PURPOSE This study describes a real-time spot weight adaptation method in spot-scanning proton therapy for moving target or moving patient, so that the resultant dose distribution closely matches the planned dose distribution. MATERIALS AND METHODS The method proposed in this study adapts the weight (MU) of the delivering pencil beam to that of the target spot; it will actually hit during pat...

BACKGROUND More than 50 million people around the world are investigated for tuberculosis using sputum smear microscopy annually. This process requires repeated visits and patients often drop out. METHODS AND FINDINGS This clinical trial of adults with cough ≥2 wk duration (in Ethiopia, Nepal, Nigeria, and Yemen) compared the sensitivity/specificity of two sputum samples collected "on the spo...

This paper highlights the previously neglected role of the futures markets in US Treasury price discovery. The estimates of 5and 10-year GovPX spot market information shares typically fail to reach 50% from 1999 on. The GovPX information shares for the 2-year contract are higher than those of the 5and 10-year maturities but also decline after 1998. Relative bid-ask spreads, number of trades, an...

The methodology described in this article was developed to transcend the limitations of both approaches. Its goal is to use existing data to identify small areas with high levels of adolescent childbearing. The method is an active approach to identify what can be defined as “hot spots” for adolescent births, even when they are located in counties or communities where adolescent births are not c...

Third-generation cellular systems will provide wide coverage and nearly universal roaming, but will not realistically live up to the bit rate expectations placed on them. On the other hand, WLAN systems already offer bit rates surpassing those of 3G systems, but are often found lacking with respect to roaming and mobility support. In short, WLAN systems are great for hot spot coverage, while 3G...

Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 75 drilled into igneous basement in the Angola Basin at Site 530, located about 20 km north of the escarpment at the eastern end of the Walvis Ridge. Petrographic and geochemical characteristics of the basalts indicate that the basement is quite uniform, variations in chemical composition being related to weathering, crystal fractionation, and the modal abundances ...

This paper introduces a novel approach or architecture for fraud-resistant and privacy-friendly Electronic Traffic Pricing (ETP). One salient contribution is that it can satisfy the seemingly incompatible requirements of a privacy-friendly and socalled “thin” solution. The proposed approach relies on regularly sending to the traffic Pricing Authority (PA) only hashes of travelled trajectories a...

Threshold selection is a critical step in using binary change detection methods. The threshold determines the accuracy of change detection results but is highly subjective and scene-dependent, depending on the familiarity with the study area and the analyst’s skill. Nearest neighbor classification is a nonparametric classifier, which was applied to remove the threshold. In order to find the mos...

This paper considers spatial data z(s1); Z(s2); ; Z(sn) collected at n locations, with the objective of predicting z(s0) at another location. The usual method of analysis for this problem is kriging, but here we introduce a new signal-plus-noise model whose essential feature is the identi cation of hot spots. The signal decays in relation to distance from hot spots. We show that hot spots can b...