Pancreatic cancer. Analysis of 149 cases in our 17-year experience

The Authors analyse a series of 149 consecutive patients with carcinoma of the pancreas or the periampullary region. Curative surgical treatment was achievable in 55 patients, palliative procedures included surgery in 68 patients; biliary decompression with endoscopic or percutaneous procedure in 25 patients and chemotherapy in one patient with lymphoma. Perioperative complications consisted in gastroplegia (33%), pancreatic fistula (22%), biliary fistula (7.3%), abdominal abscess (5.5%) and hemoperitoneum (1.8%). Five patients died within 30 days after surgery (9%). The overall median postoperative survival was 37, 29 and 21 months in papillary, choledochal and pancreatic cancer, respectively.     

Chemical Ecology of Chemosensation in Asteroidea: Insights Towards Management Strategies of Pest Species

Within the Phylum Echinodermata, the class Asteroidea, commonly known as starfish and sea stars, encompasses a large number of benthos inhabiting genera and species with various feeding modalities including herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and detritivores. The Asteroidea rely on chemosensation throughout their life histories including hunting prey, avoiding or deterring predators, in the formation of spawning aggregations, synchronizing gamete release and targeting appropriate locations for larval settlement. The identities of many of the chemical stimuli that mediate these physiological and behavioural processes remain unresolved even though evidence indicates they play pivotal roles in the functionality of benthic communities. Aspects of chemosensation, as well as putative chemically-mediated behaviours and the molecular mechanisms of chemoreception, within the Asteroidea are reviewed here, with particular reference to the coral reef pest the Crown-of-Thorns starfish Acanthaster planci species complex, in the context of mitigation of population outbreaks.     

Quantification of uncertainty using Bayesian and bootstrap models to simulate the impact of nitrogen fertilisation on β‐glucan levels in barley

BACKGROUND: β‐Glucans have enjoyed renewed interest as a functional food ingredient, with current attention focused on optimising β‐glucan levels in finished products without compromising final product quality. In order to measure the uncertainty about the level of β‐glucans in barley, two different statistical methods (Bayesian inference and Bootstrap technique) were applied to measured levels of β‐glucan in three different varieties of barley grain (n = 83). RESULTS: The resulting probability density distributions were similar for the full data set and also when applied to smaller sample sizes, highlighting the potential for either method in quantifying the total uncertainty in β‐glucan levels. Bayesian inference was used to model the effect of nitrogen treatment on β‐glucan and protein contents in barley. The model found that a low level of fertilisation (50 kg N ha^?1) did not have a significant effect on β‐glucan or protein content. However, fertilisation above this level did result in an increase in β‐glucan and protein levels, the effect seeming to plateau at 100 kg N ha^?1. In addition, the uncertainty distributions were significantly different for two consecutive years of data, highlighting the potential environmental influence on β‐glucan content. CONCLUSION: The model developed in this study could be a useful tool for processors to quantify the uncertainty about the initial level of β‐glucan in barley and to evaluate the influence of environmental factors, thus enabling them to formulate their ingredient base to optimise levels of β‐glucan without compromising final product quality. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry     

Pyropia columbina phycocolloids as microencapsulating material improve bioaccessibility of brewers’ spent grain peptides with ACE-I inhibitory activity

The effects of wall hydrocolloids on delivery and bioaccessibility of encapsulated brewers’ spent grain ACE-I inhibitory peptides after simulated gastrointestinal digestion were assessed. Microencapsulation of peptides was carried out by spray drying using locust bean gum, P. columbina phycocolloids, or its mixtures as wall materials. Microcapsules presented round external surfaces with some concavities, negative surface charge and encapsulation efficiencies higher than 90%. The incorporation of phycocolloids to formulations increased the encapsulation efficiency, negative surface charge and resistance against digestive enzymes of microcapsules. Encapsulated peptides with P. columbina phycocolloids showed lower IC₅₀ value of ACE-I inhibition than un-encapsulated peptides (2.4 ± 0.2 vs. 7.2 ± 0.3 mg mL⁻¹ protein), but higher than that obtained for hydrolysate (1.5 ± 0.2 mg mL⁻¹ protein), indicating a 75% protection of bioactivity. Electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions between P. columbina phycocolloids and brewers’ spent grain peptides could be implicated in the protection of peptides during gastrointestinal digestion.     

A farm‐to‐fork model to evaluate the level of polyacetylenes in processed carrots

Naturally occurring aliphatic C₁₇ polyacetylene compounds [falcarinol (FaOH), falcarindiol (FaDOH) and falcarindiol‐3‐acetate (FaDOAc)] in carrots are known for their bioactivity and health benefits. This study assesses the impact of pre‐ and postharvest processes (including food processing stages) on the level of polyacetylenes and evaluates subsequent human exposure using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. The model includes data inputs from both experimental and published literature sources. The sensitivity analysis highlights the importance of cultivar selection and agronomic factors. The sensitivity analysis also showed that peeling, blanching and boiling time of carrots have a significant negative influence on the level of polyacetylenes with correlation coefficients of ?0.15, ?0.14 and ?0.19 for FaOH, ?0.47, ?0.23 and ?0.20 for FaDOH and ?0.29, ?0.26 and ?0.25 for FaDOAc, respectively. The scenario analysis shows the practical application of the proposed model for industrial processing of carrots. This model could facilitate food processors in optimising critical processing factors such as peeling and cutting prior to processing of carrots.     

