Purpose
: Although the optimal management for patients with high-grade clinically localized prostate cancer is undefined, radical prostatectomy (RP) or external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) is performed. ...The clinical utility of the pretreatment prostrate-specific antigen (PSA) level (≤10 and >10 ng/mL) and endorectal MRI (erMRI) stage (T3 vs. T2) to stratify PSA outcome after RP in these patients was evaluated.
Methods and Materials
: erMRI was performed in 147 men with biopsy Gleason score ≥7 and 1992 AJCC clinical Stage T1c or T2a disease before RP. Enumerations of the biopsy and prostatectomy Gleason scores, pathologic stage, and margin status were performed for each pretreatment group on the basis of erMRI findings and PSA level. Comparisons were made using a chi-square metric. The median follow-up was 4.5 years (range 1–10 years). Comparisons of the actuarial freedom from PSA failure (bNED) were made using the log-rank test.
Results
: erMRI Stage T2 and T3 disease was found in 132 and 15 patients, respectively. On stratification by PSA level, patients with erMRI T3 disease had similar bNED outcomes (
p = 0.46), regardless of the PSA level. The 3-year bNED rate was 82%, 64%, and 25% (
p <0.0001) for Group 1 (erMRI T2 and PSA ≤10 ng/mL), Group 2 (erMRI T2 and PSA >10 ng/mL), and Group 3 (erMRI T3 with any PSA level), respectively. The rates of prostatectomy T3 disease, biopsy and prostatectomy Gleason score 8–10, and positive surgical margins were significantly higher (
p ≤0.007) in Group 3, followed by Group 2 and were lowest in Group 1. When considering only the patients with biopsy Gleason score 7 (
n = 110), the 3-year bNED rate was 83%, 63%, and 28% (
p trend <0.0001) for Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
Conclusion
: In the setting of biopsy Gleason score ≥7, PSA ≤10 ng/mL, and clinically localized disease, local therapy alone may be adequate for patients with erMRI T2 disease. On the other hand, these data suggest that more aggressive therapy may be warranted in patients with erMRI T3 disease. Given the survival benefit established for patients with locally advanced prostate cancer treated with EBRT and androgen suppression therapy compared with EBRT alone, erMRI staging may help identify patients with high biopsy Gleason score and clinically localized disease who may benefit most from treatment with EBRT and hormonal therapy as opposed to EBRT alone.
Abstract
The global forecast system (GFS), which started its operation in 1988 at the Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan, has been upgraded to incorporate better numerical methods and more complete ...parameterization schemes. The second-generation GFS uses multivariate optimum interpolation analysis and incremental nonlinear normal-mode initialization to initialize the forecast model. The forecast model is a global primitive equation model with a resolution of 18 sigma levels in the vertical and 79 waves of triangular truncation in the horizontal. The forecast model includes a 1.5-order eddy mixing parameterization, a gravity wave drag parameterization, a shallow convection parameterization, a relaxed version of Arakawa–Schubert cumulus parameterization, grid-scale condensation calculation, and longwave and shortwave radiative transfer calculations with consideration of fractional clouds. The performance of the second-generation GFS is significantly better than the first-generation GFS. For two 3-month periods in winter 1995/96 and summer 1996, the second-generation GFS provided forecasters with 5-day forecasts where the averaged 500-mb height anomaly correlation coefficients for the Northern Hemisphere were greater than 0.6.
Observational data available to the GFS are much less than those at other numerical weather prediction centers, especially in the Tropics and Southern Hemisphere. The GRID messages of 5° resolution, ECMWF 24-h forecast 500-mb height and 850- and 200-mb wind fields available once a day on the Global Telecommunications System are used as supplemental observations to increase the data coverage for the GFS data assimilation. The supplemental data improve the GFS performance both in the analysis and forecast.
