Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Atlantis Expedition, 1934

Dr. Charles M. Breder participated on the 1934 expedition of the Atlantis from Woods Hole, Massachusetts to Panama and back and kept a field diary of daily activities. The Atlantis expedition of 1934, led by Prof. A. E. Parr, was a milestone in the history of scientific discovery in the Sargasso Sea and the West Indies. Although naturalists had visited the Sargasso Sea for many years, the Atlantis voyage was the first attempt to investigate in detailed quantitative manner biological problems about this varying, intermittent ‘false’ bottom of living, floating plants and associated fauna. In addition to Dr. Breder, the party also consisted of Dr. Alexander Forbes, Harvard University and Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI); T. S. Greenwood, WHOI hydrographer; M. D. Burkenroad, Yale University’s Bingham Laboratory, carcinology and Sargasso epizoa; M. Bishop, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Zoology Dept., collections and preparations and H. Sears, WHOI ichthyologist. The itinerary included the following waypoints: Woods Hole, the Bermudas, Turks Islands, Kingston, Colon, along the Mosquito Bank off of Nicaragua, off the north coast of Jamaica, along the south coast of Cuba, Bartlett Deep, to off the Isle of Pines, through the Yucatan Channel, off Havana, off Key West, to Miami, to New York City, and then the return to Woods Hole. During the expedition, Breder collected rare and little-known flying fish species and developed a method for hatching and growing flying fish larvae. (PDF contains 48 pages

Optimizing pre-treatment cancer care:Do no harm

Good clinical practice is to abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm. This thesis discusses how to prevent and screen for complications in patients that need to be treated for cancer. Three different topics are covered. In the first part hepatitis B screening in patients that will start with chemo- or immunotherapy is discussed. Do we have to screen all patients before start of chemotherapy to prevent hepatitis B reactivation? And how do Dutch medical oncologists behave on this topic? The second part addresses screening for human papillomavirus related anal dysplasia in women with a history of human papillomavirus disease, the value of different screening tests to detect anal dysplasia or cancer and the role of human papillomavirus vaccination as addition to standard treatment for HPV high grade dysplasia or cancer. In the last part pain and fear of pain during a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy is studied. What pain do patients experience during this procedure and what is the influence of fear of pain? Also, the effect of different premedication schemes to reduce pain during a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy is studied in a randomized controlled trial

Previous attentional set can induce an attentional blink with task-irrelevant initial targets

Identification of a second target is often impaired by the requirement to process a prior target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This is termed the attentional blink. Even when the first target is task-irrelevant an attentional blink may occur providing this first target shares similar features with the second target (contingent capture). An RSVP experiment was undertaken to assess whether this first target can still cause an attentional blink when it did not require a response and did not share any features with the following target. The results revealed that such task-irrelevant targets can induce an attentional blink providing that they were task-relevant on a previous block of trials. This suggests that irrelevant focal stimuli can distract attention on the basis of a previous attentional set

The use of stakeholder analysis in integrated watershed management

In the Ngenge watershed, at Mt. Elgon in the eastern Ugandan highlands, agricultural practices cause serious soil erosion problems and subsequent decrease in soil and water quality. Attempts to manage soil erosion through policy interventions have not been successful, because existing policies and legislation for natural resource management are inadequate and often formulated without consulting local communities. In the Ngenge watershed, an integrated watershed management (IWM) program was initiated to foster sustainable land and water management solutions. Experience shows that successes in IWM programs depend on effective participation by all relevant groups of stakeholders. The present study investigates the usability of a stakeholder analysis (SA) and how it has to be linked with participatory problem identification and participatory formulation of action and work plans to build a base for effective IWM. The SA considered the following criteria: (1) stakeholders' commitment to implement IWM, (2) their power to influence policy-making and implementation processes, and (3) the expected impact of the IWM program on the stakeholders. The SA allowed identification of key groups of stakeholders who participated in workshops and jointly developed concrete action and work plans. These workshop outputs, together with the positive feedback of the stakeholders and the commitment of policy-makers to continue the process, are good indicators that SA is a useful means for supporting the development of IWM strategies

A comparative study of adhesion of melanoma and breast cancer cells to blood and lymphatic endothelium

Background: Lymphovascular invasion (LVI) is an important step in the metastatic cascade; tumor cell migration and adhesion to blood and lymphatic vessels is followed by invasion through the vessel wall and subsequent systemic spread. Although primary breast cancers and melanomas have rich blood vascular networks, LVI is predominately lymphatic in nature. Whilst the adhesion of tumor cells to blood endothelium has been extensively investigated, there is a paucity of information on tumor cell adhesion to lymphatic endothelium. Methods and Results: Breast cancer (MDA-MB-231 and MCF7) and melanoma (MeWo and SKMEL-30) cell adhesion to lymphatic (hTERT-LEC and HMVEC dLy Neo) and blood (HUVEC and hMEC-1) endothelial cells were assessed using static adhesion assays. The effect of inflammatory conditions, tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) stimulation of endothelial and tumor cells, on the adhesive process was also examined. In addition, the effects of TNF-a stimulation on tumor cell migration was investigated using haplotaxis (scratch wound) assays. Breast cancer and melanoma cells exhibited higher levels of adhesion to blood compared to lymphatic endothelial cells ( p < 0.001). TNF-a stimulation of endothelial cells, or of tumor cells alone, did not significantly alter tumor–endothelial cell adhesion or patterns.When both tumor and endothelial cells were stimulated with TNF-a, a significant increase in adhesion was observed ( p < 0.01), which was notably higher in the lymphatic cell models ( p < 0.001). TNF-a-stimulation of all tumor cell lines significantly increased their migration rate ( p < 0.01). Conclusions: Results suggest that metastasis resultant from lymphatic vessel-tumor cell adhesion may be modulated by cytokine stimulation, which could represent an important therapeutic target in breast cancer and melanoma