The Labor Market Effects of National Health Insurance : Evidence From Taiwan

This paper investigates the impacts of national health insurance on the labor market, by considering the case of Taiwan, which implemented national health insurance in March 1995. Taiwan’s national health insurance is financed by premiums, which are proportional to an employee’s salary. These premiums may introduce distortions to the labor market. Based on repeated cross-sections of individual data we find that, on average, private sector employees’ work hours declined relative to their public sector counterparts, while their relative wage rates were almost unchanged with the introduction of national health insurance. The results suggest that neither private sector employers nor their employees were able to shift their premium burden to each other.National Health Insurance, Labor Supply, Wage Rate, Difference-in-Difference

Development of "Smart" Particles for Silencing Anti-apoptotic Bel-2 Protein Expression in Epithelial Cancer Cells.

B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) is an anti-apoptotic protein that is over-expressed in head and neck cancer cells and results in increased radio- and chemo-resistance. Short interfering RNA (siRNA) inhibits Bcl-2 expression causing enhanced cancer cell death and reduction of tumor growth. Transforming anti-Bcl-2 siRNA into a viable therapy with a defined dosage regimen requires a biocompatible carrier that can shuttle a large dose of siRNA into the cytoplasm of cancer cells. This dissertation describes the development of degradable, pH-sensitive, membrane-destabilizing, comb- and star-shaped polymers to condense anti-Bcl-2 siRNA into “smart” nanoparticles, which bypassed the endosomal membrane and delivered the cargo into the cytoplasm of cancer cells resulting in efficient knockdown of Bcl-2 gene expression. Specifically, comb-like polymers were synthesized by grafting copolymers of cationic trimethyl aminoethyl methacrylate (TMAEMA) and hydrophobic hexyl methacrylate (HMA) monomers from a diblock linear backbone via acid-labile hydrazone linkages. Similarly, β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) was used as a core to synthesize star-shaped polymers where pH-sensitive dimethyl aminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and hydrophobic HMA monomers were grafted from the secondary face of β-CD via hydrazone linkages to form β-CD-P(HMA-co-DMAEMA) polymers. Both comb- and star-shaped polymers condensed siRNA molecules into “smart” particles that were stable at physiologic pH but rapidly degraded into membrane-active fragments in acidic endosomal pH. We systematically evaluated the effect of hydrophobic/hydrophilic balance (HMA/DMAEMA ratio), percentage of DMAEMA monomers quaternized into TMAEMA, and molecular weight of grafts on the ability of star polymers to achieve functional delivery of anti-Bcl-2 siRNA. Results show that star-shaped polymers incorporating P(HMA-co-DMAEMA-co-TMAEMA) grafts with the MW of 25 kDa, 50/50 HMA/DMAEMA monomers, and 50% of DMAEMA monomers transformed to TMAEMA exhibit the highest transfection efficiency. These star-shaped polymers delivered anti-Bcl-2 siRNA into UM-SCC-17B cells causing 50-75% reduction in Bcl-2 mRNA and protein levels. Further, combining “smart” particles loaded with anti-Bcl-2 siRNA with AT-101(a Bcl-2 small molecule inhibitor) synergistically inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells by 63% while increasing cancer cell apoptosis by 12-14%. These results confirm the successful development of a new family of degradable, pH-sensitive, membrane-destabilizing star-shaped polymers that enhance the cytoplasmic delivery of anti-Bcl-2 siRNA into head and neck cancer cells.PHDBiomedical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97922/1/ccling_1.pd

Building Legitimacy for Green IS Innovations in Taiwan

The environmental concerns are leading to the growing interest in the adoption of Green IS. From legitimacy perspective, this paper argues that the adoption and diffusion of Green IS among organizations are modulated by pragmatic, normative, and cultural-cognitive influences in the institutional environment. The study therefore applies topology of legitimacy to develop a taxonomy to understand actors’ strategies in shaping the understanding and development of Green IS. Using content analysis of news articles in Taiwan, the study contributes to a practical understanding of the complex institutional influences in forming the greener industry

