Predicting lung cancer recurrence from circulating tumour DNA. Commentary on 'Phylogenetic ctDNA analysis depicts early-stage lung cancer evolution'

No abstract available

Review: optical fiber sensors for civil engineering applications

Optical fiber sensor (OFS) technologies have developed rapidly over the last few decades, and various types of OFS have found practical applications in the field of civil engineering. In this paper, which is resulting from the work of the RILEM technical committee “Optical fiber sensors for civil engineering applications”, different kinds of sensing techniques, including change of light intensity, interferometry, fiber Bragg grating, adsorption measurement and distributed sensing, are briefly reviewed to introduce the basic sensing principles. Then, the applications of OFS in highway structures, building structures, geotechnical structures, pipelines as well as cables monitoring are described, with focus on sensor design, installation technique and sensor performance. It is believed that the State-of-the-Art review is helpful to engineers considering the use of OFS in their projects, and can facilitate the wider application of OFS technologies in construction industry

Conscious monitoring and control (reinvestment) in surgical performance under pressure.

Research on intraoperative stressors has focused on external factors without considering individual differences in the ability to cope with stress. One individual difference that is implicated in adverse effects of stress on performance is "reinvestment," the propensity for conscious monitoring and control of movements. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of reinvestment on laparoscopic performance under time pressure

Finding the region of pseudo-periodic tandem repeats in biological sequences

SUMMARY: The genomes of many species are dominated by short sequences repeated consecutively. It is estimated that over 10% of the human genome consists of tandemly repeated sequences. Finding repeated regions in long sequences is important in sequence analysis. We develop a software, LocRepeat, that finds regions of pseudo-periodic repeats in a long sequence. We use the definition of Li et al. [1] for the pseudo-periodic partition of a region and extend the algorithm that can select the repeated region from a given long sequence and give the pseudo-periodic partition of the region. AVAILABILITY: LocRepeat is available a

Safety and effectiveness of low-dose aspirin for the prevention of gastrointestinal cancer in adults without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease: a population-based cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To assess the association between low-dose aspirin and the incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC), gastric cancer (GC), oesophageal cancer (EC) and gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) in adults without established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. DESIGN: Cohort study with propensity score matching of new-users of aspirin to non-users. SETTING: Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System database, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: Adults ≥40 years with a prescription start date of either low-dose aspirin (75-300 mg/daily) or paracetamol (non-aspirin users) between 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2008 without a history of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was the first diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancer (either CRC, GC or EC) and the secondary outcome was GIB. Individuals were followed from index date of prescription until the earliest occurrence of an outcome of interest, an incident diagnosis of any type of cancer besides the outcome, death or until 31 December 2017. A competing risk survival analysis was used to estimate HRs and 95% CIs with death as the competing risk. RESULTS: After matching, 49 679 aspirin and non-aspirin users were included. The median (IQR) follow-up was 10.0 (6.4) years. HRs for low-dose aspirin compared with non-aspirin users were 0.83 for CRC (95% CI, 0.76 to 0.91), 0.77 for GC (95% CI, 0.65 to 0.92) and 0.88 for EC (95% CI, 0.67 to 1.16). Patients prescribed low-dose aspirin had an increased risk of GIB (HR 1.15, 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.20), except for patients prescribed proton pump inhibitors or histamine H2-receptor antagonists (HR 1.03, 95% CI, 0.96 to 1.10). CONCLUSION: In this cohort study of Chinese adults, patients prescribed low-dose aspirin had reduced risks of CRC and GC and an increased risk of GIB. Among the subgroup of patients prescribed gastroprotective agents at baseline, however, the association with GIB was attenuated

Multidimensional Homeier's generalized class and its application to planar 1D Bratu problem

