A review of 10 children on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

The experience of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in children of the Queen Mary Hospital for the past 11 years was reviewed. Seven boys and three girls (aged 4.3 to 15.9 years) were treated for a mean of 27 months (range 5 to 58 months). There was significant biochemical improvement and patients led an active life on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. The commonest complications were peritonitis, occurring on average once per 10 patient-months and mostly due to Staphylococcus spp. The median catheter survival time was 30 months. There were two technique failures due to fungal peritonitis which necessitated transfer to haemodialysis due to fungal peritonitis. The only mortality was due to concurrent cardiac disease. This review supports that children with renal failure in Hong Kong can be maintained on long term dialysis with a reasonable quality of life. However, significant morbidity due to infective and mechanical complications still exists. Continuous ambulatory peitonitis dialysis remains a temporary treatment modality while patients are waiting for renal transplantation.published_or_final_versio

Evidence for a Type-II band alignment between cubic and hexagonal phases of GaN

The study of photoluminescence spectra of a series of thin, undoped, hexagonal GaN films containing cubic GaN inclusions grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on 6H-SiC was presented. It was shown that an emission peak at ∼3.17 eV in thin, hexagonal GaN films exhibits behaviors typical of a spatially indirect transition. The values of the band offsets extracted from the data were in good agreement with theoretical predictions.published_or_final_versio

Deduced probable HLA-B*40:01:35-associated HLA haplotype (A*24-B*40:01:35-DRB1*11) found in a Taiwanese unrelated hematopoietic bone marrow stem cell donor

AbstractObjectiveHuman leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B*40:01:35 is a low incidence allele in the HLA-B locus. The objective of this study is to report the ethnicity of B*40:01:35 and its deduced probable HLA associated haplotype in a Taiwanese unrelated bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell donor.Materials and methodsA sequence-based typing method was employed to confirm the low incidence allele B*40:01:35. Polymerase chain reaction was performed to amplify exons 2 and 3 of the HLA-A and HLA-B loci and exon 2 of the HLA-DRB1 locus using group-specific primer sets. The amplicons were sequenced using the BigDye Terminator Cycle Sequencing Ready Reaction kit in both directions according to the manufacturer's protocols.ResultsThe DNA sequence of B*40:01:35 is identical to B*40:01:01 in exons 2 and 3, except for residue 324 where C is changed to T (codon 84, TAC→TAT). The nucleotide exchange does not cause amino acid alteration to the protein sequence of B*40:01:01 due to the silent mutation. We deduced the probable HLA haplotype in association with B*40:01:35 in Taiwanese to be A*24-B*40:01:35-DRB1*11.ConclusionInformation on the deduced probable HLA haplotype in association with the low incidence B*40:01:35 allele that we report here is of value for HLA testing laboratories for reference purposes. In addition, it can be used by stem cell transplantation donor search coordinators to determine a strategy for finding compatible donors in unrelated bone marrow donor registries when a patient has this uncommon HLA allele

Aqcostic quantification and colour kinesis: evaluation of left atrial and left ventricular function in real time

published_or_final_versio

The use of enoxaparin in Chinese patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention: observations on safety, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics from a pilot study

published_or_final_versio

Mapping genomic and transcriptomic alterations spatially in epithelial cells adjacent to human breast carcinoma.

Almost all genomic studies of breast cancer have focused on well-established tumours because it is technically challenging to study the earliest mutational events occurring in human breast epithelial cells. To address this we created a unique dataset of epithelial samples ductoscopically obtained from ducts leading to breast carcinomas and matched samples from ducts on the opposite side of the nipple. Here, we demonstrate that perturbations in mRNA abundance, with increasing proximity to tumour, cannot be explained by copy number aberrations. Rather, we find a possibility of field cancerization surrounding the primary tumour by constructing a classifier that evaluates where epithelial samples were obtained relative to a tumour (cross-validated micro-averaged AUC = 0.74). We implement a spectral co-clustering algorithm to define biclusters. Relating to over-represented bicluster pathways, we further validate two genes with tissue microarrays and in vitro experiments. We highlight evidence suggesting that bicluster perturbation occurs early in tumour development

Low mass fraction impregnation with graphene oxide (GO) enhances thermo-physical properties of paraffin for heat storage applications

Whereas previous researchers analyzed the thermal behavior of paraffin waxes impregnated with graphene oxide nanoparticles (P-GONP) at high mass fraction ( > 1%), this paper analyzes behavior and stability at only 0.3% mass fraction. GONP was prepared by Hummer’s method. The morphology was studied using scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transformation-Infrared (FT-IR) Spectrometer and the thermal properties were measured using laser flash analyser (LFA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) and thermal cycling. LFA showed a 101.2% and 94.5% increase in the thermal conductivity of P-GONP compared to pure paraffin (P) in solid and liquid state respectively. Melting and solidifying temperatures and latent heat were found to be 63.5, 59 °C & 102 kJ/kg and 57.5, 56 °C & 64.7 kJ/kg for P and P-GONP respectively. Thermal cycling over 4000 cycles showed that P-GONP was 27% more stable than P. The latent heat was 64.7 kJ/kg, a 36.5% deterioration compared to virgin paraffin. Compared against higher mass fraction impregnation, lower mass fraction P-GONP was found to have almost equivalent thermo-physical properties (namely thermal conductivity, melting and solidifying characteristics, thermo-chemical stability and reliability) while providing considerable cost saving

Security challenges of small cell as a service in virtualized mobile edge computing environments

Research on next-generation 5G wireless networks is currently attracting a lot of attention in both academia and industry. While 5G development and standardization activities are still at their early stage, it is widely acknowledged that 5G systems are going to extensively rely on dense small cell deployments, which would exploit infrastructure and network functions virtualization (NFV), and push the network intelligence towards network edges by embracing the concept of mobile edge computing (MEC). As security will be a fundamental enabling factor of small cell as a service (SCaaS) in 5G networks, we present the most prominent threats and vulnerabilities against a broad range of targets. As far as the related work is concerned, to the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate security challenges at the intersection of SCaaS, NFV, and MEC. It is also the first paper that proposes a set of criteria to facilitate a clear and effective taxonomy of security challenges of main elements of 5G networks. Our analysis can serve as a staring point towards the development of appropriate 5G security solutions. These will have crucial effect on legal and regulatory frameworks as well as on decisions of businesses, governments, and end-users

Spin- and energy relaxation of hot electrons at GaAs surfaces

The mechanisms for spin relaxation in semiconductors are reviewed, and the mechanism prevalent in p-doped semiconductors, namely spin relaxation due to the electron-hole exchange interaction, is presented in some depth. It is shown that the solution of Boltzmann-type kinetic equations allows one to obtain quantitative results for spin relaxation in semiconductors that go beyond the original Bir-Aronov-Pikus relaxation-rate approximation. Experimental results using surface sensitive two-photon photoemission techniques show that the spin relaxation-time of electrons in p-doped GaAs at a semiconductor/metal surface is several times longer than the corresponding bulk spin relaxation-times. A theoretical explanation of these results in terms of the reduced density of holes in the band-bending region at the surface is presented.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures; earlier submission replaced by corrected and expanded version; eps figures now included in the tex