The influence of footwear sole hardness on slip initiation in young adults

Slips occur when the friction demand of an individual exceeds the friction available from the shoe/floor interface. Shoe sole hardness is one of the factors thought to influence friction demand and available friction. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of footwear sole hardness on the probability of slip initiation. Forty young adults were randomized into a hard or soft sole group. Slip events during the slippery floor trials were documented using a motion analysis system. The proportion of slip events in the hard sole group was greater than that in the soft sole group. The difference between utilized and available friction accurately predicted 90% of slip outcomes. Our data support the premise that individuals wearing shoes with harder soles are at greater risk for slipping. The results of this study suggest that shoe sole hardness should be considered when designing footwear aimed at decreasing slip risk.     

Developing the Digital Content Industry in Taiwan

The average global annual growth rate of digital content products has grown exponentially. This is because of the technology advancement, cost reduction, and availability of the enabling technologies, e.g., digital processing, digital storage, and digital telecommunications. The development of the digital content industry (DCI) requires a strong cultural background, creative ideas, respect of intellectual property rights, and telecommunications infrastructure, which are all dependent on government supportive policies. This study summarizes the government policies, progress, and obstacles in the development of Taiwan's DCI and compares these subjects with other countries, including the United States, EU countries, Japan, and Korea. In this paper, Taiwan's DCI opportunities and challenges will be discussed, and strategies and recommendations will be provided, based on Taiwan's unique resources and competitive advantages.     

Public participation and the concept of space in environmental governance: An application of PPGIS

Citizen participation ought to be important in environmental governance. However, environmental issues are usually defined as science‐related ones, wherein expert knowledge is more important than the opinions, demands or needs of citizens. On the other hand, environmental issues involve spatial dimensions, the geographic characteristics of which require specific techniques to analyse. PPGIS is applied to study An‐Shun, the site of a well‐known pollution case in Taiwan, to reveal, through a participatory process, the perception of space of citizens of a nearby community. The results of this study suggest that the government needs to ensure more citizen participation in its future plans for the decontamination and renovation of the An‐Shun site. Lay knowledge or citizen perceptions of space should not replace scientific knowledge, but can supplement it. They are additional views that ought to be considered by government agencies in dealing with environmental issues. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Copyright and live streaming of sports broadcasting

The inception of live streaming technology has rapidly changed the way in which sporting events are transmitted. The unauthorised retransmission of live sports telecasts over the Internet has become one of the main concerns in sports media, where broadcasters have lost billions of dollars’ worth of sports broadcasting contracts and sponsorship deals. The scale of this problem has caused serious harm, both to sports rights-holders and to broadcasters. Legislative reforms are required in order to balance the public’s ever-increasing desire for convenient ways to view digital materials against the legal rights of the owners of the material, while also aiming to maintain a forward-looking perspective in an attempt to foresee potential technological advancements that may pose considerable challenges to the traditional copyright law. This article analyses how the concept of live streaming of live sports has changed the legal landscape.     

When Shadow Banking Can Be Productive: Financing Small and Medium Enterprises in China

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of China’s economy, yet they face challenges in accessing bank credit. SMEs thus rely on a wide range of alternative sources, including informal finance, online peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, registered non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and underground financiers. This article distinguishes among different types of ‘shadow banking’ to clarify popular misconceptions about the nature of risks associated with informal financial intermediation in China. Given their familiarity with local business conditions and needs, regulated and well-managed NBFIs could provide an enduring foundation for commercialised financial intermediation serving SMEs.     

Sequence analysis of STR polymorphisms at locus ACTBP2 in the Taiwanese population

A highly polymorphic sequence structure is reported in the human beta-actin related pseudogene 2 (ACTBP2) (SE33) locus in members of the Taiwanese Han population. A total of 100 unrelated members of the Taiwanese Han population were used in the study. Alleles that shared the same size but differ in their sequence are described to allow for inter laboratory sharing of data. PCR products amplified from this locus were separated by single-strand conformation polymorphism electrophoresis, the single-stranded DNA bands were excised from the gels, a second amplification performed, and then the PCR products were sequenced. All the alleles differed by either 2 or 4 bp. Sequence variations were observed as deletions or insertions in the repeat units AG (or AA) and AAAG. Additionally, transitions in the flanking regions were recorded. A total of 27 alleles with 71 associated genotypes were recorded if the alleles were defined by size, but 68 alleles with 88 associated genotypes were noted with the alleles were scored on the basis of sequence variation. The power of discrimination (Pd) of this single locus was 0.9874 making the human ACTBP2 a good alternative marker for individual identification and paternity testing.     

