Browsing by SDGs "[SDGs]SDG16"

In 1894, following the First Sino-Japanese War, Qing Empire ceded Taiwan and Penghu to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki. To prevent the governance of Japenese, Taiwan officials and gentry established the Republic of Formosa. After a few months of resistance the Republic still collapsed. Whether the Republic of Formosa a country is controversial, this article tried to use the concept of intertemporal law to observe the international law of that time and examed the statehood of the Republic in modern international law. This article is in the view that the government of Republic of Formosa had independence, because the declaration of independence in accordance with formal independence and the tributary system explaned the words honored the Qing Empire thus meet the requirements of actual independence. But the effectiveness of government of the Republic of Formosa seemed insufficient, it may be in the period of States in Statu nascendi. Statehood in States in Statu nascendi is not firmly established, in this kind of period recognition can be a powerful evidence of statehood, the non-recognition could even negate it. But according to the declaratory theory the Republic of Formosa was exist in fact, thus the international person of the Republic of Formosa might exist as well, just couldn’t proved by other contrys’ recognition.

2-chloroethanol (2-CE, ethylene chlorohydrin, CAS 107-07-3) is a chemical once widely used in hastening grape vine sprouting among Taiwanese farmers. Due to its severe toxicity upon acute exposure, such use of 2-CE is now prohibited in Taiwan. However, because of its superior potency and cheaper price compared to 49% cyanamide, 2-CE is still being illegally used by some farmers, so cases of poisoning due to accidental ingestions or occupational exposures were reported from time to time. In 2011, a man murdered his ex-girlfriend with 2-CE due to an emotional entanglement in Nantou County; four persons died in this case, and the detection of 2-CE from the corpses was an important forensic evidence. To date, there are no standardized methods for the detection and quantification of 2-CE in human blood, because it is not a routinely-screened toxin. We developed a sensitive and specific method by employing static headspace gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS) for the quantitative determination of 2-CE in whole blood sample using 1-pentanol as internal standard. It was performed using selected ion monitoring (SIM) with quantitative ion (m/z 31) and qualitative ion (m/z 49, 80). We found that the method produced results with good linearity (r2=0.999, in the concentration range of 5-200 μg/mL), is sensitive (with the limit of detection and the limit of quantitation as 1 μg/mL and 5 μg/mL, respectively), and is easy to operate. To evaluate the stability of 2-CE, whole human blood samples were taken from 10 volunteers (with EDTA added as anticoagulant), and two different concentrations of 2-CE solutions (10 μg/mL and 100 μg/mL) were prepared from each sample. They were further divided into two groups, with one group stored at 4℃ and another stored at room temperature until analyzed in triplicate by headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS). After twelve weeks, the result showed that there were no significant alterations in the concentrations of the 10 μg/mL 2-CE solutions, whether stored at 4℃ (average 10.6 μg/mL with SD 0.86) or room temperature (average 10.5 μg/mL with SD 0.62). In the 100 μg/mL 2-CE solutions, no significant alterations of the concentrations were noticed when stored at 4℃ (average 93.6 μg/mL with SD 5.37); however, when stored at room temperature, it decreased significantly to 78.3 μg/mL in the 9th week and to 83.4 μg/mL in the 12th week. 2-chloroethanol has been assumed to be metabolized to chloroacetaldehyde (CAA) via alcohol dehydrogenase, and then to chloroacetae (CA) by aldehyde dehydrogenase. Both 2-CE and its metabolites should be detected in order to prove that it’s indeed 2-CE poisoning. Looking to the method of determining CA concentration in water for inspiration, we developed a simple and quick way that combines simultaneous liquid-liquid microextraction/methylation and HS-GC/MS for quantification of CA and 2-CE concentrations. Methylation and derivatization were completed in 3 minutes by shaking at room temperature. The methyl ester derivatives and the organic phase were completely volatilized by static headspace technique, and then analyzed by GC/MS. It seems that the concentrations of CA and 2-CE could be simultaneously determined in water, but further evaluations of LOD, LOQ, linearity and yield rate of the method in blood samples are still needed.

