The social origin of Alzheimer\u27s disease : a path analysis

In this short paper, our attempt is to describe the path-model that specifies relationships of a number of known health measures of Alzheimer\u27 s Disease victims in a community population with such demographic characteristics as gender, age, and education attainment, or more specifically, literacy

Living arrangements and elderly care : the case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been a British Colony for more than one and a half centuries. The British has provided a legal-administrative framework under which the Chinese live and work (Chan and Lee, 1995), The Census showed that ninety-eight percent of the Territory\u27s total population are ethnically Chinese. In 1991, nearly one half of HongKong\u27s residents were immigrants from the Chinese Mainland and two thirds of the remaining were Hong Kong born off-springs of immigrants from the mainland. Although expatriotes from other countries are accountable for the remainder 2% of the population, a great majority of expatriotes are from overseas Chinese communities in southeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma. It cannot be overstated that Hong Kong has a fairly homogenous cultural values that can be described as “Chinese”, the beliefs with respect to filial piety and honouring one\u27s ancestors still play a significant role in shaping and regulating the local Chinese social life and familial behavior

{2,2′-[1,1′-(Ethyl­enedioxy­dinitrilo)diethyl­idyne]di-1-naphtholato}copper(II)

The title complex, [Cu(C26H22N2O4)], is isostructural with its Ni analogue. All intramolecular distances and angles are very similar for the two structures, whereas the packing of the molecules, including C—H⋯O and C—H⋯π interactions, are slightly different

The First Release of the CSTAR Point Source Catalog from Dome A, Antarctica

In 2008 January the 24th Chinese expedition team successfully deployed the Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) to DomeA, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau. CSTAR consists of four 14.5cm optical telescopes, each with a different filter (g, r, i and open) and has a 4.5degree x 4.5degree field of view (FOV). It operates robotically as part of the Plateau Observatory, PLATO, with each telescope taking an image every 30 seconds throughout the year whenever it is dark. During 2008, CSTAR #1 performed almost flawlessly, acquiring more than 0.3 million i-band images for a total integration time of 1728 hours during 158 days of observations. For each image taken under good sky conditions, more than 10,000 sources down to 16 mag could be detected. We performed aperture photometry on all the sources in the field to create the catalog described herein. Since CSTAR has a fixed pointing centered on the South Celestial Pole (Dec =-90 degree), all the sources within the FOV of CSTAR were monitored continuously for several months. The photometric catalog can be used for studying any variability in these sources, and for the discovery of transient sources such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and minor planets.Comment: 1 latex file and 9 figures The paper is accepted by PAS

The sky brightness and transparency in i-band at Dome A, Antarctica

The i-band observing conditions at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau have been investigated using data acquired during 2008 with the Chinese Small Telescope ARray. The sky brightness, variations in atmospheric transparency, cloud cover, and the presence of aurorae are obtained from these images. The median sky brightness of moonless clear nights is 20.5 mag arcsec^{-2} in the SDSS $i$ band at the South Celestial Pole (which includes a contribution of about 0.06 mag from diffuse Galactic light). The median over all Moon phases in the Antarctic winter is about 19.8 mag arcsec^{-2}. There were no thick clouds in 2008. We model contributions of the Sun and the Moon to the sky background to obtain the relationship between the sky brightness and transparency. Aurorae are identified by comparing the observed sky brightness to the sky brightness expected from this model. About 2% of the images are affected by relatively strong aurorae.Comment: There are 1 Latex file and 14 figures accepted by A

The PLATO Dome A Site-Testing Observatory : instrumentation and first results

The PLATeau Observatory (PLATO) is an automated self-powered astrophysical observatory that was deployed to Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau, in 2008 January. PLATO consists of a suite of site-testing instruments designed to quantify the benefits of the Dome A site for astronomy, and science instruments designed to take advantage of the unique observing conditions. Instruments include CSTAR, an array of optical telescopes for transient astronomy; Gattini, an instrument to measure the optical sky brightness and cloud cover statistics; DASLE, an experiment to measure the statistics of the meteorological conditions within the near-surface layer; Pre-HEAT, a submillimeter tipping radiometer measuring the atmospheric transmission and water vapor content and performing spectral line imaging of the Galactic plane; and Snodar, an acoustic radar designed to measure turbulence within the near-surface layer. PLATO has run completely unattended and collected data throughout the winter 2008 season. Here we present a detailed description of the PLATO instrument suite and preliminary results obtained from the first season of operation

A Chinese SCA36 pedigree analysis of NOP56 expansion region based on long-read sequencing

Introduction: Spinocerebellar ataxias 36 (SCA36) is the neurodegenerative disease caused by the GGCCTG Hexanucleotide repeat expansions in NOP56, which is too long to sequence using short-read sequencing. Single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing can sequence across disease-causing repeat expansion. We report the first long-read sequencing data across the expansion region in SCA36.Methods: We collected and described the clinical manifestations and imaging features of Han Chinese pedigree with three generations of SCA36. Also, we focused on structural variation analysis for intron 1 of the NOP56 gene by SMRT sequencing in the assembled genome.Results: The main clinical features of this pedigree are late-onset ataxia symptoms, with a presymptomatic presence of affective and sleep disorders. In addition, the results of SMRT sequencing showed the specific repeat expansion region and demonstrated that the region was not composed of single GGCCTG hexanucleotides and there were random interruptions.Discussion: We extended the phenotypic spectrum of SCA36. We applied SMRT sequencing to reveal the correlation between genotype and phenotype of SCA36. Our findings indicated that long-read sequencing is well suited to characterize known repeat expansion

Computing Optical Properties of Ultra-thin Crystals

An overview is given of recent advances in experimental and theoretical understanding of optical properties of ultra-thin crystal structures (graphene, phosphorene, silicene, MoS2, MoSe2 , WS2 , WSe2 , h-AlN, h-BN, fluorographene, graphane). Ultra-thin crystals are atomically-thick layered crystals that have unique properties which differ from their 3D counterpart. Because of the difficulties in the synthesis of few-atom-thick crystal structures, which are thought to be the main building blocks of future nanotechnology, reliable theoretical predictions of their electronic, vibrational and optical properties are of great importance. Recent studies revealed the reliable predictive power of existing theoretical approaches based on density functional theory (DFT)