The Relationship and Interaction Process of Taiwanese Couples Having Undergone Assisted Reproductive Technology- A Systemic Perspective

Approximately 10-15% of married couples in Taiwan encounter the challenge of infertility, which significantly impacts their lives and relationships. However, the nature and extent of this impact vary across different social and cultural contexts. Recognising the complex and wide-ranging nature of infertility issues, integrated interventions have emerged as a novel approach to assist infertile couples effectively. Drawing upon Helms et al.'s (2011) modified three-level model of marriage, Huston's model, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (1986), a comprehensive framework is constructed within this thesis to explore various aspects of infertile couples' experiences in Taiwan as they are undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART). This framework encompasses the couples' interpersonal relationships, their interactions with the medical system, and the influence of their family of origin and cultural systems. The study employs mixed methods, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, to address the following research questions:1. What is the societal and cultural context in which Taiwanese infertile couples have undergone assisted reproductive technology? 2. What does the medical system in Taiwan provide infertile couples with in terms of resources and assistance, how the infertile couples feel about the medical system, and how does the treatment process affect marital life and relationships? 3. Under the Taiwanese cultural context, how aware are the couples of other perspectives (original family system, interpersonal system) to infertility, and how do these perspectives influence them? 4. How do infertile couples cope with and face infertility within the Taiwanese cultural context? Firstly, the findings reveal that Taiwanese infertile couples undergoing ART live within the societal context of traditional negative perceptions and modern rich information interactions. Secondly, the medical system focuses on providing physical assistance and professional equipment to infertile couples. However, the treatment process comes with great physical, psychological and spiritual difficulties that are not addressed. The Taiwanese infertile couples believe in medical professionals but are eager for more humanisation and supportive medical assistance. Thirdly, traditional cultural values pervade in general social contexts and emerge in family gatherings. The rising external pressure tests Taiwanese infertile couples' relationships and coping techniques. Lastly, infertile couples in Taiwan tend to be perfunctory and evasive in maintaining interpersonal safety and harmony and use contextual strategies to protect their partners. In summary, this study provides a systemic framework for investigating the contextual experiences of infertile couples across diverse cultural contexts. It offers valuable insights into the specific needs of Taiwanese infertile couples, enabling medical and mental health practitioners to design appropriate integrated psychosocial support programs

How Do Virtual Teams Work- A Social Relationship Model By SEM

Virtual teams have been brought the need for organizations to improve the performance of virtual teams. Among these key issues to be successful, social dimensions have been catching researchers and mangers’ attentions. Hence, this study derives a preliminary social relationship model from Powell et al’s (2004) virtual team framework and conduct an experiment to validate it by SEM. The results reveal: (1) Communication has a positive impact on relationship building; (2) Relationship building has a positive impact on cohesion; (3) Relationship building has a positive impact on trust; (4) cohesion and trust have positive impacts on performance

Evaluation Issues in Managing and Realizing Benefits in B2BEC/IT Investments

Organizations have invested substantial amount of financial resources in information technology (IT) over the last few decades. However, there is still a lack of understanding of the impact of IT investment evaluation processes and practices in these organizations. This study extends the Limits-to-Value model to examine the relationship between the levels of IT maturity and the adoption of IT investment evaluation and benefits realization methodologies as well as their effects on B2BEC benefits. The study has found that IT maturity has a direct positive relationship with the adoption of these evaluation methodologies. A number of issues and problems have also emerged from the analysis of the data collected. These findings will assist organizations in making better evaluation of B2BEC/IT investment

When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks

Discovering and exploiting the causality in deep neural networks (DNNs) are crucial challenges for understanding and reasoning causal effects (CE) on an explainable visual model. "Intervention" has been widely used for recognizing a causal relation ontologically. In this paper, we propose a causal inference framework for visual reasoning via do-calculus. To study the intervention effects on pixel-level features for causal reasoning, we introduce pixel-wise masking and adversarial perturbation. In our framework, CE is calculated using features in a latent space and perturbed prediction from a DNN-based model. We further provide the first look into the characteristics of discovered CE of adversarially perturbed images generated by gradient-based methods \footnote{~~https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvImg}. Experimental results show that CE is a competitive and robust index for understanding DNNs when compared with conventional methods such as class-activation mappings (CAMs) on the Chest X-Ray-14 dataset for human-interpretable feature(s) (e.g., symptom) reasoning. Moreover, CE holds promises for detecting adversarial examples as it possesses distinct characteristics in the presence of adversarial perturbations.Comment: Noted our camera-ready version has changed the title. "When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks" as the v3 official paper title in IEEE Proceeding. Please use it in your formal reference. Accepted at IEEE ICIP 2019. Pytorch code has released on https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvIm

