Drawbacks of ovarian ablation with goserelin in women with breast cancer

In the last few years, ovarian ablation with GnRH agonists has been used as first-line adjuvant therapy in pre and perimenopausal breast cancer. These drugs suppress ovarian function in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and they have adverse effects in other end-organs. A retrospective study was conducted on 35 premenopausal women, with breast cancer, and treated with goserelin, in order to investigate the effects of iatrogenic estrogen suppression. All women complaint of amenorrhea and only half of them referred hot-flashes, weight gain or arthralgias. Hot-flushes and arthralgias remit spontaneously in the end of the treatment. Osteodensitometry was used to access bone mass. There was a reduction in mineral bone mass and T-score at femoral neck and lumbar spine after the treatment with goserelin, but without statistical significance, except for the T-score in lumbar spine

Elevated expression of artemis in human fibroblast cells is associated with cellular radiosensitivity and increased apoptosis

Copyright @ 2012 Nature Publishing GroupThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: The objective of this study was to determine the molecular mechanism(s) responsible for cellular radiosensitivity in two human fibroblast cell lines 84BR and 175BR derived from two cancer patients. Methods: Clonogenic assays were performed following exposure to increasing doses of gamma radiation to confirm radiosensitivity. γ-H2AX foci assays were used to determine the efficiency of DNA double strand break (DSB) repair in cells. Quantitative-PCR (Q-PCR) established the expression levels of key DNA DSB repair proteins. Imaging flow cytometry using Annexin V-FITC was used to compare artemis expression and apoptosis in cells. Results: Clonogenic cellular hypersensitivity in the 84BR and 175BR cell lines was associated with a defect in DNA DSB repair measured by the γ-H2AX foci assay. Q-PCR analysis and imaging flow cytometry revealed a two-fold overexpression of the artemis DNA repair gene which was associated with an increased level of apoptosis in the cells before and after radiation exposure. Over-expression of normal artemis protein in a normal immortalised fibroblast cell line NB1-Tert resulted in increased radiosensitivity and apoptosis. Conclusion: We conclude elevated expression of artemis is associated with higher levels of DNA DSB, radiosensitivity and elevated apoptosis in two radio-hypersensitive cell lines. These data reveal a potentially novel mechanism responsible for radiosensitivity and show that increased artemis expression in cells can result in either radiation resistance or enhanced sensitivity.This work was supported in part by The Vidal Sassoon Foundation USA. This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund

Heat Treated NiP–SiC Composite Coatings: Elaboration and Tribocorrosion Behaviour in NaCl Solution

Tribocorrosion behaviour of heat-treated NiP and NiP–SiC composite coatings was investigated in a 0.6 M NaCl solution. The tribocorrosion tests were performed in a linear sliding tribometer with an electrochemical cell interface. It was analyzed the influence of SiC particles dispersion in the NiP matrix on current density developed, on coefficient of friction and on wear volume loss. The results showed that NiP–SiC composite coatings had a lower wear volume loss compared to NiP coatings. However, the incorporation of SiC particles into the metallic matrix affects the current density developed by the system during the tribocorrosion test. It was verified that not only the volume of co-deposited particles (SiC vol.%) but also the number of SiC particles per coating area unit (and consequently the SiC particles size) have made influence on the tribocorrosion behaviour of NiP–SiC composite coatings

ZnO:Co Diluted Magnetic Semiconductor or Hybrid Nanostructure for Spintronics?

We have studied the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic defects in the magnetic and electrical transport properties of Co-doped ZnO thin films. X ray absorption measurements show that Co substitute Zn in the ZnO structure and it is in the 2+ oxidation state. Magnetization (M) measurements show that doped samples are mainly paramagnetic. From M vs. H loops measured at 5 K we found that the values of the orbital L and spin S numbers are between 1 and 1.3 for L and S = 3/2, in agreement with the representative values for isolated Co 2+. The obtained negative values of the Curie-Weiss temperatures indicate the existence of antiferromagnetic interactions between transition metal atoms.Comment: To be published in Journal of Materials Scienc

Random-Matrix Theory of Quantum Size Effects on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Metal Particles

The distribution function of the local density of states is computed exactly for the Wigner-Dyson ensemble of random Hamiltonians. In the absence of time-reversal symmetry, precise agreement is obtained with the "supersymmetry" theory by Efetov and Prigodin of the NMR lineshape in disordered metal particles. Upon breaking time-reversal symmetry, the variance of the Knight shift in the smallest particles is reduced by a universal factor of 2/3. ***To be published in Physical Review B.****Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX-3.0, 1 postscript figure, INLO-PUB-940819; [2017: figure included in text

