The modified PVDF membranes were prepared by adding different amounts of TiO(2) particles (0-4 wt.%) into the casting solution. The TiO(2) entrapped PVDF membranes (0-4% PVDF/TiO(2)) were tested for ...its antibacterial property by using Escherichia Coliform (E. Coli), photoactive property using Reactive Black 5 (RB5) dye and self cleaning (antifouling) properties by fouling using 1% BSA solution. Results showed that TiO(2) addition significantly affects the pore size and hydrophilicity of the PVDF/TiO(2) membrane. This also improves the flux and permeability of modified PVDF/TiO(2) membrane. The results of antibacterial study showed that the composite PVDF/TiO(2) membrane removes E. Coli at a very faster rate than neat PVDF membrane and membrane with 4% TiO(2) possess highest antibacterial property. The RB5 dye removal using PVDF/TiO(2) occurs under UV by photolysis and photocatalysis mechanisms. The rate of RB5 dye color removal was faster as compared to the rate of aromatic ring structure. The resistance study showed 2% TiO(2) membrane having lower fouling resistance as compared to others. The fouling resistance caused by loosely bound protein (R(c)) was lower than the strongly bound protein (R(f)). The performance of fouled membranes flux and TMP can be recovered to its initial value by simple UV treatment.
Many countries have recently witnessed the structure of their economies shift from industrial production to service-sector activities. In particular, this shift has characterised Taiwan's economy, ...which nevertheless has grown sluggish in the last few years. In addressing the sluggish environment, Taiwanese companies have been enhancing their business processes with new business models that innovatively satisfy customer demands. In the current study, we explore factors that powerfully support IT firms' efforts to develop innovative business model. Having invented a STEP
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model for this task, we uncovered factors that are highly relevant to service innovation, technology adaptation, environmental transformation, process planning, and people requirements. For the current study, we collected 210 completed online surveys, of which we were able to analyse 195. We found that three factors - environmental transformation, process planning, and people requirements - are particularly useful for firms seeking to enhance the innovativeness of their services. We also found that service innovation affects the development of innovation-oriented business models. Thanks to this study's STEP
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model, our findings should have significant theoretical and practical implications.
Aims
This study aimed to compare the efficacy of different numbered sets of injections of platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) in the treatment of mild‐moderate knee osteoarthritis (OA).
Methods
A ...comprehensive search in three databases of Cochrane Library, Embase, and PubMed was conducted to find relevant articles that investigated the efficacy of PRP injection therapies in the treatment of mild‐moderate knee OA through August 2020. The Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain and function scores were the primary outcomes and visual analogue scale (VAS) was the secondary outcome. The pooled improvements amongst different injection therapies were compared.
Results
No significant differences in the improvement of WOMAC pain were observed amongst 1‐, 2‐, and 3‐injection therapies at 3‐ (P = .26) and 6‐month (P = .13) follow‐ups. For a 12‐month follow‐up, the difference amongst different therapies reached borderline significance (P = .05) in which 3‐injection therapy had a significantly better improvement than 2‐injection therapy (P = .02) and reached borderline significance compared with 1‐injection (P = .07). However, no significant differences in the improvement of VAS scores were observed amongst three injection therapies for all the follow‐up visits (P > .05). For WOMAC function score, 3‐injection therapy performed significantly better than 1‐injection (P < .00001) or 2‐injection therapy (P < .0001) only at 12‐month follow‐up visit.
Conclusions
Our results demonstrated that 3‐injection therapy of PRP in the treatment of mild‐moderate knee OA had the best efficacy in pain relief and function improvement compared with 1‐ and 2‐injection therapies.
