Immune checkpoint inhibitors in renal cell carcinoma

The immune system has long been known to play a critical role in the body's defence against cancer, and there have been multiple attempts to harness it for therapeutic gain. Renal cancer was, historically, one of a small number of tumour types where immune manipulation had been shown to be effective. The current generation of immune checkpoint inhibitors are rapidly entering into routine clinical practice in the management of a number of tumour types, including renal cancer, where one drug, nivolumab, an anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody (mAb), is licensed for patients who have progressed on prior systemic treatment. Ongoing trials aim to maximize the benefits that can be gained from this new class of drug by exploring optimal timing in the natural course of the disease as well as combinations with other checkpoint inhibitors and drugs from different classes

Understanding the Heavy Tailed Dynamics in Human Behavior

The recent availability of electronic datasets containing large volumes of communication data has made it possible to study human behavior on a larger scale than ever before. From this, it has been discovered that across a diverse range of data sets, the inter-event times between consecutive communication events obey heavy tailed power law dynamics. Explaining this has proved controversial, and two distinct hypotheses have emerged. The first holds that these power laws are fundamental, and arise from the mechanisms such as priority queuing that humans use to schedule tasks. The second holds that they are a statistical artifact which only occur in aggregated data when features such as circadian rhythms and burstiness are ignored. We use a large social media data set to test these hypotheses, and find that although models that incorporate circadian rhythms and burstiness do explain part of the observed heavy tails, there is residual unexplained heavy tail behavior which suggests a more fundamental cause. Based on this, we develop a new quantitative model of human behavior which improves on existing approaches, and gives insight into the mechanisms underlying human interactions.Comment: 9 pages in Physical Review E, 201

Alcohol warning labels: are they effective?

Australia does not currently require warning labels on alcohol products, putting Australia out of step with many other countries. Given the potential persuasive power of labels, as well as the rising social costs of alcoholism in the United States (US), government - mandated warning labels were enforced and have appeared on all alcoholic beverage containers manufactured in the US since 1989. The commencement of this warning label system reportedly brought about increased awareness of the risks of excessive alcohol use among consumers in the US. As a result, other countries have followed this lead with at least 20 other countries introducing some kind of mandated warning label, including Brazil, France, India, Portugal, South Africa, Korea, Thailand, and Zimbabwe. There are several other countries considering their introduction (e.g. United Kingdom), or with voluntary labeling in place (e.g. Japan). While Australia does not currently require warning labels on alcohol products, both public health advocates and the alcohol industry are pushing for labels, although it is likely they have different motivations. Medical and advocacy organisations have been campaigning for mandatory (and government regulated) warning labels on alcohol for over a decade. Key advocacy groups include the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), Australian Medical Associa tion (AMA), Salvation Army, and national and state Cancer Councils. These groups are consistent in their calls for strong, specific and mandatory messages on warning labels such as ‘Alcohol can cause brain damage’ (Salvation Army)

The Data Audit Framework: a toolkit to identify research assets and improve data management in research led institutions

Although vast quantities of data are being created within higher education, few institutions have formal strategies in place for curating these research outputs in the longterm. Moreover there appears to be a lack of awareness as to exactly what data are held and whether they are being managed. In response to these concerns the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) issued a call for proposals to develop and implement a Data Audit Framework suited to the needs of the UK higher education research communities. The Data Audit Framework (DAF) Development project was funded to produce an audit methodology, online toolkit, and a registry. Four additional implementation projects were funded to test the toolkit and promote its uptake. This paper outlines the audit methodology, introduces the online toolkit, and provides feedback on implementing the Data Audit Framework.

Small Spacecraft Activities at JPL

This paper presents a brief technical description of some of the small spacecraft concepts prepared by JPL for various sponsors. Some of JPL\u27s work in microspacecraft is presented. The paper contains brief technical descriptions of the following four small spacecraft conceptual designs: 1) Lunar GAS, 2) Polar Mesoscale Explorer, 3) DARPA SHF and 4) Discovery. Since 1986, JPL has studied more than 10 small spacecraft including those to be presented here

Anomaly Mediation and Dimensional Transmutation

We show how a sparticle spectrum characteristic of anomaly mediation can arise from a theory whose Lagrangian contains no explicit mass scale. The scale of supersymmetry breaking is governed by the gravitino mass, which is the vacuum expectation value of the F-term of the conformal compensator field, and the tachyonic slepton problem is resolved by the breaking of a U(1) gauge symmetry at a scale determined by dimensional transmutation.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. v2 has added preprint number and acknowledgement

Structural geology of the northern Galice Formation, western Klamath Mountains, Oregon and California

The Galice Formation is a thick, turbiditic flysch sequence that depositionally overlies the Josephine ophiolite in the western Klamath Mountains of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. The Josephine ophiolite and Galice have been interpreted as the basement and sedimentary cover of a Late Jurassic back-arc basin that opened proximal to the continental margin. During the Nevadan orogeny (ca. 151-147 Ma), the ophiolite and overlying Galice sediments were thrust eastward beneath the continental margin along the regional Orleans fault. Two distinct Nevadan deformational phases are recognized in the Galice – an initial D1 or main-phase deformation and a later brittle deformation dominated by thrusting. D1 involved development of tight to isoclinal northwest-vergent F1 folds which possess an axial-planar S1 cleavage. S1 ranges from a weak pressure-solution cleavage in the northernmost Galice, to a strong slaty cleavage or schistosity in the southern Galice. S1 is ubiquitously parallel to bedding in the absence of recognizable F1 fold closures. Bedding is commonly transposed into parallelism with cleavage in southern exposures of the Galice. Syntectonic fibers in pressure shadows of pyrite grains reflect a north-south gradient in Nevadan penetrative strain. The fibers are straight and parallel to the trace of slaty cleavage, suggesting that cleavage formed during a stage of pure flattening. Percent shortening normal to Sl determined from fibers in the northern Galice (SW Oregon) is approximately 33%. However, fibers from slates in northern California record an average of 70% shortening normal to S1. A large increase in the intensity of S1 towards the south also suggests a gradient in finite strain. Main-phase Nevadan deformation was followed by an episode of brittle shearing. Nevadan thrusts reveal top-to-northwest sense to displacement, similar to vergence observed from F1 folds. A second generation of folds, F2, appear to be genetically related to the thrusts. Nevadan thrusts clearly overprint main-phase structures (F1, S1). In the northernmost Galice, angular F1 folds are thrusted-out parallel to bedding in one of the fold limbs. Further to the south, F1 folds are more typically truncated by thrusts that are parallel to S1 cleavage planes. Small-scale thrust systems in thinly-bedded rocks have produced peculiar bedding truncations or pseudocross-bedding . These small thrusts locally truncate the S1 cleavage. Fundamental conclusions obtained in this study are: 1) The Galice Formation is tightly folded on both outcrop and regional scales. 2) There is a north-to-south increase in Nevadan regional metamorphic grade and penetrative strain. This gradient may reflect a small southward component of underthrusting along the Orleans fault. 3) Nevadan vergence from folds and thrusts in the Galice is dominantly northwestward. 4) Most Nevadan thrusting in the Galice took place after the main-phase penetrative deformation and peak metamorphism. This ductile-to-brittle transition may have resulted from continued underthrusting during regional uplift