The Role of Serum Albumin and Secretory Phospholipase A2 in Sepsis.

Sepsis is caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection that leads to cascading cell death and eventually organ failure. In this study, the role of inflammatory response serum secretory phospholipase A2 (sPLA2) and albumin in sepsis was investigated by determining the activities of the two proteins in serial serum samples collected on different days from patients with sepsis after enrollment in the permissive underfeeding versus standard enteral feeding protocols in an intensive care unit. Serum sPLA2 and albumin showed an inverse relationship with increasing sPLA2 activity and decreasing albumin membrane-binding activity in patients with evolving complications of sepsis.

Exploring word-referent mapping in Mandarin-speaking late-talkers at 33 months and its language predictors at 27 months: An eye-tracking study.

Background And Aims: This longitudinal study investigated the language skills, phonological working memory and lexical-tone perception of Mandarin-speaking late-talkers (LTs) and those with typical language development (TLD) at 27 months, while also examining their connections with novel word-referent mapping (W-R mapping) through eye-tracking at 33 months.

Methods And Procedures: Participants included 22 Mandarin-speaking 27-month-old LTs and 22 toddlers with TLD. Data on expressive and receptive language abilities, as well as phonological working memory and lexical-tone perception, were collected when participants were 27 months old.

Event-related potentials of familiar monosyllabic words with unexpected lexical tones: A picture-word study of Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with and without a history of late talking.

This study examined how Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with and without a history of late talking (LT) process familiar monosyllabic words with unexpected lexical tones, focusing on both phonological and semantic violations. This study initially enrolled 64 Mandarin-speaking toddlers: 31 with a history of LT (mean age: 27.67 months) and 33 without a history of LT (non-LT) (mean age: 27.

Promotion of phosphate release from humic acid-iron hydroxide coprecipitates in the presence of citric acid.

Phosphate (P) resources are expected to be depleted within a century. Therefore, promoting balanced phosphorus fertilizer use and understanding phosphorus dynamics in soils containing iron (III), organic acids, and iron (III)-organic molecule particulates is crucial. This study investigated the sorption of citric acid onto humic acid-iron hydr(o)xide coprecipitate (HAFHCP) and the reciprocal effects of citric acid and P sorption on HAFHCP with different C/Fe ratios.

Noun and Verb Lexicons Differentially Predict Later Grammatical Development in Mandarin-Speaking Children With and Without Late Language Emergence.

Purpose: The current investigation evaluated the extent to which early noun, verb, and adjective lexicon sizes predicted later grammatical outcomes in Mandarin-speaking children with and without late language emergence (LLE) using a parent report.

Method: In Study 1, the parents of 24 Mandarin-speaking children with typical language filled out the toddler version of (MCDI-T) when these children were 24 and 36 months old. In Study 2, the parents of 23 children with LLE completed the same form when these children were 24, 36, and 48 months old.

Human Serum Albumin Misfolding in Aging and Disease.

Age-dependent conformational stability of human serum albumin was determined by the method of fluorescent bilayer liposome assay. After pre-heating at 80 °C, albumin in the sera of 74-year-old healthy subjects exhibited hydrophobic effects on liposomes and made liposomal membrane phospholipids more susceptible to hydrolysis by the lipolytic enzyme phospholipase A2. In contrast, albumin in the sera of 24-year-old individuals was stable at 80 °C and displayed no increased hydrophobic effects on liposomes.

English and Mandarin native speakers' cue-weighting of lexical stress: Results from MMN and LDN.

Past research on how listeners weight stress cues such as pitch, duration and intensity has reported two inconsistent patternss: listeners' weighting conforms to 1) their native language experience (e.g., language rhythmicity, lexical tone), and 2) a general "iambic-trochaic law" (ITL), favouring innate sound groupings in cue perception.

Temporal stability of parent-reported behavior problems in late talkers over 2 years: a prospective case-control study from toddlerhood to preschool age.

Background: Late talking (LT) in toddlers is a risk factor for language weakness that may interfere with the development of using language to regulate behavior and emotion and contribute to the development of behavior problems from early childhood. This study examined the temporal stability of parent-reported behavior problems among Mandarin-speaking LT toddlers from ages 2 to 4 in Taiwan.

