Intramedullary spinal cord metastases from breast cancer: Detection with 18F-FDG PET/CT

A 35-year-old woman, already treated with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy for a ductal carcinoma of the left breast, underwent an 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) scan for an increase of the serum markers carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and cancer antigen 15.3 (CA15.3). The scan showed multiple FDG-avid lesions in the liver and bone. The images also detected two areas of uptake in the dorsal and lumbar spinal cord, which were suspicious for metastases; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed these lesions. © the authors; licensee ecancermedicalscience

Introducción a la paleografía : Herramientas para la lectura y análisis de documentos antiguos

El presente libro aborda el estudio de la documentación paleográfica de los siglos XIII-XVII desde varias perspectivas complementarias, con el objetivo de ofrecer las herramientas básicas para la iniciación a la investigación histórica en el área de Historia Medieval y Moderna española y en el de la Historia Americana Colonial. El libro consta de dos partes: la primera, aborda el estudio de la escritura gótica en España a través de una serie documentos conservados en el Archivo Catedralicio de Salamanca; en la segunda, se analiza la escritura procesal, procesal encadenada y Humanista, que dominó en América durante los siglos XVI y XVII, a través de la documentación notarial del Archivo General de la Nación (Argentina). Ambas partes poseen una introducción general sobre los fondos conservados en ambos archivos, un estudio sobre los tipos de escritura y un análisis histórico-diplomático de los documentos.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Benchmarking local practice in view of introduction of thrombolysis for stroke in Malta

The aim of the study was to benchmark the quality of local stroke care in view of introduction of thrombolysis. Stroke patients admitted to Mater Dei Hospital over 6 weeks in 2008 were recruited. A questionnaire based on the 2006 Royal College of Physicians (RCP) National Sentinel Stroke Audit phase II (Clinical Audit) was used. Results were compared to the 2008 RCP National Sentinel Stroke Audit phase II (Clinical Audit) report. 42 confirmed strokes were admitted. All patients underwent CT scanning within 24 hours. 97% received aspirin within 48 hours. 26.2% spent >50% of their stay in the neurology ward. 81% were discharged alive. At 24 hours from admission, 54.7% were not screened for swallowing. 47.6% were not assessed by an occupational therapist. 81% were assessed by physiotherapy at 72 hours of admission. None of the patients had documented goals set by a multi- disciplinary team. If thrombolysis were available, 16.7% would have been eligible. The commonest contraindications were late presentation (52.4%) and age >80 years (35.7%). Local results compared well to the RCP 2008 results in initiation of aspirin, imaging, and nutrition. However, we noted need for improvement in the assessment of swallowing, mood and cognitive function as well as involvement of a multidisciplinary team. Since then, adherence to international guidelines has improved by the introduction of thrombolysis, a dedicated multidisciplinary service and the use of local guidelines for stroke.peer-reviewe

EUROPEAN FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND SUCCESFUL ROAD PPP PROJECTS

[EN] The EU has been promoting the use of PPPs in order to accelerate the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) for ensuring economic, social and territorial cohesion and increasing accessibility throughout the Union. To encourage the use of PPPs, the European Commission has put several financing mechanisms at the disposal of the Member States, including a series of innovative financial instruments developed along with the European Investment Bank. The Bank has in turn played a major role in the promotion and financing of PPPs across the EU. The paper undertakes a review of the main financial instruments developed by the EU that are available to PPPs so as to determinate to what extent the European financial support has been channelled to road projects under that scheme in Spain. On the basis of the results obtained, a multiple regression model has been developed to analyse whether the PPP projects which enjoyed the financial support of the European Union tend to be significantly more successful from an economic point of view. The paper concludes that there is a positive correlation between receiving European financial support and the success of the PPP road projects.Garrido Maza, L.; Baeza, MDLA.; Vassallo, JM. (2016). EUROPEAN FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND SUCCESFUL ROAD PPP PROJECTS. En XII Congreso de ingeniería del transporte. 7, 8 y 9 de Junio, Valencia (España). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 306-317. https://doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2015.3492OCS30631

Postnatal development of subterranean habits in tuco-tucos Ctenomys talarum (Rodentia, Caviomorpha, Ctenomyidae)

