Nga iwi o Ngapuhi membership system: relationship management and relational design

This paper reviews a capstone project undertaken by Auckland University of Technology (AUT) students to develop a tribal membership register for Te Runanga a Iwi o Ngapuhi. The initial scope of the project incorporated a database to record details of people, land, and their common history. As the project unfolded complex issues related to land, genealogical and historical relationships had to be addressed. The paper discusses the relationship between the clients and developers and the partnership model that was adopted. Research conducted to develop a suitable data model uncovered the GENTECH genealogical data model originated by genealogists in Texas. This model was adapted for this project to suit the unique needs of Maori. The paper describes the initial implementation of an online membership register and concludes with a critique of this model proposing further extensions to address the interactions between people, land and history

Tumor control and QoL outcomes of very young children with atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor treated with focal only chemo-radiation therapy using pencil beam scanning proton therapy

The aim of this analysis was to assess the early clinical results of pencil beam scanning proton therapy (PT) in the treatment of young children with non-metastatic atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor (ATRT) of the CNS. Fifteen children (male, n = 8, 53 %) were treated with PT between May 2008 and January 2013. Mean age at diagnosis was 17.4 ± 7.0 months. The localization was infratentorial in 9 (60 %) patients. Gross total resection of the primary tumors was achieved in 7 (47 %) patients. The dose administered focally under sedation was 54 Gy (RBE). After a median follow-up of 33.4 months (range 9.7-69.2), 3 (20 %), 4 (27 %) and 2 (13 %) patients presented with local failure (LF), distant brain failure (DBF) and spinal failure (SF), respectively. Six patients died, all of tumor progression. The 2-year overall- and progression-free survival was 64.6 and 66.0 %. Tumor location (supratentorial) and the extent of surgical resection (non-gross total resection) were negative prognostic factors for both OS and PFS. PT was well tolerated. No grade >2 acute toxicity was observed. The estimated 2-year toxicity-free survival was 90 %. As assessed by the PedsQoL proxy, no decrease in QoL was observed after PT. We conclude that PBS PT is an effective treatment for young children with ATRT. After PT, with or without concomitant chemotherapy, two third of the patients survived >2 years. Acute toxicity was manageable. Longer follow-up and larger numbers of patients are needed to assess long-term outcomes and treatment-induced toxicity

Effects of deep inspiration breath hold on prone photon or proton irradiation of breast and regional lymph nodes

We report on a comparative dosimetrical study between deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) and shallow breathing (SB) in prone crawl position for photon and proton radiotherapy of whole breast (WB) and locoregional lymph node regions, including the internal mammary chain (LN_MI). We investigate the dosimetrical effects of DIBH in prone crawl position on organs-at-risk for both photon and proton plans. For each modality, we further estimate the effects of lung and heart doses on the mortality risks of different risk profiles of patients. Thirty-one patients with invasive carcinoma of the left breast and pathologically confirmed positive lymph node status were included in this study. DIBH significantly decreased dose to heart for photon and proton radiotherapy. DIBH also decreased lung doses for photons, while increased lung doses were observed using protons because the retracting heart is displaced by low-density lung tissue. For other organs-at-risk, DIBH resulted in significant dose reductions using photons while minor differences in dose deposition between DIBH and SB were observed using protons. In patients with high risks for cardiac and lung cancer mortality, average thirty-year mortality rates from radiotherapy-related cardiac injury and lung cancer were estimated at 3.12% (photon DIBH), 4.03% (photon SB), 1.80% (proton DIBH) and 1.66% (proton SB). The radiationrelated mortality risk could not outweigh the similar to 8% disease-specific survival benefit of WB + LN_MI radiotherapy in any of the assessed treatments

Comparing radiolytic production of H2O2 and development of Zebrafish embryos after ultra high dose rate exposure with electron and transmission proton beams.

The physico-chemical and biological response to conventional and UHDR electron and proton beams was investigated, along with conventional photons. The temporal structure and nature of the beam affected both, with electron beam at ≥1400 Gy/s and proton beam at 0.1 and 1260 Gy/s found to be isoefficient at sparing zebrafish embryos

A method for increasing expressivity of Gene Ontology annotations using a compositional approach.

BACKGROUND: The Gene Ontology project integrates data about the function of gene products across a diverse range of organisms, allowing the transfer of knowledge from model organisms to humans, and enabling computational analyses for interpretation of high-throughput experimental and clinical data. The core data structure is the annotation, an association between a gene product and a term from one of the three ontologies comprising the GO. Historically, it has not been possible to provide additional information about the context of a GO term, such as the target gene or the location of a molecular function. This has limited the specificity of knowledge that can be expressed by GO annotations. RESULTS: The GO Consortium has introduced annotation extensions that enable manually curated GO annotations to capture additional contextual details. Extensions represent effector-target relationships such as localization dependencies, substrates of protein modifiers and regulation targets of signaling pathways and transcription factors as well as spatial and temporal aspects of processes such as cell or tissue type or developmental stage. We describe the content and structure of annotation extensions, provide examples, and summarize the current usage of annotation extensions. CONCLUSIONS: The additional contextual information captured by annotation extensions improves the utility of functional annotation by representing dependencies between annotations to terms in the different ontologies of GO, external ontologies, or an organism's gene products. These enhanced annotations can also support sophisticated queries and reasoning, and will provide curated, directional links between many gene products to support pathway and network reconstruction

