EVALUATION OF BREAST SUPPORTS WITH DIFFERENT BRAS DURING JUMPLANDING MANEUVERS

This study attempted to evaluate kinematic of the breast with different breast support during jump-landing maneuvers. Twelve C cup female volleyball athletes were recruited in this study. Markers were attached to the subject’s nipples and trunk to calculate relative 3D breast kinematics data. The subject had to wear four kinds of bras (no bra, normal bra, fashion bra, and sport bra) to evaluation of breast support in the medio-lateral, anterioposterior, and vertical directions. Results of current study showed that the sports bra was effective in reducing the amplitude of breast displacement, velocity, acceleration, and comfort scale during jump-landing than no bra situation, everyday bra, and fashion bra. Future studies should be focus on analyzing different types of sports bras in order to identify 3D breast kinematics with different bras during jump-landing maneuvers

Probiotic actions on diseases: implications for therapeutic treatments

The ecology of gut microflora, which colonizes all body surfaces, has long coevolved with its hosts in a complicated fashion. Health benefits conferred by gut microflora include defense against invading pathogens, improvement of nutritional bioavailability, and development of the regional and systemic immune systems. The past decade has witnessed growing interest in the fact that the gut microflora affects the host's energy homeostasis by means of various mechanisms, including supplying nourishment from indigestible compounds, producing small biomolecules responsible for lipid profiles, and participating in the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of nutrition. Much in vitro and in vivo research has indicated that aberrant gut microflora plays an important role in the pathogenesis of a wide spectrum of diseases. This is accomplished by a shift in focus, from laying an emphasis on pharmacotherapy to placing more effort on gut microflora normalization. The objectives of this review include illustrating trends in the clinical application of probiotics on diseases, as well as discussing current methodology limitations on probiotic selection. Furthermore, it is expected to shed light on the nature of probiotics, with the aim of giving greater insight into the implications for clinical use of probiotics in the treatment of diseases

Development of a Portable Electronic Nose System for the Detection and Classification of Fruity Odors

In this study, we have developed a prototype of a portable electronic nose (E-Nose) comprising a sensor array of eight commercially available sensors, a data acquisition interface PCB, and a microprocessor. Verification software was developed to verify system functions. Experimental results indicate that the proposed system prototype is able to identify the fragrance of three fruits, namely lemon, banana, and litchi

Increasing utilization of Internet-based resources following efforts to promote evidence-based medicine: a national study in Taiwan

BACKGROUND: Since the beginning of 2007, the National Health Research Institutes has been promoting the dissemination of evidence-based medicine (EBM). The current study examined longitudinal trends of behaviors in how hospital-based physicians and nurses have searched for medical information during the spread of EBM. METHODS: Cross-sectional postal questionnaire surveys were conducted in nationally representative regional hospitals of Taiwan thrice in 2007, 2009, and 2011. Demographic data were gathered concerning gender, age, working experience, teaching appointment, academic degree, and administrative position. Linear and logistic regression models were used to examine predictors and changes over time. RESULTS: Data from physicians and nurses were collected in 2007 (n = 1156), 2009 (n = 2975), and 2011 (n = 3999). There were significant increases in the use of four Internet-based resources – Web portals, online databases, electronic journals, and electronic books – across the three survey years among physicians and nurses (p < 0.001). Access to textbooks and printed journals, however, did not change over the 4-year study period. In addition, there were significant relationships between the usage of Internet-based resources and users’ characteristics. Age and faculty position were important predictors in relation to the usage among physicians and nurses, while academic degree served as a critical factor among nurses only. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians and nurses used a variety of sources to look for medical information. There was a steady increase in use of Internet-based resources during the diffusion period of EBM. The findings highlight the importance of the Internet as a prominent source of medical information for main healthcare professionals

Minimum-Cost QoS-Constrained Deployment and Routing Policies for Wireless Relay Networks

With the continued evolution of wireless communication technology, relaying is one of the features proposed for the 4G LTE Advanced (LTE-A) system. The aim of relaying is to enhance both coverage and capacity. The idea of relays is not new, but relaying is being considered to ensure that the optimum performance is achieved to enable the expectations or good quality of service (QoS) of the users to be met while still keeping capital expenditure (CAPEX) within the budgeted bounds of operators. In this paper, we try to stand for an operator to propose a solution that determines where and how many relays should be deployed in the planning stages to minimize the development cost. In the planning stages, we not only derive a multicast tree routing algorithm to both determine and fulfill the QoS requirements to enhance throughput, but we also utilize the Lagrangian relaxation (LR) method in conjunction with optimization-based heuristics and conduct computational experiments to evaluate the performance. Our contribution is utilizing the LR method to propose an optimal solution to minimize the CAPEX of operators to build up a relay network with more efficiency and effectiveness and the QoS can be guaranteed by service level agreement

Lactobacillus plantarum MYL26 induces endotoxin tolerance phenotype in Caco-2 cells

Background: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the major types of chronic inflammatory bowel diseaseoccurring in the colon and small intestine. A growing body of research has proposed that probiotics are able toattenuate the inflammatory symptoms of these diseases in vitro and in vivo. However, the mechanism of probioticactions remains unclear.Results: Our results suggested Lactobacillus plantarum MYL26 inhibited inflammation in Caco-2 cells throughregulation of gene expressions of TOLLIP, SOCS1, SOCS3, and IκBα, rather than SHIP-1 and IRAK-3.Conclusions: We proposed that live/ heat-killed Lactobacillus plantarum MYL26 and bacterial cell wall extracttreatments impaired TLR4-NFκb signal transduction through Tollip, SOCS-1 and SOCS-3 activation, thus inducing LPStolerance. Our findings suggest that either heat-killed probiotics or probiotic cell wall extracts are able to attenuateinflammation through pathways similar to that of live bacteria

Acute kidney injury in patients with COVID-19 compared to those with influenza: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundCOVID-19 and influenza can both lead to acute kidney injury (AKI) as a common complication. However, no meta-analysis has been conducted to directly compare the incidence of AKI between hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and influenza. The objective of our study aims to investigate the incidence and outcomes of AKI among hospitalized patients between these two groups.Materials and methodsA systematic search of PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases was conducted from December 2019 to August 2023 to identify studies examining AKI and clinical outcomes among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and influenza. The primary outcome of interest was the incidence of AKI, while secondary outcomes included in-hospital mortality, recovery from AKI, hospital and ICU stay duration. The quality of evidence was evaluated using Cochrane and GRADE methods.ResultsTwelve retrospective cohort studies, involving 17,618 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and influenza, were analyzed. COVID-19 patients showed higher AKI incidence (29.37% vs. 20.98%, OR: 1.67, 95% CI 1.56–1.80, p &lt; 0.01, I2 = 92.42%), and in-hospital mortality (30.95% vs. 5.51%, OR: 8.16, 95% CI 6.17–10.80, p &lt; 0.01, I2 = 84.92%) compared to influenza patients with AKI. Recovery from AKI was lower in COVID-19 patients (57.02% vs., 80.23%, OR: 0.33, 95% CI 0.27–0.40, p &lt; 0.01, I2 = 85.17%). COVID-19 patients also had a longer hospital stay (SMD: 0.69, 95% CI 0.65–0.72, p &lt; 0.01, I2 = 98.94%) and longer ICU stay (SMD: 0.61, 95% CI 0.50–0.73, p &lt; 0.01, I2 = 94.80%) than influenza patients. In our study, evidence quality was high (NOS score 7–9), with low certainty for AKI incidence and moderate certainty for recovery form AKI by GRADE assessment.ConclusionCOVID-19 patients had higher risk of developing AKI, experiencing in-hospital mortality, and enduring prolonged hospital/ICU stays in comparison to influenza patients. Additionally, the likelihood of AKI recovery was lower among COVID-19 patients

Preparation of Ag/Cu/Ti Nanofluids by Spark Discharge System and Its Control Parameters Study

This study selected silver, copper, and titanium as the research objects to explore the relationship between nanofluids properties and electrical discharge machining (EDM) processes. Regarding the products, UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) was applied to measure the concentration distribution of nanofluids; zeta-size analysis is applied for measuring nanometal particles’ Zeta-Potential and the size distribution of metallic particles in the fluid. Finally, various instruments, including scanning electron microscope (SEM), were applied to observe the shape, size, and composition ratio of metal particles after processing. According to the experimental results, the control of the discharge pulse time, in addition to affecting the concentration of metallic liquid and temperature in the process, affects the size of the metal particles after the process. As the resistivity of silver and copper is very low, at about 15×10-9 Ω·m, if TON is set to between 10~50 μs, good preparation efficiency can be obtained. The resistivity of titanium is 420×10-9 Ω·m, which is much larger than that of silver or copper. Hence, TON should be set to approximately 100 μs to achieve a good discharge success rate

Enteroscopic Diagnosis and Management of Small Bowel Diverticular Hemorrhage: A Multicenter Report from the Taiwan Association for the Study of Small Intestinal Diseases

Small bowel diverticulum is a rare cause of gastrointestinal bleeding. The diagnosis and treatment of small bowel diverticular hemorrhage is clinically challenging before the development of deep enteroscopy. In this multicenter study from the Taiwan Association for the Study of Small Intestinal Diseases (TASSID), 608 patients underwent deep enteroscopy for obscure gastrointestinal bleeding during January 2004 and April 2010 from eight medical centers in Taiwan. Small bowel diverticular hemorrhage account for 7.89% of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding in this study. Most of the patients received endoscopic therapy with an initial hemostasis rate of 85.71% and rebleeding rate of 20%. In this large case series investigating the enteroscopic management of small intestinal diverticular hemorrhage, we found that, as to patients with peptic ulcer hemorrhage, most of these patients can be successfully managed by endoscopic therapy before surgery in the era of deep enteroscopy

Ferroelectric Control of the Conduction at the LaAlO 3 /SrTiO 3 Hetero-interface

Abstract The LaAlO 3 /SrTiO 3 (LAO/STO) interface serves as a model system in which a highly mobile quasi-twodimensional electron gas (2DEG) forms between two band insulator