Publications by authors named "Chong P"

Drought is one of the main environmental factors affecting plant survival and growth. Atraphaxis bracteata is a common desert plant mainly utilized in afforestation and desertification control. This study analyzed the morphological, physiological and molecular regulatory characteristics of different organs of A.

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Background: Interpreting the pathogenicity of genetic variants associated with rare diseases is a laborious and time-consuming endeavour. To streamline the diagnostic process and lighten the burden of variant interpretation, it is crucial to automate variant annotation and prioritization. Unfortunately, currently available variant interpretation tools lack a unified and comprehensive workflow that can collectively assess the clinical significance of these types of variants together: small nucleotide variants (SNVs), small insertions/deletions (INDELs), copy number variants (CNVs) and structural variants (SVs).

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Spoofing attacks (or Presentation Attacks) are easily accessible to facial recognition systems, making the online financial system vulnerable. Thus, it is urgent to develop an anti-spoofing solution with superior generalization ability due to the high demand for spoofing attack detection. Although multi-modality methods such as combining depth images with RGB images and feature fusion methods could currently perform well with certain datasets, the cost of obtaining the depth information and physiological signals, especially that of the biological signal is relatively high.

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Research on plant-based wound healing agents has been one of the current developing areas in modern biomedical science. This study aimed to assess the effects of ethyl acetate extract of rhizome (ZZRE) on open wound healing activity in Wistar rats. Ninety male Wistar rats (220-320 g) were divided into three groups treated with phosphate buffered saline (PBS) (negative control), Solcoseryl gel (positive control), and 10 % ZZRE (treatment group), respectively.

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Article Synopsis
  • Advanced care planning (ACP) involves ongoing discussions among patients, families, and healthcare professionals about future healthcare needs.
  • Patients with rheumatic diseases often face significant symptoms and complications, but the rate of completed ACP in this group is low.
  • A quality improvement project in Singapore successfully increased ACP completion rates from 0 to 1 per month over a year through two Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, indicating a need for further research on enhancing ACP engagement in these patients.
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Dural arteriovenous fistula (DAVF) represents a pathological group of intracranial shunts arising from the dural artery to venous sinus and veins. Childhood-onset DAVF is generally considered to be poor in prognosis, whereas only limited information is available for the onset and long-term outcomes. We herein report a Japanese girl with trisomy 21, large ventricular septal defects, and pulmonary vein stenosis, for which a transcatheter stent had been placed after birth.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology for sensing and monitoring the environment to reduce disaster impact. Energy is one of the major concerns for IoT devices, as sensors used in IoT devices are battery-operated. Thus, it is important to reduce energy consumption, especially during data transmission in disaster-prone situations.

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Introduction: Hand tumours are frequently encountered in clinical practice. However, large-scale epidemiological data of soft tissue tumours in the hand are infrequently published. Epidemiological data provide diagnostic cues to guide the workup and management of hand tumours.

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Lissencephaly is a rare brain malformation characterized by abnormal neuronal migration during cortical development. In this study, we performed a comprehensive genetic analysis using next-generation sequencing in 12 unsolved Japanese lissencephaly patients, in whom PAFAH1B1, DCX, TUBA1A, and ARX variants were excluded using the Sanger method. Exome sequencing (ES) was conducted on these 12 patients, identifying pathogenic variants in CEP85L, DYNC1H1, LAMC3, and DCX in four patients.

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Candidemia leaves a trail of approximately 750,000 cases yearly, with a morbidity rate of up to 30%. While Candida albicans still ranks as the most predominantly isolated Candida species, C. glabrata comes in second, with a death rate of 40-50%.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This study identifies an ancient SVA_D retrotransposon as the novel cause of occipital horn syndrome (OHS), a genetic disorder linked to copper metabolism due to ATP7A dysfunction.
  • - Researchers detected a 2.8 kb insertion in the patient's gene that disrupted normal mRNA splicing, which was confirmed using long-read sequencing techniques.
  • - Treatment with antisense oligonucleotides restored proper gene expression and reduced copper accumulation in patient cells, highlighting the SVA_D retrotransposon's unexpected role in rare genetic diseases.
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Pulmonary Tuberculosis (PTB) is one of the world's most infectious illnesses, and its early detection is critical for preventing PTB. Digital Radiography (DR) has been the most common and effective technique to examine PTB. However, due to the variety and weak specificity of phenotypes on DR chest X-ray (DCR), it is difficult to make reliable diagnoses for radiologists.

