Managing Pain with Laser Acupuncture

According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, Qi flows through the body along specific paths known as meridians. Any disturbance in Qi evokes a Ying−Yang imbalance in the body, and consequently leads to disease. Pain results from blood stasis and Qi stagnation. Laser acupuncture (LA), first introduced clinically in the 1970s, combines the advantages of traditional acupuncture and modern laser medicine and has been applied for the treatment of various diseases. Here, we investigated studies on the use of LA for pain management according to current evidence. Articles including English keywords related to the use of LA for pain, published between January 2006 and August 2015 were sourced from PubMed, Medline, and Cochrane Library databases. On the basis of these papers, we explored the modern applications, mechanisms, and analgesic effects of LA. LA integrates the positive effects of acupuncture and low-level laser therapy, and is therefore effective in activating blood and in moving Qi. LA relieves pain through both anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. No adverse effects or complications resulting from LA were reported in the literature. In the hands of an experienced physician, LA can be a useful and safe method for pain management

Spatiotemporal Trends in Oral Cancer Mortality and Potential Risks Associated with Heavy Metal Content in Taiwan Soil

Central and Eastern Taiwan have alarmingly high oral cancer (OC) mortality rates, however, the effect of lifestyle factors such as betel chewing cannot fully explain the observed high-risk. Elevated concentrations of heavy metals in the soil reflect somewhat the levels of exposure to the human body, which may promote cancer development in local residents. This study assesses the space-time distribution of OC mortality in Taiwan, and its association with prime factors leading to soil heavy metal content. The current research obtained OC mortality data from the Atlas of Cancer Mortality in Taiwan, 1972–2001, and derived soil heavy metals content data from a nationwide survey carried out by ROCEPA in 1985. The exploratory data analyses showed that OC mortality rates in both genders had high spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I = 0.6716 and 0.6318 for males and females). Factor analyses revealed three common factors (CFs) representing the major pattern of soil pollution in Taiwan. The results for Spatial Lag Models (SLM) showed that CF1 (Cr, Cu, Ni, and Zn) was most spatially related to male OC mortality which implicates that some metals in CF1 might play as promoters in OC etiology

Arbitrage, Covered Interest Parity and Cointegration Analysis on the NTD/USD Forex Market Revisited

This study applies interest parity theory including Covered Interest Parity (CIP) to examine the 30-, 60-.90-, and 180-day maturities for the NTD/USD foreign exchange (FX) market. In the empirical unit root tests, we find that NTD/USD forward premium and interest rate spread present I(0) property. Empirical results are provided that interest rate differential appears stationary component; imply the stable relationship between Taiwan and USA on monetary policy. Using Taylor (1989)'s covered interest arbitrage model, the empirical results exhibit the absence of excess profit opportunities on New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) or US Dollar (USD) returns. Additionally, theoretical innovation approach of the cost-of-carry model is considered to evaluate the arbitrage opportunities in FX study. Accordingly, the covered interest parity condition generally continue to hold that almost zero-arbitrage results support FX market efficiency although the Federal Reserve implemented several rounds of quantitative easing after the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. Ultimately, Taiwanese FX market emerges to have been little affected by the increased crisis risks during the turbulent times because of the its limited development and market integration. Keywords: Covered Interest Parity, Market Integration, Granger Causality Tests, Cost-of-Carry model JEL Classifications: G1, G12, F3

Personalized Rehabilitation Recognition Model upon ANFIS

This study applied the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to design a recognition model of personalized rehabilitation. In the model, the user may take a wearable sensor and follow the assigned joint-relax exercise to measure the motions of the upper limbs. The sensor that is embedded with the chips of accelerometer, gyroscope, and inclinometer produced the sample datasets due to the exercise schedule of physiotherapy assignment. All motion samples were labeled by arbitrary numbers, which can be identified to the specific motion, for the data training process. A Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) was initially designed by the steps of data pre-processing, featuring, fuzzifying, and ruling Fuzzy logics according to the sample datasets. The FIS was then trained by the ANFIS for optimization by tuning parameters of the features. In testing, the accomplished FIS could recognize the motion features by the defuzzifier that infers the label corresponding to the motion. As a result, the average recognition rate was higher than 90% when the testing motions followed the sampling schedule of the physiotherapy assignment. The model can be applied in the ubiquitous healthcare measurement for health services. The professionals can assess whether the subject obeyed the assigned program or not based on detail motions of the exercise. This approach can be enabled on the trackable interface for the physiatrists to screen the motions of routine rehabilitation