The ethnic conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia, is considered to be one of the sources of unrest in Caucasus. Despite sharing a common ethnicity and religion, South Ossetia and North Ossetia have become separate entities in Georgia and Russia, under different historical and geographical contexts. Unlike in North Ossetia, how political development flourished gradually under the protection of Russia, South Ossetia’s national course has progressed unsteadily in its long-term struggle with Georgia. The complexity of the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict heightens, as Russia and Georgia continue to cast variables into the dispute. As early as the Soviet period, the foundation of Russia and Georgia’s interests have shattered to an extent, that it finally collapsed not long after the end of the Cold War. Georgia, after several transitions of regimes, has rapidly shifted its ideology which eventually led to the deterioration of its fragile relationship with Russia. The 2008 Georgian reconnaissance craft incident, offered Georgia an opportunity to stand before Russia, which also brought the two adversaries into war. Georgia’s discontent with South Ossetia’s intercourse with North Ossetia, has led to an execution of preemptive military suppression, where simultaneously Russia also launched a military counteraction in response. As a result of asymmetrical military capacity, the 2008 Russia-Georgia war ended instantly, as a cease-fire agreement was carried out by France and signed by the two contestants. Russia then established official diplomatic relations with South Ossetia, where a series of discussion on how to cope with the aftermath of the incident, also took place within the United Nations Security Council, the Organization for Security and Co- operation in Europe and many other multilateral platforms. The military confrontation between Russia and Georgia, has become a crucial reference for Russia’s management of issues such as self-determination and separatism. This research attempts to examine the rationality of Russia’s policy decision, under the theoretical structure of the Rational Actor Model, by deconstructing Russia’s objectives, options, consequences and choice towards the South Ossetia incident. Taking into account other international stakeholders that may have been involved in the South Ossetia dispute, the challenge to contain all potential actors into one analytic body, therefore becomes a major task of this research. Whether or not Russia considers a military resolution, rather than diplomatic negotiation or non-intervention, the best possible solution to the conflict in South Ossetia, remains a crucial debate in this research. In addition, whether or not the result of the Russia-Georgia conflict is compatible to a maximized utility of national interests, also remains as the most essential course of this research.

This thesis dual with the conflict between Tang Dynasty and the Turks in the Agricultural- Pastoral mixed District from 7th to 8th century and its influence. Agricultural- Pastoral mixed District was a long and narrow transitional area from Liaoning to the west of Inner Mongolia and the north of Shaanxi. This thesis would focus on the nowadays middle part of Inner Mongolia and North of Shanxi, which was the location of Chanyu Protectorate during the Gaozong reign. The conflict between Tang Dynasty and the Turks in the Agricultural- Pastoral mixed District means, 1. fall of the First Turkic Khanate in early 7th century and the establishment of Jimifuzhou and 2. The war between Tang Dynasty and the Second Turkic Khanate in late 7th and the early 8th century. In history, nomadic states and agricultural China had conflicts in the Agricultural- Pastoral mixed District, if the latter won the war, it settled down the surrendered tribes in the same area to defense the outer nomadic tribes. Tang Dynasty created Jimifuzhou for the same reason. Tang Dynasty promoted the members of the Ashide clan(or tribe) and overheaded the members of the Ashina clan(or tribe), it caused the rise of Ashides that the Turks rebuilt their khanate under the leadership of Ashides. In the context of inner Asia history, the Turkic Alphabet was invented in the era of the second Turkic Khanate,, which mean the “civilizing” in the north of Gobi. The following Uyghurs built cities and introduced systemic religion, finished the progress of “civilizing”. Affected by Uyghurs, the Khitans displaced the original tribal communities, as a symbol of medieval period in inner Asia history. In the other hand, although the Tang Dynasty defensed itself from the invasion of Turks by organizing the Shuofang Army and building the three Shouxiangchengs, it came to weaken in 8th to 9th century, the local powers fall into the hands of warlords, Li Keyong controlled the north of Shanxi and the middle part of Inner Mongolia, his followers built the Sha-t’o dynasties. In conclusion, the path of Chinese and Inner Asian history in after 8th century was affected by the conflict between Tang Dynasty and the Turks in the Agricultural- Pastoral mixed District from 7th to 8th century in some reason.

