High performance carbon dots based prodrug Platform: Image-Guided photodynamic and chemotherapy with On-Demand drug release upon laser irradiation.

The design of therapeutic nanoplatforms based on fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) has become a viable strategy because of their aqueous solubility, biocompatibility, and ease of further functionalization. By doping various heteroatoms into pristine CDs structures, we synthesized N-, Cl-, and S-doped CDs (NClS/CDs), as well as Se-, N-, and Cl-doped CDs (NClSe/CDs) with superior optoelectronic properties using rapid and straightforward microwave heating. The quantum efficiencies of these NClS/CDs and NClSe/CDs were enhanced to 30.

Enhanced CO₂ Adsorption on Activated Carbon Fibers Grafted with Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanotubes.

In this paper, multiscale composites formed by grafting N-doped carbon nanotubes (CNs) on the surface of polyamide (PAN)-based activated carbon fibers (ACFs) were investigated and their adsorption performance for CO₂ was determined. The spaghetti-like and randomly oriented CNs were homogeneously grown onto ACFs. The pre-immersion of cobalt(II) ions for ACFs made the CNs grow above with a large pore size distribution, decreased the oxidation resistance, and exhibited different predominant N-functionalities after chemical vapor deposition processes.

Morphomechanical alterations in the medial gastrocnemius muscle in patients with a repaired Achilles tendon: Associations with outcome measures.

Background: Functional deficits are found in ankles that have sustained an Achilles rupture. This study sought to evaluate and compare the morphomechanical characteristics of the medial gastrocnemius muscle in the legs of participants within six months of a unilateral Achilles repair to determine any correlations between those characteristics and objective outcomes and self-reported functional levels.

Methods: Fifteen participants were assessed via measurements of muscle morphologies (fascicle length, pennation angle, and muscle thickness) in a resting state, the mechanical properties of the proximal aponeurosis of the medial gastrocnemius muscle, the pennation angle during ramping maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MVIC), the heel raise test, and the Taiwan Chinese version of the Lower Extremity Functional Scale (LEFS-TC) questionnaire.

Neuromechanical characteristics in the knees of patients who had primary conservative treatment for a torn cruciate ligament and reconstruction afterward.

Background/purpose: To compare the neuromechanical characteristics and subjective outcomes for knees of patients with a cruciate ligament tear and reconstruction with those for knees of controls at three time intervals, and to determine correlations between the characteristics and subjective outcomes.

Methods: Ten participants with a cruciate ligament tear and at least a 12-week conservative treatment prior to ligament reconstruction were prospectively measured prior to and 3 months and 6 months after surgery. Ten healthy individuals were recruited as controls.

Analyzing big data with the hybrid interval regression methods.

Big data is a new trend at present, forcing the significant impacts on information technologies. In big data applications, one of the most concerned issues is dealing with large-scale data sets that often require computation resources provided by public cloud services. How to analyze big data efficiently becomes a big challenge.

Impact of windows and daylight exposure on overall health and sleep quality of office workers: a case-control pilot study.

Study Objective: This research examined the impact of daylight exposure on the health of office workers from the perspective of subjective well-being and sleep quality as well as actigraphy measures of light exposure, activity, and sleep-wake patterns.

Methods: Participants (N = 49) included 27 workers working in windowless environments and 22 comparable workers in workplaces with significantly more daylight. Windowless environment is defined as one without any windows or one where workstations were far away from windows and without any exposure to daylight.

Analysis of the influence of quantile regression model on mainland tourists' service satisfaction performance.

It is estimated that mainland Chinese tourists travelling to Taiwan can bring annual revenues of 400 billion NTD to the Taiwan economy. Thus, how the Taiwanese Government formulates relevant measures to satisfy both sides is the focus of most concern. Taiwan must improve the facilities and service quality of its tourism industry so as to attract more mainland tourists.

Evolving MCDM applications using hybrid expert-based ISM and DEMATEL models: an example of sustainable ecotourism.

Ecological degradation is an escalating global threat. Increasingly, people are expressing awareness and priority for concerns about environmental problems surrounding them. Environmental protection issues are highlighted.

Virtual reality system based on Kinect for the elderly in fall prevention.

Background: Daily life movements require balance ability. Good balance control is closely related to body stability and its development. Therefore, balance training is necessary for any age group.

Low-cost computer mouse for the elderly or disabled in Taiwan.

Background: A mouse is an important communication interface between a human and a computer, but it is still difficult to use for the elderly or disabled.

Objective: To develop a low-cost computer mouse auxiliary tool.

Methods: The principal structure of the low-cost mouse auxiliary tool is the IR (infrared ray) array module and the Wii icon sensor module, which combine with reflective tape and the SQL Server database.

Development of digitized apparatus for upper limb rehabilitation training.

Background: People use upper limbs to conduct daily activities. When recovering from injuries, many patients neglect the importance of rehabilitation, which results in degraded function.

Objective: Rehabilitation after treatment of an injury is very important.

Investigation into pulse laser heating of nanoscale Au film using dual-phase-lag model.

In this study the thermal field is presented for pulse laser processing of nanoscale Au films. Fourier law is inadequate for describing the heat conduction in nanoscale process due to the boundary scattering and the finite relaxation time of heat carriers. In the regime where the particle description of electrons and phonons is valid, the Boltzmann equation is the most accurate option to model heat transfer in such problems.

Modeling hybrid rough set-based classification procedures to identify hemodialysis adequacy for end-stage renal disease patients.

Healthcare problems observed in the majority of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients regarding hemodialysis (HD) treatment are serious issues for the Taiwanese healthcare services, and an interesting topic is thus the adequacy of HD therapy. This study successfully models a hybrid procedure to measure HD adequacy to assess therapeutic effects and to explore the relationship between accuracy and coverage for interested parties. The proposed model has better accuracy, a lower standard deviation, and fewer attributes than the listed methods under various evaluation criteria.

