Pregnancy-associated breast cancer - Special features in diagnosis and treatment

For obvious psychological reasons it is difficult to associate pregnancy - a life-giving period of our existence with life-threatening malignancies. Symptoms pointing to malignancy are often ignored by both patients and physicians, and this, together with the greater difficulty of diagnostic imaging, probably results in the proven delay in the detection of breast cancers during pregnancy. The diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer are becoming more and more important, as the fulfillment of the desire to have children is increasingly postponed until a later age associated with a higher risk of carcinoma, and improved cure rates of solid tumors no longer exclude subsequent pregnancies. The following article summarizes the special features of the diagnosis and primary therapy of pregnancy-associated breast cancer with particular consideration of cytostatic therapy

Subthreshold phi-meson production in heavy-ion collisions

Within a transport code of BUU type the production of phi-mesons in the reactions Ni+Ni at 1.93 AGeV and Ru+Ru at 1.69 AGeV is studied. New elementary reaction channels rho+N(Delta) to phi+N and pi+N(1520) to phi+N are included. In spite of a substantial increase of the \phi multiplicities by these channels the results stay below the tentative numbers extracted from experimental data.Comment: 17 pages(LaTeX), two new figures adde

Indicators of implicit and explicit social anxiety influence threat-related interpretive bias as a function of working memory capacity

Interpretive biases play a crucial role in anxiety disorders. The aim of the current study was to examine factors that determine the relative strength of threat-related interpretive biases that are characteristic of individuals high in social anxiety. Different (dual process) models argue that both implicit and explicit processes determine information processing biases and behavior, and that their impact is moderated by the availability of executive resources such as working memory capacity (WMC). Based on these models, we expected indicators of implicit social anxiety to predict threat-related interpretive bias in individuals low, but not high in WMC. Indicators of explicit social anxiety should predict threat-related interpretive bias in individuals high, but not low in WMC. As expected, WMC moderated the impact of implicit social anxiety on threat-related interpretive bias, although the simple slope for individuals low in WMC was not statistically significant. The hypotheses regarding explicit social anxiety (with fear of negative evaluation used as an indicator) were fully supported. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed

In-medium spectral change of omega mesons as a probe of QCD four-quark condensate

Within QCD sum rules at finite baryon density we show the crucial role of four-quark condensates for the in-medium modification of the omega meson spectral function. In particular, such a global property as the sign of the in-medium omega meson mass shift is found to be governed by a parameter which describes the strength of the density dependence of the four-quark condensate beyond mean-field approximation. To study self-consistently the broadening of the omega meson resonance we employ a hadron spectral function based on the omega meson propagator delivered by an effective chiral Lagrangian. Measurements of the omega meson spectral change in heavy-ion collisions with the HADES detector can reveal the yet unknown density dependence of the four-quark condensate

Design of the Pluto Event Generator

We present the design of the simulation package Pluto, aimed at the study of hadronic interactions at SIS and FAIR energies. Its main mission is to offer a modular framework with an object-oriented structure, thereby making additions such as new particles, decays of resonances, new models up to modules for entire changes easily applicable. Overall consistency is ensured by a plugin- and distribution manager. Particular features are the support of a modular structure for physics process descriptions, and the possibility to access the particle stream for on-line modifications. Additional configuration and self-made classes can be attached by the user without re-compiling the package, which makes Pluto extremely configurable.Comment: Presented at the 17th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physic

Occurrence of Livestock-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Turkey and Broiler Barns and Contamination of Air and Soil Surfaces in Their Vicinity

The emission of microorganisms, especially resistant bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), from poultry farms is of public interest, and its occurrence and relevance are controversially discussed. So far, there are limited data on this issue. In this study, we investigated the occurrence of livestock-associated (LA)-MRSA inside and outside previously tested MRSA-positive poultry barns in Germany. In total, five turkey and two broiler fattening farms were investigated four and three times, respectively. In a longitudinal study during one fattening period, samples were collected from animals, the animals' environment inside the barn, including the air, and the barns' surroundings, such as ambient air and boot swabs of ground surfaces at different distances from the barn. Moreover, a cross-sectional study was carried out once inside the barns on five turkey and four broiler farms during the last third of the fatting period. In the cross- sectional study, LA-MRSA was detected in the air of most barns (7 of 9, 77.8%), as well as in many samples originating from animals, with detections levels of 50 to 54% in broiler and 62 to 77% in turkey farms. In the longitudinal study, LA-MRSA was found in the ambient air outside two turkey barns and on the ground surface on the downwind side of many (44.4%) turkey and broiler farms. The same spa types of isolates were observed inside and outside the barns. Transmission of MRSA within poultry farms, as well as emission via the airborne route, seems to be possible

Design of the Pluto Event Generator

We present the design of the simulation package Pluto, aimed at the study of hadronic interactions at SIS and FAIR energies. Its main mission is to offer a modular framework with an object-oriented structure, thereby making additions such as new particles, decays of resonances, new models up to modules for entire changes easily applicable. Overall consistency is ensured by a plugin- and distribution manager. Particular features are the support of a modular structure for physics process descriptions, and the possibility to access the particle stream for on-line modifications. Additional configuration and self-made classes can be attached by the user without re-compiling the package, which makes Pluto extremely configurable.Comment: Presented at the 17th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physic

Design of the Pluto Event Generator

We present the design of the simulation package Pluto, aimed at the study of hadronic interactions at SIS and FAIR energies. Its main mission is to offer a modular framework with an object-oriented structure, thereby making additions such as new particles, decays of resonances, new models up to modules for entire changes easily applicable. Overall consistency is ensured by a plugin- and distribution manager. Particular features are the support of a modular structure for physics process descriptions, and the possibility to access the particle stream for on-line modifications. Additional configuration and self-made classes can be attached by the user without re-compiling the package, which makes Pluto extremely configurable.Comment: Presented at the 17th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physic

Towards strangeness saturation in central heavy-ion collisions at high energies

Analyses of the centrality binned identified hadron multiplicities at SPS and RHIC within the statistical-thermal model point to strangeness saturation with increasing centrality and energy.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Presented at the 16th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Nantes, France, 18-24 July, 200