Publications by authors named "Bing-Keng Chen"

Resource competition among flowers is expected to influence variation in seed output within inflorescences, but the extent to which flower position affects competitive interactions is still incompletely understood. To investigate position effects on seed output in the perennial, monoecious macrophyte Sagittaria trifolia, we compared components of seed production (fruit set, seed number per fruit, and seed size) in control inflorescences to that in inflorescences from which half of the female flowers were experimentally removed, either from basal positions, from upper positions, or from across the inflorescence. Basal and upper flower removal reduced total seed output per inflorescence, while the throughout removal treatment maintained a seed yield comparable to the control.

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1. Accurate sex identification of one-day-old chicks is crucial in layer poultry production. Establishing an early sexing method during the chicken embryonic period is essential for animal welfare.

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1. The avian gut hosts a complex and dynamic microbial ecosystem, which is essential for regulating host organ function. However, the relationship between the gut microbiota and the hypothalamic axis in acute stress vulnerability in ducks remains unclear.

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Importance: Maternal inflammation during pregnancy has been associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism, and cognitive deficits in early childhood. However, little is known about the contributions of a wider range of inflammatory proteins to this risk.

Objective: To determine whether maternal inflammatory proteins during pregnancy are associated with the risk of NDDs and executive functions (EF) in middle childhood and to identify protein patterns associated with NDDs and EF.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to quantify the corneal power changes after wearing orthokeratology lenses of different back optic zone diameters (BOZDs) and to propose a novel 4-parameter model capable of revealing the associations between each parameter and axial length growth (ALG).

Methods: A prospective self-controlled study was conducted between June 2022 and December 2023. One eye in each subject (N = 33) was randomly assigned to wear a lens with a BOZD of either 5 mm (5 oz) or 6 mm (6 oz).

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Importance: Indocyanine green (ICG)-guided lymphadenectomy has been increasingly used to treat gastric cancer. However, its oncologic impact remains unclear.

Objective: To investigate the effect of ICG tracing on long-term outcomes in patients diagnosed with locally advanced gastric cancer undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) followed by laparoscopic radical gastrectomy.

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Importance: Peripheral (blood-based) biomarkers for psychiatric illness could benefit diagnosis and treatment, but research to date has typically been low throughput, and traditional case-control studies are subject to potential confounds of treatment and other exposures. Large-scale 2-sample mendelian randomization (MR) can examine the potentially causal impact of circulating proteins on neuropsychiatric phenotypes without these confounds.

Objective: To identify circulating proteins associated with risk for schizophrenia (SCZ), bipolar disorder (BD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) as well as cognitive task performance (CTP).

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Purpose: To enhance patient safety and improve communication and response times during the perioperative management of patients with acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding, a checklist was developed, tested for psychometric properties, and implemented in clinical practice.

Design: This is a methodological study.

Methods: A perioperative checklist for acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding was developed using a literature review and the Delphi method.

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Background: The few reported patients with pathogenic IRF8 variants have manifested 2 distinct phenotypes: (1) an autosomal recessive severe immunodeficiency with significant neutrophilia and absence of or significant decrease in monocytes and dendritic cells and (2) a dominant-negative form with only a decrease in conventional type 2 dendritic cells (cDC2s) and susceptibility to mycobacterial disease.

Objectives: Genetic testing of a child with persistent EBV viremia identified a novel IRF8 variant: c.1279dupT (p.

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Recent advances in microbial pathogen research have highlighted the potential of gut microbe-based microbial medicine. One of the most extensively studied biological pathways is the gut-brain axis, which has been shown to reverse neurological disorders. Evidence from animal-based studies of dysbiosis suggest complex behavioral changes, such as alterations in sociability and anxiety, can be modulated through gut microbiota.

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This study aims to review the evidence from Mendelian randomization (MR) studies on the causal role of vitamin D in type 2 diabetes (T2D). A systematic search (registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024551731)) was performed in PubMed, Embase and Web of Science for publications up to June 2024. MR studies including vitamin D as the exposure and T2D as the outcome were included.

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Background: Previous studies indicated discrete lifestyle health metrics that benefit cardiovascular health are associated with better prognosis in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), while evidence regarding the comprehensive impact of cardiovascular health remains limited. This study aimed to investigate the association between the overall cardiovascular health indicator, Life's Essential 8 (LE8), and the adverse outcomes of IBD.

Materials And Methods: We included 3,232 IBD participants recruited from the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010.

