Are the Asian Equity Markets more Interdependent after the Financial Crisis?

This paper examines the impact of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis on the linkages between the Singapore and five Asian-Pacific stock markets. We show that the interdependence between these markets has intensified after the crisis. Before the crisis, only the Malaysian stock market is found to be cointegrated with Singapore. However, after the onset of the crisis, the stock markets of Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and the US are found to be cointegrated with the Singapore stock market.

Pediatric Patients with Intravascular Devices: Polymicrobial Bloodstream Infections and Risk Factors

A retrospective study was conducted, including 61 patients with long-term intravascular devices (IVDs) admitted to the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles with diverse underlying diseases, different types of catheters, and culture-proven catheter-related bloodstream infections (BSIs). Within these patients, 125 catheter-related BSIs occurred, and the incidence of monomicrobial and polymicrobial BSIs was evaluated. Risk factors for polymicrobial BSIs were determined. Forty-two BSIs contained more than one pathogen. These polymicrobial BSIs were observed more often in younger patients (<4.1 years versus ≥4.1 years) and less in patients using venous implanted ports. No other associations were found between the occurrences of polymicrobial BSIs and underlying diseases, other types of catheters, host defense status, parenteral nutrition, recurrences, or catheter removal. Patients with long-term IVDs at a younger age have a higher risk of developing a polymicrobial BSI. Future prospective studies should address the issue of polymicrobial infection in IVDs in more detail

The impact of ecological innovation and corporate social responsibilities on the sustainable development: Moderating role of environmental ethics

In light of the economic volatility and the environmentally conscious state, academics must pay close attention to the issue of sustainable development. Therefore, this research analyzes how social responsibility, corporate governance, and ecological innovation have affected the Chinese coal industry’s sustainable development. This study investigates the moderating role of environmental ethics among the nexus of social responsibilities, environmental responsibilities, and sustainable development due to its growing importance for sustainability in the coal industry in China. The study used survey questionnaires to collect primary data from the coal industry employees. The research has applied the structural equation model to examine the association among the variables and test the hypotheses through Smart PLS software. The results revealed that social and environmental responsibilities and ecological innovation have a positive while corporate governance has a negative association with the sustainable development of the coal industry in China. The findings also revealed that environmental ethics significantly moderate among social responsibilities, environmental responsibilities, and sustainable development of the coal industry in China. This study guides policymakers in establishing policies related to sustainable development by improving their social and environmental-related responsibilities and adopting ecological innovation

Taipei's Use of a Multi-Channel Mass Risk Communication Program to Rapidly Reverse an Epidemic of Highly Communicable Disease

BACKGROUND: In September 2007, an outbreak of acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis (AHC) occurred in Keelung City and spread to Taipei City. In response to the epidemic, a new crisis management program was implemented and tested in Taipei. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Having noticed that transmission surged on weekends during the Keelung epidemic, Taipei City launched a multi-channel mass risk communications program that included short message service (SMS) messages sent directly to approximately 2.2 million Taipei residents on Friday, October 12th, 2007. The public was told to keep symptomatic students from schools and was provided guidelines for preventing the spread of the disease at home. Epidemiological characteristics of Taipei's outbreak were analyzed from 461 sampled AHC cases. Median time from exposure to onset of the disease was 1 day. This was significantly shorter for cases occurring in family clusters than in class clusters (mean+/-SD: 2.6+/-3.2 vs. 4.39+/-4.82 days, p = 0.03), as well as for cases occurring in larger family clusters as opposed to smaller ones (1.2+/-1.7 days vs. 3.9+/-4.0 days, p<0.01). Taipei's program had a significant impact on patient compliance. Home confinement of symptomatic children increased from 10% to 60% (p<0.05) and helped curb the spread of AHC. Taipei experienced a rapid decrease in AHC cases between the Friday of the SMS announcement and the following Monday, October 15, (0.70% vs. 0.36%). By October 26, AHC cases reduced to 0.01%. The success of this risk communication program in Taipei (as compared to Keelung) is further reflected through rapid improvements in three epidemic indicators: (1) significantly lower crude attack rates (1.95% vs. 14.92%, p<0.001), (2) a short epidemic period of AHC (13 vs. 34 days), and (3) a quick drop in risk level (1 approximately 2 weeks) in Taipei districts that border Keelung (the original domestic epicenter). CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The timely launch of this systematic, communication-based intervention proved effective at preventing a dangerous spike in AHC and was able to bring this high-risk disease under control. We recommend that public health officials incorporate similar methods into existing guidelines for preventing pandemic influenza and other emerging infectious diseases

