M Maldonado-Vega received her PhD in Science, specializing in Toxicology and Master of Science from Research and Advanced Studies Center, Politecnical National Institute (CINVESTAV-IPN) México. Her research lines are toxicology labor groups exposed to heavy metals and environmental pollution by solid waste. She currently works on microbiological aspects of air quality and phytoremediation processes of industrial effluents. She has developed different projects in research and technology, which have resulted in forum disclosure of more papers, technical reports and technology transfer. Currently, she has 18 papers in refereed journals and 20 international papers, and two books published on the subject, specialized footwear for diabetics, as well as toxicology, and books chapters published on heavy metals. She has participated with other research groups in short Ales School of Mines in France, The University of the Environment UFZ-Leipzig in Germany, in Mexico, involved with biomedical researchers at the Institute of UNAM, CINVESTAV-IPN Mexico unit and Irapuato, also University of Guanajuato. She is serving as an Editorial Member of several reputed journal like Journal of Nuclear Medicine & Radiation Therapy, Journal International Pollution, other Medical journals and Magazine of Biochemistry Education.

Pollution by fine dust from a recycling plant has an impact on living things. The adaptation of microorganisms is a biological alternative with a view to its biotechnological application in the treatment of industrial waste like the slags of a lead recycler. The present work was to isolate and characterize in vitro rhizospheric bacteria from surrounding soil to a Pb (NO3)2 tolerant lead recycling plant (Pb) and with capacity to produce indole compounds-indole acetic acid (AIA) and of sideróforos by means of the techniques of Salkowski and CAS-agar, respectively. We also identify bacterial isolates through the 16S rRNA gene. Ten strains tolerated concentrations between 0.6 and 1.8 mM Pb (NO3)2, of which seven strains had AIA production of up to 60 μg mL-1 and five strains had siderophore production of 0.02 to 0.054 μg mL-1. Qualitatively, the Streptomyces sp isolates presented a more intense orange halo than the Curtobacterium sp and Arthrobacter sp isolates, positive reaction indicator of siderophores production, similar to the positive control of Burkholderia cepacea. The production of siderophores of the hydroxamate type by the isolates L2, L48, L67, L138 and L23 was variable from 0.02-0.054 μg mL-1. The conclusions that there are bacterial strains associated to the rhizosphere of the vegetation cover around the recycling plant of Pb with a high potential to be used in phytoremediation processes. Tests of Ricinus communis plus inoculated with Streptomices sp and Bacillus sp in industrial slag leave guidelines to address an alternative in industrial waste.

Hui-Chuan Liao is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing, Fooyin University, who has completed her Master’s in Nursing Science from Penn State University. She has taught the long-term care nursing for more than 20 years as well as conducted the practicum teaching for more than ten years both in the elderly and psychiatric settings. Currently she and her teaching team members have developed the simulation scenarios and skills of the long-term care course for the RN-BSN students. She has published approximately 10 articles related to long-term care and simulation teaching as well as 10 conference papers in the domestic and foreign areas.

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a medical-labor-intensive critical care department equipped with specialized instruments, where most of these patients undergo endo-tracheal intubation. ICU is the strange and closed environment of providing 24 hours service for patients and research has indicated that 16-85% of ICU patients would have the delirium problems. However, if the healthcare professionals could identify the delirium problems of ICU patients earlier, they could prevent the serious consequences of disorientation, confusion, non-cooperation, unusual or irritable behaviors due to delirium problems. Consequently, the death rate of ICU patients with delirium could be decreased and their quality of lives might be increased. Additionally, the benefits of early detecting delirium problems of ICU patients included less nursing care needs, hospitalized day, mortality, but their functions could be increased. Nevertheless, the frequent interventions for delirium problems of ICU patients were sedation and restriction. For instance, in our liver ICU the patients often have the delirium problems by using the different sedations such as PCA, morphine, Haldol, Vena, Dormicum+Fentanyl, Valium with restriction; however, the delirium problems were still existed. Therefore, this study is to explore the delirium problems and approach methods of liver ICU patients in one southern medical center. Purposive samples included one head nurse and one nursing practitioner who will observe, assess, and record the delirium problems and approach methods of 20-30 liver ICU patients following the assessment scale of delirium patients for liver ICU patients developed by the research team. However, the consistency of both evaluators for the assessment scale of delirium patients will be built before conducting the assessment. Based on the information from the assessment scale of delirium patients, the research team would analyze the pattern and trend of approach methods for the liver ICU patients with the purpose of identifying the standardized care protocol. It is expected that the standardized care protocol of the liver ICU delirium patients could provide as the reference for the future clinical guidelines.