Factors associated with the utilization of antenatal care services among pregnant women in Eswatini - A cross-sectional study

The study aimed to assess the utilization of antenatal care services and its associated factors among pregnant women in Eswatini. A cross-sectional study was adopted. Convenience sampling was conducted in a public referral hospital in central Eswatini from 1st of August to the 30 of September 2021. A total of 400 newly delivered women who met the inclusion criteria were recruited. SPSS version 22.0 was used to analyze data including descriptive and bivariate analysis. Results indicated that only 13% of pregnant women booked their first ANC in the first trimester and 24.8% of them attended less than four ANC visits. Maternal education, gestational age, gravity, pregnant-related complications, medical history, and maternal health literacy were significantly associated with the utilization of ANC services (p< .05). To increase the utilization of ANC service, healthcare professionals should pay special attention to pregnant women with tertiary education, gave birth below 38 weeks, multi-gravities, medical history, and poor maternal health literacy. (Afr J Reprod Health 2022; 26[12]: 67-77). L'étude visait à évaluer l'utilisation des services de soins prénatals et ses facteurs associés chez les femmes enceintes en Eswatini. Une étude transversale a été retenue. Un échantillonnage de commodité a été effectué dans un hôpital public de référence du centre d'Eswatini du 1er août au 30 septembre 2021. Un total de 400 femmes nouvellement accouchées qui répondaient aux critères d'inclusion ont été recrutées. La version SPSS 22.0 a été utilisée pour analyser les données, y compris l'analyse descriptive et bivariée. Les résultats ont indiqué que seulement 13 % des femmes enceintes ont réservé leur première CPN au cours du premier trimestre et 24,8 % d'entre elles ont assisté à moins de quatre visites CPN. L'éducation de la mère, l'âge gestationnel, la gravité, les complications liées à la grossesse, les antécédents médicaux et les connaissances en matière de santé maternelle étaient significativement associés à l'utilisation des services de soins prénatals (p < 0,05). Pour accroître l'utilisation des services de soins prénatals, les professionnels de la santé doivent accorder une attention particulière aux femmes enceintes ayant fait des études supérieures, ayant accouché à moins de 38 semaines, multigravités, ayant des antécédents médicaux et une faible littératie en matière de santé maternelle. (Afr J Reprod Health 2022; 26[12]: 67-77)

A feasibility study on the three-dimensional reconstruction of high voltage and lightning descharge channels using digital images

The work presented extends and contributes to research in the visualisation of discharge channels with an expectation to extend to lightning channels. Although previous work in this area has produced three-dimensional (3D) information of discharge channels, there has not been a method to visualise the channel and the characteristics of its shape in a 3D environment. In the research presented, photographed discharge channels are reconstructed in a virtual interactive 3D envi- ronment. It is found that single-channelled discharges produce models that correctly follow the inferred channel paths from the photograph datasets. Single-channelled discharges have also been veri ed in the controlled laboratory environment, providing con - dence in the two-image reconstruction algorithm. The algorithm is shown to fail for an angular separation of cameras less than 15 , which produces thicker channel segments. It is further shown that branched discharge channels can produce models that correctly follow the channel paths. If images are not accurately normalised for lens correction and slight camera tilts, missing segments and duplication of reconstructed branches are evident in the models. Furthermore, it is shown that the algorithm also fails for image perspectives with angular separations less than 15 , additional redundant branches are produced in addition to thicker channel segments

