Method and apparatus for supercooling and solidifying substances

An enclosure provides a containerless environment in which a sample specimen is positioned. The specimen is heated in the containerless environment, and the specimen melt is dropped through the tube in which it cools by radiation. The tube is alternatively backfilled with an inert gas whereby the specimen melt cools by both radiation and convection during its free fall. During the free fall, the sample is in a containerless, low-gravity environment which enhances supercooling in the sample and prevents sedimentation and thermal convection influences. The sample continues to supercool until nucleation occurs which is detected by silicon photovoltaic detectors. The sample solidifies after nucleation and becomes completely solid before entering the detachable catcher. The amount of supercooling of the specimen can be measured by knowing the cooling ratio and determining the time for nucleation to occur

A three-feature prediction model for metastasis-free survival after surgery of localized clear cell renal cell carcinoma

After surgery of localized renal cell carcinoma, over 20% of the patients will develop distant metastases. Our aim was to develop an easy-to-use prognostic model for predicting metastasis-free survival after radical or partial nephrectomy of localized clear cell RCC. Model training was performed on 196 patients. Right-censored metastasis-free survival was analysed using LASSO-regularized Cox regression, which identified three key prediction features. The model was validated in an external cohort of 714 patients. 55 (28%) and 134 (19%) patients developed distant metastases during the median postoperative follow-up of 6.3 years (interquartile range 3.4-8.6) and 5.4 years (4.0-7.6) in the training and validation cohort, respectively. Patients were stratified into clinically meaningful risk categories using only three features: tumor size, tumor grade and microvascular invasion, and a representative nomogram and a visual prediction surface were constructed using these features in Cox proportional hazards model. Concordance indices in the training and validation cohorts were 0.755 +/- 0.029 and 0.836 +/- 0.015 for our novel model, which were comparable to the C-indices of the original Leibovich prediction model (0.734 +/- 0.035 and 0.848 +/- 0.017, respectively). Thus, the presented model retains high accuracy while requiring only three features that are routinely collected and widely available.Peer reviewe

A three-feature prediction model for metastasis-free survival after surgery of localized clear cell renal cell carcinoma

After surgery of localized renal cell carcinoma, over 20% of the patients will develop distant metastases. Our aim was to develop an easy-to-use prognostic model for predicting metastasis-free survival after radical or partial nephrectomy of localized clear cell RCC. Model training was performed on 196 patients. Right-censored metastasis-free survival was analysed using LASSO-regularized Cox regression, which identified three key prediction features. The model was validated in an external cohort of 714 patients. 55 (28%) and 134 (19%) patients developed distant metastases during the median postoperative follow-up of 6.3 years (interquartile range 3.4-8.6) and 5.4 years (4.0-7.6) in the training and validation cohort, respectively. Patients were stratified into clinically meaningful risk categories using only three features: tumor size, tumor grade and microvascular invasion, and a representative nomogram and a visual prediction surface were constructed using these features in Cox proportional hazards model. Concordance indices in the training and validation cohorts were 0.755 +/- 0.029 and 0.836 +/- 0.015 for our novel model, which were comparable to the C-indices of the original Leibovich prediction model (0.734 +/- 0.035 and 0.848 +/- 0.017, respectively). Thus, the presented model retains high accuracy while requiring only three features that are routinely collected and widely available

Analyzing Childlessness

Childlessness has been on the rise in many European societies. In Germany, the UK, Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, childlessness has increased starting with the 1950s cohorts. In these countries, about 20 % of the women born around 1965 will remain childless. In southern Europe and the former state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the rise in levels of childlessness is a more recent phenomenon. Yet among younger cohorts in these countries, childlessness has reached levels of 15 % or higher. In this introductory chapter, we summarize the long-term trends in childlessness and discuss the differences between European countries in the prevalence of childlessness. We also outline the structure and the logic of this volume

REDI: Budgets de référence pour une vie digne, une application web

status: publishe