security, our signature size is only 4 MB. In addition, when proving the linkability we develop a new proof technique in the random oracle model, which might be of independent interes