Chris Crosby in a Junior Voice Recital

This is the program for the junior voice recital of soprano Chris Crosby. Pianist Brenda Oliger assisted the performance. The recital took place on January 30, 1970

Carol Chris Crosby in a Senior Voice Recital

This is the program for the senior voice recital of soprano Carol Chris Crosby. Brenda Oliger accompanied Chris Crosby on piano. The recital took place in Mitchell Hall Auditorium on November 12, 1971

Role of nutritional status and intervention in oesophageal cancer treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy: outcomes from SCOPE1

ackground: Malnutrition is common in oesophageal cancer. We aimed to identify nutritional prognostic factors and survival outcomes associated with nutritional intervention in the SCOPE1 (Study of Chemoradiotherapy in OesoPhageal Cancer with or without Erbitux) trial. methods: Two hundred and fifty eight patients were randomly allocated to definitive chemoradiotherapy (dCRT) +/− cetuximab. Nutritional Risk Index (NRI) scores were calculated; NRI<100 identified patients at risk of malnutrition. Nutritional intervention included dietary advice, oral supplementation or major intervention (enteral feeding/tube placement). Univariable and multivariable analyses using Cox proportional hazard modelling were conducted. results: At baseline NRI<100 strongly predicted for reduced overall survival (hazard ratio (HR) 12.45, 95% CI 5.24–29.57; P<0.001). Nutritional intervention improved survival if provided at baseline (dietary advice (HR 0.12, P=0.004), oral supplementation (HR 0.13, P<0.001) or major intervention (HR 0.13, P=0.003)), but not if provided later in the treatment course. Cetuximab patients receiving major nutritional intervention had worse outcomes compared with controls (13 vs 28 months, P=0.003). conclusions: Pre-treatment assessment and correction of malnutrition may improve survival outcomes in oesophageal cancer patients treated with dCRT. Nutritional Risk Index is a simple and objective screening tool to identify patients at risk of malnutrition

Recognition of extended linear and cyclised polyketide mimics by a Type II acyl carrier protein

Extended linear and cyclised polyketide mimics were synthesized and high-resolution solution NMR structures were used to probe the interactions of the actinorhodin polyketide ACP with these surrogates.</p

Forecasting infrastructure resilience to climate change

Resilience of the UK transport infrastructure network can be expressed as the imbalance between the physical condition of the network and the transport demands the network experiences. Forecasting changes of resilience in the long term (e.g. the 2050s) requires a structured, multi-disciplinary approach. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded Futurenet project developed a model architecture to formalise such an approach and this paper addresses one component: the assessment of the influence of physical processes on asset condition. This requires the development of new, integrated physical-based models that respond to detailed inputs of forecast weather events (e.g. UK Climate Projections 2009). The results are plotted onto the infrastructure network for visualisation. Subsequent combination with user demand will then enable determination of network resilience at a range of spatial scales. The project has highlighted the need for better datasets, more sophisticated physical-based models and further analyses of complex feedbacks and interactions between physical processes and also with user behaviour

The influence of dose distribution on treatment outcome in the SCOPE 1 oesophageal cancer trial

Purpose The first aim of this study was to assess plan quality using a conformity index (CI) and analyse its influence on patient outcome. The second aim was to identify whether clinical and technological factors including planning treatment volume (PTV) volume and treatment delivery method could be related to the CI value. Methods and materials By extending the original concept of the mean distance to conformity (MDC) index, the OverMDC and UnderMDC of the 95 % isodose line (50Gy prescribed dose) to the PTV was calculated for 97 patients from the UK SCOPE 1 trial (ISCRT47718479). Data preparation was carried out in CERR, with Kaplan-Meier and multivariate analysis undertaken in EUCLID and further tests in Microsoft Excel and IBM’s SPSS. Results A statistically significant breakpoint in the overall survival data, independent of cetuximab, was found with OverMDC (4.4 mm, p < 0.05). This was not the case with UnderMDC. There was a statistically significant difference in PTV volume either side of the OverMDC breakpoint (Mann Whitney p < 0.001) and in OverMDC value dependent on the treatment delivery method (mean IMRT = 2.1 mm, mean 3D-CRT = 4.1 mm Mann Whitney p < 0.001). Re-planning the worst performing patients according to OverMDC from 3D-CRT to VMAT resulted in a mean reduction in OverMDC of 2.8 mm (1.6–4.0 mm). OverMDC was not significant in multivariate analysis that included age, sex, staging, tumour type, and position. Conclusion Although not significant when included in multivariate analysis, we have shown in univariate analysis that a patient’s OverMDC is correlated with overall survival. OverMDC is strongly related to IMRT and to a lesser extent with PTV volume. We recommend that VMAT planning should be used for oesophageal planning when available and that attention should be paid to the conformity of the 95 % to the PTV

Discovery of stable and prognostic CT-based radiomic features independent of contrast administration and dimensionality in oesophageal cancer

