High electrical conductivity and large accessible surface area, which are required for ideal electrode materials of energy conversion and storage devices, are opposed to each other in current ...materials. It is a long-term goal to solve this issue. Herein, we report highly conductive porous Na-embedded carbon (Na@C) nanowalls with large surface areas, which have been synthesized by an invented reaction of CO with liquid Na. Their electrical conductivities are 2 orders of magnitude larger than highly conductive 3D graphene. Furthermore, almost all their surface areas are accessible for electrolyte ions. These unique properties make them ideal electrode materials for energy devices, which significantly surpass expensive Pt. Consequently, the dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with the Na@C counter electrode has reached a high power conversion efficiency of 11.03%. The Na@C also exhibited excellent performance for supercapacitors, leading to high capacitance of 145 F g–1 at current density of 1 A g–1.
Tissue-resident memory T cells (T
) provide optimal defense at the sites of infection, but signals regulating their development are unclear, especially for CD4 T cells. Here we identify two distinct ...pathways that lead to the generation of CD4 T
in the lungs following influenza infection. The T
are transcriptionally distinct from conventional memory CD4 T cells and share a gene signature with CD8 T
. The CD4 T
are superior cytokine producers compared with conventional memory cells, can protect otherwise naive mice against a lethal influenza challenge, and display functional specialization by inducing enhanced inflammatory responses from dendritic cells compared with conventional memory cells. Finally, we demonstrate than an interleukin (IL)-2-dependent and a novel IL-2-independent but IL-15-dependent pathway support the generation of cohorts of lung T
.
Artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and telemedicine are deeply involved in our daily life and have also been extensively applied in the medical field, especially in ...ophthalmology. Clinical ophthalmologists are required to perform a vast array of image exams and analyze images containing complicated information, which allows them to diagnose the disease type and grade, make a decision on remedy, and predict treatment outcomes. AI has a great potential to assist ophthalmologists in their daily routine of image analysis and relieve their work burden. However, in spite of these prospects, the application of AI may also be controversial and associated with several legal, ethical, and sociological concerns. In spite of these issues, AI has indeed become an irresistible trend and is widely used by medical specialists in their daily routines in what we can call now, the era of AI. This review will encompass those issues and focus on recent research on the AI application in ophthalmology and telemedicine.
To investigate the treatment outcomes and predictors of response to photodynamic therapy (PDT) in patients with symptomatic circumscribed hemangioma (CCH).
This retrospective case series examined 20 ...patients with symptomatic CCH (10 submacular CCHs and10 juxtapapillary CCHs) who underwent standard PDT (wavelength: 662 nm; light dose: 50J/cm2; exposure time: 83 sec) with verteporfin (6mg/m2), either as monotherapy (n = 9) or in association with other treatments (n = 11), of which 7 received intravitreal injections (IVI) of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF). A post-PDT improvement of at least two lines in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was the primary outcome measure. Predictors of response were investigated with binary logistic regression analysis.
Seventeen (85%) patients received one PDT session, and three patients (15%) underwent PDT at least twice. Ten patients (50%) achieved the primary outcome of a post-PDT BCVA improvement of at least two lines. Macular atrophy and recalcitrant cystoid macular edema in 2 patients. Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that younger age (< 50 years) (P = 0.033), pre-PDT BCVA of ≧20/200 (P = 0.013), exudative retinal detachment resolved within one month after PDT (P = 0.007), and a thinner post-PDT tumor thickness (P = 0.015) were associated with the achievement of a post-PDT BCVA improvement. Additional treatments to PDT including IVI anti-VEGF did not appear to improve visual and anatomical outcomes.
Symptomatic CCHs respond generally well to PDT. Patients with younger age (< 50 years), pretreatment BCVA≥ 20/200, and thinner foveal edema are most likely to benefit from this approach.
Public-private partnerships in developing countries Kang, Seong; Mulaphong, Dhanakorn; Hwang, Eunjin ...
