Background We investigated the impact of serum cholesterol levels on 30-day mortality after ischemic stroke in dialysis patients. Methods From the Taiwan Stroke Registry data, we identified 46,770 ...ischemic stroke cases, including 1101 dialysis patients and 45,669 nondialysis patients from 2006 to 2013. Results Overall, the 30-day mortality was 1.46-fold greater in the dialysis group than in the nondialysis group (1.75 versus 1.20 per 1000 person-days). The mortality rates were 1.64, .62, 2.82, and 2.23 per 1000 person-days in dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of <120 mg/dL, 120-159 mg/dL, 160-199 mg/dL, and ≥200 mg/dL, respectively. Compared to dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of 120-159 mg/dL, the corresponding adjusted hazard ratios of mortality were 4.20 (95% confidence interval CI = 1.01-17.4), 8.06 (95% CI = 2.02-32.2), and 6.89 (95% CI = 1.59-29.8) for those with cholesterol levels of <120 mg/dL, 160-199 mg/dL, and ≥200 mg/dL, respectively. Conclusions Dialysis patients with serum total cholesterol levels of ≥160 mg/dL or <120 mg/dL on admission are at an elevated hazard of 30-day mortality after ischemic stroke.
Previous studies indicated that region 11.2 of the long arm of chromosome 22 (22q11.2) might be a locus encoding a tumor suppressor gene, since its deletion is a recurrent genetic characteristic of ...aggressive pediatric cancer. This region is found in the human immunodeficiency virus integrase interactor 1 (hSNF5/INI1) gene. To investigate whether the hSNF5/INI1 gene is involved in leukemogenesis, mutation analysis of the hSNF5/INI1 gene was performed in the present study using 5 hematopoietic cell lines, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) specimen and normal control. We found two single nucleotide polymorphisms at the hSNF5/INI1 gene in exon 4 and exon 9. The results of this study suggest that the hSNF5/INI1 gene does not play an important role in the leukemogenesis of AML.
Prompted by three years of funding from the National Science Council of Taiwan, the National Priority Typhoon Research Project was formed in Jul 2002. The interagency project involves a field ...experiment, Dropwindsonde Observations for Typhoon Surveillance near the Taiwan Region, with collation between researchers from the National Taiwan University and the Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan, along with scientists from the NOAA Hurricane Research Division and NCEP. The goal is to build upon previous successful work to improve tropical cyclone track forecasts with additional observations.
We investigated the temporal coherence properties of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) by characterizing their coherence lengths. The interferometry based on the Newton’s rings apparatus was ...adopted to characterize the coherence lengths of various OLEDs, including non-doped/doped OLEDs and non-cavity bottom-emitting/cavity top-emitting OLEDs. The types of OLEDs investigated exhibit coherence lengths of 3–10
μm, depending on the device structures/emitters and spectral bandwidths of the OLED emission. OLEDs using emitting molecules with more limited number of allowed vibronic transitions give narrower-band and more coherent emission. Introducing the microcavity into the device structure to induce resonance also narrows the emission spectra and meanwhile increases the coherence length. Such information may be useful for modeling, design, and optimization of optical properties of OLEDs.
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal).
This article has been retracted at the ...request of the Editor-in-Chief and Author. The article duplicates significant parts of the following papers:1.“Cardiac repair with injectable cell sheet fragments of human amniotic fluid stem cells in an immune-suppressed rat model” Biomaterials, 31/25 (2010) 6444-6453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2010.04.069 and2.“Vascularization and restoration of heart function in rat myocardial infarction using transplantation of human cbMSC/HUVEC core-shell bodies” Biomaterials, 33/7 (2011) 2127-2136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2011.11.059
One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a misuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
Abstract The etiology of Bell's palsy is often unknown. We present herein two cases of adults who developed a Bell's palsy following the administration of an influenza vaccine. While the incidence is ...low, with the widespread recommendation for annual influenza vaccines, patients should be apprised of the possibility of this complication and the benefit of early treatment.
To investigate the role of the traditional and radiomic parameters of
F-FDG PET for predicting the outcomes of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC).
Forty-four patients with ...primary esophageal SqCC who underwent neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) followed by esophagectomy (tri-modality treatment) were retrospectively analyzed. All patients underwent
F-FDG PET/CT before and after neoadjuvant CCRT. The radiomic features were calculated using the pre-treatment PET scan. Pre-treatment radiomic features and changes in the PET-derived traditional parameters after neoadjuvant CCRT were analyzed according to the pathological response to esophagectomy, disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS). We further developed a scoring system based on the independent survival prognosticators and compared our model to the traditional TNM staging system and surgical pathology.
A pre-treatment primary tumor histogram entropy ≥ 3.69 predicts an unfavorable response to neoadjuvant CCRT (OR = 19.25, p = 0.009). An SUVmax reduction ratio ≤ 0.76, a pre-treatment primary tumor code similarity ≤ 0.0235, and incomplete pathological remission were independently associated with poor OS (p = 0.019, 0.033, and 0.038, respectively) and DFS (p = 0.049, 0.021, and 0.009, respectively). The three survival prognosticators were used to construct a scoring system (score 0-1, 2, and 3). Patients with a score of 2 or 3 had a significantly worse survival outcome than those with a score of 0-1 (HRs for OS: 3.58 for score 2, and 15.19 for score 3, p < 0.001; HRs for DFS: 1.39 for score 2 and 6.04 for score 3, p = 0.001).This survival prediction model was superior to the traditional TNM staging system (p < 0.001 versus p = 0.061 for OS, and p = 0.001 versus p = 0.027 for DFS) and the model based on surgical pathology (p < 0.001 versus p = 0.049 for OS, and p = 0.001 versus p = 0.022 for DFS).
The
F-FDG PET-derived radiomic parameter is useful for predicting the surgical pathological response in patients with esophageal SqCC treated with the tri-modality method. Using a combination of traditional and radiomic PET parameters with clinical profiles enables better stratification of patients into subgroups with various survival rates.
Driven by the huge market demand, the glass lenses made of various optical glasses are required to be more diversified in sizes/shapes, to have better form accuracy/ surface roughness, to be more ...environmental durable, and to be more competitive in price. In comparison to conventional refractive lens, diffractive lens (diffractive optical element, DOE) has the advantages of being thinner and lighter, and is widely used in optical systems such as lighting and photovoltaic systems. Glass moulding process(GMP) is regarded as a very promising technique for mass producing high precision optical components such as spherical/ aspheric glass lenses and free-form optics. However, only a handful of materials can sustain the chemical reaction, mechanical stress and temperature involved in the glass moulding process. Besides, almost all of these mould materials are classified as hard-to-machine materials. This makes the machining of these materials to sub-micrometer form accuracy and nanometer surface finish a rather tough and expensive task. As a result, making service life of mould longer has played a critical part in the GMP industry. The excessive stress and/or temperature involved in the moulding process are amongst the main reasons for pre-matured mould failure. This research aimed to analyze the stress/strain conditions and the obtained dimensional accuracy under various molding parameters by simulations. Molding experiments were subsequently carried out to verify the simulated results. A glass DOE of 14.8 mm in diameter and 3.36 mm in thickness are successfully produced in this research and the difference between the simulated and the molded DOE is around 15μm.
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