The information search of Taiwanese students within the decision-making business master's degrees in Taiwan and in the UK.

This study investigated Taiwanese students' information search regarding their application choices for business Master's degees in Taiwan). Taiwanese students studying) in Taiwan and Taiwanese students studying in the UK in this study were used to contrast the similarities and differences between the information search of home-based and international students. In the literature review, previous studies on information search were discussed, and a conceptual framework was presented to indicate the stages of students' decision-making and possible external information sources that students might use. As the majority of research was conducted amongst Western English-speaking home-based students, the importance of investigating how information sources could be used differently by Taiwanese applicants was emphasised. The study employed qualitative data collection of focus group discussions, observations and interviews to investigate how participants used information sources to find the information they needed in making Master's choices. Different types of universities in Taiwan and in the UK were sampled to explore students' choice criteria. Template Analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings suggested that the TW group had more internal information which reduced the level of their external search. On the other hand, the UK group as international students needed more external information as a result of lacking internal information. This study also found Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and educational agents were influential to Taiwanese participants' Master's decision-making. Also, middle range universities are often selected by the UK group, while parental influences were limited to both the TW and the UK group. As current students and alumni were found in this study to be particularly influential regarding applicants' Master's choices, higher education institutions (HEI) should also look after current students when trying to market courses to potential students

Abundant and species-specific DINE-1 transposable elements in 12 Drosophila genomes

Evidence is presented that DINE-1 is a highly abundant miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE) family present in all 12 Drosophila species with whole-genome sequence available

Oxaliplatin-induced acquired long QT syndrome with torsades de pointes and myocardial injury in a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy and rectal cancer

AbstractA 67-year-old woman presented with a history of dilated cardiomyopathy with congestive heart failure since 2003, who subsequently developed lower rectal cancer (adenocarcinoma) with liver, bone, and lymph node metastasis. Abdominoperineal resection and hepatectomy were performed. The patient received two rounds of intravenous chemotherapy, including 12 and six courses of FOLFOX4 (5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin; 85 mg/m2 per cycle). She underwent a third round of intravenous FOLFOX4 because of tumor progression. During the 21st course of FOLFOX4 regimen, the patient developed ST segment depression in lead II and prolongation of QT interval with polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, torsades de pointes right after the start of oxaliplatin infusion. Immediate defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation were administered, and the patient regained spontaneous circulation and consciousness. Twelve-lead electrocardiogram showed ST segment elevation in III, aVF, and ST segment depression in V4–6 after resuscitation. To our knowledge, prolongation of QT interval with torsades de pointes and coronary spasm with myocardial injury that were stabilized in one patient following oxaliplatin infusion has not been reported. We present a patient with these rare complications

Evolution of hydra, a Recently Evolved Testis-Expressed Gene with Nine Alternative First Exons in Drosophila melanogaster

We describe here the Drosophila gene hydra that appears to have originated de novo in the melanogaster subgroup and subsequently evolved in both structure and expression level in Drosophila melanogaster and its sibling species. D. melanogaster hydra encodes a predicted protein of ~300 amino acids with no apparent similarity to any previously known proteins. The syntenic region flanking hydra on both sides is found in both D. ananassae and D. pseudoobscura, but hydra is found only in melanogaster subgroup species, suggesting that it originated less than ~13 million y ago. Exon 1 of hydra has undergone recurrent duplications, leading to the formation of nine tandem alternative exon 1s in D. melanogaster. Seven of these alternative exons are flanked on their 3′ side by the transposon DINE-1 (Drosophila interspersed element-1). We demonstrate that at least four of the nine duplicated exon 1s can function as alternative transcription start sites. The entire hydra locus has also duplicated in D. simulans and D. sechellia. D. melanogaster hydra is expressed most intensely in the proximal testis, suggesting a role in late-stage spermatogenesis. The coding region of hydra has a relatively high Ka/Ks ratio between species, but the ratio is less than 1 in all comparisons, suggesting that hydra is subject to functional constraint. Analysis of sequence polymorphism and divergence of hydra shows that it has evolved under positive selection in the lineage leading to D. melanogaster. The dramatic structural changes surrounding the first exons do not affect the tissue specificity of gene expression: hydra is expressed predominantly in the testes in D. melanogaster, D. simulans, and D. yakuba. However, we have found that expression level changed dramatically (~ >20-fold) between D. melanogaster and D. simulans. While hydra initially evolved in the absence of nearby transposable element insertions, we suggest that the subsequent accumulation of repetitive sequences in the hydra region may have contributed to structural and expression-level evolution by inducing rearrangements and causing local heterochromatinization. Our analysis further shows that recurrent evolution of both gene structure and expression level may be characteristics of newly evolved genes. We also suggest that late-stage spermatogenesis is the functional target for newly evolved and rapidly evolving male-specific genes

CMOS Image Sensor with a Built-in Lane Detector

This work develops a new current-mode mixed signal Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) imager, which can capture images and simultaneously produce vehicle lane maps. The adopted lane detection algorithm, which was modified to be compatible with hardware requirements, can achieve a high recognition rate of up to approximately 96% under various weather conditions. Instead of a Personal Computer (PC) based system or embedded platform system equipped with expensive high performance chip of Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) or Digital Signal Processor (DSP), the proposed imager, without extra Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) circuits to transform signals, is a compact, lower cost key-component chip. It is also an innovative component device that can be integrated into intelligent automotive lane departure systems. The chip size is 2,191.4 × 2,389.8 μm, and the package uses 40 pin Dual-In-Package (DIP). The pixel cell size is 18.45 × 21.8 μm and the core size of photodiode is 12.45 × 9.6 μm; the resulting fill factor is 29.7%