4,022 research outputs found
Intraoperative Radiotherapy in the Treatment of Breast Cancer: A Review of the Evidence
The surgical treatment of early breast cancer has evolved from the removal of the entire breast and surrounding tissues (mastectomy) to the removal of the tumour together with a margin of healthy tissue (lumpectomy). Adjuvant radiotherapy, however, is still mainly given to the whole breast. Furthermore, external beam radiotherapy is often given several months after initial surgery and requires the patient to attend the radiotherapy centre daily for several weeks. A single fraction of radiotherapy given during surgery directly to the tumour bed (intraoperative radiotherapy) avoids these problems. The rationale and level-1 evidence for the safety and efficacy of the technique are reviewed
Enzyme-Cascade Analysis of the Rio Tinto Subsurface Environment: A Biosensor Experiment
The Portable Test System (PTS), designed & developed by Charles Rivers Laboratories, Inc. (Charleston, SC) is a portable instrument that was designed to perform analysis of enzymatic assays related to rapid assessment of microbial contamination (Wainwright, 2003). The enzymatic cascade of Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) is known to be one of the most sensitive techniques available for microbial detection, enabling the PTS to be evaluated as a potential life detection instrument for in situ Astrobiology missions. In the summer of 2003 the system was tested as a part of the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) ground truth science campaign in the Rio Tinto Analogue environment near Nerva, Spain. The preliminary results show that the PTS analysis correlates well with the contamination control tests and the more traditional lab-based biological assays performed during the MARTE field mission. Further work will be conducted on this research during a second field campaign in 2004 and a technology demonstration of a prototype instrument that includes autonomous sample preparation will occur in 2005
CANDELS: The correlation between galaxy morphology and star formation activity at z~2
We discuss the state of the assembly of the Hubble Sequence in the mix of
bright galaxies at redshift 1.4< z \le 2.5 with a large sample of 1,671
galaxies down to H_{AB}~26, selected from the HST/ACS and WFC3 images of the
GOODS--South field obtained as part of the GOODS and CANDELS observations. We
investigate the relationship between the star formation properties and
morphology using various parametric diagnostics, such as the Sersic light
profile, Gini (G), M_{20}, Concentration (C), Asymmetry (A) and multiplicity
parameters. Our sample clearly separates into massive, red and passive galaxies
versus less massive, blue and star forming ones, and this dichotomy correlates
very well with the galaxies' morphological properties. Star--forming galaxies
show a broad variety of morphological features, including clumpy structures and
bulges mixed with faint low surface brightness features, generally
characterized by disky-type light profiles. Passively evolving galaxies, on the
other hand, very often have compact light distribution and morphology typical
of today's spheroidal systems. We also find that artificially redshifted local
galaxies have a similar distribution with z~2galaxies in a G-M_{20} plane.
Visual inspection between the rest-frame optical and UV images show that there
is a generally weak morphological k-correction for galaxies at z~2, but the
comparison with non-parametric measures show that galaxies in the rest-frame UV
are somewhat clumpier than rest-frame optical. Similar general trends are
observed in the local universe among massive galaxies, suggesting that the
backbone of the Hubble sequence was already in place at z~2.Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted (added 3 references
Salmon mortality investigation
On 1 March 2012, the New Zealand King Salmon Company (NZKS) notified MPI of a significant mortality event occurring in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) at their sea farm in Waihinau Bay, outer Pelorus Sound
Cosmetic outcome as rated by patients, doctors, nurses and BCCT.core software assessed over 5 years in a subset of patients in the TARGIT-A trial
Background: The purpose of this research was to assess agreement between four rating systems of cosmetic outcome measured in a subset of patients with early breast cancer participating in the randomised TARGIT-A trial. TARGIT-A compared risk-adapted single-dose intra-operative radiotherapy (TARGIT-IORT) to whole breast external beam radiotherapy (EBRT).
Methods: Patients, their Radiation Oncologist and Research Nurse completed a subjective cosmetic assessment questionnaire before radiotherapy and annually thereafter for five years. Objective data previously calculated by the validated BCCT.core software which utilizes digital photographs to score symmetry, colour and scar was also used. Agreement was assessed by the Kappa statistic and longitudinal changes were assessed by generalized estimating equations.
Results: Overall, an Excellent-Good (EG) cosmetic result was scored more often than a Fair-Poor (FP) result for both treatment groups across all time points, with patients who received TARGIT-IORT scoring EG more often than those who received EBRT however this was statistically significant at Year 5 only. There was modest agreement between the four rating systems with the highest Kappa score being moderate agreement which was between nurse and doctor scores at Year 1 with Kappa = 0.46 (p \u3c 0.001), 95% CI (0.24, 0.68).
Conclusion: Despite similar overall findings between treatment groups and rating systems, the inter-rater agreement was only modest. This suggests that the four rating systems utilized may not necessarily be used interchangeably and it is arguable that for an outcome such as cosmetic appearance, the patient’s point of view is the most important.
Trial Registration: TARGIT-A ISRCTN34086741, Registered 21 July 2004, retrospectively registered
Upper critical field for underdoped high-T_c superconductors. Pseudogap and stripe--phase
We investigate the upper critical field in a stripe--phase and in the
presence of a phenomenological pseudogap. Our results indicate that the
formation of stripes affects the Landau orbits and results in an enhancement of
. On the other hand, phenomenologically introduced pseudogap leads to a
reduction of the upper critical field. This effect is of particular importance
when the magnitude of the gap is of the order of the superconducting transition
temperature. We have found that a suppression of the upper critical field takes
place also for the gap that originates from the charge--density waves.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Vortex structure in d-density wave scenario of pseudogap
We investigate the vortex structure assuming the d-density wave scenario of
the pseudogap. We discuss the profiles of the order parameters in the vicinity
of the vortex, effective vortex charge and the local density of states. We find
a pronounced modification of these quantities when compared to a purely
superconducting case. Results have been obtained for a clean system as well as
in the presence of a nonmagnetic impurity. We show that the competition between
superconductivity and the density wave may explain some experimental data
recently obtained for high-temperature superconductors. In particular, we show
that the d-density wave scenario explains the asymmetry of the gap observed in
the vicinity of the vortex core.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure
Non-magnetic impurity scattering in a superconductor near a van Hove point: Zn versus Ni in the cuprates
We consider the effect of non-magnetic impurities in a
superconductor with \ef close to a van Hove singularity. It is shown that the
non-trivial density of states (DOS) allows for resonant scattering already at
intermediate potential strengths eV. The residual DOS at
\ef, and the \tc suppression rate are found to strongly depend on the carrier
concentration. Quantitative agreement with experiments on Zn and Ni doped
cuprates is obtained by adjusting a single parameter, .Comment: 4 pages uuencoded compressed Postscript (Minor changes
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