Is deck B a disadvantageous deck in the Iowa Gambling Task?

BACKGROUND: The Iowa gambling task is a popular test for examining monetary decision behavior under uncertainty. According to Dunn et al. review article, the difficult-to-explain phenomenon of "prominent deck B" was revealed, namely that normal decision makers prefer bad final-outcome deck B to good final-outcome decks C or D. This phenomenon was demonstrated especially clearly by Wilder et al. and Toplak et al. The "prominent deck B" phenomenon is inconsistent with the basic assumption in the IGT; however, most IGT-related studies utilized the "summation" of bad decks A and B when presenting their data, thereby avoiding the problems associated with deck B. METHODS: To verify the "prominent deck B" phenomenon, this study launched a two-stage simple version IGT, namely, an AACC and BBDD version, which possesses a balanced gain-loss structure between advantageous and disadvantageous decks and facilitates monitoring of participant preferences after the first 100 trials. RESULTS: The experimental results suggested that the "prominent deck B" phenomenon exists in the IGT. Moreover, participants cannot suppress their preference for deck B under the uncertain condition, even during the second stage of the game. Although this result is incongruent with the basic assumption in IGT, an increasing number of studies are finding similar results. The results of the AACC and BBDD versions can be congruent with the decision literatures in terms of gain-loss frequency. CONCLUSION: Based on the experimental findings, participants can apply the "gain-stay, loss-shift" strategy to overcome situations involving uncertainty. This investigation found that the largest loss in the IGT did not inspire decision makers to avoid choosing bad deck B

Lack of association of genetic variants for diabetic retinopathy in Taiwanese patients with diabetic nephropathy

[[abstract]]Objective Diabetic nephropathy (DN) and diabetic retinopathy (DR) comprise major microvascular complications of diabetes that occur with a high concordance rate in patients and are considered to potentially share pathogeneses. In this case-control study, we sought to investigate whether DR-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) exert pleiotropic effects on renal function outcomes among patients with diabetes. Research design and methods A total of 33 DR-related SNPs were identified by replicating published SNPs and via a genome-wide association study. Furthermore, we assessed the cumulative effects by creating a weighted genetic risk score and evaluated the discriminatory and prediction ability of these genetic variants using DN cases according to estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) status along with a cohort with early renal functional decline (ERFD). Results Multivariate logistic regression models revealed that the DR-related SNPs afforded no individual or cumulative genetic effect on the nephropathy risk, eGFR status or ERFD outcome among patients with type two diabetes in Taiwan. Conclusion Our findings indicate that larger studies would be necessary to clearly ascertain the effects of individual genetic variants and further investigation is also required to identify other genetic pathways underlying DN.[[notice]]補正完

Neuromagnetic Index of Hemispheric Asymmetry Prognosticating the Outcome of Sudden Hearing Loss

The longitudinal relationship between central plastic changes and clinical presentations of peripheral hearing impairment remains unknown. Previously, we reported a unique plastic pattern of “healthy-side dominance” in acute unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL). This study aimed to explore whether such hemispheric asymmetry bears any prognostic relevance to ISSNHL along the disease course. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), inter-hemispheric differences in peak dipole amplitude and latency of N100m to monaural tones were evaluated in 21 controls and 21 ISSNHL patients at two stages: initial and fixed stage (1 month later). Dynamics/Prognostication of hemispheric asymmetry were assessed by the interplay between hearing level/hearing gain and ipsilateral/contralateral ratio (I/C) of N100m latency and amplitude. Healthy-side dominance of N100m amplitude was observed in ISSNHL initially. The pattern changed with disease process. There is a strong correlation between the hearing level at the fixed stage and initial I/Camplitude on affected-ear stimulation in ISSNHL. The optimal cut-off value with the best prognostication effect for the hearing improvement at the fixed stage was an initial I/Clatency on affected-ear stimulation of 1.34 (between subgroups of complete and partial recovery) and an initial I/Clatency on healthy-ear stimulation of 0.76 (between subgroups of partial and no recovery), respectively. This study suggested that a dynamic process of central auditory plasticity can be induced by peripheral lesions. The hemispheric asymmetry at the initial stage bears an excellent prognostic potential for the treatment outcomes and hearing level at the fixed stage in ISSNHL. Our study demonstrated that such brain signature of central auditory plasticity in terms of both N100m latency and amplitude at defined time can serve as a prognostication predictor for ISSNHL. Further studies are needed to explore the long-term temporal scenario of auditory hemispheric asymmetry and to get better psychoacoustic correlates of pathological hemispheric asymmetry in ISSNHL

The Effect of NaCl/pH on Colloidal Nanogold Produced by Pulsed Spark Discharge

A green method, using pulsed spark discharge (PSD) to synthesize colloidal gold, is studied in this thesis. PSD uses spark discharge to synthesize gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in deionized water (DIW) and/or ethanol (EtOH). While gold nanoparticles have widespread applications in many fields, especially for the human body, in use them must overcome the influence of NaCl and pH value; therefore, this study adds NaCl into PSD-AuNPs to simulate the human body to study its stability. Furthermore, a variety of protectants are added in an attempt to determine the best protectant for AuNPs and improve biologically compatible potency. From the results of this study, adding the long-chain-polymer Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) or Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP-k30) can prevent nanogold from aggregation and precipitation in NaCl or different pH value and maintain the characteristic of nanogold dispersion by raising the repulsive force between the particles. The results of this study can be a reference of nanogold applying in biomedical science

The Effect of NaCl/pH on Colloidal Nanogold Produced by Pulsed Spark Discharge

A green method, using pulsed spark discharge (PSD) to synthesize colloidal gold, is studied in this thesis. PSD uses spark discharge to synthesize gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in deionized water (DIW) and/or ethanol (EtOH). While gold nanoparticles have widespread applications in many fields, especially for the human body, in use them must overcome the influence of NaCl and pH value; therefore, this study adds NaCl into PSD-AuNPs to simulate the human body to study its stability. Furthermore, a variety of protectants are added in an attempt to determine the best protectant for AuNPs and improve biologically compatible potency. From the results of this study, adding the long-chain-polymer Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) or Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP-k30) can prevent nanogold from aggregation and precipitation in NaCl or different pH value and maintain the characteristic of nanogold dispersion by raising the repulsive force between the particles. The results of this study can be a reference of nanogold applying in biomedical science