Radionuclide therapy using I-131-labeled anti-epidermal growth factor receptor-targeted nanoparticles suppresses cancer cell growth caused by EGFR overexpression

Introduction Anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted nanoparticles can be used to deliver a therapeutic and imaging agent to EGFR-overexpressing tumor cells. I-131-labeled anti-EGFR nanoparticles derived from cetuximab were used as a tumor-targeting vehicle in radionuclide therapy

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Unified deep learning architecture for the detection of all catenary support components

With the rapid development of deep learning technologies, researchers have begun to utilize convolutional neural network (CNN)-based object detection methods to detect multiple catenary support components (CSCs). The literature has focused on the detection of specified large-scale CSCs. Additionally, CNN architectures have faced difficulties in identifying overlapping CSCs, especially small-scale components. In this paper, a unified CNN architecture is proposed for detecting all components at various scales of CSCs. First, a detection network for CSCs with large scales is proposed by optimizing and improving Faster R-CNN. Next, a cascade network for the detection of CSCs with small scales is proposed and is integrated into the detection network for CSCs with large scales to construct the unified network architecture. The experimental results demonstrate that the detection accuracy of the proposed CNN architecture can reach 92.8%; hence, it outperforms the popular CNN architectures.Railway Engineerin

Generation Y Interactions: Making the Office Catch Up

The rapid development of information technology in the past decade has enabled the introduction of a number of new communication tools and platforms in everyday life, such as instant messaging, podcasting, blogging and social networking. These tools offer people new ways of interacting, enabling them to create, retrieve and broadcast large amounts of digital information, using a great variety of devices, techniques and media. As a result of this constant stream of information, people have become more socially active as well as become more capable and ready to integrate their virtual world with their physical world, using highly interactive devices, such as mobile phones, laptops and multi-touch tablets. So far, however, this kind of interactive behavior has mainly manifested itself in people’s private context, while in the more public work context the rich interactions that all these new technologies are offering do not seem to be supported to a great extent yet. Whereas office applications have increased sometimes dramatically in functionality, the ways of interacting with all these functionalities have evolved much more slowly. As a consequence, most office work is thus still done through the ubiquitous, almost 40-year old, set-up of keyboard, display and mouse, which only supports limited behaviors, such as keyboard tapping and mouse clicking. This lack of richness in interaction is becoming more evident, now that a new generation of workers is quickly entering the market. This so-called Generation Y, born in the 1980s and early 90s, are digital natives, who have experienced digital technology their entire lives. Thus they have developed new ways and habits of interacting with their (digital) world, putting very high demands on the applications, services, devices and networks that enable and support these interactions. An interesting challenge therefore presents itself to designers and researchers: How to bring the qualities of the interactions that people currently experience in the private context of their homes and friends into the more public context of their offices and colleagues? In this thesis this challenge is taken on through a number of studies, in which the following research questions were addressed: 1. What are Generation Y styles of interaction in home life and office work? 2. What are the interaction qualities that make up Generation Y styles of interaction? 3. How are these interaction qualities experienced within home and office context? 4. What are opportunities to design office tools or services that support Generation Y styles of interaction? 5. How are the interaction qualities of these new designs experienced? The research framework of this thesis distinguishes three major components: 1) people (Generation Y), 2) technology and 3) context (home vs. work). On the intersections of these three components are the interactions that are at the core of the research. From the beginning and throughout the whole research, prototypes that are rich in aesthetic, expressive and experiential quality were built and tested in real contexts. In the first phases of the project emphasis was in the exploration of new ways of interacting, while later on in the project the focus shifted to applying these new interactions within the office context. Chapter 2 addresses research questions 1 and 2 through literature review, as well as a qualitative study, aimed at exploring Generation Y styles of interaction, behaviors and interaction qualities. In a series of contextual interviews with office workers, we found that they put very high demands on the applications, services, devices, and networks that enable and support collaborative work. A set of examples of activities representative of what people currently do in their home and office context was gathered and grouped into a style of interaction, which we have labeled as ‘Generation Y’. This style of interaction seemed to be more prominent in the home situation than in the office context. Six interaction qualities (instant, expressive, playful, collaborative, responsive and flexible) were identified to make up the Generation Y style of interaction. The interviews strengthened the impression that these qualities were better represented in the home context, through activities such as gaming or chatting, than in the office context. Chapter 3 focuses on interactive technology design, designing and developing a number of experiential prototypes as a first exploration. It explores how to use interaction qualities to guide the design of Generation Y styles of interaction by combining functional, experience and technology approaches. In an educational setting a number of interactive prototypes were built by students in which specific interaction qualities were explored and demonstrated. From designing, building and testing these prototypes, we learned to use interaction qualities to explicitly guide and constrain the design process. Interaction qualities were found to be able to integrate all three design approaches, and thus can be introduced as a possible new principle into design research and education. Chapter 4 addresses research question 3. In follow-up interviews, we explored how office workers experienced and judged the interaction qualities in their home and the office situations in order to develop interaction design guidelines. The interviews and discussions showed that the six interaction qualities made sense to users and designers alike. Designers are more used to talk about interactions and qualities as abstract things, whereas other people will refer to their direct experiences. The six interaction qualities, together with their corresponding guidelines were subsequently used by the author and by design students, to design new types of interactions in the work context. Chapter 5 deals with research question 4 by implementing the interaction qualities into a new design, which uses the knowledge and experience gained from the previous chapters and integrates them into a working prototype. An office phone was chosen as the product to bring the Generation Y interaction qualities into an office context. The YPhone prototype was developed to demonstrate the interaction qualities with new ways of working, e.g., pushing down hard on a contact to send an urgent mood while calling. YPhone prototype is being developed using Max/MSP, Phidgets sensors and Arduino. A pair of prototypes was built to demonstrate and to evaluate the Generation Y interaction style in office work. Chapter 6 focuses on synthesis again to answer research question 5. This chapter presents findings on the prototype’s performance on the interaction qualities in a lab setup and in a real office work context. The YPhone prototype was demonstrated, evaluated and discussed at a series of venues, with respondents trying out scenarios such as placing an urgent call, or relaying an incoming message. The prototype worked in demonstrating the intended Generation Y interaction qualities. Moreover, the evaluation results indicated that the interactions would fit into work contexts and enrich people’s work situations. These findings indicate that the interaction qualities can give guidance in designing Generation Y type of interactions. Chapter 7 starts by reflecting on the answers on the five research questions. This is followed by a general discussion of the research: what has been learned and what are the possible impact of its results. The aim of this research was to contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the domains of interaction design and design research. By taking interaction qualities as a driver in the design and research process, the intention was to bring Generation Y interaction qualities from the home context to the work context. We believe and hope that interaction qualities can serve as a tool to guide the design process, and that the six interaction qualities will become a valuable instrument to guide designers in developing new office tools and applications that are rich and engaging in interaction.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin

Determining the Importance of Factors for Transport Modes in Freight Transportation

The road transportation has been overly used in freight transportation for decades, and it has undesirable effects on the environment. Nowadays, with the ever-increasing awareness of environmental issues which is mainly caused by road freight transportation, intermodal transport is thus promoted in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, even though many policies promoting the use of intermodal transport have been proposed, they have less impact to trigger shippers to shift mode from road transport to intermodal transport. The main reason might be that the real requirements of shippers towards transport mode are not well understood, hence this research is to investigate freight transport mode choice from their perspectives. The requirements for transport modes are abstracted into a set of factors, and knowing the perceived importance assigned to each factor is helpful to understand what should be improved in intermodal transport. In this research, the literature review regarding freight transportation mode is done aiming to generate an exhaustive list of decisive factors, and these factors are transport cost, door-to-door travel time, on-time reliability, flexibility, frequency, and reduction of CO2-emission. However, apart from these six factors, characteristics of the freight itself do play a role as a premise in freight transport mode choice, and factors are possibly perceived differently regarding different types of freights, therefore, four type of freights are chosen, which are freights from manufacturing industry, agriculture industry, perishable food industry, and chemical industry. Best-Worst method which is a Multiple Criteria Decision Making method is chosen to conduct data analysis, and online questionnaires are sent to the respondents which are divided into three groups: practitioners, industry experts, and professors. And, since this research mainly focus on two regions: Europe and the United States, all respondents are chosen from these two regions. The results of data analysis indicate an overall ranking of all factors, where transport cost is viewed as the most important, closely followed by on-time reliability, and reduction of CO2- emission is viewed as the least important. Moreover, through the comparison of the general perception of factors regarding four types of freights, it can be seen that one or more factors are perceived differently based on four types of freights. Besides, different groups of respondents do perceive specific factor differently, and perceptions of practitioners and professors differ a lot. Since these two types of comparison analysis have not been done in the previous literature, so this research is the first study to provide a perspective for understanding factors from the perceptions of different types of respondents and in terms of different types of freights. Besides, by including reduction of CO2-emission, this research provides an overview of this ever-increasing important factor.Technology, Policy and ManagementMaster Technology, Policy and Managemen

