THE VARIATION OF DOMINANT ELBOW RANGE OF MOTION AMONG DIFFERENT MATURE STAGE FOR BASEBALL PITCHERS

The purpose of this study was to examine the variation of elbow range of motion (ROM) in the dominant arm between different maturity levels in baseball pitchers. Sixty-two pitchers, including 17 early-puberty players, 22 later-puberty players, and 23 adult players, participated in this study. A goniometer was used to assess elbow ROM in the dominant arms, including elbow flexion, hyper-extension, supination, pronation and valgus angles. The results showed that smaller ROM was found in elbow flexion, supination, and pronation, and larger ROM in elbow valgue, in pithers of later puberty level (

Cytotoxic Effect of Recombinant Mycobacterium tuberculosis CFP-10/ESAT-6 Protein on the Crucial Pathways of WI-38 Cells

To unravel the cytotoxic effect of the recombinant CFP-10/ESAT-6 protein (rCFES) on WI-38 cells, an integrative analysis approach, combining time-course microarray data and annotated pathway databases, was proposed with the emphasis on identifying the potentially crucial pathways. The potentially crucial pathways were selected based on a composite criterion characterizing the average significance and topological properties of important genes. The analysis results suggested that the regulatory effect of rCFES was at least involved in cell proliferation, cell motility, cell survival, and metabolisms of WI-38 cells. The survivability of WI-38 cells, in particular, was significantly decreased to 62% with 12.5 μM rCFES. Furthermore, the focal adhesion pathway was identified as the potentially most-crucial pathway and 58 of 65 important genes in this pathway were downregulated by rCFES treatment. Using qRT-PCR, we have confirmed the changes in the expression levels of LAMA4, PIK3R3, BIRC3, and NFKBIA, suggesting that these proteins may play an essential role in the cytotoxic process in the rCFES-treated WI-38 cells

Millimeter-Wave Microstrip Antenna Array Design and an Adaptive Algorithm for Future 5G Wireless Communication Systems

This paper presents a high gain millimeter-wave (mmW) low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) microstrip antenna array with a compact, simple, and low-profile structure. Incorporating minimum mean square error (MMSE) adaptive algorithms with the proposed 64-element microstrip antenna array, the numerical investigation reveals substantial improvements in interference reduction. A prototype is presented with a simple design for mass production. As an experiment, HFSS was used to simulate an antenna with a width of 1 mm and a length of 1.23 mm, resonating at 38 GHz. Two identical mmW LTCC microstrip antenna arrays were built for measurement, and the center element was excited. The results demonstrated a return loss better than 15 dB and a peak gain higher than 6.5 dBi at frequencies of interest, which verified the feasibility of the design concept

Pretreatment with a Heat-Killed Probiotic Modulates the NLRP3 Inflammasome and Attenuates Colitis-Associated Colorectal Cancer in Mice.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide. Inflammation contributes to cancer development and inflammatory bowel disease is an important risk factor for CRC. The aim of this study is to assess whether a widely used probiotic Enterococcus faecalis can modulate the NLRP3 inflammasome and protect against colitis and colitis-associated CRC. We studied the effect of heat-killed cells of E. faecalis on NLRP3 inflammasome activation in THP-1-derived macrophages. Pretreatment of E. faecalis or NLRP3 siRNA can inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages in response to fecal content or commensal microbes, P. mirabilis or E. coli, according to the reduction of caspase-1 activation and IL-1β maturation. Mechanistically, E. faecalis attenuates the phagocytosis that is required for the full activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. In in vivo mouse experiments, E. faecalis can ameliorate the severity of intestinal inflammation and thereby protect mice from dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis and the formation of CRC in wild type mice. On the other hand, E. faecalis cannot prevent DSS-induced colitis in NLRP3 knockout mice. Our findings indicate that application of the inactivated probiotic, E. faecalis, may be a useful and safe strategy for attenuation of NLRP3-mediated colitis and inflammation-associated colon carcinogenesis

Enhancing diagnosis of T-cell lymphoma using non-recombined T-cell receptor sequences

