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Abstract: Background: The surgical management of soft tissue sarcoma (STS) in elderly patients has only been addressed in a few studies. The objective of the current study was to assess surgical outcomes in patients with STS aged 70 years and older and the association of older age with the survival after complete resection. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted in 158 elderly patients with localized STS who visited 11 institutions participating in Japanese Musculoskeletal Oncology Group between 1995 and 2006 and were treated by surgical resection. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify prognostic factors. Results: Median follow-up period was 38 months. Histologically high-grade tumors were detected in 71% of the patients. Wide resection with adequate margins was performed in 66% of the cases. Systemic chemotherapy was performed in only 5 patients. Univariate analysis identified histological grade and gender as statistically significant prognostic factors for sarcoma-specific survival. Multivariate analysis did not identify significant prognostic factors for sarcoma-specific survival, although high grade sarcoma emerged as a potentially significant prognostic factor (P = 0.050). Local recurrence was detected in 19% of the patients. Multivariate analysis of local recurrence-free survival showed that tumor site and surgical margins were statistically significant prognostic factors. Conclusions: Older age was not identified as a prognostic factor for sarcoma-specific survival, which is not consistent with the findings of previous studies showing that older age was associated with decreased sarcoma-specific survival. Complete resection should be indicated and can lead to optimal treatment outcome for properly selected elderly patients. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The CD transition spectra under an external magnetic field are calculated based on quantum mechanical perturbation method, and the results are compared with measurements in glow-discharge plasmas. The values of the equilibrium molecular constants, T e , , and B e for the state, are determined from the comparison of the spectra under no magnetic field. The measured spectra under a field strength up to 4.0T are well reproduced by the calculation using these molecular constants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The density distribution of cold exciton clouds generated into a strain-induced potential well by two-photon excitation in Cu2O is studied at 2 K. We find that an anomalous spike, which can be interpreted as accumulation of the excitons into the ground state, emerges at the potential minimum. The accumulation can be due to stimulated scattering of cold excitons, mediated by acoustic phonon emission. The possibility of the formation of the thermodynamic Bose–Einstein condensate of paraexcitons is discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the geometry of embedded Si1− x Ge x source/drain junctions on the stress field. Stress simulations were performed using TSUPREM4 2D software to further investigate the elastic strain relaxation as a function of Si1− x Ge x alloy active size, in the regime where no plastic relaxation is present. Moreover, the role of the epilayer thickness and the Ge content on the stress levels is also discussed. The work is complemented with experimental Raman spectroscopy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]