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A new pyrrolopyrazine alkaloid, named lycipyrazine A (), alone with seven known alkaloids (-), were isolated from the fruit of The structure of new compound was determined using extensive 1D and 2D spectroscopic analyses, while its absolute configuration was determined by comparison of its experimental and calculated ECD spectra. Their -glucosidase inhibitory activity was screened using acarbose as a positive control. Compound showed strong inhibitory activity against -glucosidase (IC = 3.

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Objective: Persistent postoperative sensory loss significantly limits breast reconstruction following mastectomy. In addition, the absence of sensation profoundly impacts patients' physical well-being and overall quality of life. New surgical techniques involving nerve autograft intercostal nerve elongation have been introduced to neurotize reconstructed breasts.

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Background: Preoperative biliary drainage (PBD) has been proposed as a strategy to manage the complications associated with biliary obstruction in hilar cholangiocarcinoma patients. However, the efficacy and safety of PBD in remain controversial, even in clinical guidelines. This meta-analysis aimed to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of PBD in patients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma.

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1. Faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a technique that promotes gut microbiota diversity and abundance by transplantation of faeces into a recipient's gastrointestinal tract multiple routes.2.

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Hybrid multicompartment artificial architectures, inherited from different compartmental systems, possess separate microenvironments that can perform different functions. Herein, a hybrid compartmentalized architecture via hybridizing ferritin nanocage (Fn) with non-aqueous droplets using aminated-modified amphiphilic gelatin (AGEL) is proposed, which enables the generation of compartmentalized emulsions with hybrid multicompartments. The resulting compartmentalized emulsions are termed "hybrasome".

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Ionic devices find applications such as flexible electronics and biomedicines and function by exploiting hybrid circuits of mobile ions and electrons. However, the poor interfacial compatibility of hard electronic conductors with soft ionic conductors in ionic devices leads to low deformability, sensitivity, electromechanical responses, and stability. Herein, an interpenetrating interface between silicone-modified polyurethane/carbon nanotube electronic conductors and ionoelastomers in an ionic device using in situ polymerization is fabricated.

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Compression strongly degrades the electrical conductivity of the liquid-metal-based circuits because the liquid state is prone to be squashed. Here, a new compressible and stretchable biphasic liquid-solid self-healing circuit is proposed by filling GalnSn-BilnSn biphasic metal into micropillar-embedded channels. The underlying BilnSn solid alloy layer serves as a compression resistance layer, while the upper GalnSn liquid metal layer enables the real-time filling of the cracks in the solid layer under large deformations, resulting in autonomous self-healing and maintenance of conductivity under both stretching and compression.

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Chiral-specific interaction of light with organic materials is important but typically arises from circular polarization-dependent absorption of specific optical transitions, resulting in narrow effective wavelength ranges. This study presents a scalable and universal concept for broadband circular dichroism (CD) enabled by strained conducting polymer thin films that possess in-plane hyperbolic optical behavior (i.e.

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Photocatalytic hydrogen production through water splitting represents a promising strategy to store solar energy as chemical energy. Current photocatalysts primarily focus on traditional semiconductor materials, such as metal oxides, sulfides, nitrides, g-CN, etc. However, these materials often suffer from large bandgap and fast charge recombination, which limit sunlight utilization and result in unsatisfactory photon conversion efficiency.

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ConspectusProteins and peptides occur ubiquitously in organisms and play key functional roles, as structural elements and catalysts. Their major natural source is ribosomal synthesis, which produces polypeptides from 20 amino acid building blocks. Peptides containing noncanonical amino acids have long been prepared by chemical synthesis, which has provided a wealth of physiologically active compounds.

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The effective and precise processing of visual information by the human eye primarily relies on the diverse contrasting functions achieved through synaptic regulation of ion transport in the retina. Developing a bio-inspired retina that uses ions as information carriers can more accurately replicate retina's natural signal processing capabilities, enabling high-performance machine vision. Herein, an ion-confined transport strategy is proposed to construct a bio-inspired retina by developing artificial synapses with inhibitory and excitatory contrasting functions.

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P2-type NaNiMnO (NNMO) as cathode material for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) largely suffers from continuous accumulation of local stress caused by destructive structural evolution and irreversible oxygen loss upon cycling, leading to rapid capacity degradation. Herein, a strategy of negative enthalpy doping (NED), wherein transition metal (TM) sites are substituted with 0.01 mol each Sn, Sb, Cu, Ti, Mg, and Zn to increase the stability of the TM layers, is proposed.

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