Fu Jen Catholic University

About: Fu Jen Catholic University is a education organization based out in Taipei, Taiwan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 6842 authors who have published 9512 publications receiving 171005 citations. The organization is also known as: FJU & Fu Jen.

Tetramethylpyrazine suppresses HIF-1α, TNF-α, and activated caspase-3 expression in middle cerebral artery occlusion-induced brain ischemia in rats

Abstract: Aim: To examine the detailed mechanisms underlying the inhibitory effect of tetramethylpyrazine (TMPZ) in inflammatory and apoptotic responses induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in rats. Methods: MCAO-induced focal cerebral ischemia in rats was used in this study. The hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), activation of caspase-3, and TNF-α mRNA transcription in ischemic regions were detected by immunoblotting and RT-PCR, respectively. Anti-oxidative activity was investigated using a thiobarbituric acid-reactive substance (TBARS) test in rat brain homogenate preparations. Results: We showed the statistical results of the infarct areas of solvent- and TMPZ (20 mg/kg)-treated groups at various distances from the frontal pole in MCAO-induced focal cerebral ischemia in rats. Treatment with TMPZ (20 mg/kg) markedly reduced the infarct area in all regions, especially in the third to fifth sections. MCAO-induced focal cerebral ischemia was associated with increases in HIF-1α and the activation of caspase-3, as well as TNF-α transcription in ischemic regions. These expressions were markedly inhibited by treatment with TMPZ (20 mg/kg). However, TMPZ (0.5–5 mmol/L) did not significantly inhibit TBARS reaction in rat brain homogenates. Conclusion: The neuroprotective effect of TMPZ may be mediated at least by a portion of the inhibition of HIF-1α and TNF-α activations, followed by the inhibition of apoptosis formation (active caspase-3), resulting in a reduction in the infarct volume in ischemia-reperfusion brain injury. Thus, TMPZ treatment may represent an ideal approach to lowering the risk of or improving function in ischemia-reperfusion brain injury-related disorders.

A Secure Chaotic Maps and Smart Cards Based Password Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme with User Anonymity for Telecare Medicine Information Systems

Abstract: Telecare medicine information system (TMIS) is widely used for providing a convenient and efficient communicating platform between patients at home and physicians at medical centers or home health care (HHC) organizations. To ensure patient privacy, in 2013, Hao et al. proposed a chaotic map based authentication scheme with user anonymity for TMIS. Later, Lee showed that Hao et al.'s scheme is in no provision for providing fairness in session key establishment and gave an efficient user authentication and key agreement scheme using smart cards, in which only few hashing and Chebyshev chaotic map operations are required. In addition, Jiang et al. discussed that Hao et al.'s scheme can not resist stolen smart card attack and they further presented an improved scheme which attempts to repair the security pitfalls found in Hao et al.'s scheme. In this paper, we found that both Lee's and Jiang et al.'s authentication schemes have a serious security problem in that a registered user's secret parameters may be intentionally exposed to many non-registered users and this problem causing the service misuse attack. Therefore, we propose a slight modification on Lee's scheme to prevent the shortcomings. Compared with previous schemes, our improved scheme not only inherits the advantages of Lee's and Jiang et al.'s authentication schemes for TMIS but also remedies the serious security weakness of not being able to withstand service misuse attack.

Investigating teachers’ adoption of MOOCs: the perspective of UTAUT2

Abstract: The number of the massive open online courses (MOOCs) around the globe is on the rise. Despite the popularity of MOOCs, they have received less attention from faculty members around the glo...