Successful Surgical Treatment of a Patient with a Solitary Asymptomatic Cardiac Metastasis from Breast Cancer, Identified by Elevated Tumor Markers and Circulating Tumor Cells

Indroduction: Cardiac metastases are a not infrequent autopsy finding in patients dying of metastatic cancer, but are less commonly diagnosed during life (1). Although the autopsy incidence of cardiac metastases ranges may be as high as 25%, solitary cardiac metastases in the absence of metastatic involvement of other organs are rare (2).Case Presentation: We report here the case of a 66-year old woman with a history of bilateral breast cancer, where a solitary metastasis in the right atrium was successfully resected.Conclusion: In the absence of any symptoms or clinical findings on physical examination, the presence of metastatic disease was first suggested by the detection of elevated tumor markers and circulating tumor cells during routine follow up after treatment for early stage breast cancer.

Development and Test of a Single-Aperture 11 T Nb3Sn Demonstrator Dipole for LHC Upgrades

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Quench Protection Study of a Single-Aperture 11 T Nb3Sn Demonstrator Dipole for LHC Upgrades

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Field Quality Measurements in a Single-Aperture 11 T Nb3Sn Demonstrator Dipole for LHC Upgrades

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Quench Protection Study of a Single-Aperture 11 T Nb3Sn Demonstrator Dipole for LHC Upgrades

The planned upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collimation system will include installation of additional collimators in the dispersion suppressor areas. The longitudinal space for the collimators could be provided by replacing 15-m-long 8.33 T NbTi LHC main dipoles with shorter 11 T Nb 3Sn dipoles compatible with the LHC lattice and main systems. FNAL and CERN have started a joint program with the goal of building a 5.5-m-long twin-aperture Nb3Sn dipole prototype suitable for installation in the LHC. The first step of this program is the development of a 2-m-long single-aperture demonstrator dipole with a nominal field of 11 T at the LHC nominal current of 11.85 kA. This paper summarizes the results of quench protection studies of 11 T dipoles performed using the single-aperture Nb 3Sn demonstrator

The Socio-Economic Value of Natural Riverbanks in the Netherlands

Ecologists and economists both use a different approach to determine the value of nature. Its ecological value can be measured using criteria like rarity and diversity of species in an ecosystem. The economic value can be determined using non-market valuation techniques. This paper focuses on an empirical application of the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to find out whether this valuation method is a suitable method to estimate the economic value of natural riverbanks in the Netherlands. Natural riverbanks will provide habitat for species that particularly depend on the land water transit area. Since common riverbanks do not provide this habitat, natural river banks increase biodiversity in the Netherlands. On the basis of technical and ecological characteristics nine different types of natural riverbanks were distinguished. For each type a laymen description was made. This description served as a basis for economic valuation by means of CVM. The results of the CVM study shows that the average willingness to pay for non-use of a natural riverbank varied between 16 and 25 Dutch guilders per household year. The willingness to pay for recreational use ranged from 1,07 to 2,50 guilders per visit. The generated outcomes proved to be consistent with results from other studies. At first sight, the economic value of natural riverbanks seemed to be higher than their construction and maintenance cost

A Climate-Change Policy Induced Shift from Innovations in Energy Production to Energy Savings

We develop an endogenous growth model with capital, labor and energy as production factors and three productivity variables that measure accumulated innovations for energy production, energy savings, and neutral growth. All markets are complete and perfect, except for research, for which we assume that the marginal social value exceeds marginal costs by factor four. The model constants are calibrated so that the model reproduces the relevant trends over the 1970-2000 period. The model contains a simple climate module, and is used to assess the impact of Induced Technological Change (ITC) for a policy that aims at a maximum level of atmospheric CO2 concentration (450 ppmv). ITC is shown to reduce the required carbon tax by about a factor 2, and to reduce costs of such a policy by about factor 10. Numerical simulations show that knowledge accumulation shifts from energy production to energy saving technology

Modelling Dynamic Conditional Correlations in WTI Oil Forward and Futures Returns

This paper estimates the dynamic conditional correlations in the returns on WTI oil one-month forward prices, and one-, three-, six-, and twelve-month futures prices, using recently developed multivariate conditional volatility models. The dynamic correlations enable a determination of whether the forward and various futures returns are substitutes or complements, which are crucial for deciding whether or not to hedge against unforeseen circumstances. The models are estimated using daily data on WTI oil forward and futures prices, and their associated returns, from 3 January 1985 to 16 January 2004. At the univariate level, the estimates are statistically significant, with the occasional asymmetric effect in which negative shocks have a greater impact on volatility than positive shocks. In all cases, both the short- and long-run persistence of shocks are statistically significant. Among the five returns, there are ten conditional correlations, with the highest estimate of constant conditional correlation being 0.975 between the volatilities of the three-month and six-month futures returns, and the lowest being 0.656 between the volatilities of the forward and twelve-month futures returns. The dynamic conditional correlations can vary dramatically, being negative in four of ten cases and being close to zero in another five cases. Only in the case of the dynamic volatilities of the three-month and six-month futures returns is the range of variation relatively narrow, namely (0.832, 0.996). Thus, in general, the dynamic volatilities in the returns in the WTI oil forward and future prices can be either independent or interdependent over time