Precision positioning is a very important task for automatic assembly and inspection in the manufacturing process. The conventional image processing for image alignment has relied on template ...matching, which is computationally intensive for objects in arbitrary locations and orientations. In this article, we propose the deep neural network regressors for fast and accurate image alignment. They are especially applied to the positioning of printed circuit boards (PCBs). The simple multilayer perceptron (MLP), the convolutional neural network (CNN), and the CNN models incorporated with support vector regression (SVR) are proposed and evaluated for the PCB positioning task. The proposed deep neural networks require only one single reference sample with a manually marked template window. All training images and the ground-truth geometric parameters are automatically generated for the model training. The effect of illumination changes and the strategies to cope with lighting variations are analyzed and proposed for robust positioning. Experimental results indicate that the proposed regressors can achieve a subpixel accuracy in translation and yield a rotation error less than 1° with 1-ms evaluation time for PCB positioning.
The COVID‐19 pandemic is a global public health issue. Neurological complications have been reported in up to one‐third of affected cases, but their distribution varies significantly in terms of ...prevalence, incidence and phenotypical characteristics. Variability can be mostly explained by the differing sources of cases (hospital vs. community‐based), the accuracy of the diagnostic approach and the interpretation of the patients’ complaints. Moreover, after recovering, patients can still experience neurological symptoms. To obtain a more precise picture of the neurological manifestations and outcome of the COVID‐19 infection, an international registry (ENERGY) has been created by the European Academy of Neurology in collaboration with European national neurological societies and the Neurocritical Care Society and Research Network. ENERGY can be implemented as a stand‐alone instrument for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID‐19 and neurological findings or as an addendum to an existing registry not targeting neurological symptoms. Data are also collected to study the impact of neurological symptoms and neurological complications on outcomes. The variables included in the registry have been selected in the interests of most countries, to favour pooling with data from other sources and to facilitate data collection even in resource‐poor countries. Included are adults with suspected or confirmed COVID‐19 infection, ascertained through neurological consultation, and providing informed consent. Key demographic and clinical findings are collected at registration. Patients are followed up to 12 months in search of incident neurological manifestations. As of 19 August, 254 centres from 69 countries and four continents have made requests to join the study.
Map of Europe including the location of the centres participating in the European Academy of Neurology registry.
This article presents a deep learning scheme for automatic defect detection in material surfaces. The success of deep learning model training is generally determined by the number of representative ...training samples and the quality of the annotation. It is extremely tedious and tiresome to annotate defects pixel-by-pixel in an image to train a semantic network model for defect segmentation. In this study, we propose a two-stage deep learning scheme to tackle the pixel-wise defect detection in textured surfaces without manual annotation. The first stage of the deep learning scheme uses two cycle-consistent adversarial network (CycleGAN) models to automatically synthesize and annotate defect pixels in an image. The synthesized defect images and their corresponding annotated results from the CycleGAN models are then used as the input-output pairs for training the U-Net semantic network. The proposed scheme requires only a few real defect samples for the training and completely requires no manual annotation work. It is practical and computationally very efficient for the implementation in manufacturing. Experimental results show that the proposed deep learning scheme can be applied for defect detection in a variety of textured and patterned surfaces, and results in high detection accuracy.
Surgical smoke is a common chemical hazard produced from the use of electrocautery, laser, or ultrasonic scalpels during surgery. It has been proved harmful to medical personnel. Thus, it is ...important to monitor surgical smoke concentrations in the operating room. In the past decade, many researches regarding surgical smoke were discussed in different professional healthcare fields, but few showed the correlation between surgical smoke and otolaryngology surgery. In this study, the concentrations of particulate matter and formaldehyde were measured during thirty cases of several types of otolaryngology surgery in a regional research hospital in Taiwan. The concentrations of 0.3 µm and 0.5 µm particulate matter raised rapidly in the main knife range at the beginning of the electrocautery knife used, and then decreased by half after 5-10 min of use. The concentrations of formaldehyde were ranged from 1 to 2 ppm during the surgery, which is higher than the permissible exposure limit. While many medical staffs are working in the operating room and are exposed to the smoke hazard, effective strategies for collecting and eliminating the smoke should be taken in all medical facilities.