Clonality assessment, which can detect neoplastic T cells by identifying the uniquely recombined T-cell receptor (TCR) genes, provides important support in the diagnosis of T-cell lymphoma (TCL). BIOMED-2 is the gold standard clonality assay and has proven to be effective in European TCL patients. However, we failed to prove its sensitivity in Taiwanese TCL patients, especially based on the TCRβ gene. To explore potential impact of genetic background in the BIOMED-2 test, we analyzed TCRβ sequences of 21 healthy individuals and two TCL patients. This analysis suggests that genetic variations in the BIOMED-2 primer sites could not explain the difference in sensitivity. The BIOMED-2 test results of the two TCL patients were positive and negative, respectively. Interestingly, a higher percentage (>81%) of non-recombined TCRβ sequences was observed in the test-negative patient than those of the test-positive patient and all healthy individuals (13~66%). The result suggests a new TCR target for enhancing TCL diagnosis. To further explore the hypothesis, we proposed a cost-effective digital PCR assay that quantifies the relative abundance of non-recombined TCRβ sequences containing a J2-2P~J2-3 segment. With the digital PCR assay, bone marrow specimens from TCL patients (n=9) showed a positive outcome (i.e., the relative abundance of the J2-2P~J2-3 sequences ≧5%), whereas non-TCL patients (n=6) gave a negative result. As five of nine TCL patients had a negative BIOMED-2 test result, the J2-2P~J2-3 sequences may improve TCL detection. This is the first report showing the capability of characterizing non-recombined TCR sequences as a supplementary strategy for the BIOMED-2 clonality test

A spectral graph theoretic approach to quantification and calibration of collective morphological differences in cell images

Motivation: High-throughput image-based assay technologies can rapidly produce a large number of cell images for drug screening, but data analysis is still a major bottleneck that limits their utility. Quantifying a wide variety of morphological differences observed in cell images under different drug influences is still a challenging task because the result can be highly sensitive to sampling and noise

Rapid Trio Exome Sequencing for Autosomal Recessive Renal Tubular Dysgenesis in Recurrent Oligohydramnios

Oligohydramnios is not a rare prenatal finding. However, recurrent oligohydramnios is uncommon, and genetic etiology should be taken into consideration. We present two families with recurrent fetal oligohydramnios that did not respond to amnioinfusion. Rapid trio-whole-exome sequencing (WES) revealed mutations in the AGT gene in both families within 1 week. The first family had a compound heterozygous mutation with c.856 + 1G > T and c.857-619_1269 + 243delinsTTGCCTTGC changes. The second family had homozygous c.857-619_1269 + 243delinsTTGCCTTGC mutations. AGT gene mutation may lead to autosomal recessive renal tubular dysgenesis, a rare and lethal disorder that can result in early neonatal death. Both the alleles identified are known alleles associated with pathogenicity. Our findings suggest that trio-WES analysis may help rapidly identify causative etiologies that can inform prompt counseling and decision-making prenatally

Invasive fungal infection among hematopoietic stem cell transplantation patients with mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Invasive fungal infection (IFI) is associated with high morbidity and high mortality in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) patientsThe purpose of this study was to assess the characteristics and outcomes of HSCT patients with IFIs who are undergoing MV at a single institution in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We performed an observational retrospective analysis of IFIs in HSCT patients undergoing mechanical ventilation (MV) in an intensive care unit (ICU) from the year 2000 to 2009. The characteristics of these HSCT patients and risk factors related to IFIs were evaluated. The status of discharge, length of ICU stay, date of death and cause of death were also recorded.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 326 HSCT patients at the Linkou Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital (Taipei, Taiwan) during the study period. Sixty of these patients (18%) were transferred to the ICU and placed on mechanical ventilators. A total of 20 of these 60 patients (33%) had IFIs. Multivariate analysis indicated that independent risk factors for IFI were admission to an ICU more than 40 days after HSCT, graft versus host disease (GVHD), and high dose corticosteroid (<it>p </it>< 0.01 for all). The overall ICU mortality rate was 88% (53 of 60 patients), and was not significantly different for patients with IFIs (85%) and those without IFIs (90%, <it>p </it>= 0.676).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There was a high incidence of IFIs in HSCT patients requiring MV in the ICU in our study cohort. The independent risk factors for IFI are ICU admission more than 40 days after HSCT, GVHD, and use of high-dose corticosteroid.</p

Overview of BioCreative II gene mention recognition.

Nineteen teams presented results for the Gene Mention Task at the BioCreative II Workshop. In this task participants designed systems to identify substrings in sentences corresponding to gene name mentions. A variety of different methods were used and the results varied with a highest achieved F1 score of 0.8721. Here we present brief descriptions of all the methods used and a statistical analysis of the results. We also demonstrate that, by combining the results from all submissions, an F score of 0.9066 is feasible, and furthermore that the best result makes use of the lowest scoring submissions