The International journal of public sector management,
06/2019, Volume:
32, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Purpose
Mounting fiscal constraints and increasing complexity of public services have led governments to search for alternative service delivery mechanisms. The public–private partnership (PPP) is ...one type of service arrangement in which the public and private sectors enter into a long-term cooperative relationship for the purpose of delivering a public good or service. Despite increasing private sector participation in developing nations, there is a need for more systematic assessment of PPPs in such countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that affect the adoption and implementation of projects in the context of developing countries.
Design/methodology/approach
A multiple case holistic design is employed to analyze 19 select projects across several developing countries to identify and pool clusters of variables that facilitate or impede PPPs.
Findings
The results indicate five broad categories of political, economic, legislative, financial and management requisites.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of this research is that the cases were not selected at random. However, the projects are spread across several areas such as public health, public utilities, public works, transportation and water/wastewater infrastructure in different countries. This allows the authors to examine how the common factors apply across different contextual settings.
Originality/value
This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by examining several developing countries to identify and pool clusters of variables that facilitate or impede the effective implementation of PPP projects in the context of such regions.
Situating students to learn from the real world has been recognized as an important and challenging issue. However, in a real-world learning environment, there are usually many physical constraints ...that affect the learning performance of students, such as the total learning time, the limitation of the number of students who can visit a learning target, and the time needed for moving from one learning location to another. It is essential to guide the students along an efficient learning path to maximize their learning performance according to the current situation. In this paper, an active learning support system (ALESS) for context-aware ubiquitous learning environments is designed and developed. ALESS can provide learning guidance when conducting ubiquitous learning activities. A great deal of context information is used in ALESS, including the location, the current capacity of the learning object, the time available, etc. ALESS is able to actively provide the required learning support to individual students when they approach the corresponding real-world learning targets. To evaluate the performance of ALESS, an experiment was conducted in the National Science Museum of Taiwan. The experimental results showed that, with the help of ALESS, the students learned more efficiently, and achieved better learning performance.
Dual connectivity (DC) was first proposed in 3GPP Release 12 which allows one piece of user equipment (UE) to connect to two base stations in heterogeneous networks (HetNet) at the same time, to ...increase the flexibility of resource utilization. DC has been further extended to multiple connectivity in 5G New Radio (NR). On the other hand, different UE tends to have different bandwidth requirements. Thus, in DC, one of the challenging issues is how to integrate resources from two base stations to enhance the quality of service (QoS) as well as the data transfer rate of each UE. In this paper, we proposed novel resource management mechanisms to improve the QoS of UE in the co-channel dual connectivity network. In terms of resource allocation, we designed the Max–Min Threshold Scheduler (MTS) which, in principle, allocates a resource block to the UE with the best channel quality while considering the issues of intercell resource allocation and the QoS requirement of each UE. In order to balance the load of different cells, we designed a novel cell selection scheme based on the HetNet Congestion Indicator (HCI) which considers not only the signal quality of UE but also the remaining resources of each base station. To improve the QoS of cell edge UE, cell range expansion (CRE) and the Almost Blank Subframe (ABS) were proposed in 3GPP. In this paper, based on Q-learning, we designed an adaptive mechanism which dynamically adjusts the ABS ratio according to the network condition to improve resource utilization. Our simulation results showed that our MTS scheduler was able to achieve a 31.44% higher data rate than the Proportional Fairness Scheduler; our HCI cell selection scheme yielded a 2.98% higher data rate than the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) cell selection scheme; the QoS satisfaction rate of our Q-learning dynamic ABS scheme was 4.06% higher than that of the Static ABS scheme. Finally, for the cell edge users who often suffer poor data transfer rate, by integrating the mechanisms of DC, CRE, and ABS, our experimental results showed that the QoS satisfaction ratio of cell edge UEs could be improved by 10.76% as compared to the single connectivity and no ABS situation.