Identifying the medical practice after total hip arthroplasty using an integrated hybrid approach.

A critical option of total hip arthroplasty (THA) is considered only when tried more conservative treatments but continued to have pain, stiffness, or problems with the function of ones hip. THA plays one of major concerns under the waves of the rapid growth of aging populations and the constrained health care resources in Taiwan. Moreover, prior studies indicated that imbalanced class distribution problems do exist in the constructed classification model and cause seriously negative effects on model performances in the health care industry.

An approach to improve the quality of infrared images of vein-patterns.

This study develops an approach to improve the quality of infrared (IR) images of vein-patterns, which usually have noise, low contrast, low brightness and small objects of interest, thus requiring preprocessing to improve their quality. The main characteristics of the proposed approach are that no prior knowledge about the IR image is necessary and no parameters must be preset. Two main goals are sought: impulse noise reduction and adaptive contrast enhancement technologies.

Identifying patients in target customer segments using a two-stage clustering-classification approach: a hospital-based assessment.

Identifying patients in a Target Customer Segment (TCS) is important to determine the demand for, and to appropriately allocate resources for, health care services. The purpose of this study is to propose a two-stage clustering-classification model through (1) initially integrating the RFM attribute and K-means algorithm for clustering the TCS patients and (2) then integrating the global discretization method and the rough set theory for classifying hospitalized departments and optimizing health care services. To assess the performance of the proposed model, a dataset was used from a representative hospital (termed Hospital-A) that was extracted from a database from an empirical study in Taiwan comprised of 183,947 samples that were characterized by 44 attributes during 2008.

Terahertz antiresonant-reflecting-hollow-waveguide-based directional coupler operating at antiresonant frequencies.

We report a particular coupling phenomenon occurring in the directional coupler composed of two touching terahertz antiresonant reflecting hollow waveguides. Unlike conventional directional couplers where one even system mode and one odd system mode are excited, numerical results indicate that three (one even and two odd) system modes participate in the power transfer process at the antiresonant frequencies. As a result, the coupling length can be significantly reduced, and it is shown here to be less than 300 wavelengths.

Structural and catalytic roles of amino acid residues located at substrate-binding pocket in Fibrobacter succinogenes 1,3-1,4-beta-D-glucanase.

We created 12 mutant enzymes (E11L, F40I, Y42L, N44L, N44Q, E47I, L62G, K64A, K64M, R137M, R137Q, and N139A) from the truncated Fibrobacter succinogenes 1,3-1,4-beta-D-glucanase (TF-glucanase). The enzymes were used to investigate the structural and catalytic roles of specific amino acid residues located at the catalytic pocket and having direct interactions with glucose subsites of the product beta-1,3-1,4-cellotriose (CLTR). Fluorescence spectrometry showed no discernible changes in secondary structures among purified TF-glucanase and the mutants.

Web2OHS: a Web2.0-based omnibearing homecare system.

This study presents a Web2.0-based Omnibearing Homecare System (Web2OHS) that uses our proposed Application Layer Somecast (ALS) protocol for real-time interactions. Web2OHS provides omnibearing homecare and patientcare services for medical staff and caregivers, which are capable of assisting families, physicians, and nurses to obtain patients' physiological information using healthcare sensors, as well as monitor their behaviors using monitoring-based services.

Respiratory wheeze detection system.

Respiratory sound is associated with many lung diseases. By observing respiratory sound symptoms, we can know more about lung conditions. In this research, we construct an efficient lung sound recording system according to CORSA, and develop a spectrogram process flow technique to object wheeze.

Zeitgeists and development trends in long-term care facility design.

Through literature analysis, in-depth interviews, and the application of the Delphi survey, this study explored long-term care resident priorities with regard to long-term care facility design in terms of both physical and psychological needs. This study further clarified changing trends in long-term care concepts; illustrated the impact that such changes are having on long-term care facility design; and summarized zeitgeists related to the architectural design of long-term care facilities. Results of our Delphi survey indicated the following top five priorities in long-term care facility design: (1) creating a home-like feeling; (2) adhering to Universal Design concepts; (3) providing well-defined private sleeping areas; (4) providing adequate social space; and (5) decentralizing residents' rooms into clusters.

The M3S-based electric wheelchair for the people with disabilities in Taiwan.

Purpose: This study aims to establish an electronic wheelchair system in Taiwan that conforms to multiple master-multiple slave (M3S) standards. The proposed system could enhance the safety and convenience of people with disabilities.

Material And Method: The M3S-based head-controlled electric wheelchair consists of three parts: (A) the input device, (B) the output device, and (C) the safety device.

Optimal static output feedback simultaneous regional pole placement.

The problem of optimal simultaneous regional pole placement for a collection of linear time-invariant systems via a single static output feedback controller is considered. The cost function to be minimized is a weighted sum of quadratic performance indices of the systems. The constrained region for each system can be the intersection of several open half-planes and/or open disks.

Observer-based direct adaptive fuzzy-neural control for nonaffine nonlinear systems.

In this paper, an observer-based direct adaptive fuzzy-neural control scheme is presented for nonaffine nonlinear systems in the presence of unknown structure of nonlinearities. A direct adaptive fuzzy-neural controller and a class of generalized nonlinear systems, which are called nonaffine nonlinear systems, are instead of the indirect one and affine nonlinear systems given by Leu et al. By using implicit function theorem and Taylor series expansion, the observer-based control law and the weight update law of the fuzzy-neural controller are derived for the nonaffine nonlinear systems.