Search Results (9)

Backover crashes cause considerable injuries especially among young children. Prior research on backover crashes has not assessed the joint effect of heavy vehicles and diminished light conditions on injuries. By analysing the United Kingdom STATS19 crash dataset from 1991 to 2020, this study focused on backover crashes involving paediatric cyclists or pedestrians aged ≤17 years and other motorised vehicles. By estimating the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of multiple logistic regression models, pedestrians appeared to have 82.3% (95% CI: 1.78–1.85) higher risks of sustaining killed or serious injuries (KSIs) than cyclists. In addition, casualties involved in backover crashes with heavy vehicles were 39.3% (95% CI: 1.35–1.42) more likely to sustain KSIs than those involved in crashes with personal cars. The joint effect of heavy vehicles and diminished light conditions was associated with a 71% increased probability of sustaining KSIs (AOR = 1.71; 95% CI: 1.60–1.83). Other significant joint effects included young children (aged 0 to 5 years) as pedestrian (AOR = 1.92; 95% CI: 1.87–1.97), in diminished light conditions (AOR = 1.23; 95% CI: 1.15–1.31), and with heavy vehicle (AOR = 1.37; 95% CI: 1.28–1.47). Full article

Milkfish, Chanos chanos, is one of the major inland cultured fish species in Taiwan. Variations in land resources and climate have led to the application of two distinct culture practices of milkfish polycultures with white shrimp, Penaeus indicus. This study applies a translog cost function model to analyze the production scale economy and input demand price elasticity of four milkfish polyculture systems with two different culture periods (OWC and NOWC) and two different white shrimp–milkfish fry stocking ratios (low SMR: 10–55 fry/ha; high SMR: 56–100 fry/ha). The findings show that the four milkfish polyculture systems require different operational adjustments to increase production while reducing the average culture cost. More specifically, overwinter cultures (OWC) have economies of scale. Farmers may reduce the average cost by expanding the production scale. Non-overwinter polycultures (NOWC) with high SMR are at the stage of decreasing return to scale, meaning that gains in output of milkfish cannot reduce the average cost. In terms of input factor use, farmers of OWC systems with high SMR are sensitive to fluctuations in the fry price since fry constitutes the input factor exhibiting the highest own-price elasticity. Moreover, fry and feed of OWC households with high SMR have high levels of substitutability, whereas fry and other input exhibit substitutability in OWC systems with low SMR. In NOWC farming households with high SMR, fry and capital have substitutability. It is thus recommended to modify the input factor use according to the culture mode and the white shrimp–milkfish stocking density ratio. Moreover, the study found that NOWCs have considerably higher SMR than OWCs, which may lead to a deterioration of the water quality in NOWC fishponds and lower survival rates. It is thus recommended to reduce the SMR to 31:1 to achieve economies of scale in production and increase the survival rate of milkfish and white shrimp. Full article

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, and its tumorigenesis involves the accumulation of genetic and epigenetic events in the respiratory epithelium. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, RNA modification, and histone modifications, have been widely reported to play an important role in lung cancer development and in other pulmonary diseases. Whereas the functionality of DNA and chromatin modifications referred to as epigenetics is widely characterized, various modifications of RNA nucleotides have recently come into prominence as functionally important. N6-methyladosine (m6A) is the most prevalent internal modification in mRNAs, and its machinery of writers, erasers, and readers is well-characterized. However, several other nucleotide modifications of mRNAs and various noncoding RNAs have also been shown to play an important role in the regulation of biological processes and pathology. Such epitranscriptomic modifications play an important role in regulating various aspects of RNA metabolism, including transcription, translation, splicing, and stability. The dysregulation of epitranscriptomic machinery has been implicated in the pathological processes associated with carcinogenesis including uncontrolled cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. In recent years, with the advancement of RNA sequencing technology, high-resolution maps of different modifications in various tissues, organs, or disease models are being constantly reported at a dramatic speed. This facilitates further understanding of the relationship between disease development and epitranscriptomics, shedding light on new therapeutic possibilities. In this review, we summarize the basic information on RNA modifications, including m6A, m1A, m5C, m7G, pseudouridine, and A-to-I editing. We then demonstrate their relation to different kinds of lung diseases, especially lung cancer. By comparing the different roles RNA modifications play in the development processes of different diseases, this review may provide some new insights and offer a better understanding of RNA epigenetics and its involvement in pulmonary diseases. Full article

