Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Design and Implementation of SOAP Manageable Access Control Gateways

With the prevailing wireless network nowadays, more and more network devices such as firewalls, gateways, and wireless access points are set up in hotels, coffee shops, schools and stores to provide Internet access services. In addition to manage users using network services, it is also an important issue to maintain and control all these distributed network devices. In this thesis we combine Captive Portal technique in the access control gateway with a web server on the Internet to achieve a more flexible authentication mechanism and manage users in the network. Besides, IP Plug and Play (IP PnP) function will be added to the gateway for the convenience of use. In addition, considering that many commerce popular Wide Area Network (WAN) devices management protocols like CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) use Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to carry out the transmission of information, we modify the gateway to be a SOAP manageable access control gateway. This means by supporting SOAP protocol, our gateway can be configured and controlled by a management server along with other gateways in different kinds of platforms or developed in different programming languages via the Internet simultaneously. The goal of this thesis is to provide a flexible network access control gateway which can be applied to large-scale wireless users and devices management. The gateway is not only a controller itself to do the authentication and manage clients in LAN but also can be configured and controlled by a management server via WAN. With the SOAP supported function in the gateway, the management server can solve the problems which are difficult for the gateway to handle by itself, achieve vast and complicated configuration via the Internet remotely. Therefore, services providers can carry out long-distance centralized management within a common management framework and control many different devices in batches efficiently and systematically

Simple yet effective algorithms for block and I/O buffer placement in flip-chip design

[[abstract]]We study the problem of block and I/O buffer placement in flip-chip design. The goal of the problem is to minimize simultaneously the total path delay and the total skew of all input/output signals. We present two simple, yet effective, algorithms for the problem. Both algorithms place blocks to minimize the total path delay, and place I/O buffers to minimize the total skew. As compared to an existing method (Peng, C.-Y., 2003), the experimental results show that both algorithms are able to get better placement solutions with improvement rates of up to 65% and 77.5%, respectively, and run much faster.[[fileno]]2030229030024[[department]]資訊工程學

How Does the Severity of Injury Vary between Motorcycle and Automobile Accident Victims Who Sustain High-Grade Blunt Hepatic and/or Splenic Injuries? Results of a Retrospective Analysis

Background: High-grade blunt hepatic and/or splenic injuries (BHSI) remain a great challenge for trauma surgeons. The main aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics, mortality rates, and outcomes of high-grade BHSI in motorcyclists and car occupants hospitalized for treatment of traumatic injuries in a Level I trauma center in southern Taiwan. Methods: High-grade BHSI are defined as grade III-VI blunt hepatic injuries and grade III-V blunt splenic injuries. This retrospective study reviewed the data of 101 motorcyclists and 32 car occupants who experienced a high-grade BHSI from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2013. Two-sided Fisher’s exact or Pearson’s chi-square tests were used to compare categorical data, unpaired Student’s t-test was used to analyze normally distributed continuous data, and Mann–Whitney’s U test was used to compare non-normally distributed data. Results: In this study, the majority (76%, 101/133) of high-grade BHSI were due to motorcycle crashes. Car occupants had a significantly higher injury severity score (ISS; 26.8 ± 10.9 vs. 20.7 ± 10.4, respectively, p = 0.005) and organ injured score (OIS; 3.8 ± 1.0 vs. 3.4 ± 0.6, respectively, p = 0.033), as well as a significantly longer hospital length of stay (LOS; 21.2 days vs. 14.6 days, respectively, p = 0.038) than did motorcyclists. Car occupants with high-grade BHSI also had worse clinical presentations than their motorcyclist counterparts, including a significantly higher incidence of hypotension, hyperpnea, tube thoracostomy, blood transfusion >4 units, LOS in intensive care unit >5 days, and complications. However, there were no differences in the percentage of angiography or laparotomy performed or mortality rate between these two groups of patients. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that car occupants with high-grade BHSI were injured more severely, had a higher incidence of worse clinical presentation, had a longer hospital LOS, and had a higher incidence of complications than motorcyclists. The results also implied that specific attention should be paid to those car occupants with high-grade BHSI, whose critical condition should not be underestimated because of the concept that the patients within in a car are much safer

