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- Beral, V, et al.
(author)
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Alcohol, tobacco and breast cancer - collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 58515 women with breast cancer and 95067 women without the disease
- 2002
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In: British Journal of Cancer. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1532-1827 .- 0007-0920. ; 87, s. 1234-45
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Alcohol and tobacco consumption are closely correlated and published results on their association with breast cancer have not always allowed adequately for confounding between these exposures. Over 80% of the relevant information worldwide on alcohol and tobacco consumption and breast cancer were collated, checked and analysed centrally. Analyses included 58515 women with invasive breast cancer and 95067 controls from 53 studies. Relative risks of breast cancer were estimated, after stratifying by study, age, parity and, where appropriate, women's age when their first child was born and consumption of alcohol and tobacco. The average consumption of alcohol reported by controls from developed countries was 6.0 g per day, i.e. about half a unit/drink of alcohol per day, and was greater in ever-smokers than never-smokers, (8.4 g per day and 5.0 g per day, respectively). Compared with women who reported drinking no alcohol, the relative risk of breast cancer was 1.32 (1.19 - 1.45, P < 0.00001) for an intake of 35 - 44 g per day alcohol, and 1.46 (1.33 - 1.61, P < 0.00001) for greater than or equal to 45 g per day alcohol. The relative risk of breast cancer increased by 7.1% (95% CI 5.5-8.7%; P<0.00001) for each additional 10 g per day intake of alcohol, i.e. for each extra unit or drink of alcohol consumed on a daily basis. This increase was the same in ever-smokers and never-smokers (7.1 % per 10 g per day, P < 0.00001, in each group). By contrast, the relationship between smoking and breast cancer was substantially confounded by the effect of alcohol. When analyses were restricted to 22 255 women with breast cancer and 40 832 controls who reported drinking no alcohol, smoking was not associated with breast cancer (compared to never-smokers, relative risk for ever-smokers= 1.03, 95% CI 0.98 - 1.07, and for current smokers=0.99, 0.92 - 1.05). The results for alcohol and for tobacco did not vary substantially across studies, study designs, or according to 15 personal characteristics of the women; nor were the findings materially confounded by any of these factors. If the observed relationship for alcohol is causal, these results suggest that about 4% of the breast cancers in developed countries are attributable to alcohol. In developing countries, where alcohol consumption among controls averaged only 0.4 g per day, alcohol would have a negligible effect on the incidence of breast cancer. In conclusion, smoking has little or no independent effect on the risk of developing breast cancer; the effect of alcohol on breast cancer needs to be interpreted in the context of its beneficial effects, in moderation, on cardiovascular disease and its harmful effects on cirrhosis and cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus and liver. (C) 2002 Cancer Research UK.
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| 3. |
- Wei, CH, et al.
(author)
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Polarization dependence of light intensity distribution near a nanometric aluminum slit
- 2004
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In: Optical Society of America. Journal B: Optical Physics. - 0740-3224. ; 21:5, s. 1005-1012
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The near-field radiation pattern of a long thin slit (with a width much smaller than the excitation wavelength) in a uniform aluminum surface was measured and modeled by numerical computation. In particular, the interplay between the incident light polarization and the slit width is found to play an essential role in the near-field profile on the back side of the nanoslits. Two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain computer simulations were performed to calculate the near-field intensity profile for different slit widths and metal thicknesses. This method will allow the optimization of three-dimensional near-field radiation patterns for a variety of near-field molecular scanning schemes. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.
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| 4. |
- Chen, Weimin, 1959-, et al.
(author)
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Nature and Formation of Non-Radiative Defects in GaNAs and InGaAsN
- 2002
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In: MRS Fall Meeting 2001,2001. - Materials Research Society Symposium - Proceedings, Vol. 692 : MRS. ; , s. 67-72
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) technique has been employed to examine the nature and formation mechanism of non-radiative defects in GaNAs and InGaAsN. In both alloys, two defects were observed and were shown to be deep-level, non-radiative recombination centers. One of the defects has been identified as a complex involving an AsGa antisite. These two defects gain more importance with increasing N composition up to 3%, presumably due to an increase in their concentration. With a further higher N composition, the defects start to lose importance in carrier recombination that is attributed to an increasingly important role of other new non-radiative channels introduced with a high N composition. On the other hand, effect of In composition up to 3% seems to be only marginal. Both defects were shown to be preferably introduced in the alloys during low-temperature growth by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), but can be rather efficiently removed by post-growth rapid thermal annealing.
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| 5. |
- Rao, W., et al.
(author)
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Design of an open and secure ubiquitous computing system
- 2004
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In: IEEE/WIC/ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WEB INTELLIGENCE (WI 2004), PROCEEDINGS. - 0769521002 ; , s. 656-659
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Many difficulties such as scalability and security problems are addressed in this paper, and some concluded principles are given to guide the design and implementation of a large-scale open and secure ubiqu itous computing system. A service toolkit (aCAST) consisting of a set of software components and detector services have been developed, and a Context Aware Call Forwarding system has also been developed as a proof-of-concept test bed using aCAST. The off-the-shelf devices, such as Bluetooth mobile phones and PDAs, is used as user devices and the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is adopted as an open communication protocol.
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| 6. |
- Saha, B., et al.
