Charged particle radiotherapy at the Hyogo Ion Beam Medical Center: Characteristics,technology and clinical results

The Hyogo Ion Beam Medical Center was constructed in 2001 as the world’s first charged particle radiotherapy center where both proton and carbon-ion radiotherapy can be performed. From April 2001 to February 2007, more than 1,400 patients with a variety of cancers were treated. Most of the tumors except for prostate cancer were considered hard to cure with standard treatments such as surgery or conventional x-ray radiotherapy. The clinical results obtained so far are very encouraging, mainly due to the excellent dose localization to the tumor and strong cell killing effects of protons and carbon-ions. The good indications are localized tumors including skull base tumors, head and neck tumors, cancers of the lung, the liver, and the prostate, and bone and soft tissue sarcomas. Charged particle radiotherapy will significantly improve the quality of life of cancer patients and promote their speedy return to normal lives or work if it is used for early stage cancer.     

Estimation of a parameter of Morgenstern type bivariate exponential distribution by ranked set sampling

Ranked set sampling is applicable whenever ranking of a set of sampling units can be done easily by a judgement method or based on the measurement of an auxiliary variable on the units selected. In this work, we consider ranked set sampling, in which ranking of units are done based on measurements made on an easily and exactly measurable auxiliary variable X which is correlated with the study variable Y. We then estimate the mean of the study variate Y by the BLUE based on the measurements made on the units of the ranked set sampling regarding the study variable Y, when (X ,Y) follows a Morgenstern type bivariate exponential distribution. We then consider unbalanced multistage ranked set sampling and estimate the mean of the study variate Y by the BLUE based on the observations made on the units of multistage ranked set sample regarding the study variable Y. Efficiency comparison is also made on all estimators considered in this work.     

VALUE DISTRIBUTION THEORY AND DIOPHANTINE APPROXIMATION

In this paper, we will introduce some problems and results between Diophantine approximation and value distribution theory.     

NLPQL: A fortran subroutine solving constrained nonlinear programming problems

NLPQL is a FORTRAN implementation of a sequential quadratic programming method for solving nonlinearly constrained optimization problems with differentiable objective and constraint functions. At each iteration, the search direction is the solution of a quadratic programming subproblem. This paper discusses the organization of NLPQL, including the formulation of the subproblem and the information that must be provided by a user. A summary is given of the performance of different algorithmic options of NLPQL on a collection of test problems (115 hand-selected or application problems, 320 randomly generated problems). The performance of NLPQL is compared with that of some other available codes.     

Single machine scheduling with family setups to minimize total earliness and tardiness

This paper considers the problem of scheduling a given number of jobs on a single machine to minimize total earliness and tardiness when family setup times exist. The paper proposes optimal branch-and-bound algorithms for both the group technology assumption and if the group technology assumption is removed. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve larger problems with the group technology assumption removed. The proposed algorithms were empirically evaluated on problems of various sizes and parameters. The paper also explores how the choice of procedure affects total earliness and tardiness if an implementation of lean production methods has resulted in a reduction in setup times. An important finding of these empirical investigations is that scheduling jobs by removing the group technology assumption can significantly reduce total earliness and tardiness.     

Vacuum condensates of QCD

We study the properties of QCD vacuum state in this paper. The values of various local quark vacuum condensates, quark-gluon mixed vacuum condensates, and the structure of non-local quark vacuum condensate are predicted by the solution of Dyson-Schwinger Equations in "rainbow" approximation with three sets of different parameters for effective gluon propagator. The light quark virtuality is also obtained in a consistent way. Our all theoretical results here are in good agreement with the empirical values used widely in literature and many other theoretical calculations.     

Well-posedness results for a model of damage in thermoviscoelastic materials

This paper deals with a phase transitions model describing the evolution of damage in thermoviscoelastic materials. The resulting system is highly non-linear, mainly due to the presence of quadratic dissipative terms and non-smooth constraints on the variables. Existence and uniqueness of a solution are proved, as well as regularity results, on a suitable finite time interval.     

Co-ordination stoichiometry,edge shift and effective nuclear charge: A novel correlation

Summary K-absorption edge shifts of the absorbing atom in its complexes have been correlated with the effective nuclear charge on the central metal ion, overall electronegativity difference between the nearest neighbours in the complexes and the ionic radius of the central metal ion; a linear correlation has been observed among them, the data subjected to the method of least squares indicated that the correlation is genuine.

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Riassunto Gli slittamenti dell’orlo di assorbimentoK dell’atomo assorbente nei suoi complessi sono stati correlati con la carica nucleare efficacie sullo ione metallico centrale, con la differenza di elettronegatività generale tra vicini prossimi nei complessi e col raggio ionico dello ione metallico centrale; una correlazione lineare è stata osservata tra loro, i dati soggetti al metodo dei minimi quadranti hanno indicato che la correlazione è genuina.