The Role of Chemotherapy in Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma

Locally advanced upper tract urothelial carcinoma has a poor prognosis. While surgery represents the only potentially curable therapeutic intervention, recurrences are common and typically systemic in nature. It is thus reasonable to consider perioperative chemotherapy in an effort to decrease the risk of recurrence. There are very little direct data providing clinical guidance in this scenario. For urothelial cancer of the bladder, there are randomized phase III data demonstrating a survival advantage with neoadjuvant cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy. Although arguments favoring adjuvant chemotherapy could be made for upper tract urothelial cancer, the loss of renal function that occurs with nephrectomy can complicate administration of appropriate perioperative treatment. Therefore, by analogy to urothelial carcinoma of the lower tract, it is argued that cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy should be the standard of care for patients with locally advanced upper tract urothelial cancer

Mobilizing diversity: transposable element insertions in genetic variation and disease

Transposable elements (TEs) comprise a large fraction of mammalian genomes. A number of these elements are actively jumping in our genomes today. As a consequence, these insertions provide a source of genetic variation and, in rare cases, these events cause mutations that lead to disease. Yet, the extent to which these elements impact their host genomes is not completely understood. This review will summarize our current understanding of the mechanisms underlying transposon regulation and the contribution of TE insertions to genetic diversity in the germline and in somatic cells. Finally, traditional methods and emerging technologies for identifying transposon insertions will be considered

Effects of wildfire disaster exposure on male birth weight in an Australian population

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Maternal stress can depress birth weight and gestational age, with potential health effects. A growing number of studies examine the effect of maternal stress caused by environmental disasters on birth outcomes. These changes may indicate an adaptive response. In this study, we examine the effects of maternal exposure to wildfire on birth weight and gestational age, hypothesising that maternal stress will negatively influence these measures. METHODOLOGY Using data from the Australian Capital Territory, we employed Analysis of Variance to examine the influence of the 2003 Canberra wildfires on the weight of babies born to mothers resident in fire-affected regions, while considering the role of other factors. RESULTS We found that male infants born in the most severely fire-affected area had significantly higher average birth weights than their less exposed peers and were also heavier than males born in the same areas in non-fire years. Higher average weights were attributable to an increase in the number of macrosomic infants. There was no significant effect on the weight of female infants or on gestational age for either sex. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Our findings indicate heightened environmental responsivity in the male cohort. We find that elevated maternal stress acted to accelerate the growth of male fetuses, potentially through an elevation of maternal blood glucose levels. Like previous studies, our work finds effects of disaster exposure and suggests that fetal growth patterns respond to maternal signals. However, the direction of the change in birth weight is opposite to that of many earlier studies.This work was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award from the Australian Government Department of Education

A design research approach

The significance of the design process in determining the success or failure of a product in the market place is becoming increasingly more articulated. Consequently companies are implementing and developing new techniques and tools to support design more effectively. Design research is directed at gaining a greater understanding of design, ultimately to better support it through the development of improved techniques, methods or tools

Effects Of Kaluza-Klein Excited W On Single Top Quark Production At Tevatron

In extra dimension theories if the gauge bosons of the standard model propagate in the bulk of the extra dimensions then they will have Kaluza-Klein excitations that can couple to the standard model fermions. In this paper we study the effects of the first excited Kaluza-Klein mode of the W on single top production at the Tevatron. We find that the cross section for the single top production can be significantly reduced if the mass of the first Kaluza-Klein excited $W \sim 1$ TeV. Hence, a measurement of the single top production cross section smaller than the standard model prediction would not necessarily imply $V_{tb} <1$ or evidence of extra generation(s) of fermions mixed with the third generation.Comment: Text added, Latex, 16 pages, 3 figures, To appear in Phys. Lett.

A phase aberration correction method for ultrasound imaging

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A computationally efficient method for phase aberration correction in ultrasound imaging is presented. The method is based on time delay estimation via minimization of the sum of absolute differences between radio frequency samples of adjacent array elements. Effects of averaging estimated aberration patterns over scan angles, and truncation to a single bit wordlength are examined. Phase distortions due to near-field inhomogeneities are simulated using silicone rubber aberrators. Performance of the method is tested using experimental data. Simulation studies addressing different factors affecting efficiency of the method, such as the number of iterations, window length, and the number of scan angles used for averaging, are presented. Images of a standard resolution phantom are reconstructed and used for qualitative testing

Absence of human herpes virus-8 (HHV8) in nephrogenic systemic fibrosis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) is a fibrosing disorder that exhibits CD34 expression in the majority of lesional spindle cells. Several features of NSF bear similarity to Kaposi sarcoma.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Skin lesions procured from two male NSF patients were found to be negative for HHV8 (LNA-1) by means of immunohistochemsitry.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This finding negates a role for HHV8 in the pathogenesis of NSF.</p

Influence of missing array elements on phase aberration correction for medical ultrasound

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The influence of missing array elements on aberration correction based on time delay estimation using radio frequency signals of neighboring elements is experimentally investigated. Normalized cross correlation and sum of absolute differences are employed as the cost functions in aberration estimation. Their performance is tested through various measurements using radio frequency data acquired with a 3.3 MHz, 64-element phased array. Variation of cost functions and phase estimation error are obtained for different combinations of number of missing elements, amount of aberration, and noise level. For a particular combination of these parameters, a set of B-scan images is reconstructed and presented to examine the effects of residual phase errors on image quality