Browsing by Author "Huang, Y.-H."

Manipulating orientation of organic emitters remains a formidable challenge in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Here, expansion of the acceptor plane of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters was demonstrated to selectively modulate emitting dipole orientation. Two proof-of-the-concept molecules, PXZPyPM and PXZTAZPM, were prepared by introducing a planar 2-phenylpyridine or 2,4,6-triphenyl-1,3,5-triazine substituent into a prototypical molecule (PXZPM) bearing a pyrimidine core and two phenoxazine donors. This design approach suppressed the influence of substituents on electronic structures and associated optoelectronic properties. Accordingly, PXZPyPM and PXZTAZPM preserved almost the same excited states and similar emission characteristics as PXZPM. The expanded acceptor plane of PXZPyPM and PXZTAZPM resulted in a 15 to 18% increase in horizontal ratios of emitting dipole orientation. PXZPyPM supported its green device exhibiting an external quantum efficiency of 33.9% and a power efficiency of 118.9 lumen per watt, competitive with the most efficient green TADF OLEDs reported so far. © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Study Objectives: Reliable sleep staging is difficult to obtain from home sleep testing for diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), especially when it is self-applied. Hence, the current study aimed to develop a single frontal electroencephalography-based automatic sleep staging system (ASSS). Methods: The ASSS system was developed on a clinical dataset, with a high percentage of participants with OSA. The F4-M1 signal extracted from 62 participants (62.9% having OSA) was used to build a four-stage classifier. Performance of the ASSS was tested in a holdout set of 58 patients (60.3% having OSA) with epoch-by-epoch and whole-night agreement for sleep staging compared with expert scoring of polysomnography. Results: Mean all-stage percentage agreement was 75.52% (95% confidence interval, 72.90 to 78.13) (kappa 0.62; 95% confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.65), with mean percentage agreement for wake, light sleep, deep sleep (DS), and rapid eye movement of 78.04%, 70.97%, 83.65%, and 75.00%, respectively. The whole-night agreement was good-excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.74 to 0.88) for sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, total sleep time, and sleep efficiency. Compared to the non-OSA subset, the OSA subset had lower agreement for DS. Conclusions: Our results indicate that a single-channel F4-M1 based ASSS was sufficient for sleep staging in a population with a high percentage of participants with OSA. © 2019 American Academy of Sleep Medicine. All rights reserved.

Extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that mediate resistance to newer β-lactam antibiotics, including extended-spectrum cephalosporins and monobactams. The production of ESBL is primarily plasmid mediated, and such plasmids often comprise the genes that encode resistance to other classes of antimicrobials, such as aminoglycosides and fluoroquinolones. Therefore, ESBL-producing microorganisms leave clinicians with limited therapeutic options in both human and veterinary medicine. Compared with human medicine, information regarding ESBL-producing microorganisms is limited in veterinary medicine. We screened for ESBL-producing Escherichia coli in dogs and cats admitted to National Taiwan University Veterinary Hospital, Taipei, from 2014 to 2017 and further analyzed the genotypes and phylogenetic traits of these ESBL producers. Double disk tests specified by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute were performed on 283 E. coli isolates and revealed a total of 65 E. coli (54 from dogs and 11 from cats) with the ESBL phenotype (22.8%). blaCTX?M?1group and blaCTX?M?2group were the most commonly identified ESBL gene groups. blaCTX?M?55 was the main ESBL gene within the blaCTX?M?1group, whereas the blaCTX?M?2group contained only blaCTX?M?124. The ESBL-producing E. coli were all resistant to ampicillin. The resistance rate to ceftiofur, doxycycline, enrofloxacin, and ciprofloxacin was 93.8, 73.8, 80, and 78.5%, respectively. Of the antibiotics tested, greater sensitivity to imipenem and gentamicin was noted. Multilocus sequence typing indicated that ST457, ST131, and ST648 were the most common sequence types. Our study identified eight ST131/O25b isolates, which is a global zoonotic clone of public health concern. The major ESBL genes of these clones were blaCTX?M?174 and blaCTX?M?194. Because companion animals such as dogs and cats are in close contact with humans, the characterization of ESBL producers originating from them is crucial from the perspective of both public health and veterinary medicine. ? Copyright ? 2020 Huang, Kuan and Yeh.