Lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking for morbidity reduction during sentinel node biopsy in breast cancer

Current trends in patient care include the desire for minimizing invasiveness of procedures and interventions. This aim is reflected in the increasing utilization of sentinel lymph node biopsy, which results in a lower level of morbidity in breast cancer staging, in comparison to extensive conventional axillary dissection. Optimized lymphoscintigraphy with triangulated body marking is a clinical option that can further reduce morbidity, more than when a hand held gamma probe alone is utilized. Unfortunately it is often either overlooked or not fully understood, and thus not utilized. This results in the unnecessary loss of an opportunity to further reduce morbidity. Optimized lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking provides a detailed 3 dimensional map of the number and location of the sentinel nodes, available before the first incision is made. The number, location, relevance based on time/sequence of appearance of the nodes, all can influence 1) where the incision is made, 2) how extensive the dissection is, and 3) how many nodes are removed. In addition, complex patterns can arise from injections. These include prominent lymphatic channels, pseudo-sentinel nodes, echelon and reverse echelon nodes and even contamination, which are much more difficult to access with the probe only. With the detailed information provided by optimized lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking, the surgeon can approach the axilla in a more enlightened fashion, in contrast to when the less informed probe only method is used. This allows for better planning, resulting in the best cosmetic effect and less trauma to the tissues, further reducing morbidity while maintaining adequate sampling of the sentinel node(s)

Mechanical structure of a spin-1 particle

We investigate the mechanical structure of a spin-1 particle. Introducing three different frameworks, i.e., the three-dimensional (3D) Breit frame, the two-dimensional (2D) Breit frame, and the 2D infinite momentum frame (equivalently the two-dimensional Drell-Yan frame), we scrutinize the 2D and 3D energy-momentum tensor (EMT) distributions in these frames. We first derive the EMT distributions in the 2D Breit frame by performing the Abel transformation. The mass distribution in the 2D Breit frame contains an additional monopole contribution induced geometrically. The pressure distribution in the 2D Breit frame also gets an induced monopole structure. When the Lorentz boost is carried out, the mass distribution in the 2D infinite-momentum frame acquires the induced dipole term. Similarly, we also have the induced dipole contributions to the pressure and shear-force densities. We visualize the 2D mass distributions when the spin-1 particle is polarized along the $x$- and $z$-axes. We observe that the 2D mass distribution in the infinite momentum frame exhibit clearly the induced dipole structure when the spin-1 particle is polarized along the $x$-axis. We also discuss the strong force fields inside a polarized spin-1 particle.Comment: 28 pages and 9 figure

PRIMARY PRODUCTION OF PHYTOPLANKTON AND MACROPHYTES IN AN EUTROPHIC LAGOON, LAKE KYUNGPO, KOREA

Primary production of phytoplankton and macrophytes are measured in a eutrophic lagoon, Lake Kyungpo, where 86% of the lake is inhabited by macrophytes. Phytoplankton standing crop was high, 40-130 mgChl/m³, but productivity per unit area was suppressed low by the light deficiency due to high content of inorganic suspended particles. Contribution of phytoplankton and macrophytes to the total annual production was 55% and 45%, respectively. Allochthonous organic input estimated from BOD was 36% of total organic matter supply. Nitrogen seems to be the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton, since nitrate is often depleted in the water column of macrophyte-growing region and N/P ratio is low. Turbulence and the vertical transfer of oxygen and nutrient are strongly suppressed by the dense population of macrophytes and the chemocline of high stability caused by saline bottom water.Article信州大学理学部付属諏訪臨湖実験所報告 7: 99-103(1991)departmental bulletin pape

A Hybrid Approach Based on Variational Mode Decomposition for Analyzing and Predicting Urban Travel Speed

Predicting travel speeds on urban road networks is a challenging subject due to its uncertainty stemming from travel demand, geometric condition, traffic signals, and other exogenous factors. This uncertainty appears as nonlinearity, nonstationarity, and volatility in traffic data, and it also creates a spatiotemporal heterogeneity of link travel speed by interacting with neighbor links. In this study, we propose a hybrid model using variational mode decomposition (VMD) to investigate and mitigate the uncertainty of urban travel speeds. The VMD allows the travel speed data to be divided into orthogonal and oscillatory sub-signals, called modes. The regular components are extracted as the low-frequency modes, and the irregular components presenting uncertainty are transformed into a combination of modes, which is more predictable than the original uncertainty. For the prediction, the VMD decomposes the travel speed data into modes, and these modes are predicted and summed to represent the predicted travel speed. The evaluation results on urban road networks show that, the proposed hybrid model outperforms the benchmark models both in the congested and in the overall conditions. The improvement in performance increases significantly over specific link-days, which generally are hard to predict. To explain the significant variance of the prediction performance according to each link and each day, the correlation analysis between the properties of modes and the performance of the model are conducted. The results on correlation analysis show that the more variance of nondaily pattern is explained through the modes, the easier it was to predict the speed. Based on the results, discussions on the interpretation on the correlation analysis and future research are presented. Document type: Articl