Head and Neck Cancer is especially tricky as you have to eliminate the cancer cells while protecting the physiological features like the eyes, nose and mouth. Researchers have discovered that chemotherapy after surgery is superior to any other method in terms of increasing the survival rate of the cancer patient while combined therapy and radiotherapy is less effective than combined therapy. The conduct their experiment based on a Randomised Clinical Trial whereby they have to take into consideration the hypothesis, risk stratification, allocation to treatment, patient numbers and date monitoring. There are two important factors affecting survival in Head and Neck Cancer; the stage of disease and the extra-capsular speed in nodal metastases. The researchers hypothesise that the stem cell population is disproportionally high and tumor heterogeneity exists. They found out that tumor cells which comes from a high proportion of stem cells do badly and that when the 30-gene profile is exercised, there 100% concordance.
Students’ Oral Presentation:
1. Effect of Stress on Subsequent Performance in Observers during High Fidelity Simulator-based Training
The team investigates the relationship between stress and performance. They do this by using Simulation-based Training in which they have 2 group. They measure the salivary cortisol and the heart rate. The discovered that if the person is in the hot seat for three times, their stress levels will gradually decrease by the session. However, if the person observes for 2 sessions then goes into the “hot-seat” at the third, their stress levels will increase. From this, we know that repetitive “hot-seat” improves the performance rather than repetitive observation. It demonstrates that performance was not improved by repetitive exposure but by repetitive actual simulation experience
2. Impact of Transverse Modes Interaction in Fiber Amplifiers
The team investigates a way to improve transmission using a single mode optical fiber. They do this by studying the use of multimode fibers that have a higher signal power handling. However, this means that the beam quality would decrease as fibers support multiple transverse modes. By studying the effect of factors such as input pump power, input signal power, doping concentration and fiber length, they found out the range of amplifier parameters which reduces the fraction of power in unwanted transverse modes. Their research demonstrates that appropriately designed fiber amplifiers can compensate the quality degradation when using multimode fibers.
Students’ posters
- Paradoxes
They provided examples of paradoxes making use of algebra and sets.
The showed us a couple of examples of paradoxes.
Example 1:
Consider a variant of the liar’s paradox
“This statement is false”
Let s be the statement: “This statement is false.”
Let F (…) be the statement: Statement … is false.
Using the symbolism from above, the statement s can be written as:
s: F (s) = F [f(s)] = F {F [f(s)} …
The above expression means that “This statement” in the sentence “This statement is false refers to the whole sentence, the statement s will be reduced to a statement which consists of infinite statements. The chain of infinite statements has no truth value as we do not know which “statement” is claimed to be false in the statement s.
They also talked about Russell’s paradox; from which they deduced self-referential statement should be rejected as incomplete statements, and Achilles and the Tortoise paradox; in which the tortoise has a head start of 100m and by the time Achilles reaches the starting point of the tortoise, the tortoise would already have moved ahead. This continues on until the gap between Achilles and the tortoise closes but never reaches zero.
(This obviously is wrong but is still mathematically and logically sound. -> this is proved wrong as in the paradox, it indirectly shows that Achilles is dependent on the tortoise while in reality this is not so.) Adapted from: http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.com/2011/11/xenos-religious-paradox.html
This team’s research is on the probability of a broken stick (broken into 3 pieces) forming a triangle. They found the probability by using 2 methods, the Geometrical Method an the Graphical method. In the Geometrical method, they made use of the Cosine rule while in the Graphical method, they used Pythagorus Theorem,
- If the triangle formed is a right-angled triangle, a^2 + b^2 = c^2 will be used
- If the triangle formed is obtuse, a^2 + b^2 ≤ c^2
- If the triangle formed is acute, a^2 + b^2 ≥ c^2
After calculation, they have found out that there is a 25% chance that a stick randomly broken into three pieces would form a triangle.
3. Oxygen Snorting system
The team researches on how submarines can store oxygen in their tanks so that they will not need to return to the surface to refill oxygen. They take into consideration 4 processes which produces oxygen.
1. Cryogenic Separation (Cryogenic)
A physical process involving repeated condensation and evaporation to separate different gases.
2. Vacuum Pressure Swing Adsorption (VPSA)
A physical process using molecular sieves to selectively filter and separate gases.
3. Electrolysis
A chemical process where electricity is run through water to split it up into hydrogen and oxygen.
4.Photosynthesis (Plants)
A chemical process where water and carbon dioxide are converted into glucose and oxygen.
They weigh the pros and cons of each process by using the table below.
They have come up with an Oxygen Snorting System using VPSA. In the Oxygen Snorting System, the oxygen snorting snorkel has an air blower attached to increase flow rate. In the next compartment, the unit compresses, cools and filters the incoming air. The air then moves into two or more sets of zeolite plates which are used to absorb and desorb nitrogen to remove it in cycles. When nitrogen is desorbed, it is vented through an exhaust pipe while a buffer vessel stores purified oxygen for use in purging. A compression unit then compresses the oxygen to an appropriate pressure then is then stored in storage vessels and piped into the engine as needed.
