To date, few studies have been conducted on the relationship between postbiotics and air pollution, and there is limited knowledge if postbiotic and probiotic have synergistic effects. Therefore, we ...created a PM‐induced lung inflammation mice model and demonstrated the effect of probiotic, postbiotic, and their combination treatment on attenuation of PM2.5‐induced lung damage and allergic response. The mice were intratracheally given PM2.5 triggering conditions of acute lung damage and allergic response. Our results showed that individual treatment of probiotic and postbiotic reduced body weight loss by 47.1% and 48.9%, but the results did not show any effect on polarizing IFN‐γ/IL‐4 ratio. In addition, PM2.5‐induced overactive expression of IgE treated by probiotic and postbiotic was reduced by 33.2% and 30.4%, respectively. While combination treatment of probiotic and postbiotic exerted a synergistic effect, especially considerably on improving IgE reduction by 57.1%, body weight loss by 78.3%, and IFN‐γ/IL‐4 ratio boost by 87.5%. To sum up the above functionality, these research findings may help establish a novel platform for postbiotic application, formulation, and mechanistic selection with regard to PM2.5‐induced lung injury.
Practical Application
Allergic inflammation caused by PM2.5 is not like common allergens (ex. Pollens, ovalbumin, dust mites), which simply skewing Th1/Th2 polarization to Th2. Thus using probiotics screened by Th1‐skewing criteria might not be the best choice to treat on PM2.5‐induced symptoms. This research proposed a combination of probiotics and postbiotics on modulating immunity homeostasis, and consequently attenuating complications of PM2.5‐induced lung damage. These research findings may help establish a novel platform for postbiotic application, formulation and mechanistic selection with regard to PM2.5‐induced lung injury.
Recent studies suggested that Traditional Chinese Medicine could play a beneficial role in conventional cancer treatment. The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to investigate the effect of ...Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) combined with Western medicine on the survival of patients with colorectal cancer. A retrospective cohort study was conducted on patients with newly diagnosed colorectal cancer identified from the Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital Cancer Registry Database in 2004–2014. Combining with the medical records of the study hospital, patients were classified into CHM users and CHM nonusers. Kaplan–Meier analyses and Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to investigate the survival between CHM users and CHM nonusers. A total of 535 patients with colorectal cancer were included in the study with 147 of them were CHM users. The log-rank test for Kaplan–Meier survival curve revealed a statistically significant difference between the survival of CHM users and CHM nonusers (P=0.006). Results from multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that CHM use was significantly associated with better survival (adjusted hazard ratio = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.38 to 0.77). In addition, the CHM formulae Jia Wei Xiao Yao San, Zhi Bah Di Huang Wan, Ping Wei San, and Qui Pi Tang were significantly associated with better survival. In conclusion, findings from this retrospective cohort study indicated that integrated CHM and Western medicine could improve survival in patients with colorectal cancer. Additional research on integrating TCM with Western medicine to improve cancer survival is warranted.
•Adding Chinese herbal medicines to the conventional therapy was related t to the lower risk of mortality by 36% for patients with lung cancer.•This study further explored the most commonly ...prescribed Chinese herbal products, which could be a reference for the pharmacological investigations.
We explored the effect of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) on the long-term survival of lung cancer patients and hazard ratio (HR) and to analyse CHM herbs and formulas for lung cancer treatment.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study on diagnosed lung cancer patients in 2003–2016 from Taipei and Dalin Tzu Chi General Hospital Cancer Registry Database and from outpatient database from Chinese Medicine and Conventional Medicine Department. We categorised the patients into CHM user and CHM nonuser groups according to the CHM consumption time. After passing the proportional hazard assumption, we used the Cox PH model to calculate the groups’ survival hazard ratio (HR) and examine the statistical difference and effect of CHM on lung cancer survival.
We classified 2557 lung cancer patients into 1643 CHM nonusers and 228 CHM users. The CHM users had lower mortality than the CHM nonusers. With the multivariable Cox model, we observed that the CHM use was associated with 35% lower risk of mortality (adjusted HR: 0.65; 95% confidence interval: 0.51-0.76). Continuous CHM use of >180 days may further lessen the mortality risk by 64%. Finally, eight herbs and two formulas could significantly lower the mortality. After pairing the eight herbs for analysis, seven combinations could reduce the mortality better than only using one herb.