Postnatal development of subterranean habits was investigated in Los Talas’ tuco-tuco Ctenomys talarum, a subterranean caviomorph rodent endemic from South America. Since in this species, some key morpho-functional traits related to scratch-digging behaviour—a form of underground progression—are already present during early ontogeny and develop progressively, we predicted that this behaviour expresses early during postanatal development and its performance enhances gradually from pups to adults. The process of acquisition of different behaviours associated to the construction of a burrow system was recorded in 11 individuals, each one coming from different litters, inside a terrarium filled with natural soil. We found that scratch-digging and burrowing behaviours expressed early during postnatal development, particularly, during lactancy. The digging of a “true burrow” clearly preceded the dispersal age, with a high inter-individual variability, from 18 (lactancy) to 47 (post-weaning) postnatal days. Pups could lose the soil using their foreclaws and remove the accumulated substrate using their hindfeet as adults do. During lactancy individuals could construct a simple burrow to shelter, and first burrow construction occurred in the absence of either a burrowing demonstrator or an early subterranean environment (a natal burrow). However, certain features of the complex burrow system that characterize this species, such as lateral branches and nest chamber, just appeared after weaning. The time elapsed until animals started to dig and the time dedicated to underground activities varied with age, decreasing and increasing, respectively. In sum, our results show that—in C. talarum—immature digging behaviour gets expressed early during ontogeny, and develops progressively. The role of the early ability to build its own burrow and its possible function influencing the development of musculoskeletal traits and on efficiency for such conduct is discussed.Fil: Echeverría, Alejandra Isabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Biondi, Laura Marina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Becerra, Federico. Institut Max Planck for Evolutionary Anthropology; Alemania. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Vassallo, Aldo Iván. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; Argentin

A Deep Learning model to segment liver metastases on CT images acquired at different time-points during chemotherapy

The aim of this study is to present a fully automatic deep learning algorithm to segment liver Colorectal cancer metastases (lmCRC) on CT images, based on a U-Net structure, comparing nets with and without the transfer learning approach. This is a bi-centric study, enrolling patients who underwent CT exam before (baseline) and after first-line therapy (TP1). Patients were divided into training (using a portion of baseline sequences from both centers) to train the DL model, and two validation sets: one with baseline (valB), and one with TP1 (valTP1) sequences. The reference standard for the automatic segmentations was defined by the manual segmentations performed by an experienced radiologist on the portal phase of the baseline and TP1 CT exam. The best performing model obtained Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 0.68±0.24, Precision (Pr) of 0.74±0.27, Recall (Re) of 0.73±0.26, Detection Rate (DR) of 93% on the valB, and DSC of 0.61±0.28, Pr of 0.68±0.31, Re of 0.65±0.29 and DR of 88% on the valTP1. These encouraging results, if confirmed on larger dataset, might provide a reliable and robust tool that can be used as first step of future radiomics analyses aimed at predicting response to therapy, improving the management of lmCRC patients

Foxp3 expression is associated with aggressiveness in differentiated thyroid carcinomas

OBJECTIVES: Forkhead box P3 (FoxP3) expression has been observed in human cancer cells but has not yet been reported in thyroid cells. We investigated the prognostic significance of both FoxP3 expression and intratumoral FoxP3+ lymphocyte infiltration in differentiated thyroid carcinoma cells. METHODS: We constructed a tissue microarray with 385 thyroid tissues, including 266 malignant tissues (from 253 papillary thyroid carcinomas and 13 follicular carcinomas), 114 benign lesions, and 5 normal thyroid tissues. RESULTS: We determined the expression of FoxP3 in both tumor cells and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes using immunohistochemical techniques. Cellular expression of FoxP3 was evident in 71% of benign and 91.9% of malignant tissues. The nuclear and cytoplasmic expression patterns were quantified separately. A multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that cytoplasmic FoxP3 expression is an independent risk factor for thyroid malignancy. Cytoplasmic FoxP3 staining was inversely correlated with patient age. Nuclear FoxP3 staining was more intense in younger patients and in tumors presenting with metastasis at diagnosis. FoxP3+ lymphocytes were more frequent in tumors smaller than 2 cm, those without extrathyroidal invasion, and in patients with concurrent chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated FoxP3 expression in differentiated thyroid carcinoma cells and found evidence that this expression may exert an important influence on several features of tumor aggressiveness

Libro del Apeo del Monasterio de Santo Toribio de Liébana (año 1499): Primera Parte

Primera parte de la transcripción paleográfica y edición del "Libro en el que constan las tierras, derechos, censos, etc..., del monasterio benedictino de Santo Toribio de Liébana (Santander)", 1499 (Archivo Histórico Nacional, CODICES,L.276).Fil: Cavallero, Constanza Edith. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana ; ArgentinaFil: Cimino, Carla. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; ArgentinaFil: Peruggini, O.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; ArgentinaFil: Rodríguez Giles, Ana Inés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; ArgentinaFil: Wasserman, Martín Leandro Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana ; Argentin

Documentación del Monasterio de Santo Toribio de Liébana : Pesquisa sobre derechos jurisdiccionales (año 1471)

En el marco del proyecto, iniciado hace algunos años, de transcripción y edición de la documentación del Monasterio de Santo Toribio de Liébana, conservada en el Archivo Histórico Nacional, ofrecemos aquí un libro en el que se recogen las pruebas presentadas por Pedro Bejes, como procurador y delegado del convento, en el pleito sostenido contra el marqués de Santillana en torno a los derechos jurisdiccionales que poseía el cenobio sobre sus vasallos. La demanda, iniciada por el monasterio, tiene por objeto mantener el ejercicio efectivo de la justicia baja (o civil), la cual era entorpecida por el accionar del marqués', quien se arrogaba la jurisdicción plena sobre todo el espacio de la merindad”.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació