Background: Rectal cancer treatment has improved through important incremental surgical and oncological developments over the past decades. Localized disease is highly treatable with multimodal surgical and oncological therapy. Prognosis is dependent on several factors with tumour stage at diagnosis being the most important. Furthermore, curative treatment is highly dependent on radical surgical r

Some plants use food bodies to attract ants that then provide protection from herbivory. A brief report from 1898 describes the myrmecophilic plant Leea aculeata Bl. as bearing food bodies on its young shoots, which accumulate when they are not harvested by ants. However, ant efficacy in deterring herbivores and consequences for herbivory rates remain unknown. Here we investigate (1) which ant tax

A hybrid combining T-matrix method and electric field integral equation is used to formulate fundamental bounds on radiation efficiency of an implanted antenna. Resulting quadratic optimization problem is solved using a dual formulation. The results present the versatility of the described computational scheme and show the optimal current densities that are the least impaired by dissipation in the

An algebraic link between transition matrix and impedance matrix is utilized in this work to unify characteristic mode decomposition originally proposed by Garbacz with a framework proposed later on by Harrington and Mautz. The resulting formulation is unique to all method of moments formulations, valid for all linear and lossless materials, and has many favorable properties. The unified prescript

A reflective metasurface with reconfigurable beam is proposed for indoor wireless communications. It consists of 8 × 8 unit cells with tunable capacitors. By varying the capacitances, the reflective phase across the metasurface can be designed to facilitate different reflective angles for an incident wave. The simulation results show that the proposed reflective metasurface can deflect the incomin

Massive multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) technology and mm wave are important technologies in 5G/6G to enhance the spectrum efficiency and system capacity. However, it has a lot of challenges in mm wave range, such as high hardware cost and power consumption in such systems. Hybrid beamforming is an interesting solution with less number of RF transvers than antennas. In this paper, we will prese

This study investigates a missing value imputation approach for longitudinal growth data in pediatric studies from multiple countries. We analyzed a combined cohort from five natural history studies of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in the US and EU with longitudinal growth measurements for 23,201 subjects. We developed a multiple imputation methodology using LMS parameters of CDC reference data. We measur

The recent years have witnessed science taking gigantic strides and achieving milestones in the areas which were previously rendered to be difficult. Advancements such as the culmination of the Human Genome Project and the successful use of gene therapy have shown how science can be used to alleviate human diseases and benefit society. While basic scientific knowledge is increasing at a remarkable

Atmospheric new-particle formation (NPF) affects climate by contributing to a large fraction of the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOMs) drive the early particle growth and therefore substantially influence the survival of newly formed particles to CCN. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is known to suppress the NPF driven by HOMs, but the underlying mechanism remains larg

The role of biotechnology as a forerunner in the pathway of revolution of human lives has been promising in the recent past. The achievements of biotechnology in the bio-medical front encompass various products like novel vaccines, diagnostic devices, and novel therapeutic strategies. This chapter deals with the principles and processes involved in the attainment of therapeutic tools and treatment

Towards the close of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, there was a proliferation of Christian missionaries in Africa. Upon settling in Africa, missionaries initiated and became the main providers of Western-styled education and health care. For this reason, the historical and enduring impact of missionaries in Africa cannot be overlooked. This thesis examines the synchronic an

This chapter focuses on the oxidative stability of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) delivery systems and n-3 PUFAs fortified foods during digestion, with specific attention given to the long-chain n-3 PUFAs. The topic is of importance since the formation of reactive lipid oxidation products in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) can lead to unwanted reactions e.g., with proteins, phospholi

A 43-year-old woman was referred to the Eye clinic at Skåne University Hospital complaining of redness and a foreign body sensation in the left eye for 2 to 3 days. Vision was unaffected, and she was otherwise completely well. In particular, there was no itching or swelling elsewhere.

Phase field crystal modeling with wavelet filtering is shown to be an attractive replacement for molecular dynamics simulations when evaluating grain boundary stiffness by the capillary fluctuation method. Obstacles such as iterative equilibration of grain boundary structures and repeated reconstruction of the grain boundary over extended simulations can be avoided.