Japanese eels are widely distributed in northeast Asian countries, and they have a catadromous life history. In this article, we explored whether Japanese elvers have temporal genetic structure and whether the population went through population expansion during the Pleistocene. In total, 273 specimens were collected from the Tanshui River estuary, northern Taiwan, in 1989-2008. The highly variable region of the mitochondrial DNA D-loop was cloned and sequenced. A genealogy was reconstructed based on the Neighbor-joining method, and results showed an unobvious yearly clade and a high level of haplotype diversity, but low mean nucleotide diversity among samples. Most of the pairwise F (ST) appeared statistically insignificant. These genetic parameters suggested a lack of temporal population structure combined with a sustainable high effective population size of Japanese eels. Negative values of Tajima's D and Fu's F (s) appeared in all samples with high significance. The mismatch distribution, skyline plot, and minimum spanning network indicated that historical population expansion of the Japanese eel could be traced back to the Pleistocene. Results of this study imply the Japanese eel has a complex life history, and the temporal structure of Japanese eels should be continually monitored in the future

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Risk factors of recurrence and distant metastasis of acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) are of great interest for the high percentage of ALM in cutaneous melanoma in Asian populations. This single-center retrospective cohort including 177 patients with localized melanoma diagnosed from 2004 to 2020 aims to identify adverse predictors in cutaneous melanoma in Taiwan, with a focus on ALM. The relationship between clinicopathological features and outcomes, including incidences of recurrence and distant metastasis in 5 years from diagnosis, was analyzed. This study included 124 patients (70.1%) with ALM and 53 (29.9%) with non-ALM melanoma. Regarding clinicopathological characteristics, ALM patients were diagnosed at an older age and received sentinel lymph node biopsies (SLNBs) more often, while adjacent melanocytic nevi were more prevalent in non-ALM patients. With respect to prognostic implications of clinicopathological features, in ALM, implementation of SLNB was associated with a lower 5-year distant metastasis rate. Thickness of melanoma lesions over 4 mm, ulceration, and neurotropism, were related to both higher 5-year recurrence and distant metastasis rates. With regard to non-ALM patients, diagnoses made at or over 65 years old was linked to a higher 5-year recurrence rate, whereas ulceration was associated with both higher 5-year recurrence and distant metastasis rates. In conclusion, several clinicopathological characteristics have been identified to be associated with poor prognosis of cutaneous melanoma, especially ALM.

Syndromic hereditary hearing impairment (HHI) is a clinically and etiologically diverse condition that has a profound influence on affected individuals and their families. As cutaneous findings are more apparent than hearing-related symptoms to clinicians and, more importantly, to caregivers of affected infants and young individuals, establishing a correlation map of skin manifestations and their underlying genetic causes is key to early identification and diagnosis of syndromic HHI. In this article, we performed a comprehensive PubMed database search on syndromic HHI with cutaneous abnormalities, and reviewed a total of 260 relevant publications. Our in-depth analyses revealed that the cutaneous manifestations associated with HHI could be classified into three categories: pigment, hyperkeratosis/nail, and connective tissue disorders, with each category involving distinct molecular pathogenesis mechanisms. This outline could help clinicians and researchers build a clear atlas regarding the phenotypic features and pathogenetic mechanisms of syndromic HHI with cutaneous abnormalities, and facilitate clinical and molecular diagnoses of these conditions.

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For enhancing our existing conference systems product of embedded chairman/delegate units, a low cost embedded chairman/delegate units design is proposed in this paper, which is capable of digital audio processing for digital conference system. In addition, the functionality of an automatic gain control (AGC), a dynamic range compression (DRC), and a 2.5W embedded class-D speaker amplifier is also supported in this design.

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