Security Dilemma is a basic concept for Western international relation theory to explain global intense, opposition, and reason for conflict forming. As nations see each other as a threat and considered to be against itself is a reaction to the movement of the other side. On the country, the movement of the other side is considered to be a intention of one side to attack each other. Thus, .under the situation of twisted interaction, both sides have increase their cognition of aggression. Oppositely, the countermeasure to protect themselves has become more and more, making the situation moving like spiral. The uncertainty of each other’s intentions and every actions each other took because of the sense of insecurity, which amplify the hostility cognition to each other. Thus, Inimical Spiral has ascended and the ascension is the main cause of Inimical Spiral. The main purpose of this theory is to discuss the possibility of China and Japan to form security dilemma. Especially on adjustments of American security strategy, the change of security role of Japan, and the change of national policy of China, which all affect Sino-Japnese Relationships after 911 attack. Based on this reason, the theory is try to explain three questions below. 1.What’s Japan’s perception of the rise of China after 911 attack? And how does the perception influence its national security policy? 2.What’s China’s perception of goal of Japan’s ordinary state? And what’s it reaction to the changes of Japan’s national security policy after 911 attack? 3.Whether trying to analyze China and Japan’s understanding to each other’s behavior would cause Security Dilemma? And whether Sino-Japnese Relationships are competition or corporation in the future?

The major contribution of this paper is to propose a robust en-route filtering scheme for data authentication in sensor networks without relying on unrealistic assumptions. Copyright 2009 ACM.

Sensor networks are usually consist of thousands of resource-limited nodes and are deployed in a designated area without any fixed infrastructure. While the establishment of the pairwise keys between any pair of adjacent nodes to build a secure link remains the main concern in the design of key management protocols, malicious attacks aim at routing information, exhaust node's resource, and compromised secrets can misdirect the data flow or denial the network service with relatively small effort. Many mission-critic sensor network applications demand an effective, light, and flexible algorithm yet robust under attacks. Based on the LEAP+ scheme, we propose an improved LEAP+ by adding location information into the key establishment phase. By identifying the correctness of the id-location pair, our scheme effectively limits the Sybil attack and mitigates the damage of HELLO flood attack and node cloning attack. We furthermore propose an authentication phase in our scheme to defend possible replay attacks. The analysis shows that our scheme is more robust than LEAP+ with only minor increase of computation overhead. Copyright 2008 ACM.

Objective: This study evaluated the direct and interactive effects of regional-level and individual-level characteristics on methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), after considering the individual characteristics in Taiwan. Methods: This study utilized a survey research method. Opioid-dependent patients who participated in the outpatient MMT program in 2009 and met the eligibility criteria were recruited from five hospitals. The impact of MMT on self-perceived health was assessed by using questionnaires. This study assessed the participants' quality of life and treatment outcomes during 3-month follow-up visits, before evaluating the direct effects of regional and individual characteristics. Multilevel linear models were used to estimate whether regional levels influenced individual behavior and treatment outcomes. Results: Three hundred thirty-four opioid-dependent patients agreed to participate in this study. After the follow-up period, 127 participants completed the study (completion rate = 38%). Participants receiving MMT demonstrated significant improvements in psychological state, HIV risk-taking behavior, social functioning, and health. Regional characteristics, such as the lower than junior high school rate, low-income family rate, and related crime rates, of the study regions were negatively associated with improvements in drug abuse behavior. Conclusions: This study shows that MMT can significantly improve the HIV risk-taking behavior and health of the study participants. Disadvantaged regions, however, exhibit poor treatment outcomes. This study suggests actions to minimize the treatment variations between regions. © 2012 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

