Decreased risk of breast cancer associated with oral bisphosphonate therapy

Preclinical studies and adjuvant trials using bisphosphonates have found them to have an antitumor effect. Although major advances have been made in chemoprevention strategies with selective estrogen receptor modulators and aromatase inhibitors, their use has been fraught with significant adverse effects such as venous thromboembolic events and an increased risk for endometrial cancer. In this context, several recent observational studies have investigated a chemoprevention role for oral bisphosphonates in decreasing risk for breast cancer. This review will aim to summarize these studies and present a critical evaluation of the association between oral bisphosphonate use and breast cancer risk reduction. © 2012 Mathew and Brufsky, publisher and licensee Dove Medical Press Ltd

When the Trumpet Call is Unclear: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Speech That Launched the Jesus Seminar

Since the Jesus Seminar has become almost iconic in religious media coverage, it merits academic scrutiny. This article focuses on the Seminar\u27s inaugural address given by founder Robert Funk on March 21, 1985, at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. In that address, Funk set forth the Seminar\u27s mission and method that has guided the association ever since. The main thesis of this article is that clues to the Seminar\u27s successes and failures may be found in Funk\u27s inaugural address, which may be uncovered through a text-in-context analysis of the speech

Transverse Instability of Periodic Traveling Waves in the Generalized Kadomtsev-Petviashvili Equation

In this paper, we investigate the spectral instability of periodic traveling wave solutions of the generalized Korteweg-de Vries equation to long wavelength transverse perturbations in the generalized Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation. By analyzing high and low frequency limits of the appropriate periodic Evans function, we derive an orientation index which yields sufficient conditions for such an instability to occur. This index is geometric in nature and applies to arbitrary periodic traveling waves with minor smoothness and convexity assumptions on the nonlinearity. Using the integrable structure of the ordinary differential equation governing the traveling wave profiles, we are then able to calculate the resulting orientation index for the elliptic function solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries and modified Korteweg-de Vries equations.Comment: 26 pages. Sign error corrected in Lemma 3. Statement of main theorem corrected. Exposition updated and references added

Nondegeneracy and Stability of Antiperiodic Bound States for Fractional Nonlinear Schr\"odinger Equations

We consider the existence and stability of real-valued, spatially antiperiodic standing wave solutions to a family of nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations with fractional dispersion and power-law nonlinearity. As a key technical result, we demonstrate that the associated linearized operator is nondegenerate when restricted to antiperiodic perturbations, i.e. that its kernel is generated by the translational and gauge symmetries of the governing evolution equation. In the process, we provide a characterization of the antiperiodic ground state eigenfunctions for linear fractional Schr\"odinger operators on $\mathbb{R}$ with real-valued, periodic potentials as well as a Sturm-Liouville type oscillation theory for the higher antiperiodic eigenfunctions.Comment: 46 pages, 2 figure