Quantifying spatial heterogeneity of vulnerability to short-term PM exposure with data fusion framework.

The current estimations of the burden of disease (BD) of PM exposure is still potentially biased by two factors: ignorance of heterogeneous vulnerabilities at diverse urbanization levels and reliance on the risk estimates from existing literature, usually from different locations. Our objectives are (1) to build up a data fusion framework to estimate the burden of PM exposure while evaluating local risks simultaneously and (2) to quantify their spatial heterogeneity, relationship to land-use characteristics, and derived uncertainties when calculating the disease burdens. The feature of this study is applying six local databases to extract PM exposure risk and the BD information, including the risks of death, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and respiratory disease (RD), and their spatial heterogeneities through our data fusion framework.

Application of a health index using PM concentration reductions for evaluating cross-administrative region air quality policies.

The primary goal of air quality policies is to reduce the impact of air pollution on human health, in particular, it is very important in the attainment-closing geographic areas with densely populated like Taiwan. Air quality policies in general only consider the reduction of emission as well as concentration, in order to highlight the effects of air pollution reduction responded on human health, a health index using PM concentration reductions (HI-cr) was adopted to evaluate air quality policies in this study. To investigate priorities of cross-administrative region air quality policies, the HI-cr were calculated by using annual results of atmospheric modeling and air quality modeling, which involved the meteorological effect and spatial distribution of air pollution.

Transient risk of ambient fine particulate matter on hourly cardiovascular events in Tainan City, Taiwan.

Background: The association between daily changes in ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and cardiovascular diseases have been well established in mechanistic, epidemiologic and exposure studies. Only a few studies examined the effect of hourly variations in air pollution on triggering cardiovascular events.

Difference of performance in response to disease admissions between daily time air quality indices and those derived from average and entropy functions.

Daily time air quality indices, which can reflect air quality in 1 day, are suitable for identifying daily exposure during conditions of poor air quality. The aim of this study is to compare the main effectiveness of four daily time indices in representing variation in the number of disease admissions. These indices include pollution standard index (PSI), air quality index (AQI) and their respective indices derived from mean and entropy functions: MEPSI and MEAQI.

Public health risks of prolonged fine particle events associated with stagnation and air quality index based on fine particle matter with a diameter <2.5 μm in the Kaoping region of Taiwan.

The increasing frequency of droughts in tropical and sub-tropical areas since 1970 due to climate change requires a better understanding of the relationship between public health and long-duration fine particle events (FPE; defined as a day with an average PM ≥ 35.5 μg/m) associated with rainfall and wind speed. In the Kaoping region of Taiwan, 94.

Relationship between fine particulate matter events with respect to synoptic weather patterns and the implications for circulatory and respiratory disease in Taipei, Taiwan.

The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between PM2.5, synoptic weather patterns, and admissions for circulatory and respiratory disease. A PM2.

The relationship between typhoons' peripheral circulation and ground-level ozone concentrations in central Taiwan.

Surface data of meteorological parameters (wind speed, wind direction, and mixing height) and air pollutant concentrations (O3, NO, and NO2) were collected for a 92-day period associated with typhoon formation in 2005. The influence of typhoons on O3 concentration were defined by azimuth and distance from Taiwan, and Types A, B, and C correspond to typhoons less than 1,500 km from Taiwan and located between azimuths 45° and 135°, 135° and 225°, and 225° and 45°, respectively. Type D corresponds to typhoons more than 1,500 km from Taiwan.

Effect of photochemical smog associated with synoptic weather patterns on cardiovascular and respiratory hospital admissions in metropolitan Taipei.

This study focuses on the relationship between photochemical smog (PS) (hourly ozone conc. >100 ppb), PS-related diseases, and the synoptic weather patterns during 2005-2009 in metropolitan Taipei. The results show that compared to respiratory ailments (ICD code 460-519) and asthma (ICD code 493), cardiovascular ailments (ICD code 390-459) were more clearly influenced by PS events.

Influence of environmental conditions on asynchronous outbreaks of dengue disease and increasing vector population in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

The objective of this study was to clarify the associations between dengue vectors and the number of dengue fever admissions. We statistically analyzed the daily meteorological and sea surface temperature (SST) data obtained from 13 monitoring stations for 2002-2007, the daily number of dengue fever admissions to hospitals, as well as the Breteau index (BI) values obtained from the Taiwan Centres for Disease Control for the 38 political districts of metropolitan Kaohsiung. It was found that hot and wet environmental conditions were caused by warm SSTs together with the weather patterns that cause typhoons and high-pressure areas in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Biochemical characterizations of Escherichia coli-expressed protective antigen Ag473 of Neisseria meningitides group B.

