Most previous studies reported there were higher survival rates if low birth weight babies were born in tertiary perinatal centers (inborn) than elsewhere (outborn). The objective of this study is to ...examine whether the number and ratio of outborn babies decrease and the neonatal mortality differs between inborn and outborn babies.
We used the pooled data of the Taiwan Clinical Effectiveness Index for the years 2011–2016 obtained from the Joint Commission of Taiwan to study the outborn/inborn number and neonatal mortality rate.
We found that the number of outborn babies did not decrease year by year. The ratio of outborn to total babies was lower in the groups of birth body weight 750–999 g and ≧ 2500 g than the other groups. The neonatal mortality rate in outborns was significantly higher than the inborns in the groups of birth body weight 1000–1499 g, 2000–2499 g and ≧ 2500 g (6.9 ± 2.4 vs. 3.8 ± 0.9, P = 0.009, 2.6 ± 0.6 vs. 0.6 ± 0.3, P = 0.002 and 1.52 ± 0.67 vs. 0.08 ± 0.02, P = 0.002, respectively) in medical centers.
Improved maternal transport which promotes in utero transfer of patients may further improve neonatal outcome.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) ranks among the top ten most prevalent cancers worldwide. Like most head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs), OSCC is highly inflammatory and aggressive. ...However, the signaling pathways triggering the activation of its inflammatory processes remain elusive. G protein-coupled receptor signaling regulates the inflammatory response and invasiveness of cancers, but it remains unclear whether Gα12 is a critical player in the inflammatory cytokine pathway during the tumorigenesis of OSCC. This study was undertaken to determine the role of Gα12 signaling in the regulation of proinflammatory cytokines in their mediation of OSCC invasion. We found that both the transcription and protein levels of Gα12 are up-regulated in OSCC tumors. The elevated Gα12 expressions in OSCC patients also correlated with extra-capsular spread, an indicator of tumor invasiveness in HNSCCs. This clinical finding was supported by the studies of overexpression and RNAi knockdown of Gα12 in OSCC cells, which demonstrated that Gα12 promoted tumor cell migration and invasion. To understand how Gα12 modulates OSCC invasiveness, we analyzed key biological processes in microarray data upon depletion of Gα12 and found that cytokine- and other immune-related pathways were severely impaired. Importantly, the mRNA levels of IL-6 and IL-8 proinflammatory cytokines in clinical samples were found to be significantly correlated with the increased Gα12 levels, suggesting a potential role of Gα12 in modulating the IL-6 and IL-8 expressions. Supporting this hypothesis, overexpression or RNAi knockdown of Gα12 in OSCC cell lines both showed that Gα12 positively regulated the mRNA and protein levels of IL-6 and IL-8. Finally, we demonstrated that the Gα12 promotion of tumor cell invasiveness was suppressed by the neutralization of IL-6 and IL-8 in OSCC cells. Together, these findings suggest that Gα12 drives OSCC invasion through the up-regulation of IL-6 and IL-8 cytokines.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Over the past few decades, recognition of early lung cancers was researched for effective treatments. In early lung cancers, the invasiveness is an important factor for expected survival rates. ...Hence, how to effectively identify the invasiveness by computed tomography (CT) images became a hot topic in the field of biomedical science. Although a number of previous works were shown to be effective on this topic, there remain some problems unsettled still. First, it needs a large amount of marked data for a better prediction, but the manual cost is high. Second, the accuracy is always limited in imbalance data. To alleviate these problems, in this paper, we propose an effective CT invasiveness recognizer by semi-automated segmentation. In terms of semi-automated segmentation, it is easy for doctors to mark the nodules. Just based on one clicked pixel, a nodule object in a CT image can be marked by fusing two proposed segmentation methods, including thresholding-based morphology and deep learning-based mask region-based convolutional neural network (Mask-RCNN). For thresholding-based morphology, an initial segmentation is derived by adaptive pixel connections. Then, a mathematical morphology is performed to achieve a better segmentation. For deep learning-based mask-RCNN, the anchor is fixed by the clicked pixel to reduce the computational complexity. To incorporate advantages of both, the segmentation is switched between these two sub-methods. After segmenting the nodules, a boosting ensemble classification model with feature selection is executed to identify the invasiveness by equalized down-sampling. The extensive experimental results on a real dataset reveal that the proposed segmentation method performs better than the traditional segmentation ones, which can reach an average dice improvement of 392.3%. Additionally, the proposed ensemble classification model infers better performances than the compared method, which can reach an area under curve (AUC) improvement of 5.3% and a specificity improvement of 14.3%. Moreover, in comparison with the models with imbalance data, the improvements of AUC and specificity can reach 10.4% and 33.3%, respectively.
This paper examines the effect of green bond issuance on firms' climate risk concerns from 2011 to 2020. First, we propose four ratios of climate risk concerns, which are transition risks, acute ...physical risks, chronic physical risks, and climate-related opportunities by using text mining techniques. Second, we find that the climate risk concerns increase for most firms after the issuance of green bonds. Finally, to eliminate the endogeneity, we adopt propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-difference (DID) analysis to indicate that after the issuance of green bonds, firms pay more attention to climate risks. Our results provide insights and implications for policy makers and regulators.
•Our paper investigates the effect of green bond issuance on firms' climate risk concerns from 2011 to 2020.•Four climate risk concerns, which are ransition risks, acute physical risks, chronic physical risks, and climate-related opportunities.•We find that the climate risk concerns increase for most firms after the issuance of green bonds.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•NEAT1 and Xist are upregulated in kidneys with experimental membranous nephropathy.•Xist expression is significantly elevated in both LPS-treated podocytes and urine of MN mice.•H3K27me3 is reduced ...at Xist promoter regions in MN kidneys.•Xist expression is significantly elevated in urine from patients with glomerular nephritis.