Citizen seismology helps decipher the 2021 Haiti earthquake

5 pages, 4 figures, supplementary materials https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn1045.-- Data and materials availability: All data and code used in this study are openly available. RADAR data can be obtained through ESA (Sentinel) or JAXA (Alos-2). Aftershock data can be obtained from https://ayiti.unice.fr/ayiti-seismes/ (7). The codes used to process or model the data are published and public (8). The catalog of high-precision earthquake relocated with the NLL-SSST-coherence procedure (SM4) is available as supplementary dataOn 14 August 2021, the moment magnitude (Mw) 7.2 Nippes earthquake in Haiti occurred within the same fault zone as its devastating 2010 Mw 7.0 predecessor, but struck the country when field access was limited by insecurity and conventional seismometers from the national network were inoperative. A network of citizen seismometers installed in 2019 provided near-field data critical to rapidly understand the mechanism of the mainshock and monitor its aftershock sequence. Their real-time data defined two aftershock clusters that coincide with two areas of coseismic slip derived from inversions of conventional seismological and geodetic data. Machine learning applied to data from the citizen seismometer closest to the mainshock allows us to forecast aftershocks as accurately as with the network-derived catalog. This shows the utility of citizen science contributing to our understanding of a major earthquakeThis work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) through their “Natural Hazard” program (E.C., S.S., T.M., B.D., F.C., J.P.A., J.C., A.D., D.B., S.P.); the FEDER European Community program within the Interreg Caraïbes “PREST” project (E.C., S.S., D.B.); Institut Universitaire de France (E.C., R.J.); Université Côte d’Azur and the French Embassy in Haiti (S.P.); the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant no. 758210, Geo4D project to R.J. and grant no. 805256 to Z.D.); the French National Research Agency (project ANR-21-CE03-0010 “OSMOSE” to E.C. and ANR-15-IDEX-01 “UCAJEDI Investments in the Future” to Q.B.); the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant no. 949221 to Q.B.); and HPC resources of IDRIS (under allocations 2020-AD011012142, 2021-AP011012536, and 2021-A0101012314 to Q.B.With the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)Peer reviewe

Combining rescanning and gating for a time-efficient treatment of mobile tumors using pencil beam scanning proton therapy.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Respiratory motion during proton therapy can severely degrade dose distributions, particularly due to interplay effects when using pencil beam scanning. Combined rescanning and gating treatments for moving tumors mitigates dose degradation, but at the cost of increased treatment delivery time. The objective of this study was to identify the time efficiency of these dose degradation-motion mitigation strategies for different range of motions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Seventeen patients with thoracic or abdominal tumors were studied. Tumor motion amplitudes ranged from 2-30 mm. Deliveries using different combinations of rescanning and gating were simulated with a dense dose spot grid (4x4x2.5 mm3) for all patients and a sparse dose spot grid (8x8x5 mm3) for six patients with larger tumor movements (>8 mm). The resulting plans were evaluated in terms of CTV coverage and time efficiency. RESULTS Based on the studied patient cohort, it has been shown that for amplitudes up to 5 mm, no motion mitigation is required with a dense spot grid. For amplitudes between 5 and 10 mm, volumetric rescanning should be applied while maintaining a 100% duty cycle when using a dense spot grid. Although gating could be envisaged to reduce the target volume for intermediate motion, it has been shown that the dose to normal tissues would only be reduced marginally. Moreover, the treatment time would increase. Finally, for larger motion amplitudes, both volumetric rescanning and respiratory gating should be applied with both spot grids. In addition, it has been shown that a dense spot grid delivers better CTV dose coverage than a sparse dose grid. CONCLUSION Volumetric rescanning and/or respiratory gating can be used in order to effectively and efficiently mitigate dose degradation due to tumor movement

Proton and carbon ion therapy

Proton and Carbon Ion Therapy is an up-to-date guide to using proton and carbon ion therapy in modern cancer treatment. The book covers the physics and radiobiology basics of proton and ion beams, dosimetry methods and radiation measurements, and treatment delivery systems. It gives practical guidance on patient setup, target localization, and treatment planning for clinical proton and carbon ion therapy. The text also offers detailed reports on the treatment of pediatric cancers, lymphomas, and various other cancers. After an overview, the book focuses on the fundamental aspects of proton and carbon ion therapy equipment, including accelerators, gantries, and delivery systems. It then discusses dosimetry, biology, imaging, and treatment planning basics and provides clinical guidelines on the use of proton and carbon ion therapy for the treatment of specific cancers. Suitable for anyone involved with medical physics and radiation therapy, this book offers a balanced and critical assessment of state-of-the-art technologies, major challenges, and the future outlook of proton and carbon ion therapy. It presents a thorough introduction for those new to the field while providing a helpful, up-to-date reference for readers already using the therapy in clinical settings.Proton and Carbon Ion Therapy is an up-to-date guide to using proton and carbon ion therapy in modern cancer treatment. The book covers the physics and radiobiology basics of proton and ion beams, dosimetry methods and radiation measurements, and treatment delivery systems. It gives practical guidance on patient setup, target localization, and treatment planning for clinical proton and carbon ion therapy. The text also offers detailed reports on the treatment of pediatric cancers, lymphomas, and various other cancers. After an overview, the book focuses on the fundamental aspects of proton an