Heat Killed Lactobacillus reuteri GMNL-263 Reduces Fibrosis Effects on the Liver and Heart in High Fat Diet-Hamsters via TGF-β Suppression

Obesity is one of the major risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and NAFLD is highly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Scholars have suggested that certain probiotics may significantly impact cardiovascular health, particularly certain Lactobacillus species, such as Lactobacillus reuteri GMNL-263 (Lr263) probiotics, which have been shown to reduce obesity and arteriosclerosis in vivo. In the present study, we examined the potential of heat-killed bacteria to attenuate high fat diet (HFD)-induced hepatic and cardiac damages and the possible underlying mechanism of the positive effects of heat-killed Lr263 oral supplements. Heat-killed Lr263 treatments (625 and 3125 mg/kg-hamster/day) were provided as a daily supplement by oral gavage to HFD-fed hamsters for eight weeks. The results show that heat-killed Lr263 treatments reduce fatty liver syndrome. Moreover, heat-killed Lactobacillus reuteri GMNL-263 supplementation in HFD hamsters also reduced fibrosis in the liver and heart by reducing transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) expression levels. In conclusion, heat-killed Lr263 can reduce lipid metabolic stress in HFD hamsters and decrease the risk of fatty liver and cardiovascular disease.     

Novel Haar features for real-time hand gesture recognition using SVM

Journal of Real-Time Image Processing - Due to the effect of lighting and complex background, most visual hand gesture recognition systems work only under restricted environments. Here, we propose...     

Roles of Nitric Oxide and Asymmetric Dimethylarginine in Pregnancy and Fetal Programming

Nitric oxide (NO) regulates placental blood flow and actively participates in trophoblast invasion and placental development. Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) can inhibit NO synthase, which generates NO. ADMA has been associated with uterine artery flow disturbances such as preeclampsia. Substantial experimental evidence has reliably supported the hypothesis that an adverse in utero environment plays a role in postnatal physiological and pathophysiological programming. Growing evidence suggests that the placental nitrergic system is involved in epigenetic fetal programming. In this review, we discuss the roles of NO and ADMA in normal and compromised pregnancies as well as the link between placental insufficiency and epigenetic fetal programming.     

Coarse-grained modeling of model poly(urethane urea)s: Microstructure and interface aspects

Poly(urethane urea) elastomers are versatile and can be tailored to exhibit a broad range of mechanical response under high strain rate deformation. In this work, we utilize coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the molecular mechanisms, particularly the effects of hard segment content, intermolecular interaction, and rigidity of the interface between the hard and soft segments on local morphology and rate-dependent stress-strain behavior in the ballistic regime. Simulation results qualitatively agree with available experimental data, where analysis of hard segment orientation during tensile and compression deformation and dynamic strain rate sensitivity was also performed. Further study of the intermolecular interaction on the stress-strain behavior reveals that it has a strong effect on strain hardening, particularly for a rigid interface, once the hard segment content reaches the percolation threshold. Simulation results also show that interface intermolecular interaction could become more dominant over interface rigidity in the initial stress-strain response, particularly below percolation.     

A study on the formation of a measurement scale for the environmental quality of Taiwan’s long-term care institutions by the Delphi method

This study used a two-round modified Delphi technique with a questionnaire survey in order to reach a consensus for the questionnaire; the survey was conducted from September to December 2009. The six indicators for the environmental quality of long-term care institutions in Taiwan are (1) indoor environmental quality, (2) safety equipment for the prevention and management of disasters occurring in residents?? daily lives, (3) provision for assistive devices for residents?? daily use, (4) provision for privacy and individualized space, (5) provision for comfortable and decorated indoor environments, and (6) provision for social interaction space. The scale included 34 items with an acceptable number of panel members and acceptable construct validity. Panel members all highly approved of Indicators 1, 2, and 6. Although they approved of Indicator 3, they suggested that caregivers at institutions should replace the functions of living assistive devices. They approved of Indicator 5; however, they questioned the method for providing comfortable and decorated environments. They approved of Indicator 4; however, they suggested that private space need not be provided in the living room of the institution. In terms of long-term care institution environments in Taiwan, Indicators 1, 2, and 6 were important for protecting residents?? physical and psychological well-being and improving their social interactions. Indicator 3, although important, could be directly replaced by caregivers. Indicator 5 required more implementation methods, while Indicator 4, the living room of the institution, was considered unnecessary.     