Counting Crowds in Bad Weather

Crowd counting has recently attracted significant attention in the field of computer vision due to its wide applications to image understanding. Numerous methods have been proposed and achieved state-of-the-art performance for real-world tasks. However, existing approaches do not perform well under adverse weather such as haze, rain, and snow since the visual appearances of crowds in such scenes are drastically different from those images in clear weather of typical datasets. In this paper, we propose a method for robust crowd counting in adverse weather scenarios. Instead of using a two-stage approach that involves image restoration and crowd counting modules, our model learns effective features and adaptive queries to account for large appearance variations. With these weather queries, the proposed model can learn the weather information according to the degradation of the input image and optimize with the crowd counting module simultaneously. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective in counting crowds under different weather types on benchmark datasets. The source code and trained models will be made available to the public.Comment: including supplemental materia

Successful treatment of an early invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma with topical 5-aminolevulinic acid-mediated photodynamic therapy

Our previous studies showed successful treatment of a series of 36 oral verrucous hyperplasia lesions and of an extensive oral verrucous carcinoma with a topical 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA)-mediated photodynamic therapy (topical ALA-PDT) protocol (with a fluence rate of 100 mW/cm2 and a light exposure dose of 100 J/cm2) using a 635-nm light-emitting diode (LED) light source. In this case report, we tested whether an enhanced topical ALA-PDT protocol (with a fluence rate of 200 mW/cm2 and a light exposure dose of 200 J/cm2) could be used to treat an early invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) with a verrucous appearance of the left lower posterior edentulous alveolar mucosa of a 67-year-old male former areca-quid chewer and ex-smoker. The main verrucous lesion showed complete regression after eight treatments with PDT. However, 10 extra treatments were needed to eradicate the multiple residual leukoplakia lesions on the edentulous alveolar mucosa. Moderate to severe post-PDT pain was noted during the initial eight treatments, and the patient needed analgesics (codeine phosphate, 30 mg three times daily) to control the pain. No recurrence of the OSCC lesion was found after a follow-up period of 4 years. We suggest that our enhanced topical ALA-PDT protocol may have good potential to be used as a treatment of choice for a superficially invasive OSCC without regional or distant metastasis before the commencement of other effective therapies

Effect of Surface Geology on Ground Motions: The Case of Station TAP056 - Chutzuhu Site

In the Tatun mountain area of northern Taiwan are two strong motion stations approximately 2.5 km apart, TAP056 and TAP066 of the TSMIP network. The accelerometer at station TAP056 is often triggered by earthquakes, but that at TAP066 station is not. Comparisons of vertical and horizontal peak ground accelerations reveal PGA in the vertical, east-west, and north-south components at TAP056 station to be 3.89, 7.57, and 5.45 times those at station TAP066, respectively. The PGA ratio does not seem to be related to earthquake source or path. Fourier spectra of earthquake records at station TAP056 always have approximately the same dominant frequency; however, those at station TAP066 are different due to different sources and paths of different events. This shows that spectra at TAP056 station are mainly controlled by local site effects. The spectral ratios of TAP056/TAP066 show the S-wave is amplified at around 8 ~ 10 Hz. The horizontal/vertical spectral ratios of station TAP056 also show a dominant frequency at about 6 and 8 ~ 10 Hz. After dense microtremor surveying and the addition of one accelerometer just 20 meters away from the original observation station, we can confirm that the top soft soil layer upon which the observation station is constructed generates the local site response at station TAP056