Design of Novel S-Shaped Quad-Band Antenna for MedRadio/WMTS/ISM Implantable Biotelemetry Applications

A novel S-shaped quad-band planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) is proposed for implantable biotelemetry in the Medical Device Radiocommunications Service (MedRadio) band (401–406 MHz), Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS) band (1427–1432 MHz), and industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands (433-434 MHz and 2.4–2.4835 GHz). The proposed antenna reveals compact dimension of 254 mm3 (10×10×2.45 mm3) and is composed of three substrates and a superstrate, which are constructed from an S-shaped radiator (layer 1) and two twin radiators of spiral structures (layer 2 and layer 3). The optimal antenna characteristics were measured in the ground pork skin, and the measured bandwidths are 150 MHz for the MedRadio and ISM bands (433 MHz), 52 MHz for the WMTS band, and 102 MHz for the ISM band (2.4 GHz), respectively. The characteristics of proposed antenna are enough to support the applications of implantable body area networks (BAN) for biotelemetry and can completely cover main available frequency bands of BAN for biotelemetry below 3 GHz

Vibration of fast trains, palindromic eigenvalue problems and structure-preserving doubling algorithms

AbstractThe vibration of fast trains is governed by a quadratic palindromic eigenvalue problem (λ2A1T+λA0+A1)x=0, where A0,A1∈Cn×n and A0T=A0. Accurate and efficient solution can only be obtained using algorithms which preserve the structure of the eigenvalue problem. This paper reports on the successful application of the structure-preserving doubling algorithms

Synergistic effect of phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor and serum on migration of endotoxin-stimulated macrophages.

Macrophage migration is an essential step in host defense against infection and wound healing. Elevation of cAMP by inhibiting phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4), enzymes that specifically degrade cAMP, is known to suppress various inflammatory responses in activated macrophages, but the role of PDE4 in macrophage migration is poorly understood. Here we show that the migration of Raw 264.7 macrophages stimulated with LPS was markedly and dose-dependently induced by the PDE4 inhibitor rolipram as assessed by scratch wound healing assay. Additionally, this response required the involvement of serum in the culture medium as serum starvation abrogated the effect. Further analysis revealed that rolipram and serum exhibited synergistic effect on the migration, and the influence of serum was independent of PDE4 mRNA expression in LPS-stimulated macrophages. Moreover, the enhanced migration by rolipram was mediated by activating cAMP/exchange proteins directly activated by cAMP (Epac) signaling, presumably via interaction with LPS/TLR4 signaling with the participation of unknown serum components. These results suggest that PDE4 inhibitors, together with serum components, may serve as positive regulators of macrophage recruitment for more efficient pathogen clearance and wound repair

A correlation among safety leadership, safety climate and safety performance.

Abstract There has not been much consensus on the causality of safety climates in the past 25 years. Moreover, there is an overall lack of models specifying the relationship among safety leadership, safety climate and safety performance. On the grounds of social system theory, this study has investigated the potential correlation among them. Self-administered questionnaires that included a safety leadership scale, a safety climate scale and a safety performance scale were used to collect data in four universities in central Taiwan. The survey was conducted among 754 subjects selected via simple random sampling. The number of returned valid questionnaires was 465, and the response rate was 61.67%. Path analysis showed that safety climate partially mediated the relationship between safety leadership and safety performance. Canonical correlation analysis showed that safety controlling, one factor of safety leadership, had main influence on CEOs and managers' safety commitment and action in safety climate, and on safety organization and management, safety equipment and measures, and accident investigations in safety performance. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that organizational leaders would do well to develop a strategy by which they improve the safety climates within their organizations, which will then have a positive effect on safety performance.

