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...

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...

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...

An image compression method has been developed using fuzzy edge image utilizing the basic Block Truncation Coding (BTC) algorithm. The fuzzy edge image has been validated with classical edge detectors on the basis of the results of the well-known Canny edge detector prior to applying to the proposed method. The bit plane generated by the conventional BTC method is replaced with the fuzzy bit pl...

Stigmatizing beliefs about seeking help for mental health conditions and perceived barriers to care (BTC) may influence the decision to seek support and treatment in U.K. military personnel. Many coalition partners, including the U.K. Armed Forces (UKAF), have made considerable efforts to reduce stigma/BTC although the impact of these efforts over time has not been assessed. We surveyed a total...

Six assertions concerning the status of Bitcoin are formulated and defended: (i) Bitcoin is not and will not become a currency-like informational commodity, (ii) currencylike informational commodities that aren’t currencies must be frauds, (ii) specific BTC amounts may become monetized and thus may be turned into financial assets, (iii) currently no BTC amounts are monetized in any currency are...