Membranous nephropathy (MN), a type of glomerular nephritis, is the most common cause of nephrotic syndrome in human adults. Changes in gene expression as a result of epigenetic dysregulation through long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are increasingly being recognized as important factors in disease. Using an experimental MN mouse model, we identify the first dysregulated lncRNAs, Xist and NEAT1, whose levels are significantly upregulated in both tubular epithelial and glomerular cells. MN is also often characterized by glomerular podocyte injury. Treatment of a mouse podocyte cell line with lipopolysaccharides to induce injury resulted in the stable elevation of Xist, but not NEAT1 levels. In mice, the observed changes in Xist levels are specific: Xist can be effectively detected in urine, with a strong correlation to disease severity, but not serum in MN samples. We find that regulation of Xist may be controlled by post-translational modifications. H3K27me3 levels are significantly downregulated in mouse MN kidney, where chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments also showed decreased H3K27me3 at Xist promoter regions. Finally, we show that our findings in mice can be extended to human clinical samples. Urinary Xist is significantly elevated in urine samples from patients with different types of glomerular nephritis, including MN, compared to normal counterparts. Together, our results suggest that a reduction of H3K27me3 at Xist promoter regions leads to elevated levels of urinary Xist, which may be used as a biomarker to detect MN.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
We report in this article a simple route for synthesizing small-sized silver/gold core–shell (Ag/Au) on multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) surfaces via galvanic replacement of Ag nanoparticles (Ag ...NPs). The Raman response of MWCNT decorated with Ag/Au was investigated under surface-enhanced Raman scattering. A relatively weak Raman signal enhancement of the tube was observed due to the large interparticle distance between neighboring small-sized nanostructures. Ag/Au gives better enhancing capability than the starting Ag because of the synergistic effect between the localized electric field of the Ag core, and the Au shell separated with a hollow space formed during the galvanic replacement reaction. Furthermore, the Ag/Au was removed from the CNT surfaces via sonication with 1-octanethiol (OT), releasing unreplaced Ag NPs and Au nanobowls (Au NBs) with 1.3 and 7.6 nm of mean diameter sizes, respectively. The production of these fine-sized nanocomposites (Au/Ag NCs) allowed us to investigate their luminescent property. Interestingly, the separated Au/Ag NCs (i.e., the mixture of Au NBs and unreplaced Ag NPs) exhibit fluorescence behavior that may be useful for single-molecule detection. Our technique provides the synthesis of smallest dimension of Au NBs so far simply achieved by wet-chemical process using MWCNTs as templates.
The integrated effect of the cholesterol and CYP46 genotypes on the risk of cognitive decline needs to be determined. Using the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI), 145 mentally healthy ...middle‐aged and older adults were recruited to investigate the influence of cholesterol and CYP46 genotypes on cognitive event‐related potentials (ERPs). The subjects with a high low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL‐C) level displayed significantly lower amplitude ERPs, although the CASI scores showed no difference. There was no association between the CYP46 genotypes, CASI scores, cholesterol levels, and measures of ERPs. No interaction between LDL‐C level and CYP46 genotypes was noted. The LDL‐C level is an independent predictor of low P300 amplitude. Prevention and treatment of high cholesterol may be of potential benefit in reducing cognitive impairment.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FSPLJ, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Interest in developing a rapid and robust DNA sequencing platform has surged over the past decade. Various next-/third-generation sequencing mechanisms have been employed to replace the traditional ...Sanger sequencing method. In sequencing by synthesis, a signal is monitored by a scanning charge-coupled device (CCD) to identify thousands to millions of incorporated dNTPs with distinctive fluorophores on a chip. Because one reaction site usually occupies dozens of pixels on a CCD detector, a bottleneck related to the bandwidth of CCD imaging limits the throughputs of the sequencing performance and causes trade-offs among speed, accuracy, read length, and the numbers of reaction sites in parallel. Thus, current research aims to align one reaction site to a few pixels by directly stacking nanophotonic layers onto a CMOS detector to minimize the size of the sequencing platforms and accelerate the processing procedures. This article reports a custom integrated optoelectronic device based on a triple-junction photodiode (TPD) CMOS sensor in conjunction with NPL integration for real-time illumination and detection of fluorescent molecules.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Melatonin is a hormone majorly secreted by the pineal gland and contributes to a various type of physiological functions in mammals. The melatonin production is tightly limited to the AANAT level, ...yet the most known molecular mechanisms underlying AANAT gene transcription is limited in the pinealocyte. Here, we find that c-Fos and cAMP-response element-binding protein (CREB) decreases and increases the AANAT transcriptional activity in renal tubular epithelial cell, respectively. Notably, c-Fos knockdown significantly upregulates melatonin levels in renal tubular cells. Functional results indicate that AANAT expression is decreased by c-Fos and resulted in enhancement of cell damage in albumin-injury cell model. We further find an inverse correlation between c-Fos and AANAT levels in renal tubular cells from experimental membranous nephropathy (MN) samples and clinical MN specimens. Our finding provides the molecular basis of c-Fos in transcriptionally downregulating expression of AANAT and melatonin, and elucidate the protective role of AANAT in preventing renal tubular cells death in albumin-injury cell model and MN progression.
•The expression of melatonin is downregulated by c-Fos in human renal tubular epithelial cells.•The transcription activity of AANAT is repressed by c-Fos in human renal tubular epithelial cells.•c-Fos promote cell damage via the downregulation of AANAT in albumin-injury model.•Inverse correlation between c-Fos and AANAT levels in the experimental MN kidneys and clinical MN specimens.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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