In the production process from green beans to coffee bean packages, the defective bean removal (or in short, defect removal) is one of most labor-consuming stages, and many companies investigate the automation of this stage for minimizing human efforts. In this paper, we propose a deep-learning-based defective bean inspection scheme (DL-DBIS), together with a GAN (generative-adversarial network)-structured automated labeled data augmentation method (GALDAM) for enhancing the proposed scheme, so that the automation degree of bean removal with robotic arms can be further improved for coffee industries. The proposed scheme is aimed at providing an effective model to a deep-learning-based object detection module for accurately identifying defects among dense beans. The proposed GALDAM can be used to greatly reduce labor costs, since the data labeling is the most labor-intensive work in this sort of solutions. Our proposed scheme brings two main impacts to intelligent agriculture. First, our proposed scheme is can be easily adopted by industries as human effort in labeling coffee beans are minimized. The users can easily customize their own defective bean model without spending a great amount of time on labeling small and dense objects. Second, our scheme can inspect all classes of defective beans categorized by the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) at the same time and can be easily extended if more classes of defective beans are added. These two advantages increase the degree of automation in the coffee industry. The prototype of the proposed scheme was developed for studying integrated tests. Testing results of a case study reveal that the proposed scheme can efficiently and effectively generate models for identifying defective beans with accuracy and precision values up to $80\%$ . Full article

We demonstrate excellent color quality of liquid-type white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) using a combination of green light-emitting CsPbBr₃ and red light-emitting CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs). Previously, we reported red (CsPbBr_1.2I_1.8) and green (CsPbBr₃) perovskite QDs (PQDs)-based WLEDs with high color gamut, which manifested fast anion exchange and stability issues. Herein, the replacement of red PQDs with CdSe/ZnS QDs has resolved the aforementioned problems effectively and improved both stability and efficiency. Further, the proposed liquid-type device possesses outstanding color gamut performance (132% of National Television System Committee and 99% of Rec. 2020). It also shows a high efficiency of 66 lm/W and an excellent long-term operation stability for over 1000 h. Full article

Traditional backlights are designed with new dot patterns, and then injection molding, laser beam fabrication, or UV (Ultraviolet) roll-to-plate imprinting is used to apply dot patterns to a light guide plate—the process consumes considerable time and resources. Therefore, we propose a novel light guide design that does not use a dot pattern. We designed an asymmetric intensity distribution of mini-LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) and a light guide plate with a fully printed diffusion reflection on the bottom surface for a planar illuminator. The design rules for the proposed architecture are described in this paper. The archetype design with a 152.4 mm circular down-light has a diameter of 143 mm for the planar light source module. The experiment achieved a total efficiency of 85% and uniformity of 92.6%. Full article

This study demonstrates that flexible white LEDs, doped with diffusion particles and with a square column structure, have excellent luminosity, uniformity, and bending reliability. This large area (5 cm × 5 cm) square column flexible device had a smaller thickness (2 mm), and enhancements in both luminous efficiency (29.5%) and uniformity (44.6%) compared to the characteristics of the 6 mm reference sample. Optimization of the reflective layer coating for the square column, flexible white LED was achieved with a higher luminous efficiency (171 lm/w) and uniformity (92%). We designed a novel lightning bolt electrode to improve reliability and bendability. After the bending test, the blue flexible LED had a lower bending diameter (10 mm) but more bending circles (increased to 2000 times. Full article

This study presents a novel method for estimating the phosphor conversion efficiency of white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) with different ratios of phosphors. Numerous attempts have been made for predicting the phosphor conversion efficiency of WLEDs using Monte Carlo ray tracing and the Mie scattering theory. However, because efficiency depends on the phosphor concentration, obtaining a tight match between this model and the experimental results remains a major challenge. An accurate prediction depends on various parameters, including particle size, morphology, and packaging process criteria. Therefore, we developed an efficient model that can successfully correlate the total absorption ratio to the phosphor concentration using a simple equation for estimating the spectra and lumen output. The novel and efficient method proposed here can accelerate WLED development by reducing costs and saving fabrication time. Full article

To realize high-efficiency AlGaN-based deep-ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (DUV-LEDs), enhancing their light-extraction efficiency (LEE) is crucial. This paper proposes an aluminum-based sidewall reflector structure that could replace the conventional ceramic-based packaging method. We design optimization simulations and experimental results demonstrated the light power output could be enhanced 18.38% of DUV-LEDs packaged with the aluminum-based sidewall. Full article