CHM users had significantly lower mortality than CHM nonusers. The longer the CHM use, the more the mortality HR declined. Glehnia littoralisF. Schmidt ex Miq., Polyporus umbellatus(Pers.) Fries and Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. possess a highly substantial anticancer activity compared with other herbs.
Background. Rapid antigen tests for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection have been authorized for emergency use (EUA); however, the performance has not been fully ...evaluated in clinical contexts. This study aimed to provide evidence regarding the diagnostic performance of SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen tests compared with the real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test in the emergency department (ED) and community. Methods. Patients who underwent SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen tests using the VTRUST COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test (TD-4531) and real-time RT-PCR on the same day in the ED or community from May 24, 2021, to June 24, 2021, were examined. Results. Paired nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 4022 suspected COVID-19 patients: 800 in the ED and 3222 in the community. Overall, 62 (1.54%) tested positive, 13 tested indeterminate, and 3947 tested negative by real-time RT-PCR. The sensitivity and specificity of the antigen test were 51.61% and 99.44% (overall), 62.50% and 99.61% (ED), and 31.82% and 99.40% (community), respectively. There were 30 false negatives and 22 false positives. Among the false negatives, 16.67% had a cycle threshold (Ct) value of <25. Conclusion. The VTRUST COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test showed comparable specificity as real-time RT-PCR for the ED and community, but the sensitivity was relatively low, especially when the Ct value was >25. This test can be useful for the rapid identification of infected subjects in an epidemic situation.
Bidirectional integrin αIIbβ3 signaling is essential for platelet activation. The platelet adaptor protein Disabled-2 (Dab2) is a key regulator of integrin signaling and is phosphorylated at serine ...24 in eukaryotic cells. However, the mechanistic insight and function of Dab2-serine 24 phosphorylation (Dab2-pSer24) in platelet biology are barely understood. This study aimed to define whether and how Dab2 is phosphorylated at Ser24 during platelet activation and to investigate the effect of Dab2-pSer24 on platelet function.
An antibody with confirmed specificity for Dab2-pSer24 was generated. By using this antibody as a tool, we showed that protein kinase C (PKC)-mediated Dab2-pSer24 was a conservative signaling event when human platelets were activated by the platelet agonists such as thrombin, collagen, ADP, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, and the thromboxane A2 activator U46619. The agonists-stimulated Dab2-pSer24 was attenuated by pretreatment of platelets with the RGDS peptide which inhibits integrin outside-in signaling by competitive binding of integrin αIIb with fibrinogen. Direct activation of platelet integrin outside-in signaling by combined treatment of platelets with manganese dichloride and fibrinogen or by spreading of platelets on fibrinogen also resulted in Dab2-pSer24. These findings implicate that Dab2-pSer24 was associated with the outside-in signaling of integrin. Further analysis revealed that Dab2-pSer24 was downstream of Src-PKC-axis and phospholipase D1 underlying the integrin αIIbβ3 outside-in signaling. A membrane penetrating peptide R11-Ser24 which contained 11 repeats of arginine linked to the Dab2-Ser24 phosphorylation site and its flanking sequences (RRRRRRRRRRR
APKAPSKKEKK
) and the R11-S24A peptide with Ser24Ala mutation were designed to elucidate the functions of Dab2-pSer24. R11-Ser24 but not R11-S24A inhibited agonists-stimulated Dab2-pSer24 and consequently suppressed platelet spreading on fibrinogen, with no effect on platelet aggregation and fibrinogen binding. Notably, Ser24 and the previously reported Ser723 phosphorylation (Dab2-pSer723) occurred exclusively in a single Dab2 molecule and resulted in distinctive subcellular distribution and function of Dab2. Dab2-pSer723 was mainly distributed in the cytosol of activated platelets and associated with integrin inside-out signaling, while Dab2-pSer24 was mainly distributed in the membrane fraction of activated platelets and associated with integrin outside-in signaling.
These findings demonstrate for the first time that Dab2-pSer24 is conservative in integrin αIIbβ3 outside-in signaling during platelet activation and plays a novel role in the control of cytoskeleton reorganization and platelet spreading on fibrinogen.
