• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6813-6820
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• 2013

The present study was conducted to investigate the prognostic significance of co-expression patterna of HER-2, IL-6, TNF-a and TGF-${\beta}1$ in breast cancer, by correlating the number of markers with positive expression with clinicopathological characteristics indicative of tumor progression and overall survival. One hundred thirty consecutive patients with primary breast cancer were prospectively included and evaluated. Serum concentrations of the above markers were measured by ELISA. Median split was used to subdivide patients with marker positive or negative expression. The presence of ${\geq}3$ positive markers was independently associated with extended lymph node (>3) involvement (aOR, 11.94, p=0.001) and lymphovascular invasion (aOR, 12.04, p=0.018), increasing the prognostic significance of each marker considered separately. Additional prognostic information regarding survival was also provided; as the number of positive markers increased, a gradually reduction of survival time was observed. In addition, patients with 4 positive markers had significantly shorter survival (25 vs 39 months, p=0.006) and a more than 4 fold increased risk of death (aHR, 4.35, p=0.003) compared to patients with 3 positive markers. Our findings suggest that the coexpression pattern of these four markers could be used clinically as a useful marker for tumor extension and outcome of breast cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6965-6969
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• 2013

Background: Tobacco consumption has been identified as the single biggest cause of inequality in morbidity and mortality. Understanding pattern of socioeconomic equalities in tobacco consumption in India will help in designing targeted public health control measures. Materials and Methods: Nationally representative data from the India Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) conducted in 2009-2010 was analyzed. The survey provided information on 69,030 respondents aged 15 years and above. Data were analyzed according to regions for estimating prevalence of current tobacco consumption (both smoking and smokeless) across wealth quintiles. Multiple logistic regression analysis predicted the impact of socioeconomic determinants on both forms of current tobacco consumption adjusting for other socio-demographic variables. Results: Trends of smoking and smokeless tobacco consumption across wealth quintiles were significant in different regions of India. Higher prevalence of smoking and smokeless tobacco consumption was observed in the medium wealth quintiles. Risk of tobacco consumption among the poorest compared to the richest quintile was 1.6 times higher for smoking and 3.1 times higher for smokeless forms. Declining odds ratios of both forms of tobacco consumption with rising education were visible across regions. Poverty was a strong predictor in north and south Indian region for smoking and in all regions for smokeless tobacco use. Conclusions: Poverty and poor education are strong risk factors for both forms of tobacco consumption in India. Public health policies, therefore, need to be targeted towards the poor and uneducated.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6613-6618
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• 2013

To evaluate the relationship between alcohol drinking, XRCC1 codon 194 and 399 polymorphisms and risk of colorectal cancer, we conducted a case-control study with 315 colorectal cancer cases (105 colon, 210 rectal) and 439 population-based controls in Jiangsu Province of China. The XRCC1 codon 194 and 399 genotypes were identified using polymerase chain reaction and restrictrion fragment length polymorphism methods (PCR-RFLP). A structured questionnaire was used to elicit detailed information. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated with an unconditional logistic model. In this study no significant differences were observed among the studied groups with regard to the genotype distribution of the XRCC1 codons 194 and 399 and the risk of colorectal cancer did not appear to be significantly influenced by genotype alone, whereas alcohol consumption showed a positive association (P for trend <0.01). When combined effects of XRCC1 polymorphisms and alcohol consumption were analyzed, we found that the 194Trp or 399Gln alleles further increased the colorectal cancer risk due to high alcohol intake. These findings support the conclusion that colorectal cancer susceptibility may be altered by gene-environment interactions.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6315-6319
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• 2013

To study the differentiated expression of the proto-oncogene Pokemon in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cell lines and tissues, mRNA and protein expression levels of CNE1, CNE2, CNE3 and C666-1 were detected separately by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), real-time PCR and Western-blotting. The immortalized nasopharyngeal epithelial cell line NP69 was used as a control. The Pokemon protein expression level in biopsy specimens from chronic rhinitis patients and undifferentiated non keratinizing NPC patients was determined by Western-blotting and arranged from high to low: C666-1>CNE1>CNE2> CNE3>NP69. The Pokemon mRNA expression level was also arranged from high to low: CNE1>CNE2>NP69>C666-1>CNE3. Pokemon expression of NP69 and C666-1 obviously varied from mRNA to protein. The Pokemon protein level of NPC biopsy specimens was obviously higher than in chronic rhinitis. The data suggest that high Pokemon protein expression is closely associated with undifferentiated non-keratinizing NPC and may provide useful information for NPC molecular target therapy.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.7023-7027
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• 2013

