Evaluasi Aktivitas LST Pada Institusi Pendidikan Tinggi Berdasarkan Persepsi Mahasiswa

Institusi pendidikan tinggi perlu berperan aktif dalam isu keberlanjutan untuk mencapai Tujuan Pembangunan Berkelanjutan (TPB). Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui persepsi mahasiswa terhadap kegiatan universitas terkait LST. Penelitian ini dilakukan pada sebuah universitas swasta di Indonesia yang telah melaksanakan berbagai aktivitas terkait isu lingkungan, sosial dan tata kelola (LST) untuk mendukung pencapaian TPB. Hal ini telah dibuktikan dengan terbitnya Laporan Keberlanjutan dan partisipasi universitas tersebut dalam UI GreenMetrics. Metode yang diterapkan adalah penyebaran kuesioner kepada responden mahasiswa, dan mahasiswa memberikan respon pada skala Likert 1-5. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa bidang sosial dan tata kelola mendapatkan persepsi baik dari mahasiswa dengan skor persepsi 4, sedangkan bidang lingkungan mendapat skor kurang dari 4. Pendalaman lebih lanjut menunjukkan bahwa universitas masih perlu melakukan perbaikan atas kegiatan penghematan energi, pengelolaan bangunan dan promosi transportasi ramah lingkungan. Hasil studi ini dapat dipakai oleh universitas untuk meningkatkan aspek-aspek yang masih kurang dan mempertahankan aktivitas yang telah baik dari persepsi mahasiswa

Sub-wavelength localization of near-fields in coupled metallic spheres for single emitter polarization analysis

We numerically demonstrate selective near-field localization determined by the polarization state of a single emitter coupled to plasmonic nano-cluster. Seven gold nanospheres are carefully arranged such that up to ten polarization states of the single emitter, including linear, circular, and elliptical polarizations, can be distinguished via the distinct field localization in four gaps. The ability to transform polarization state into field spatial localization may find application for single emitter polarization analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted by Optics Letter

Combined Tractional and Rhegmatogenous Retinal Detachment in Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy in the Anti-VEGF Era

Purpose. To investigate the clinical features, surgical outcomes, and prognostic factors of combined rhegmatogenous and tractional detachment (combined RD) in proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) in recent years. Methods. Medical records of PDR and combined RD treated with vitrectomy from 2008 to 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. Results. A total of 57 eyes from 49 patients were included. Nine eyes had received panretinal photocoagulation (PRP) and 7 eyes had intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) within 3 months before RD developed. Thirty-eight eyes (66.7%) had ≧3 sites of broad adhesion of fibrovascular proliferation (FVP). Thirty-three eyes (57.9%) showed active FVP. Thirty-four eyes (59.6%) had extent of RD involving 3 or 4 quadrants. The primary reattachment rate was 93.0%, and the final visual acuity (VA) improved by more than 3 lines in 80.7% of eyes. Neovascular glaucoma occurred in 4 eyes postoperatively. Poor preoperative VA, severe vitreoretinal adhesion, and broad extent of RD had significant correlation with poor visual outcomes. Conclusion. PRP or IVB might play a role in provoking combined RD. The anatomical and functional success rates of surgery were high. Poor preoperative VA and severe proliferations predicted poor visual outcomes

Mixed Spices at Culinary Doses Have Prebiotic Effects in Healthy Adults: A Pilot Study.

