Treatment planning study of cyberKnife prostate SBRT (stereotactic body radiation therapy) using CT-based vs MRI-based prostate volumes

This study has been conducted for the purpose of investigating the systematic dose reduction of rectum and neurovascular bundles (NVBs) during treatment planning of the CyberKnifeTM prostate SBRT using CT-Based volumes versus MRI-based volumes. Three prostate cancer patients were Planned for the CyberKnifeTM prostate SBRT and they underwent computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) preplanning exams. The patients were positioned during both exams using an immobilizing device. A radiation oncologist and a radiologist delineated the prostate gland, intra-prostatic and peri-prostatic structures, and pelvic organs of interest in both CT and MRI images. The CT and MRI images were fused based on fuducial markers to accurately align the prostate. Radiation Therapy Oncology protocol RTOG 0938 was followed to meet the target volume (prostate plus margin) dose coverage requirement, and dose-volume constraints for organs at risk, including rectum, bladder, femoral heads, penile bulb, urethra, skin and NVBs. Radiation dose volume parameters were recorded for both volumes and compared. The preliminary result shows that the CT-based volumes were generally larger than MRI-based volumes of the prostate. Therefore, the CT-based volumes resulted in less accurate treatment planning and dose delivery to radiosensitive structures

Impaired β-Cell Neogenesis in a Mouse Model of Metabolic Syndrome

Pancreatic islet β-cell plays an essential role in insulin release and hence glucose homeostasis. The maintenance of glucose homeostasis depends on β-cell ability to cope with enough insulin to fulfill metabolic and physiological demands. Adequate insulin release is the result of highly complex and dynamic interplays between acute changes in β- cell electrical activity, exocytosis and chronic adaptations in cellular function, volume, mass and proliferation. All of this appears modulated, to some extent, by the functional presence of Slc12a2 symporters, also known as Na+K+2Cl– cotransporter-1 (Nkcc1), which accumulates intracellular Cl– above its electrochemical equilibrium. Recent studies from our laboratory showed that mice lacking Nkcc1 in β-cell (Nkcc1βKO) develop a cluster of metabolic phenotypes reminiscent of the metabolic syndrome i.e., hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, steatohepatitis and overweight. The present study is aimed at determining the potential relationship between those phenotypes and pancreas morphometric parameters including islet size, β-cell number, volume, mass and neogenesis. The results presented here indicate that elimination of Nkcc1 from β-cell negatively impact those parameters, even before the onset of overweight and its metabolic complications. Therefore, we propose that Nkcc1 plays a potential causative role in the development of metabolic syndrome

Seek, Read, Present, Question (SRPQ): A feasibility study of an integrated strategy to teach history and critical thinking in a high school in Saudi Arabia

The growth of technology in the twenty-first century drives school education to use digital resources and communication tools for teaching and learning. Students need to be able to retrieve, select and collate useful information from a wealth of digital sources; to judge the suitability and reliability of the retrieved information; and to decide whether to process the selected information. They, therefore, need to master information literacy and critical thinking skills for their success in learning advancement. The key reason for this feasibility study is to propose a new strategy (Seek, Read, Present, Question: SRPQ) for education in Saudi Arabia that relies on technology in a collaborative learning situation to teach ‘History’ with critical thinking in Saudi girls’ schools. It also seeks to figure out the extent to which this new strategy is applicable and acceptable for both teachers and students so that students can successfully learn the curriculum whilst develop their critical capabilities. This study employed mixed methods to address the central questions where collaborative action research was the key approach, alongside interviews, unstructured observations and participants’ reflective perspectives at the end of the study. Each data source has been analysed separately. The data was gathered from interviews with teachers and students who participated in this study; tests of achievement; students’ and teachers’ perspectives who transferred the strategy proposed in this study into their classroom; and the feedback that came from the schools’ inspector who attended some lessons. The data was obtained over the course of twelve weeks, when the study was conducted, to answer the main research questions. The study concludes that the SRPQ strategy is likely to be a practical and usable strategy to teach students their history curriculum in classroom, as the students made progress in their achievement tests. It may also be feasible to teach aspects of critical thinking. Both teachers and students found it acceptable in the classrooms. Further research about this strategy is recommended

Essays on crude oil price differentials, oil price shocks, and the economy of Saudi Arabia

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of EconomicsLance J BachmeierThis dissertation incorporates three essays to examine the price differential between different-quality crude oils and the effect of oil price shocks on the Saudi economy. The first essay examined how price differences depending on crude oil quality have different regimes using a Markov switching model. The main difference between the two regimes is in the mean; the mean in the first regime shows no difference from zero, whereas the mean in the second regime is significantly positive, indicating consistency with a capacity constraint. The second essay compared two situations: one involving three shocks applying Kilian’s (2009) methodology versus one with only one shock to investigate whether considering a single shock is sufficient. Using three shocks showed a difference in how Saudi Arabia’s industrial production and consumer price index respond to oil supply and demand shocks, suggesting that it is not sufficient to consider only one shock. Finally, the third essay explored the reactions of Saudi Arabia’s stock market to oil market shocks using Kilian’s (2009) methodology and found that Saudi Arabia’s stock sectors react differently to oil price shocks. Saudi Arabia’s stock sectors reacted positively to oil-specific demand shocks but negatively to oil supply shocks; they showed no response to aggregate demand shocks

Tarjihat Ibn Uthaimin Dalam Tafsir Surah Yasin[P1-1091].

