Novel mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in Iranian women with early-onset breast cancer

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common female malignancy and a major cause of death in middle-aged women. So far, germline mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in patients with early-onset breast and/or ovarian cancer have not been identified within the Iranian population. METHODS: With the collaboration of two main centres for cancer in Iran, we obtained clinical information, family history and peripheral blood from 83 women under the age of 45 with early-onset breast cancer for scanning of germline mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. We analysed BRCA1 exons 11 and BRCA2 exons 10 and 11 by the protein truncation test, and BRCA1 exons 2, 3, 5, 13 and 20 and BRCA2 exons 9, 17, 18 and 23 with the single-strand conformation polymorphism assay on genomic DNA amplified by polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS: Ten sequence variants were identified: five frameshifts (putative mutations – four novel); three missense changes of unknown significance and two polymorphisms, one seen commonly in both Iranian and British populations. CONCLUSIONS Identification of these novel mutations suggests that any given population should develop a mutation database for its programme of breast cancer screening. The pattern of mutations seen in the BRCA genes seems not to differ from other populations studied. Early-onset breast cancer (less than 45 years) and a limited family history is sufficient to justify mutation screening with a detection rate of over 25% in this group, whereas sporadic early-onset breast cancer (detection rate less than 5%) is unlikely to be cost-effective

A mathematical modeling approach for high and new technology-project portfolio selection under uncertain environments

High and new technology-project as a tool to achieve productive forces through scientific and technological knowledge is characterized as knowledge based with high risk and returns. Often conflicting objectives of these projects have complicated their assessment and selection process. This paper offers a novel approach of high technology-project portfolio selection in two main parts. In the first part, a new risk reduction compromise decision-making model is proposed that applies a new approach in determining the weights of experts and in avoiding information loss. The objective function of a new interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2Fs) based mathematical model of project portfolio selection is formed by the outcome. To depict model’s applicability, data from case study of high technology-project selection in the literature is used to present the efficacy of the model

Sustainable infrastructure project selection by a new group decision-making framework introducing MORAS method in an interval type 2 fuzzy environment

Project management is a process that is involved with making important decisions under uncertainty. In project management often the existing data is limited and vague. Sustainable project selection has a multi-criteria evaluation nature which calls for attending to various often conflicting factors under vagueness. To deal with sustainable project selection several important factors should be properly considered. In this paper, in order to provide a new multi-criteria project selection method, a novel last aggregation method is presented. This method has several main novelties. First, to address uncertainty interval type 2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) are used. Second, the importance of criteria is investigated by using IT2F entropy. Third, a novel index for decision making is presented that has the merits of ratio system in MOORA and COPRAS, named MORAS. Fourth, the weights of decision makers are computed according to the obtained judgments and the weights are employed to aggregate the results. Fifth, the defuzzification is carried out in the last step of the process by means of a new IT2F ranking method. To present the applicability of the method, it is used in an existing case study in the literature and the outcomes are presented

Project portfolio selection problems: a review of models, uncertainty approaches, solution techniques, and case studies

Project portfolio selection has been the focus of many scholars in the last two decades. The number of studies on the strategic process has significantly increased over the past decade. Despite this increasing trend, previous studies have not been yet critically evaluated. This paper, therefore, aims to presents a comprehensive review of project portfolio selection and optimization studies focusing on the evaluation criteria, selection approach, solution approach, uncertainty modeling, and applications. This study reviews more than 140 papers on project portfolio selection research topic to identify the gaps and to present future trends. The findings show that not only the financial criteria but also social and environmental aspects of project portfolios have been focused by researchers in project portfolio selection in recent years. In addition, meta-heuristics and heuristics approach to finding the solution of mathematical models have been the critical research by scholars. Expert systems, artificial intelligence, and big data science have not been considered in project portfolio selection in the previous studies. In future, researchers can investigate the role of sustainability, resiliency, foreign investment, and exchange rates in project portfolio selection studies, and they can focus on artificial intelligence environments using big data and fuzzy stochastic optimization techniques

An Assessment Method for Project Cash Flow under Interval-Valued Fuzzy Environment

Effective project management requires reliable knowledge of cash required in different stages of project life cycle. Getting this knowledge is highly dependent on sophisticated consideration of project environment. Nature of projects and their environments are associated with uncertain conditions. In this paper, a new project cash flow assessment method based on project scheduling is proposed to foresee projects' cash flow in their different stages. Interval-valued fuzzy sets (IVFSs) are applied to address the uncertainty of activity durations and costs. First, an IVF-project scheduling method is proposed to calculate early start time and early finish time of activities under IVF-environment and based on that, a new method of cash flow assessment is introduced under IVF-environment. For the purpose of illustration, the proposed method is implemented to generate cash flow of main activities of a large-scale project. The results show the flexibility of presented assessment method in expressing uncertainty, in addition to its capability in risk evaluation. Furthermore, using alpha-cuts to address different levels of uncertainty and risk provides a comprehensive insight of the cash required in different stages of project life cycle under different levels of risk and uncertainty. Finally, the results are discussed and the proposed method is believed to be useful in the project evaluation

