Knowledge Levels, Attitude and Beliefs of Men towards the Digital Rectal Examinations (DRE): A study in Trinidad

Background: Trinidad and Tobago have been ranked as having one of the highest cancer mortality rates in the Caribbean. Prostate cancer was identified as the most common cancer in men, with a higher mortality than any other cancer. At least 1 in 9 men in Trinidad and Tobago will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine knowledge levels, attitudes, and beliefs of men aged 40 years and over regarding digital rectal examination (DRE). The investigators considered this crucial following the scourge of prostate cancer in Trinidad and Tobago and an apparent lack of the use of the DRE, a noted method of screening for the condition for early detection. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was undertaken using 216 men who were at least 40 years old and who gave their informed consent; these men were attending a central mall in Trinidad in the month of April 2018 when the data was collected. Data was collected using the researchers’ designed, self-administered questionnaire and analysed using SPSS version 20. Result: Results indicate that most men (95.8%) are knowledgeable/very knowledgeable about DRE. Similarly, most (64.6%) of the men have favourable/very favourable attitudes towards DRE while 59.3% of them indicated that their beliefs have little or major influence regarding their participation in DRE. It also showed that the men’s beliefs are associated with their ethnicity (pDiscussion/Recommendation/Conclusion: The findings suggest that perhaps the attitudes and beliefs of men aged 40 years and over attending this mall are better predictors of intentions than their knowledge. This needs to be explored further given the need to curb the prevalence of prostate cancer amongst men in Trinidad and Tobago

Lattice measurement of s with a realistic charm quark

We report on an estimate of s, renormalised in the MS scheme at the and Z0 mass scales, by means of lattice QCD. Our major improvement compared to previous lattice calculations is that, for the first time, no perturbative treatment at the charm threshold has been required since we have used statistical samples of gluon fields built by incorporating the vacuum polarisation effects of u/d, s and c sea quarks. Extracting s in the Taylor scheme from the lattice measurement of the ghost-ghost-gluon vertex, we obtain MS s (m2 Z) = 0.1200(14) and MS s (m2 ) = 0.339(13).Universidad Pablo de Olavide. Departamento de Sistemas Físicos, Químicos y NaturalesPreprin

DNA Double-Strand Breaks Induced by Cavitational Mechanical Effects of Ultrasound in Cancer Cell Lines

Ultrasonic technologies pervade the medical field: as a long established imaging modality in clinical diagnostics; and, with the emergence of targeted high intensity focused ultrasound, as a means of thermally ablating tumours. In parallel, the potential of [non-thermal] intermediate intensity ultrasound as a minimally invasive therapy is also being rigorously assessed. Here, induction of apoptosis in cancer cells has been observed, although definitive identification of the underlying mechanism has thus far remained elusive. A likely candidate process has been suggested to involve sonochemical activity, where reactive oxygen species (ROS) mediate the generation of DNA single-strand breaks. Here however, we provide compelling new evidence that strongly supports a purely mechanical mechanism. Moreover, by a combination of specific assays (neutral comet tail and staining for γH2AX foci formation) we demonstrate for the first time that US exposure at even moderate intensities exhibits genotoxic potential, through its facility to generate DNA damage across multiple cancer lines. Notably, colocalization assays highlight that ionizing radiation and ultrasound have distinctly different signatures to their respective γH2AX foci formation patterns, likely reflecting the different stress distributions that initiated damage formation. Furthermore, parallel immuno-blotting suggests that DNA-PKcs have a preferential role in the repair of ultrasound-induced damage

apeNEXT: A Multi-Tflops LQCD Computing Project

This paper is a slightly modified and reduced version of the proposal of the {\bf apeNEXT} project, which was submitted to DESY and INFN in spring 2000. .It presents the basic motivations and ideas of a next generation lattice QCD (LQCD) computing project, whose goal is the construction and operation of several large scale Multi-TFlops LQCD engines, providing an integrated peak performance of tens of TFlops, and a sustained (double precision) performance on key LQCD kernels of about 50% of peak speed

QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories : challenges and perspectives

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.Peer reviewe

Status of APE projects

This talk is divided in two parts. In the first part, we will summarize the status of the APEmille project that will Le completed by the end of the year. We will then devote the rest of the talk to the description of a new project for a multi-TeraFlop machine, apeNEXT. The interested reader will find a much more detailed discussion of all the items touched upon here in the full proposal of the project that will shortly appear on hep-lat

Status of APE projects

This talk is divided in two parts. In the first part, we will summarize the status of the APEmille project that will be completed by the end of the year. We will then devote the rest of the talk to the description of a new project for a multi-TeraFlop machine, ape NEXT. The interested reader will find a much more detailed discussion of all the items touched upon here in the full proposal of the project that will shortly appear on hep-lat. (9 refs)