The aim of this study was to measure the level of cytokines produced by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNC) in patients with aplastic anemia (AA) and determine their effect on normal bone ...marrow (BM) colony growth. Thirty-five patients with AA and 21 normal controls were enrolled in the study. Medium conditioned by PBMNC of AA patients in the presence of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) was found to be suppressive to the clonal growth of normal BM cells. Thus, we further determined the presence in the PBMNC conditioned medium (CM) of inhibitory cytokines (macrophage inflammatory protein-1 alpha MIP-1 alpha, transforming growth factor-beta 2 TGF-beta 2, interferon-gamma IFN-gamma, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha TNF-alpha) and stimulatory cytokines (granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulatory factor GM-CSF, interleukin-3 IL-3, and stem cell factor SCF). The results show no significant difference between AA patients and normal controls in the spontaneous production of all cytokines by PBMNC. After PHA stimulation, the production of MIP-1 alpha, IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha, and GM-CSF significantly increased in the cultures of AA patients (p = 0.0009, 0.0002, 0.0022, and 0.0156, respectively). However, both TGF-beta 2 and SCF were undetectable in most of the tested samples. IL-3 was measured in the conditioned medium only after PHA stimulation, but without significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.67). Furthermore, the myelopoietic suppressing effect of AA-PBMNC CM could be significantly blocked by pretreatment with specific antibodies to the corresponding inhibitory cytokines (MIP-1 alpha, IFN-gamma, and TNF-alpha). After antibody neutralization, an apparent change occurred in the clonal growth of normal BM cells incubated with AA-PBMNC CM, resulting in colony enhancement of 205, 131, and 237% by anti-MIP-1 alpha, anti-IFN-gamma, and anti-TNF-alpha, respectively. These results suggest that overproduction of inhibitory cytokines, rather than underproduction of stimulating cytokines, may play a role in the progression of at least some patients with AA.
As in other Tetranychus species, both T. kanzawai and T. urticae undergo reproductive diapause induced by short-days and low temperatures. This study compares the diapause characteristics of ...populations of these two species from Taiwan with those from Kagoshima (southern Japan) and the Okinawa islands (southwestern islands). Our previous study (Takafuji et al., 2001, Appl. Entomol. Zool. 36: 177-184) showed that most T. kanzawai populations from Kagoshima exhibited more than 90% diapause at 15°C-9L15D, but the incidence of diapause in populations from the Okinawa islands was very low, and some exhibited no diapause even at 15°C. The present study shows that populations from central Taiwan, including those from the lowlands, exhibited a lower incidence of diapause than populations from Kagoshima, but a higher incidence than populations from the Okinawa islands. These results imply that the gene flow among populations in the lowlands and mountains maintains a higher incidence of diapause in Taiwan, but the diapause characteristic may have been eliminated by warm temperatures on the Okinawa islands, on which there are no high mountains. On the other hand, all populations of T. urticae from Kagoshima, Okinawa and Taiwan similarly exhibited a very low incidence of diapause.
The interesting ZnO nanoparticles (NPs)-based sensor devices are fabricated on sapphire substrates to study the nitrogen oxide (NO 2 ) gas sensing performance. The postheat treatment process is not ...used to avoid the undesired agglomeration phenomenon. Different concentrations (0.1 and 0.01 wt%) of ZnO NPs are employed to produce the studied NO 2 gas sensors. Experimentally, studied devices demonstrate good NO 2 sensing responses \sim 100 (at 5 ppm NO 2 /air, 473 K). Especially, an extremely low sensing limit of 10 ppb NO 2 /air is obtained for the studied devices. This value is superior to those of previously reported results from other NO 2 sensors. The studied sensor devices also show the advantages of low cost, easy fabrication, and compact potentiality to integrate with other high-speed and optoelectronic devices. Therefore, the studied devices give the promise for high-performance NO 2 monitoring applications.
