Thyroid carcinoma after high-dose external radiotherapy for Hodgkin's disease: report of three cases

Three patients (two female and one male), who had received mantle irradiation for Hodgkin's disease eight, ten, and twelve years previously, developed papillary thyroid carcinoma. The radiation doses to the necks overlying the site of thyroid cancers were 3000, 4000, and 4100 rads, respectively. It has been stated that there is no risk of developing thyroid cancer with such high doses of external irradiation but apparently this complication will be encountered in a small number of patients.     

Low‐Operating‐Voltage Organic Transistors Made of Bifunctional Self‐Assembled Monolayers

Self‐assembled monolayers (SAMs) are molecular assemblies that spontaneously form on an appropriate substrate dipped into a solution of an active surfactant in an organic solvent. Organic field‐effect transistors are described, built on an SAM made of bifunctional molecules comprising a short alkyl chain linked to an oligothiophene moiety that acts as the active semiconductor. The SAM is deposited on a thin oxide layer (alumina or silica) that serves as a gate insulator. Platinum–titanium source and drain electrodes (either top‐ or bottom‐contact configuration) are patterned by using electron‐beam (e‐beam) lithography, with a channel length ranging between 20 and 1000 nm. In most cases, ill‐defined current–voltage (I–V) curves are recorded, attributed to a poor electrical contact between platinum and the oligothiophene moiety. However, a few devices offer well‐defined curves with a clear saturation, thus allowing an estimation of the mobility: 0.0035 cm² V^–1 s^–1 for quaterthiophene and 8 × 10^–4 cm² V^–1 s^–1 for terthiophene. In the first case, the on–off ratio reaches 1800 at a gate voltage of –2 V. Interestingly, the device operates at room temperature and very low bias, which may open the way to applications where low consumption is required.     

Unrelated donor bone marrow transplantation for chronic myelogenous leukemia: a decision analysis

BACKGROUND: Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is an indolent but ultimately fatal disease. Because the natural history of CML varies and quality of life with CML may be excellent until shortly before death, deciding whether and when to pursue unrelated donor bone marrow transplantation is often difficult. OBJECTIVE: To compare early transplantation, delayed transplantation, and no transplantation for patients with chronic-phase CML on the basis of discounted, quality-adjusted life expectancy. DESIGN: A markov model comparing different strategies was constructed. This model considers patient age, quality of life, risk aversion, and the competing risks for CML progression and transplant toxicity. SETTING: Therapeutic decision at the time of diagnosis of CML. PATIENTS: The base case is a 35-year-old patient with intermediate-prognosis CML. Younger and older patients with better and worse prognoses are also evaluated. INTERVENTION: Early transplantation, delayed transplantation, and no transplantation. MEASUREMENTS: Quality-adjusted, discounted life expectancy. RESULTS: For patients with newly diagnosed CML, transplantation within the first year provides the greatest quality-adjusted expected survival, although this benefit decreases with increasing patient age. For a 35-year-old patient with intermediate-prognosis CML, transplantation within the first year results in 53 more discounted, quality-adjusted years of life expectancy than does no transplantation. This finding is robust even with varying baseline assumptions. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the use of early unrelated donor bone marrow transplantation for most patients with CML.     

Information from time-varying vibrotactile stimuli

Experiments have been carried out to investigate the information transfer available via a single vibrator on the fingertip. In a first experiment, for stimuli with durations 80 to 320 ms, discrimination of a one-octave step change in frequency at the halfway point was investigated. Results were similar for three stimulus types--sinewave, monophasic pulse and tetraphasic pulse--suggesting temporal cues are more important than spectral cues in this task. In a second experiment, subjects were required to perceive changes in a sequence of stimulus elements. A presentation rate of 6.25 elements s-1 was found to give better results than a rate of 12.5 elements s-1. In the former case, the potential information transfer per element was estimated to be approximately 1.0 bits, corresponding to an information transfer rate of around 6 bits s-1. Implications for the design of a tactile aid to lipreading are discussed.     

Psychodynamic formulation, consensual response method, and interpersonal problems.

We describe a new method for aggregating psychodynamic formulations of independent clinicians. 15 patients (10 female and 5 male, aged 23–41) were interviewed before they began brief dynamic psychotherapy. Different panels of 8 formulators (drawn from a pool of 72 psychodynamic clinicians with 10–38 years of clinical experience) observed each videotaped interview and wrote individual formulations. The text of each formulation was divided into thought-units, and thought-units that occurred 3 or more times were combined into a final consensual formulation. (One case was formulated twice to demonstrate the replicability of the method). Other clinical raters then read each consensual formulation and judged, for a list of interpersonal problems, whether each problem was apt to be distressing for that patient. The raters were very successful in predicting which problems were later discussed in treatment. Predictions were best for formulations with a high proportion of interpersonal content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)