The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of daily activities among elderly patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) within 2 weeks after hospital discharge. Seven ...male and two female COPD patients aged 65-80 were inter viewed. Inter views were tape recorded, and then transcribed verbatim within 48 hours. Data were analyzed according to the method of qualitative research through constant comparison and content analysis. The data generated seven themes(1) expectations beyond oneʼs strength; (2) fear of having another attack; (3) slowing and simplifying activities; (4) acting according oneʼs abilities; (5) protecting one self; (6) striving for an independent life; and (7) trying to continue living. The findings of this research can help health professionals understand experiences of COPD patients, sensitively and precisely recognize their daily activity needs, and provide suitable interventions during the discharge transition to facilitate a better quality of life for elderly patients.
Vanidilol, 4'-(2-hydroxy-3-(tert-butylamino)propoxy)-3'-methoxyphenyl -benzaldehyde, newly synthesized from vanillin, is a vanilloid-type beta-adrenoceptor blocker. The beta-adrenoceptor-blocking ...properties of vanidilol were studied both in vivo and in vitro. Intravenous injection of vanidilol (1.0, 3.0, 5.0 mg/kg) in anesthetized Wistar rats produced a decrease in blood pressure and a dose-dependent bradycardia response. Vanidilol inhibited the tachycardia effects induced by (-)isoproterenol, but had no blocking effect on the arterial pressor responses induced by phenylephrine. In isolated guinea-pig tissues, vanidilol attenuated the (-)isoproterenol-induced positive chronotropic and inotropic effects of the atria and trachea relaxation responses in a concentration-dependent manner. The parallel shift to the right of the concentration-response curve of (-)isoproterenol suggested that the agent was a beta-adrenoceptor competitive antagonist. The apparent pA2 values for vanidilol on the right atria, left atria and trachea were 7.67 +/- 0.03, 7.89 +/- 1.02 and 7.66 +/- 0.15, respectively, denoting that vanidilol was a nonselective beta-blocker. The intrinsic sympathomimetic activity of vanidilol and propranolol was determined on isolated atria and trachea from reserpinized guinea pigs. Propranolol caused significantly negative inotropic and chronotropic effects at 10(-6) mol/l or above, whereas vanidilol possessed less cardiodepressant activities than propranolol. In reserpinized tracheal strips, vanidilol produced dose-dependent relaxant responses, but propranolol was ineffective. Preincubating the preparations with ICI 118,551 (0.1-10 nmol/l), a beta 2-adrenoceptor antagonist, significantly shifted the concentration-relaxation curves of vanidilol to a region of higher concentrations. In isolated guinea-pig thoracic aorta, vanidilol (0.1-10 mumol/l) inhibited the phenylephrine (10(-5) mol/l)-induced tonic contraction in vascular smooth muscle which was related to the block of calcium influx. In 20% saline-perfused rabbits, vanidilol showed a marked delay in intraocular pressure recovery, demonstrating an ocular hypotensive action. Binding characteristics of vanidilol and propranolol were evaluated in 3Hdihydroalprenolol binding to porcine ventricular membranes. Vanidilol was less potent than propranolol in competing for the beta-adrenoceptor-binding sites. On the other hand, vanidilol had a high hydrophilicity in comparison with propranolol. In conclusion, vanidilol exhibited nonselective beta-adrenoceptor blocking, vasorelaxant and ocular hypotensive activities, but was devoid of alpha-adrenoceptor blocking and beta 1-agonist activity. Partial beta 2-adrenoceptor agonist activity and inhibitory activity on calcium influx may share in the vasorelaxant activity.
Several peptide fragments of streptokinase (SK) were prepared by incubating SK with immobilized human plasmin (hPlm) and purified by h.p.l.c. with a reverse-phase phenyl column. The N-terminal ...sequences, amino acid compositions and molecular masses of these peptide fragments were determined. The SK peptide fragment of 36 kDa consisting of Ser60-Lys387 (SK-p), was the only peptide fragment that could be tightly bound to immobilized hPlm. Another three large SK peptide fragments, SK-m, SK-n and SK-o, with molecular masses of 7 kDa, 18 kDa and 30 kDa, and consisting of Ile1-Lys59, Glu148-Lys333, Ser60-Lys333 respectively, were also obtained from the supernatant of the reaction mixture. The purified SK-p had high affinity with hPlm and could activate human plasminogen (hPlg) with a kPlg one-sixth that of the native SK. SK-o had low affinity with hPlm and could also activate hPlg, although the catalytic constant was less than 1% of the native SK. SK-n, as well as SK-m, which is the N-terminal 59 amino acid peptide of the native SK, had no activator activity. However, SK-m could enhance the activator activity of both SK-o and SK-p and increase their second-order rate constants by two- and six-fold respectively. It was concluded from these studies that (1) SK-o, the Ser60-Lys333 peptide of SK, was essential for minimal SK activator activity, (2) the C-terminal peptide of SK-p, Ala334-Lys387, was essential for high affinity with hPlm, and (3) the N-terminal 59-amino-acid peptide was important in maintaining the proper conformation of SK to have its full activator activity.