This study presents an approach to improving the (t, n) ring signature, which permits a signer to sign anonymously. Using fair partitioning to design a new (t, n) threshold ring signature based on bilinear pairing, the study develops a threshold signature method. The proposed method not only permits total signer anonymity, but also resist the signature of an anonymous signer from being forged even in a random oracle mode. Besides, the method is competent for protecting the identity and signature of a signer in regard to the anonymity property of ring signature. Therefore, this method trends suitable for those application complex, such as electronic voting and electronic cash, as well as for democratic management in which members with specific threshold value voice their opinion. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.

WiMAX is a telecommunication technology. It is based on IEEE802.16 family and provides the network service with large coverage, high data rate and mobility. Since IEEE802.16 series are connection-based wireless technologies, WiMAX is exposed to a special kind of DoS attacks which can target a specific victim connection without influencing the others. This paper will introduce this scrambling attack in WiMAX networks in detail and will provide a prevention approach. © 2009 IEEE.

Silicon nanowire-based biosensors have been identified as a promising biosensing technology. However, it suffers from the interface signal process to be applied into applications. In this paper, we utilize a readout circuit to directly transfer the signal obtained from a Si nanowire based sensing device into digital format. Based on the experimental results, cTnI and NT-proBNP, the biomarkers for acute myocardial infraction diagnosis, can be detected by the developed bio-sensing system in different concentration (320fM, 32pM, 3.2nM and 32nM). As a consequence, this work demonstrates the potential to translate Si nanowire biosensors device into applied bio-sensing systems. © 2014 IEEE.

E-cash is considered as one of the coming mainstreams of digital currency due to its excellent security properties. With its perfect anonymity, however, e-cash may be misused to commit crimes. In this paper, we propose a fair e-cash scheme, which improves the previous schemes by reducing the computational and storage overhead of the trusted third party. In addition, our proposed scheme also possesses the desired user efficient property where a customer only has to compute several modular multiplication and addition in coin withdrawing. Due to the rapidly growing of the Internet access via mobile units with low computation power, the user efficient property is of great worth. Thus this work can provide an efficient and practical payment mechanism for electronic commerce.

Abuse-related trauma remains a global health issue. However, there is paucity in nationwide reports. We aim to estimate the incidence of abuse-related trauma forward medical care and identify its characteristics and clinical course in Taiwan. Patients with trauma between 2005 and 2007 that occurred 3 months before or after a diagnosis of abuse were identified from a randomly sampled nationwide longitudinal health insurance database of 1 million beneficiaries. The patients' demographic data, injury pattern, and medical resource utilization were measured, stratified by age and sex, and compared using chi-square test. Risk factors of next trauma event were identified using Cox regression analysis. Ninety-three patients (65 females) were identified (mean age, 20.6 ± 16.3 years), including 61.3% under 18 years of age. For the first trauma event, 68 patients (73.1%) visited the emergency room, 63 (67.7%) received intervention, and 14 (15.1%) needed hospital care. Seven (7.5%), all less than 11 years old, had intracranial hemorrhage and required intensive care. Thirty-three (35.5%) left with complications or sequelae, or required rehabilitation, but all survived. Of the 34 victims of sexual abuse, 32 were aged less than 18 years. Men received more mood stabilizers or antipsychotics (50.0% vs 10.7%, P=0.030) and reeducative psychotherapy (25.0% vs 0, P=0.044). Risk factors for a next trauma event were injury involving the extremities (hazard ratio [HR]: 5.27 [2.45-11.33]) and use of antibiotics (HR: 4.21 [1.45-12.24]) on the first trauma event. Abuserelated trauma has heterogeneous presentations among subgroups. Clinicians should be alert in providing timely diagnosis and individualized intervention. © Copyright 2016 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