MuRAL: Multi-Scale Region-based Active Learning for Object Detection

Obtaining large-scale labeled object detection dataset can be costly and time-consuming, as it involves annotating images with bounding boxes and class labels. Thus, some specialized active learning methods have been proposed to reduce the cost by selecting either coarse-grained samples or fine-grained instances from unlabeled data for labeling. However, the former approaches suffer from redundant labeling, while the latter methods generally lead to training instability and sampling bias. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach called Multi-scale Region-based Active Learning (MuRAL) for object detection. MuRAL identifies informative regions of various scales to reduce annotation costs for well-learned objects and improve training performance. The informative region score is designed to consider both the predicted confidence of instances and the distribution of each object category, enabling our method to focus more on difficult-to-detect classes. Moreover, MuRAL employs a scale-aware selection strategy that ensures diverse regions are selected from different scales for labeling and downstream finetuning, which enhances training stability. Our proposed method surpasses all existing coarse-grained and fine-grained baselines on Cityscapes and MS COCO datasets, and demonstrates significant improvement in difficult category performance

Insights into the binding specificity and catalytic mechanism ofN-acetylhexosamine 1-phosphate kinases through multiple reaction complexes

Utilization of N-acetylhexosamine in bifidobacteria requires the specific lacto-N-biose/galacto-N-biose pathway, a pathway differing from the Leloir pathway while establishing symbiosis between humans and bifidobacteria. The gene lnpB in the pathway encodes a novel hexosamine kinase NahK, which catalyzes the formation of N-acetylhexosamine 1-phosphate (GlcNAc-1P/GalNAc-1P). In this report, seven three-dimensional structures of NahK in complex with GlcNAc, GalNAc, GlcNAc-1P, GlcNAc/AMPPNP and GlcNAc-1P/ADP from both Bifidobacterium longum (JCM1217) and B. infantis (ATCC15697) were solved at resolutions of 1.5-2.2 Å. NahK is a monomer in solution, and its polypeptide folds in a crescent-like architecture subdivided into two domains by a deep cleft. The NahK structures presented here represent the first multiple reaction complexes of the enzyme. This structural information reveals the molecular basis for the recognition of the given substrates and products, GlcNAc/GalNAc, GlcNAc-1P/GalNAc-1P, ATP/ADP and Mg(2+), and provides insights into the catalytic mechanism, enabling NahK and mutants thereof to form a choice of biocatalysts for enzymatic and chemoenzymatic synthesis of carbohydrates

Associations Between Heart Rate Variability Measured With a Wrist-Worn Sensor and Older Adults' Physical Function: Observational Study.

BACKGROUND:Heart rate variability (HRV), or variation in beat-to-beat intervals of the heart, is a quantitative measure of autonomic regulation of the cardiovascular system. Low HRV derived from electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings is reported to be related to physical frailty in older adults. Recent advances in wearable technology offer opportunities to more easily integrate monitoring of HRV into regular clinical geriatric health assessments. However, signals obtained from ECG versus wearable photoplethysmography (PPG) devices are different, and a critical first step preceding their widespread use is to determine whether HRV metrics derived from PPG devices also relate to older adults' physical function. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to investigate associations between HRV measured with a wrist-worn PPG device, the Empatica E4 sensor, and validated clinical measures of both objective and self-reported physical function in a cohort of older adults living independently within a continuing care senior housing community. Our primary hypothesis was that lower HRV would be associated with lower physical function. In addition, we expected that HRV would explain a significant proportion of variance in measures of physical health status. METHODS:We evaluated 77 participants from an ongoing study of older adults aged between 65 and 95 years. The assessments encompassed a thorough examination of domains typically included in a geriatric health evaluation. We collected HRV data with the Empatica E4 device and examined bivariate correlations between HRV quantified with the triangular index (HRV TI) and 3 widely used and validated measures of physical functioning-the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Timed Up and Go (TUG), and Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) physical composite scores. We further investigated the additional predictive power of HRV TI on physical health status, as characterized by SF-36 physical composite scores and Cumulative Illness Rating Scale for Geriatrics (CIRS-G) scores, using generalized estimating equation regression analyses with backward elimination. RESULTS:We observed significant associations of HRV TI with SPPB (n=52; Spearman ρ=0.41; P=.003), TUG (n=51; ρ=-0.40; P=.004), SF-36 physical composite scores (n=49; ρ=0.37; P=.009), and CIRS-G scores (n=52, ρ=-0.43; P=.001). In addition, the HRV TI explained a significant proportion of variance in SF-36 physical composite scores (R2=0.28 vs 0.11 without HRV) and CIRS-G scores (R2=0.33 vs 0.17 without HRV). CONCLUSIONS:The HRV TI measured with a relatively novel wrist-worn PPG device was related to both objective (SPPB and TUG) and self-reported (SF-36 physical composite) measures of physical function. In addition, the HRV TI explained additional variance in self-reported physical function and cumulative illness severity beyond traditionally measured aspects of physical health. Future steps include longitudinal tracking of changes in both HRV and physical function, which will add important insights regarding the predictive value of HRV as a biomarker of physical health in older adults