Economic burden of adverse drug reactions and potential for pharmacogenomic testing in Singaporean adults.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) contribute to hospitalization but data on its economic burden is scant. Pre-emptive pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing can potentially reduce ADRs and its associated costs. The objectives of this study were to quantify the economic burden of ADRs and to estimate the breakeven cost of pre-emptive PGx testing in Singapore. We collected itemized costs for 1000 random non-elective hospitalizations of adults admitted to a tertiary-care general hospital in Singapore. The presence of ADRs at admission and their clinical characteristics were reported previously. The economic burden of ADRs was assessed from two perspectives: (1) Total cost and (2) incremental costs. The breakeven cost of PGx testing was estimated by dividing avoidable hospitalization costs for ADRs due to selected drugs by the number of patients taking those drugs. The total cost of 81 admissions caused by ADRs was US$570,404. Costs were significantly higher for bleeding/elevated international normalized ratio (US$9906 vs. US$2251, p = 6.58 × 10-3) compared to other ADRs, and for drugs acting on the blood coagulation system (US$9884 vs. US$2229, p = 4.41 × 10-3) compared to other drug classes. There were higher incremental laboratory costs due to ADRs causing or being present at admission. The estimated breakeven cost of a pre-emptive PGx test for patients taking warfarin, clopidogrel, chemotherapeutic and neuropsychiatric drugs was US$114 per patient. These results suggest that future studies designed to directly measure the clinical and cost impact of a pre-emptive genotyping program will help inform clinical practice and health policy decisions

Feasibility and effectiveness of heat pipe cooling in end milling operations : thermal, structural static, and dynamic analyses : a new approach

In this paper, the feasibility and effectiveness of heat pipe cooling in end milling operations are investigated. A new embedded heat pipe technology was utilized to remove the heat generated at the tool-interface in end milling processes. Numerical studies involved four cases, including dry milling, fluid cooling, heat pipe cooling, and heat pipe cooling with cutting fluid supplied. The thermal, structural static, and dynamic characteristics of the endmill were investigated using a numerical calculation with fast finite element plus solvers based on explicit finite element analysis software. The results demonstrate that the heat pipe end-mill is most feasible and effective in the actual end milling processe

Stateless Two-Stage Multiple Criteria Scheduling in Nuclear Medicine

Examination in nuclear medicine exhibits scheduling difficulties due to its intricate clinical issues, such as varied radiopharmaceuticals for different diseases, machine preparation and length of scan, and patients’ and hospital’s criteria and/or limitations. Many scheduling methods exist but are limited for nuclear medicine. In this paper, we present stateless two-stage scheduling to cope with multiple criteria decision making. The first stage mostly deals with patients’ conditions. The second stage concerns more the clinical condition and its correlations with patients’ preference which presents more complicated intertwined configurations. A greedy algorithm is proposed in the second stage to determine the (time slot and patient) pair in linear time. The result shows practical and efficient scheduling for nuclear medicine

Experimental analyses to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness in using heat pipe-embedded drills

This paper presents an experimental investigation to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of heat pipe cooling in drilling operations. The basic idea is to insert a heat pipe at the center of the drill tool with the evaporator close to the drill tip and the condenser at the end of the drill. Consequently, the heat generated at the tool–chip interface can be removed by convection heat transfer. Experimental studies were involved in three cases, including solid drill without coolant, solid drill with coolant, and heat pipe drill. Drilling tests were conducted on a CNC machining center with full immersion cutting. The cast iron square block was used as the workpiece, and the high-speed steel was chosen for the drill tool material. Flank wear is considered as the criterion for tool failure, and the wear was measured using a Hisomet II Toolmaker’s microscope. The tests were conducted until the drill was rejected when an average flank wear greater than 0.10 mm was recorded. The results demonstrate that using a heat pipe in the drilling process can effectively perform thermal management comparable to the flooding coolant cooling used pervasively in the manufacturing industry, extending the tool life of the drill

Solving The Flexible Job Shop Problem using Multi-Objective Optimizer with Solution Characteristic Extraction

It is difficult to find optimal scheduling solutions for abstract scheduling problems with mass parallel tasks on multiprocessors because they are NP-complete. In this paper, a solution searching strategy called solution characteristic extraction is proposed as a multi-objective optimizer for solving flexible job shop problems (FJSP). These problems are concerned with finishing assigned jobs with minimal critical machine workload, total workload, and completion times. A suitable job assignment must consider processor performance, job complexity, and job suitability for each individual processor simultaneously. To test the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method, the experiments will contain two groups of benchmarks; with, and without release time constraints. Each benchmark includes numbers of heterogeneous processors and different jobs for execution. The results indicate the proposed method can find more potential solutions, and outperform related methods

University-community partnerships for local museum : an interdisciplinary service-learning project

In 2013, Far East University conducted an interdisciplinary service -learning project in the Fang-Yuan Art Museum, a local museum in Tainan suburban. The project was grouped by four courses, Life Aesthetics and Museum Narration, Navigation Technology for Museum, Creative Design and Exhibition, and Green Consumption, by faculties from Dept. of Applied Language, Dept. of Information Management, and Dept. of Digital Multimedia Arts. The faculty members, in partnership with the museum curator and its neighboring community, con-constructed a one-year long service-learning project to meet museum\u27s needs and courses objectives. The English version of museum narration, the APP for museum navigation, and the creative souvenir were developed. This paper will present this model of interdisciplinary service-learning, as well as courses objectives, common learning activities, advantage and disadvantage, and further development