Six years survival on imatinib with no disease progression after diagnosis of metastatic duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumour: a case report

Introduction: A duodenal Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour (GIST) is a rare finding and until recently advanced disease had a poor prognosis. A PubMed search revealed no reports of more than five years survival of inoperable GIST on chemotherapy with WHO performance status zero. Case Presentation: A 68 year old female was diagnosed with unresectable GIST in the duodenum with metastasis to liver, pancreas and omentum in November 2001. She was commenced on imatinib mesylate (Glivec) chemotherapy. This case report was prepared from the medical records and radiology reports. She had good tolerance with stable disease. After six years her CT scan showed no disease progression and her WHO performance status was zero. Conclusion: This report supports the view that imatinib is a safe and effective drug in controlling disease progression in advanced metastatic GIST and plays an important role in improving the patient's quality of life

Prevailing theoretical approaches predicting sustainable business models: a systematic review

Purpose: This study aims to map scientific publications, intellectual structure and research trends in the sustainable business model (SBM) field. Specifically, it attempts to (1) identify the fundamental contributions of research in this area of knowledge; and (2) determine the research lines that constitute the most prominent intellectual structure. We leverage these insights to formulate and propose a future research agenda for SBM. Design/methodology/approach: The authors made recourse to the bibliometric, co-citation and cluster analysis techniques. To evaluate potential patterns among articles, we analysed how articles are jointly cited. We further applied hierarchical cluster analysis to the articles and used co-citation analysis to group the interrelated articles into distinct sets. Findings: The results enable the identification and classification of the prevailing theoretical foci in the domain of SBM: (1) SBM implementation; (2) SBM challenges; (3) institutional SBM; (4) circular SBM; and (5) emerging SBM. Originality/value: This study identifies, explores, analyses and summarises the main theoretical approaches and themes surrounding SBM research to date, contributing to deepening the literature by identifying the priority areas concerning sustainable business models and encouraging future research of an internationally excellent standard.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Bean Genome Diversity Reveals the Genomic Consequences of Speciation, Adaptation, and Domestication

Here we review whether genomic islands of speciation are repeatedly more prone to harbor within-species differentiation due to genomic features, such as suppressed recombination, smaller effective population size, and increased drift, across repeated hierarchically nested levels of divergence. Our discussion focuses on two species of Phaseolus beans with strong genepool and population substructure and multiple independent domestications each. We overview regions of species-associated divergence, as well as divergence recovered in within-species between-genepool comparisons and in within-genepool wild-cultivated comparisons. We discuss whether regions with overall high relative differentiation coincide with sections of low SNP density and with between-species pericentric inversions, since these convergences would suggest that shared variants are being recurrently fixed at replicated comparisons, and in a similar manner across different hierarchically nested levels of divergence, likely as the result of genomic features that make certain regions more prone to accumulate islands of speciation as well as within-species divergence. We conclude that neighboring signatures of speciation, adaptation, and domestication in Phaseolus beans seem to be influenced by ubiquitous genomic constrains, which may continue shaping, fortuitously, genomic differentiation at various other scales of divergence. This pattern also suggests that genomic regions important for adaptation may frequently be sheltered from recombination

Exploring Spirituality of Elders Relocating into Long-Term Care Facilities

Background: Spirituality is recognized as an important contributor to quality of life, particularly for older adults. Yet, limited research has been conducted to examine spirituality of older adults relocating to long-term care facilities (LTCFs). The intent of this mixed methods study was to cull data from a parent study to explore different aspects of spirituality among residents newly admitted to LTCFs. Method: Qualitative and quantitative data of six participants from a parent study including interviews and scores from the religious and existential well-being sections of the Spiritual Well Being Scale (SWBS) were analyzed and triangulated. Results: Descriptive analysis of the demographic data including age, gender, ethnicity, and spirituality scores was conducted. Emerging themes from the qualitative interviews included: hope/hopelessness for the future; sense of belonging in the LTCF; contentment/discontentment with life; and personal religious beliefs. These themes, in turn, were triangulated with and supported by the SWBS scores Conclusion: The findings have the potential of developing recommendations for spiritually-based interventions to facilitate successful relocation to LTCFs. Clinical implications for occupational therapy and future research are discussed

Experimental Designs for Binary Data in Switching Measurements on Superconducting Josephson Junctions

We study the optimal design of switching measurements of small Josephson junction circuits which operate in the macroscopic quantum tunnelling regime. Starting from the D-optimality criterion we derive the optimal design for the estimation of the unknown parameters of the underlying Gumbel type distribution. As a practical method for the measurements, we propose a sequential design that combines heuristic search for initial estimates and maximum likelihood estimation. The presented design has immediate applications in the area of superconducting electronics implying faster data acquisition. The presented experimental results confirm the usefulness of the method. KEY WORDS: optimal design, D-optimality, logistic regression, complementary log-log link, quantum physics, escape measurement

High-order aberration compensation with Multi-frame Blind Deconvolution and Phase Diversity image restoration techniques

Context. For accurately measuring intensities and determining magnetic field strengths of small-scale solar (magnetic) structure, knowledge of and compensation for the point spread function is crucial. For images recorded with the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope, restoration with Multi-Frame Blind Deconvolution and Joint Phase Diverse Speckle methods lead to remarkable improvements in image quality but granulation contrasts that are too low, indicating additional stray light. Aims. We propose a method to compensate for stray light from high-order atmospheric aberrations not included in MFBD and JPDS processing. Methods. To compensate for uncorrected aberrations, a reformulation of the image restoration process is proposed that allows the average effect of hundreds of high-order modes to be compensated for by relying on Kolmogorov statistics for these modes. The applicability of the method requires simultaneous measurements of Fried's parameter r0. The method is tested with simulations as well as real data and extended to include compensation for conventional stray light. Results. We find that only part of the reduction of granulation contrast in SST images is due to uncompensated high-order aberrations. The remainder is still unaccounted for and attributed to stray light from the atmosphere, the telescope with its re-imaging system and to various high-altitude seeing effects. Conclusions. We conclude that statistical compensation of high-order modes is a viable method to reduce the loss of contrast occurring when a limited number of aberrations is explicitly compensated for with MFBD and JPDS processing. We show that good such compensation is possible with only 10 recorded frames. The main limitation of the method is that already MFBD and JPDS processing introduces high-order compensation that, if not taken into account, can lead to over-compensation.Comment: in press in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Biomass burning emission inventory with daily resolution: Application to aircraft observations of Asian outflow

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