Publications by authors named "Weng C"

Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) poses a diagnostic challenge, particularly impacting vulnerable populations such as infants and those with untreated HIV. Given the diagnostic intricacies of TBM, there's a pressing need for rapid and reliable diagnostic tools. This review scrutinizes the efficacy of up-and-coming technologies like machine learning in transforming TBM diagnostics and management.

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  • Strain CYW5 is a newly identified mesophilic, hydrogenotrophic methanogen isolated from sediment samples at submarine mud volcano MV5 in southwestern Taiwan.
  • It has distinct cell characteristics, utilizes formate or hydrogen plus carbon dioxide for methanogenesis, and thrives at specific conditions of temperature, salt concentration, and pH.
  • Phylogenetic analysis shows it is closely related to the genus JR1, but significant differences in genomic content and growth conditions support the classification of strain CYW5 as a novel species in a new genus.
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  • - An analysis of a GaN-based metalens revealed that optical loss in the blue range causes color distortion in images, leading to blurriness and color cast issues.
  • - Two AI models, Autoencoder and CodeFormer, were used sequentially to correct these color issues and improve image details across various categories of face images.
  • - The effectiveness of these AI models was confirmed through numerical evaluations, demonstrating their capability to repair images even without blue information, highlighting significant advancements in metalens imaging technology.
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Digital biobanks that integrate genetic data with health data captured by digital sources are used routinely to discover genes, biomarkers, gene–environment interactions and pharmacogenetic relationships across many clinical areas. There remain many opportunities in dermatology to further use biobank data to increase our knowledge about the genetic architecture of skin disease, to resolve disease mechanisms that can be modulated by medical interventions and to discover genetically derived disease relationships that inform on drug repurposing and adverse events. Such knowledge promises to reduce the global burden of skin disease and facilitates the development of tailored medical care.

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  • The study explores how secondary adrenal insufficiency occurs after traumatic brain injuries and its effect on patient outcomes.
  • The research involved 120 patients categorized by injury severity, revealing that higher severity correlated with increased rates of adrenal insufficiency and dysfunction in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis.
  • Those with a functioning axis had shorter hospital stays and better recovery scores, indicating a significant link between adrenal function and prognosis in brain injury cases.
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  • - The study investigates the toxicity and clinical impact of chlorpyrifos and cypermethrin pesticide mixtures, focusing on how organophosphate pesticides may exacerbate the toxicity of pyrethroids due to impaired detoxification mechanisms in the body.
  • - Data was collected from 121 patients treated for poisoning between 2000 and 2021, categorized by type of pesticide exposure, and included analysis of clinical symptoms, laboratory findings, and mortality rates.
  • - Results showed a high incidence of acute respiratory failure (41.3%) and other symptoms, with the mixture group displaying more severe health outcomes, including higher rates of acute respiratory failure and increased death rates compared to other groups.
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Background: Noninvasive methods have been developed to detect fibrosis in many liver diseases due to the limits of liver biopsy. However, previous studies have focused primarily on chronic viral hepatitis and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The diagnostic value of transient elastography for autoimmune liver diseases (AILDs) is worth studying.

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  • End-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients often have coronary artery disease and are treated with coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, although they face higher risks of complications post-surgery.
  • A 45-year-old male ESRD patient developed a massive pancreatic pseudocyst two weeks after CABG, leading to significant abdominal pain and requiring treatment.
  • The case underscores the rarity of such large pseudocysts in ESRD patients post-CABG and highlights the need for careful monitoring during recovery due to factors like prolonged surgery and postoperative hypotension.
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  • * In a study involving 16,218 adults, those with actionable genetic findings underwent significantly more healthcare services in the year following result disclosure compared to before and to those without such findings.
  • * The annual healthcare costs for individuals with pathogenic findings nearly doubled, increasing from an average of $162 to $343, indicating a notable financial impact on healthcare payors.
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Background: Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a prevalent pediatric neurological disorder. Most studies point to abnormalities in the cortico-striato-thalamocortical (CSTC) circuits. Neuroimaging studies have shown GTS's extensive impact on the entire brain.