After Typhoon Morakot, dredging engineering was conducted while taking the safety of humans and structures into consideration, but partial stream reaches were formed in the multiple-channel sections ...in Cishan Stream because of anthropogenic and natural influences. This study mainly explores the distribution of each fish species in both the multiple- and single-channel sections in the Cishan Stream. Parts of the environments did not exhibit significant differences according to a one-way ANOVA comparing the multiple- and single-channel sections, but certain areas of the multiple-channel sections had more diverse habitats. Each fish species was widely distributed by non-metric multidimensional scaling in the multiple-channel sections as compared to those in the single-channel sections. In addition, according to the principal component analysis, each fish species has a preferred environment, and all of them have a wide choice of habitat environments in the multiple-channel sections. Finally, the existence of multiple-channel sections could significantly affect the existence of the fish species under consideration in this study. However, no environmental factors were found to have an influence on fish species in the single-channel sections, with the exception of Rhinogobius nantaiensis. The results show that providing multiple-channel sections in dredging activities could improve fish habitat environments.
Taguchi method was known as an off-line quality control methodology to be used in many industries. Until now, most applications only focus on optimizing a single-response in a static system. ...Furthermore, due to the increasing complexity of the product design, more than one quality characteristic must be considered simultaneously to improve the production quality. Therefore, there are several studies to address the multi-response problem. In order to satisfy the requirements of the production's design, optimization of a dynamic system been mentioned by Taguchi has received more attentions in the recent years. Hence, optimizing a multi-response problem in a dynamic system becomes an important issue to address the quality improvement.
This study proposes a procedure utilizing the statistic regression analysis and desirability function to optimize the multi-response problem with Taguchi's dynamic system consideration. Firstly, the regression analysis is employed to screen out the control factors significantly affecting the quality variation, and the adjustment factors significantly affecting the sensitivity of a Taguchi's dynamic system. Then, the desirability function will be applied to optimize such a multi-response problem. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed procedure will be demonstrated by an example of a biological reduction of ethyl acetoacetate process experiment project at the Union Chemical Laboratories of the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
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► A cluster-based method is proposed to mine generalized fuzzy association rules during the EC environment. ► It outperforms a known apriori-based mining algorithm for a foodmart ...transaction database example. ► The associative features among the click frequency of product's web and the transaction records can also be mined. ► The multiple-level association knowledge can be mined to aid decision-making of business strategies.
During electronic commerce (EC) environment, how to effectively mine the useful transaction information will be an important issue to be addressed in designing the marketing strategy for most enterprises. Especially, the relationships between different databases (e.g., the transaction and online browsing database) may have the unknown and potential knowledge of business intelligence. Two important issues of mining association rules were mentioned to address EC application in this study. The first issue is the discovery of generalized fuzzy association rules in the transaction database. The second issue is to discover association rules from the web usage data and the large itemsets identified in the transaction database. A cluster-based fuzzy association rules (CBFAR) mining architecture is then proposed to simultaneously address such two issues in this study. Three contributions were achieved as: (a) an efficient fuzzy association rule miner based on cluster-based fuzzy-sets tables is presented to identify all the large fuzzy itemsets; (b) this approach requires less contrast to generate large itemsets; (3) a fuzzy rule mining approach is used to compute the confidence values for discovering the relationships between transaction database and browsing information database. Finally, a simulated example during EC environment is provided to demonstrate the rationality and feasibility of the proposed approach.
博士
國立中央大學
資訊工程研究所
85
An invariant pattern recognition system recognizes patterns despite arbitrary
variations in location, scale, and orientation. In our study, an adequate norm
alization process is ...first used to normalize characters such that they are inv
ariant to translation and scale, then several rotation-invariant features and
non-rotation-invariant structural features are respectively extracted for inva
riant recognition of small and middle sets of handwritten Chinese characters.
In off-line character recognition, a thinning algorithm is generally used to o
btain the character skeletons to expedite the feature extraction. However, the
overlap and rough borders of character strokes make the thinned character ske
letons distorted; the distorted skeletons will degrade the performance of feat
ure extraction and then that of recognition. Two feature-extraction approaches
are presented by specially considering the skeleton-distortion problem to mor
e perfectly extracted the desired features. The first approa
The diseases in traditional Chinese medicine are defined as syndromes. The diagnosis of syndromes in traditional Chinese medicine is called syndrome differentiation. Our previous work proposes a ...fuzzy classification approach to solve the syndrome differentiation for 20 deficiency syndromes. This paper proposes an improved version of the previous fuzzy classification approach. This paper also presents a preliminary evaluation of the improvement based on the baseline differentiation coefficient of these 20 deficiency syndromes and the Jaccard similarity coefficient of 40 case reports from traditional Chinese medicine journal papers.
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