• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.18
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• pp.7703-7705
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• 2014

Cancer-testis (CT) antigens are a group of tumor-associated antigens with restricted expression in normal tissues except for testis and expression in a wide variety of tumor tissues. This pattern of expression makes them suitable targets for immunotherapy as well as potential biomarkers for early detection of cancer. However, some genes attributed to this family are now known to be expressed in other normal tissues which put their potential applications in immunotherapy and cancer detection under question. Here we analyzed expression of two previously known CT antigens, RHOXF2 and PIWIL2, in AML patients versus normal donors and found no significant difference in the expression of these genes between the two groups. As these two genes showed expression in normal leukocytes, their expression pattern seems to be wider than to be attributed to the CT gene family. Future research should focus on the expression profiles of so called CT antigens to find those with more testis specific expression.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.3523-3525
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• 2015

Gastric cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide. Environmental as well as genetic factors have been shown to be involved in its genesis. Among genetic factors, loss of function of a tumor suppressive gene named promyelocytic leukemia (PML) has been demonstrated in gastric cancer. In order to cast light in the mechanism by which PML protein is under-expressed in gastric cancer cells, we analyzed all exons and intron-exon boundaries of PML gene in 50 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks from gastric carcinoma tumors by means of PCR-SSCP and CSGE, with direct sequencing of abnormally shifted bands. We found a novel sequence variant of unknown significance localized in intron 5 in 3 samples (c.1398+84delA). We did not detect any deleterious mutations of the PML gene. This study shows that PML mutations may not contribute to gastric adenocarcinoma development. Post-translational modifications or protein degradation might be mechanisms by which PML is not expressed in gastric tumors.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.133-145
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• 2009

In this paper a modular high performance MV-to-LV rectifier based on a cascaded H-bridge rectifier is presented. The proposed rectifier can directly connect to the medium voltage levels and provide a low-voltage and highly-stable DC interface with the consumer applications. The input stage eliminates the necessity for heavy and bulky step-down transformers. It corrects the input power factor and maintains the voltage balance among the individual DC buses. The second stage includes the high frequency parallel-output DC/DC converters which prepares the galvanic isolation, regulates the output voltage, and attenuates the low frequency voltage ripple ($2f_{line}$) generated by the first stage. The parallel-output converters can work in interleaving mode and the active load-current sharing technique is utilized to balance the load power among them. The detailed analysis for modeling and control of the proposed structure is presented. The validity and performance of the proposed topology is verified by simulation and experimental results.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.16-22
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• 2015

This paper presents an automated computer vision-based system to update BIM data by leveraging multi-modal visual data collected from existing buildings under inspection. Currently, visual inspections are conducted for building envelopes or mechanical systems, and auditors analyze energy-related contextual information to examine if their performance is maintained as expected by the design. By translating 3D surface thermal profiles into energy performance metrics such as actual R-values at point-level and by mapping such properties to the associated BIM elements using XML Document Object Model (DOM), the proposed method shortens the energy performance modeling gap between the architectural information in the as-designed BIM and the as-is building condition, which improve the reliability of building energy analysis. Several case studies were conducted to experimentally evaluate their impact on BIM-based energy analysis to calculate energy load. The experimental results on existing buildings show that (1) the point-level thermography-based thermal resistance measurement can be automatically matched with the associated BIM elements; and (2) their corresponding thermal properties are automatically updated in gbXML schema. This paper provides practitioners with insight to uncover the fundamentals of how multi-modal visual data can be used to improve the accuracy of building energy modeling for retrofit analysis. Open research challenges and lessons learned from real-world case studies are discussed in detail.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.105-111
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• 2013

Probability distribution of microbes in wastewater is a crucial factor to be determined for microbial risk assessment associated with its reuse. The objective of this study was to investigate probability distribution of an indicator microorganism in wastewater. Daily total coliform counts measured from nationwide wastewater treatment plants in 2010 by the Ministry of Environment were used for statistical analysis. Basic statistics and probability distributions were estimated in the three different spatial scales using the MS Excel software and FARD2006 model. Overall, wastewater from manure and livestock treatment plants demonstrated greater median coliform counts than from sewage and village treatment plants. Generalized logistic (GLO) and 2-parameter Weibull (WBU2) appeared to be the two probability distributions that fitted best for total coliform numbers in wastewater. The study results of microbial statistics and probability distributions would provide useful data for quantitative assessment of microbial risk from agricultural wastewater reuse.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.218-227
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• 2016