A review of quantitative microbial risk assessment in the management of Escherichia coli O157:H7 on beef

Since Escherichia coli O157:H7 first emerged as a food borne pathogen in the mid 1980s, it has been linked to many cases of food poisoning across the world. While multiple sources and routes of transmission for this pathogen are now recognised, beef and beef products remain an important vehicle of the pathogen and continue to be linked to outbreaks across the developed world. Much research has been directed at E. coli O157:H7 transmission, survival and control in the beef chain and this paper presents an overview of current knowledge on this pathogen in the beef chain from primary production through slaughter, processing, distribution, final preparation and cooking. In order to strategically manage E. coli O157:H7 and to devise approaches to reduce the public health risk posed, many national and international groups have applied quantitative risk assessment techniques to model the risk posed by E. coli O157:H7 in beef, particularly in ground/minced beef which is most often linked with infection. This paper reviews these quantitative risk assessments and their application in managing the risk posed by E. coli O157:H7 in beef.     

Integrating E-Commerce and Games

This paper investigates how many users of commercial interactive systems are not properly agents within the interactive narrative, largely due to the dynamics of branding in cyberspace. Parallels are drawn between the dynamic personalization of e-CRM engines and context aware computing systems. Several seminal games are discussed as examples of systems in which very different relationships exist between users and the system. Arguments are made for designing e-commerce interactive systems that install into games, inside the game narrative. Correspondence to: Ms N. Cummins, Preject Brand Communications Consultancy, Unit P, Carlton Works Studios, Asylum Road, London SE15 2SB, UK. Email: nizami@preject.com     

广西珊瑚钨锡矿田成矿地球化学机理及成矿模式

珊瑚钨锡矿田产出有钨锡石英脉、钨锑萤石石英脉和含钨石英角砾脉3种类型。以长营岭隐伏花岗岩为中心,自东往西、自深部到浅部形成单侧水平分带和垂向分带,它们属同一成矿系列。成矿时,成矿流体由富含W,Sn等成矿元素及F,B等运矿元素的高中温、酸性、高fs_2、低fo_2、类硫酸盐型的岩浆水,逐渐转化为有地下水掺和的富含Cl、中低温、弱酸-中性、高fo_2、低fs_2、类氯化物型的混合流体。成矿物质由岩浆提供逐渐转化为主要由地层提供。该成矿系列的形成是成矿流体不断演化的结果,属多源多因复成矿床。     

Making video mundane: intellectual disability and the use of camcorders

Models of disability assume that impairments have only a limiting effect on technology usage. Drawing upon the results of a year-long participant observation study of the use of camcorders by six severely intellectually disabled adults, we argue that intellectual disability (ID) affects the domestication of technology in a more complex and interwoven fashion. The observed group of ID adults attended a weekly 2-h session, organised by a local day centre, in which they would make videos at local locations. There were two main aspects of appropriation in this context. One is the role of the support worker (SW) in mediating many of their interactions due to accessibility problems with the camcorder. While these interventions by the SW allowed them to use the camcorder, they also slowed their interactions with it making them less direct. SW also guided and constrained their early encounters with the camcorders, strongly influencing the environment of appropriation. The second aspect is the way the group transformed the camcorder into two tools during the course of the study: an ‘artistic’ tool for visual exploration, and a ‘social’ tool that participated in the group’s social activities. These appropriations are very different to anything reported in the literature on mainstream camcorder use. While technologists typically model disability as a set of functional limitations, we would argue for broader models that consider the wider social and support aspects of ID, recognising the different ways in which they may choose to make a technology mundane for them.     

Evolving General Term-Weighting Schemes for Information Retrieval: Tests on Larger Collections

Term-weighting schemes are vital to the performance of Information Retrieval models that use term frequency characteristics to determine the relevance of a document. The vector space model is one such model in which the weights assigned to the document terms are of crucial importance to the accuracy of the retrieval system. This paper describes a genetic programming framework used to automatically determine term-weighting schemes that achieve a high average precision. These schemes are tested on standard test collections and are shown to perform as well as, and often better than, the modern BM25 weighting scheme. We present an analysis of the schemes evolved to explain the increase in performance. Furthermore, we show that the global (collection wide) part of the evolved weighting schemes also increases average precision over idf on larger TREC data. These global weighting schemes are shown to adhere to Luhn’s resolving power as middle frequency terms are assigned the highest weight. However, the complete weighting schemes evolved on small collections do not perform as well on large collections. We conclude that in order to evolve improved local (within-document) weighting schemes it is necessary to evolve these on large collections