Search

Background and purpose: Patients with irresectable locoregional recurrent breast cancer en cuirasse (BCEC) do not have effective curative treatment options. Hyperthermia, the elevation of tumor temperature to 40–45 °C, is a well-established radio- and chemotherapy sensitizer. A total of 196 patients were treated with reirradiation and hyperthermia (reRT+HT) at two Dutch institutes from 1982–2005. The palliative effect was evaluated in terms of clinical outcome and toxicity. Patients and methods: All patients received previous irradiation to a median dose of 50 Gy. In all, 75% of patients received 1–6 treatment modalities for previous tumor recurrences. ReRT consisted of 8 × 4 Gy given twice a week or 12 × 3 Gy given four times a week. Superficial hyperthermia was added once or twice a week. Tumor area comprised ≥½ of the ipsilateral chest wall. Results: Overall clinical response rate was 72% (complete response [CR] 30%, partial response [PR] 42%, stable disease [SD] 22%, progressive disease [PD] 6%). The local progression-free rate at 1 year was 24%. Median survival was 6.9 months. Forty-three percent of our patients with CR, PR, SD after treatment remained infield progression-free until death or last follow-up. Acute ≥grade 3 toxicity occurred in 33% of patients, while late ≥grade 3 toxicity was recorded in 14% of patients. Tumor ulceration prior to treatment had a negative impact on both clinical outcome and toxicity. Conclusion: ReRT+HT provides sustainable palliative tumor control, despite refractory, extensive tumor growth. Compared to currently available systemic treatment options, reRT+HT is more effective with less toxicity.

Large areas of Titan’s surface brightened at all wavelengths as seen from Cassini/VIMS for several months. The brightenings occurred after a large storm and rainfall event, and may relate to volatile refreezing due to evaporative cooling.

Tyre sidewall compounds are generally formulated using NR and BR to achieve the required dynamical properties. The most widely used antiozonant, N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N’-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6PPD), is a staining, toxic and environmentally harmful substance. Incorporation of EPDM into NR/BR blends improves ozone resistance, but leads to poor properties because of differences in filler affinity and cure incompatibility of the rubber components. In this work, the cure incompatibility is overcome by utilising a reactive processing technique, making use of the most commonly used accelerator CBS and sulfur. The entire amount of curatives is first added into the EPDM. After a thermal pretreatment step related to the scorch time of the EPDM, the modified EPDM is mixed with pre-blended NR/BR. The reactive blends show significant improvements of physical properties in comparison with those of conventional straight mixes, due to improvement of the crosslink and carbon black distributions, confirmed by AFM and TEM images. The physical properties of the reactive mixed NR/BR/EPDM blends are equivalent or even superior to regular filled NR/BR blends for tyre sidewall applications. The blend with 30 phr of EPDM has excellent ozone resistance while 6PPD can be totally omitted from the formulation.

The following paper describes the use of an antireversion agent which has to be found useful in different applications of rubber goods. 1,3-bis(citraconimidomethyl)benzene has been evaluated in some typical IRP ap-plications providing a benefit with regard to reversion resistance, both during cure and following aging. This improvement in reversion resistance leads to a better re-tention of vulcanizate properties such as tensile strength, cut growth resistance and abrasion resistance. Furthermore, heat build up is significantly reduced in the presence of the antireversion agent.

Both spraying with pesticides and using explosions to kill red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea) may affect non-target organisms and leave hazardous contaminants in the environment. Results of monitoring such effects in Botswana and Tanzania showed that although few non-target mortalities were noted, indirect effects in terms of depressed cholinesterases in birds and small mammals were marked and pesticides and contaminants from products used for the explosions persisted at controlled sites at unacceptable levels and for long periods (at least 188 days for sprays and at least 11 months for petroleum products and plastics).