PURPOSE To compare planning target volume (PTV) defined by PET combined with 4DCT to 3DCT and 4DCT. METHODS Eighteen (18/30) esophageal cancer patients who underwent 3DCT, 4DCT and (18)F-FDG PET-CT thoracic simulation with SUVmax≥2.0 of the primary volume were enrolled. CTV3D was formed on 3DCT by adding a margin of 30 mm in cranial-caudal direction and 5 mm in transversal direction. PTV3D wa...

Animals as diverse as arthropods [1], fish [2], reptiles [3], birds [4], and mammals, including primates [5], depend on visually acquired information about conspecifics for survival and reproduction. For example, mate localization often relies on vision [6], and visual cues frequently advertise sexual receptivity or phenotypic quality [5]. Moreover, recognizing previously encountered competitor...

The basic financial purpose of corporation is creation of its value. Liquidity management should also contribute to realization of this fundamental aim. Many of the current asset management models that are found in financial management literature assume book profit maximization as the basic financial purpose. These book profit-based models could be lacking in what relates to another aim (i.e., ...

This article is one of ten reviews selected from the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2013 and co-published as a series in Critical Care. Other articles in the series can be found online at

This paper presents a new Variable target value method (VTVM) that can be used in conjunction with pure or de ected subgradient strategies. The proposed procedure assumes no a priori knowledge regarding bounds on the optimal value. The target values are updated iteratively whenever necessary, depending on the information obtained in the process of the algorithm. Moreover, convergence of the seq...

In this paper, we consider a decentralized approach to the multi-agent target allocation problem where agents are partitioned in two groups and every member of each group is a possible target for the members of the opposite group. Each agent has a limited communication range (radius) and individual preferences for the target allocation based on its individual local utility function. Furthermore...

The settling times of target functions play an important role in the domain of online optimization at the engine test bed. Inert target functions generally induce long measuring times which lead to increased costs. In this article, we analyze how previous knowledge about the physical behavior of target functions can be used to early predict the final steady state value to reduce measuring times.

In this paper, we consider how to improve the scalability and efficiency of target-value-path search on directed acyclic graphs. To this end, we introduce a depth-first heuristic search algorithm and a dynamic-programming method to compute the heuristic’s pattern database in linear (in the number of edges) time. We show the benefits of the new approach over previous work on this problem (Kuhn e...

An important aspect of marketing practice is the targeting of consumer segments for differential promotional activity. The premise of this activity is that there exist distinct segments of homogeneous consumers who can be identified by readily available demographic information. The increased availability of individual consumer panel data open the possibility of direct targeting of individual ho...