Mitochondrial targeting of human NADH dehydrogenase (ubiquinone) flavoprotein 2 (NDUFV2) and its association with early-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and encephalopathy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>NADH dehydrogenase (ubiquinone) flavoprotein 2 (NDUFV2), containing one iron sulfur cluster ([2Fe-2S] binuclear cluster N1a), is one of the core nuclear-encoded subunits existing in human mitochondrial complex I. Defects in this subunit have been associated with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Bipolar disorder, and Schizophrenia. The aim of this study is to examine the mitochondrial targeting of NDUFV2 and dissect the pathogenetic mechanism of one human deletion mutation present in patients with early-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and encephalopathy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A series of deletion and point-mutated constructs with the <it>c-myc </it>epitope tag were generated to identify the location and sequence features of mitochondrial targeting sequence for NDUFV2 in human cells using the confocal microscopy. In addition, various lengths of the NDUFV2 N-terminal and C-terminal fragments were fused with enhanced green fluorescent protein to investigate the minimal region required for correct mitochondrial import. Finally, a deletion construct that mimicked the IVS2+5_+8delGTAA mutation in <it>NDUFV2 </it>gene and would eventually produce a shortened NDUFV2 lacking 19-40 residues was generated to explore the connection between human gene mutation and disease.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified that the cleavage site of NDUFV2 was located around amino acid 32 of the precursor protein, and the first 22 residues of NDUFV2 were enough to function as an efficient mitochondrial targeting sequence to carry the passenger protein into mitochondria. A site-directed mutagenesis study showed that none of the single-point mutations derived from basic, hydroxylated and hydrophobic residues in the NDUFV2 presequence had a significant effect on mitochondrial targeting, while increasing number of mutations in basic and hydrophobic residues gradually decreased the mitochondrial import efficacy of the protein. The deletion mutant mimicking the human early-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and encephalopathy lacked 19-40 residues in NDUFV2 and exhibited a significant reduction in its mitochondrial targeting ability.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The mitochondrial targeting sequence of NDUFV2 is located at the N-terminus of the precursor protein. Maintaining a net positive charge and an amphiphilic structure with the overall balance and distribution of basic and hydrophobic amino acids in the N-terminus of NDUFV2 is important for mitochondrial targeting. The results of human disease cell model established that the impairment of mitochondrial localization of NDUFV2 as a mechanistic basis for early-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and encephalopathy.</p

Distribution and associated factors of optic disc diameter and cup-to-disc ratio in an elderly Chinese population

AbstractBackgroundGlaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide and East Asian people account for almost half of those affected. Vertical elongation of the optic cup is a characteristic feature of glaucoma. However, there is a significant overlap in the vertical cup-to-disc ratio (VCDR) between normal eyes and eyes affected by glaucoma. The purpose of this study was to determine the distribution of VCDR and vertical disc diameter (VDD) and their predictive factors in a population of elderly Chinese residents in Taiwan.MethodsFour hundred and sixty elderly Chinese residents aged 72 years and older in the Shihpai district, Taipei, Taiwan participated in this study. Slit lamp biomicroscopic measurement of the VCDR and VDD after pupil dilation with a 78 diopter lens was performed by one glaucoma specialist. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to fit the best model for independent variables.ResultsThe VCDR was recorded for 438 right eyes and 430 left eyes. After excluding participants with glaucoma, the mean ± SD VCDR was 0.44 ± 0.17 for both eyes, and the 97.5th percentile was 0.8. A greater VCDR was associated with a longer axial length [VCDR = −0.47 + 0.04(axial length)] under multiple regression analysis. The VDD was obtained for 420 right eyes and 406 left eyes. The mean ± SD VDD for all participants was 1.77 ± 0.22 mm for the right eye and 1.79 ± 0.22 mm for the left eye. A higher body mass index (BMI) and a longer axial length were significantly associated with a larger VDD under multiple regression analysis. [VDD = −0.05 + 0.07 (axial length) + 0.06 (obesity); if BMI <24, then obesity = 0; if BMI ≥24, then obesity = 1]. A larger VDD was associated with a larger VCDR (p < 0.001) and the VCDR could be predicted by the equation VCDR = −0.07 + 0.3VDD.ConclusionA greater VCDR was related to a longer axial length. A greater VDD was related to a higher BMI and a longer axial length