Visualization of the moving Pareto frontier in DSS

A new approach to decision support in a multiobjective problem arising in controlled dynamic system design is described. The approach basically extends the feasible goals method that implies specifying the goal point by visualizing the Pareto frontier that characterizes feasible objective values and objective tradeoffs to dynamic systems. The developed approach helps explore dynamic modifications of the Pareto frontier.     

A Review on Salivary Genomics and Proteomics Biomarkers in Oral Cancer

Oral cancer has emerged as an alarming public health problem with increasing incidence and mortality rates all over the world. Therefore, the implementation of newer screening and early detection approaches are of utmost importance which could reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with this disease. Sensitive and specific biomarkers for oral cancer are likely to be most effective for screening, diagnosis, staging and follow-up for this dreaded malignancy. Unlike other deep cancers, oral cancer is located in oral cavity. Hence, the direct contact between saliva and oral cancer lesion makes the measurement of tumor markers in saliva an attractive alternative to serum and tissue testing. The DNA, RNA and protein molecules derived from the living cancer cells can be conveniently obtained from saliva. Thus, salivary biomarkers, a non-invasive alternative to serum and tissue-based biomarkers may be an effective modality for early diagnosis, prognostication and monitoring post therapy status. In the current post-genomic era, various technologies provide opportunities for high-throughput approaches to genomics and proteomics; which have been used to evaluate altered expressions of gene and protein targets in saliva of oral cancer patients. The emerging field of salivary biomarkers has great potentials to prove its clinical significance to combat oral cancer. Hence, we have reviewed importance of several salivary genomics and proteomics biomarkers for oral cancer.     

What have we learned from the recent historiography of alchemy?

Over the last two decades a new scholarship on alchemy has emerged, leading to a fundamental reformulation of knowledge about alchemists and their activities. We now know that medieval and early modern alchemists employed experiment in concert with theory to demonstrate the existence of stable "chymical atoms," which were thought to combine with one another according to a hierarchical theory of matter. Employing laboratory-based analysis and synthesis, alchemists were among the first explicitly to enunciate the principle of mass balance and to show that materials are compounded of the ingredients into which they can be physically decomposed. Perhaps even more surprisingly, these convictions and practices arose out of the interaction of alchemical practice with scholastic Aristotelianism, long viewed by historians of the Scientific Revolution as antithetical to experiment. Thus the new historiography challenges both a long-standing marginalization of alchemy itself and a commonplace view of Aristotelianism as inimical to the early modern growth of experimental science.     

New results on BIBO stability analysis for a class of neutral delay systems

This paper studies bounded input bounded output (BIBO) stability for a class of neutral systems with time-varying delays. Based on Lyapunov method and linear matrix inequalities, some new BIBO stability criteria are established. The numerical simulation is made to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results obtained in this paper.     

Growing where you are planted: Exogenous firms and the seeding of Silicon Valley

What are the respective roles of indigenous and exogenous factors in the development of high-tech regions? Entrepreneurs and their start-ups have dominated Silicon Valley's economy in recent decades, but a different dynamic was at work from 1940 to 1965, when the Valley emerged as a formidable high-tech region. In key industries (electronics, semiconductors, computers, and aerospace) that defined Silicon Valley as a high-tech cluster during that period, companies based elsewhere played critical roles in planting the organizations that would - through the innovations they made, the technical talent they attracted, and the start-ups they spun off - help make the Valley the world's most admired and emulated high-tech region.     

The impact of consumer trust on attitudinal loyalty and purchase intentions in B2C e-marketplaces: Intermediary trust vs. seller trust

The online merchant of an e-marketplace consists of an intermediary, providing the market infrastructure, and the community of sellers conducting business within that infrastructure. Typically, consumers willingly buy from unknown sellers within an e-marketplace, despite the apparent risk, since they trust the institutional mechanisms furnished by the relatively well-known intermediary. Consumers’ trust in one component of the e-marketplace merchant may not only affect their trust in the other, but also influence the way consumers make online purchases. This paper explores the impact of trust on consumer behavior in e-marketplaces. An empirical study has been conducted to accomplish our research objectives, using a questionnaire survey of 222 active e-marketplace shoppers in Korea. The results reveal that consumer trust in an intermediary has a strong influence upon both attitudinal loyalty and purchase intentions, although consumer trust in the community of sellers has no significant effect on the two constructs representing consumer behavior. In addition, it was found that trust is transferred from an intermediary to the community of sellers, implying that the trustworthiness of the intermediary plays a critical role in determining the extent to which consumers trust and accept the sellers in the e-marketplace. This paper offers some implications from the findings of the research.