Rapid planetesimal formation in turbulent circumstellar discs

The initial stages of planet formation in circumstellar gas discs proceed via dust grains that collide and build up larger and larger bodies (Safronov 1969). How this process continues from metre-sized boulders to kilometre-scale planetesimals is a major unsolved problem (Dominik et al. 2007): boulders stick together poorly (Benz 2000), and spiral into the protostar in a few hundred orbits due to a head wind from the slower rotating gas (Weidenschilling 1977). Gravitational collapse of the solid component has been suggested to overcome this barrier (Safronov 1969, Goldreich & Ward 1973, Youdin & Shu 2002). Even low levels of turbulence, however, inhibit sedimentation of solids to a sufficiently dense midplane layer (Weidenschilling & Cuzzi 1993, Dominik et al. 2007), but turbulence must be present to explain observed gas accretion in protostellar discs (Hartmann 1998). Here we report the discovery of efficient gravitational collapse of boulders in locally overdense regions in the midplane. The boulders concentrate initially in transient high pressures in the turbulent gas (Johansen, Klahr, & Henning 2006), and these concentrations are augmented a further order of magnitude by a streaming instability (Youdin & Goodman 2005, Johansen, Henning, & Klahr 2006, Johansen & Youdin 2007) driven by the relative flow of gas and solids. We find that gravitationally bound clusters form with masses comparable to dwarf planets and containing a distribution of boulder sizes. Gravitational collapse happens much faster than radial drift, offering a possible path to planetesimal formation in accreting circumstellar discs.Comment: To appear in Nature (30 August 2007 issue). 18 pages (in referee mode), 3 figures. Supplementary Information can be found at 0708.389

On the Numerical Evaluation of Loop Integrals With Mellin-Barnes Representations

An improved method is presented for the numerical evaluation of multi-loop integrals in dimensional regularization. The technique is based on Mellin-Barnes representations, which have been used earlier to develop algorithms for the extraction of ultraviolet and infrared divergencies. The coefficients of these singularities and the non-singular part can be integrated numerically. However, the numerical integration often does not converge for diagrams with massive propagators and physical branch cuts. In this work, several steps are proposed which substantially improve the behavior of the numerical integrals. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated by calculating several two-loop examples, some of which have not been known before.Comment: 13 pp. LaTe

Connecting to smart cities : analyzing energy times series to visualize monthly electricity peak load in residential buildings

Rapidly growing energy consumption rate is considered an alarming threat to economic stability and environmental sustainability. There is an urgent need of proposing novel solutions to mitigate the drastic impact of increased energy demand in urban cities to improve energy efficiency in smart buildings. It is commonly agreed that exploring, analyzing and visualizing energy consumption patterns in residential buildings can help to estimate their energy demands. Moreover, visualizing energy consumption patterns of residential buildings can also help to diagnose if there is any unpredictable increase in energy demand at a certain time period. However, visualizing and inferring energy consumption patterns from typical line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots is obsolete, less informative and do not provide deep and significant insight of the daily domestic demand of energy utilization. Moreover, these methods become less significant when high temporal resolution is required. In this research work, advanced data exploratory and data analytics techniques are applied on energy time series. Data exploration results are presented in the form of heatmap. Heatmap provides a significant insight of energy utilization behavior during different times of the day. Heatmap results are articulated from three analytical perspectives; descriptive analysis, diagnostic analysis and contextual analysis

A Tree-Loop Duality Relation at Two Loops and Beyond

The duality relation between one-loop integrals and phase-space integrals, developed in a previous work, is extended to higher-order loops. The duality relation is realized by a modification of the customary +i0 prescription of the Feynman propagators, which compensates for the absence of the multiple-cut contributions that appear in the Feynman tree theorem. We rederive the duality theorem at one-loop order in a form that is more suitable for its iterative extension to higher-loop orders. We explicitly show its application to two- and three-loop scalar master integrals, and we discuss the structure of the occurring cuts and the ensuing results in detail.Comment: 20 pages. Few typos corrected, some additional comments included, Appendix B and one reference added. Final version as published in JHE

Successful switch to tenofovir after suboptimal response to entecavir in an immunocompromised patient with chronic hepatitis B and without genotypic hepatitis B virus resistance

We report a case of an immunocompromised patient affected by chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) with high basal HBV viremia (>8 log(10) IU/ml) who failed an entecavir regimen, despite the absence of primary or secondary drug resistance mutations. The patient achieved sustained virological success (serum HBV DNA <12 IU/ml) when tenofovir was added to the treatment. This case highlights the difficulty in choosing an optimal therapy in such specific conditions and supports the concept of tailoring therapy (including combination regimens) on the basis of the particular conditions of each individual patient