INTRODUCTION In 2011, the Taiwan FDA disclosed illegal di(2-ethylhexyl phthalate) (DEHP) and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) use in beverage and nutrition supplements. We aim to determine phthalate exposure and other relevant factors in a sample of the general Taiwanese population in order to evaluate actual phthalate exposure levels after this disclosure of DEHP use. METHOD We selected subjects aged...

HIGHLIGHTS Recombinant E. coli can produce mono-rhamnolipid and di-rhamnolipid biosurfactants. Rhamnolipid congeners were identified using HRMS. Di-rhamnolipid has lower surface tension CMC than mono-rhamnolipid. production have been optimized to enhance rhamnolipid yield.

STUDY QUESTION Are urinary phthalate concentrations associated with altered semen quality parameters among males recruited from the general population? SUMMARY ANSWER Urinary levels of metabolites of phthalate diesters are associated with lower total sperm counts, larger sperm head sizes, and higher percentages of morphologically abnormal sperm. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY High dose experiments i...

The aim of this study was to evaluate decrease in waist circumference in obese patients receiving different anti-obesity treatments. The study was designed as a short-term (12 weeks), open-label, and randomized trial. Eighty six patients (70 females, 81.4%; mean age 41.09+/-8.73 years, mean BMI 36.1+/-4.3 kg/m2) were randomized to four different therapy groups. The primary outcome parameters we...

conclusions this study found that gbv-c infection has a high frequency among injecting drug users with hiv/hcv coinfection and hcv mono-infection in yunnan, china. in patients with chronic hepatitis c and hiv coinfection, gbv-c rna was associated with significantly lower alt and ast levels, suggesting a beneficial effect of gbv-c infection on chronic hepatitis c. results gbv-c rna was identifie...

The Bidirectional Texture Function (BTF) is the recent most advanced representation of visual properties of surface materials. It specifies their appearance due to varying spatial, illumination, and viewing conditions. Corresponding enormous BTF measurements require a mathematical representation allowing extreme compression but simultaneously preserving its high visual fidelity. We present a no...

2D KEYNOTE ADDRESS THE MONO VM Miguel de Icaza, Co-Founder and CTO, Ximian Summarized by Maria Cutumisu Miguel de Icaza discussed the implementation of Mono, an open source execution engine for the ECMA CLI specification. The Mono VM was implemented by an enthusiastic group of people who were newcomers to the virtual machine domain but were attracted by the social, technical, and personal aspec...

Spectrum sensing enables detecting opportunities in licensed bands in order to access unused portions of the licensed spectrum. In this paper we propose two low complexity detectors based on a combination of two well-known and complementary signal detection mechanisms: energy detection and mono-cycle detection, which exploits cyclostationarity property of the signals. In the first algorithm the...

A method for the separation of folinic acid diastereomers by capillary electrophoresis in chiral separation media was developed. Aiming to achieve a good separation of the anionic analytes, a newly synthesized cationic β-cyclodextrin derivative, mono-6-deoxy-6-piperdine-β-cyclodextrin, was applied as the chiral selector. The effect of background electrolyte pH, the concentration of the cyclodex...

In this paper we propose a new type of non-negative time-frequency distribution associated with mono-components in both the non-periodic and periodic cases, called transient time-frequency distribution (TTFD), and study its properties. The TTFD of a mono-component signal can be obtained directly through its analytic instantaneous frequency. The characteristic property of TTFD is its complete co...