The light harvesting efficiency is counted as an important factor in the power conversion efficiency of DSSCs. There are two measures to improve this parameter, including enhancing the dye-loading capacity and increasing the light trapping in the photoanode structure. In this paper, these tasks are addressed by introducing a macro-porous silicon (PSi) substrate as photoanode. The effects of the novel photoanode structure on the DSSC performance have been investigated by using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, photocurrent-voltage, UV-visible spectroscopy, reflectance spectroscopy, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements. The results indicated that bigger porosity percentage of the PSi structure improved the both anti-reflective/light-trapping and dye-loading capacity properties. PSi based DSSCs own higher power conversion efficiency due to its remarkable higher photocurrent, open circuit voltage, and fill factor. Percent porosity of 64%, PSi(III), resulted in nearly 50 percent increment in power conversion efficiency compared with conventional DSSC. This paper showed that PSi can be a good candidate for the improvement of light harvesting efficiency in DSSCs. Furthermore, this study can be considered a valuable reference for more investigations in the design of multifunctional devices which will profit from integrated on-chip solar power.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.1333-1354
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• 2015

A higher order analytical solution for static analysis of a truncated conical composite sandwich panel subjected to different loading conditions was presented in this paper which was based on a new improved higher order sandwich panel theory. Bending analysis of sandwich structures with flexible cores subjected to concentrated load, uniform distributed load on a patch, harmonic and uniform distributed loads on the top and/or bottom face sheet of the sandwich structure was also investigated. For the first time, bending analysis of truncated conical composite sandwich panels with flexible cores was performed. The governing equations were derived by principle of minimum potential energy. The first order shear deformation theory was used for the composite face sheets and for the core while assuming a polynomial description of the displacement fields. Also, the in-plane hoop stresses of the core were considered. In order to assure accuracy of the present formulations, convergence of the results was examined. Effects of types of boundary conditions, types of applied loads, conical angles and fiber angles on bending analysis of truncated conical composite sandwich panels were studied. As, there is no research on higher order bending analysis of conical sandwich panels with flexible cores, the results were validated by ABAQUS FE code. The present approach can be linked with the standard optimization programs and it can be used in the iteration process of the structural optimization. The proposed approach facilitates investigation of the effect of physical and geometrical parameters on the bending response of sandwich composite structures.

• Journal of Sport and Applied Science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2020

Purpose: This study sought to investigate the critical features of Word of mouth (WOM) advertising and their impact on sport consumer behavior. Research design, data, and methodology: Target population of the study consisted of all sports consumer of the Federation of Special Patients and Organ Transplantation, Tehran (Iran), who had indirectly watched the World Organ Transplant Competition documentary at least once on others' advice. For this purpose, 360 sports consumers of the federation were purposefully selected and they were asked to complete the standard WOM advertising questionnaire of Asda and Ko. Pearson correlation coefficient test and modeling of structural equations were performed using Spss24 and Smart PLS software at an error level of 0.05 used to analyze the data. Results: The findings show that there is a significant relationship between experience and expertise, trust and validity, content richness, and the power of message transmission through WOM advertising and its predictability. Finally, interpersonal relationships and work involvement also had a moderating role in this regard. Conclusions: The general conclusion is that the components of WOM advertising as well as involvement and homophily with the mediating role directly as one of the presuppositions for persuasion. The sports consumer was promoting WOM.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.347-371
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• 2015

A hybrid procedure based on multi-Criteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) and a Network Data Envelopment Analysis (NDEA) is proposed to evaluate the relative efficiency of customer services in bank branches. First, a three-stage process including sub-processes such as customer expectations, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, is defined to model the banking customer services. Then, fulfillment of customer expectations, customer loyalty level, and the customer satisfaction degree are measured and quantified through a multi-dimensional questionnaire based on customers' perceptions analysis and MUSA method, respectively. The customer services scores and the other criteria such as mean of employee evaluation score, operation costs, assets, deposits, loans, number of accounts are considered in network three-stage DEA model. The proposed NDEA model is formed based on multipliers perspective, output-oriented, and constant return to scale assumptions. The proposed NDEA model quantifies and assesses the total efficiency of main process and assigns the efficiency to customer expectations, customer satisfactions, and customer loyalties sub-processes in bank branches. The whole procedure is applied on 30 bank branches in IRAN. The proposed approach can be used in other organizations such as airports, airline agencies, urban transportation systems, railway organizations, chain stores, chain restaurants, public libraries, and entertainment centers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.719-742
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• 2015

This paper dealt the free vibration analysis of thick truncated conical composite sandwich shells with transversely flexible cores and simply supported boundary conditions based on a new improved and enhanced higher order sandwich shell theory. Geometries were used in the present work for the consideration of different radii curvatures of the face sheets and the core was unique. The coupled governing partial differential equations were derived by the Hamilton's principle. The in-plane circumferential and axial stresses of the core were considered in the new enhanced model. The first order shear deformation theory was used for the inner and outer composite face sheets and for the core, a polynomial description of the displacement fields was assumed based on the second Frostig's model. The effects of types of boundary conditions, conical angles, length to radius ratio, core to shell thickness ratio and core radius to shell thickness ratio on the free vibration analysis of truncated conical composite sandwich shells were also studied. Numerical results are presented and compared with the latest results found in literature. Also, the results were validated with those derived by ABAQUS FE code.