Among abiotic factors, high temperature is one of the major constraints to adaptation of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) in tropical and subtropical areas. The aims of this study were (i) to evaluate ...three genotypes (ICG 1236, ICGS 44, and Chico) of groundnut for their heat acclimation potential (HAP), and (ii) to examine whether the growth, yield, and photosynthetic responses of these genotypes to temperature related to the HAP. We defined HAP as the change in leaf heat tolerance based on plasmalemma thermostability at 40 to 60 degrees C measured by electrolyte leakage after acclimation at 35/30 degrees C day/night temperature. Initially, plants were raised in a glasshouse maintained at 25/25 degrees C day/night temperature. One half of the plants were shifted to another glasshouse maintained at 35/30 degrees C after the appearance of the third leaf. Heat killing time (HKT), defined as the time required to cause 50% relative injury, indicated that the three genotypes acclimated high temperatures stress, with significant variations in HAP. All genotypes maintained greater vegetative growth and higher photosynthesis rates when grown under the higher temperature regime and genetic differences in photosynthesis rate were related to HKT. The higher temperature regime affected the reproductive growth adversely by increasing flower abortion and decreasing seed size, however. Differences in chlorophyll fluorescence and membrane thermostability between growth temperature were found only after incubating the leaf tissue at temperatures of 50 degrees C or higher. Genetic differences in HAP were small and unrelated to growth differences.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose: A prospective clinical trial was undertaken to investigate the feasibility of concurrent chemoradiotherapy for esophageal carcinomas.
Materials and Methods: Between June 1989 and May 1996, ...forty patients with operable squamous cell carcinoma of the thoracic esophagus (Stage 0 to III: UICC 1987), ages 45 to 78 years (mean: 64), were enrolled in a study of neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy followed by definitive high-dose radiotherapy (CRT group) or surgery (CRT-S group). Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy consisted of 44 Gy in 40 fractions for 4 weeks (2.2 Gy/2 Fr/day) through 10-MVX rays, with 2 courses of cisplatin (80–100 mg/body, mean: 60 mg/m2, Day 1, bolus injection) and 5-fluorouracil (500–1000 mg/body/day, mean: 400 mg/m2, Days 1–4, continuous infusion). After completion of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, an intermediate clinical response was assessed by barium swallow, esophagoscopy with/without biopsy, EUS in most cases, thoracic and upper abdominal CT scan, and cervical US. Definitive chemoradiotherapy was performed in patients when regression of more than 75% was evident (CRT Group), and esophageal resection was indicated in those who remained at less than 75% (CRT-S Group). In CRT Group, a cumulative dose of 60–70 Gy for Tis, T1 and 65–75 Gy for T2–T4 tumor with high-dose–rate intraluminal brachytherapy and a total of 3 courses of chemotherapy were planned. In CRT-S Group, intraoperative radiotherapy for abdominal lymphatic system and postoperative supraclavicular irradiation were added.
Results: At the time of intermediate assessment, complete response (CR) was observed in 16 patients, a partial response (PR) in 22, and no change (NC) in 2. Thirty responding patients (CR, 16; PR, 14) entered the CRT Group, and 10 nonresponding patients (PR, 8; NC, 2) were followed by surgery (CRT-S Group). Radiotherapy was completed satisfactorily, but chemotherapy was suspended in 26 patients (65%) because of acute toxicity. Clinical CR rate at the completion of treatment showed 90% in CRT Group, and pathologic CR rate 10% in CRT-S Group. The overall median survival was 45 months, survival at 1, 2, and 3 years being 100%, 72%, and 56%, respectively. Local-regional failure was observed in 7 patients (all in CRT Group), distant failure in 6 (3 in CRT Group, 3 in CRT-S Group) and local-regional with distant failure in 1 (CRT Group). Four patients with local-regional recurrence in the CRT Group were salvaged by surgery. Overall survival at 2 and 3 years for CRT vs. CRT-S Group was 72%, 64% vs. 75%, 38%, respectively. No treatment-related mortality was observed. The rate of the ’esophagus conservation’ was 65% (Stage 0: 1 of 1, 100%; Stage I: 11 of 12, 92%; Stage II: 8 of 17, 47%; Stage III: 6 of 10, 60%).
Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that almost all early disease (Stage 0–I) and about half of advanced disease (Stage II–III) could be conserved, their esophagus treated by the multidisciplinary approach centering on high-dose radiotherapy and concurrent chemotherapy.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
New energy-degrading beamline for in-flight RI beams, OEDO Michimasa, S.; Imai, N.; Dozono, M. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
01/2020, Volume:
463
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The Optimized Energy Degrading Optics (OEDO) beamline was constructed at RIBF to produce slowed-down, well-focused radioactive-isotope beams at 10–50 MeV/u, and began operation in June 2017. We ...examined the performance of the OEDO system by decelerating high-energy medium-mass radioactive ions. The main components of the OEDO beamline are two superconducting quadrupole triplet magnets and one radio-frequency deflector. This paper introduces the unique design of the ion optics of the beamline and describes the achieved performance of the beamline in the commissioning and following physics experiments. We will discuss the properties of energy-degraded beams produced by the OEDO beamline by comparison of simulations and the achieved performance.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Background: Quality management in health care services has not been as successful as in other industries.
Objective: To assess the potential contribution of an on-line incident reporting system ...(OIRS) and of an electronic patient record (EPR) system to quality management in hospitals.
Methods: The two approaches are being implemented in Osaka University Hospital.
Results: Analysis of the early use of the on-line reporting system indicates that this qualitative approach has been effective to avoid adverse medical events. The quantitative methodology with the EPR is still in the phase of developing.
Conclusion: Direct data entry by medical staff and an EPR based on dynamic templates and a dynamic problem oriented approach could be useful for building clinical data repositories that can support clinical quality management.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Recently, the development of autonomous cars is accelerating on the integration of highly advanced artificial intelligence, which increases demand for a digital map with high accuracy. In particular, ...traffic markings are required to be precisely digitized since automatic driving utilizes them for position detection. To draw traffic markings, we benefit from Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) equipped with high-density Laser imaging Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanners, which produces large amount of data efficiently with XYZ coordination along with reflectance intensity. Digitizing this data, on the other hand, conventionally has been dependent on human operation, which thus suffers from human errors, subjectivity errors, and low reproductivity. We have tackled this problem by means of automatic extraction of traffic marking, which partially accomplished to draw several traffic markings (G. Takahashi et al., 2014). The key idea of the method was extracting lines using the Hough transform strategically focused on changes in local reflection intensity along scan lines. However, it failed to extract traffic markings properly in a densely marked area, especially when local changing points are close each other. In this paper, we propose a bidirectional gradient-based detection method where local changing points are labelled with plus or minus group. Given that each label corresponds to the boundary between traffic markings and background, we can identify traffic markings explicitly, meaning traffic lines are differentiated correctly by the proposed method. As such, our automated method, a highly accurate and non-human-operator-dependent method using bidirectional gradient-based algorithm, can successfully extract traffic lines composed of complex shapes such as a cross walk, resulting in minimizing cost and obtaining highly accurate results.
Failures in mobile robot navigation are often caused by errors in localizing the robot relative to its environment. This paper explores the idea that these errors can be considerably reduced by ...planning paths taking the robot through positions where pertinent features of the environment can be sensed. It introduces the notion of a "sensory uncertainty field" (SUF). For every possible robot configuration q, this field estimates the distribution of possible errors in the robot configuration that would be computed by a localization function matching the data given by the sensors against an environment model, if the robot was at q. A planner is proposed which uses a precomputed SUF to generate paths that minimize expected errors or any other criterion combining, say, path length and errors. This paper describes in detail the computation of a specific SUF for a mobile robot equipped with a classical line-striping camera/laser range sensor. It presents an implemented SUF-based motion planner for this robot and shows paths generated by this planner. Navigation experiments were conducted with mobile robots using paths generated by the SUF-based planner and other paths. The former paths were tracked with greater precision than the others. The final section of the paper discusses additional research issues related to SUF-based planning.< >
To discuss in what ways computer systems can contribute to the quality of healthcare and on which principles of informatics successful systems are based.
Part of the information was obtained via a ...literature search and part is based on the knowledge of the authors.
The results of the literature search are reported. The answers to the questions whether decision support is useful and which factors determine its success, the foundations of computerized guidelines systems and applications of physician order entry and medical risk management are presented.
Despite many publications concerning diagnostic support systems their use in clinical practice is limited. Reminder systems do appear to have an impact on health outcomes. Standards for guideline models are being developed for effective sharing of guidelines across systems. Electronic patient records and physician order entry systems are useful aids in medical risk management.
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