Spices were used as food preservatives prior to the advent of refrigeration, suggesting the possibility of effects on microbiota. Previous studies have shown prebiotic activities in animals and in vitro, but there has not been a demonstration of prebiotic or postbiotic effects at culinary doses in humans. In this randomized placebo-controlled study, we determined in twenty-nine healthy adults the effects on the gut microbiota of the consumption daily of capsules containing 5 g of mixed spices at culinary doses by comparison to a matched control group consuming a maltodextrin placebo capsule. The 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing data were used for microbial characterization. Spice consumption resulted in a significant reduction in Firmicutes abundance (p < 0.033) and a trend of enrichment in Bacteroidetes (p < 0.097) compared to placebo group. Twenty-six operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were different between the spice and placebo groups after intervention. Furthermore, there was a significant negative correlation between fecal short-chain fatty acid propionate concentration and Firmicutes abundance in spice intervention group (p < 0.04). The production of individual fecal short-chain fatty acid was not significantly changed by spice consumption in this study. Mixed spices consumption significantly modified gut microbiota, suggesting a prebiotic effect of spice consumption at culinary doses

Surgical treatment strategy for multiple injury patients in ICU

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the surgical treatment for patients with multiple injuries in ICU.MethodsClinical data of 163 multiple injury patients admitted to ICU of our hospital from January 2006 to January 2009 were retrospectively studied, including 118 males and 45 females, with the mean age of 36.2 years (range, 5-67 years). The injury regions included head and neck (29 cases), face (32 cases), chest (89 cases), abdomen (77 cases), pelvis and limbs (91 cases) and body surface (83 cases). There were 57 cases combined with shock. ISS values varied from 10 to 54, 18.42 on average. Patients received surgical treatments in ICU within respectively 24 hours (10 cases), 24-48 hours (8 cases), 3-7 days (7 cases) and 8-14 days (23 cases).ResultsFor the 163 patients, the duration of ICU stay ranged from 2 to 29 days, with the average value of 7.56 days. Among them, 143 were cured (87.73%), 11 died in the hospital (6.75%) due to severe hemorrhagic shock (6 cases), craniocerebral injury (3 cases) and multiple organ failure (2 cases), and 9 died after voluntarily discharging from hospital (5.52%). The total mortality rate was 12.27%.ConclusionsThe damage control principle should be followed when multiple injury patients are resuscitated in ICU. Surgical treatment strategies include actively controlling hemorrhage, treating the previously missed injuries and related wounds or surgical complications and performing planned staging operations

Parthenolide induces proliferation inhibition and apoptosis of pancreatic cancer cells in vitro

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To explore the anti-tumor effects of parthenolide in human pancreatic cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>BxPC-3 cell, a human pancreatic cancer, was treated with parthenolide at different concentrations. The MTT assay was used to analyze cell viability. Flow cytometry and DNA fragmentation analysis were applied to evaluate apoptosis after parthenolide treatment. The wound closure and cell invasion assay were also employed in the study. Western blotting was used to demonstrate Bad, Bcl-2, Bax, caspase-9 and pro-caspase-3 expression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The MTT assay indicated that the pancreatic cancer growth could be dose-dependently inhibited by parthenoolide. This phenomenon was confirmed by flow cytometry and DNA fragmentation analysis. The wound closure assay and cell invasion assay showed that BxPC-3 cell was significantly suppressed by parthenolide at 7.5 μM and 15 μM. Western Blotting demonstrated the Bcl-2 and pro-caspase-3 were down-regulated while the Bax and caspase-9 were up-regulated. No alteration in Bad expression was found after treatment.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The parthenolide can inhibit the cell growth, migration, and induce the apoptosis in human pancreatic cancer. These findings may provide a novel approach for pancreatic cancer treatment.</p

