Retrospective comparison of infusional 5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and mitomycin-C (modified FAM) combination chemotherapy versus palliative therapy in treatment of advanced gastric cancer

About one-third of patients with gastric cancer are unresectable at the time of diagnosis. Their median survival is < 6 months, with a grave prognosis. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of a modified FAM (mFAM) regimen in advanced gastric cancer. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of 409 advanced gastric cancer patients who had not received curative surgery. Among 409 patients, 202 patients were treated with an mFAM regimen (infusional 5-FU + doxorubocin + mitomycin-C), and 207 patients received no chemotherapy (control group). No differences were found in clinical parameters between the two groups. The 1-year survival rates were 34.1% for the mFAM-treated group and 22.5% for the control group (p = 0.0135). In subset analysis, a higher 1-year survival rate was demonstrated in patients with mFAM and palliative surgery. Of the 154 evaluable patients in the mFAM-treated group, the response rate was 17.5%. In these patients, median response duration was 30 weeks, and progression-free survival was 23 weeks. Overall toxicity of mFAM regimen was relatively tolerable and reversible. In conclusion, FAM combination chemotherapy, which has been used as a standard therapy, prolonged survival after modification of the administration schedule and combination with palliative surgery. A prospective randomized study is warranted to confirm this conclusion from our retrospective study.     

The Effects of Management Traffic on the Local Call Processing Performance of ATM Switches Using Queue Network Models and Jackson's Theorem

This paper considers a TMN‐based management system for the management of public ATM switching networks using a four‐level hierarchical structure consisting of one network management system, several element management systems, and several agent‐ATM switch pairs. Using Jackson's queuing model, we analyze the effects of one TMN command on the performance of the component ATM switch in processing local calls. The TMN command considered is the permanent virtual call connection. We analyze four performance measures of ATM switches—utilization, mean queue length and mean waiting time for the processor directly interfacing with the subscriber lines and trunks, and the call setup delay of the ATM switch—and compare the results with those from Jackson's queuing model.     

Dependence of melt temperature on screw speed and size in extrusion

Melt temperature in an extrusion process can significantly influence production rate, product quality, and yield. However, prediction of melt temperature is extremely difficult because errors in the predictions of output rate, screw power, and heat transfer, which are used to calculate melt temperature, cumulatively cause a very large error in the prediction of melt temperature. This paper analyzed the overall energy balance of an extruder and developed a simple equation to predict the melt temperature of a projected extruder in scale-up as a function of screw diameter, depth, and speed based on the experimental results of an experimental extruder and the polymeroperties. The predicted melt temperatures agreed reasonably with the measured values reported in a previous scale-up study.     

A 1.8-V distributed voltage-controlled oscillator module for 5.8-GHz ISM band

This letter presents the design and implementation of a 1.8-V 5.8-GHz distributed voltage-controlled oscillator module based on bipolar transistors. The oscillator delivered -2-dBm-output power with a current consumption of 11.5 mA. The tuning range achieved was 650 MHz. The measured phase noise was -100 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset. The circuit construction was simple and robust and no buffer amplifier was needed. The design can be used for 5.8-GHz ISM band wireless LAN applications.     

Analysis and reduction of dark zone in ultra‐thin wedge‐plate displays

Abstract— A wedge plate can be used as the screen of a display, and the thickness of the display can be incredibly thin. In this paper, a basic formula for ray tracing in such a wedge plate is deduced. The fundamental limitation on the display quality of a wedge plate is explored, and the formation of a dark zone on the display screen is analyzed and verified numerically. Experimental exploration and confirmation of one 14‐in. acrylic wedge plate with a white‐light‐emitting diode is also provided. Two approaches to eliminate the dark zone are proposed, and the corresponding numerical demonstration of a 52‐in. wedge‐plate display is also shown.     

Parallel Algorithms for Perceptual Grouping on Distributed Memory Machines

Perceptual grouping is a key intermediate-level vision problem. Parallel solutions to this problem are characterized by uneven distribution of symbolic features among the processors, unbalanced workload, and irregular interprocessor data dependency caused by the input image. In this paper, we propose two load-balancing techniques for parallelizing perceptual grouping on distributed-memory machines. By using an initial workload estimate, we first partition the computations to distribute the workload across the processors. In addition, we asynchronously perform ongoing task migrations to adapt to the unbalanced workload which may evolve differently from the initial estimate. We also discuss two strategies to manage the irregular interprocessor data dependency. To illustrate our ideas, perceptual grouping steps used in an integrated vision system for building detection are used as examples. Our experimental results show that, given 8K extracted line segments from a 1K × 1K image, both the line and junction grouping steps can be completed in 0.644 s on a 32-node SP2 and in 0.585 s on a 32-node T3D. For the same grouping steps, a serial implementation requires 10.550 s and 10.023 s on a single node of SP2 and T3D, respectively. The implementations were performed using the message passing interface standard and are portable to other high performance computing platforms.     

Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Concrete as an Intrinsically Smart Concrete for Damage Assessment during Dynamic Loading

Concrete containing short carbon fibers (0.2–0.5 vol%) wasfound to be an intrinsically smart concrete that can sense elastic and inelastic deformation, as well as fracture. The signal provided is the change in electrical resistance, which is reversible for elastic deformation and irreversible for inelastic deformation and fracture. The presence of electrically conducting short fibers is necessary for the concrete to sense elastic or inelastic deformation, but the sensing of fracture does not require fibers. The fibers serve to bridge the cracks and provide a conduction path. The resistance increase is due to conducting fiber pullout in the elastic regime, conducting fiber breakage in the inelastic regime, and crack propagation at fracture.