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AbstractIn this ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent twins/sibling pairs and their parents in Taipei, we aimed to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on adolescent behavioral development, metabolic risk factors, and the associations between the two. Special focus is on anxious depression, metabolic profile, and hormonal factors such as cortisol and leptin. The first wave of assessment was completed during the period of 2002 to 2005 and included 192 twin pairs, 6 triplets, 56 sibling pairs and their first-degree relatives (484 parents and 142 siblings). We are currently in the process of a second wave assessment as follow-up. Dimensional psychological assessments using self-report questionnaires, as well as categorical assessments based on semistructured clinical interviews, were performed. All subjects received a 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test at the examination site. The metabolic phenotypes including body mass index, blood pressure, levels of glucose, insulin, and lipid profile as well as related hormonal levels were measured. Zygosity was determined using DNA, except for a few twins whose DNA was not available. Such a combination of detailed psychological assessments and metabolic function tests is expected to help shed light on the interrelation of psychological well-being and metabolic functioning.

AbstractCirculating levels of leptin and adiponectin are closely associated with obesity. However, it is not known whether there are common shared genes or environment exerting influences on the levels of leptin, adiponectin, and BMI. We aimed to assess the relative contribution of genes and environment to adiponectin, leptin, and BMI individually as well as simultaneously to the three measures. Our subjects included a total of 228 twin/sibling pairs aged 12 to 18 (130 monozygotic twins, 68 dizygotic twins and 30 sibling pairs) were recruited from the middle schools. Multivariate analyses were applied to twin/sibling data using structural equation modeling. The results showed that intraclass correlations for adiponectin, leptin and BMI were higher in the MZ twins than those in the DZ/SP group. The relative contribution of genes to adiponectin (39%) was comparable to those of shared environment (40%). In contrast, leptin and BMI were influenced mostly by genes (74% and 89%, respectively). The multivariate genetic analyses showed that a latent factor underlying the three measures was identified, with BMI being equivalent to this latent factor. The BMI-dependent genetic factor explains only 15% and 34% of variation of adiponectin and leptin, respectively. These data indicate a differential contribution of genetic factors for the variation of adiponectin, leptin and BMI. More importantly, only a small portion of the genetic influences on adiponectin and leptin was attributed to BMI. Our findings provided more insight into the complex regulation of adiponectin and leptin in obesity.

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; The needle-like surface morphology evolution in oxygen plasma in combination with a secondary gas (Cl2, CHF3 or CF4) by inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) on a free-standing polycrystalline diamond was investigated. The addition of CF4 can produce trans-polyacetylene (t-PA), which is similar to the result when the pure O2 etching takes place, and generate compact needle-tip particles. However, the t-PA disappears with the introduction of Cl or H ions. The optimised etching parameters for the needle-like structure formation are as following: Cl2/O2 ratio 20% and RF-power (RFP) 100 W, where more compact and even nano-needles are realised with an average etching rate of 2 μm/min. The Cl2/O2 plasma etching results indicate that the time-dependent etching mechanism of diamond nano-needles results from (1 1 1) crystal plane selective etching and preferential graphitisation at the twin-plane boundary and dislocation area. ; This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2016YFE0133200) and the European Union's Horizon-2020 Research program (no. 734578). Special thanks to the national high-level university-sponsored graduate program of China Scholarship Council (CSC). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

Rice acreage estimation is a key aspect to guarantee food security and also important to support government agricultural subsidy system. In this paper, we explored a sophisticated method to improve rice estimation accuracy at county scale and we developed our approach with China Environment Satellite HJ-1A/B data in Hunan Province, a fragmented area with complex rice cropping patterns. Our approach improved the estimation accuracy by combing supervised and unsupervised classification upon decomposition of mixed pixels model, and the rice estimation results, validated by ground survey data, showed a close relationship (RMSE≈3.40) with survey figures, the estimated accuracy (EA) reached 83.74% at county level according to the sub-pixel method, and the accuracy can be increased about 12% compared to the pure-pixel method. The results suggest that decomposition of mixed pixels method has great significance to the improvement of rice acreage estimation accuracy, and can be used in mountainous and broken planting area.

Rice acreage estimation is a key aspect to guarantee food security and also important to support government agricultural subsidy system. In this paper, we explored a sophisticated method to improve rice estimation accuracy at county scale and we developed our approach with China Environment Satellite HJ-1A/B data in Hunan Province, a fragmented area with complex rice cropping patterns. Our approach improved the estimation accuracy by combing supervised and unsupervised classification upon decomposition of mixed pixels model, and the rice estimation results, validated by ground survey data, showed a close relationship (RMSE≈3.40) with survey figures, the estimated accuracy (EA) reached 83.74% at county level according to the sub-pixel method, and the accuracy can be increased about 12% compared to the pure-pixel method. The results suggest that decomposition of mixed pixels method has great significance to the improvement of rice acreage estimation accuracy, and can be used in mountainous and broken planting area.