This paper describes the design of the de-interleaver and punctured Viterbi decoder for the Eureka-147 DAB system and their corresponding VLSI implementations. We emphasize how to efficiently handle ...four DAB transmission modes, time/frequency de-interleaving and path metric/survivor memory management in our development. Results show that our implementation has the characteristics of modular design, consuming less silicon area, and facilitating the extension for high transmission rate requirement. The core size of the resulting chip implementation is 4990/spl times/4930 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ based on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 0.6 /spl mu/m single-polysilicon-triple-metal CMOS process.
Our previous work has shown that preconditioning can promote the recovery of cardiac function in patients having an open heart procedure. Because preconditioning is regarded as the most powerful form ...of endogenous myocardial protection, we tested the hypothesis that preconditioning protects against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in patients undergoing prolonged cold crystalloid cardioplegic arrest.
Thirty patients who had rheumatic heart disease and required both aortic and mitral valve replacement were studied. Patients were randomly divided into two equal groups. Preconditioning was accomplished using two cycles of 2-minute occlusion of the vena cava and aorta followed by 3 minutes of reperfusion under cardiopulmonary bypass. All hearts were arrested with 4°C St. Thomas’ Hospital cardioplegic solution. Myocardial protective effects were assessed by changes in myocardial levels of adenosine triphosphate, electrocardiographic activity, leakage of myocardial enzymes, and myocardial contractility.
The adenosine triphosphate content in ischemic myocardium was higher in the preconditioning group than in the control group (
p
<
0.05 90 minutes after ischemia), and there was a significant reduction in release of the myocardial-specific isoenzyme of creatine kinase in the preconditioning group. Preconditioning improved the recovery of myocardial contractility (first derivative of left ventricular developed pressure, 1,490
±
102
mm Hg/s versus 1,250
±
97
mm Hg/s 30 minutes after reperfusion;
p
<
0.05), and there was also a protective effect on electrocardiographic activity.
Our results suggest that ischemic preconditioning protects the myocardium in humans from the severe ischemia-reperfusion injury produced after prolonged arrest with cold crystalloid cardioplegia.
Microarray technology was used to gain an insight into the molecular events of tumor cell growth inhibition mediated by the soy isoflavone genistein. For this, a susceptible bladder tumor line TCCSUP ...was treated with the inhibitory dose (50 microM) of genistein for various periods of time, followed by mRNA isolations, cDNA probe preparations, and hybridization individually to cDNA chips containing 884 sequence-verified known human genes. After analyzing the hybridization signals with a simple quantitative method developed by this study, we detected that egr-1, whose expression has been associated with proliferation and differentiation, was transiently induced and this expression pattern was later confirmed by RT-PCR. Thus, microarray technology is a reliable and powerful tool for profiling gene expression patterns in many biological systems related to cancer. We further detected many groups of genes with distinct expression profiles and most of them encode for proteins that regulate the signal transduction or the cell cycle pathways. These genes warrant further investigation as regards their roles in the susceptibility of the tumor cell line to the antitumor drug.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The purpose of this paper is to document the climate characteristics of the Global Forecast System (GFS), which is an atmospheric general circulation model developed at the Central Weather Bureau ...(CWB), Taiwan. This paper documents the winter (December-February) and summer (June-August) climate characteristics of simulated hydrological processes and atmospheric circulation from a 2-year control simulation conducted with the GFS using an annually repeating prescribed sea surface temperature climatology.
P14; A tilt-correction adaptive optical system installed on the 430 mm Solar Telescope of Nanjing University has been put in operation. It consists of a tip-tilt mirror, a correlation tracker and an ...imaging CCD camera. An absolute difference algorithm is used for detecting image motion in the correlation tracker. The sampling frequency of the system is 419 Hz. We give a description of the system's configuration, an analysis of its performance and a report of our observational results. A residual jitter of 0.14 arcsec has been achieved. The error rejection bandwidth of the system can be adjusted in the range 5-28 Hz according to the beacon size and the strength of atmospheric turbulence.
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