BACKGROUND Prostate cancer prognosis is variable, and management decisions involve balancing patients' risks of recurrence and recurrence-free death. Moreover, the roles of body mass index (BMI) and race in risk of recurrence are controversial [1,2]. To address these issues, we developed and cross-validated RAPS (Risks After Prostate Surgery), a personal prediction model for biochemical recurre...

In an attempt to isolate disease-associated autoantigens in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we cloned a new autoantigen named gp130-RAPS, which is a novel soluble form of the IL-6 signal-transducing molecule gp130. gp130-RAPS is a 50-kDa protein translated from alternatively spliced mRNA and has a truncated form of gp130 with a unique sequence, Asn-Ile-Ala-Ser-Phe (NIASF), in its COOH-terminus. We o...

This paper introduces an interesting meta-heuristic called Meta-RaPS (Meta-heuristic for Randomized Priority Search) for solving combinatorial problems . Meta-RaPS incorporates randomness within priority rules to construct a feasible solution at each iteration. In addition, Meta-RaPS includes improvement heuristics for enhancing the feasible solution already obtained. Applications discussed inc...

Advertisement disseminations based on Roadside Access Points (RAPs) in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) attract lots of attentions and have a promising prospect. In this paper, we focus on a roadside advertisement dissemination, including three basic elements: RAP Service Provider (RSP), mobile vehicles and shops. The RSP has deployed many RAPs at different locations in a city. A shop wants t...

Renewable energy resources are widely being utilised in remote area power supply (RAPS) systems. The capacity value of renewable energy resources in a RAPS system indicates the ability of renewable energy resources to serve the load demand in the RAPS systems. In this paper, the impact of capacity value of renewable resources on energy management of a RAPS system, while maintaining system relia...

A striking illusion of motion is generated by static repeated asymmetric patterns (RAPs) such as Kitaoka's (2003) "Rotating Snakes" and Fraser and Wilcox's (1979) peripheral drift illusion. How do RAPs generate spurious motion signals, and what critical difference between RAPs and natural static scenes prevents the latter from appearing to move? Small involuntary eye movements during fixation h...

Neurotrophins influence growth and survival of specific populations of neurons through activation of Trks, members of the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) family. In this report, we describe the identification and characterization of two substrates of Trk kinases, rAPS and SH2-B, which are closely related Src homolog 2 (SH2) domain-containing signaling molecules. rAPS and SH2-B are substrates of ...

Standalone operation of a wind turbine generating system under fluctuating wind and variable load conditions is a difficult task. Moreover, high reactive power demand makes it more challenging due to the limitation of reactive capability of the wind generating system. A Remote Area Power Supply (RAPS) system consisting of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG), hybrid energy storage, a...

Transcription as the key step in gene expression is a highly regulated process. The speed of transcription elongation depends on the underlying gene sequence and varies on a gene by gene basis. The reason for this sequence dependence is not known in detail. Recently, our group studied the cross talk between the nascent RNA and the transcribing RNA polymerase by screening the Escherichia coli ge...

Standalone operation of a wind turbine generating system under fluctuating wind and variable load conditions is a difficult task. Moreover, high reactive power demand makes it more challenging due to the limitation of reactive capability of the wind generating system. A Remote Area Power Supply (RAPS) system consisting of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG), hybrid energy storage, a...