Background: Peer victimization contributes to an elevated risk of adolescent depression. Although theoretical evidence has noted that peer victimization may disrupt sleep and subsequently increase levels of depressive symptoms, this pathway has never been tested. This study explores a novel mechanism leading from peer victimization to depressive symptoms through sleep problems and considers whether the direct and indirect pathways vary by age and sex of adolescents. Methods: Data were from 4072 adolescents (2042 males, 2030 females; age range 14–19 years) residing in northern Taiwan. Mediation analyses were first conducted to understand the mediating role of sleep problems in the association between peer victimization and depressive symptoms for males and females, respectively. Moderated mediation analyses were then applied to test age differences in the direct and indirect pathways from peer victimization to depressive symptoms. Results: Sleep problems mediated the association between peer victimization and depressive symptoms in adolescent females but not in males. Age further moderated the indirect pathway from peer victimization to depressive symptoms through sleep problems, such that the mediating effects of sleep problems increased with age and were only significant in older females. No age differences were observed for the direct effects of peer victimization on depressive symptoms in either males or females. Limitations: Study was not designed to infer causality and all variables were assessed by self-report measures. Conclusions: Our analyses revealed age and sex differences in the link from peer victimization to depressive symptoms through sleep problems. Efforts to reduce depressive symptoms in adolescent females who have experienced peer victimization may be made more effective by targeting sleep problems, especially in older female adolescents. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Network security has been a serious problem in the Internet. To face this issue, network intrusion detection tools have become indispensable for computer systems and network gateways. In this paper we propose an embedded, multi-core aware network intrusion detection system (NIDS), which has the following features: 1) It integrates a novel multi-core aware packet capture module, called the MCA ring, and an NIDS. 2) It exploits a zero-copy mechanism to remove the overheads of packet copy processing from the network interface driver to the NIDS application. 3) It uses the concept of process and IRQ affinity to enhance the processing speed. The performance of NIDS under different packet capture modules in multi-gigabits networks has also been analyzed and presented in this paper. The results show that our integrated multi-core aware MCA ring and NIDS is effective for detecting network intrusion attacks in multi-gigabits networks. © 2013 IEEE.

Objective: Sexual assault is a form of interpersonal violence with significant consequential health problems. The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics of the victims, assaults, and associated physical and psychologic trauma of sexual assault cases in Taipei. Materials and Methods: Data were retrospectively collected from the medical records of sexual assault victims who visited the emergency department of a medical center in Taipei from 1991 to 2003. The characteristics of the victims, assaults, and factors associated with general body and genital trauma were analyzed. Results: There were 114 sexual assault victims, including 107 females and seven males, aged from 3 to 49 years (mean, 17.9 years). Overall, 72.3% of victims had evidence of physical trauma. Genital/anal injuries (53.3%) occurred more often than general body trauma (41.0%). The presence of general body injuries was positively associated with physical examination within 72 hours, and negatively associated with a victim age younger than 18 years. Genital/anal lesions were significantly more common in victims without prior sexual intercourse. Conclusion: The results of physical examination in sexual assault victims were related to early examination, age, and sexual experience. © 2010 Taiwan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Android malware detection has been a popularresearch topic due to non-negligible amount of malwaretargeting the Android operating system. In particular, thenaive Bayes generative classifier is a common techniquewidely adopted in many papers. However, we found thatthe naive Bayes classifier performs badly in ContagioMalware Dump dataset, which could result from theassumption that no feature dependency exists. In this paper, we propose a lightweight method for An-droid malware detection, which improves the performanceof Bayesian classification on the Contagio Malware Dumpdataset. It performs static analysis to gather malicious fea-tures from an application, and applies principal componentanalysis to reduce the dependencies among them. Withthe hidden naive Bayes model, we can infer the identityof the application. In an evaluation with 15,573 normalapplications and 3,150 malicious samples, our work detects94.5% of the malware with a false positive rate of 1.0%.The experiment also shows that our approach is feasibleon smartphones. © 2016 IEEE.