Efficient Color-theory-based Dynamic Localization for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Location information is critical to mobile wireless sensor networks (WSN) applications. With the help of location information, for example, routing can be performed more efficiently. In this paper, we propose a novel localization approach, Color-theory based Dynamic Localization (CDL), which is based on color theory to exploit localization in mobile WSNs. CDL makes use of the broadcast information, such as locations and RGB values, from all anchors (a small portion of nodes with GPS receivers attached), to help the server to create a location database and assist each sensor node to compute its RGB value. Then, the RGB values of all sensor nodes are sent to the server for localization of the sensor nodes. A unique feature of our color-theory based mechanism is that it can use one color to represent the distances of a sensor node to all anchors. Since CDL is easy to implement and is a centralized approach, it is very suitable for applications that need a centralized server to collect user (sensor) data and monitor user activities, such as community health-care systems and hospital monitoring systems. Evaluation results have shown that for mobile WSNs, the location accuracy of CDL (E-CDL, an enhanced version of CDL) is 40–50% (75–80%) better than that of MCL (Hu, L., & Evans, D. (2004). Localization for mobile sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 10th annual international conference on mobile computing and networking, pp. 45–57). In addition, we have implemented and validated our E-CDL algorithm on the MICAz Mote Developer’s Kit.     

Adaptive parallel interference cancellation for CDMA systems—A weight selection and filtering scheme

Parallel interference cancellation (PIC) is a well-known multiuser detection algorithm in direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. It is typically implemented with a multi-stage architecture. One problem associated with the PIC is that unreliable interference cancellation may occur in the early stages and the system performance may be degraded. Thus, the partial PIC detector was developed to control the cancellation level by use of interference cancellation factors. Partial PIC can be implemented with an adaptive form, in which optimal weights are derived using the least mean square (LMS) algorithm. In this paper, we propose an algorithm improving the conventional adaptive partial PIC. The main idea is to reduce the number of active weights in the LMS algorithm, and to perform weight post-filtering such that the resultant excess mean square error can be reduced. We also analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm and derive the bit error rate of the second stage output. Simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional partial PIC, and derived analytical results are accurate.     

Composition dependence of magnetic properties of directly quenched Nd-Fe-Ti-Zr-B bulk magnets

Magnetic properties, phase evolution, and microstructure of directly quenched Nd_yFe_97−y−zTi_3−xZr_xB_z (x = 0-3; y = 7-10; z = 14-19) bulk magnets of 0.9 mm in diameter have been investigated. Proper Zr substitution for Ti and appropriate Nd and B contents modify the magnetic phases constitution and refine the grain size from 200-250 nm to 50-100 nm. Consequently, the magnetic properties of the rods are enhanced remarkably from _iH_c = 6.2 kOe and (BH)_max = 5.6 MGOe for Zr-free rods to _iH_c = 6.7-13.5 kOe and (BH)_max = 6.7-8.2 MGOe for Zr-substituted Nd_yFe_97−y−zTi_3−xZr_xB_z rods (x = 0.5-2; y = 8-10; z = 14-16). The optimum magnetic properties of B_r = 6.6 kG, _iH_c = 9.6 kOe and (BH)_max = 8.2 MGOe were achieved for Nd_9.5Fe_72.5Ti_2.5Zr_0.5B₁₅ alloy.     

Effects of pre-strain applied at a polyethylene terephthalate substrate before the coating of Al-doped ZnO film on film quality and optical and electrical properties

Five kinds of polyethylene-terephthalate (PET)/aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) specimen were prepared to examine the effect of strain applied to the PET substrate before the coating of AZO film on the mechanical, optical, and electrical properties and morphology. An increase in the strain of PET increases the reflection intensity, resulting in a significant reduction in absorption. The largest mean surface roughness was obtained for the PET-4%/AZO specimen. XRD diffraction peaks of ZnO (002) indicate that the quality of the AZO film initially improved with increasing strain, and then degraded with further increases. Compressive residual stresses formed in the bending specimens at various strains; the residual stress increased with decreasing 2θ angle. A higher compressive stress in the AZO film resulted in a lower optical band gap and a lower transmittance; it also led to an increase in the sheet resistance of the AZO film, and thus a lower carrier mobility.     

Effect of N2O plasma treatment on the improvement of instability under light illumination for InGaZnO thin-film transistors

This paper investigates the impact of N₂O plasma treatment on the light-induced instability of InGaZnO thin film transistors with a SiO₂ passivation layer deposited by plasma-enhanced-chemical-vapor-deposition (PECVD). For the untreated device, because the deposition of the SiO₂ passivation layer by PECVD causes extra trap states, the anomalous subthreshold leakage current can be attributed to a lowering of the source side barrier due to trap-assisted photogenerated holes. In contrast, the N₂O plasma treatment applied to both the gate insulator and the active layer effectively suppresses the device instability under illumination. In order to clarify the influence of the N₂O plasma treatment, this study investigates a device with treatment of only the gate insulator. This device shows a slight decrease of light-induced subthreshold leakage current. This demonstrates that N₂O plasma treatment on IGZO active layer after its deposition is critical in preventing damage from the subsequent SiO₂ passivation deposition process. In addition, the instability of threshold voltage (V_T) under negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) is significantly improved by the N₂O plasma treatment. Furthermore, a different dark recovery rate follows NBIS for untreated and N₂O plasma-treated devices, indicating different hole-trapping levels exist in the energy band.