Patients Infected with CRF07_BC Have Significantly Lower Viral Loads than Patients with HIV-1 Subtype B: Mechanism and Impact on Disease Progression

The circulating recombinant form (CRF) 07_BC is the most prevalent HIV-1 strain among injection drug users (IDUs) in Taiwan. It contains a 7 amino-acid deletion in its p6gag. We conducted a cohort study to compare viral loads and CD4 cell count changes between patients infected with subtype B and CRF07_BC and to elucidate its mechanism. Twenty-one patients infected with CRF07_BC and 59 patients with subtype B were selected from a cohort of 667 HIV-1/AIDS patients whom have been followed up for 3 years. Generalized estimated equation was used to analyze their clinical data and the results showed that patients infected with CRF07_BC had significantly lower viral loads (about 58,000 copies per ml less) than patients with subtype B infection (p = 0.002). The replicative capacity of nine CRF07_BC and four subtype B isolates were compared and the results showed that the former had significantly lower replicative capacity than the latter although all of them were CCR5- tropic and non-syncytium inducing viruses. An HIV-1-NL4-3 mutant virus which contains a 7 amino-acid deletion in p6gag (designated as 7d virus) was generated and its live cycle was investigated. The results showed that 7d virus had significantly lower replication capacity, poorer protease-mediated processing and viral proteins production. Electron microscopic examination of cells infected with wild-type or 7d virus demonstrated that the 7d virus had poorer and slower viral maturation processes: more viruses attached to the cell membrane and higher proportion of immature virions outside the cells. The interaction between p6gag and Alix protein was less efficient in cells infected with 7d virus. In conclusion, patients infected with CRF07_BC had significantly lower viral loads than patients infected with subtype B and it may due to the deletion of 7 amino acids which overlaps with Alix protein-binding domain of the p6gag

Persistence of haemostatic response following gene therapy with valoctocogene roxaparvovec in severe haemophilia A.

INTRODUCTION: Valoctocogene roxaparvovec is an investigational AAV5-based factor VIII (FVIII) gene therapy that has demonstrated sustained clinical benefit in people with severe haemophilia A. AIM: To report safety, tolerability, efficacy, and quality of life (QOL) among participants who received valoctocogene roxaparvovec in a phase 1/2 clinical study (NCT02576795). METHODS: Men ≥18 years of age with severe haemophilia A (FVIII ≤1 IU/dl) without history of FVIII inhibitors or anti-AAV5 antibodies received a single infusion of valoctocogene roxaparvovec and were followed for 5 years (6 × 1013 vg/kg dose, n = 7) and 4 years (4 × 1013 vg/kg dose, n = 6). RESULTS: Over the past 2 years, few adverse events and no FVIII inhibitors were reported. Per chromogenic substrate (CSA) assay at years 5 and 4, four of seven and three of six participants in the 6 × 1013 and 4 × 1013 vg/kg cohorts, respectively, maintained median FVIII levels >5 IU/dl, corresponding to mild haemophilia. By regression analysis, rate of change in FVIII activity was -0.14 (95% confidence interval [CI]: -.32 to .03) IU/dl/wk in the 6 × 1013 vg/kg cohort in year 5 and -.06 (95% CI: -.14 to .01) IU/dl/wk in the 4 × 1013 vg/kg cohort in year 4. No participants resumed FVIII prophylaxis, and eight of 13 participants reported zero bleeds in the past 2 years. Improved QOL from baseline persisted in the 6 × 1013 vg/kg cohort; all six Haemo-QOL-A domain scores increased. For the 4 × 1013 vg/kg cohort, high baseline Haemo-QOL-A scores persisted. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate transgene expression and haemostatic response for up to 5 years in individuals with haemophilia A

Risk Factors for HIV-1 seroconversion among Taiwanese men visiting gay saunas who have sex with men