Researching interaction guidelines - Mapping playful quality to design interactive products

The interactions in IT supported activities in a Generation Y work context were studied and discussed, which general design guidelines have een revealed. However, further research about practical design guidelines hasn’t been performed. This study aims to serve as supplement of this part based on previous research. By applying contextual interviews of mapping interaction quality and Aesthetic Experience, some phenomena of interaction in work context has been revealed. By using sensitizing toolkits, we extract participants’ latent needs and expectation of future working types. In the end, practical design guidelines for designing playful interactions in work context are drawn. Designers could benefit from the result and utilize the guidelines, prototyping new interactive products. Meanwhile, researchers could apply or modify the sensitizing toolkits or sessions in order to come up with new insights for designing different interaction qualitiesIndustrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin

Leadership and governance tools for village sustainable development in China

The Chinese central government has recognized that village-government networks are promising for the sustainable development of rural villages. Though many local governments tend to deploy various hands-on or hand-off governance tools to influence the sustainable development of village-governance networks, the number of villages successfully achieving "good governance" is still rare. Therefore, this study empirically elaborates on the application of three classic tools of governance networks, analyzing how leaders of local government and village communities influence the effectiveness of these tools. The data were collected by snowball interviews, careful observations, and documentary analysis in Xiaonan village, a representatively successful case of rural-village governance networks in China. We detected that governance tools are often inadequately used and under-development in Chinese rural-village governance networks, accompanying a strong interaction between the effectiveness of tools and leadership. Excellent leadership is necessary for a successful rural-village governance network and its scaling-up.Organisation and Governanc

Leveraging spatial model to improve indoor tracking

In this paper, we leverage spatial model to process indoor localization results and then improve the track consisting of measured locations. We elaborate different parts of spatial model such as geometry, topology and semantics, and then present how they contribute to the processing of indoor tracks. The initial results of our experiment reveal that spatial model can support us to overcome problems such as tracks intersecting with obstacles and unstable shifts between two location measurements. In the future, we will investigate more exceptions of indoor tracking results and then develop additional spatial methods to reduce errors of indoor tracks.UrbanismArchitecture and The Built Environmen

Spiking Neural-Networks-Based Data-Driven Control

Machine learning can be effectively applied in control loops to make optimal control decisions robustly. There is increasing interest in using spiking neural networks (SNNs) as the apparatus for machine learning in control engineering because SNNs can potentially offer high energy efficiency, and new SNN-enabling neuromorphic hardware is being rapidly developed. A defining characteristic of control problems is that environmental reactions and delayed rewards must be considered. Although reinforcement learning (RL) provides the fundamental mechanisms to address such problems, implementing these mechanisms in SNN learning has been underexplored. Previously, spike-timing-dependent plasticity learning schemes (STDP) modulated by factors of temporal difference (TD-STDP) or reward (R-STDP) have been proposed for RL with SNN. Here, we designed and implemented an SNN controller to explore and compare these two schemes by considering cart-pole balancing as a representative example. Although the TD-based learning rules are very general, the resulting model exhibits rather slow convergence, producing noisy and imperfect results even after prolonged training. We show that by integrating the understanding of the dynamics of the environment into the reward function of R-STDP, a robust SNN-based controller can be learned much more efficiently than TD-STDP.Robot Dynamic