(author)
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LEA-135 expression: its association with a lower risk of recurrence and increased overall survival of patients with lymph node-positive primary invasive breast cancer
- 2004
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In: Anticancer Res. - 0250-7005. ; 24:4, s. 2391-2400
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A retrospective study was undertaken to determine and compare the prognostic significance of LEA-135 protein expression by immunohistochemistry with other prognostic pathological parameters, with respect to recurrence and overall survival. This study was conducted in freshly-frozen tissue sections from a cohort of 367 patients having primary invasive breast cancer, with axillary lymph node metastasis. The association of LEA-135 expression was compared with estrogen and progesterone receptor status, segmentectomy or radical mastectomy and hormonal therapy or chemotherapy in terms of recurrence or disease-free survival. Pathologic parameters including tumor size, histological tumor type and histological grade, as well as age of patients at the time of initial diagnosis, and the treatments, together with a median follow-up of 8.8 years were contemplated for the study. Among these parameters, tumor size and histological grade were individually and significantly associated with an increased probability of recurrence (log rank p<0.001 in both cases) and short survival (log ranks p<0.001 and p=0.002, respectively), whereas age was only significantly associated with an increased probability of recurrence (log rank p=0.002) by univariate analysis. By multivariate analysis, both tumor size and histological grade remained statistically significant for recurrence (log rank p<0.001 and p=0.013, respectively) and overall survival (log ranks p<0.001 and p=0.016, respectively). Among the prognostic biomarkers, both ER and PR expression were associated with a decreased rate of recurrence (log ranks p<0.001 and p=0.008, respectively) and overall survival (log ranks p<0.001 and p=0.002, respectively) by univariate analysis. By multivariate analysis, only the ER expression remained significantly associated with a decreased recurrence and increased overall survival (log ranks p=0.023 and p=0.002, respectively). Patients with high (>50% positive cells) or moderate (5-50% positive cells) number of LEA-135-positive cells had a lower probability (46%) of recurrence at 10 years after surgery compared to 76% in LEA-135-negative patients (log rank p<0.001) by univariate analysis. Moreover, the probability of overall survival was higher in patients with high or moderate expression of LEA-135 (46% and 47%, respectively) compared to LEA-135-negative patients (24%) by univariate analysis (log rank p=0.009). By multivariate analysis, the association remained statistically significant for recurrence (log rank p<0.001) and survival (log rank p=0.002). However, there was no significant association between LEA-135 and any of the pathological parameters, age, hormone receptor status, the mode of surgery or the form of therapy (chemo- and/or hormonal) received by this cohort of patients. The results show that an improved prognosis was directly associated with the density of LEA-135-positive cancer cells, while loss of LEA-135 expression was associated with an aggressive phenotype of cancer cells during breast cancer progression. Thus, LEA-135 expression can be implicated as a significant and independent biomarker to identify and distinguish high- from low-risk patients with lymph node-positive invasive breast cancer for an aggressive treatment. Moreover, according to the present results, LEA-135 expression appears to be associated with the tumor cells that have retained certain normal biological characteristics, leading to their lack of aggressiveness and hence a better prognosis.
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| 7. |
- Tang, W., et al.
(author)
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Experimental investigation and thermodynamic calculation of the Ti-Ni-Cu shape memory alloys
- 2000
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In: Metallurgical and Materials Transactions. A. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1073-5623 .- 1543-1940. ; 31:10, s. 2423-2430
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The effect of Cu content on the thermoelastic martensitic transformation in TiNi shape memory alloys (SMAs) was systematically investigated by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Martensitic transformation temperatures and transformation enthalpy were measured for a series of alloys with composition Ti50Ni50-xCux (x = 0 to 13 at. pet). The measured data were then used to evaluate the thermodynamic properties of the low-temperature orthorhombic B19 and monoclinic B19' phases using a two-sublattice model (Ni, Cu, Va)(0.5)(Ni, Cu, Ti)(0.5) in combination with the thermodynamic description of the parent B2 phase. The vertical section of the pseudobinary TiNi-TiCu was calculated including the B19 and B19' phases. Transformation enthalpy and stress rate were predicted for the ternary TiNiCu SMAs, which are in reasonable agreement with experimental data.
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| 8. |
- Wang, Hsei-Wei, et al.
(author)
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Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus-induced cellular reprogramming contributes to the lymphatic endothelial gene expression in Kaposi sarcoma.
- 2004
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In: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 36:7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The biology of Kaposi sarcoma is poorly understood because the dominant cell type in Kaposi sarcoma lesions is not known. We show by gene expression microarrays that neoplastic cells of Kaposi sarcoma are closely related to lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) and that Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) infects both LECs and blood vascular endothelial cells (BECs) in vitro. The gene expression microarray profiles of infected LECs and BECs show that KSHV induces transcriptional reprogramming of both cell types. The lymphangiogenic molecules VEGF-D and angiopoietin-2 were elevated in the plasma of individuals with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and Kaposi sarcoma. These data show that the gene expression profile of Kaposi sarcoma resembles that of LECs, that KSHV induces a transcriptional drift in both LECs and BECs and that lymphangiogenic molecules are involved in the pathogenesis of Kaposi sarcoma.
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| 9. |
- Wei, Tzu-Chieh, et al.
(author)
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Quantifying multipartite entanglement
- 2004
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In: Quantum communication, meaurement and computing. - : AIP. - 0735402167 ; , s. 241-244
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A natural way of quantifying the degree of entanglement for a pure quantum state is to compare how far this state is from the set of all unentangled pure states. This geometric measure of entanglement is explored for bipartite and multipartite pure and mixed states. It is determined analytically for arbitrary two-qubit mixed states and for generalized Werner and isotropic states. It is also applied to certain multipartite mixed states. including two multipartite bound entangeled states discovered by Smolin and Dur. Moreover, the geometric measure of entanglement is applied to the ground state of the Ising model in a transverse magnetic field. From this model the entanglement is shown to exhibit singular behavior at the quantum critical point.
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