Protective effects of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) derivatives on azoxymethane-induced colonic carcinogenesis in mice

Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), the major polyphenol in green tea and a functional food ingredient/nutraceutical with health-promoting properties, was structurally modified by esterification with butyric and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acid in order to improve its lipophilicity and hence bioefficacy in vivo. The lipophilic derivatives of EGCG so-prepared were evaluated for their anticancer activity against azoxymethane (AOM)-induced colon carcinogenesis in mice. Formation of colonic aberrant crypt foci (ACF) was monitored as the biomarker of colorectal cancer (CRC). It was found that oral administration of EGCG derivatives led to reduced size of ACF in the mouse colon. EGCG–DHA esters were more effective than EGCG-butyrate in inhibiting the formation of ACF. The total number of large colonic ACF was remarkably decreased by treatment with EGCG derivatives, especially by the EGCG–DHA esters, which showed a 100% inhibition of large ACF formation. Two tumor-promoting enzymes, iNOS and COX-2 were also inhibited by EGCG derivatives to various extents at the expression level. The results suggest that the lipophilic ester derivatives of EGCG are effective in inhibiting colon carcinogenesis and may be good candidates for colon cancer prevention/treatment.     

Concurrent Error Detection in a Polynomial Basis Multiplier over GF(2 m )

Eliminating cryptographic computation errors is vital for preventing attacks. A simple approach is to verify the correctness of the cipher before outputting it. The multiplication is the most significant arithmetic operation among the cryptographic computations. Hence, a multiplier with concurrent error detection ability is urgently necessary to avert attacks. Employing the re-computing shifted operand concept, this study presents a semi-systolic array polynomial basis multiplier with concurrent error detection with minimal area overhead. Moreover, the proposed multiplier requires only two extra clock cycles while traditional multipliers using XOR trees consume at least extra XOR gate delays in GF(2^m) fields. Chiou-Yng Lee received the Bachelor’s degree (1986) in medical engineering and the M.S. degree in electronic engineering (1992), both from the Chung Yuan university, Taiwan, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Chang Gung University, Taiwan, in 2001. From 1988 to now, he was a research associate with Chunghwa Telecommunication Laboratory in Taiwan. He joined the department of project planning. He taught those related field courses at Ching-Yun Technology University. He is currently as an assistant professor of Department of Computer Information and Network Engineering in Lunghwa University of Science and Technology. His research interests include computations in finite fields, error-control coding, signal processing, and digital transmission system. Besides, he is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer society. He is also an honor member of Phi Tao Phi in 2001. Che Wun Chiou received his B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Chung Yuan Christian University in 1982, the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University in 1984 and 1989, respectively. From 1990 to 2000, he was with the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology in Taiwan. He joined the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Ching Yun University in 2000 and 2005, respectively. He is currently as Dean of Division of Continuing Education in Ching Yun University. His current research interests include fault-tolerant computing, computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and cryptography. Jim-Min Lin was born on March 5, 1963 in Taipei, Taiwan. He received the B.S. degree in Engineering Science and the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, all from National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1985, 1987, and 1992, respectively. Since February 1993, he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung City, Taiwan. He is currently as Professor at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University. His research interests include Operating Systems, Software Integration/Reuse, Embedded Systems, Software Agent Technology, and Testable Design.     

Foodborne disease outbreaks caused by sucrose-nonfermenting and beta-galactosidase-deficient variants of Vibrio cholerae

We reported four foodborne disease outbreaks in Taiwan caused by sucrose-nonfermenting and by beta-galactosidase-deficient variants of non-O1, non-O139 Vibrio cholerae. The sucrose-nonfermenting vibrios collected from three outbreaks were biochemically identified to be V. mimicus and the beta-galactosidase-deficient vibrios from an outbreak to be V. alginolyticus. However, molecular methods including DNA-DNA hybridization, fatty acid profile analysis, and sequence analysis of 16S rRNA, oriC, pyrH, recA, and rpoA indicated that these vibrios should be V. cholerae. These V. cholerae variants carried two hemolysin genes, hlyA and hlx, but contained neither cholera toxin gene, ctx, V. mimicus hemolysin gene, vmh, nor thermo-directed hemolysin, tdh. The sucrose-nonfermenting variants of V. cholerae shared a high level of genetic relatedness; they could derive from a common clone. In our record from 1995 to date, this was the first time that V. cholerae variants were discovered as etiologic agents for foodborne disease outbreaks in Taiwan.     

