Background: Previous investigations have shown a positive relationship between baseball pitching velocity and the kinetic chain involved in pitching motion. However, no study has examined the ...influence of finger characteristics on pitching velocity and rate of spin via a sensor-embedded baseball. Methods: Twenty-one pitchers volunteered and were recruited for this study. An experimental baseball embedded with a force sensor and an inertial measurement unit was designed for pitching performance measurement. Finger length and strength were measured as dependent variables. Spin rate and velocity were independent variables. Pearson product–moment correlations (r) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) determined the relationship between finger characteristics and pitching performance. Results: Finger length discrepancy, two-point pinch strength, index finger RFD (rate of force development), middle finger impulse, and force discrepancy had significant correlations with spin rate (r = 0.500~0.576, p ≤ 0.05). Finger length discrepancy, two-point pinch, three-point pinch strength, index and middle finger RFD, middle finger impulse, and force combination had significant correlations with fastball pitching velocity (r = 0.491~0.584, p ≤ 0.05). Conclusions: Finger length discrepancy, finger pinch strength, and pitching finger force including maximal force and RFD may be factors that impact fastball spin rate and fastball pitching velocity.
According to the Health Promotion Administration in the Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics in Taiwan, over ten thousand women have breast cancer every year. Mammography is widely used to ...detect breast cancer. However, it is limited by the operator's technique, the cooperation of the subjects, and the subjective interpretation by the physician. It results in inconsistent identification. Therefore, this study explores the use of a deep neural network algorithm for the classification of mammography images. In the experimental design, a retrospective study was used to collect imaging data from actual clinical cases. The mammography images were collected and classified according to the breast image reporting and data-analyzing system (BI-RADS). In terms of model building, a fully convolutional dense connection network (FC-DCN) is used for the network backbone. All the images were obtained through image preprocessing, a data augmentation method, and transfer learning technology to build a mammography image classification model. The research results show the model's accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were 86.37%, 100%, and 72.73%, respectively. Based on the FC-DCN model framework, it can effectively reduce the number of training parameters and successfully obtain a reasonable image classification model for mammography.
Indwelling urethral catheters are widely used in clinical settings. Catheter-associated urinary tract infection has been recognized as a common adverse event in older patients. However, noninfectious ...complications are almost 5 times as common as infectious complications, and insufficient attention has been given to noninfectious complications. Given this importance, a novel intervention related to removing unnecessary catheters in a timely manner to promote, after removal, the recovery of self-voiding function is herein developed to reduce infectious and noninfectious complications associated with indwelling urethral catheters in hospitalized older patients.
A quasi-experimental study design was adopted. Patients aged 65 and older who had a urinary catheter placed within 24 h of hospital admission were included. All patients were allocated into either an intervention group, in which the novel intervention developed in the study was implemented, or a control group, who received care as usual. The outcomes of this study were to evaluate whether the novel intervention reduced the incidence of the following: catheter-associated urinary tract infections, catheter-associated noninfectious complications, decline in activities of daily living, and new nursing home admissions.
Of 106 hospitalized older patients who consented to participate, 92 completed follow-up until discharge, including 49 in the control group and 43 in the intervention group. The patients in the intervention group were significantly older than those in the control group 83.72 ± 9.18 vs. 80.26 ± 7.66, p = 0.038, and no differences were found between the groups in other demographics or present health conditions. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that the control group was more likely to develop noninfectious complications adjusted odds ratio: 3.01, 95% confidence interval: 1.32-6.81 and a decline in ADLs adjusted odds ratio: 11.20, 95% confidence interval: 3.68-34.00.
A novel intervention can be effective as a means of reducing noninfectious complications associated with indwelling urethral catheters in hospitalized older patients. This approach will help to standardize urethral catheter care, and it highlights the fact that health care professionals can play a crucial role in preventing harm from urethral catheters.
