240 research outputs found
Community Gardening: Benefits Focused Strategies
Throughout history humans have had varying degrees of interaction with nature and natural environments. This interaction has shaped our species in almost every way possible from our physical traits to our behaviors and places we have chosen to occupy. Currently, humans have developed such overwhelming mastery of the planet that it is easy for many humans to feel disconnected from nature. This separation could have detrimental effects on various aspects of human well-being including physical and mental health. To understand these effects, it is important to evaluate the benefits that humans receive from exposure to nature and interaction with natural environments. One of the most effective ways to realize these benefits is through horticulture, which provides opportunities for interaction with nature on multiple levels.
These benefits can be realized by large numbers of people in different settings. Rural populations are likely to have more opportunities for interaction with nature than urban populations. Rural dwellers have greater access to natural environments, agriculture, and opportunities for the development of gardens within the home. Urban dwellers often have less access to natural environments and fewer opportunities to engage in horticulture. Community gardening can make these benefits accessible to large populations in rural or urban areas
Trifluridine/tipiracil versus placebo for third or later lines of treatment in metastatic gastric cancer: an exploratory subgroup analysis from the TAGS study
Metastatic gastric cancer; Overall survival; Trifluridine/tipiracilCĂ ncer gĂ stric metastĂ tic; SupervivĂšncia global; Trifluridina/tipiracilCĂĄncer gĂĄstrico metastĂĄsico; Supervivencia global; Trifluridina/tipiraciloBackground
Metastatic gastric cancer and cancer of the esophagogastric junction (GC/EGJ) is an aggressive disease with poor prognosis. In the TAGS study, trifluridine/tipiracil (FTD/TPI) improved overall survival (OS) compared with placebo in heavily pre-treated patients. This unplanned, exploratory subgroup analysis of the TAGS study aimed to clarify outcomes when FTD/TPI was used as third-line (3L) treatment and fourth- or later-line (4L+) treatment.
Patients and methods
Patients were divided into a 3L group (126 and 64 in FTD/TPI and placebo arms, respectively) and 4L+ group (211 and 106 in FTD/TPI and placebo arms, respectively). Endpoints included OS, progression-free survival (PFS), time to Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG PS) deterioration to â„2, and safety.
Results
Baseline characteristics were generally well balanced between FTD/TPI and placebo for 3L and 4L+ treatment. Median OS (mOS) for FTD/TPI versus placebo was: 6.8 versus 3.2 months {hazard ratio (HR) [95% confidence interval (CI)] = 0.68 (0.47-0.97), P = 0.0318} in the 3L group; and 5.2 versus 3.7 months [0.73 (0.55-0.95), P = 0.0192] in the 4L+ group. Median PFS for FTD/TPI versus placebo was 3.1 versus 1.9 months [0.54 (0.38-0.77), P = 0.0004] in the 3L group; and 1.9 versus 1.8 months [0.57 (0.44-0.74), P < 0.0001] in the 4L+ group. Time to deterioration of ECOG PS to â„2 for FTD/TPI versus placebo was 4.8 versus 2.0 months [HR (95% CI) = 0.60 (0.42-0.86), P = 0.0049] in the 3L group; and 4.0 versus 2.5 months [0.75 (0.57-0.98), P = 0.0329] in the 4L+ group. The safety of FTD/TPI was consistent in all subgroups.
Conclusions
This analysis confirms the efficacy and safety of FTD/TPI in patients with GC/EGJ in third and later lines with a survival benefit that seems slightly superior in 3L treatment. When FTD/TPI is taken in 3L as recommended in the international guidelines, physicians can expect to provide patients with an mOS of 6.8 months.The TAGS study was funded by Taiho Oncology and Taiho Pharmaceutical (no grant number). This exploratory subgroup analysis was funded by Servier (no grant number)
Checkerboard local density of states in striped domains pinned by vortices
Within a Green's function formalism we calculate the electronic structure
around static extended magnetic and non-magnetic perturbations in a d-wave
superconductor. In partucular, we discuss recent elastic neutron scattering and
scanning tunneling experiments on High-T_c cuprates exposed to an applied
magnetic field. A physical picture consisting of antiferromagnetic vortex cores
operating as pinning centers for surrounding stripes is qualitatively
consistent with the neutron data provided the stripes have the usual antiphase
modulation. The low energy electronic structure in such a region reveals a
checkerboard interference pattern consistent with recent scanning tunneling
experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Practices and expectations on the use of circulating tumor DNA in colorectal cancer patients: A bi-national AGEO/AIOM/GERCOR/FFCD/FRENCH survey
Improving Machine Translation of Educational Content via Crowdsourcing
The limited availability of in-domain training data is a major issue in the training of application-specific neural machine translation
models. Professional outsourcing of bilingual data collections is costly and often not feasible. In this paper we analyze the influence of
using crowdsourcing as a scalable way to obtain translations of target in-domain data having in mind that the translations can be of a
lower quality. We apply crowdsourcing with carefully designed quality controls to create parallel corpora for the educational domain
by collecting translations of texts from MOOCs from English to eleven languages, which we then use to fine-tune neural machine
translation models previously trained on general-domain data. The results from our research indicate that crowdsourced data collected