Polysaccharide-based vaccines against Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) serogroups A, C, Y and W135 have been available since 1970, but similar vaccine candidates developed for Nm group B (NmB) have not been successful due to both poor immunogenicity and their potential immunological cross-reactivity with human neurological tissue. In previous reports, a protective antigen and vaccine candidate, Ag473, was identified using proteomics and NmB-specific bactericidal monoclonal antibody. To initiate human phase one clinical trials, antigen production and characterization, pre-clinical toxicology and animal studies are required.

Urban heat island and air pollution--an emerging role for hospital respiratory admissions in an urban area.

The aim of the study discussed here was to determine the associations among the urban heat island (UHI), air quality, and hospital respiratory admissions in the warm center of an urban area. The authors collected and analyzed the data regarding air quality parameters, meteorological parameters, and the daily hospital respiratory admissions in the Taichung metropolis in the autumns of 2003 and 2004. By collecting the vertical meteorological parameters and air pollutant concentrations via the tethersonde balloon technique, the authors simulated convergence in Dali using The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) for the atmospheric conditions.

Air quality influenced by urban heat island coupled with synoptic weather patterns.

Few studies have discussed the association between the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon and air quality under synoptic weather patterns conducive to UHI. In this study, the authors used statistical analyses to study this association in the Taichung metropolis region. The air quality data obtained from government-owned observation stations and wind field profiles obtained from tethersonde monitoring (performed during 21-29 October 2004) were combined with the simulations of the horizontal wind fields at different heights by the air pollution model (TAPM).

A novel technology for the production of a heterologous lipoprotein immunogen in high yield has implications for the field of vaccine design.

We have developed a novel platform technology that can express high levels of recombinant lipoproteins with intrinsic adjuvant properties. In this study, Ag473 (a lipoprotein from Neisseria meningitidis) can be produced in high yields using Escherichia coli strain C43 (DE3). After testing a non-lipoimmunogen (E3, from dengue virus) fused with different lipid signal peptides from other lipoproteins as well as Ag473 fragments of different lengths, we identified that the fusion sequence has to contain at least the N-terminal 40 residues, D1, of Ag473 to achieve high expression levels of the recombinant lipo-immunogen (rlipo-D1E3).

A novel dengue vaccine candidate that induces cross-neutralizing antibodies and memory immunity.

A novel dengue vaccine candidate comprised of a consensus dengue virus envelope protein domain III (cED III) was developed to fight against dengue virus infection. The amino acid sequence of this novel cED III was obtained by alignment of amino acid sequences from different isolates of the four serotypes of dengue viruses. A proof-of-concept study demonstrated that BALB/c mice immunized with the recombinant cED III developed neutralizing antibodies against all serotypes of dengue virus.

The impact of air quality on respiratory admissions during Asian dust storm periods.

The objective of this study was to assess the temporal and spatial patterns of air quality during Asian dust storm (ADS) events between 2000 and 2004, as well as their correlation with the frequency of respiratory admissions in the clinics and hospitals of metropolitan Taipei, Taiwan. The daily air pollutant concentrations and the respiratory admissions on the "index days" were compared with those on the "comparison days". A Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to map the distributions of the air pollutant concentrations and the respiratory admissions.

Microfluidic chip of fast DNA hybridization using denaturing and motion of nucleic acids.

This study presents the effect of fluidic temperatures and velocities on improving DNA hybridization. The efficiency of hybridization could be improved by introducing elevated temperature in the hot region and velocity in the cold region. Compared with the conventional methods, this hybridization microchip was able to increase the hybridization signal 4.

POWER: PhylOgenetic WEb Repeater--an integrated and user-optimized framework for biomolecular phylogenetic analysis.

POWER, the PhylOgenetic WEb Repeater, is a web-based service designed to perform user-friendly pipeline phylogenetic analysis. POWER uses an open-source LAMP structure and infers genetic distances and phylogenetic relationships using well-established algorithms (ClustalW and PHYLIP). POWER incorporates a novel tree builder based on the GD library to generate a high-quality tree topology according to the calculated result.