Drug-drug interactions in older patients with cancer: A report from the 15th Conference of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology, Prague, Czech Republic, November 2015

Drugs taken for cancer can interact with each other, with agents taken as part of supportive care, with drugs taken for comorbid conditions (which are particularly common in the elderly patients), and with herbal supplements and complementary medicines. We tend to focus on the narrow therapeutic window of cytotoxics, but the metabolism of tyrosine kinase inhibitors by the cytochrome P450 3A4 enzyme (CYP3A4) makes some TKIs particularly prone to interference with or from other agents sharing this pathway. There is also potential for adverse pharmacokinetic interactions with new hormonal agents used in advanced prostate cancer

Making waves in education

Making Waves in Education is a book of a collaborative nature, being a collection of chapters written by undergraduates studying B.A. Hons in Education at the Universities of Plymouth and York. Thirteen chapters, each from a different student, cover topics from learning theories to sex education, home education and autism. The chapters are well-organised and written, and they cover key topics in an accessible and thoughtful way. The chapters are generally well - referenced and present critical and balanced arguments. Many use hard statistics in an effective way to back up their points and all include bibliographies as indeed one expects from a serious publication. The collection therefore addresses itself to a wide readership of anyone interested in education, and students and teachers/trainers in HE in particula

When does a physical system compute

Computing is a high-level process of a physical system. Recent interest in non-standard computing systems, including quantum and biological computers, has brought this physical basis of computing to the forefront. There has been, however, no consensus on how to tell if a given physical system is acting as a computer or not; leading to confusion over novel computational devices, and even claims that every physical event is a computation. In this paper we introduce a formal framework that can be used to determine whether or not a physical system is performing a computation. We demonstrate how the abstract computational level interacts with the physical device level, drawing the comparison with the use of mathematical models to represent physical objects in experimental science. This powerful formulation allows a precise description of the similarities between experiments, computation, simulation, and technology, leading to our central conclusion: physical computing is the use of a physical system to predict the outcome of an abstract evolution. We give conditions that must be satisfied in order for computation to be occurring, and illustrate these with a range of non-standard computing scenarios. The framework also covers broader computing contexts, where there is no obvious human computer user. We define the critical notion of a 'computational entity', and show the role this plays in defining when computing is taking place in physical systems