[EN] In this paper, a parametric family of iterative methods for solving nonlinear systems, including Homeier’s scheme is presented, proving its third-order of convergence. The numerical section is devoted to obtain an estimation of the solution of the classical Bratu problem by transforming it in a nonlinear system by using finite differences, and solving it with different elements of the iterative family.This research was supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2014-52016-C02-02.Cordero Barbero, A.; Franqués García, AM.; Torregrosa Sánchez, JR. (2015). Multidimensional Homeier's generalized class and its application to planar 1D Bratu problem. Journal of the Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics. 70(1):1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40324-015-0037-xS110701Abad, M. F., Cordero, A., Torregrosa, J. R.: Fourth-and fifth-order for solving nonlinear systems of equations: an application to the global positioning system, Abstr. Appl. Anal. (2013) (Article ID 586708)Andreu, C., Cambil, N., Cordero, A., Torregrosa, J.R.: Preliminary orbit determination of artificial satellites: a vectorial sixth-order approach, Abstr. Appl. Anal. (2013) (Article ID 960582)Awawdeh, F.: On new iterative method for solving systems of nonlinear equations. Numer. Algorithms 54, 395–409 (2010)Boyd, J.P.: One-point pseudospectral collocation for the one-dimensional Bratu equation. Appl. Math. Comput. 217, 5553–5565 (2011)Bratu, G.: Sur les equation integrals non-lineaires. Bull. Math. Soc. France 42, 113–142 (1914)Buckmire, R.: Applications of Mickens finite differences to several related boundary value problems. In: Mickens, R.E. (ed.) Advances in the Applications of Nonstandard Finite Difference Schemes, pp. 47–87. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (2005)Cordero, A., Hueso, J.L., Martínez, E., Torregrosa, J.R.: A modified Newton-Jarratt’s composition. Numer. Algorithms 55, 87–99 (2010)Gelfand, I.M.: Some problems in the theory of quasi-linear equations. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. Ser. 2, 295–381 (1963)Homeier, H.H.H.: On Newton-tyoe methods with cubic convergence. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 176, 425–432 (2005)Jacobsen, J., Schmitt, K.: The Liouville-Bratu-Gelfand problem for radial operators. J. Differ. Equ. 184, 283–298 (2002)Jalilian, R.: Non-polynomial spline method for solving Bratu’s problem. Comput. Phys. Comm. 181, 1868–1872 (2010)Kanwar, V., Kumar, S., Behl, R.: Several new families of Jarratts method for solving systems of nonlinear equations. Appl. Appl. Math. 8(2), 701–716 (2013)Mohsen, A.: A simple solution of the Bratu problem. Comput. Math. with Appl. 67, 26–33 (2014)Petković, M., Neta, B., Petković, L., Džunić, J.: Multipoint Methods for Solving Nonlinear Equations. Academic Press, Amsterdam (2013)Sharma, J.R., Guna, R.K., Sharma, R.: An efficient fourth order weighted-Newton method for systems of nonlinear equations. Numer. Algorithms 62, 307–323 (2013)Sharma, J.R., Arora, H.: On efficient weighted-Newton methods for solving systems of nonlinear equations. Appl. Math. Comput. 222, 497–506 (2013)Traub, J.F.: Iterative Methods for the Solution of Equations. Chelsea Publishing Company, New York (1982)Wan, Y.Q., Guo, Q., Pan, N.: Thermo-electro-hydrodynamic model for electrospinning process. Int. J. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simul. 5, 5–8 (2004

The development of path integration: combining estimations of distance and heading

Efficient daily navigation is underpinned by path integration, the mechanism by which we use self-movement information to update our position in space. This process is well-understood in adulthood, but there has been relatively little study of path integration in childhood, leading to an underrepresentation in accounts of navigational development. Previous research has shown that calculation of distance and heading both tend to be less accurate in children as they are in adults, although there have been no studies of the combined calculation of distance and heading that typifies naturalistic path integration. In the present study 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds took part in a triangle-completion task, where they were required to return to the startpoint of a multi-element path using only idiothetic information. Performance was compared to a sample of adult participants, who were found to be more accurate than children on measures of landing error, heading error, and distance error. 7-year-olds were significantly more accurate than 5-year-olds on measures of landing error and heading error, although the difference between groups was much smaller for distance error. All measures were reliably correlated with age, demonstrating a clear development of path integration abilities within the age range tested. Taken together, these data make a strong case for the inclusion of path integration within developmental models of spatial navigational processing