Changes in Outcome and Complication Rates of Very-low-birth-weight Infants in One Tertiary Center in Southern Taiwan Between 2003 and 2010

BackgroundNeonatal intensive care has changed dramatically over the past few decades and the survival of infants has generally improved in many countries. The purpose of this study was to explore the recent evolution of mortality and morbidities among very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants in southern Taiwan.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed the medical records of VLBW (birth weight <1500 g) infants who were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit at a tertiary medical center in southern Taiwan from 2003 to 2010. The study period was divided into two cohorts: the first cohort of 2003–2006 and the second cohort of 2007–2010. Demographic profiles and complications were recorded, including the following information: sex, birth body weight (BBW), gestational age (GA), Apgar score, patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), necrotizing enterocolitis, retinopathy, chronic lung disease (CLD), inguinal hernia, and sepsis. The length of stay (LOS) in hospital was compared between the two cohorts.ResultsA total of 420 (212 male) VLBW infants were enrolled with 52 (12.4%) deaths. Compared to surviving infants, deceased infants had significantly lower GA, Apgar scores, and BBW. The mortality of VLBW infants remained static between the two birth cohorts, but the incidence of major morbidities generally decreased. The LOS for overall surviving infants and the proportion of LOS > 60 days were both reduced in the period of 2007–2010. With further stratification by BBW, the major reduction of long LOS was only found in the group of BBW ≥ 1000 g. The multivariate logistic regression model found PDA, CLD, and BBW < 1000 g were major complications to be associated with long LOS among surviving infants.ConclusionPeriodic evaluation of the mortality and morbidity of preterm infants can help to understand the changes and trends of our neonatal care. Further study using the national dataset to provide more representative information is warranted

The Behavior of Retaining Walls Under 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake

This paper reports failure of retaining structures related to the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. On September 21 of 1999, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale struck Taiwan. At the site near Tou-Sheh, overturning failure was observed on a 2.5 m-high gravity wall located near the epicenter. At the site near the Temple of Ten-thousand Buddha, a masonry wall constructed with cobble was damaged. Upper part of wall shifted outward about 0.2 m with respect to its lower part. At the site of Cinema-Culture Town, a gravity wall built on top of the Che-Lung-Pu fault was severely damaged. The heel of the wall was uplifted by the fault rupture. At the parking lot of the Lalu Resort, the retaining wall constructed on a slope moved down the slope during the earthquake. A circular sliding surface can be observed in the collapsed backfill. At the entrance of National Chi-Nan University, a geogrid-reinforced wall was severely damaged during the earthquake. Reinforcing strips were pulled out under the seismic load and fill materials fell out

Obstacle-Resistant Deployment Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

[[abstract]]Node deployment is an important issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Sensor nodes should be efficiently deployed in a predetermined region in a low-cost and high-coverage-quality manner. Random deployment is the simplest way to deploy sensor nodes but may cause unbalanced deployment and, therefore, increase hardware costs and create coverage holes. This paper presents the efficient obstacle-resistant robot deployment (ORRD) algorithm, which involves the design of a node placement policy, a serpentine movement policy, obstacle-handling rules, and boundary rules. By applying the proposed ORRD, the robot rapidly deploys a near-minimal number of sensor nodes to achieve full sensing coverage, even though there exist unpredicted obstacles with regular or irregular shapes. Performance results reveal that ORRD outperforms the existing robot deployment mechanism in terms of power conservation and obstacle resistance and, therefore, achieves better deployment performance.[[incitationindex]]SC

An Obstacle-Free and Power Efficient Deployment Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

[[abstract]]This paper proposes a robot-deployment algorithm that overcomes unpredicted obstacles and employs full-coverage deployment with a minimal number of sensor nodes. Without the location information, node placement and spiral movement policies are proposed for the robot to deploy sensors efficiently to achieve power conservation and full coverage, while an obstacle surrounding movement policy is proposed to reduce the impacts of an obstacle upon deployment. Simulation results reveal that the proposed robot-deployment algorithm outperforms most existing robot-deployment mechanisms in power conservation and obstacle resistance and therefore achieves a better deployment performance.[[notice]]補正完

Zero-shot Domain-sensitive Speech Recognition with Prompt-conditioning Fine-tuning

In this work, we propose a method to create domain-sensitive speech recognition models that utilize textual domain information by conditioning its generation on a given text prompt. This is accomplished by fine-tuning a pre-trained, end-to-end model (Whisper) to learn from demonstrations with prompt examples. We show that this ability can be generalized to different domains and even various prompt contexts, with our model gaining a Word Error Rate (WER) reduction of up to 33% on unseen datasets from various domains, such as medical conversation, air traffic control communication, and financial meetings. Considering the limited availability of audio-transcript pair data, we further extend our method to text-only fine-tuning to achieve domain sensitivity as well as domain adaptation. We demonstrate that our text-only fine-tuned model can also attend to various prompt contexts, with the model reaching the most WER reduction of 29% on the medical conversation dataset.Comment: F-T Liao and Y-C Chan contributed equall

Age as a predisposing factor of respiratory alkalosis in accidental carbon monoxide poisoning