To evaluate the relationship between obesity, diet, physical activity and breast cancer in Thai women, we conducted a case control study with 1,130 cases and 1,142 controls. Informed consent was obtained from all participants and a structured questionnaire was performed by trained interviewers to collect information on demographic and anthropometric data, reproductive and medical history, residential history, physical activity and occupation as well as dietary habits. A significant positive association with an increased risk of breast cancer was observed in women body mass index (BMI) of ${\geq}25mg/m^2$ (OR=1.33, 95%CI 1.07-1.65), the risk being higher in postmenopausal women (OR=1.67, 95%CI 1.24-2.25). In addition, underweight BMI at ages 10 and 20 years showed an inverse association in all women (OR=0.70, 95%CI 0.56-0.88 and OR=0.74, 95%CI 0.59-0.93, respectively) and in those with a premenopausal status (OR=0.69, 95%CI 0.51-0.93 and OR=0.76, 95%CI 0.56-0.99, respectively). Regular exercise was associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer (OR=0.78, 95%CI 0.68-0.98). Interestingly, analysis by type of activity revealed significant protective effects for women who reported the highest levels of walking for shopping (OR=0.58, 95%CI 0.38-0.88). High consumption of vegetables and fruit were associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer, while high consumption of animal fat showed an increased risk in postmenopausal women. In conclusion, our results indicate that obesity and high consumption of animal fat are associated with breast cancer risk, particularly in postmenopausal women, while recreational physical activity has protective effects. It seems that primary prevention of breast cancer should be promoted in an integrated manner. Effective strategies need to be identified to engage women in healthy lifestyles.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.4503-4506
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• 2016

Background: Lymph node and distant metastases are known as the prognostic factor in renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Clinical parameters are needed to predict metastases preoperatively. The aim of this study was to assess clinical predictive factors for lymph node and distant metastases. Materials and Methods: We collected RCC data from January 1995 until December 2015 at Cipto Mangunkusumo hospital in Jakarta. We only reviewed data that had renal cell carcinoma histopathology by operation or biopsy. Clinical information such as patient age, gender, hemoglobin (Hb), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and tumor size (clinical T stage) were reviewed and analyzed by Chi-squre and logistic regression to establish clinical predictive value. Results: A total of 102 patients were reviewed. There were 32 (31.4%) with lymph node metastases and 27 (26.5%) with distant metastases. Age, Hb and clinical T staging were associated with nodal metastases. However, only Hb and clinical T staging were found to be associated with distant metastases. By logistic regression, we found T3-4 in clinical T-stage to be the only predictor of nodal metastases (OR 5.14; 1.87 - 14.09) and distant metastases (OR 3.42; 1.27 - .9.23). Conclusions: Clinical T-stages of T3 and T4 according to The AJCC TNM classification could be used as independent clinical predictive factors for lymph node or distant metastases in patients with RCC.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.56-62
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• 2001

In this paper, we adopt a missing data theory to speech recognition. It can be used in order to maintain high performance of speech recognizer when the missing data occurs. In general, hidden Markov model (HMM) is used as a stochastic classifier for speech recognition task. Acoustic events are represented by continuous probability density function in continuous density HMM(CDHMM). The missing data theory has an advantage that can be easily applicable to this CDHMM. A marginalization method is used for processing missing data because it has small complexity and is easy to apply to automatic speech recognition (ASR). Also, a spectral subtraction is used for detecting missing data. If the difference between the energy of speech and that of background noise is below given threshold value, we determine that missing has occurred. We propose a new method that examines the reliability of detected missing data using voicing probability. The voicing probability is used to find voiced frames. It is used to process the missing data in voiced region that has more redundant information than consonants. The experimental results showed that our method improves performance than baseline system that uses spectral subtraction method only. In 452 words isolated word recognition experiment, the proposed method using the voicing probability reduced the average word error rate by 12％ in a typical noise situation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.24-30
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• 2001

This article is concerned with automatic segmentation for Korean speech signals. All kinds of transition cases of phonetic units are classified into 3 types and different strategies for each type are applied. The type 1 is the discrimination of silence, voiced-speech and unvoiced-speech. The histogram analysis of each indicators which consists of wavelet coefficients and SVF (Spectral Variation Function) in wavelet coefficients are used for type 1 segmentation. The type 2 is the discrimination of adjacent vowels. The vowel transition cases can be characterized by spectrogram. Given phonetic transcription and transition pattern spectrogram, the speech signal, having consecutive vowels, are automatically segmented by the template matching. The type 3 is the discrimination of vowel and voiced-consonants. The smoothed short-time RMS energy of Wavelet low pass component and SVF in cepstral coefficients are adopted for type 3 segmentation. The experiment is performed for 342 words utterance set. The speech data are gathered from 6 speakers. The result shows the validity of the method.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.48-55
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• 2001

A novel method to reduce additive non-stationary noise is proposed. The method requires neither the information about noise nor the estimate of the noise statistics from any pause regions. The enhancement is performed on a band-by-band basis for each time frame. Based on both the decision on whether a particular band in a frame is speech or noise dominant and the masking property of the human auditory system, an appropriate amount of noise is reduced using spectral subtraction. The proposed method was tested on various noisy conditions (car noise, Fl6 noise, white Gaussian noise, pink noise, tank noise and babble noise) and on the basis of comparing segmental SNR with spectral subtraction method and visually inspecting the enhanced spectrograms and listening to the enhanced speech, the method was able to effectively reduce various noise while minimizing distortion to speech.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.3-11
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• 2001

This paper describes an implementation of inverse filter using SVD in order to recover the input in multi-channel system. The matrix formulation in SISO system is extended to MIMO system. In time and frequency domain we investigates the inversion of minimum phase system and non-minimum phase system. To execute an effective inversion of non-minimum phase system, SVD is introduced. First of all we computes singular values of system matrix and then investigates the phase property of system. In case of overall system is non-minimum phase, system matrix has one (or more) very small singular value (s). The very small singular value (s) carries information about phase properties of system. Using this property, approximate inverse filter of overall system is founded. The numerical simulation shows potentials in use of the inverse filter.