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Article Synopsis
  • Burnout among palliative and hospice professionals has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly 49% of surveyed workers reporting it.
  • Key factors contributing to burnout include heightened anxiety, increased workload, higher perceived risk of COVID-19, and lower confidence in safety measures.
  • Effective coping resources identified by respondents include peer support and access to COVID-related information, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to mental health in the workplace.
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Salt stress is a major abiotic stress that affects the growth of and many psammophytes in the desert areas of Northwest China. However, various Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) have been known to play an important role in promoting plant growth and alleviating the damaging effects of salt stress. In this study, three PGPR strains belonging to were isolated from the rhizosphere of by morphological and molecular identification.

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White kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) extracts can aid weight management by reducing calorie intake from complex carbohydrates through alpha-amylase inhibition. We examined the impact of a proprietary aqueous extract from whole dried white kidney beans standardized by its alpha-amylase inhibitor activity (Phase 2 white kidney bean extract (WKBE)) on weight management in subjects with overweight and moderate obesity.

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Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global shortage of nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs, required for RT-PCR testing. Canadian manufacturers were contacted to share NP swab innovations. The primary objective was to determine whether novel NP test swabs were comparable to commercially available swabs regarding user characteristics, ability to collect a specimen, and diagnostic performance using RT-PCR testing.

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Fungal infections caused by Candida species pose a serious threat to humankind. Antibiotics abuse and the ability of Candida species to form biofilm have escalated the emergence of drug resistance in clinical settings and hence, rendered it more difficult to treat Candida-related diseases. Lethal effects of Candida infection are often due to inefficacy of antimicrobial treatments and failure of host immune response to clear infections.

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Food consumption can alter the biochemistry and redox status of human saliva, and the serving temperature of food may also play a role. The study aimed to explore the immediate (3 min) and delayed (30 min) effects of hot tea (57 ± 0.5 °C) ingestion and cold tea (8 ± 0.

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The advent of patient access to complex medical information online has highlighted the need for simplification of biomedical text to improve patient understanding and engagement in taking ownership of their health. However, comprehension of biomedical text remains a difficult task due to the need for domain-specific expertise. We aimed to study the simplification of biomedical text via large language models (LLMs) commonly used for general natural language processing tasks involve text comprehension, summarization, generation, and prediction of new text from prompts.

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A Hybrid LiFi and WiFi network (HLWNet) integrates the rapid data transmission capabilities of Light Fidelity (LiFi) with the extensive connectivity provided by Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), resulting in significant benefits for wireless data transmissions in the designated area. However, the challenge of decision-making during the handover process in HLWNet is made more complex due to the specific characteristics of electromagnetic signals' line-of-sight transmission, resulting in a greater level of intricacy compared to previous heterogeneous networks. This research work addresses the problem of handover decisions in the Hybrid LiFi and WiFi networks and treats it as a binary classification problem.

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Objective: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccinations have been shown to prevent infection with efficacies ranging from 50% to 95%. This study assesses the impact of vaccination on the clinical severity of COVID-19 during the second wave in Brunei Darussalam in 2021, which was due to the Delta variant.

Methods: Patients included in this study were randomly selected from those who were admitted with COVID-19 to the National Isolation Centre between 7 August and 6 October 2021.

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Gaucher disease (GD) is a lysosomal storage disorder caused by a deficiency in the GBA1-encoded enzyme, β-glucocerebrosidase. Enzyme replacement therapy is ineffective for neuronopathic Gaucher disease (nGD). High-dose ambroxol has been administered as an alternative treatment for a group of patients with nGD.

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Background: Norovirus (NoV) can cause chronic relapsing and remitting diarrhea in immunocompromised patients.  Few multicenter studies have described the clinical course, outcomes, and complications of chronic NoV in transplant recipients.

Methods: A multicenter retrospective study of adult and pediatric SOT and HSCT recipients diagnosed with NoV between November 1, 2017, and February 28, 2021.

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