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  • This study compares the effectiveness of circumferential pulmonary vein isolation (CPVI) and segmental pulmonary vein isolation (SPVI) in patients undergoing redo ablations for recurrent atrial fibrillation (AF).
  • 543 patients who had AF ablation were analyzed, with 141 included in the final assessment; the results showed similar AF-free survival rates for both techniques, but a significant difference in atrial flutter recurrence favoring CPVI.
  • The findings suggest that while SPVI and CPVI are comparable for AF recurrence, SPVI has a higher rate of atrial flutter, potentially linked to more residual pulmonary vein gaps over time.
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The separation of Lns(III) from radioactive Ans(III) in high-level liquid waste remains a formidable hydrometallurgical challenge. Water-soluble ligands are believed to be new frontiers in the search of efficient Lns/Ans separation ligands to close the nuclear fuel cycles and dealing with current existing nuclear waste. Currently, the development of hydrophilic ligands far lags behind their lipophilic counterparts due to their complicated synthetic procedures, inferior extraction performances, and acid tolerances.

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Objective: Developing targeted, culturally competent educational materials is critical for participant understanding of engagement in a large genomic study that uses computational pipelines to produce genome-informed risk assessments.

Materials And Methods: Guided by the Smerecnik framework that theorizes understanding of multifactorial genetic disease through 3 knowledge types, we developed English and Spanish infographics for individuals enrolled in the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics Network. Infographics were developed to explain concepts in lay language and visualizations.

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Objective: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease associated with excessive mechanical loading. The aim here was to elucidate whether different subpopulations of chondrocytes exhibit distinct phenotypes in response to variations in loading conditions. Furthermore, we seek to investigate the transcriptional switches and cell crosstalk among these chondrocytes subsets.

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Background: Modifying the autonomic system after catheter ablation may prevent the recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF). Evaluation of skin sympathetic nerve activity (SKNA) is a noninvasive method for the assessment of sympathetic activity. However, there are few studies on the effects of different energy settings on SKNA.

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  • - The study investigates factors that contribute to successful participant recruitment in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) by analyzing data from 393 completed treatment studies, focusing on accrual percentages as a measure of success.
  • - A comparison of different predictive models revealed that the CatBoost regressor provided the best performance, identifying government funding and participant compensation as positive recruitment factors, while cancer-focused studies and unconventional recruiting methods were less successful.
  • - The research concludes by emphasizing the importance of specific recruitment strategies, such as flexible infrastructure and adequate compensation, to enhance participant recruitment in future clinical trials.
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Objective: To examine the impact of resilience on the association between discrimination and trajectories of depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic across racial and ethnic groups.

Methods: Data were drawn from 5 waves of the All of Us Research Program's survey on the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of American adults. Linear mixed-effects models were fitted to assess the association between discrimination exposure throughout the pandemic and depressive symptoms over time.

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Mitochondria (MT) participate in most metabolic activities of mammalian cells. A near-unidirectional mitochondrial transfer from T cells to cancer cells was recently observed to "metabolically empower" cancer cells while "depleting immune cells," providing new insights into tumor-T cell interaction and immune evasion. Here, we leverage single-cell RNA-seq technology and introduce MERCI, a statistical deconvolution method for tracing and quantifying mitochondrial trafficking between cancer and T cells.

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Objective: This study investigated the association between Type D personality and prognoses in stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients by mode of endpoints, age, and methodological debates to explain substantial heterogeneity among Type D studies.

Design: The prospective study was designed to recruit 590 stable CAD patients in Taiwan. Main outcome measures: Demographic and clinical characteristics, and the 14-item Type D scale-Taiwanese version were recorded at discharge.

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African swine fever (ASF) caused by ASF virus (ASFV) is a highly contagious and acute hemorrhagic viral disease in domestic pigs. Until now, no effective commercial vaccine and antiviral drugs are available for ASF control. Here, we generated a new live-attenuated vaccine candidate (ASFV-ΔH240R-Δ7R) by deleting H240R and MGF505-7R genes from the highly pathogenic ASFV HLJ/18 genome.

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Background: Current evidence regarding gender difference in retroperitoneal liposarcoma (RLPS) is scarce, so we sought to investigate whether gender may affect prognosis after primary resection of RLPS.

Methods: We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to identify RLPS patients from January 1973 to December 2015. Multivariate cox proportional hazard analysis was adopted to generate adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of survival outcomes.

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Opportunities to improve the clinical management of skin disease are being created by advances in genomic medicine. Large-scale sequencing increasingly challenges notions about single-gene disorders. It is now apparent that monogenic etiologies make appreciable contributions to the population burden of disease and that they are underrecognized in clinical practice.

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Chromium gypsum (CG) is a common hazardous waste formed in chromium salt or electroplating industries. The trapped or lattice-doped CrO in gypsum crystals are difficult to be reduced or removed by traditional methods, which will be re-oxidized or slowly released during long-term hypaethral storage. In this study, microwave hydrothermal treatment was applied to remove chromium in CG.

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