A mathematical modeling approach for high and new technology-project portfolio selection under uncertain environments

International audienceHigh and new technology-project as a tool to achieve productive forces through scientific and technological knowledge is characterized as knowledge based with high risk and returns. Often conflicting objectives of these projects have complicated their assessment and selection process. This paper offers a novel approach of high technology-project portfolio selection in two main parts. In the first part, a new risk reduction compromise decision-making model is proposed that applies a new approach in determining the weights of experts and in avoiding information loss. The objective function of a new interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2Fs) based mathematical model of project portfolio selection is formed by the outcome. To depict model’s applicability, data from case study of high technology-project selection in the literature is used to present the efficacy of the model

A mathematical modeling approach for high and new technology-project portfolio selection under uncertain environments

International audienceHigh and new technology-project as a tool to achieve productive forces through scientific and technological knowledge is characterized as knowledge based with high risk and returns. Often conflicting objectives of these projects have complicated their assessment and selection process. This paper offers a novel approach of high technology-project portfolio selection in two main parts. In the first part, a new risk reduction compromise decision-making model is proposed that applies a new approach in determining the weights of experts and in avoiding information loss. The objective function of a new interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2Fs) based mathematical model of project portfolio selection is formed by the outcome. To depict model’s applicability, data from case study of high technology-project selection in the literature is used to present the efficacy of the model

A new analytical methodology to handle time-cost trade-off problem with considering quality loss cost under interval-valued fuzzy uncertainty

This paper proposes a new framework in addressing time-cost trade-off problem (TCTP) under uncertainty. First critical path analysis is carried out based on developing a new interval-valued fuzzy (IVF)-program evaluation and review technique (PERT) approach. Then, non-conformance risks that influence on execution quality of activities are identified and evaluated based on a new approach that considers probability of risk along with impacts on time, cost, and performance. Then, a new mathematical model under IVF uncertainty is presented to decrease project total time while considering time, cost and quality loss cost that is determined in form of rework or modification cost. Finally, the approach categorizes the activities in three groups based on their level of criticality. Outcome of this methodology is a scheduling that addresses time, cost and quality trade-offs in addition to categorizing activities in different groups based on being on the critical path. Therefore, the project manager not only gets a scheduling based on the TCTP with considering quality loss cost but also has a knowledge of activities that require extra attentions. To show the steps of this methodology, an existing application from the literature is adopted and solved

Factors affecting the maxillary and mandibular incisors’ buccolingual inclinations and buccal and lingual cortical plate heights

Abstract Introduction Orthodontics is closely related to periodontics. The buccolingual inclination (BLI) of the incisors and deficiencies in their buccal (BHd) and lingual (LHd) cortical plate heights may affect orthodontic outcomes. Identifying risk factors that can compromise buccal or lingual bone heights may have clinical value. The literature on BLI/BHd/LHd is not only scarce but also limited to one jaw. We aimed to examine, for the first time, factors affecting BLI/BHd/LHd not evaluated before as well as other factors with scarce literature about them. Methods In this two-phase epidemiological and analytical study, inclinations and cortical heights of 248 incisors (bilateral centrals and laterals) were evaluated blindly on 62 randomly selected high-resolution pretreatment cone-beam computed tomography volumes (30 maxillae [13 men, 17 women], 32 mandibles [13 men, 19 women]). The sample was balanced in terms of sexes, jaws, and ages. The BLI/BHd/LHd of bilateral incisors were measured (intraobserver agreement > 95%). The effects of jaws, sexes, age, sides, and incisor types on each of the anatomical variables (BLI/BHd/LHd) were analyzed using a Mixed-Model Multiple Linear Regression analysis. Correlations among continuous variables were assessed using a Pearson coefficient (α = 0.05). Results For the maxillary centrals, BLI, BHd, and LHd were 106.79 ± 5.06, 1.94 ± 0.95, and 1.50 ± 0.76, respectively. These parameters were ‘110.56 ± 5.97, 1.81 ± 0.83, 1.23 ± 0.69’ for the maxillary laterals; ‘97.64 ± 8.26, 2.98 ± 1.48, 3.46 ± 1.45’ for the mandibular centrals; and ‘95.98 ± 6.80, 3.29 ± 1.72, and 2.73 ± 1.15’ for the mandibular laterals. BLI was greater in the maxilla compared to the mandible and in the lateral incisors compared to centrals (P  0.05). Age, sex, side, or incisor types were not associated with BHd (P > 0.05). LHd was greater in the mandible, older individuals, and centrals (P < 0.05). There were some significant but weak correlations between BLI with BHd and especially LHd (P < 0.05). Conclusion In the maxilla, but not in the mandible, incisors’ BLI may determine LHd. Maxillary incisors may have greater BLIs as well as greater buccal and lingual alveolar bone heights compared to mandibular incisors. BLI might be greater in the laterals compared to the centrals in both jaws combined