AbstractAimsThe purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of and identify the predisposing factors for respiratory alkalosis in patients with accidental carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.MethodsPatients presenting to the emergency department with accidental CO poisoning were retrospectively identified and divided into Group A (no respiratory alkalosis) and Group B (respiratory alkalosis). Charts were reviewed for neurologic status, various demographic factors, and laboratory data.ResultsA total 96 patients, 37 (38.5%) men and 59 (61.5%) women, were identified. Of these, the 58 (60.4%) patients without respiratory alkalosis were placed in Group A and the 38 (39.6%) patients with respiratory alkalosis were placed in Group B. Independent multivariate predictors of CO poisoning presenting with respiratory alkalosis were age [odds ratio (OR), 1.04; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.01–1.08] and respiratory rate (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.01–1.33). The rates of respiratory alkalosis in patients younger than 15 years, 15–29 years, 30–44 years, 45–59 years, and older than 59 years were 17.4%, 32.4%, 51.9%, 75%, and 75%, respectively (p<0.01).ConclusionsRespiratory alkalosis in the patients with CO poisoning is not an uncommon finding, and as age increases, the percentage becomes higher. When emergency physicians are faced with patients presenting with respiratory alkalosis of undetermined cause, CO poisoning should be taken into consideration, especially in the elderly

Disordered Fe vacancies and superconductivity in potassium-intercalated iron selenide (K2-xFe4+ySe5)

The parent compound of an unconventional superconductor must contain unusual correlated electronic and magnetic properties of its own. In the high-Tc potassium intercalated FeSe, there has been significant debate regarding what the exact parent compound is. Our studies unambiguously show that the Fe-vacancy ordered K2Fe4Se5 is the magnetic, Mott insulating parent compound of the superconducting state. Non-superconducting K2Fe4Se5 becomes a superconductor after high temperature annealing, and the overall picture indicates that superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5 originates from the Fe-vacancy order to disorder transition. Thus, the long pending question whether magnetic and superconducting state are competing or cooperating for cuprate superconductors may also apply to the Fe-chalcogenide superconductors. It is believed that the iron selenides and related compounds will provide essential information to understand the origin of superconductivity in the iron-based superconductors, and possibly to the superconducting cuprates

A Study on the Effect of Design Factors of Slim Keyboard's Tactile Feedback

With the rapid development of computer technology, the design of computers and keyboards moves towards a trend of slimness. The change of mobile input devices directly influences users' behavior. Although multi-touch applications allow entering texts through a virtual keyboard, the performance, feedback, and comfortableness of the technology is inferior to traditional keyboard, and while manufacturers launch mobile touch keyboards and projection keyboards, the performance has not been satisfying. Therefore, this study discussed the design factors of slim pressure-sensitive keyboards. The factors were evaluated with an objective (accuracy and speed) and a subjective evaluation (operability, recognition, feedback, and difficulty) depending on the shape (circle, rectangle, and L-shaped), thickness (flat, 3mm, and 6mm), and force (35±10g, 60±10g, and 85±10g) of the keyboard. Moreover, MANOVA and Taguchi methods (regarding signal-to-noise ratios) were conducted to find the optimal level of each design factor. The research participants, by their typing speed (30 words/ minute), were divided in two groups. Considering the multitude of variables and levels, the experiments were implemented using the fractional factorial design. A representative model of the research samples were established for input task testing. The findings of this study showed that participants with low typing speed primarily relied on vision to recognize the keys, and those with high typing speed relied on tactile feedback that was affected by the thickness and force of the keys. In the objective and subjective evaluation, a combination of keyboard design factors that might result in higher performance and satisfaction was identified (L-shaped, 3mm, and 60±10g) as the optimal combination. The learning curve was analyzed to make a comparison with a traditional standard keyboard to investigate the influence of user experience on keyboard operation. The research results indicated the optimal combination provided input performance to inferior to a standard keyboard. The results could serve as a reference for the development of related products in industry and for applying comprehensively to touch devices and input interfaces which are interacted with people

A Study on the Effect of Design Factors of Slim Keyboard's Tactile Feedback

With the rapid development of computer technology, the design of computers and keyboards moves towards a trend of slimness. The change of mobile input devices directly influences users' behavior. Although multi-touch applications allow entering texts through a virtual keyboard, the performance, feedback, and comfortableness of the technology is inferior to traditional keyboard, and while manufacturers launch mobile touch keyboards and projection keyboards, the performance has not been satisfying. Therefore, this study discussed the design factors of slim pressure-sensitive keyboards. The factors were evaluated with an objective (accuracy and speed) and a subjective evaluation (operability, recognition, feedback, and difficulty) depending on the shape (circle, rectangle, and L-shaped), thickness (flat, 3mm, and 6mm), and force (35±10g, 60±10g, and 85±10g) of the keyboard. Moreover, MANOVA and Taguchi methods (regarding signal-to-noise ratios) were conducted to find the optimal level of each design factor. The research participants, by their typing speed (30 words/ minute), were divided in two groups. Considering the multitude of variables and levels, the experiments were implemented using the fractional factorial design. A representative model of the research samples were established for input task testing. The findings of this study showed that participants with low typing speed primarily relied on vision to recognize the keys, and those with high typing speed relied on tactile feedback that was affected by the thickness and force of the keys. In the objective and subjective evaluation, a combination of keyboard design factors that might result in higher performance and satisfaction was identified (L-shaped, 3mm, and 60±10g) as the optimal combination. The learning curve was analyzed to make a comparison with a traditional standard keyboard to investigate the influence of user experience on keyboard operation. The research results indicated the optimal combination provided input performance to inferior to a standard keyboard. The results could serve as a reference for the development of related products in industry and for applying comprehensively to touch devices and input interfaces which are interacted with people