Publications by authors named "Yu Chung"

Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers have high rates of unintended pregnancy, yet many are reluctant to choose the most effective forms of contraception, such as IUDs (intrauterine devices). Those who do are often socioeconomically disadvantaged, a finding that contradicts much health research, namely that higher SES individuals can access better healthcare. This puzzle highlights the need to understand better migrant workers' contraceptive decision-making.

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Halophenols are toxic and persistent pollutants in water environments which poses harm to various organisms. Due to their high stability and long residence time, ultraviolet radiation, heavy metals and oxidizing agents have been largely adopted on treating these compounds. However, these treatment methods could pose toxicity or hazardous risks to the marine environment and plant operators.

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Loss-of-function (LoF) variants in the lipid transporter ABCA7 significantly increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease (odds ratio ∼2), yet the pathogenic mechanisms and the neural cell types affected by these variants remain largely unknown. Here, we performed single-nuclear RNA sequencing of 36 human samples from the prefrontal cortex of 12 ABCA7 LoF carriers and 24 matched non-carrier control individuals. ABCA7 LoF was associated with gene expression changes in all major cell types.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cancer cells need more energy (ATP) to grow and survive, which can change how they take in and balance sodium ions in their bodies.
  • The researchers used special methods to measure sodium levels and how fast cancer cells convert sugar into energy, comparing cancer cells to normal cells to see the differences.
  • They found that when they blocked a specific pump that controls sodium balance (Na/K-ATPase), the cancer cells had more sodium and produced less energy, showing that sodium levels affect their energy production.
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Elevated intracellular sodium Na adversely affects mitochondrial metabolism and is a common feature of heart failure. The reversibility of acute Na induced metabolic changes is evaluated in Langendorff perfused rat hearts using the Na/K ATPase inhibitor ouabain and the myosin-uncoupler para-aminoblebbistatin to maintain constant energetic demand. Elevated Na decreases Gibb's free energy of ATP hydrolysis, increases the TCA cycle intermediates succinate and fumarate, decreases ETC activity at Complexes I, II and III, and causes a redox shift of CoQ to CoQH, which are all reversed on lowering Na to baseline levels.

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Hydrogen is one of the most promising green energy alternatives due to its high gravimetric energy density, zero-carbon emissions, and other advantages. In this work, a CoFeBP micro-flower (MF) electrocatalyst is fabricated as an advanced water-splitting electrocatalyst by a hydrothermal approach for hydrogen production with the highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The fabrication process of the CoFeBP MF electrocatalyst is systematically optimized by thorough investigations on various hydrothermal synthesis and post-annealing parameters.

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Japanese encephalitis (JE), caused by the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), is a highly threatening disease with no specific treatment. Fortunately, the development of vaccines has enabled effective defense against JE. However, re-emerging genotype V (GV) JEV poses a challenge as current vaccines are genotype III (GIII)-based and provide suboptimal protection.

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Dual immunoglobulin domain-containing cell adhesion molecule (DICAM) is a type I transmembrane protein that presents in various cells including renal tubular cells. This study evaluated the expression and protective role of DICAM in renal tubular cell injury. HK-2 cells were incubated and treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS, 30 μg/mL) or hydrogen peroxide (HO, 100 μM) for 24 h.

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Biological early warning system (BEWS) has been globally used for surface water quality monitoring. Despite its extensive use, BEWS has exhibited limitations, including difficulties in biological interpretation and low alarm reproducibility. This study addressed these issues by applying machine learning (ML) models to eight years of in-situ BEWS data for Daphnia magna.

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Attentional biases to emotional stimuli are thought to reflect vulnerability for mood disorder onset and maintenance. This study examined the association between the endogenous sex hormone estradiol and emotional attentional biases in adolescent females with either current or remitted depression. Three groups of participants (mean age ± SD) completed the Emotional Interrupt Task: 1) 20 adolescent females (15.

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Both adults and children learn through feedback which environmental events and choices are associated with higher probability of reward, an ability thought to be supported by the development of fronto-striatal reward circuits. Recent developmental studies have applied computational models of reward learning to investigate such learning in children. However, tasks and measures effective for assaying the cascade of reward-learning neural processes in children have been limited.

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Background: The environmental oxygen tension has been reported to impact the blastocyst quality and cell numbers in the inner cell mass (ICM) during human and murine embryogenesis. While the molecular mechanisms leading to increased ICM cell numbers and pluripotency gene expression under hypoxia have been deciphered, it remains unknown which regulatory pathways caused the underweight fetal body and overweight placenta after maternal exposure to hyperbaric oxygen (HBO).