Yung-Hua Liu has completed her Master’s in Nursing Science from Department of Nursing, Fooyin University. She personally has worked in different nursing clinics for 13 years, including medical and surgical intensive care units, GI, Hemo, and RHC units. Currently, she has involved into the narrative studies with her adviser Ya-Lie Ku and published a series of conference papers on narrative studies. Now, she is the OPD Nurse working in the Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital.

The present study explored the life stories of nurses caring for patients with terminal illness. In this narrative study, five nurses who cared for patients with terminal illness were enrolled using a semi-structured guideline for data collection. Each nurse was individually interviewed twice. The first data analysis was based on the integrated content model reported by Lieblich, Mashiach, and Zilber (2008) for analyzing all data in context. The second data analysis was conducted following the category content model, which classifies contextualized experiences according to specific categories. The nurses were women aged 28–41 years, with various religious beliefs and no chronic diseases; their family members had undergone hospitalization experiences and had been enrolled in spirituality-related training courses; the nurses had a total average nursing experience of 12.5 years. The study identified five life themes, namely: maintaining rightness and hating evil in the true moment; wandering because of the lack of emotional bonds to homes; release from spiritual imprisonment to nirvana; a heart that contains no desire and that releases emotions as if they were water; and the enjoyment of spiritual traveling when boundaries are erased. Furthermore, the results revealed that the nurses shared their life stories with other nurses for promoting concepts of and passion for spirituality, and continued disseminating their stories and transforming their professional growth.

Ju-Li Ku currently is a PhD student in the Department of Chinese Literature, National Kaohsiung Normal University, and she has worked as the Senior Lecturer of Chinese Literature in the ROC Military Academic for more than 25 years. She has involved into the studies of Su Shi’s whole life regarding his philosophy and Chinese medicines. She hopes to transform the Su Shi’s body-mind-spirit self-healing menu into the health care system for improving the patients’ health based on his own autobiography.

The purpose and value of this paper is to learn the way of body-mind and spirit self-healing while people face the hardships of life. Special attention was given to the problems of disease prevention and treatment of the underprivileged, and often sent medicine to them. This article explores a demoted official to feel self-healing during planting medicinal herb, gaining medicine and decocting medicinal herb. In addition to medical treatment of the disease, the mind and self-healing power has more impact on the people. While using medicine to heal people, if we use motivated talk with them they can recover very easy. Through the study, health care professionals could consider how to merge the body-mind-soul of self-healing of medicine thought and regimen into improving the quality of patient’s care.

Ching-Liang Chu has completed his PhD from National Defense Medical College/Academia Sinica, Taiwan and Post-doctoral studies from School of Medicine, UCSF, CA, USA. He is the Associate Professor of Graduate Institute of Immunology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. He has published more than 40 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a reviewer of more than 20 reputed journals.

The inhibitory effect of immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM)-containing adapters DAP12 and FcRI -chain (FcR) has been found in many immune functions; however, the role of these adapters is not known in C-type lectin receptor (CLRs) response. In this report, we identified that FcR, but not DAP12, could negatively regulate the Dectin-1 responses in dendritic cells (DCs). Loss of FcR or both DAP12 and FcR enhanced the maturation and cytokine production in DCs upon Dectin-1 activation compared to normal cells, whereas DCs lacking only DAP12 showed little changes. In addition, increment of recall T-cell proliferation was observed in FcR-deficient mice. Examining the Dectin-1 signaling, we revealed that the activations of several signaling molecules were augmented in FcR-deficient DCs stimulated with Dectin-1 ligands. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the association of phosphatases SHP-1 and PTEN with FcR may contribute to the negative regulation of FcR in Dectin-1 activation in DCs. These results extend the inhibitory effect of ITAM-containing adapters to Dectin-1 response in immune functions, even though Dectin-1 contains an ITAM-like intracellular domain. According to the role of Dectin-1 in responding to microbes and tumor cells, our finding may have applications in the development of vaccine and cancer therapy.

Kuan-Yin Shen has received his PhD from Graduate Institute of Life Science of National Defense Medical Center in 2014. He accepted Post-doctoral fellowship in National Health Research Institutes in 2016. He has his expertise in the flied of Tumor Immunology to explore the mechanism of antigen processing for tumor vaccine development. To establish novel approach for immunotherapeutic tumor vaccines, he investigates the immune responses induced by lipo-immunogens, recombinant lipoproteins and lipo-peptides.