Good Mortality Prediction by Glasgow Coma Scale for Neurosurgical Patients

How to effectively use the finite resources of an intensive care unit (ICU) for neurosurgical patients is a critical decision-making process. Mortality prediction models are effective tools for allocating facilities. This study intended to distinguish the prediction power of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II), the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II), and the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) for neurosurgical patients. Methods: According to the definitions of the APACHE II, this study recorded both APACHE II and SAPS II scores of 154 neurosurgical patients in the ICU of a 600-bed general hospital. Linear regression models of GCS (GCS-mr) were constructed. The t test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used as the statistical evaluation methods. Results: There were 50 (32.5%) females and 104 (67.5%) males in this study. Among them, 108 patients survived and 46 patients died. The areas under the ROC curves (AUC) of SAPS II and APACHE II were 0.872 and 0.846, respectively. The AUC of GCS-mr was 0.866, and the R2 was 0.389. The evaluation powers of SAPS II, GCS-mr and APACHE II were the same (p > 0.05). Patients with GCS ≤ 5 or motor component of GCS (GCS-M) ≤ 3 had a higher probability of mortality than patients with GCS > 5 or GCS-M > 3 (p < 0.01). Conclusion: The predictive powers of SAPS II, APACHE II and GCS-mr were the same. The GCS-mr is more convenient for predicting mortality in neurosurgical patients. Both GCS ≤ 5 and GCS-M ≤ 3 are good indicators of mortality in these patients

Modeling for Spatial Overlap Effect of End-Pumped Passively Q-Switched Nd:YVO₄/Cr⁴⁺:YAG Laser and Its Experimental Verification

In this work, the spatial effects of the pumping and lasing were considered into the coupled rate equations of passively Q-switched lasers for the condition of no saturation in the gain medium. A transcendental equation of energy utilization was derived, and the solution to the equation was approximated by an analytic model developed in previous work. The reflection factor of output coupler with low reflectivity was modified for more accurate output energy evaluations. Experimentally, an end-pumped Nd:YVO4/Cr4+:YAG laser in a concave-plano cavity with output coupling reflectivity ranging from 10% to 92% was demonstrated, and two different pumping spot sizes of laser diode were adopted for validating the developed spatial model. The experimental results showed good agreements with the theoretical calculations

Modeling for Spatial Overlap Effect of End-Pumped Passively Q-Switched Nd:YVO4/Cr4+:YAG Laser and Its Experimental Verification

In this work, the spatial effects of the pumping and lasing were considered into the coupled rate equations of passively Q-switched lasers for the condition of no saturation in the gain medium. A transcendental equation of energy utilization was derived, and the solution to the equation was approximated by an analytic model developed in previous work. The reflection factor of output coupler with low reflectivity was modified for more accurate output energy evaluations. Experimentally, an end-pumped Nd:YVO4/Cr4+:YAG laser in a concave-plano cavity with output coupling reflectivity ranging from 10% to 92% was demonstrated, and two different pumping spot sizes of laser diode were adopted for validating the developed spatial model. The experimental results showed good agreements with the theoretical calculations

Enzymatic degradation of ginkgolic acid by laccase immobilized on novel electrospun nanofiber mat

BACKGROUND: Ginkgo biloba leaf extract contains many active ingredients that are beneficial for health. However, ginkgolicacid, one of the major components found in G. biloba extract, may cause serious allergic and toxic side effects. The purpose of this study is to immobilize the laccase system on the electrospun nylon fiber mat (NFM) to hydrolyze the ginkgolic acid in G. biloba leaf extract efficiently. RESULTS: Novel electrospinning technology successfully produced high-quality nanoscopic fiber mats made of a mixture of multi-walled carbon nanotube and nylon 6,6. Laccase that was immobilized onto the NFM exhibited much higher efficiency in the catalyzation of 2,20-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) than nylon 6,6 pellets. After being immobilized onto the NFM, the pH and temperature stability of laccase were significantly improved. The NFMimmobilized laccase could maintain more than 50% of its original activity even after 40 days of storage or 10 operational cycles. The kinetic parameters, including rate constant (K), the time (τ50) in which 50% of ginkgolic acid hydrolysis was reached, the time (τcomplete) required to achieve complete ginkgolic acid hydrolysis, Km and Vmax were determined, and were 0.07 ± 0.01 min−1, 8.97 ± 0.55 min, 45.45 ± 2.79 min, 0.51 ± 0.09 mM and 0.49 ± 0.03 mM min−1 mg−1, respectively. CONCLUSION: The result successfully demonstrated the strong potential of using novel electrospun nanofiber mats as enzyme immobilization platforms, which could significantly enhance enzyme activity and stability