The aim of this work was to investigate radiomic analysis of contrast and non-contrast enhanced planning CT images of oesophageal cancer (OC) patients in terms of stability, dimensionality and contrast agent dependency. The prognostic significance of CT-based radiomic features was also evaluated. Different 2D and 3D radiomic features were extracted from contrast and non-contrast enhanced CT images of 213 patients from the multi-centre SCOPE1 randomised controlled trial (RCT) in OC. Feature stability was evaluated by randomly dividing patients into three groups and identifying textures with similar distributions among groups with a Kruskal-Wallis analysis. A paired two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to assess for significant differences in the remaining corresponding 2D and 3D stable features. A prognostic model was constructed using clinical characteristics and remaining filtered features. The discriminative ability of significant variables was tested using Kaplan-Meier analysis. A total of 238 2D and 3D radiomic features were computed from oesophageal CT images. More than 75 features were stable if extracted from homogeneous cohort (contrast or non-contrast enhanced CT images) and inhomogeneous cohort (contrast and non-contrast enhanced CT images). Among the remaining corresponding stable features computed from both cohorts, only 4 features did not show a statistically significant difference if obtained in 2D or in 3D (p-value < 0.05). A Cox regression model constructed using 5 clinical variables (age, sex, tumour, node and metastasis (TNM) stage, WHO performance status and contrast administration) and 4 radiomic variables (inverse varianceGLCM, large distance emphasisGLDZM, zone distance non uniformity normGLDZM, zone distance varianceGLDZM), identified one radiomic feature (zone distance varianceGLDZM) that was significantly associated with overall survival (p-value = 0.032, HR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.02–1.52). A significant difference in overall survival between groups was found when considering a threshold of zone distance varianceGLDZM equals to 1.70 (X2 = 7.692, df = 1, p-value = 0.006). Zone distance varianceGLDZM was identified as the only stable CT radiomic feature statistically correlated with overall survival, independent of dimensionality and contrast administration. This feature was able to identify high-risk patients and if validated, could be the subject of a future clinical trial aiming to improve clinical decision making and personalise OC treatment

The effect of dose escalation on gastric toxicity when treating lower oesophageal tumours: a radiobiological investigation

Purpose Using radiobiological modelling to estimate normal tissue toxicity, this study investigates the effects of dose escalation for concurrent chemoradiation therapy (CRT) in lower third oesophageal tumours on the stomach. Methods and materials 10 patients with lower third oesophageal cancer were selected from the SCOPE 1 database (ISCRT47718479) with a mean planning target volume (PTV) of 348 cm3. The original 3D conformal plans (50Gy3D) were compared to newly created RapidArc plans of 50GyRA and 60GyRA, the latter using a simultaneous integrated boost (SIB) technique using a boost volume, PTV2. Dose-volume metrics and estimates of normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) were compared. Results There was a significant increase in NTCP of the stomach wall when moving from the 50GyRA to the 60GyRA plans (11–17 %, Wilcoxon signed rank test, p = 0.01). There was a strong correlation between the NTCP values of the stomach wall and the volume of the stomach wall/PTV 1 and stomach wall/PTV2 overlap structures (R = 0.80 and R = 0.82 respectively) for the 60GyRA plans. Conclusion Radiobiological modelling suggests that increasing the prescribed dose to 60Gy may be associated with a significantly increased risk of toxicity to the stomach. It is recommended that stomach toxicity be closely monitored when treating patients with lower third oesophageal tumours with 60Gy

Multi-platform assessment of transcriptional profiling technologies utilizing a precise probe mapping methodology

BACKGROUND: The arrival of RNA-seq as a high-throughput method competitive to the established microarray technologies has necessarily driven a need for comparative evaluation. To date, cross-platform comparisons of these technologies have been relatively few in number of platforms analyzed and were typically gene name annotation oriented. Here, we present a more extensive and yet precise assessment to elucidate differences and similarities in performance of numerous aspects including dynamic range, fidelity of raw signal and fold-change with sample titration, and concordance with qRT-PCR (TaqMan). To ensure that these results were not confounded by incompatible comparisons, we introduce the concept of probe mapping directed “transcript pattern”. A transcript pattern identifies probe(set)s across platforms that target a common set of transcripts for a specific gene. Thus, three levels of data were examined: entire data sets, data derived from a subset of 15,442 RefSeq genes common across platforms, and data derived from the transcript pattern defined subset of 7,034 RefSeq genes. RESULTS: In general, there were substantial core similarities between all 6 platforms evaluated; but, to varying degrees, the two RNA-seq protocols outperformed three of the four microarray platforms in most categories. Notably, a fourth microarray platform, Agilent with a modified protocol, was comparable, or marginally superior, to the RNA-seq protocols within these same assessments, especially in regards to fold-change evaluation. Furthermore, these 3 platforms (Agilent and two RNA-seq methods) demonstrated over 80 % fold-change concordance with the gold standard qRT-PCR (TaqMan). CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that microarrays can perform on nearly equal footing with RNA-seq, in certain key features, specifically when the dynamic range is comparable. Furthermore, the concept of a transcript pattern has been introduced that may minimize potential confounding factors of multi-platform comparison and may be useful for similar evaluations. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1913-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users