Increasing evidence suggests that PRMT5, a protein arginine methyltransferase, is involved in tumorigenesis. However, no systematic research has demonstrated the cell‐transforming activity of PRMT5. ...We investigated the involvement of PRMT5 in tumor formation. First, we showed that PRMT5 was associated with many human cancers, through statistical analysis of microarray data in the NCBI GEO database. Overexpression of ectopic PRMT5 per se or its specific shRNA enhanced or reduced cell growth under conditions of normal or low concentrations of serum, low cell density, and poor cell attachment. A stable clone that expressed exogenous PRMT5 formed tumors in nude mice, which demonstrated that PRMT5 is a potential oncoprotein. PRMT5 accelerated cell cycle progression through G1 phase and modulated regulators of G1; for example, it upregulated cyclin‐dependent kinase (CDK) 4, CDK6, and cyclins D1, D2 and E1, and inactivated retinoblastoma protein (Rb). Moreover, PRMT5 activated phosphoinositide 3‐kinase (PI3K)/AKT and suppressed c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase (JNK)/c‐Jun signaling cascades. However, only inhibition of PI3K activity, and not overexpression of JNK, blocked PRMT5‐induced cell proliferation. Further analysis of PRMT5 expression in 64 samples of human lung cancer tissues by microarray and western blot analysis revealed a tight association of PRMT5 with lung cancer. Knockdown of PRMT5 retarded cell growth of lung cancer cell lines A549 and H1299. In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, we have characterized the cell‐transforming activity of PRMT5 and delineated its underlying mechanisms for the first time.
Purpose. The aim of our study is to assess efficacy of noninvasive erbium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet laser (Er:YAG laser) for female stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Materials and Methods. ...Forty-one women with SUI were included in the study and scheduled for vaginal Er:YAG laser treatment. The procedure was performed with a 2940 nm, Er:YAG laser (Fotona Smooth ™ XS, Fotona, Ljubljana, Slovenia), designed to heat up the vaginal mucosa to around 60°C. All subjects had a baseline and 6 months’ posttreatment assessment that included perineal sonography and lower urinary tract symptoms. Results. Significant improvements in both urinary frequency and incontinence were found 6 months after Er:YAG laser treatment when compared to the baseline results (p<0.001). The battery of questionnaires administered to patients, including the UDI-6, IIQ-7, OABSS, and POPDI-6, all showed significant improvement posttreatment (P < 0.001). The treatment efficacy for the vaginal Er:YAG laser for SUI at 6 months posttreatment was 75.5% (31/41). Bladder neck mobility by perineal ultrasonography decreased significantly (16.1 ± 6.4 mm to 10.5 ± 4.6 mm) after treatment (p=0.039). No permanent adverse events were found. Conclusions. The Er:YAG vaginal laser seems to be a safe and efficacious treatment for women with mild to moderate SUI, this being partly related to the decrease of bladder neck mobility following laser treatment.
Growing evidence suggests the link between gut microbiota and mood regulation. The current study aimed to identify microbiota targets for major depressive disorder (MDD) and mood-related traits in ...Taiwanese samples, while taking into account the influence of dietary patterns. We recruited 36 MDD patients and 37 healthy controls for 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We assessed nutrient content using food frequency questionnaire, and mood related phenotypes, including depressive severity, anxiety, and perceived stress. Analysis of composition of microbiomes (ANCOM) models were performed to evaluate microbiota compositions between patients and controls, while adjusted for fat intake% and sequencing platforms. We found 23 taxa (4 phyla, 7 families and 12 genera) to be associated with depression and beta diversity was differed between groups. Phylum Actinobacteria and Firmicutes were overrepresented in MDD patients. At genus level, Bifidobacterium (7%) and Blautia (8%) had relatively high abundance among MDD patients, while Prevotella (16%) had high abundance in controls. Holdemania exhibited moderate correlation with anxiety (r = 0.65) and perceived stress level (r = 0.49) mainly in MDD patients but not controls. Pathway analyses revealed that pentose phosphate and starch and sucrose metabolism processes were important pathways for depression via microbiota functions. In conclusion, our results revealed microbiota targets for depression that are independent of fat intake. It is worthwhile to conduct further studies to replicate the current findings and to integrate with biochemistry and metabolomics data to better understand the functions of identified targets.
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