• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.4839-4842
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• 2014

Background: Although the Cox's proportional hazard model is the popular approach for survival analysis to investigate significant risk factors of cancer patient survival, it is not appropriate in the case of log-term disease free survival. Recently, cure rate models have been introduced to distinguish between clinical determinants of cure and variables associated with the time to event of interest. The aim of this study was to use a cure rate model to determine the clinical associated factors for cure rates of patients with breast cancer (BC). Materials and Methods: This prospective cohort study covered 305 patients with BC, admitted at Shahid Faiazbakhsh Hospital, Tehran, during 2006 to 2008 and followed until April 2012. Cases of patient death were confirmed by telephone contact. For data analysis, a non-mixed cure rate model with Poisson distribution and negative binomial distribution were employed. All analyses were carried out using a developed Macro in WinBugs. Deviance information criteria (DIC) were employed to find the best model. Results: The overall 1-year, 3-year and 5-year relative survival rates were 97%, 89% and 74%. Metastasis and stage of BC were the significant factors, but age was significant only in negative binomial model. The DIC also showed that the negative binomial model had a better fit. Conclusions: This study indicated that, metastasis and stage of BC were identified as the clinical criteria for cure rates. There are limited studies on BC survival which employed these cure rate models to identify the clinical factors associated with cure. These models are better than Cox, in the case of long-term survival.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.17
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• pp.7923-7927
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• 2015

Background: The Cox PH model is one of the most significant statistical models in studying survival of patients. But, in the case of patients with long-term survival, it may not be the most appropriate. In such cases, a cure rate model seems more suitable. The purpose of this study was to determine clinical factors associated with cure rate of patients with breast cancer. Materials and Methods: In order to find factors affecting cure rate (response), a non-mixed cure rate model with negative binomial distribution for latent variable was used. Variables selected were recurrence cancer, status for HER2, estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR), size of tumor, grade of cancer, stage of cancer, type of surgery, age at the diagnosis time and number of removed positive lymph nodes. All analyses were performed using PROC MCMC processes in the SAS 9.2 program. Results: The mean (SD) age of patients was equal to 48.9 (11.1) months. For these patients, 1, 5 and 10-year survival rates were 95, 79 and 50 percent respectively. All of the mentioned variables were effective in cure fraction. Kaplan-Meier curve showed cure model's use competence. Conclusions: Unlike other variables, existence of ER and PR positivity will increase probability of cure in patients. In the present study, Weibull distribution was used for the purpose of analysing survival times. Model fitness with other distributions such as log-N and log-logistic and other distributions for latent variable is recommended.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.142-151
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• 1994

In a hospital, there are many clinical departments. In general, the hospital management often uses the index of cure rate (i.e. the rate of patients recovered by the cure of this hospital) to evaluate the medical quality of each clinical department. But, since the cure rate varies significantly with the rate of patient with severe disease, the evaluation by cure rate is unreasonable and incomplete. This paper proposes a new evaluation method called the cause-selecting evaluation method proposed by Prof. Gongxu Zhang (1990). Besides, this method can also be used to diagnose the abnormality of cure rate. The practical case studies check with the theory very well.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.560-564
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• 2007

The photostabilization and cure kinetics of UV-curable, optical resins containing various formulations of photostabilizers were investigated to determine the system with the highest cure conversion and durability. Photo-DSC analysis revealed that increasing the concentration of a UV absorber (UVA) decreased both the crosslink density and the cure rate due to competition for the incident photons between the photoinitiator and the UVA, whereas including a hindered amine light stabilizer (HALS) hardly affected either the cure conversion or the cure rate due to its very low absorption of 365 nm. This result was confirmed by FTIR-ATR spectroscopy and UV-visible spectroscopy analyses. QUV ageing experiments showed that the cure conversion and durability were the highest for the UVA/HALS formulation at a ratio of 1 : 2, which is due to their synergistic action.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.16
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• pp.7359-7363
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• 2015

Background: As a result of significant progress made in treatment of many types of cancers during the last few decades, there have been an increased number of patients who do not experience mortality. We refer to these observations as cure or immune and models for survival data which include cure fraction are known as cure rate models or long-term survival models. Materials and Methods: In this study we used the data collected from 438 female patients with breast cancer registered in the Cancer Research Center in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. The patients had been diagnosed from 1992 to 2012 and were followed up until October 2014. We had to exclude some because of incomplete information. Phone calls were made to confirm whether the patients were still alive or not. Deaths due to breast cancer were regarded as failure. To identify clinical, pathological, and biological characteristics of patients that might have had an effect on survival of the patients we used a non-mixture cure rate model; in addition, a Weibull distribution was proposed for the survival time. Analyses were performed using STATA version 14. The significance level was set at $P{\leq}0.05$. Results: A total of 75 patients (17.1%) died due to breast cancer during the study, up to the last follow-up. Numbers of metastatic lymph nodes and histologic grade were significant factors. The cure fraction was estimated to be 58%. Conclusions: When a cure fraction is not available, the analysis will be changed to standard approaches of survival analysis; however when the data indicate that the cure fraction is available, we suggest analysis of survival data via cure models.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.320-324
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• 2002

