Saline-infused radiofrequency ablation : a review on the key factors for a safe and reliable tumour treatment

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) combined with saline infusion into tissue is a promising technique to ablate larger tumours. Nevertheless, the application of saline-infused RFA remains at clinical trials due to the contradictory findings as a result of the inconsistencies in experimental procedures. These inconsistencies not only magnify the number of factors to consider during the treatment, but also obscure the understanding of the role of saline in enlarging the coagulation zone. Consequently, this can result in major complications, which includes unwanted thermal damages to adjacent tissues and also incomplete ablation of the tumour. This review aims to identify the key factors of saline responsible for enlarging the coagulation zone during saline-infused RFA, and provide a proper understanding on their effects that is supported with findings from computational studies to ensure a safe and reliable cancer treatment. © 2008-2011 IEEE

Dissecting the hype : a study of wallstreetbets’ sentiment and network correlation on financial markets

The emergence of online investment communities like WallStreetBets (WSB) on Reddit has revolutionised retail trading, characterised by collaborative, meme-infused market influence. This study analyses WSB’s ecosystem, examining how social sentiment, network structure, and user interactions impact stock volatility. Our analysis leverages sentiment analysis and network theory on millions of posts to understand community dynamics and their effectiveness in predicting stock prices. This research highlights the rising influence of social media in financial markets, especially with the recent surge in retail investors and their market impact. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024

“Do our diversities count?” Collaborative reflections on dwelling in academe’s intersectional shadowlands

The promotion of equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives has become routine within Anglophone universities in the Global North. However, critical race scholars have demonstrated that these well-intentioned policies are often formulated in ways that transact empty performatives, where discussions of racism are deemed too challenging. Moreover, the dynamics of social class are often missing from university diversity regimes. Using autoethnography as methodology, we suggest that the practices of “border crossings” of intersectional academics can help track the multidirectional impacts of institutional diversity and inclusion discourses within Australian universities. As class and race intermix, we operate in a metaphorical “shadowland”; our border criss-crossings and places of dwelling highlight the blurriness of privileged and marginalised identities, with some minoritised statuses seemingly too visible while others are obscured. Despite this, and albeit brought into being through largely unrewarded emotional labour, our emphasis is on demonstrating how intersectional subjects’ dialoguing in academe is a form of quiet resistance, offering hope for creating new becomings. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Dreaming of an indigenised Australia

This article offers a critical engagement with Billy Griffiths’s award-winning book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia as a departure point towards uncovering and examining a significant tradition of Australian cultural reflection and interpretation it terms, following Anthony Moran, indigenising settler nationalism. Tracing the genealogy of the indigenising settler-nationalist tendencies that shape Deep Time Dreaming, and to which the text itself contributes, the article situates Griffiths’s contribution as a recent and notable exemplar of a longstanding historiographical tradition that responds to the continuing crisis of settler-national belonging and legitimacy by attempting to incorporate the historical depth of Indigenous occupation into its own national, nationalising narrative, and so to indigenise the settler nation itself. The tradition is not Griffiths’s alone. When read in the context of a broader indigenising settler-nationalist tradition, Griffiths’s approach is revealed as neither unusually problematic nor uniquely complicit in the dynamics the article draws attention to. On the contrary, the genealogical reading of Griffiths’s work I offer here is important precisely to the extent that it facilitates an understanding of the underlying tendencies towards settler indigenisation that continue to condition Australian settler-national/ist historiography, and culture at large. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

A survey of commercial and industrial demand response flexibility with energy storage systems and renewable energy

The transition from traditional fuel-dependent energy systems to renewable energy-based systems has been extensively embraced worldwide. Demand-side flexibility is essential to support the power grid with carbon-free generation (e.g., solar, wind.) in an intermittent nature. As extensive energy consumers, commercial and industrial (C&I) consumers can play a key role by extending their flexibility and participating in demand response. Onsite renewable generation by consumers can reduce the consumption from the grid, while energy storage systems (ESSs) can support variable generation and shift demand by storing energy for later use. Both technologies can increase the flexibility and benefit by integrating with the demand response. However, a lack of knowledge about the applicability of increasing flexibility hinders the active participation of C&I consumers in demand response programs. This survey paper provides an overview of demand response and energy storage systems in this context following a methodology of a step-by-step literature review covering the period from 2013 to 2023. The literature review focuses on the application of energy storage systems and onsite renewable generation integrated with demand response for C&I consumers and is presented with an extensive analysis. This survey also examines the demand response participation and potential of wastewater treatment plants. The extended research on the wastewater treatment plant identifies the potential opportunities of coupling biogas with PV, extracting the thermal energy and onsite hydrogen production. Finally, the survey analysis is summarised, followed by critical recommendations for future research. © 2024 by the authors