Methods: Thirty-one LT and 31 typical language development (TLD) toddlers were assessed for their vocabulary production at age 2 with the Words and Sentences Forms of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories Toddler Form (Taiwan version).

Behavioral problems of Mandarin-speaking late-talking toddlers and preschool aged children: A prospective case-control study in Taiwan.

This study aimed to examine whether Mandarin-speaking late-talking (LT) toddlers have a higher incidence of behavioral problems than typical language developing (TLD) children in toddlerhood and at preschool age from a community sample in Taiwan.This prospective case-control study comprised 32 LT and 32 TLD toddlers. Participants' parents provided reports about their children at 2 and 4 years using the Child Behaviors Checklist, a component of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment.

Aging-Related and Gender Specific Albumin Misfolding in Alzheimer's Disease.

Aging-related protein misfolding and aggregation may play critical roles in the pathogenesis of numerous diseases. In the brain, extracellular aggregated amyloid-β (Aβ) is closely related to the death of neurons in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Albumin-Aβ binding is important in preventing Aβ fibril aggregation.

Discrimination and identification of lexical tones and consonants in Mandarin-speaking children using cochlear implants.

Mandarin-speaking adults using cochlear implants (CI) experience more difficulties in perceiving lexical tones than consonants. This problem may result from the fact that CIs provide relatively sufficient temporal envelope information for consonant perception in quiet environments, but do not convey the fine spectro-temporal information considered to be necessary for accurate pitch perception. Another possibility is that Mandarin speakers with post-lingual hearing loss have developed language-specific use of these acoustic cues, impeding lexical tone processing under CI conditions.

Phosphate Removal in Relation to Structural Development of Humic Acid-Iron Coprecipitates.

Precipitation of Fe-hydroxide (FH) critically influences the sequestration of PO and organic matter (OM). While coatings of pre-sorbed OM block FH surfaces and decrease the PO adsorption capacity, little is known about how OM/Fe coprecipitation influences the PO adsorption. We aimed to determine the PO adsorption behaviors on humic acid (HA)-Fe coprecipitates in relation to surface and structural characteristics as affected by HA types and C/(C + Fe) ratios using the Fe and P X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

Speech Perception Deficits in Mandarin-Speaking School-Aged Children with Poor Reading Comprehension.

Previous studies have shown that children learning alphabetic writing systems who have language impairment or dyslexia exhibit speech perception deficits. However, whether such deficits exist in children learning logographic writing systems who have poor reading comprehension remains uncertain. To further explore this issue, the present study examined speech perception deficits in Mandarin-speaking children with poor reading comprehension.

Synthesis and reactions of 4H-1,4-telluraborine.

The B(CF)-catalyzed reaction of the 1,4-telluraborine, Te(PhC[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))BOCHPh 2 with PhSiH gives Te(PhC[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))BH 3. Compound 3 acts as a synthetic precursor to Te(PhC[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))BCl 4 and Te(PhC[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))B(THF)(OSCF) 5. In addition, 3 undergoes reactions with alkenes, alkynes, ketones and aldehydes to give a series of hydroboration products, 6-16.

Stoichiometric and catalytic isomerization of alkenylboranes using bulky Lewis bases.

1,1-Carboboration of alkynes with boranes R'B(CF) (R' = (CH)Ph, CF) affords mixtures of the E and Z isomers of RCH = CR'B(CF) (R = (CH)Me, (CH)Me, (CH)Ph, CHCHMe, CHMe, CMe, CHOMe, CHN(CO)CH), treatment of these alkenylboranes with stoichiometric or catalytic amounts of tBuPH or other donors are shown to induce isomerization. The proposed mechanism involving a zwitterionic borataalkene intermediate is supported by computations.

Facile access to unsymmetrically substituted tellurium-boron based heterocycles.

Reactions of Te-B heterocycles Te((Ph)C[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))B(CF) 1 with alcohols is shown to afford species of the form Te((Ph)C[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))BOR. The subsequent reaction with either 4-Br-CHCCH or 3-(CHS)CCH proceeds with the liberation of CFCCPh to give unsymmetrically substituted Te-B based heterocycles of the form Te((Ph)C[double bond, length as m-dash]C(CF))(HC[double bond, length as m-dash]CR)BOCHPh.

M1 macrophages decrease in the deciduae from normal pregnancies but not from spontaneous abortions or unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortions.

