Use and effectiveness of dapagliflozin in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: a multicenter retrospective study in Taiwan

Aims/Introduction To investigate the clinical outcomes of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) who initiated dapagliflozin in real-world practice in Taiwan. Materials and Methods In this multicenter retrospective study, adult patients with T2DM who initiated dapagliflozin after May 1st 2016 either as add-on or switch therapy were included. Changes in clinical and laboratory parameters were evaluated at 3 and 6 months. Baseline factors associated with dapagliflozin response in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) were analyzed by univariate and multivariate logistic regression. Results A total of 1,960 patients were eligible. At 6 months, significant changes were observed: HbA1c by −0.73% (95% confidence interval [CI] −0.80, −0.67), body weight was -1.61 kg (95% CI −1.79, −1.42), and systolic/diastolic blood pressure by −3.6/−1.4 mmHg. Add-on dapagliflozin showed significantly greater HbA1c reduction (−0.82%) than switched therapy (−0.66%) (p = 0.002). The proportion of patients achieving HbA1c <7% target increased from 6% at baseline to 19% at Month 6. Almost 80% of patients experienced at least 1% reduction in HbA1c, and 65% of patients showed both weight loss and reduction in HbA1c. Around 37% of patients had at least 3% weight loss. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated patients with higher baseline HbA1c and those who initiated dapagliflozin as add-on therapy were associated with a greater reduction in HbA1c. Conclusions In this real-world study with the highest patient number of Chinese population to date, the use of dapagliflozin was associated with significant improvement in glycemic control, body weight, and blood pressure in patients with T2DM. Initiating dapagliflozin as add-on therapy showed better glycemic control than as switch therapy

ATOMS : ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions - I. Survey description and a first look at G9.62+0.19

The ATOMS, standing for ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions, survey has observed 146 active star-forming regions with ALMA band 3, aiming to systematically investigate the spatial distribution of various dense gas tracers in a large sample of Galactic massive clumps, to study the roles of stellar feedback in star formation, and to characterize filamentary structures inside massive clumps. In this work, the observations, data analysis, and example science of the ATOMS survey are presented, using a case study for the G9.62+0.19 complex. Toward this source, some transitions, commonly assumed to trace dense gas, including CS J = 2-1, HCO+ J = 1-0, and HCN J = 1-0, are found to show extended gas emission in low-density regions within the clump; less than 25 per cent of their emission is from dense cores. SO, CH3OH, (HCN)-C-13, and HC3N show similar morphologies in their spatial distributions and reveal well the dense cores. Widespread narrow SiO emission is present (over similar to 1 pc), which may be caused by slow shocks from large-scale colliding flows or HII regions. Stellar feedback from an expanding HII region has greatly reshaped the natal clump, significantly changed the spatial distribution of gas, and may also account for the sequential high-mass star formation in the G9.62+0.19 complex. The ATOMS survey data can be jointly analysed with other survey data, e.g. MALT90, Orion B, EMPIRE, ALMA IMF, and ALMAGAL, to deepen our understandings of 'dense gas' star formation scaling relations and massive protocluster formation.Peer reviewe

ATOMS : ALMA three-millimeter observations of massive star-forming regions - II. Compact objects in ACA observations and star formation scaling relations

We report studies of the relationships between the total bolometric luminosity (L-bol or L-TIR) and the molecular line luminosities of J = 1 - 0 transitions of (HCN)-C-13, (HCO+)-C-13, HCN, and HCO+ with data obtained from ACA observations in the 'ATOMS' survey of 146 active Galactic star-forming regions. The correlations between L-bol and molecular line luminosities L-mol' of the four transitions all appear to be approximately linear. Line emission of isotopologues shows as large scatters in L-bol-L-mol' relations as their main line emission. The log(L-bol/L-mol') for different molecular line tracers have similar distributions. The L-bol-to-L-mol' ratios do not change with galactocentric distances (R-GC) and clump masses (M-clump). The molecular line luminosity ratios (HCN-to-HCO+, (HCN)-C-13-to-(HCO+)-C-13, HCN-to-(HCN)-C-13, and HCO+-to-(HCO+)-C-13) all appear constant against L-bol, dust temperature (T-d), M-clump, and R-GC. Our studies suggest that both the main lines and isotopologue lines are good tracers of the total masses of dense gas in Galactic molecular clumps. The large optical depths of main lines do not affect the interpretation of the slopes in star formation relations. We find that the mean star formation efficiency (SFE) of massive Galactic clumps in the 'ATOMS' survey is reasonably consistent with other measures of the SFE for dense gas, even those using very different tracers or examining very different spatial scales.Peer reviewe

