The Evolving Role of Maintenance Therapy Using Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (EGFR TKIs) in the Management of Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer

A video abstract by the authors of this paper is available. video-abstract5127.mo

Application of Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy to Cytocompatibility Testing of Potential Orthopaedic Materials in Immortalised Osteoblast-Like Cell Lines

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) was used in conjunction with in vitro cell culture to investigate cellular interactions with orthopaedic biomaterials. Transfected rat and human osteoblasts were seeded on two potential isoelastic hip prosthesis materials, carbon fibre reinforced polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and epoxy. Titanium 318 alloy was employed as a control. Determination of the material surface contour, an important factor influencing cellular adhesion, proliferation and function, was performed using the industry standard Talysurf® and compared to analogous results obtained using the CLSM. The latter technique consistently gave higher values of material roughness but offers the advantage that it can be used to correlate roughness with cell distribution on the same samples, whereas Talysurf® measurement of roughness requires clean rigid samples. Image analysis and processing, performed on cells after attachment and culture on the materials for 48 hours, provided cell morphology data. Cells cultured on titanium were larger, with a higher percentage of cytoplasm, than those grown on either of the other materials. The macroscopic surface of epoxy resulted in smaller cells with altered morphology, which orientated themselves along carbon fibres. In conclusion, we believe CLSM offers great potential for investigating the cellular interactions of biomaterials involving minimal sample preparation, non-invasive optical sectioning of samples and minimal opportunity for generation of cellular deformation and sample preparation artefacts

The Causal Structure of Emotions in Aristotle: Hylomorphism, Causal Interaction between Mind and Body, and Intentionality

Recently, a strong hylomorphic reading of Aristotelian emotions has been put forward, one that allegedly eliminates the problem of causal interaction between soul and body. Taking the presentation of emotions in de An. I 1 as a starting point and basic thread, but relying also on the discussion of Rh. II, I will argue that this reading only takes into account two of the four causes of emotions, and that, if all four of them are included into the picture, then a causal interaction of mind and body remains within Aristotelian emotions, independent of how strongly their hylomorphism is understood. Beyond the discussion with this recent reading, the analysis proposed of the fourfold causal structure of emotions is also intended as a hermeneutical starting point for a comprehensive analysis of particular emotions in Aristotle. Through the different causes Aristotle seems to account for many aspects of the complex phenomenon of emotion, including its physiological causes, its mental causes, and its intentional object

CLOVER - A new instrument for measuring the B-mode polarization of the CMB

We describe the design and expected performance of Clover, a new instrument designed to measure the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. The proposed instrument will comprise three independent telescopes operating at 90, 150 and 220 GHz and is planned to be sited at Dome C, Antarctica. Each telescope will feed a focal plane array of 128 background-limited detectors and will measure polarized signals over angular multipoles 20 < l < 1000. The unique design of the telescope and careful control of systematics should enable the B-mode signature of gravitational waves to be measured to a lensing-confusion-limited tensor-to-scalar ratio r~0.005.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the XXXVIXth Rencontres de Moriond "Exploring the Universe

Dynamics of nonequilibrium quasiparticles in a double superconducting tunnel junction detector

We study a class of superconductive radiation detectors in which the absorption of energy occurs in a long superconductive strip while the redout stage is provided by superconductive tunnel junctions positioned at the two ends of the strip. Such a device is capable both of imaging and energy resolution. In the established current scheme, well studied from the theoretical and experimental point of view, a fundamental ingredient is considered the presence of traps, or regions adjacent to the junctions made of a superconducting material of lower gap. We reconsider the problem by investigating the dynamics of the radiation induced excess quasiparticles in a simpler device, i.e. one without traps. The nonequilibrium excess quasiparticles can be seen to obey a diffusion equation whose coefficients are discontinuous functions of the position. Based on the analytical solution to this equation, we follow the dynamics of the quasiparticles in the device, predict the signal formation of the detector and discuss the potentiality offered by this configuration.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures Submitted to Superconducting Science and Technolog

Convergence to stable laws for multidimensional stochastic recursions: the case of regular matrices

Given a sequence $(M_{n},Q_{n})_{n\ge 1}$ of i.i.d.\ random variables with generic copy $(M,Q) \in GL(d, \R) \times \R^d$, we consider the random difference equation (RDE) $$R_{n}=M_{n}R_{n-1}+Q_{n},$$ $n\ge 1$, and assume the existence of $\kappa >0$ such that \lim_{n \to \infty}(\E{\norm{M_1 ... M_n}^\kappa})^{\frac{1}{n}} = 1 . We prove, under suitable assumptions, that the sequence $S_n = R_1 + ... + R_n$, appropriately normalized, converges in law to a multidimensional stable distribution with index $\kappa$. As a by-product, we show that the unique stationary solution $R$ of the RDE is regularly varying with index $\kappa$, and give a precise description of its tail measure. This extends the prior work http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1728v3 .Comment: 15 page

Prototype finline-coupled TES bolometers for CLOVER

CLOVER is an experiment which aims to detect the signature of gravitational waves from inflation by measuring the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. CLOVER consists of three telescopes operating at 97, 150, and 220 GHz. The 97-GHz telescope has 160 feedhorns in its focal plane while the 150 and 220-GHz telescopes have 256 horns each. The horns are arranged in a hexagonal array and feed a polarimeter which uses finline-coupled TES bolometers as detectors. To detect the two polarizations the 97-GHz telescope has 320 detectors while the 150 and 220-GHz telescopes have 512 detectors each. To achieve the target NEPs (1.5, 2.5, and 4.5x10^-17 W/rtHz) the detectors are cooled to 100 mK for the 97 and 150-GHz polarimeters and 230 mK for the 220-GHz polarimeter. Each detector is fabricated as a single chip to ensure a 100% operational focal plane. The detectors are contained in linear modules made of copper which form split-block waveguides. The detector modules contain 16 or 20 detectors each for compatibility with the hexagonal arrays of horns in the telescopes' focal planes. Each detector module contains a time-division SQUID multiplexer to read out the detectors. Further amplification of the multiplexed signals is provided by SQUID series arrays. The first prototype detectors for CLOVER operate with a bath temperature of 230 mK and are used to validate the detector design as well as the polarimeter technology. We describe the design of the CLOVER detectors, detector blocks, and readout, and present preliminary measurements of the prototype detectors performance.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, held 10-12 May 2006 in Pari

The non-equilibrium response of a superconductor to pair-breaking radiation measured over a broad frequency band

We have measured the absorption of terahertz radiation in a BCS superconductor over a broad range of frequencies from 200 GHz to 1.1 THz, using a broadband antenna-lens system and a tantalum microwave resonator. From low frequencies, the response of the resonator rises rapidly to a maximum at the gap edge of the superconductor. From there on the response drops to half the maximum response at twice the pair-breaking energy. At higher frequencies, the response rises again due to trapping of pair-breaking phonons in the superconductor. In practice this is the first measurement of the frequency dependence of the quasiparticle creation efficiency due to pair-breaking in a superconductor. The efficiency, calculated from the different non-equilibrium quasiparticle distribution functions at each frequency, is in agreement with the measurements.We would like to thank Jan Barkhof for help with the FTS calibration. This work was in part supported by ERC starting Grant Nos. ERC-2009-StG and 240602 TFPA. T. M. Klapwijk acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Science and Education of Russia under Contract No. 14.B25.31.0007 and from the European Research Council Advanced Grant No. 339306 (METIQUM). P. J. de Visser acknowledges support from a Niels Stensen Fellowship.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AIP via http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.492309