with proper quality controls consistently yields performance gains over general-domain baseline systems, and systems fine-tuned with
pre-existing in-domain corpora
Renormalized mean-field theory of the neutron scattering in cuprate superconductors
The magnetic excitation spectrum of the t-t'-J-model is studied in mean-field
theory and compared to inelastic neutron-scattering (INS) experiments on YBCO
and BSCCO superconductors. Within the slave-particle formulation the dynamical
spin response is calculated from a renormalized Fermi liquid with an effective
interaction ~J in the magnetic particle--hole channel. We obtain the so-called
41meV resonance at wave vector (pi,pi) as a collective spin-1 excitation in the
d-wave superconducting state. It appears sharp (undamped), if the underlying
Fermi surface is hole-like with a sufficient next-nearest-neighbor hopping
t'<0. The double-layer structure of YBCO or BSCCO is not important for the
resonance to form. The resonance energy \omega_{res} and spectral weight at
optimal doping come out comparable to experiment. The observed qualitative
behavior of \omega_{res} with hole filling is reproduced in the underdoped as
well as overdoped regime. A second, much broader peak becomes visible in the
magnetic excitation spectrum if the 2D wave-vector is integrated over. It is
caused by excitations across the maximum gap, and in contrast to the resonance
its energy is almost independent of doping. At energies above or below
\omega_{res} the commensurate resonance splits into incommensurate peaks,
located off (pi,pi). Below \omega_{res} the intensity pattern is of `parallel'
type and the dispersion relation of incommensurate peaks has a negative
curvature. This is in accordance with recent INS experiments on YBCO.Comment: 17pp including 14 figure
Chemotherapy of advanced small-bowel adenocarcinoma: a multicenter AGEO study
Les adĂ©nocarcinomes de lâintestin grĂȘle (AIG) sont des tumeurs
rares et de mauvais pronostic à un stade avancé. Les données
publiĂ©es concernant lâefficacitĂ© de la chimiothĂ©rapie palliative sont
peu nombreuses. Le but de notre Ă©tude Ă©tait dâĂ©valuer lâefficacitĂ©
et la tolérance de différents protocoles « modernes » de chimiothérapie
et de comparer lâefficacitĂ© des chimiothĂ©rapies Ă base de
sels de platine dans le traitement de premiÚre ligne des AIG avancés.
Cette étude rétrospective multicentrique a inclus 93 patients
(sexe masculin : 53 % ; ùge médian : 56 ans ; site primitif duodénal
: 53 %) avec un AIG avancé (métastatique : 86 %) traités par
LV5FU2 (n = 10), FOLFOX (n = 48), FOLFIRI (n = 19) ou LV5FU2-
cisplatine (n = 16). Le taux de toxicité grade 3-4 était significativement
plus fréquent dans le groupe de patients traités par
LV5FU2-cisplatine (75 %) comparativement aux autres groupes
de patients (p = 0,001). Les médianes de survie sans progression
(SSP) Ă©taient de 7,7 ; 6,9 ; 6,0 et 4,8 mois (p = 0,16) et les
médianes de survie globale (SG) étaient de 13,5 ; 17,8 ; 10,6 et
9,3 mois (p = 0,25) pour les quatre groupes de patients traités par
LV5FU2, FOLFOX, FOLFIRI et LV5FU2-cisplatine, respectivement.
En analyse multivariĂ©e, lâindice de performance OMS Ă 2
(p < 0,0001) ainsi que des taux Ă©levĂ©s dâACE (p = 0,02) et de CA
19-9 (p = 0,03) avant traitement étaient les seuls facteurs indépendants
significativement associés à un mauvais pronostic.
Dans le sous-groupe de patients traités par sels de platine, ceux
qui ont reçu une chimiothérapie par FOLFOX avaient de meilleures
SSP et SG que les patients traités par LV5FU2-cisplatine. En analyse
multivariée, le traitement par FOLFOX était un facteur significatif
et indépendant de survie prolongée en termes de
SSP (p < 0,0001) et SG (p = 0,02). Ainsi, cette Ă©tude, la plus
grande rapportĂ©e Ă ce jour, suggĂšre dâune part que lâindice de
performance OMS et les taux dâACE et CA 19-9 avant traitement
sont des facteurs pronostiques indĂ©pendants de survie et, dâautre
part que la chimiothérapie par FOLFOX est le traitement de choix
en premiÚre ligne des AIG avancés
Deficient mismatch repair: Read all about it (Review)
Defects in the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) proteins, result in a phenotype called microsatellite instability (MSI), occurring in up to 15% of sporadic colorectal cancers. Approximately one quarter of colon cancers with deficient MMR (dMMR) develop as a result of an inherited predisposition syndrome, Lynch syndrome (formerly known as HNPCC). It is essential to identify patients who potentially have Lynch syndrome, as not only they, but also family members, may require screening and monitoring. Diagnostic criteria have been developed, based primarily on Western populations, and several methodologies are available to identify dMMR tumours, including immunohistochemistry and microsatellite testing. These criteria have provided evidence supporting the introduction of reflex testing. Yet, it is becoming increasingly clear that tests have a limited sensitivity and specificity and may yet be superseded by next generation sequencing. In this review, the limitations of diagnostic criteria are discussed, and current and emerging screening technologies explained. There is now useful evidence supporting the prognostic and predictive value of dMMR status in colorectal tumours, but much less is known about their value in extracolonic tumours, that may also feature in Lynch syndrome. This review assesses current literature relating to dMMR in endometrial, ovarian, gastric and melanoma cancers, which it would seem, may benefit from large-scale clinical trials in order to further close the gap in knowledge between colorectal and extracolonic tumours
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