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; As we know that more effective synthesis of diamond combined with physical and chemical properties of hydrogen termination in aqueous environment as well as device structure design can greatly facilitate the chemical and electrochemical applications of higher cost-performance diamond. For this purpose, the direct-current (DC) characteristics, surface reaction and reparation of a hydrogen-terminated DC arc jet plasma CVD polycrystalline diamond, which has a high cost-performance, were characterized by I-V experiments based on a FET-like structure device in multiple aqueous solutions. The variation trends of the I-V properties of device based on pH were similar in different aqueous solutions but could be affected by disparate ions (such as K + ions) or organic molecules (such as citric acid radicals or a benzene ring). Especially, owing to the founded replacement of hydrogen termination with hydroxyl (–OH), carboxyl radical (–COOH) or carbon-oxygen bond (–C–O–C–) in mixed solution, i.e., KHP + H 2 SO 4 (and +NaOH) solutions, the resistance of the device was remarkably increased from 13.57 kΩ to 95.78 kΩ. However, the raised resistance of surface reacted diamond (SRD) can be reduced prominently by repairing hydrogen termination through negative potential sweeps (NPS) at a low negative potential (−1 to −3 V) if the SRD was introduced as an electrode in a strong inorganic acid. What's more, the NPS repaired device, which subsequently stored for four weeks, was more sensitive than the original hydrogen plasma-treated diamond in aqueous solution environments. This repaired result was coming out of NPS re-formed C–H bonds with higher intensity. These findings will be the references of failure and reparation of diamond hydrogen termination in aqueous environment. ; This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No.2016YFE0133200 and 2018YFB0406500) and European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Scheme (No. 734578) and Nano-X experimental cooperation project (H008-2017). Special thanks to the national high-level university-sponsored graduate program of China Scholarship Council (CSC). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; The ultra-smooth surface and hydrophobic nitrogen-incorporated ultra-nano-crystalline diamond (N-UNCD) was directly synthesized by equilibrating the etching effect of OH radical and growth promotion of CN and CH in the 5% CH4 added H2 plasma environment with additional feeding of constant 0.16% O2 and from 0.3% to 3.3% N2 contents. The initially decreasing and then increasing trend of surface roughness, i.e., from as-grown appearance with pits to smooth and then to worm-like surface, was resulted from the offset and even suppressive effect on OH etched holes by the faster growth rate that under the help of more N2 promoted chemical groups of CH and CN. In addition, chemical composition, i.e., the large amount of sp2 phases (sp2/sp3 ratio up to 1.399) and H termination of N-UNCD surface (proportion was 75.54 ± 3.8%), played an another enhancing function for repelling water (contact angle from 81.3° to 93.8°) although the surface roughness decreased to smoothest of 1.36 nm in Root-Mean-Square (RMS) in the presence of N2 addition from 0.3% to 1%. However, continuing adding N2 to 3.3%, the formed surface (RMS 8.98 nm) with worm-like ultra-nano diamond crystallites together with higher H reconstructed sp2 contents (sp2/sp3 ratio rose to 1.478) further boosted the hydrophobicity, at which the contact angle was finally increased to 110.2°. Therefore, in C-H-O-N gas system, ultra-smooth and uniform N-UNCD surface with excellent hydrophobicity can be obtained by a one-step method without any post-treatment. ; This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFE0133200, 2018YFB0406500) and European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Scheme (No. 734578) and Nano-X experimental cooperation project (H008-2017). Special thanks to the national high-level university-sponsored graduate program of China Scholarship Council (CSC). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the world unguarded, some places outperformed others in COVID-19 containment. This longitudinal study considered a comparative evaluation of COVID-19 containment across 50 distinctly governed regions between March 2020 and November 2021. Our analysis distinguishes between a pre-vaccine phase (March–November 2020) and a vaccinating phase (December 2020–November 2021). In the first phase, we develop an indicator, termed lockdown efficiency (LE), to estimate the efficacy of measures against monthly case numbers. Nine other indicators were considered, including vaccine-related indicators in the second phase. Linear mixed models are used to explore the relationship between each government policy & hygiene education (GP&HE) indicator and each vital health & socioeconomic (VH&SE) measure. Our ranking shows that surveyed countries in Oceania and Asian outperformed countries in other regions for pandemic containment prior to vaccine development. Their success appears to be associated with non-pharmaceutical interventions, acting early, and adjusting policies as needed. After vaccines have been distributed, maintaining non-pharmacological intervention is the best way to achieve protection from variant viral strains, breakthrough infections, waning vaccine efficacy, and vaccine hesitancy limiting of herd immunity. The findings of the study provide insights into the effectiveness of emerging infectious disease containment policies worldwide.