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 interviewed. Interviews 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 one's strength; (2) fear of having another attack; (3) slowing and simplifying activities; (4) acting according one's abilities; (5) protecting oneself; (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 pat
Human liver arginase has many biological effects on lymphocytes, macrophages, liver cells, and tumor cells, in addition to its major role in the liver urea cycle. We have developed a sandwich ...enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method to quantitate arginase concentrations in plasma that can be applied to various body fluids. The sensitivity was 2.5 ng/mL. The coefficients of variation were good both in intra- and inter-assay. Using this method to study the stability of an arginase preparation, we found that plasma arginase was stable for only 1 or 2 days even at temperatures as low as 4 degrees C. The mean plasma level was 41.0 +/- 3.3 ng/mL (mean +/- SE) in 143 normal subjects. There was no age difference in the general population and in the male group. However, in the female group, the plasma arginase level increased with age (p = 0.05). Its biological significance was unclear. As a whole, the ELISA method for the measurement of arginase concentration in the body fluid is convenient and reliable.
Haemophilus influenzae type b causes invasive infection in children under 2 years of age. The disease may be complicated with hearing impairment, lowered learning ability, and other neurologic ...sequelae. The incidence of invasive H. influenzae type b has declined dramatically after the introduction of routine administration of protein-conjugated H. influenzae type b vaccine in the United States and some other countries. Because of its low incidence in Taiwan, many clinicians are not familiar with the initial symptoms and management of H. influenzae type b. This case report describes a 7-month-old H. influenzae type b meningitis patient who had initial presentations of prolonged intermittent fever and vague neurologic signs. Left peripheral facial palsy with hearing loss in left ear and bilateral frontal subdural effusion developed during the first 5 days of cefotaxime therapy. Betamethasone was then given for 4 days to relieve the severe inflammation. Drug-induced fever was observed after 11 days of antibiotic use and subsided with prednisolone treatment. Left ear hearing impairment persisted during the follow-up period, but the children did not experience other significant development delay.
Quality of transmission is very important in digital communication. The BER (bit error rate) of a PCM encoding method may be varied according to different working condition or different signal ...source. Theoretically, the BER of encoding method can be estimated mathematically. The BER is generally assumed as a constant value. The BER, however, is not deterministic in real world. In this paper, a Dynamic PCM Selector that can dynamically select an optimal PCM codec module is proposed. The system can dynamically switch to the encoding mode with possible lowest BER, according to the current type of the transmission. By way of this design, it can greatly reduce the overheads of the error correction process.
In the Web 2.0 era, many social networking services have rapidly emerged. For helping users interactively explore characteristics of these social communities, different visualization tools are ...proposed to present the social networks with a panoramic view. However, most visualization tools do not consider the issue of effectively exploring interpersonal relationships from a single user perspective. In this paper, we discuss this issue using various information visualization techniques to help end-users efficiently discover detailed individual information. To study the usability, we performed user studies to compare our system with a typical text-based interface. The preliminary experiment results show that our visualization design significantly reduces the searching time cost to help the subjects efficiently find information.
Portable mobile computing and communication applications demand low-power and low-energy with high performance. These competing demands drive SoC development. Especially, 3D graphics-intensive ...applications are predicted to become widely available on a variety of portable mobile devices ranging from laptops to PDAs to mobile phones. Such 3D graphics coprocessors were originally developed for home computers and game consoles, which use steady power supplies. But a portable mobile device has a limited battery life, which needs to be prolonged as much as possible. Consequently, low power design is the most important segment in order to become competitively portable mobile consumer electronics. We are developing a high-performance, low-power, 3D-graphics SoC to meet such requirements. This paper introduces our developing energy-awared mobile 3D graphics SoC and its real-time performance/energy monitoring and control.
This paper presents an embedded debugging/performance monitoring engine (EDPME), which is capable of collect run time characteristics, detect AHB on-chip bus protocol error/inefficiency, and capture ...on-chip AHB bus traces at various abstraction levels with compression ratio up to 98% for a low cost tile-based 3D graphics SoC development.
