I feel somewhat relaxed and freer since I resigned from the position of Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs about a month ago. At least now I don’t have to worry about what I say about the yen/US dollar rate for the wire people who used to follow me all over the world. I would like to remind you that what I say today does not necessarily reflect the official views of the Japanese...

Introduction Geriatric patients and their relative fragility with respect to younger patients represent a surgical dilemma for the general surgeon. This has led surgeons to adopt "tailored" techniques and strategies to treat them. The rapid increase of this aged population has given the clinician the chance to push forward the knowledge on this subset of patients and challenge previous concepts...

Dysphagia due to tumor ulcers and stomatitis induced by chemoradiotherapy is painful; it is therefore crucial and urgent to establish a surgical enteral feeding route in patients with head and neck cancer to avoid malnutrition and improve treatment compliance [1]. However, common trismus caused by surgical resection, reconstruction, and, mostly, radiation fibrosis often compromise flexible endo...

Culture of entrepreneurs is also a sort of capital, which has a direct effect on development of enterprises in the process of economic operation of enterprises. Construction of cultural capital among entrepreneurs helps to enhance the overall competitive strength of Chinese enterprises in international society and helps to push forward development of the economic society. Due to historical reas...

Surgical treatment of cancer of the esophagus is influenced by two issues: use of surgical resection within a multimodality treatment approach and selection of the correct surgical approach. Selecting the correct surgical approach should be individualized and determined by the intent of surgery (curative or palliative), the anatomic location of the tumor (cervical or thoracic), the preferred me...

Complete esophageal stenosis secondary to peptic stricture in the upper esophagus is rare. It is, however a serious medical problem that may require otolaryngologic intervention because of life-threatening dysphagia and weight loss. We report the case of an elderly patient who presented with an upper esophageal stricture, without the typical symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease, that pro...

the static pull-in instability of beam-type micro-electromechanical systems is theoretically investigated. two engineering cases including cantilever and double cantilever micro-beam are considered. considering the mid-plane stretching as the source of the nonlinearity in the beam behavior, a nonlinear size-dependent euler-bernoulli beam model is used based on a modified couple stress theory, c...

This paper explores the broad issues of why the meaningful use of ICT to engage in deep learning has not been widespread in K-12 schools. We argue a critical reason is the lack of sustainability in the implementation of ICT-enabled pedagogies in schools, arising from a failure to understand the conditions for systemic innovations. We describe the key issues related to sustainability from litera...