BACKGROUND Evidence from both animal and human studies suggests that exposure to phthalates may be associated with adverse female reproductive outcomes. OBJECTIVE We evaluated the associations between urinary concentrations of phthalate metabolites and outcomes of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). METHODS This analysis included 256 women enrolled in the Environment and Reproductive ...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of negative-sentence suggestions on various behavior. From the standpoint of the logic of negation, Miyashita (1998a, 1999) investigated the characteristics of feelings, sensations, and behavior. The results suggested that negative-sentence suggestions had more affirmative effects on mono-dimensional behavior than on multi-dimensional behavio...

Few studies have examined the association between environmental phthalate exposure and children's neurocognitive development. This longitudinal study examined cognitive function in relation to pre-and postnatal phthalate exposure in children 2-12 years old. We recruited 430 pregnant women in their third trimester in Taichung, Taiwan from 2001-2002. A total of 110, 79, 76, and 73 children were f...

Conventional stereophonic processes allow playback of mono audio signals with a stereo effect. The stereo effect is limited to mimicking ambience or signal independent left/right separation and thus no realistic sound stage is reproduced. This paper proposes two techniques for converting old mono recordings to two or more channel stereo signals with a realistic sound stage and ambience. One tec...

PARP catalysed ADP-ribosylation is a post-translational modification involved in several physiological and pathological processes, including cellular stress. In order to visualise both Poly-, and Mono-, ADP-ribosylation in vivo, we engineered specific fluorescent probes. Using them, we show that amino-acid starvation triggers an unprecedented display of mono-ADP-ribosylation that governs the fo...

Chronic exposure of pancreatic beta-cells to long-chain fatty acids can cause loss of secretory function and enhanced apoptosis by a process of 'lipotoxicity', which may be a contributory factor to the rising incidence of Type 2 diabetes in humans. However, when incubated in vitro, beta-cells respond differentially to long-chain saturated and mono-unsaturated fatty acids, suggesting that these ...

Methoxychlor, a currently used pesticide that in mammals elicits proestrogenic/estrogenic activity and reproductive toxicity, has been classified as a prototype endocrine disruptor. Methoxychlor is prochiral, and its metabolites 1,1,1-trichloro-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2-(4-methoxyphenyl)ethane (mono-OH-M); 1,1,1-trichloro- 2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-2-(3, 4-dihydroxyphenyl)ethane (catechol-M); and 1,1,1-t...

BACKGROUND Although it is known that febrile respiratory illnesses (FRI) may be caused by multiple respiratory pathogens, there are no population-level studies describing its impact on clinical disease. METHODS Between May 2009 and October 2012, 7733 FRI patients and controls in the Singapore military had clinical data and nasal wash samples collected prospectively and sent for PCR testing. P...