Penyelidikan ini mengandungi biografi menyeluruh tentang Sheikh Ibn Uthaimin. Ini diikuti oleh penerangan tentang makna Al Tarji>h{ (pendapat atau takwil yang diambil di antara pendapat- pendapat atau takwil-takwil yang terkemuka secara sepakat) dan metodologi para fundamentalis dan para pentafsir dalam bidang tersebut. This study comprised a comprehensive biography of Sheikh Ibn Uthaimin. This was followed by an explanation of the meaning of Al Tarjih (favored opinions) and methodology of fundamentalists and interpreters in the area

Enhancing Solutions Of Capacity Vehicle Routing Problem Based On An Improvement Ant Colony System Algorithm

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a famous routing issue and combinatorial optimization problem. It serves an important task in logistics and supply procession administration appropriate toward its wide applications in transport, product delivery, and services. VRP is one of the major important issues have no perfect solutions yet. Several authors over the last only some decades have recognized many types of research and used several algorithms with various methods to solve it. In this work the problem of the VRP work is described as follows: the vehicles which are used for transportation products toward instance place. Each vehicle begins from a major area at various times every day. The capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is described as toward service a set of delivery customers by means of well-known demands, the aim of CVRP is toward giving every vehicle with a series of delivers so with the purpose of each and every one of customers are serviced, and the cost of traveling for vehicles are decreased. The paper aims to discover an optimal route for VRP by using Improvement Ant Colony System Algorithm (IACS). Optimal routes are founded based on to decrease the distance and the time for each and every one route which directs to quickest the moving of customers to their locations, also based on developing the CVRP model for optimizing the routing issues. The IACS method has been mostly considered recently for handling several combinatorial optimization issues. In this paper, the IACS has been introduced for solving the CVRP. A wide numerical experiment has been performed on benchmark issues available in recent work. The results have been shown the IACS algorithm is better when compared to conventional metaheuristic methods for handling CVRP

Strategic management role in boosting hotel performance

The foremost aim of this paper is to examine the right linkage of specific market orientation, innovation strategy and organizational performance of 114 hotels in Malaysia. Data were drawn from census method on 475 hotels’ top and middle managers who are responsible for the progress of innovation and market orientation of their hotel. These research findings confirmed that all hypotheses give valuable indications on the strategic linkage of specific market orientation and innovation strategy to pursue for improved organizational performance. The results highlighted hotels pursuing competitor orientation focused on process innovation. Hotels that pursue customer orientation focused on service innovation. The result shows that competitor orientation, customer orientation, process innovation and service innovation have a significant effect on organizational performance. Remarkably, this research found process innovation partially mediates the association between competitor orientation and performance, while service innovation partially mediates the association of customer orientation and performance. The paper develops an integrated model that link specific market orientation, innovation strategy and organizational performance of hotels in Malaysia

A research paper recommender system using a dynamic normalized tree of concepts model for user modelling

The enormous growth of information on the Internet makes finding information challenging and time consuming. Recommender systems provide a solution to this problem by automatically capturing user interests and recommending related information the user may also find interesting. In this paper, we present a novel recommender system for the research paper domain using a Dynamic Normalized Tree of Concepts (DNTC) model. Our system improves existing vector and tree of concepts models to be adaptable with a complex ontology and a large number of papers. The proposed system uses the 2012 version of the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) ontology. This ontology has a much deeper structure than previous versions, which makes it challenging for previous ontology-based approaches to recommender systems. We performed offline evaluations using papers provided by ACM digital library for classifier training, and papers provided by CiteSeerX digital library for measuring the performance of the proposed DNTC model. Our evaluation results show that the novel DNTC model significantly outperforms the other two models: non-normalized tree of concepts and the vector of concepts models. Further, our DNTC model provides high average precision and reliable results when used in a context which the user has multiple interests and reads a large quantity of papers over time

A New Hybrid Approach Based On Discrete Differential Evolution Algorithm To Enhancement Solutions Of Quadratic Assignment Problem

The Combinatorial Optimization Problem (COPs) is one of the branches of applied mathematics and computer sciences, which is accompanied by many problems such as Facility Layout Problem (FLP), Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), etc. Even though the use of several mathematical formulations is employed for FLP, Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is one of the most commonly used. One of the major problems of Combinatorial NP-hard Optimization Problem is QAP mathematical model. Consequently, many approaches have been introduced to solve this problem, and these approaches are classified as Approximate and Exact methods. With QAP, each facility is allocated to just one location, thereby reducing cost in terms of aggregate distances weighted by flow values. The primary aim of this study is to propose a hybrid approach which combines Discrete Differential Evolution (DDE) algorithm and Tabu Search (TS) algorithm to enhance solutions of QAP model, to reduce the distances between the locations by finding the best distribution of N facilities to N locations, and to implement hybrid approach based on discrete differential evolution (HDDETS) on many instances of QAP from the benchmark. The performance of the proposed approach has been tested on several sets of instances from the data set of QAP and the results obtained have shown the effective performance of the proposed algorithm in improving several solutions of QAP in reasonable time. Afterwards, the proposed approach is compared with other recent methods in the literature review. Based on the computation results, the proposed hybrid approach outperforms the other method