Economic model predictive control for microgrid optimization : a review

Microgrids have emerged as a promising solution to integrate distributed energy resources (DERs) and supply reliable and efficient electricity. The operation of a microgrid involves the coordination of different DERs and loads. To date, various control methods have been developed to maximize the overall benefit while satisfying various constraints. Now it is urgently needed to understand and comprehend these approaches to further stimulate the deployment of microgrids. This paper presents an overview for researchers on economic model predictive control (EMPC) methods of microgrids to achieve a variety of objectives such as cost minimization and benefit maximization. The fundamental principle of the EMPC theory is explained in detail. The most popular and important strategies applied to stand-alone microgrids, grid-connected microgrids, residential smart homes, as well as networked microgrids are discussed. Future trends are also highlighted. © 2010-2012 IEEE

Transcendental groups

In this note we introduce the notion of a transcendental group, that is, a subgroup G of the topological group C of all complex numbers such that every element of G except 0 is a transcendental number. All such topological groups are separable metrizable torsion-free abelian groups. If

The linkedness of cubical polytopes : beyond the cube

A cubical polytope is a polytope with all its facets being combinatorially equivalent to cubes. The paper is concerned with the linkedness of the graphs of cubical polytopes. A graph with at least 2k vertices is k-linked if, for every set of k disjoint pairs of vertices, there are k vertex-disjoint paths joining the vertices in the pairs. We say that a polytope is k-linked if its graph is k-linked. In a previous paper [3] we proved that every cubical d-polytope is ⌊d/2⌋-linked. Here we strengthen this result by establishing the ⌊(d+1)/2⌋-linkedness of cubical d-polytopes, for every d≠3. A graph G is strongly k-linked if it has at least 2k+1 vertices and, for every vertex v of G, the subgraph G−v is k-linked. We say that a polytope is (strongly) k-linked if its graph is (strongly) k-linked. In this paper, we also prove that every cubical d-polytope is strongly ⌊d/2⌋-linked, for every d≠3. These results are best possible for this class of polytopes

Is doctor google our best choice for healthcare information recommendations? A duty of care to improve processes

Living with a life-long medical condition or a serious disease requires a lot of research skills on how to access the best quality information to inform better decision-making of healthcare consumers. Relatives, friends, and carers are often sharing the stress and responsibility of looking after the healthcare of consumers. They feel personally responsible for meeting not only physical, but also information needs of people they care for. With the internet being almost a default source of a wide variety of information, and health information in particular, this interview-based chapter reflects on what are the opportunities and challenges for information and communication technology (ICT) researchers who aim to address the personalized needs for quality healthcare information provision. Professor Frada Burstein is a leading information technology researcher specializing in smart information portals in health care. Her research has contributed to the transformations in web-based information systems architecture to empower patients. She was named the ICT Educator of the Year for her pioneering work in knowledge management and ICT education. In this interview with Grant Meredith, she reveals how her intense experiences caring for her father led her to focus her intelligent systems research toward health care

A new systemic disease mouse model for glioblastoma capable of single-tumour-cell detection

Background: Glioblastoma is characterised by extensive infiltration into the brain parenchyma, leading to inevitable tumor recurrence and therapeutic failure. Future treatments will need to target the specific biology of tumour recurrence, but our current understanding of the underlying mechanisms is limited. Significantly, there is a lack of available methods and models that are tailored to the examination of tumour recurrence. Methods: NOD-SCID mice were orthotopically implanted with luciferase-labelled donor U87MG or MU20 glioblastoma cells. Four days later, an unlabelled recipient tumor was implanted on the contralateral side. The mice were euthanised at a humane end-point and tissue and blood samples were collected for ex vivo analyses. Results: The ex vivo analyses of the firefly-labelled MU20 tumours displayed extensive invasion at the primary tumour margins, whereas the firefly-labelled U87MG tumours exhibited expansive phenotypes with no evident invasions at the tumour margins. Luciferase signals were detected in the contralateral unlabelled recipient tumours for both the U87MG and MU20 tumours compared to the non-implanted control brain. Remarkably, tumour cells were uniformly detected in all tissue samples of the supratentorial brain region compared to the control tissue, with single tumour cells detected in some tissue samples. Circulating tumour cells were also detected in the blood samples of most of the xenografted mice. Moreover, tumour cells were detected in the lungs of all of the mice, a probable event related to haematogenous dissemination. Similar results were obtained when the U87MG cells were alternatively labelled with gaussian luciferase. Conclusions: These findings describe a systemic disease model for glioblastoma which can be used to investigate recurrence biology and therapeutic efficacy towards recurrence. © 2024 by the authors