Overview of bladder heating technology: matching capabilities with clinical requirements.

Moderate temperature hyperthermia (40-45°C for 1 h) is emerging as an effective treatment to enhance best available chemotherapy strategies for bladder cancer. A rapidly increasing number of clinical trials have investigated the feasibility and efficacy of treating bladder cancer with combined intravesical chemotherapy and moderate temperature hyperthermia. To date, most studies have concerned treatment of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) limited to the interior wall of the bladder. Following the promising results of initial clinical trials, investigators are now considering protocols for treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). This paper provides a brief overview of the devices and techniques used for heating bladder cancer. Systems are described for thermal conduction heating of the bladder wall via circulation of hot fluid, intravesical microwave antenna heating, capacitively coupled radio-frequency current heating, and radiofrequency phased array deep regional heating of the pelvis. Relative heating characteristics of the available technologies are compared based on published feasibility studies, and the systems correlated with clinical requirements for effective treatment of MIBC and NMIBC

Disorder induced brittle to quasi-brittle transition in fiber bundles

We investigate the fracture process of a bundle of fibers with random Young modulus and a constant breaking strength. For two component systems we show that the strength of the mixture is always lower than the strength of the individual components. For continuously distributed Young modulus the tail of the distribution proved to play a decisive role since fibers break in the decreasing order of their stiffness. Using power law distributed stiffness values we demonstrate that the system exhibits a disorder induced brittle to quasi-brittle transition which occurs analogously to continuous phase transitions. Based on computer simulations we determine the critical exponents of the transition and construct the phase diagram of the system.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Corrections to Finite Size Scaling in Percolation

A 1/L-expansion for percolation problems is proposed, where L is the lattice finite length. The square lattice with 27 different sizes L = 18, 22 ... 1594 is considered. Certain spanning probabilities were determined by Monte Carlo simulations, as continuous functions of the site occupation probability p. We estimate the critical threshold pc by applying the quoted expansion to these data. Also, the universal spanning probability at pc for an annulus with aspect ratio r=1/2 is estimated as C = 0.876657(45)

Model for Cumulative Solar Heavy Ion Energy and Linear Energy Transfer Spectra

A probabilistic model of cumulative solar heavy ion energy and LET spectra is developed for spacecraft design applications. Spectra are given as a function of confidence level, mission time period during solar maximum and shielding thickness. It is shown that long-term solar heavy ion fluxes exceed galactic cosmic ray fluxes during solar maximum for shielding levels of interest. Cumulative solar heavy ion fluences should therefore be accounted for in single event effects rate calculations and in the planning of space missions

The lower mass function of the young open cluster Blanco 1: from 30 M_(Jup) to 3 M_☉

Aims. We performed a deep wide field optical survey of the young (~100−150 Myr) open cluster Blanco 1 to study its low mass population well down into the brown dwarf regime and estimate its mass function over the whole cluster mass range. Methods. The survey covers 2.3 square degrees in the I and z-bands down to I ≃ z ≃ 24 with the CFH12K camera. Considering two different cluster ages (100 and 150 Myr), we selected cluster member candidates on the basis of their location in the (I, I − z) CMD relative to the isochrones, and estimated the contamination by foreground late-type field dwarfs using statistical arguments, infrared photometry and low-resolution optical spectroscopy. Results. We find that our survey should contain about 57% of the cluster members in the 0.03−0.6 M_☉ mass range, including 30–40 brown dwarfs. The candidate’s radial distribution presents evidence that mass segregation has already occured in the cluster. We took it into account to estimate the cluster mass function across the stellar/substellar boundary. We find that, between 0.03 M_☉ and 0.6 M_☉, the cluster mass distribution does not depend much on its exact age, and is well represented by a single power-law, with an index α = 0.69 ± 0.15. Over the whole mass domain, from 0.03 M_☉ to 3 M_☉, the mass function is better fitted by a log-normal function with m_0 = 0.36 ± 0.07 M_☉ and σ = 0.58 ± 0.06. Conclusions. Comparison between the Blanco 1 mass function, other young open clusters’ MF, and the galactic disc MF suggests that the IMF, from the substellar domain to the higher mass part, does not depend much on initial conditions. We discuss the implications of this result on theories developed to date to explain the origin of the mass distribution

The Acute Effect of Intermittent Fasting on Resting Energy Expenditure in College-Aged Males

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The lower mass function of young open clusters

We report new estimates for the lower mass function of 5 young open clusters spanning an age range from 80 to 150 Myr. In all studied clusters, the mass function across the stellar/substellar boundary (~0.072 Mo) and up to 0.4 Mo is consistent with a power-law with an exponent alpha of -0.5 +/- 0.1, i.e., dN/dM ~ M**(-0.5).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure