ASCO 2007: What remains important for breast cancer systemic therapy in the routine setting?

The 43rd ASCO Annual Meeting took place from June 1-5, 2007 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL, USA. This year's meeting had the special theme of `Translating Research into Practice', particularly featuring 445 abstracts on translational research in addition to approximately 2,000 abstracts presented on subjects like surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, and targeted therapies. This short summary will focus on the two important breast cancer oral presentation sessions only, and will try to comment on the presented data with regard to their immediate impact on clinical practice. Many more research results regarding breast cancer were presented (all presentations will be available to the public from September 1, 2007 at wwwasco.org). In general, breast cancer data presented at this year's ASCO Annual Meeting confirmed current standards, and introduced promising new substances which may soon enter clinical practice. The 44th ASCO Annual Meeting will again be held in Chicago from May 30 to June 3, 2008. Those who do not want to wait another year may visit ASCO's first special Breast Cancer Symposium taking place September 7-8, 2007 in San Francisco, CA, USA. Whether this meeting will start a new tradition of a specialized ASCO breast cancer symposium, and how this development will eventually will impact on the regular San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December, only time will tell

A Letter to My Successor

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Anisotropic backscatter in ice-penetrating radar data: potential mechanisms and implications

Airborne and ground-based radar have been used extensively in the past to measure ice thickness and to investigate the internal structure of ice sheets in terms of layering. The main reflection mechanisms for internal reflections are changes in density, conductivity, and crystal orientation fabric, which alter thepermittivity of the ice. Linking the different mechanisms to the individual reflection horizons enables thededuction of glaciological parameters like accumulation rates or age-depth estimates. If no sample material from snow pits or ice-cores are available, multi-frequency and multi-polarization measurements must be applied to distinguish between the different reflection mechanisms. The backscattered power of horizons caused by changes in conductivity varies with the center frequency whereas in the case of horizons originating from changing crystal orientation the backscattered power is dependent on the polarization plane of the carrier signal.In this study we examine a sample data set near the German summer station Kohnen (drill site for theEPICA-EDML ice core) on the Antarctic plateau. The data were acquired with an airplane sliding on ground, producing varying incident polarization with a circular profile and several cross profiles with different headings. We find that the backscattered power changes with varying antenna orientation (i.e. polarization). In the upper third of the ice column the backscatter has two maxima with a 180° symmetry. The maxima align with the direction of minimal surface strain. At approximately 900 m depth the anisotropy is shifted by 90° in heading azimuth, with the maxima now being parallel to the maximum in surface strain. This dataset is unique, as airborne systems (primarily designed for the sounding of ice thickness) are usually not used for ground-based applications. The observed anisotropy appears clearly and is intriguing as the reason for it is entirely unknown. As primary suspects we consider the role of changing crystal orientation and ellipsoidal shaped air bubbles. The effect is visible from 200 1400 m. It appears distributed along the entire interval, and not restricted to individual layers. It seems that the polarization dependence becomes visible by a changing background level of the acquired signal, which is otherwise largely dominated by layer-like, polarization independent reflections. Hence we apply a (semi-analytical) volume scattering model in order to understand the different reflection mechanisms better. From ice-core measurements it is known that the crystals in the upper hundred meters are only weakly aligned (if at all), and it is unclear how the crystal orientation changes overshort depth intervals (~10 m). The rotation of the anisotropy coincides with the clathrate transition in the ice core and thus we first focus on the effect of anisotropic air bubbles. In an in-coherent approach we treat the ice matrix as a random medium and use the vector radiative transfer theory to incorporate boundary conditions. In a second step we model the effect of crystal orientation to estimate both, the degree of alignment and the statistical variance in the permittivity tensor needed to generate the observed pattern in backscatter. Doing so, we eventually aim at pinning down the mechanisms for the anisotropy in the upper interval, lower interval and the interrelation of the two by a shift of 90°.Anisotropic air bubbles as well as aligned crystal orientation allow to deduce stress and strain rates and a potential change thereof along depth. So far it is largely unclear, how surface strain rates relate with strain rates within the ice. If one of the two suspected mechanisms can be excluded or confirmed, this study may serve as a case study for future polarimetric surveys with low-frequency radars, in order to supply ice-sheet modelling with adequate boundary conditions - including changes in the internal structure of ice sheets along depth

Business model innovation in the oil and gas supply industry

Master i Energy Management - Nord universitet, 201