Binary cure system is composed of different two cure accelerators, which can cause a synergy effect to delay the scorch time and to increase the cure rate. In this study, binary cure systems between 1,6-bis(N,N'-dibenzylthiocarbamoyldithio)-hexane (DBTH) and benzothiazole sulfenamides were investigated using carbon black-filled natural rubber compounds. N-Cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide (CBS), N-tert-butyl-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide (TBBS), and 2-(morpholinothio) benzothiazole (MOR) were employed as benzothiazole sulfenamides. The binary cure systems show scorch safty at high temperature. The binary cure systems have faster cure rate and better reversion resistance than the single cure system of the benzothiazole sulfenamides. DBTH is found to be more effective to decrease the viscosity of a compound than the benzothiazole sulfenamides. Physical properties of the vulcanizates with the binary cure system are better than those of the vulcanizates with the single one.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 2014

Ordinary survival analysis cannot be applied when a significant fraction of patients may be cured. A cure rate model is the combination of cure fraction and survival model and can be applied to several types of cancer. In this article, the cure rate model is considered in the interval censored data with a cluster effect. A shared frailty model is introduced to characterize the cluster effect and an EM algorithm is used to estimate parameters. A simulation study is done to evaluate the performance of estimates. The proposed approach is applied to the smoking cessation study in which the event of interest is a smoking relapse. Several covariates (including intensive care) are evaluated to be effective for both the occurrence of relapse and the smoke quitting duration.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.259-265
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• 2002

The cure kinetics of blends of epoxy (DGEBA, diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A)/anhydride resin with polyamide copolymer, poly(dimmer acid-co-alkyl polyamine), were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) under isothermal condition. On increasing the amount of polyamide copolymer in the blends, the reaction rate was increased and the final cure conversion was decreased. Lower values of final cure conversions in the epoxy/(polyamide copolymer) blends indicate that polyamide hinders the cure reaction between the epoxy and the curing agent. The value of the reaction order, m, for the initial autocatalytic reaction was not affected by blending polyamide copolymer with epoxy resin, and the value was approximately 1.3, whereas the reaction order, n, for the general n-th order of reaction was increased by increasing the amount of polyamide copolymer in the blends, and the value increased from 1.6 to 4.0. A diffusion-controlled reaction was observed as the cure conversion increased and the rate equation was successfully analyzed by incorporating the diffusion control term for the epoxy/anhydride/(polyamide copolymer) blends. Complete miscibility was observed in the uncured blends of epoxy/(polyamide copolymer) up to 120 $^{\circ}C$, but phase separations occurred in the early stages of the curing process at higher temperatures than 120 "C. During the curing process, the cure reaction involving the functional group in polyamide copolymer was detected on a DSC thermogram.gram.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.27-32
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• 2014

The cure properties of self-extinguishing epoxy resin systems with different charge transfer type latent catalysts were investigated, which are composed of YX4000H as a biphenyl epoxy resin, MEH-7800SS as a hardener, and charge transfer type latent catalysts. We designed and used five kinds of charge transfer type latent catalyst and compared to epoxy resin systems with Triphenylphosphine-Benzoquinone(TPP-BQ) as reference system. The cure kinetics of these systems were analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry with an isothermal approach, the kinetic parameters of all systems were reported in generalized kinetic equations with diffusion effects. The epoxy resin systems with Triphenylphosphine-Quinhydrone(TPP-QH), Triphenylphosphine-Benzanthrone(TPP-BT) and Triphenylphosphine-Anthrone(TPP-AT) as a charge transfer type latent catalyst showed a cure conversion rate of equal or higher rate than those with TPP-BQ. These systems with TPP-QH and Triphenylphosphine-Tetracyanoethylene(TPP-TCE) showed a critical cure reaction conversion of equal or higher conversion than those with TPP-BQ. The increases of cure conversion rates could be explained by the decrease of the activation energy of these epoxy resin systems. It can be considered that the increases of critical cure reaction conversion would be dependent on the crystallinity of the biphenyl epoxy resin systems.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2001

The influences of carbon black loading and cure type on the cure characteristics including kinetics and dynamic mechanical properties were investigated for a styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR). The rate constants of accelerated sulfur vulcanization reaction at three different temperatures were determined using a cure rheometer, and they were compared with those from the direct measurement of sulfur concentration. The strain softening behavior under dynamic deformation, known as the Payne effect was also discussed depending on the carbon black loading and cure type.