OBJECTIVES Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and biliary tract cancers (BTC) are often diagnosed late and at an advanced stage. Population-based screening programmes do not exist and diagnosis is primarily dependent on symptom recognition. Recently symptom-based cancer decision support tools (CDSTs) have been introduced into primary care practices throughout the UK to support general prac...

BACKGROUND Biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a rare cancer in Europe and North America, characterized by wide geographic variation, with high incidence in some areas of Latin America and Asia. MATERIALS AND METHODS BTC mortality and incidence have been updated according to recent data, using joinpoint regression analysis. RESULTS Since the 1980s, decreasing trends in BTC mortality rates (age-st...

Dear Sirs, Rusa et al. (2009a) accurately described the program that the Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC) implemented on behalf of the Rwandan Ministry of Health (MOH) between 2005 and 2007 in Performance-based financing for better quality of services in Rwandan health centers: 3year experience . However, while it is limited to analysis of the BTC experience, the article gives the impression...

An optimized procedure was designed for the preparation of the microporous metal-organic framework (MOF) [Cu3(btc)2] (BTC=benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylate). The crystalline material was characterized by X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, SEM, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, N2 sorption, thermogravimetry, and IR spectroscopy of adsorbed CO. CO adsorbs on a small number of Cu2O impurities, and ...

Bulk Transport Capacity (BTC) is a measure of a network’s ability to transfer significant quantities of data with a single congestionaware transport connection (e.g., TCP). The intuitive definition of BTC is the expected long term average data rate (bits per second) of a single ideal TCP implementation over the path in question. However, there are many congestion control algorithms (and hence t...

We discuss the afterglow emission from a relativistic jet that is initially in the radiative regime in which the accelerated electrons are fast cooling. We note that such a “semiradiative” jet decelerates faster than an adiabatic jet does. We also take into account the effect of strong inverse-Compton scattering on the cooling frequency in the synchrotron component and therefore on the light cu...

The block truncation coding (BTC) algorithm for image compression has the advantages of low computation load and less memory requirement. In this paper, an adaptive image compression algorithm using multilevel BTC is proposed. An input image is partitioned into blocks with variable sizes, and the gray values of each block are adaptively quantized to be one, two, or four levels according to loca...

The sensing properties of the paddlewheel-type metal dimer (M-BTC: M = Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pd) toward SO2 gas were theoretically investigated using density functional theory (DFT) at M06-L level theory. Single-point calculations carried M06 to correct energetic HOMO–LUMO energy gap. O-bound adsorption complex on center paddlewheels is found be thermodynamically favorable than S-bound ones. tren...

The optical light curve of the afterglow following the gamma-ray burst GRB 990712 is reexamined. Recently published polarization measurements of that source require a collimated outflow geometry that in turn predicts a break in the light curve. We show that the V-band light curve is consistent with such a break and that the post-break light curve evolution is dominated by a supernova contributi...

Although metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or porous coordination polymers have been widely studied, their antimicrobial activities have not yet been fully investigated. In this work, antifungal activity of copper-based benzene-tricarboxylate MOF (Cu-BTC MOF), which is water stable and industrially interesting, is investigated against Candida albicans, Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus oryzae and Fu...