Dedifferentiated liposarcoma can induce a leukemoid reaction

SummaryLiposarcoma is one of the most common malignant soft tissue neoplasms in adults; however, few reports of liposarcoma had been described the expression of leukocytosis and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF). In this report, we present the rare case of a patient who had de-differentiated liposarcoma and elevated G-CSF levels that resulted in a leukemoid reaction. The patient was a 65-year-old man who had been lame for one month due to right thigh swelling. His body temperature was slightly elevated at 38°C and leukocytosis with an elevated white blood cell (WBC) count (41500/μL) was noted. The findings of computed tomography of the lower extremities indicated the presence of a malignancy. Therefore, an incision biopsy was performed. Based on the finding of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the biopsy pathology report, we diagnosed the patient with liposarcoma. Moreover, the preoperative serum G-CSF level was elevated (261.8 pg/mL). An en bloc excision including the entire biopsy pathway was performed 5 days after admission. After en bloc excision of the tumor, WBC count, C-reactive protein (CRP) level, and G-CSF expression decreased. The final pathologic report confirmed the diagnosis of de-differentiated liposarcoma. No local recurrence or distant metastasis was detected in the follow-up image study, and the patient has remained asymptomatic 2 years after surgery. The case described here is a rare type of liposarcoma that produces G-CSF, which in turn, induces leukocytosis. Liposarcoma with elevated G-CSF levels resulting in a leukemoid reaction may indicate a poorly differentiated cell type and may be associated with a poor prognosis; however, en bloc excision of the tumor remains the primary treatment for this type of tumor. Moreover, the WBC count and G-CSF serum level can be as the tools monitoring the tumor recurrence

The Processing and Electrical Properties of Isotactic Polypropylene/Copper Nanowire Composites

Funding Information: The authors would like to thank MOST for financially supporting this work under grant No. MOST 110-2224-E-038-001. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.Polypropylene (PP), a promising engineering thermoplastic, possesses the advantages of light weight, chemical resistance, and flexible processability, yet preserving insulative properties. For the rising demand for cost-effective electronic devices and system hardware protections, these applications require the proper conductive properties of PP, which can be easily modified. This study investigates the thermal and electrical properties of isotactic polypropylene/copper nanowires (i-PP/CuNWs). The CuNWs were harvested by chemical reduction of CuCl 2 using a reducing agent of glucose, capping agent of hexadecylamine (HDA), and surfactant of PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate. Their morphology, light absorbance, and solution homogeneity were investigated by SEM, UV-visible spectrophotometry, and optical microscopy. The averaged diameters and the length of the CuNWs were 66.4 ± 16.1 nm and 32.4 ± 11.8 µm, respectively. The estimated aspect ratio (L/D, length-to-diameter) was 488 ± 215 which can be recognized as 1-D nanomaterials. Conductive i-PP/CuNWs composites were prepared by solution blending using p-xylene, then melt blending. The thermal analysis and morphology of CuNWs were characterized by DSC, polarized optical microscopy (POM), and SEM, respectively. The melting temperature decreased, but the crystallization temperature increasing of i-PP/CuNWs composites were observed when increasing the content of CuNWs by the melt blending process. The WAXD data reveal the coexistence of Cu 2O and Cu in melt-blended i-PP/CuNWs composites. The fit of the electrical volume resistivity (ρ) with the modified power law equation: ρ = ρ o (V - Vc) -t based on the percolation theory was used to find the percolation concentration. A low percolation threshold value of 0.237 vol% and high critical exponent t of 2.96 for i-PP/CuNWs composites were obtained. The volume resistivity for i-PP/CuNWs composite was 1.57 × 10 7 Ω-cm at 1 vol% of CuNWs as a potential candidate for future conductive materials.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Investigating Zero-Shot Generalizability on Mandarin-English Code-Switched ASR and Speech-to-text Translation of Recent Foundation Models with Self-Supervision and Weak Supervision

This work evaluated several cutting-edge large-scale foundation models based on self-supervision or weak supervision, including SeamlessM4T, SeamlessM4T v2, and Whisper-large-v3, on three code-switched corpora. We found that self-supervised models can achieve performances close to the supervised model, indicating the effectiveness of multilingual self-supervised pre-training. We also observed that these models still have room for improvement as they kept making similar mistakes and had unsatisfactory performances on modeling intra-sentential code-switching. In addition, the validity of several variants of Whisper was explored, and we concluded that they remained effective in a code-switching scenario, and similar techniques for self-supervised models are worth studying to boost the performance of code-switched tasks.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024 Self-supervision in Audio, Speech and Beyond worksho