Comparison of tumour-based (Petersen Index) and inflammation-based (Glasgow Prognostic Score) scoring systems in patients undergoing curative resection for colon cancer

After resection, it is important to identify colon cancer patients, who are at a high risk of recurrence and who may benefit from adjuvant treatment. The Petersen Index (PI), a prognostic model based on pathological criteria is validated in Dukes' B and C disease. Similarly, the modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS) based on biochemical criteria has also been validated. This study compares both the scores in patients undergoing curative resection of colon cancer. A total of 244 patients underwent elective resection between 1997 and 2005. The PI was constructed from pathological reports; the mGPS was measured pre-operatively. The median follow-up was 67 months (minimum 36 months) during which 109 patients died; 68 of them from cancer. On multivariate analysis of age, Dukes' stage, PI and mGPS, age (hazard ratio, HR, 1.74, P=0.001), Dukes' stage (HR, 3.63, P<0.001), PI (HR, 2.05, P=0.010) and mGPS (HR, 2.34, P<0.001) were associated independently with cancer-specific survival. Three-year cancer-specific survival rates for Dukes' B patients with the low-risk PI were 98, 92 and 82% for the mGPS of 0, 1 and 2, respectively (P<0.05). The high-risk PI population is small, in particular for Dukes' B disease (9%). The mGPS further stratifies those patients classified as low risk by the PI. Combining both the scoring systems could identify patients who have undergone curative surgery but are at high-risk of cancer-related death, therefore guiding management and trial stratification

Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous

Labour market experiences of young UK Bangladeshi men: Identity, inclusion and exclusion in inner-city London

Detailed qualitative data are used to explore the processes perpetuatinglabour market disadvantage among young UK-Bangladeshi men living in central London. Strong forces of inclusion within the Bangladeshi community are found to interact with forces of exclusion from ‘mainstream’ society to constrain aspirations and limit opportunities. Though diverse forms of young Bangladeshi masculinity are found, a common pattern is heavy dependency on intra-ethnic networks. Negative experiences of and isolation from ‘mainstream’ society further reinforce reliance on ‘our own people’. However, acute ambivalence towards belonging to a dense Bangladeshi community exists, exemplified in the widespread denigration of the restaurant trade. Many respondents express the desire to ‘break out’ and access new experiences. The findings support current policy emphasis on ‘connecting people to work’ but highlight the more fundamental need to connect people across ethnic boundaries. The paper urges researchers to ‘unpack’ ethnicity to consider carefully what ethnic identity implies in terms of access to resources and opportunities for different individuals in different contexts in order better to understand the diversity of labour market outcomes and the persistence of disadvantage

Parental cultural models and resources for understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse school settings

This paper proposes that the theoretical concept of cultural models can offer useful insights into parental involvement in their child’s mathematical achievement and the resources they use to go about gaining information in culturally diverse learning settings. This examination takes place within a cultural-developmental framework and draws on the notion of cultural models to explicate parental understandings of their child’s mathematics achievement and what resources are used to make sense of this. Three parental resources are scrutinized: (a) the teacher, (b) examination test results, and (c) constructions of child development. The interviews with 22 parents revealed some ambiguity around the interpretation of these resources by the parent, which was often the result of incongruent cultural models held between the home and the school. The resources mentioned are often perceived as being unambiguous but show themselves instead to be highly interpretive because of the diversity of cultural models in existence in culturally diverse settings. Parents who are in minority or marginalized positions tend to have difficulties in interpreting cultural models held by school, thereby disempowering them to be parentally involved in the way the school would like

Preoperative systemic inflammation predicts postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing curative resection for colorectal cancer

The presence of systemic inflammation before surgery, as evidenced by the glasgow prognostic score (mGPS), predicts poor long-term survival in colorectal cancer. The aim was to examine the relationship between the preoperative mGPS and the development of postoperative complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer. Patients (n=455) who underwent potentially curative resections between 2003 and 2007 were assessed consecutively, and details were recorded in a database. The majority of patients presented for elective surgery (85%) were over the age of 65 years (70%), were male (58%), were deprived (53%), and had TNM stage I/II disease (61%), had preoperative haemoglobin (56%), white cell count (87%) and mGPS 0 (58%) in the normal range. After surgery, 86 (19%) patients developed a postoperative complication; 70 (81%) of which were infectious complications. On multivariate analysis, peritoneal soiling (P<0.01), elevated preoperative white cell count (P<0.05) and mGPS (P<0.01) were independently associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. In elective patients, only the mGPS (OR=1.75, 95% CI=1.17-2.63, P=0.007) was significantly associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. Preoperative elevated mGPS predicts increased postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer

Local lattice disorder in the geometrically-frustrated spin glass pyrochlore Y2Mo2O7

The geometrically-frustrated spin glass Y2Mo2O7 has been considered widely to be crystallographically ordered with a unique nearest neighbor magnetic exchange interaction, J. To test this assertion, we present x-ray-absorption fine-structure results for the Mo and Y K edges as a function of temperature and compare them to results from a well-ordered pyrochlore, Tl2Mn2O7. We find that the Mo-Mo pair distances are significantly disordered at approximately right angles to the Y-Mo pairs. These results strongly suggest that lattice disorder nucleates the spin-glass phase in this material.Comment: 9 pages, 2 Postscript figures, Phys. Rev. B: Rapid, in pres

Temporal trends in mode, site and stage of presentation with the introduction of colorectal cancer screening: a decade of experience from the West of Scotland

background:  Population colorectal cancer screening programmes have been introduced to reduce cancer-specific mortality through the detection of early-stage disease. The present study aimed to examine the impact of screening introduction in the West of Scotland. methods:  Data on all patients with a diagnosis of colorectal cancer between January 2003 and December 2012 were extracted from a prospectively maintained regional audit database. Changes in mode, site and stage of presentation before, during and after screening introduction were examined. results:  In a population of 2.4 million, over a 10-year period, 14 487 incident cases of colorectal cancer were noted. Of these, 7827 (54%) were males and 7727 (53%) were socioeconomically deprived. In the postscreening era, 18% were diagnosed via the screening programme. There was a reduction in both emergency presentation (20% prescreening vs 13% postscreening, P0.001) and the proportion of rectal cancers (34% prescreening vs 31% pos-screening, P0.001) over the timeframe. Within non-metastatic disease, an increase in the proportion of stage I tumours at diagnosis was noted (17% prescreening vs 28% postscreening, P0.001). conclusions:  Within non-metastatic disease, a shift towards earlier stage at diagnosis has accompanied the introduction of a national screening programme. Such a change should lead to improved outcomes in patients with colorectal cancer

Minimax Current Density Coil Design

'Coil design' is an inverse problem in which arrangements of wire are designed to generate a prescribed magnetic field when energized with electric current. The design of gradient and shim coils for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are important examples of coil design. The magnetic fields that these coils generate are usually required to be both strong and accurate. Other electromagnetic properties of the coils, such as inductance, may be considered in the design process, which becomes an optimization problem. The maximum current density is additionally optimized in this work and the resultant coils are investigated for performance and practicality. Coils with minimax current density were found to exhibit maximally spread wires and may help disperse localized regions of Joule heating. They also produce the highest possible magnetic field strength per unit current for any given surface and wire size. Three different flavours of boundary element method that employ different basis functions (triangular elements with uniform current, cylindrical elements with sinusoidal current and conic section elements with sinusoidal-uniform current) were used with this approach to illustrate its generality.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. To appear in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physic

Surface Structure of Liquid Metals and the Effect of Capillary Waves: X-ray Studies on Liquid Indium

We report x-ray reflectivity (XR) and small angle off-specular diffuse scattering (DS) measurements from the surface of liquid Indium close to its melting point of $156^\circ$C. From the XR measurements we extract the surface structure factor convolved with fluctuations in the height of the liquid surface. We present a model to describe DS that takes into account the surface structure factor, thermally excited capillary waves and the experimental resolution. The experimentally determined DS follows this model with no adjustable parameters, allowing the surface structure factor to be deconvolved from the thermally excited height fluctuations. The resulting local electron density profile displays exponentially decaying surface induced layering similar to that previously reported for Ga and Hg. We compare the details of the local electron density profiles of liquid In, which is a nearly free electron metal, and liquid Ga, which is considerably more covalent and shows directional bonding in the melt. The oscillatory density profiles have comparable amplitudes in both metals, but surface layering decays over a length scale of $3.5\pm 0.6$ \AA for In and $5.5\pm 0.4$ \AA for Ga. Upon controlled exposure to oxygen, no oxide monolayer is formed on the liquid In surface, unlike the passivating film formed on liquid Gallium.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.