Current Management and Future Strategies of Gastric Cancer

The overall prognosis of gastric cancer has gradually improved over the past decades with growing awareness of potential carcinogens, surveillance programs and early diagnosis, as well as advances in surgical techniques and multimodality treatments. Nevertheless, the outcome of advanced stage disease still remains poor with currently available treatments, and a worldwide consensus on the standard management thereof has not been established. To improve prognosis and quality of life in gastric cancer patients, both standardization and individualization of managements are imperative. Diagnostic tests and surgical procedures need to be further sophisticated and standardized based on more recent evidences from ongoing and future randomized controlled trials, while comprehensive management should be individualized to each patient. Future challenges lie with how to optimize personalized therapies by deciphering biological complexity of gastric cancer and incorporating molecular biomarkers in clinical practice to forecast prognosis and to guide targeted therapeutics in adjunct to current standards of care

Automatic 3D Model Generation based on a Matching of Adaptive Control Points

Abstract The use of a 3D model helps to diagnosis and accurately locate a disease where it is neither available, nor can be exactly measured in a 2D image. Therefore, highly accurate software for a 3D model of vessel is required for an accurate diagnosis of patients. We have generated standard vessel because the shape of the arterial is different for each individual vessel, where the standard vessel can be adjusted to suit individual vessel. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic 3D model generation based on a matching of adaptive control points. The proposed method is carried out in three steps. First, standard and individual vessels are acquired. The standard vessel is acquired by a 3D model projection, while the individual vessel of the first segmented vessel bifurcation is obtained. Second is matching the corresponding control points between the standard and individual vessels, where a set of control and corner points are automatically extracted using the Harris corner detector. If control points exist between corner points in an individual vessel, it is adaptively interpolated in the corresponding standard vessel which is proportional to the distance ratio. And then, the control points of corresponding individual vessel match with those control points of standard vessel. Finally, we apply warping on the standard vessel to suit the individual vessel using the TPS (Thin Plate Spline) interpolation function. For experiments, we used angiograms of various patients from a coronary angiography in Sanggye Paik Hospital

Improvement of photon extraction efficiency of GaN-based LED using micro and nano complex polymer structures

A micro- and nanoscale complex structure made of a high refractive index polymer (n = 2.08) was formed on the ITO electrode layer of an edge-emitting type GaN blue light-emitting diode (LED), in order to improve the photon extraction efficiency by suppressing total internal reflection of photons. The nanoimprint lithography process was used to form the micro- and nanoscale complex structures, using a polymer resin with dispersed TiO2 nano-particles as an imprint resin. Plasma processing, such as reactive ion etching, was used to form the micro- and nano-scale complex structure; thus, plasma-induced damage to the LED device can be avoided. Due to the high refractive index polymeric micro- and nanostructure on the ITO layer, the electroluminescence emission was increased up to 20%, compared to an identical LED that was grown on a patterned sapphire substrate to improve photon extraction efficiency

Identification of Gene Expression Signature Modulated by Nicotinamide in a Mouse Bladder Cancer Model

BACKGROUND: Urinary bladder cancer is often a result of exposure to chemical carcinogens such as cigarette smoking. Because of histological similarity, chemically-induced rodent cancer model was largely used for human bladder cancer studies. Previous investigations have suggested that nicotinamide, water-soluble vitamin B3, may play a key role in cancer prevention through its activities in cellular repair. However, to date, evidence towards identifying the genetic alterations of nicotinamide in cancer prevention has not been provided. Here, we search for the molecular signatures of cancer prevention by nicotinamide using a N-butyl-N-(4-hydroxybutyl)-nitrosamine (BBN)-induced urinary bladder cancer model in mice. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Via microarray gene expression profiling of 20 mice and 233 human bladder samples, we performed various statistical analyses and immunohistochemical staining for validation. The expression patterns of 893 genes associated with nicotinamide activity in cancer prevention were identified by microarray data analysis. Gene network analyses of these 893 genes revealed that the Myc and its associated genes may be the most important regulator of bladder cancer prevention, and the gene expression signature correlated well with protein expression data. Comparison of gene expression between human and mouse revealed that BBN-induced mouse bladder cancers exhibited gene expression profiles that were more similar to those of invasive human bladder cancers than to those of non-invasive human bladder cancers. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study demonstrates that nicotinamide plays an important role as a chemo-preventive and therapeutic agent in bladder cancer through the regulation of the Myc oncogenic signature. Nicotinamide may represent a promising therapeutic modality in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer

Micro solid oxide fuel cell fabricated on porous stainless steel: a new strategy for enhanced thermal cycling ability

Miniaturized solid oxide fuel cells (micro-SOFCs) are being extensively studied as a promising alternative to Li batteries for next generation portable power. A new micro-SOFC is designed and fabricated which shows enhanced thermal robustness by employing oxide-based thin-film electrode and porous stainless steel (STS) substrate. To deposit gas-tight thin-film electrolyte on STS, nano-porous composite oxide is proposed and applied as a new contact layer on STS. The micro-SOFC fabricated on composite oxide- STS dual layer substrate shows the peak power density of 560 mW cm−2 at 550 °C and maintains this power density during rapid thermal cycles. This cell may be suitable for portable electronic device that requires high power-density and fast thermal cycling.1111Ysciescopu

Optimizing Ship Speed to Minimize Total Fuel Consumption with Multiple Time Windows

We study the ship speed optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the total fuel consumption. We consider multiple time windows for each port call as constraints and formulate the problem as a nonlinear mixed integer program. We derive intrinsic properties of the problem and develop an exact algorithm based on the properties. Computational experiments show that the suggested algorithm is very efficient in finding an optimal solution