Adjuvant S-1 chemotherapy after curative resection of gastric cancer

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Author’s replypublished_or_final_versio

The applications of the risk management & quality function deployment in the Malaysian Construction Industry: A critical perspective

One of the most important tools through which undesirable and uncertain events and risks can be predicted is risk management, which is applied during the project period and before it also during the design and planning phase.. One of the most important reasons for the failure of projects in Malaysia is the failure to implement risk management or its poor implementation that does not adopt modern methods and tools, and this situation may eventually lead to the failure of the project in terms of cost overruns, delays in the schedule and poor performance. The aim of this study is to review the level of application of risk management in the Malaysian construction industry and its success, and what is the relationship between risk management and Quality function deployment (QFD), as well as the extent to which QFD is applied in the construction industry in Malaysia. In the project risk assessment process, the traditional tools used fail to provide a complete presentation of the risks. This requires a kind of modernization of these tools or their integration with other systems to enhance their effectiveness, and the deployment of the quality function is one of the appropriate options as it focuses on paying attention to the voice of customers and improving quality. By reviewing the previous recent literature, the results revealed that there is still a large gap between the management of construction projects in Malaysia and the use of well-known methods of risk management, which means that there is a clear and significant lack and weakness in the application of risk management systems in the construction industry. These results require a full awareness of how to adopt and apply risk management systems and the awareness of specialists in them (such as consultants, designers, project owners, contractors and engineers) and obligate them to implement the risk management system. The enactment of governmental laws and regulations related to risk management will have a major role in their implementation and obligating all project departments with them, which will reflect positively on the outputs of this industry

Ultrasound-Stimulated Microbubble Radiation Enhancement of Tumors: Single-Dose and Fractionated Treatment Evaluation

The use of ultrasound-stimulated microbubble therapy has successfully been used to target tumor vasculature and enhance the effects of radiation therapy in tumor xenografts in mice. Here, we further investigate this treatment using larger, more clinically relevant tumor mod- els. New Zealand white rabbits bearing prostate tumor (PC3) xenografts received a single treatment of either ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles (USMB), ionizing radiation (XRT; 8Gy), or a combination of both treatments (USMB+XRT). Treatment outcome was evalu- ated 24 hours after treatment using histopathology, immunolabeling, 3D Doppler ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging. A second cohort of rabbits received multiple treatments over a period of three weeks, where USMB treatments were delivered twice weekly with daily XRT treatments to deliver a fractionated 2Gy dose five days per week. A significant decrease in vascular function, observed through immunolabeling of vascular endothelial cells, was observed in tumors receiving the combined treatment (USMB+XRT) compared to control and single treatment groups. This was associated with an increase in cell death as observed through in situ end labeling (ISEL), a decrease in vascular index measured by Power Dopp- ler imaging, and a decrease in oxygen saturation. In rabbits undergoing the long-term fractionated combined treatment, a significant growth delay was observed after 1 week and a significant reduction in tumor size was observed after 3 weeks with combined therapy. Results demonstrated an enhancement of radiation effect and superior anti-tumor effect of the combination of USMB+XRT compared to the single treatments alone. Tumor growth was maximally inhibited with fractionated radiotherapy combined with the ultrasound-stimulated microbubble-based therapy

An Indexed Approach for Expectation-Confirmation Theory: A Trust-based model

The present study utilised the Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) as a theoretical framework to examine the temporal development of customer trust, satisfaction, and repurchase intent. In subsequent phases of the ECT, the significance of expectations in influencing customers’ attitudes towards confirmed trust and satisfaction was emphasised. The Trust-based Expectation-Confirmation model was therefore proposed to study trust at the appropriate level of abstraction to capture and analyse the relationships between Expected Trust, Perceived Trust, and the Confirmation of Expected Trust. The evaluation of the proposed ECT Trust-based model was conducted through a web-based survey with 559 participants, aiming to examine the direct and indirect approaches of measuring the Confirmation phase. Both approaches were found to be problematic in terms of the gap between the Perceived and Expected construct measured, which cannot be adjusted by the middle point on the Likert scale when using the direct approach either. This research article proposes the Indexed Approach as a new relevant assessment approach to transform data gathered from participants, which were measured throughout the Expectation and Perceived Performance stages, into a common format that could be used to determine each participant’s Confirmation. In order to validate the Indexed Approach, PLS path modelling evaluation and comparison for each approach were conducted; the results indicated that the Indexed Approach was the superior alternative to the direct and indirect approaches for transformation confirmation data to be used in the ECT model

Skyrmions in a ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate

The recently realized multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates provide opportunities to explore the rich physics brought about by the spin degrees of freedom. For instance, we can study spin waves and phase separation, macroscopic quantum tunneling, Rabi oscillations, the coupling between spin gradients and superfluid flow, squeezed spin states, vortices and other topological excitations. Theoretically, there have been already some studies of the ground-state properties of these systems and their line-like vortex excitations. In analogy with nuclear physics or the quantum Hall effect, we explore here the possibility of observing point-like topological excitations or skyrmions. These are nontrivial spin textures that in principle can exist in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. In particular, we investigate the stability of skyrmions in a fictitious spin-1/2 condensate of Rb87 atoms. We find that skyrmions can exist in this case only as a metastable state, but with a lifetime of the order of, or even longer than, the typical lifetime of the condensate itself. In addition to determining the size and the lifetime of the skyrmion, we also present its spin texture and finally briefly consider its dynamical properties.Comment: 4 pages (REVtex), 3 PDF figures. See also cond-mat/000237

't Hooft-Polyakov Monopoles in an Antiferromagnetic Bose-Einstein Condensate

We show that an antiferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate, which can for instance be created with Na-23 atoms in an optical trap, has not only singular line-like vortex excitations, but also allows for singular point-like topological excitations, i.e., 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles. We discuss the static and dynamic properties ofthese monopoles.Comment: Four pages of ReVTeX and 1 postscript figur

Breakdown of superfluidity of an atom laser past an obstacle

The 1D flow of a continuous beam of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms in the presence of an obstacle is studied as a function of the beam velocity and of the type of perturbing potential (representing the interaction of the obstacle with the atoms of the beam). We identify the relevant regimes: stationary/time-dependent and superfluid/dissipative; the absence of drag is used as a criterion for superfluidity. There exists a critical velocity below which the flow is superfluid. For attractive obstacles, we show that this critical velocity can reach the value predicted by Landau's approach. For penetrable obstacles, it is shown that superfluidity is recovered at large beam velocity. Finally, enormous differences in drag occur when switching from repulsive to attractive potential.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Intrusion-Resilient Integrity in Data-Centric Unattended WSNs

Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) operate in autonomous or disconnected mode: sensed data is collected periodically by an itinerant sink. Between successive sink visits, sensor-collected data is subject to some unique vulnerabilities. In particular, while the network is unattended, a mobile adversary (capable of subverting up to a fraction of sensors at a time) can migrate between compromised sets of sensors and inject fraudulent data. In this paper, we provide two collaborative authentication techniques that allow an UWSN to maintain integrity and authenticity of sensor data-in the presence of a mobile adversary-until the next sink visit. Proposed schemes use simple, standard, and inexpensive symmetric cryptographic primitives, coupled with key evolution and few message exchanges. We study their security and effectiveness, both analytically and via simulations. We also assess their robustness and show how to achieve the desired trade-off between performance and security