Lamivudine is a potent inhibitor of hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication, but its long‐term use may be associated with HBV tyrosine‐methionine‐aspartate‐aspartate (YMDD) motif mutation. To examine the ...clinical features and course after emergence of YMDD mutants, 55 patients who received lamivudine therapy over 104 weeks at our unit were assayed for YMDD mutation(s). Thirty‐two of them were found to have the YMDD mutation. They continued lamivudine therapy and were followed up weekly or biweekly if clinically indicated. Thirty (93.7%) of them showed elevation of alanine transaminase (ALT), and 13 (40.6%) experienced acute exacerbation at 4 to 94 weeks (median, 24 weeks) after emergence of the YMDD mutant. The incidence of exacerbation is much higher than 4.3% in patients without the YMDD mutation (P = .003). Compared with patients without exacerbation, patients with exacerbation had a significantly higher serum HBV‐DNA level after emergence of the YMDD mutant (P < .005). Before exacerbation, serum HBV‐DNA level was rising to its peak, followed by the peaking of ALT (247‐2,010 U/L) 1 to 4 weeks later. Three patients developed hepatic decompensation, but then in association with hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) seroconversion, recovered. Of the 12 evaluable patients, 8 (75%) showed HBeAg seroconversion, and 3 showed mutant clearance within 1 to 5 months after exacerbation. In contrast, none of the patients without exacerbation showed HBeAg seroconversion (P < .001). These results indicate that acute exacerbations may occur after emergence of the YMDD mutation. The incidence, clinicopathological features, and subsequent course, and possibly the underlying immune mechanisms, are similar to those of wild‐type HBV chronic infection. Because severe hepatitis may occur, patients should be followed carefully once the YMDD mutant emerges.
A niobium oxide (NbOx) layer is firstly investigated as a pH sensing membrane in single-layer light-addressable potentiometric sensor (LAPS) in this study. To confirm basic sensing performances, NbOx ...layer directly deposited on silicon substrate was prepared by reactive rf sputtering and following with post-deposition rapid thermal anneal (RTA) for electrolyte insulator semiconductor (EIS) structure first. RTA processed at 500 to 700°C can be used to make the increases of calculated pH sensitivity and linearity, especially performed in O2 ambience. Increases of pH sensitivity can result from the surface site density increases causing by the re-crystallization in RTA, which be supported by the larger grain size and surface roughness in AFM analysis. In this single-layer structure, desified layer with slightly higher atom concentration by RTA and partial Si out-diffusion to surface shown in SIMS analysis could be another factor for better pH sensing performance. 30nm-thick NbOx layer is suggested to have a lower drift coefficient after RTA in O2 ambience compare to 5nm-thick NbOx layer. An acceptable pH sensing performance including a pH sensitivity of 57–60mV/pH and a drift of −3mV/h is achieved in the 30nm-thick NbOx-EIS structure with RTA in O2 ambience at 500 to 700°C, which could be a candidate of pH sensing membrane. This developed process of NbOx sensing membrane is also applied to LAPS to collect a hydrogen-ion image for area defined by photolithography and buffer solution with red laser scanning controlled by X–Y stage.
During the course of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) seroconversion to its antibody (anti-HBe) often coincides with normalization of liver biochemical test ...and clinical remission, but data regarding long-term outcome after spontaneous seroconversion are still scarce. Excluding patients with other virus(es) concurrent infection, 283 patients with chronic HBV infection were followed up for at least 1 year after spontaneous HBeAg seroconversion to anti-HBe. Follow-up studies included clinical, biochemical, and virologic evaluation and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) screening with ultrasonography and α-fetoprotein assay. During a median follow-up period of 8.6 years (range, 1 to 18.4 years) after HBeAg seroconversion in 283 patients, 189 (66.8%) showed sustained remission, whereas the remaining 94 (33.2%) experienced alanine aminotransferase (ALT) elevation over twice the upper limit of normal: 12 (4.2%) associated with HBeAg reversion, 68 (24%) with detectable serum HBV DNA but HBeAg negative, and 14 (4.9%) of undetermined causes. Of the 269 patients without evidence of cirrhosis at the time of HBeAg seroconversion, 21 (7.8%) developed cirrhosis with a cumulative incidence and relative risk significantly higher in patients developing active hepatitis than in patients with sustained remission (
P < .05). HCC developed in 6 (2.2%) of the 283 patients, also with a significantly higher cumulative incidence in patients developing active hepatitis after HBeAg seroconversion (
P < .005). In conclusion, the results suggest that spontaneous HBeAg seroconversion confers favorable long-term outcomes. However, active hepatitis still may develop and lead to cirrhosis and HCC. (H
EPATOLOGY 2002;35:1522-1527.)