Sol-gel prepared Ni-alumina composite materials

The sol-gel method has been utilized for the preparation of dense, homogeneous ceramic-metal composites with up to 50% Ni in Al₂O₂. Examination by SEM and TEM shows that the materials consist of micrometre-size Al₂O₃ with metallic Ni in isolated regions from 50 m down to nanometre size. The density ranges from 97% (10% Ni) to 74% (50% Ni) of the theoretical number. The hardness decreases from 18 GPa for pure alumina to 10 GPa for alumina containing 50% Ni. The fracture toughness increases significantly from K _1c=3–4 MPa m^1/2 to K _1c=8.5 MPa m^1/2. The elastic and shear moduli decrease from E=400 GPa and G=160 GPa for pure alumina to E=320 GPa and G=135 GPa when containing 50% Ni. The electrical resistivity is 10⁶m with 10 to 40% Ni but decreases drastically at 50% Ni content.     

Synergetic effect of hybrid boron nitride and multi-walled carbon nanotubes on the thermal conductivity of epoxy composites

This study investigates the synergistic effect of combining multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and boron nitride (BN) flakes on thermally conductive epoxy composite. The surface of the two fillers was functionalized to form covalent bonds between the epoxy and filler, thereby reducing thermal interfacial resistance. The hybrid filler provided significant enhancement of thermal conductivity, adding 30 vol% modified BN and 1 vol% functionalized MWCNTs achieving a 743% increase in thermal conductivity (1.913 W mK⁻¹, compared to 0.2267 W mK⁻¹ of neat epoxy).     

Blaming yourself,your partner,or an unexpected event: Attribution biases and trust in a physical coordination task

As robots enabled by artificial intelligence become more agentic, people may come to develop trust schemas based on a robot's actions and attribute blame to the robot as they would with a human partner. Trust and blame have yet to be investigated during dynamic physical coordination tasks despite the potential ramifications for manufacturing and service industries that could benefit from effective human–robot physical coordination. In anticipation of future human–robot work configurations, we developed a joint physical coordination task as a preliminary test environment for understanding trust and blame in a work partner. Fifty-five participants were asked to jointly balance and transport a weighted box along a fixed path, and we used this test environment to evaluate the impact of a surprising event on trust in a work partner, and attribution of blame following a negative performance outcome. Results indicate that the group who experienced a surprising event compared to the group who did not trusted their partner more, but there was no difference in the attribution of blame to themselves, their partner, or to the surprising event. Conversely, the group who did not experience a surprising event tended to blame themselves for the negative outcome. These findings suggest that environmental uncertainty may prompt people's attribution of blame across multiple parties, including themselves. Moreover, people may build trust in work partners through the shared experience of surprising events. Future work would benefit from adopting our study design to investigate whether these findings are extendable to human–robot joint actors.     

Manipulating Spin Exchange Interactions and Spin-Selected Electron Transfers of 2D Metal Phosphorus Trisulfide Crystals for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Because oxygen molecules in the ground state favor a triplet spin configuration, spin-polarized electrons at electrocatalysts may promote the generation of parallel spin-aligned oxygen atoms, enhancing oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics. In this study, a significant enhancement of OER performance is demonstrated by controlling the spin-exchange interaction and spin-selected electron transfer of 2D Co_xFe_1−xPS₃ (x = 0–0.45) van der Waals (vdW) single crystals through Co doping. The pristine FePS₃ exhibits antiferromagnetic orbital ordering, while the Co-doped FePS₃ exhibits the emergence of interatomic ferromagnetism due to doping-mediated magnetic exchange interactions. The coupling between Fe and Co ions in the Co-doped FePS₃ crystal allows the formation of efficient spin-selective electron transfer channels compared to the pristine FePS₃. The correlation of spin-exchange interactions and spin-selected electron transfers of 2D Co-doped FePS₃ crystals with a superior OER performance is further revealed by superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer, in situ X-ray absorption near edge spectra and density functional theory simulations. The result suggests that manipulating the spin-exchange interactions of 2D vdW crystals to enhance the spin-selected electron transfer efficiencies through doping is an effective strategy to boost their OER catalytic performances.