Results: The blastocysts from the HBO-exposed pregnant mice revealed significantly increased signals of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nuclear Nrf2 staining, decreased Nf2 and Oct4 expression, increased nuclear Tp53bp1 and active caspase-3 staining, and ectopic nuclear signals of Cdx2, Yap, and the Notch1 intracellular domain (N1ICD) in the ICM.

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Aims: Empagliflozin (EMPA), a potent inhibitor of the renal sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 and an effective treatment for Type 2 diabetes, has been shown to have cardioprotective effects, independent of improved glycaemic control. Several non-canonical mechanisms have been proposed to explain these cardiac effects, including increasing circulating ketone supply to the heart. This study aims to test whether EMPA directly alters cardiac ketone metabolism independent of supply.

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Background: Previous studies demonstrated limited accuracy of existing guidelines for predicting choledocholithiasis, leading to overutilization of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). More accurate stratification may improve patient selection for ERCP and allow use of lower-risk modalities.

Methods: A machine learning model was developed using patient information from two published cohort studies that evaluated performance of guidelines in predicting choledocholithiasis.

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Little is understood about how people strategically process and remember important but complex information, such as sentences. In the current study, we asked whether people can effectively prioritize memory for sentences as a function of their relative importance (operationalized as a reward point value) and whether they do so, in part, by changing their sentence processing strategies when value information is available in advance. We adapted the value-directed remembering paradigm (Castel, Psychol Learn Motiv 48:225-270, 2007) for sentences that varied in constraint and predictability.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This research presents a new surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) platform that combines hybrid core-shell (HyCoS) AuPd nanoparticles and MoS nanoplatelets, achieving strong enhancement of the Raman signal from Rhodamine 6G (R6G).
  • - The enhancement is due to both electromagnetic (EM) and chemical mechanisms; the EM comes from the unique plasmonic properties of the AuPd nanoparticles which generate strong localized electric fields, while the chemical mechanism is related to charge transfer from MoS to R6G.
  • - The combination of these mechanisms results in an impressive enhancement factor of ~10 for the SERS of R6G on this hybrid platform, showcasing its potential for improved sensitivity in
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Introduction And Objectives: Current guidelines do not recommend routine thrombus aspiration in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) because no benefits were observed in previous randomized trials. However, there are limited data in cardiogenic shock (CS) complicating AMI.

Methods: We included 575 patients with AMI complicated by CS.

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Objective: Simpson-Golabi-Behmel syndrome type 1 (SGBS1) is a rare X-linked recessive disorder characterized by overgrowth and multiple anomalies. Most clinical diagnoses of SGBS1 are made postnatally. We present the case of a pregnant woman in whom the fetus presented with a thick nuchal fold 5.

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Background: Cardiac diastolic dysfunction is an independent predictor of mortality, regardless of left ventricular (LV) systolic function. However, the current guidelines that define cardiac diastolic dysfunction may underrate the clinical implications of those with indeterminate diastolic function.

Objectives: We sought to evaluate the prognostic implications of indeterminate diastolic function on echocardiography and its association with coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD).

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Article Synopsis
  • A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of a mixed reality system, Mr. MAPP, to help patients with phantom pain by visualizing their amputated limb and performing exercises.
  • Seven patients participated, but the study had to pause due to COVID-19, with only four finishing the trial after using the system for one month.
  • Although in-game data indicated a positive trend, pain scores did not show significant changes, although one participant did experience improvements in function.
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Ultra-fine hydrogen produced by electrochemical water splitting without carbon emission is a high-density energy carrier, which could gradually substitute the usage of traditional fossil fuels. The development of high-performance electrocatalysts at affordable costs is one of the major research priorities in order to achieve the large-scale implementation of a green hydrogen supply chain. In this work, the development of a vanadium-doped FeBP (V-FeBP) microsphere croissant (MSC) electrocatalyst is demonstrated to exhibit efficient bi-functional water splitting for the first time.

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Both gamma knife surgery (GKS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) have documented success in management of treatment-refractory major depressive disorder (MDD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but there are no formal randomized controlled trials to compare these treatment modalities in cases of psychiatric illnesses. In this brief review, comparison of GKS and DBS for management of MDD and OCD was done with regard to their efficacy, accompanying risks, reversibility of therapeutic effects, costs, availability, and daily life issues. Currently available evidence does not support the superiority of either evaluated treatment modality over each other in terms of clinical efficacy in cases of MDD and OCD.

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Hypertension and pain are both prevalent conditions in the older adult population. We aimed to report the prevalence of pain discomforts and investigated the association between hypertension and pain discomforts among older adults in the United States. Data from the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study were analyzed.

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