Noninvasive monitoring of radiotherapy-induced microvascular changes using dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) in a colorectal tumor model

To examine dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) with a macromolecular contrast agent (P792) to visualize effects of radiotherapy (RT) on microvascular leakage in a colorectal cancer model.Journal Articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

‘Born to Shop’: Malls, Dream-Worlds and Capitalism

It has been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a new generation, untouched by the previous communist regimes, has come to adulthood throughout the post-communist world. The Iulius Group’s logo – ‘Born to shop!’ – suggests that these are born shoppers: the capitalist babies of Central and Eastern Europe who are sustaining the largest growth in retail and shopping malls in Europe. With no living memory of shortages, queuing, or government restrictions, they know only the limit of their own – or their parents’ – pocket/credit. Their world could not be more different from the one that their parents and grandparents experienced: both the abundance of goods and services, as well as the opulent settings under which they are now sold, offer striking visual contrasts to the not-so-distant past. In addition, the very experience of consumption is directly connected to the way in which the current social fabric – and new social divisions within it – is interwoven with the physical and architectural changes taking place in the urban setting

Cumulative comorbid conditions influence mortality risk after staged palliation for hypoplastic left heart syndrome and variants

Objective: Prematurity, low birth weight, genetic syndromes, extracardiac conditions, and secondary cardiac lesions are considered high-risk conditions associated with mortality after stage 1 palliation. We report the impact of these conditions on outcomes from a prospective multicenter improvement collaborative. Methods: The National Pediatric Cardiology Quality Improvement Collaborative Phase II registry was queried. Comorbid conditions were categorized and quantified to determine the cumulative burden of high-risk diagnoses on survival to the first birthday. Logistic regression was applied to evaluate factors associated with mortality. Results: Of the 1421 participants, 40% (575) had at least 1 high-risk condition. The aggregate high-risk group had lower survival to the first birthday compared with standard risk (76.2% vs 88.1%, P \u3c .001). Presence of a single high-risk diagnosis was not associated with reduced survival to the first birthday (odds ratio, 0.71; confidence interval, 0.49-1.02, P = .066). Incremental increases in high-risk diagnoses were associated with reduced survival to first birthday (odds ratio, 0.23; confidence interval, 0.15-0.36, P \u3c .001) for 2 and 0.17 (confidence interval, 0.10-0.30, P \u3c .001) for 3 to 5 high-risk diagnoses. Additional analysis that included prestage 1 palliation characteristics and stage 1 palliation perioperative variables identified multiple high-risk diagnoses, poststage 1 palliation extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support (odds ratio, 0.14; confidence interval, 0.10-0.22, P \u3c .001), and cardiac reoperation (odds ratio, 0.66; confidence interval, 0.45-0.98, P = .037) to be associated with reduced survival odds to the first birthday. Conclusions: The presence of 1 high-risk diagnostic category was not associated with decreased survival at 1 year. Cumulative diagnoses across multiple high-risk diagnostic categories were associated with decreased odds of survival. Further patient accrual is needed to evaluate the impact of specific comorbid conditions within the broader high-risk categories

Robustness of personal rankings: the Handelsblatt example

In the last years, Handelsblatt has published several rankings of business economists from German, Swiss and Austrian research institutions based on their journal publication output. These rankings have a strong influence on the academic profession. We scrutinize the Handelsblatt methodology by examining the effect the rankings' underlying algorithms and assumptions have on the scores and ranks of individual researchers. In doing so, we clarify how robust the result is with respect to these internal parameters. Since the parameters used by Handelsblatt are not scientifically substantiated but defined ad hoc, this question is of great importance. For each parameter variation, we provide several robustness measures for both the Handelsblatt life's work ranking and the Handelsblatt recent research performance ranking. E.g., if one applies a weighting scheme that lays more emphasis on first tier journal publications such that the weight of a particular category is always double of the weight of the next lower category, rank correlations based on all researchers in both personal rankings exceed 80 %. However, if one solely considers the top 25 performing researchers rank correlations fall below 50 and 20 % of researchers even drop out of this top group. Further research as well as the discussion in the academic community should clarify whether these correlations verify the robustness of the ranking or manifest the opposite