Cross-presentation is an important function of dendritic cells (DCs), which present exogenous antigens on MHC class I molecules to prime cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. The effects of toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 triggering on the cross-presentation of exogenous antigens by DCs remain unclear. Here, we used synthetic di-palmitoylated peptides and TLR2 agonist-conjugated peptides as models to elucidate the mechanisms of TLR2-mediated cross-presentation. We observed that the internalization of di-palmitoylated peptides by bone marrow-derived DCs (BMDCs) was promoted by TLR2 via clathrin-mediated endocytosis. The administration of these di-palmitoylated peptide-pulsed BMDCs eliminated established tumors through TLR2 signaling. We further investigated that the induction of antigen-specific CTL responses and tumor regression by di-palmitoylated peptides was transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) independent. Moreover, presentation of di-palmitoylated peptides by MHC class I molecules were inhibited in the presence of an endosomal acidification inhibitor (chloroquine) or a cathepsin S inhibitor (Z-FL-COCHO). The endocytosed di-palmitoylated peptide also passed rapidly from early endosome antigen-1 (EEA1)-positive endosomes to RAS-related GTP-binding protein 7 (Rab7)-associated late endosomes compared with their non-lipidated counterparts. Furthermore, we found that di-palmitoylated peptide-upregulated Rab7 expression correlated with antigen presentation via the TLR2/MyD88 pathway. Both JNK and ERK signaling pathway are required for upregulation of Rab7. In summary, our data suggest that TLR2-mediated cross-presentation occurs through the upregulation of Rab7 and a TAP-independent pathway.

En-Chih Liao is an Assistant Professor in Mackay Medical College, New Taipei City, Taiwan. His major degree is PhD from National Yang-Ming University, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan. His specialty is in fields of Microbiology, Basic and Clinical Immunology, Tropical Medicine, and Translation Medicine. His research interest focuses on the house dust mite allergen characterization, animal model of bronchial asthma, and biomedical wafer of diagnostic development. Special honors for him are 2011 Seoul International Invention Fair (SIIF) (Gold Prize), (Russian House Award) and 2014, 11th National Innovation Award.

Tropomyosin was found to be responsible for the cross-reactivity between shrimp and dust mite, and measurement of tropomyosin specific IgE was reported superior to shrimp for predicting clinically allergic reaction. The aim of this study is to identify the cross-reactivity of tropomyosin among shrimp-Pen m 1 and dust mite-Der p 10. A total of 120 subjects were enrolled in this study: 60 children (<18 yr), 30 middle-age adults (18-65 yr) and 30 elderly adult (>65 yr). In the group of middle-age adult, there were four non-shrimp exposure vegetarians recruited for further analysis. The specific IgE for shrimps and house dust mites were measured using automated microfluidic-based immunoassay system (BioIC®) diagnostic assay. Two recombinant allergens of dust mite (rDer p10) and shrimp (rPen m1) were generated to investigate their cross-reactivity. The cross-reactivity between shrimps and mites were determined by basophil histamine release (BHR) before and after allergen absorption. The results showed that there were more children sensitive to mite (91.7%) than to shrimp (28.3%). In the group of middle-age adult, the mite sensitivity rate was decreased to 56.6% and shrimp sensitivity rate increased to 73.3%. In the elderly adult, the mite sensitivity rate was decreased down to 46.6%, however the shrimp sensitivity remained constant (73.3%). The rates of cosensitivity to shrimp and mite were 26.6% in children group, 56.6% in middle-age adult group and 43% in elderly adult group. A total of 45 subjects who sensitized to both shrimp and mite were recruited for BHR assay. Similar results were observed in the BHR assay, the content of histamine stimulated by mites (69.3%) was significantly higher than shrimp (48.4%) in the children group. Converse results were showed in the elderly adult group, shrimp-stimulated BHR (61.0%) was significantly higher than mite (44.5%). In the inhibition BHR assay, the results showed the shrimp-stimulated BHR could be decreased significantly by absorption with Der p 10 in the children group. The mite-stimulated BHR could be absorbed significantly with Pen m1 in the elderly adult group. In the inhibition assay of Western blot and BHR, the positive IgE responses to shrimp could be absorbed by Der p10 from vegetarians’ sera. It indicated that the IgE positive response to shrimp of the vegetarians was originated from the cross-reactivity of tropomyosin from the dust mite-Der p10.

Graduate student of Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. Studying CD4 T cell differentiation in Molecular Immunology Lab of Sogang University, under prof Gap Ryol Lee.

Autoimmune diseases are controlled by the balance between T helper 17 (Th17) cells, which promote inflammatory reactions, and regulatory T (Treg) cells, which suppress effector T cells. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this balance are unclear. Here, we showed that casein kinase 2 (CK2) is a critical determinant of the Th17/Treg cell development. Inhibition of CK2 with a specific inhibitor, CX-4945, and shRNA-mediated knockdown both suppressed Th17 cell differentiation but reciprocally promoted Treg cell differentiation in vitro. Moreover, orally treated CX-4945 ameliorated symptoms of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) and inhibited Th17 cell infiltration into the central nervous system (CNS). Mechanistically, CX-4945 blocked the IL-6/STAT3 and Akt/mTOR signaling pathways.