Background/purpose: To investigate the M1/M2 polarity of macrophages in the endometrium among different menstrual cycles, normal and abnormal pregnancies, and unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortions (RSAs).

Methods: Endometrial tissue was obtained from 43 patients undergoing hysterectomy, either in the follicular phase (Group 1, n = 23) or in the luteal phase (Group 2, n = 20). In addition, decidual tissue was obtained from 53 pregnant women during the first trimester, either of normal pregnancies (Group 3, n = 12) or abnormal pregnancies (Group 4: spontaneous abortions, n = 20; Group 5: unexplained RSA, n = 21).

Perceptual Improvement of Lexical Tones in Infants: Effects of Tone Language Experience.

To learn words in a tonal language, tone-language learners should not only develop better abilities for perceiving consonants and vowels, but also for lexical tones. The divergent trend of enhancing sensitivity to native phonetic contrasts and reduced sensitivity to non-native phonetic contrast is theoretically essential to evaluate effects of listening to an ambient language on speech perception development. The loss of sensitivity in discriminating lexical tones among non-tonal language-learning infants was apparent between 6 and 12 months of age, but only few studies examined trends of differentiating native lexical tones in infancy.

The clinical and economic impact of the use of diabetes-specific enteral formula on ICU patients with type 2 diabetes.

Background & Aims: Patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) often need enteral nutrition (EN) support. For patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), standard EN formulas may not provide ideal nutrients. The purpose was to investigate whether use of a diabetes-specific formula (DSF) could provide clinical and health economic benefits (compared to standard formulas) in critically ill patients with T2D.

S(vi) Lewis acids: fluorosulfoxonium cations.

Avenues to S-based Lewis acids were developed via the oxidation of aryl-sulfoxides with XeF, giving difluorodiarylsulfoxides which react via fluoride abstraction to afford Lewis acidic fluorosulfoxonium cations; this acidity is derived from the S-F σ* orbital and has been probed both experimentally and computationally.

Developmental changes in brain response to speech perception in late-talking children: A longitudinal MMR study.

This study used a longitudinal design to examine the development of mismatch responses (MMRs) to Mandarin lexical tones, an index of neural speech discriminative responses, in late talkers and typical controls at 3, 5, and 6 years of age. Lexical tones are phonetic suprasegments that distinguish the lexical meanings of syllables in tonal languages. The 2 year-old late talkers were later divided into persistent language delay and late bloomer groups according to their performance on standardized language tests at 4 years.

Double FLP-Alkyne Exchange Reactions: A Facile Route to Te/B Heterocycles.

1-Bora-4-tellurocyclohexa-2,5-diene undergoes sequential [4 + 2] cycloadditions/alkyne-elimination reactions to incorporate 2 equiv of terminal alkyne with the loss of diarylalkyne, affording access to a series of 11 new tellurium-boron heterocycles. These alkyne exchange reactions proceed regioselectively and can tolerate a variety of functional groups, thus providing the potential for further derivatization. The mechanism of the exchange reaction is confirmed by a DFT study to involve the interaction of the Te and B with the alkyne in a frustrated Lewis pair fashion in the transition states.

The perception of speech modulation cues in lexical tones is guided by early language-specific experience.

A number of studies showed that infants reorganize their perception of speech sounds according to their native language categories during their first year of life. Still, information is lacking about the contribution of basic auditory mechanisms to this process. This study aimed to evaluate when native language experience starts to noticeably affect the perceptual processing of basic acoustic cues [i.

Sequential therapy for 10 days versus triple therapy for 14 days in the eradication of in the community and hospital populations: a randomised trial.

Objective: Significant heterogeneity was observed in previous trials that assessed the efficacies of sequential therapy for 10 days (S10) versus triple therapy for 14 days (T14) in the first-line treatment of We aimed to compare the efficacy of S10 and T14 and assess the factors affecting their efficacies.

Design: We conducted this open-label randomised multicentre trial in eight hospitals and one community in Taiwan. 1300 adult subjects with infection naïve to treatment were randomised (1:1) to receive S10 (lansoprazole and amoxicillin for the first 5 days, followed by lansoprazole, clarithromycin and metronidazole for another 5 days) or T14 (lansoprazole, amoxicillin and clarithromycin for 14 days).