We comprehensively investigated the concentration effect of dispersed single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in polymer films for being a saturable absorber (SA) to stabilize the mode locking ...performance of the erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) pulse through the diagnosis of its nonlinear properties of SA. The measured modulation depth was from 1 to 4.5% as the thickness increased 18 to 265 microm. The full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of the stable mode-locked EDFL (MLEDFL) pulse decreased from 3.43 to 2.02 ps as the concentrations of SWCNTs SA increased 0.125 to 0.5 wt%. At constant concentration of 0.125 wt%, the similar pulse shortening effect of the MLEDFL was also observed when the FWHM decreased from 3.43 to 1.85 ps as the thickness of SWCNTs SA increased 8 to 100 microm. With an erbium-doped fiber length of 80 cm, the shortest pulse width of 1.85 ps were achieved at 1.56 microm with a repetition rate of 11.1 MHz and 0.2 mW of the output power under an output coupling ratio of 5%. An in-depth study on the stable mode-locked pulse formation employing SWCNTs SA, it is possible to fabricate the SWCNT films for use in high performance MLEDFL and utilization of many other low-cost nanodevices.
Long pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is produced by various cell types and is correlated with tumor progression in various tumor types. However, the clinical significance of
polymorphisms in oral cancer and their ...correlation with the risk of cancer are still unclear. In this study, we assessed the influence of
gene polymorphisms and environmental factors on susceptibility to oral tumorigenesis. We recruited 865 cases with oral cancer and 1,189 controls. Four single-nucleotide variations of the
gene (rs1840680, rs2305619, rs3816527, and rs2120243) were verified using a real-time polymerase chain reaction in control participants and cases with oral cancer. We found that rs3816527 in smokers was correlated with the development of late-stage cancer (odds ratio OR, 2.328; 95% confidence interval CI, 1.078-5.027) and increased lymph node metastasis (OR, 2.152; 95% CI, 1.047-4.422). Moreover, additional bioinformatics analysis results showed that the rs3816527 C allele variant to the A allele exhibited the strongest exonic splicing enhancer activity. In conclusion, our results suggested that
rs3816527 plays a role in oral cancer development.
Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) has been employed to detect Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, analysis of the SPECT PD images was mostly based on the region of interest (ROI) ...approach. Due to limited size of the ROI, especially in the multi-stage classification of PD, this study utilizes deep learning methods to establish a multiple stages classification model of PD. In the retrospective study, the 99mTc-TRODAT-1 was used for brain SPECT imaging. A total of 202 cases were collected, and five slices were selected for analysis from each subject. The total number of images was thus 1010. According to the Hoehn and Yahr Scale standards, all the cases were divided into healthy, early, middle, late four stages, and HYS I~V six stages. Deep learning is compared with five convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The input images included grayscale and pseudo color of two types. The training and validation sets were 70% and 30%. The accuracy, recall, precision, F-score, and Kappa values were used to evaluate the models’ performance. The best accuracy of the models based on grayscale and color images in four and six stages were 0.83 (AlexNet), 0.85 (VGG), 0.78 (DenseNet) and 0.78 (DenseNet).
The pedal-based power meter has its advantages, so it has become a popular monitoring tool in cycling. This study aimed to examine the validity of the Favero Assioma Duo power pedal system (FAD) in ...comparison with the SRM, which is considered the gold standard under maximal-effort cycling conditions, and a widely used cycling test, the 20-minute Functional Threshold Test.
Fourteen male adolescent cyclists completed a series of cycling intervals including 5, 15, 30, 60, 240, 600, and 1200 seconds (20-min Functional Threshold Test) with their maximal-effort performance on 2 separate days. Power output data were collected from the FAD and the SRM for analysis.
Extremely strong correlations and excellent intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were found between the power output values registered with the FAD and the SRM overall (r > .999, ICC = .996) and each power test (r > .98, ICC > .91). A low bias was found in power tests of longer durations (-3.2% at 240-s test, -3.3% at 600-s test, and -3.1% at 20-min Functional Threshold Test), while the bias augmented in shorter intervals (-2.7% at 5-s test, -3.6% at 15-s test, and -2.6% at 30-s test and -3.3% at 60-s test). A regression equation was proposed as y = -2.943 + 0.976x to diminish the bias (-0.2 W) with increased r value (>.98) and ICC (>.98).
The FAD appears to be a valid tool for the measures of maximal-effort performance. The recorded power value reflects the true value with proposed regression equation.
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