Nemonoxacin (Taigexyn^®): A New Non-Fluorinated Quinolone

Nemonoxacin (Taigexyn®), a novel C-8-methoxy non-fluorinated quinolone, has been approved for use in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in Taiwan (2014) and mainland China (2016). The FDA granted nemonoxacin ‘qualified infectious disease product’ and ‘fast-track’ designations for CAP and acute bacterial skin and skin structure infection in December 2013. It possesses a broad spectrum of bactericidal activity against typical and atypical respiratory pathogens. In particular, nemonoxacin has activity against resistant Gram-positive cocci, including penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Oral nemonoxacin was compared with oral levofloxacin for efficacy and safety in three randomized, double-blinded, controlled Phase II–III clinical trials for the treatment of CAP. This article will review the microbiological profile of nemonoxacin against respiratory pathogens including S. pneumoniae and S. aureus, and microbiological outcome data from the three Phase II–III studies

FS5 sun exposure survivability analysis

During the Acquisition and Safe Hold (ASH) mode, FORMOAT-5 (FS5) satellite attitude is not fully controlled. Direct sun exposure on the Remote Sensing Instrument (RSI) satellite telescope sensor may occur. The sun exposure effect on RSI sensor performance is investigated to evaluate the instrument’s survivability in orbit. Both satellite spin speed and sun exposure duration are considered as the key parameters in this study. A simple radiometry technique is used to calculate the total sun radiance exposure to examine the RSI sensor integrity. Total sun irradiance on the sensor is computed by considering the spectral variation effect through the RSI’s five-band filter. Experiments that directly expose the sensor to the sun on the ground were performed with no obvious performance degradation found. Based on both the analysis and experiment results, it is concluded that the FS5 RSI sensor can survive direct sun exposure during the ASH mode

Does the Law of One Price hold? A cross-regional study of China

This study considers the price convergence in different regions of China, which is the largest developing country in the world and a country in which the regional difference is much larger between provinces. Whether there is price convergence between regions in one country is an important economic issue according to the Law of One Price (LOP) theory. Compared to previous studies, this article operates with the Sequential Panel Selection Method (SPSM) to explore the non-stationary properties of the LOP in China’s regions. We provide robust evidence to specify that the LOP holds true for two-thirds of the provinces in China, mainly in the Western and Central regions. This means that the Eastern region’s price fluctuation is non-stationary and that the consumer price index (CPI) levels of the Western, Central and Northeastern regions are relatively convergent in China. The conduction path of the CPI level is from the Eastern region to the other regions. It shows that prices can converge with each other by LOP and the values of the same goods in the Western and Central regions are equal and if there is a price difference, then it can be eliminated by interregional trade

Multi-Operator Fairness in Transparent RAN Sharing by Soft-Partition With Blocking and Dropping Mechanism

Radio access network (RAN) sharing has attracted significant attention from telecom operators as a means of accommodating data surges. However, current mechanisms for RAN sharing ignore the fairness issue among operators, and hence the RAN may be under- or over-utilized. Furthermore, the fairness among different operators cannot be guaranteed, since the RAN resources are distributed on a first come, first served basis. Accordingly, the present study proposes a “soft-partition with blocking and dropping” (SBD) mechanism that offers inter-operator fairness using a “soft-partition” approach. In particular, the operator subscribers are permitted to overuse the resources specified in the predefined service-level-agreement when the shared RAN is under-utilized, but are blocked (or even dropped) when the RAN is over-utilized. The simulation results show that SBD achieves an inter-operator fairness of 0.997, which is higher than that of both a hard-partition approach (0.98) and a no-partition approach (0.6) while maintaining a shared RAN utilization rate of 98%. Furthermore, SBD reduces the blocking rate from 35% (hard partition approach) to almost 0%, whereas controlling the dropping rate at 5%. Notably, the dropping rate can be reduced to almost 0% using a newly proposed bandwidth scale down procedure.This work was supported in part by H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-CORAL under Grant 761586, and in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan under Contract MOST 106-2218- E-009-018

Method-specific suicide rates and accessibility of means:a small-area analysis in Taipei City, Taiwan

Abstract. Background: Few studies have investigated whether means accessibility is related to the spatial distribution of suicide. Aims: To examine the hypothesis that indicators of the accessibility to specific suicide methods were associated with method-specific suicide rates in Taipei City, Taiwan. Method: Smoothed standardized mortality ratios for method-specific suicide rates across 432 neighborhoods and their associations with means accessibility indicators were estimated using Bayesian hierarchical models. Results: The proportion of single-person households, indicating the ease of burning charcoal in the home, was associated with charcoal-burning suicide rates (adjusted rate ratio [aRR] = 1.13, 95% credible interval [CrI] = 1.03–1.25). The proportion of households living on the sixth floor or above, indicating easy access to high places, was associated with jumping suicide rates (aRR = 1.16, 95% CrI, 1.04–1.29). Neighborhoods’ adjacency to rivers, indicating easy access to water, showed no statistical evidence of an association with drowning suicide rates (aRR = 1.27, 95% CrI = 0.92–1.69). Hanging and overall suicide rates showed no associations with any of these three accessibility indicators. Limitations: This is an ecological study; associations between means accessibility and suicide cannot be directly inferred as causal. Conclusion: The findings have implications for identifying high-risk groups for charcoal-burning suicide (e.g., vulnerable individuals living alone) and preventing jumping suicides by increasing the safety of high buildings

Effects of orthographic consistency and homophone density on Chinese spoken word recognition

Studies of alphabetic language have shown that orthographic knowledge influences phonological processing during spoken word recognition. This study utilized the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to differentiate two types of phonology-to-orthography (P-to-O) mapping consistencies in Chinese, namely homophone density and orthographic consistency. The ERP data revealed an orthographic consistency effect in the frontal-centrally distributed N400, and a homophone density effect in central-posteriorly distributed late positive component (LPC). Further source analyses using the standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) demonstrated that the orthographic effect was not only localized in the frontal and temporal-parietal regions for phonological processing, but also in the posterior visual cortex for orthographic processing, while the homophone density effect was found in middle temporal gyrus for lexical-semantic selection, and in the temporal-occipital junction for orthographic processing. These results suggest that orthographic information not only shapes the nature of phonological representations, but may also be activated during on-line spoken word recognition