Comparative international analysis of radiofrequency exposure surveys of mobile communication radio base stations

This paper presents analyses of data from surveys of radio base stations in 23 countries across five continents from the year 2000 onward and includes over 173,000 individual data points. The research compared the results of the national surveys, investigated chronological trends and compared exposures by technology. The key findings from this data are that irrespective of country, the year and cellular technology, exposures to radio signals at ground level were only a small fraction of the relevant human exposure standards. Importantly, there has been no significant increase in exposure levels since the widespread introduction of 3G mobile services, which should be reassuring for policy makers and negate the need for post-installation measurements at ground level for compliance purposes. There may be areas close to antennas where compliance levels could be exceeded. Future potential work includes extending the study to additional countries, development of cumulative exposure distributions and investigating the possibility of linking exposure measurements to population statistics to assess the distribution of exposure levels relative to population percentiles

Effects of patient selection on the applicability of results from a randomised clinical trial (EORTC 10853) investigating breast-conserving therapy for DCIS

Selection of patients for randomised clinical trials may have a large impact on the applicability of the study results to the general population presenting the same disorder. However, clinical characteristics and outcome data on non-entered patients are usually not available. The effects of patient selection for the EORTC 10853 trial investigating the role of radiotherapy in breast conserving therapy for ductal carcinoma in situ have been studied, in an analysis of all patients treated for ductal carcinoma in situ in five participating institutes. The reasons for not entering patients were evaluated and treatment results of the randomised patients were compared to those not entered. A total of 910 patients were treated for ductal carcinoma in situ. Of these, 477 (52%) were ineligible, with the size of the lesion being the main reason for ineligibility (30% of all ductal carcinoma in situ). Of the 433 eligible patients, 278 (64%) were randomised into the trial. The main reasons for non-entry of eligible patients were either physicians' preference for one of the treatment arms (26%) or patients' refusal (9%). These percentages showed significant variation among the institutes. At 4 years follow-up, those patients not entered in the trial and treated with local excision and radiotherapy, had higher local recurrence rates than the patients randomised in the trial and treated with the same approach, (17 vs 2%, P=0.03). The patients treated with local excision alone had equal local recurrence rates (11% in both groups). Selection of patients may explain the differences in outcome of the randomised patients, and those not-entered. Thus, the results of this trial may not be applicable to all patients with ductal carcinoma in situ

Facial expression training optimises viewing strategy in children and adults

This study investigated whether training-related improvements in facial expression categorization are facilitated by spontaneous changes in gaze behaviour in adults and nine-year old children. Four sessions of a self-paced, free-viewing training task required participants to categorize happy, sad and fear expressions with varying intensities. No instructions about eye movements were given. Eye-movements were recorded in the first and fourth training session. New faces were introduced in session four to establish transfer-effects of learning. Adults focused most on the eyes in all sessions and increased expression categorization accuracy after training coincided with a strengthening of this eye-bias in gaze allocation. In children, training-related behavioural improvements coincided with an overall shift in gaze-focus towards the eyes (resulting in more adult-like gaze-distributions) and towards the mouth for happy faces in the second fixation. Gaze-distributions were not influenced by the expression intensity or by the introduction of new faces. It was proposed that training enhanced the use of a uniform, predominantly eyes-biased, gaze strategy in children in order to optimise extraction of relevant cues for discrimination between subtle facial expressions

Re-establishing the ‘outsiders’: English press coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

In 2015, the England Women’s national football team finished third at the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Alongside the establishment of the Women’s Super League in 2011, the success of the women’s team posed a striking contrast to the recent failures of the England men’s team and in doing so presented a timely opportunity to examine the negotiation of hegemonic discourses on gender, sport and football. Drawing upon an ‘established-outsider’ approach, this article examines how, in newspaper coverage of the England women’s team, gendered constructions revealed processes of alteration, assimilation and resistance. Rather than suggesting that ‘established’ discourses assume a normative connection between masculinity and football, the findings reveal how gendered ‘boundaries’ were both challenged and protected in newspaper coverage. Despite their success, the discursive positioning of the women’s team as ‘outsiders’, served to (re)establish men’s football as superior, culturally salient and ‘better’ than the women’s team/game. Accordingly, we contend that attempts to build and, in many instances, rediscover the history of women’s football, can be used to challenge established cultural representations that draw exclusively from the history of the men’s game. In such instances, the 2015 Women’s World Cup provides a historical moment from which the women’s game can be relocated in a context of popular culture

Community assessment to advance computational prediction of cancer drug combinations in a pharmacogenomic screen

The effectiveness of most cancer targeted therapies is short-lived. Tumors often develop resistance that might be overcome with drug combinations. However, the number of possible combinations is vast, necessitating data-driven approaches to find optimal patient-specific treatments. Here we report AstraZeneca’s large drug combination dataset, consisting of 11,576 experiments from 910 combinations across 85 molecularly characterized cancer cell lines, and results of a DREAM Challenge to evaluate computational strategies for predicting synergistic drug pairs and biomarkers. 160 teams participated to provide a comprehensive methodological development and benchmarking. Winning methods incorporate prior knowledge of drug-target interactions. Synergy is predicted with an accuracy matching biological replicates for >60% of combinations. However, 20% of drug combinations are poorly predicted by all methods. Genomic rationale for synergy predictions are identified, including ADAM17 inhibitor antagonism when combined with PIK3CB/D inhibition contrasting to synergy when combined with other PI3K-pathway inhibitors in PIK3CA mutant cells.Peer reviewe

20-Year Risks of Breast-Cancer Recurrence after Stopping Endocrine Therapy at 5 Years

The administration of endocrine therapy for 5 years substantially reduces recurrence rates during and after treatment in women with early-stage, estrogen-receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer. Extending such therapy beyond 5 years offers further protection but has additional side effects. Obtaining data on the absolute risk of subsequent distant recurrence if therapy stops at 5 years could help determine whether to extend treatment