Holocene Sedimentation on the Lanyang Plain and Adjacent Continental Shelf, Northwestern Taiwan

The Lanyang Plain, along the northeastern Taiwan orogen, provides an excellent example of the tectonic and climatic controls on erosion and subsequent riverine sediment supply to the coastal ocean and deep sea. 12 deep borings on the Lanyang Plain and 2 long cores in Southern Okinawa Trough (MD12403, ODP1202), together with high-resolution seismic data on Ilan Shelf, provide a good record of the depositional history during Holocene, in both on-land and offshore areas. Based on these data, we find the sediment thickness reaches 216 m in Lanyang Plain, and the average sediment rate is estimated to be 3.6 Mt/yr - 5 Mt/yr in both the Lanyang Plain and the Ilan shelf. This value is higher than previous estimation of 2.6 Mt/yr by Kao and Milliman (2008). We have divided on-land sedimentation rates over different periods (0-4 ka BP, 4-8 ka BP, and 8-12 ka BP) to document variations in Holocene sedimentation in response to event-enhanced and/or accommodation-space change. We find particularly high accumulation rates at 8-12 ka BP. Higher sedimentation rates noted in 2 offshore cores occurred at the same time. Together, this suggests greater sedimentation during this period, which we suggest may be related to the regional intensification of the southwest (summer) monsoon in Southern Asia, perhaps reflected by increased typhoon activity. Scrutinizing data from other previous studies, this event seems to have been characterized by higher sediment accumulation throughout Taiwan

Loss of vesicular dopamine release precedes tauopathy in degenerative dopaminergic neurons in a Drosophila model expressing human tau.

While a number of genome-wide association studies have identified microtubule-associated protein tau as a strong risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD), little is known about the mechanism through which human tau can predispose an individual to this disease. Here, we demonstrate that expression of human wild-type tau is sufficient to disrupt the survival of dopaminergic neurons in a Drosophila model. Tau triggers a synaptic pathology visualized by vesicular monoamine transporter-pHGFP that precedes both the age-dependent formation of tau-containing neurofibrillary tangle-like pathology and the progressive loss of DA neurons, thereby recapitulating the pathological hallmarks of PD. Flies overexpressing tau also exhibit progressive impairments of both motor and learning behaviors. Surprisingly, contrary to common belief that hyperphosphorylated tau could aggravate toxicity, DA neuron degeneration is alleviated by expressing the modified, hyperphosphorylated tau(E14). Together, these results show that impairment of VMAT-containing synaptic vesicle, released to synapses before overt tauopathy may be the underlying mechanism of tau-associated PD and suggest that correction or prevention of this deficit may be appropriate targets for early therapeutic intervention

Toward a Community-oriented Development of Internet Platforms: a Qualitative Case Study

In this study, we seek to identify the development process of the virtual community. This study investigates the development process of two virtual communities: HSC (Home-stay Community) and UTC (University Teaching Community). This case study has produced two major findings. First, the sets of values established in a virtual community are related to the particular system functions employed in that community. While HSC members use blogs to collect related information and utilize forums to make bi-directional communication, UTC members seldom access blogs or edit Wiki pages. Second, motivation leads participants to join their community and to shape its boundaries. The information sharing process is shown to be an effective way of improving community development in the virtual context. Thus, managers are advised to pay attention to active and strongly-motivated players in the virtual context. Future studies may enrich the current investigation by focusing upon the relevant business models

A Pre-Search Assisted ILP Approach to Analog Integrated Circuit Routing

The routing of analog integrated circuits (IC) has long been a challenge due to numerous constraints (such as symmetry and topology-matching) that matter for overall circuit performance. Existing automatic analog IC routing algorithms can be broadly categorized into two approaches: sequential approach that heuristically routes one net after another and constructive ILP (Integer Linear Programming). The former approach is usually fast but may miss opportunities of finding good solutions. The constructive ILP provides optimal solutions but can be very time consuming. We propose a simple yet efficient method that combines the advantages of both existing approaches. First, sequential routing is performed to obtain a set of candidate routing paths for each net. Then, an ILP is applied to commit each net to only one of its candidate routes. Experiments on two op-amp designs show that the post-layout performance (such as gain and phase margin) from our method is close to that of manual design. Our method also outperforms a previous work of automated analog IC routing

The Impact of Electronic Shopping Site\u27s Privacy Policy, Reputation, and Trust on Customers\u27 Purchase Intentions

With the advent of EC, Internet shopping becomes a way of business transactions. This research investigates how trust can affect customers’ purchase intentions. Having surveyed related literature, a conceptual framework has been proposed. The framework consists of four components: independent variables (privacy policy and reputation), intervening variables (cognitive and affective trust), dependent variable (customers’ purchase intentions), and moderating variable (perceived risk). The 2(with/without privacy policy)*2(good/bad reputation) experiments are employed to collect primary data to validate the proposed conceptual framework. The two levels privacy policy and reputation can significantly influence cognitive and affective trust. Moreover, the effect of cognitive trust and purchase intentions is more than that of affective trust. The study result also shows the interaction between privacy policy, reputation, and trust for the major product is not significant. Therefore, we suggest that electronic shopping sites’ managers should consider customers’ mentality in order to raise their purchase intentions