Parainfluenza viruses are major pathogens causing respiratory illness, manifesting from mild upper respiratory tract infection to bronchiolitis and pneumonia. This retrospective study aimed at ...providing clinical and epidemiologic data addressing the parainfluenza virus infection in Taiwan. A total of 39 patients were enrolled in this study from March 1999 to December 2000. Infants and young children were the major susceptible population, with 87.2% of them younger than 3 years. No seasonal trend was noted for parainfluenza type 1 and type 2 infections. One clustering of parainfluenza virus type 3 infections occurred in late spring of 2000 based on collected results. Parainfluenza type 1 viral isolates accounted for all of the cases of croup. Most isolates of parainfluenza virus type 3 were associated with upper and/or lower respiratory tract infections. A substantial proportion of the patients had skin involvement; the identification of one case of possible parainfluenza virus-related erythema multiforme is particularly interesting, especially because the chances of a causal relation between viral infection and skin symptoms are formerly thought to be slight. The identification of parainfluenza virus in illnesses classically considered to be due to other viruses is intriguing and may have important implications in the management of childhood illness clinically.
In order to solve the system performance bottleneck of a 3D graphics acceleration SoC, we exploit design space exploration on performance evalu-ation and benchmark characteristics using SystemC. We ...find out the bottleneck according to the simulation results of 9 hardware/software configurations and find out the tradeoffs between different configurations. The performance issues of SoC have been explored under the low-cost constraints, such as cache size effect, hardware accelerations and memory traffic. In conclusions, we provide the performance/cost tradeoffs and 3D graphics benchmark features for designing a 3D graphics SoC.
Concentrations of ammonia (NH sub(3)), hydrogen sulfide (H sub(2)S) and methyl mercaptan (CH sub(3)SH) are high in the air above landfills in Taiwan. Odors are strong and many flies are present. ...These factors were studied in the air above selected landfill sites where odor was considered to be a nuisance. In this study, Natural Effective Microorganisms Enzyme (NEME) was sprayed on selected sampling sites to reduce the odor, the concentration of NH sub(3), H sub(2)S and CH sub(3)SH and the number of flies in landfills. The odor levels, the concentrations of NH sub(3), H sub(2)S and CH sub(3)SH and the numbers of flies at various sampling sites before and after spraying with NEME were discussed. Results revealed that at the Tian-Wai-Tian Landfill in Ji-Long City, after NEME was sprayed, the measured odor level ranged from 190 to 552, and the reduction ratios were 99.4%. At the Yan-Pu Country Landfill, after it was spraying with NEME, the measured odor level had a mean of 1360 and the reduction ratio had a mean of 71.6%. At the Ping-Tung Municipal Landfill, after it was sprayed with NEME, the measured odor level had a mean of 602 and the reduction ratio averaged 68.1%. The reduction ratio of NH sub(3) from landfills averaged 72.2% and 61.1% at the Yan-Pu Country Landfill and the Ping-Tung Municipal Landfill, respectively. However, both before and after spraying with NEME, the measured H sub(2)S and CH sub(3)SH concentrations at both the Yan-Pu Country Landfill and the Ping-Tung Municipal Landfill were under 0.03 ppm. The reduction ratio of the number of captured flies averaged 55.0% and 39.7% at the Yan-Pu Country Landfill and the Ping-Tung Municipal Landfill, respectively.
A new efficient algorithm using the compressed domain features of H.264 INTRA frames is proposed for moving object extraction on huge video surveillance archives. To achieve searching efficiency, we ...propose to locate moving objects by scrutinizing only the INTRA frames in video surveillance archives in H.264 compressed domain with short GOP length. In the proposed structure, a modified codebook algorithm is designed to build the block-based background models from the INTRA coding features. Through the subtraction with the background codebook models, the foreground energy frame is filtered and normalized for detecting the existence of moving objects. To overcome the over-segmentation problem and enable the unsupervised searching, a new structure of hysteresis thresholding, where the thresholds are obtained automatically by an efficient algorithm, is adopted to extract foreground blocks. At the final step, the connected components labeling (CCL) and morphological filters are employed to obtain the list of moving objects. As shown in the experimental results, the proposed algorithm outperforms representative existing works.
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