Assessment of latent tuberculosis infection in psychiatric inpatients: A survey after tuberculosis outbreaks

AbstractBackground/PurposeTo investigate risk factors of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) among inpatients of chronic psychiatric wards with tuberculosis (TB) outbreaks.MethodsIn April 2013, inpatients of four all-male wards with TB outbreaks were tested for LTBI using the QuantiFERON-TB Gold in Tube (QFT) method. Based on this investigation, a retrospective study was conducted to assess risk factors for LTBI. Inpatients exposed to cluster-A or cluster-B TB cases were defined as contacts of cluster-A or cluster-B, and others, as nonclustered contacts.ResultsAmong 355 inpatients with TB exposure, 134 (38%) were QFT-positive for LTBI. Univariate analysis showed that significant predictors for QFT-positivity were age, case-days of exposure to all TB cases (TB-all) and to sputum smear positive cases, number of source cases with cough, and exposure to cluster-A TB cases. Independent risk factors for LTBI were higher age [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.03, 95% confidence intervals (CI: 1.01–1.05)], TB-all exposure case-days ≥ 200 [adjusted OR 2.04 (1.06–3.92)] and exposure to cluster-A TB cases [adjusted OR 2.82 (1.30–6.12)] after adjustment for the sputum smear positivity, and cough variables of the source cases. The contacts of cluster-A had a greater risk of LTBI than did those of cluster-B, especially in the younger population (≤50 years) after adjustment [adjusted OR 2.64 (1.03–6.76)].ConclusionAfter TB outbreaks, more than one third of inpatients were QFT-positive for LTBI. Our findings suggest that, beside the infectiousness of source cases, intensity of exposure, and age of contacts, exposure to TB cases in potential genotyping clusters may be predictive for LTBI in this male psychiatric population

Abnormal glucose tolerance and insulin resistance in polycystic ovary syndrome amongst the Taiwanese population- not correlated with insulin receptor substrate-1 Gly972Arg/Ala513Pro polymorphism

BACKGROUND: Insulin resistance and glucose dysmetabolism in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are related with the polymorphisms in the genes encoding the insulin receptor substrate (IRS) proteins, especially Gly972Arg/Ala513Pro polymorphism being reported to be associated with type-2 diabetes and PCOS. We intended to assess the prevalence of abnormal glucose tolerance (AGT) and insulin resistance in Taiwanese PCOS women. We also tried to assess whether the particular identity of Gly972Arg/Ala513Pro polymorphic alleles of the IRS-1 gene mutation can be used as an appropriate diagnostic indicator for PCOS. METHODS: We designed a prospective clinical study. Forty-seven Taiwanese Hoklo and Hakka women, diagnosed with PCOS were enrolled in this study as were forty-five healthy Hoklo and Hakka women as the control group. Insulin resistance was evaluated with fasting insulin, fasting glucose/insulin ratio, and homeostasis model assessment index for insulin resistance (HOMA(IR)). The genomic DNA of the subjects was amplified by PCR and digested by restriction fragmented length polymorphism (RFLP) with Bst N1 used for codon 972 and Dra III for codon 513. RESULTS: AGT was found in 46.8% of these PCOS patients and was significantly related to high insulin resistance rather than the low insulin resistance. Those patients with either insulin resistance or AGT comprised the majority of PCOS affected patients (AGT + fasting insulin ≥17: 83%, AGT + glucose/insulin ratio ≥6.5: 85.1%, AGT + HOMA(IR )≥ 2: 87.2%, and AGT + HOMA(IR )≥ 3.8: 72.3%). None of the tested samples revealed any polymorphism due to the absence of any Dra III recognition site or any Bst N1 recognition site in the amplified PCR fragment digested by restriction fragmented length polymorphism. CONCLUSION: There is significantly high prevalence of AGT and insulin resistance in PCOS women, but Gly972Arg and Ala513Pro polymorphic alleles of IRS-1 are rare and are not associated with the elevated risk of PCOS amongst Taiwanese subjects. This is quite different from the similar study in phylogenetically diverged Caucasian subjects