ATOMS : ALMA three-millimeter observations of massive star-forming regions - III. Catalogues of candidate hot molecular cores and hyper/ultra compact H II regions

A correction has been published: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 511, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 501–505, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac039We have identified 453 compact dense cores in 3mm continuum emission maps in the ALMA Three-millimetre Observations of Massive Star-forming regions survey, and compiled three catalogues of high-mass star-forming cores. One catalogue, referred to as hyper/ultra compact (H/UC)-HII catalogue, includes 89 cores that enshroud H/UC HII regions as characterized by associated compact H40 alpha emission. A second catalogue, referred to as pure s-cHMC, includes 32 candidate hot molecular cores (HMCs) showing rich spectra (N >= 20 lines) of complex organic molecules (COMs) and not associated with H/UC-HII regions. The third catalogue, referred to as pure w-cHMC, includes 58 candidate HMCs with relatively low levels of COM richness and not associated with H/UC-Hii regions. These three catalogues of dense cores provide an important foundation for future studies of the early stages of high-mass star formation across the Milky Way. We also find that nearly half of H/UC-HII cores are candidate HMCs. From the number counts of COM-containing and H/UC-HII cores, we suggest that the duration of high-mass protostellar cores showing chemically rich features is at least comparable to the lifetime of H/UC-HII regions. For cores in the H/UC-HII catalogue, the width of the H40 alpha line increases as the core size decreases, suggesting that the non-thermal dynamical and/or pressure line-broadening mechanisms dominate on the smaller scales of the H/UC-HII cores.Peer reviewe

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

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Development of auditing in Malaysia: Legal, political and historical influences

This work investigates the role and contribution of external auditing as practised in the Malaysian society during the forty year period from independence in 1957 to just before the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997.It applies the political economic theory introduced by Tinker (1980) and refined by Cooper & Sherer (1984), which focuses on the social relations aspects of professional activity rather than economic forces alone.In a case study format where qualitative data was gathered mainly from primary and secondary source materials, the study found that the function of auditing in the Malaysian society in most cases is devoid of any essence of mission; instead it is created, shaped and transformed by the pressures which give rise to its development over time.The largely insignificant role that it serves is intertwined within the contexts in which it operates

Reducing the complexity of an adaptive radial basis function network with a histogram algorithm

In this paper, a constructive training technique known as the dynamic decay adjustment (DDA) algorithm is combined with an information density estimation method to develop a new variant of the radial basis function (RBF) network. The RBF network trained with the DDA algorithm (i.e. RBFNDDA) is able to learn information incrementally by creating new hidden units whenever it is necessary. However, RBFNDDA exhibits a greedy insertion behaviour that absorbs both useful and non-useful information during its learning process, therefore increasing its network complexity unnecessarily. As such, we propose to integrate RBFNDDA with a histogram (HIST) algorithm to reduce the network complexity. The HIST algorithm is used to compute distribution of information in the trained RBFNDDA network. Then, hidden nodes with non-useful information are identified and pruned. The effectiveness of the proposed model, namely RBFNDDA-HIST, is evaluated using a number of benchmark data sets. A performance comparison study between RBFNDDA-HIST and other classification methods is conducted. The proposed RBFNDDA-HIST model is also applied to a real-world condition monitoring problem in a power generation plant. The results are analysed and discussed. The outcome indicates that RBFNDDA-HIST not only can reduce the number of hidden nodes significantly without requiring a long training time but also can produce promising accuracy rates