Freshwater fish absorb Ca2+ predominantly from ambient water, and more than 97% of Ca2+ uptake is achieved by active transport through gill mitochondrion-rich (MR) cells. In the current model for ...Ca2+ uptake in gill MR cells, Ca2+ passively enters the cytosol via the epithelium Ca2+ channel (ECaC), and then is extruded into the plasma through the basolateral Na+/Ca2+ exchanger (NCX) and plasma membrane Ca2+-ATPase (PMCA). However, no convincing molecular or cellular evidence has been available to support the role of specific PMCA and/or NCX isoforms in this model. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a good model for analyzing isoforms of a gene because of the plentiful genomic databases and expression sequence tag (EST) data.
Using a strategy of BLAST from the zebrafish genome database (Sanger Institute), 6 isoforms of PMCAs (PMCA1a, PMCA1b, PMCA2, PMCA3a, PMCA3b, and PMCA4) and 7 isoforms of NCXs (NCX1a, NCX1b, NCX2a, NCX2b, NCX3, NCX4a, and NCX4b) were identified. In the reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis, 5 PMCAs and 2 NCXs were ubiquitously expressed in various tissues including gills. Triple fluorescence in situ hybridization and immunocytochemistry showed the colocalization of zecac, zpmca2, and zncx1b mRNAs in a portion of gill MR cells (using Na+-K+-ATPase as the marker), implying a subset of ionocytes specifically responsible for the transepithelial Ca2+ uptake in zebrafish gills. The gene expressions in gills of high- or low-Ca2+-acclimated zebrafish by quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that zecac was the only gene regulated in response to environmental Ca2+ levels, while zpmcas and zncxs remained steady.
The present study provides molecular evidence for the specific isoforms of Ca2+ transporters, zECaC, zPMCA2, and zNCX1b, supporting the current Ca2+ uptake model, in which ECaC may play a role as the major regulatory target for this mechanism during environmental challenge.
Osteoporosis greatly increases the risk of fractures. Osteoporotic fractures negatively impact quality of life, increase the burden of care, and increase mortality. Taiwan is an area with a high ...prevalence of osteoporosis. This updated summary of guidelines has been developed by experts of the Taiwan Osteoporosis Association with the intention of reducing the risks of osteoporotic fractures and improving the quality of care for patients with osteoporosis. The updated guidelines compile the latest evidence to provide clinicians and other healthcare professionals with practical recommendations for the prevention, diagnosis, and management of osteoporosis under clinical settings in Taiwan.
To evaluate the neurodevelopmental outcomes in premature infants who received intravitreal anti−vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injections to treat retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).
...Retrospective cohort study.
This study was conducted using the database from the Taiwan Premature Infant Follow-up Network. Demographic data, systemic risk factors, ROP status, and neurodevelopmental assessment using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (Bayley-III) were collected. Patients were divided into 4 groups: prematurity without ROP, ROP without treatment, ROP with laser treatment, and ROP with intravitreal anti-VEGF treatment. A generalized estimating equation was used for analyzing repeated measurements of Bayley-III at the corrected ages of 6, 12, and 24 months.
A total of 2090 patients with a mean gestational age of 31.2 weeks were included. The Bayley-III composite scores of patients with ROP treated with anti-VEGF were comparable to those of patients with ROP without treatment (cognitive: P = .491; language: P = .201; motor: P = .151) and premature patients without ROP (cognitive: P = .985; language: P = .452; motor: P = .169) after adjusting for confounders. Patients with ROP treated with laser photocoagulation exhibited poorer cognitive composite scores than did those without treatment (P < .001), premature patients without ROP (P < .001), and those treated with anti-VEGF (P < .001), but they had similar language and motor composite scores.
Intravitreal anti-VEGF treatment for ROP was not associated with adverse neurodevelopment in premature infants. Further studies are needed to determine whether general anesthesia or sedation used in laser treatment for ROP has significant impacts on neurodevelopmental outcomes.
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