Determinants of Household Saving in Taiwan: Growth,Demography and Public Policy

This article examines the determinants of household saving in the process of economic development, in the light of the Taiwanese experience during the period 1952–99. The methodology involves the estimation of a saving rate function derived within the life-cycle framework. It is found that the household saving rate rises with both the level and the rate of growth of household disposable income. The real deposit rate has a significant positive impact, but the magnitude of the impact is modest. Public saving seems to crowd out private saving, but less than proportionately. While both old- and young-dependency in population have a negative impact on the saving rate, the magnitude of the impact of the former is far greater than that of the latter. Increased availability of social security provisions and enhanced credit availability also seem to reduce saving. As regards methodological implications, the study casts doubt on the usual practice of lumping together public, corporate and household savings in saving analysis, and points to the need for separating young dependence and ageing as two distinct aspects of the influence of population dynamics on saving behaviour.     

Allelic alterations at the STR markers in the buccal tissue cells of oral cancer patients and the oral epithelial cells of healthy betel quid-chewers: an evaluation of forensic applicability

Although cancerous specimens are usually not used in forensic DNA typing, they might be forcibly employed under certain instances. On the other hand, though the oral epithelial samples have been applied to forensic identification, the great popularity of betel quid (BQ)-chewing in Taiwan, which is known to be a risk factor leading to an oral cancer, makes this application questionable. The DNA stability of nine short tandem repeat (STR) markers (the AmpFlSTR kit) was first investigated and then used to evaluate the forensic appropriateness of the oral samples of both healthy BQ-chewers and the archived clinical specimens from oral cancer patients. The analyses were performed on buccal samples from 100 BQ-chewers and 100 oral cancer patients, as well as their paired peripheral blood samples, and a group of 100 non-BQ-chewers were used for the control. In the group of 100 oral cancer patients, two types of DNA instability were found. They were major allelic imbalance, and allelic alterations including the expansion, the contraction and the un-classified type (i.e. can not be confirmed as the expansion or the contraction). The overall percentage of the cancerous subjects demonstrating DNA instability was 33% (five patients possessing both types of DNA instability). Both types of DNA instability showed a tendency of increasing with the severity of the pathological stage of oral cancer. Forty-four occurrences of major allelic imbalance were found from 21 cancer patients. The statistical result revealed that there was no significant difference in the allelic imbalanced occurrence among the nine STR loci. Allelic alterations were found in 17 patients, within which 12 individuals had the expansion, five had the contraction, and three were the un-classified type. Further, among these 17 patients, three were found to acquire multiple allelic alterations at multiple loci. In the group of 100 unrelated healthy BQ-chewers, two loci with major allelic imbalance were detected. However, the two imbalanced alleles were virtually half lost, and could still be recognized as heterozygous alleles. The statistical results of ANOVA, chi(2), and Scheffe tests indicated that the means of allelic imbalance at the nine STR loci of the oral cancerous group revealed a significant difference from those in the control group. Our results suggest that oral cancer tissues cannot be used as references for forensic purposes using the PCR-based STR systems, whereas the oral swabs from healthy BQ-chewers can be employed, but should be done with caution.     

A highly polymorphic STR locus in Cannabis sativa

We report on the first short tandem repeat (STR) locus to be isolated from the plant Cannabis sativa. The STR locus, isolated by a hybrid-capture enrichment procedure, was found to contain a simple sequence repeat motif of 6 bp. This 6 bp repeat motif showed no variation in repeat length but with minor variations in repeat unit sequences. The data show the locus to be highly polymorphic with the number of repeat units ranging from 3 to 40 in 108 screened samples. The observed heterozygosity was approximately 87.04%. The forward and reverse primers (CS1F and CS1R) produced no PCR products in cross-reaction study from 20 species of plants, including highly related species such as Humulus japonicus and Nicotiana tabacum. This hexanucleotide repeat DNA locus could be used to identify cannabis samples and predict their genetic relationship as the test is specific to C. sativa and is highly reproducible.