Web Services for forward integration in international tourism supply chains: A case study of tourism in Thailand

International tourism is a highly competitive and information-intensive industry. Customers need volumes of information for decision aids. Moreover, the decision-making processes are quite sensitive to the variables of personal preferences, the tourist industrial ecosystem, the legal regulations and political environments of destinations, the regional or global economic situations, the natural matters, and so on. Hence, the owners of tourism are motivated to upgrade the competitiveness of their businesses with information technologies. This paper intends to design the architecture of Web Services in international tourism, which can contribute to the forward integration in international tourism supply chains. First, the authors conduct an in-depth case study of a regional tour operator in Thailand. In the case study, we examine the strength, weakness, challenges visions, and strategic approaches of international tourism, and their relationships with the information systems in the tourist business. Then, this paper designs the architecture of Web Services in international tourism. The architecture is expected to improve the information transparency through the global tourism supply chain, construct business-to-business collaboration mechanism, provide efficient and effective information to tourists, and consequently contribute to forward integration in international tourism supply chains

The calibration of sinusoidal excitation force of piezoelectric ceramic exciter

Piezoelectric ceramic exciter (PCE) have been used to experimentally study on the inherent and damping characteristics of thin-walled structures. However, due to its unknown excitation force level, it can not be applied on more practical cases in which accurate test of dynamic response is urgently needed. This research combines theory with experiment to calibrate sinusoidal excitation force generated by PCE. Firstly, a feedback attenuator was developed to help data acquisition instrument securely capture high-voltage excitation signal applied on PCE by high-voltage piezoelectric amplifier; Secondly, experimental research was conducted using a PCE, of type P-885.10 produced by PI in Germany, as object based on the PCE excitation feedback system to experimentally analyze its major influences on linear excitation capability, consequently a linear excitation equation was proposed to better regulate PCE to produce linear sinusoidal excitation signal; thirdly, a calibration method was proposed to exactly determine the level of sinusoidal excitation force of PCE based on the dynamics model of the cantilever beam excited by PCE, and its calibration principle and calibration process was explained in details. Finally, practicability and effectiveness of this calibration method was demonstrated by a calibration case. The results showed that if both of output signal voltage and excitation frequency meet the linear excitation equation, the concerned sinusoidal excitation force of PCE has a linear relationship with output signal voltage

If the HR department doesn’t encourage initiative, unit leaders can

Allowing people to learn from their mistakes is key, write Ying Hong, Hui Liao, Steffen Raub and Joo Hun Ha

A novel HIV-1 restriction factor that is biologically distinct from APOBEC3 cytidine deaminases in a human T cell line CEM.NKR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Isolation of novel retroviral restriction factors will open new avenues for anti-HIV/AIDS treatment. Although HIV-1 replication is restricted by APOBEC3G/APOBEC3F, TRIM5α, and CD317, none defend HIV-1 infection under natural conditions. Previously, we demonstrated a host factor from the human T cell line CEM.NKR that potently restricted wild-type HIV-1 replication. Interestingly, this restriction resembled the APOBEC3G/APOBEC3F pattern in that viral replication was inhibited from the second round of replication cycle at a post-entry step.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we further characterized this factor and found it distinguishable from the known anti-HIV APOBEC3 proteins. Although CEM.NKR cells expressed both APOBEC3G and APOBEC3F, their levels were at least 10 or 4-fold lower than those in H9 cells, and importantly, Vif effectively neutralized their activity. Among eight subclones isolated from CEM.NKR cells, one was relatively permissive, four were semi-permissive, and three were completely non-permissive for HIV-1 replication. When the levels of APOBEC3 expression were determined, all these clones retained similar low levels of APOBEC3DE, APOBEC3F, APOBEC3G and APOBEC3H expression, and no APOBEC3B expression was detected. Since the <it>vif </it>from SIVmac can effectively neutralize APOBEC3B and APOBEC3H, recombinant HIV-1 expressing this SIV gene were created. However, these viruses still failed to replicate in CEM.NKR cells. We also confirmed that HIV-1 restriction in CEM.NKR was not due to a loss of calnexin expression.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, these results not only demonstrate that all these aforementioned anti-HIV APOBEC3 proteins do not contribute to this HIV-1 restriction, but also shed light on a novel and potent HIV-1 inhibitor in CEM.NKR cells.</p

Breast cancer classification with histopathological image based on machine learning

Breast cancer represents one of the most common reasons for death in the worldwide. It has a substantially higher death rate than other types of cancer. Early detection can enhance the chances of receiving proper treatment and survival. In order to address this problem, this work has provided a convolutional neural network (CNN) deep learning (DL) based model on the classification that may be used to differentiate breast cancer histopathology images as benign or malignant. Besides that, five different types of pre-trained CNN architectures have been used to investigate the performance of the model to solve this problem which are the residual neural network-50 (ResNet-50), visual geometry group-19 (VGG-19), Inception-V3, and AlexNet while the ResNet-50 is also functions as a feature extractor to retrieve information from images and passed them to machine learning algorithms, in this case, a random forest (RF) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN) are employed for classification. In this paper, experiments are done using the BreakHis public dataset. As a result, the ResNet-50 network has the highest test accuracy of 97% to classify breast cancer images

The calibration of sinusoidal excitation force of piezoelectric ceramic exciter

Piezoelectric ceramic exciter (PCE) have been used to experimentally study on the inherent and damping characteristics of thin-walled structures. However, due to its unknown excitation force level, it can not be applied on more practical cases in which accurate test of dynamic response is urgently needed. This research combines theory with experiment to calibrate sinusoidal excitation force generated by PCE. Firstly, a feedback attenuator was developed to help data acquisition instrument securely capture high-voltage excitation signal applied on PCE by high-voltage piezoelectric amplifier; Secondly, experimental research was conducted using a PCE, of type P-885.10 produced by PI in Germany, as object based on the PCE excitation feedback system to experimentally analyze its major influences on linear excitation capability, consequently a linear excitation equation was proposed to better regulate PCE to produce linear sinusoidal excitation signal; thirdly, a calibration method was proposed to exactly determine the level of sinusoidal excitation force of PCE based on the dynamics model of the cantilever beam excited by PCE, and its calibration principle and calibration process was explained in details. Finally, practicability and effectiveness of this calibration method was demonstrated by a calibration case. The results showed that if both of output signal voltage and excitation frequency meet the linear excitation equation, the concerned sinusoidal excitation force of PCE has a linear relationship with output signal voltage

The role of EGFR mutation as a prognostic factor in survival after diagnosis of brain metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Background The brain is a common site for metastasis in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between the mutational of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and overall survival (OS) in NSCLC patients with brain metastases. Methods Searches were performed in PubMed, EmBase, and the Cochrane Library to identify studies evaluating the association of EGFR mutation with OS in NSCLC patients through September 2017. Results 4373 NSCLC patients with brain metastases in 18 studies were involved. Mutated EGFR associated with significantly improved OS compared with wild type. Subgroup analyses suggested that this relationship persisted in studies conducted in Eastern, with retrospective design, with sample size ≥500, mean age of patients ≥65.0 years, percentage male < 50.0%, percentage of patients receiving tyrosine kinase inhibitor ≥30.0%. Finally, although significant publication bias was observed using the Egger test, the results were not changed after adjustment using the trim and fill method. Conclusions This meta-analysis suggests that EGFR mutation is an important predictive factor linked to improved OS for NSCLC patients with brain metastases. It can serve as a useful index in the prognostic assessment of NSCLC patients with brain metastases

Ladder-like energy-relaying exciplex enables 100% internal quantum efficiency of white TADF-based diodes in a single emissive layer.

Development of white organic light-emitting diodes based on purely thermally activated delayed fluorescence with a single-emissive-layer configuration has been a formidable challenge. Here, we report the rational design of a donor-acceptor energy-relaying exciplex and its utility in fabricating single-emissive-layer, thermally activated delayed fluorescence-based white organic light-emitting diodes that exhibit 100% internal quantum efficiency, 108.2 lm W-1 power efficiency, and 32.7% external quantum efficiency. This strategy enables thin-film fabrication of an 8 cm × 8 cm thermally activated delayed fluorescence white organic light-emitting diodes (10 inch2) prototype with 82.7 lm W-1 power efficiency and 25.0% external quantum efficiency. Introduction of a phosphine oxide-based acceptor with a steric group to the exciplex limits donor-acceptor triplet coupling, providing dual levels of high-lying and low-lying triplet energy. Transient spectroscopic characterizations confirm that a ladder-like energy relaying occurs from the high-lying triplet level of the exciplex to a blue emitter, then to the low-lying triplet level of the phosphine oxide acceptor, and ultimately to the yellow emitter. Our results demonstrate the broad applicability of energy relaying in multicomponent systems for exciton harvesting, providing opportunities for the development of third-generation white organic light-emitting diode light sources