Development and implementation of Taiwan\u27s child health literacy test

Objectives: The aims of this study were to develop Taiwan\u27s Child Health Literacy Test and to undertake a nation-wide survey in order to determine the current status of Taiwanese sixth graders\u27 health literacy, and to understand the association between health literacy, healthy behavior, and health status. absp Methods: Taiwan\u27s Child Health Literacy Test was developed through the process of concept clarification, a qualitative pilot, a development pilot, and a field test. In the field test, 162,609 sixth graders (56.9%) from 2,235 schools (83.3%) nationwide completed the questionnaire. We also collected the students\u27 dates of birth, BMIs, self-reported health and healthy behaviors. absp Results: The final test consisted of 32 questions with item discrimination of 0.55-1.89 and item difficulty of-1.7-0.41 according to IRT; Cronbach\u27s a was 0.87. Based on this information, the test was deemed appropriate for basic health literacy screening among children. Nation-wide, the average score for sixth graders\u27 health literacy was 23.97 points (total score 32 points), with a correct rate of 74.9%. Those who were "good" in self-reported health scored highest in health literacy (M = 24.29). Health literacy was significantly positively related to healthy behavior (r = .25, p< .05), and negatively to risky behavior (r =-.28, p< .05). absp Conclusions: This study was the first curriculum-based child health literacy test developed from the viewpoints of both teachers and pupils in Taiwan through a rigorous procedure. The nationwide survey results may serve as a reference for decision-makers at the national health education level

Constraint Release mechanisms for H-Polymers moving in Linear Matrices of varying molar masses

We investigate the influence of the environment on the relaxation dynamics of well-defined H-polymers diluted in a matrix of linear chains. The molar mass of the linear chain matrix is systematically varied and the relaxation dynamics of the H-polymer is probed by means of linear viscoelastic measurements, with the aim to understand its altered motion in different blends, compared to its pure melt state. Our results indicate that short unentangled linear chains accelerate the relaxation of both the branches and the backbone of the H-polymers by acting as an effective solvent. On the other hand, the relaxation of the H-polymer in an entangled matrix is slowed-down, with the degree of retardation depending on the entanglement number of the linear chains. We show that this retardation can be quantified by considering that the H-polymers are moving in a dilated tube at the rhythm of the motion of the linear matrix

A note on the boundary contribution with bad deformation in gauge theory

Motivated by recently progresses in the study of BCFW recursion relation with nonzero boundary contributions for theories with scalars and fermions\cite{Bofeng}, in this short note we continue the study of boundary contributions of gauge theory with the bad deformation. Unlike cases with scalars or fermions, it is hard to use Feynman diagrams directly to obtain boundary contributions, thus we propose another method based on the ${\cal N}=4$ SYM theory. Using this method, we are able to write down a useful on-shell recursion relation to calculate boundary contributions from related theories. Our result shows the cut-constructibility of gauge theory even with the bad deformation in some generalized sense.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Measuring vertebrate telomeres: applications and limitations

Telomeres are short tandem repeated sequences of DNA found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that function in stabilizing chromosomal end integrity. In vivo studies of somatic tissue of mammals and birds have shown a correlation between telomere length and organismal age within species, and correlations between telomere shortening rate and lifespan among species. This result presents the tantalizing possibility that telomere length could be used to provide much needed information on age, ageing and survival in natural populations where longitudinal studies are lacking. Here we review methods available for measuring telomere length and discuss the potential uses and limitations of telomeres as age and ageing estimators in the fields of vertebrate ecology, evolution and conservation

A paradox of syntactic priming: why response tendencies show priming for passives, and response latencies show priming for actives

Speakers tend to repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. Although it has been suggested that repeating syntactic structures should result in speeded responses, previous research has focused on effects in response tendencies. We investigated syntactic priming effects simultaneously in response tendencies and response latencies for active and passive transitive sentences in a picture description task. In Experiment 1, there were priming effects in response tendencies for passives and in response latencies for actives. However, when participants' pre-existing preference for actives was altered in Experiment 2, syntactic priming occurred for both actives and passives in response tendencies as well as in response latencies. This is the first investigation of the effects of structure frequency on both response tendencies and latencies in syntactic priming. We discuss the implications of these data for current theories of syntactic processing

A metabolite-derived protein modification integrates glycolysis with KEAP1-NRF2 signalling.

Mechanisms that integrate the metabolic state of a cell with regulatory pathways are necessary to maintain cellular homeostasis. Endogenous, intrinsically reactive metabolites can form functional, covalent modifications on proteins without the aid of enzymes1,2, and regulate cellular functions such as metabolism3-5 and transcription6. An important 'sensor' protein that captures specific metabolic information and transforms it into an appropriate response is KEAP1, which contains reactive cysteine residues that collectively act as an electrophile sensor tuned to respond to reactive species resulting from endogenous and xenobiotic molecules. Covalent modification of KEAP1 results in reduced ubiquitination and the accumulation of NRF27,8, which then initiates the transcription of cytoprotective genes at antioxidant-response element loci. Here we identify a small-molecule inhibitor of the glycolytic enzyme PGK1, and reveal a direct link between glycolysis and NRF2 signalling. Inhibition of PGK1 results in accumulation of the reactive metabolite methylglyoxal, which selectively modifies KEAP1 to form a methylimidazole crosslink between proximal cysteine and arginine residues (MICA). This posttranslational modification results in the dimerization of KEAP1, the accumulation of NRF2 and activation of the NRF2 transcriptional program. These results demonstrate the existence of direct inter-pathway communication between glycolysis and the KEAP1-NRF2 transcriptional axis, provide insight into the metabolic regulation of the cellular stress response, and suggest a therapeutic strategy for controlling the cytoprotective antioxidant response in several human diseases

Prediction-Coherent LSTM-based Recurrent Neural Network for Safer Glucose Predictions in Diabetic People

In the context of time-series forecasting, we propose a LSTM-based recurrent neural network architecture and loss function that enhance the stability of the predictions. In particular, the loss function penalizes the model, not only on the prediction error (mean-squared error), but also on the predicted variation error. We apply this idea to the prediction of future glucose values in diabetes, which is a delicate task as unstable predictions can leave the patient in doubt and make him/her take the wrong action, threatening his/her life. The study is conducted on type 1 and type 2 diabetic people, with a focus on predictions made 30-minutes ahead of time. First, we confirm the superiority, in the context of glucose prediction, of the LSTM model by comparing it to other state-of-the-art models (Extreme Learning Machine, Gaussian Process regressor, Support Vector Regressor). Then, we show the importance of making stable predictions by smoothing the predictions made by the models, resulting in an overall improvement of the clinical acceptability of the models at the cost in a slight loss in prediction accuracy. Finally, we show that the proposed approach, outperforms all baseline results. More precisely, it trades a loss of 4.3\% in the prediction accuracy for an improvement of the clinical acceptability of 27.1\%. When compared to the moving average post-processing method, we show that the trade-off is more efficient with our approach

Pleomorphic adenoma of the vulva, clinical reminder of a rare occurrence

Pleomorphic adenoma, also known as mixed tumor, is a benign tumor which typically presents as a painless and persistent mass. The majority of pleomorphic adenomas involve the salivary glands, most commonly the parotid gland. Other sites include breast and skin. It is a rare tumor in the vulva. In this article we are reporting a case of pleomorphic adenoma of labia with characteristic pathologic and clinical findings, as reminder of a common benign neoplasm occurring with rare locality