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Men having sex with men (MSM) accounts for 33.6% of all reported cases of HIV-1 infection in Taiwan. The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of HIV-1 infection among MSM in gay saunas in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Patrons of 5 gay saunas were recruited for a weekly volunteer counseling and testing program from 2001 to 2005. Questionnaires were collected for a risk factor analysis. HIV-1 subtypes were determined using DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>HIV-1 prevalence rates among MSM in gay saunas in 2001 through 2005 were 3.4%, 5.1%, 8.9%, 8.5%, and 8.3%, respectively. In total, 81 of 1, 093 (7.4%) MSM had HIV-1 infection. Fifty-two HIV-1 strains were genotyped, and all of them were subtype B. HIV-seropositive men were significantly younger than the seronegatives. Only 37.1% used condoms every time during sexual intercourse. A multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the risk factors for HIV-1 were being uncircumcised (odds ratio (OR) = 2.19; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.08~4.45); having sexual intercourse with at least 2 partners during each sauna visit (≥ 2 vs. ≤ 1, OR = 1.71; 95% CI, 1.02~2.89); and the role played during anal intercourse (versatile vs. an exclusively insertive role, OR = 2.76; 95% CI, 1.42~5.36).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Overall, 7.4% Taiwanese MSM participating in this study had HIV-1 subtype B infection. Uncircumcised, being versatile role during anal intercourse, and having sex with more than one person during each sauna visit were main risk factors for HIV-1 infection.</p

More Than 1,001 Problems with Protein Domain Databases: Transmembrane Regions, Signal Peptides and the Issue of Sequence Homology

Large-scale genome sequencing gained general importance for life science because functional annotation of otherwise experimentally uncharacterized sequences is made possible by the theory of biomolecular sequence homology. Historically, the paradigm of similarity of protein sequences implying common structure, function and ancestry was generalized based on studies of globular domains. Having the same fold imposes strict conditions over the packing in the hydrophobic core requiring similarity of hydrophobic patterns. The implications of sequence similarity among non-globular protein segments have not been studied to the same extent; nevertheless, homology considerations are silently extended for them. This appears especially detrimental in the case of transmembrane helices (TMs) and signal peptides (SPs) where sequence similarity is necessarily a consequence of physical requirements rather than common ancestry. Thus, matching of SPs/TMs creates the illusion of matching hydrophobic cores. Therefore, inclusion of SPs/TMs into domain models can give rise to wrong annotations. More than 1001 domains among the 10,340 models of Pfam release 23 and 18 domains of SMART version 6 (out of 809) contain SP/TM regions. As expected, fragment-mode HMM searches generate promiscuous hits limited to solely the SP/TM part among clearly unrelated proteins. More worryingly, we show explicit examples that the scores of clearly false-positive hits, even in global-mode searches, can be elevated into the significance range just by matching the hydrophobic runs. In the PIR iProClass database v3.74 using conservative criteria, we find that at least between 2.1% and 13.6% of its annotated Pfam hits appear unjustified for a set of validated domain models. Thus, false-positive domain hits enforced by SP/TM regions can lead to dramatic annotation errors where the hit has nothing in common with the problematic domain model except the SP/TM region itself. We suggest a workflow of flagging problematic hits arising from SP/TM-containing models for critical reconsideration by annotation users

Régularisation spatiale de représentations distribuées de mots

Stimulée par l’usage intensif des téléphones mobiles, l’exploitation conjointe des don-nées textuelles et des données spatiales présentes dans les objets spatio-textuels (p. ex. tweets)est devenue la pierre angulaire à de nombreuses applications comme la recherche de lieux d’attraction. Du point de vue scientifique, ces tâches reposent de façon critique sur la représentation d’objets spatiaux et la définition de fonctions d’appariement entre ces objets. Dans cet article,nous nous intéressons au problème de représentation de ces objets. Plus spécifiquement, confortés par le succès des représentations distribuées basées sur les approches neuronales, nous proposons de régulariser les représentations distribuées de mots (c.-à-d. plongements lexicaux ou word embeddings), pouvant être combinées pour construire des représentations d’objets,grâce à leurs répartitions spatiales. L’objectif sous-jacent est de révéler d’éventuelles relations sémantiques locales entre mots ainsi que la multiplicité des sens d’un même mot. Les expérimentations basées sur une tâche de recherche d’information qui consiste à retourner le lieu physique faisant l’objet (sujet) d’un géo-texte montrent que l’intégration notre méthode de régularisation spatiale de représentations distribuées de mots dans un modèle d’appariement de base permet d’obtenir des améliorations significatives par rapport aux modèles de référence