338. Brachyterapia paliatywna PDR i HDR w leczeniu nawrotów miejscowych nowotworów głowy i szyi

Cel pracyW pracy przedstawiono wstępne wyniki paliatywnej brachyterapii HDR i PDR wznów nowotworów głowy i szyi.Materiał i metody47 chorych ze wznową miejscową nowotworu głowy i szyi leczonych było metodą brachyterapii HDR i PDR w okresie od 05.06.2001 do 31.12.2002 w Wielkopolskim Centrum Onkologii. Wszyscy chorzy zdyskwalifikowani zostali od leczenia chirurgicznego i radioterapii wiązkami zewnętrznymi ze względu na zaawansowanie choroby oraz przebyte leczenie. Wiek chorych sięgał od 38 do 75 (średnio 51.2 lat), w grupie było 10 kobiet i 37 mężczyzn. Umiejscowienie wznowy nowotworu: dno jamy ustnej i język – 20 chorych, gardło środkowe – 12 chorych, węzły chłonne szyi – 5 chorych, krtań – 3 chorych, nosogardło – 3 chorych, ślinianki – 2 chorych, szczęka górna – 2 chorych. Średni okres pomiędzy rozpoznaniem guza pierwotnego oraz wznowy wynosił 9.7 miesięcy. 34 chorych leczonych było metodą brachyterapii HDR dawką frakcyjną od 4 do 6 Gy, w 5 do 10 frakcjach, 13 chorych leczonych było metodą brachyterapii PDR dawka łączną 2000 cGy, w jednej (n=4) lub dwóch fazach leczenia (n=9). Ocenie poddano stopień remisji po 1, 3 i 6-iu miesiącach od zakończenia leczenia oraz powikłania wczesne.WynikiPo 4-ech tygodniach od zakończenia leczenia całkowitą remisję (CR) stwierdzono u 15% chorych, częściową remisję (PR) u 65.1% chorych, brak remisji (NR) u 10.9% chorych i progresję (Progr) u 9% chorych. Odpowiednie odsetki odpowiedzi wynosiły: po 3 i 6 miesiącach CR – 10.3 i 5.6%, PR – 54% i 36.3%), NR i Progr – 35.7% i 58.1%. W 74.6% przypadkach wystąpiła powierzchowna martwica w okresie 6 miesięcy obserwacji. Inne najczęstsze powikłania to nasilenie bólu (25%), infekcja miejscowa (44.3%), przetoka (6%). Obie metody brachyterapii były w równym stopniu dobrze tolerowane.Wnioski1. Brachyterapia HDR lub PDR może być efektywnym paliatywnym leczeniem wznowy nowotworu głowy i szyi. 2. Powikłania wczesne związane z wysoką dawką sumaryczną napromieniania są częste i wymagają intensywnego leczenia farmakologicznego

Toxic effects of Pb2+ on growth of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata)

A concentration as low as 1 mu M lead (Pb) is highly toxic to plants, but previous studies have typically related plant growth to the total amount of Pb added to a solution. In the present experiment, the relative fresh mass of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) was reduced by 10% at a Pb2+ activity of 0.2 mu M for the shoots and at a Pb2+ activity of 0.06 mu M for the roots. The primary site of Pb2+ toxicity was the root, causing severe reductions in root growth, loss of apical dominance (shown by an increase in branching per unit root length), the formation of localized swellings behind the root tips (due to the initiation of lateral roots), and the bending of some root tips. In the root, Pb was found to accumulate primarily within the cell walls and intercellular spaces. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

'Sending Dollars Shows Feeling' - Emotions and Economies in Filipino Migration

This paper analyses the conceptualization of gender, relationships, and emotions that underpin ‘care chains’ approaches to Filipino labour migration. In a case study of long‐distance intimacy and economic transfers in an extended Filipino family, I show how contextualizing migration within local understandings of emotion fractures expectations created by care chains accounts. This case instead reveals agency, diversity, and new forms of global subjectivity emerging through long‐distance emotional connections within the translocal field shaped by labour mobility

On the form-function dichotomy in linguistic theory

This paper focuses on an important divide in theoretical linguistics between two broad perspectives on the structural properties of human languages, generative and functionalist. In the former, linguistic structure is explained in terms of discrete categories and highly abstract principles, which may be language-independent or language-specific and purely formal or functional in nature. In the latter, explanation for why languages have the structure that they do is found ‘outside’ language, in the general principles of human cognition and the communicative functions of language. The aim of this paper is to highlight the need for abstractness, explicitness, simplicity and theoretical economy in linguistic description and explanation. The question is not whether principles of grammar are formal or functional. The question is whether the principles that are postulated to explain linguistic structure express true generalizations

Evaluation of the modified Pittsburgh classification for predicting the disease-free survival outcome of squamous cell carcinoma of the external auditory canal

Background: Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the external auditory canal (EAC) is a rare disease, which is commonly classified with the modified Pittsburgh classification. Our aim was to evaluate the predictive performance of this classification in relation to disease-free survival (DFS). Methods: We examined retrospective data from a nationwide Dutch cohort study including patients with primary EAC SCC. These data were combined with individual patient data from the literature. Using the combined data, the predictive performances were calculated using the c-index. Results: A total of 381 patients were included, 294 for clinical and 281 for the pathological classification analyses. The c-indices of the clinical and the pathological modified Pittsburgh classification predicting DFS were 0.725 (0.668-0.782) and 0.729 (0.672-0.786), respectively. Conclusion: The predictive performance of the modified Pittsburgh classification system as such appears to be acceptable to predict the DFS of EAC SCC. Other factors need to be added to a future model to improve the predicted performance

The influence of cadmium stress on the content of mineral nutrients and metal-binding proteins in arabidopsis halleri

We investigated the influence of cadmium stress on zinc hyperaccumulation, mineral nutrient uptake, and the content of metal-binding proteins in Arabidopsis halleri. The experiments were carried out using plants subjected to long-term cadmium exposure (40 days) in the concentrations of 45 and 225 μM Cd2+. Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry, size exclusion chromatography coupled with plasma-mass spectrometry, and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry used for ablation of polyacylamide gels were employed to assess the content of investigated elements in plants as well as to identify metal-binding proteins. We found that A. halleri is able to translocate cadmium to the aerial parts in high amounts (translocation index >1). We showed that Zn content in plants decreased significantly with the increase of cadmium content in the growth medium. Different positive and negative correlations between Cd content and mineral nutrients were evidenced by our study. We identified more than ten low-molecular-weight (<100 kDa) Cd-binding proteins in Cd-treated plants. These proteins are unlikely to be phytochelatins or metallothioneins. We hypothesize that low-molecular-weight Cd-binding proteins can be involved in cadmium resistance in A. halleri

Networks of Emotion Concepts

The aim of this work was to study the similarity network and hierarchical clustering of Finnish emotion concepts. Native speakers of Finnish evaluated similarity between the 50 most frequently used Finnish words describing emotional experiences. We hypothesized that methods developed within network theory, such as identifying clusters and specific local network structures, can reveal structures that would be difficult to discover using traditional methods such as multidimensional scaling (MDS) and ordinary cluster analysis. The concepts divided into three main clusters, which can be described as negative, positive, and surprise. Negative and positive clusters divided further into meaningful sub-clusters, corresponding to those found in previous studies. Importantly, this method allowed the same concept to be a member in more than one cluster. Our results suggest that studying particular network structures that do not fit into a low-dimensional description can shed additional light on why subjects evaluate certain concepts as similar. To encourage the use of network methods in analyzing similarity data, we provide the analysis software for free use (http://www.becs.tkk.fi/similaritynets/)