| 1. |
- Beyer, J., et al.
(författare)
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Maintaining success, reducing treatment burden, focusing on survivorship: highlights from the third European consensus conference on diagnosis and treatment of germ-cell cancer
- 2013
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Ingår i: Annals of Oncology. - : Elsevier BV. - 1569-8041 .- 0923-7534. ; 24:4, s. 878-888
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- In November 2011, the Third European Consensus Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Germ-Cell Cancer (GCC) was held in Berlin, Germany. This third conference followed similar meetings in 2003 (Essen, Germany) and 2006 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) [Schmoll H-J, Souchon R, Krege S et al. European consensus on diagnosis and treatment of germ-cell cancer: a report of the European Germ-Cell Cancer Consensus Group (EGCCCG). Ann Oncol 2004; 15: 1377-1399; Krege S, Beyer J, Souchon R et al. European consensus conference on diagnosis and treatment of germ-cell cancer: a report of the second meeting of the European Germ-Cell Cancer Consensus group (EGCCCG): part I. Eur Urol 2008; 53: 478-496; Krege S, Beyer J, Souchon R et al. European consensus conference on diagnosis and treatment of germ-cell cancer: a report of the second meeting of the European Germ-Cell Cancer Consensus group (EGCCCG): part II. Eur Urol 2008; 53: 497-513]. A panel of 56 of 60 invited GCC experts from all across Europe discussed all aspects on diagnosis and treatment of GCC, with a particular focus on acute and late toxic effects as well as on survivorship issues. The panel consisted of oncologists, urologic surgeons, radiooncologists, pathologists and basic scientists, who are all actively involved in care of GCC patients. Panelists were chosen based on the publication activity in recent years. Before the meeting, panelists were asked to review the literature published since 2006 in 20 major areas concerning all aspects of diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of GCC patients, and to prepare an updated version of the previous recommendations to be discussed at the conference. In addition, similar to 50 E-vote questions were drafted and presented at the conference to address the most controversial areas for a poll of expert opinions. Here, we present the main recommendations and controversies of this meeting. The votes of the panelists are added as online supplements.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Waaijers, Susanne L., et al.
(författare)
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Persistence, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity of Halogen-Free Flame Retardants
- 2013
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Ingår i: Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. - New York, NY : Springer. - 9781461447160 - 9781461447177 ; , s. 1-71
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Polymers are synthetic organic materials having a high carbon and hydrogen content, which make them readily combustible. Polymers have many indoor uses and their flammability makes them a fire hazard. Therefore, flame retardants (FRs) are incorporated into these materials as a safety measure. Brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which accounted for about 21% of the total world market of FRs, have several unintended negative effects on the environment and human health. Hence, there is growing interest in finding appropriate alternative halogen-free flame retardants (HFFRs). Many of these HFFRs are marketed already, although their environ- mental behavior and toxicological properties are often only known to a limited extent, and their potential impact on the environment cannot yet be properly assessed. Therefore, we undertook this review to make an inventory of the available data that exists (up to September 2011) on the physical-chemical properties, pro- duction volumes, persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (PBT) of a selection of HFFRs that are potential replacements for BFRs in polymers. Large data gaps were identified for the physical-chemical and the PBT properties of the reviewed HFFRs. Because these HFFRs are currently on the market, there is an urgent need to fill these data gaps. Enhanced transparency of methodology and data are needed to reevaluate certain test results that appear contradictory, and, if this does not provide new insights, further research should be performed. TPP has been studied quite extensively and it is clearly persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. So far, RDP and BDP have demonstrated low to high ecotoxicity and persistence. The compounds ATH and ZB exerted high toxicity to some species and ALPI appeared to be persistent and has low to moderate reported ecotoxicity. DOPO and MPP may be persistent, but this view is based merely on one or two studies, clearly indicating a lack of information. Many degradation studies have been performed on PER and show low persistence, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there is too l ittle information on the bioaccumulation potential of PER. APP mostly has low PBT properties; however, moderate ecotoxicity was reported in two studies. Mg(OH)₂, ZHS, and ZS do not show such remarkably high bioaccumulation or toxicity, but large data gaps exist for these compounds also. Nevertheless, we consider the latter compounds to be the most promising among alternative HFFRs. To assess whether the presently reviewed HFFRs are truly suitable alternatives, each compound should be examined individually by comparing its PBT values with those of the relevant halogenated flame retardant. Until more data are available, it remains impossible to accurately evaluate the risk of each of these compounds, including the ones that are already extensively marketed.
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| 4. |
- Wit, J M., et al.
(författare)
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Personalized Approach to Growth Hormone Treatment: Clinical Use of Growth Prediction Models
- 2013
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Ingår i: Hormone Research in Paediatrics. - : Karger. - 1663-2818 .- 1663-2826. ; 79:5, s. 257-270
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The goal of growth hormone (GH) treatment in a short child is to attain a fast catch-up growth toward the target height (TH) standard deviation score (SDS), followed by a maintenance phase, a proper pubertal height gain, and an adult height close to TH. The short-term response variable of GH treatment, first-year height velocity (HV) (cm/year or change in height SDS), can either be compared with GH response charts for diagnosis, age and gender, or with predicted HV based on prediction models. Three types of prediction models have been described: the Kabi International Growth Hormone Study models, the Gothenburg models and the Cologne model. With these models, 50-80% of the variance could be explained. When used prospectively, individualized dosing reduces the variation in growth response in comparison with a fixed dose per body weight. Insulin-like growth factor-I-based dose titration also led to a decrease in the variation. It is uncertain whether adding biochemical, genetic or proteomic markers may improve the accuracy of the prediction. Prediction models may lead to a more evidence-based approach to determine the GH dose regimen and may reduce the drug costs for GH treatment. There is a need for user-friendly software programs to make prediction models easily available in the clinic.
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| 5. |
- Bengtsson-Palme, Johan, 1985, et al.
(författare)
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Improved software detection and extraction of ITS1 and ITS2 from ribosomal ITS sequences of fungi and other eukaryotes for analysis of environmental sequencing data
- 2013
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Ingår i: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. - 2041-210X. ; 4:10, s. 914-919
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region is the primary choice for molecular identification of fungi. Its two highly variable spacers (ITS1 and ITS2) are usually species specific, whereas the intercalary 5.8S gene is highly conserved. For sequence clustering and blast searches, it is often advantageous to rely on either one of the variable spacers but not the conserved 5.8S gene. To identify and extract ITS1 and ITS2 from large taxonomic and environmental data sets is, however, often difficult, and many ITS sequences are incorrectly delimited in the public sequence databases. We introduce ITSx, a Perl-based software tool to extract ITS1, 5.8S and ITS2 – as well as full-length ITS sequences – from both Sanger and high-throughput sequencing data sets. ITSx uses hidden Markov models computed from large alignments of a total of 20 groups of eukaryotes, including fungi, metazoans and plants, and the sequence extraction is based on the predicted positions of the ribosomal genes in the sequences. ITSx has a very high proportion of true-positive extractions and a low proportion of false-positive extractions. Additionally, process parallelization permits expedient analyses of very large data sets, such as a one million sequence amplicon pyrosequencing data set. ITSx is rich in features and written to be easily incorporated into automated sequence analysis pipelines. ITSx paves the way for more sensitive blast searches and sequence clustering operations for the ITS region in eukaryotes. The software also permits elimination of non-ITS sequences from any data set. This is particularly useful for amplicon-based next-generation sequencing data sets, where insidious non-target sequences are often found among the target sequences. Such non-target sequences are difficult to find by other means and would contribute noise to diversity estimates if left in the data set.
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| 6. |
- Rockström, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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A safe operating space for humanity
- 2013
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Ingår i: The Future of Nature. - : Yale University Press. - 9780300184617 ; , s. 491-501
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 7. |
- Agapitov, Oleksiy, et al.
(författare)
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Multispacecraft observations of chorus emissions as a tool for the plasma density fluctuations' remote sensing
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 116, s. A09222-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Discrete ELF/VLF chorus emissions are the most intense electromagnetic plasma waves that are observed in the radiation belts and in the outer magnetosphere of the Earth. They are assumed to propagate approximately along the magnetic field lines and are generated in source regions in the vicinity of the magnetic equator and in minimum B pockets in the dayside outer zone of the magnetosphere. The presence of plasma density irregularities along the raypath causes a loss of phase coherence of the chorus wave packets. These irregularities are often present around the plasmapause and in the radiation belts; they occur at scales ranging from a few meters up to several hundred kilometers and can be highly anisotropic. Such irregularities result in fluctuations of the dielectric permittivity, whose statistical properties can be studied making use of intersatellite correlations of whistler waves' phases and amplitudes. We demonstrate how the whistler-mode wave properties can be used to infer statistical characteristics of the density fluctuations. The analogy between weakly coupled oscillators under the action of uncorrelated random forces and wave propagation in a randomly fluctuating medium is used to determine the wave phase dependence on the duration of signal recording time. We study chorus whistler-mode waves observed by the Cluster WBD instrument and apply intersatellite correlation analysis to determine the statistical characteristics of the waveform phases and amplitudes. We then infer the statistical characteristics of the plasma density fluctuations and evaluate the spatial distribution of the irregularities using the same chorus events observed by the four Cluster spacecraft.
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| 8. |
- Björklund, Justina A., et al.
(författare)
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Comparisons of polybrominated diphenyl ether and hexabromocyclododecane concentrations in dust collected with two sampling methods and matched breast milk samples
- 2012
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Ingår i: Indoor Air. - : Hindawi Limited. - 0905-6947 .- 1600-0668. ; 22:4, s. 279-288
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Household dust from 19 Swedish homes was collected using two different sampling methods: from the occupants own home vacuum cleaner after insertion of a new bag and using a researcher-collected method where settled house dust was collected from surfaces above floor level. The samples were analyzed for 16 polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners and total hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD). Significant correlations (r = 0.600.65, Spearman r = 0.470.54, P < 0.05) were found between matched dust samples collected with the two sampling methods for ?OctaBDE and ?DecaBDE but not for ?PentaBDE or HBCD. Statistically significantly higher concentrations of all PBDE congeners were found in the researcher-collected dust than in the home vacuum cleaner bag dust (VCBD). For HBCD, however, the concentrations were significantly higher in the home VCBD samples. Analysis of the bags themselves indicated no or very low levels of PBDEs and HBCD. This indicates that there may be specific HBCD sources to the floor and/or that it may be present in the vacuum cleaners themselves. The BDE-47 concentrations in matched pairs of VCBD and breast milk samples were significantly correlated (r = 0.514, P = 0.029), indicating that one possible exposure route for this congener may be via dust ingestion. Practical Implications The statistically significant correlations found for several individual polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners, ?OctaBDE and ?DecaBDE between the two dust sampling methods in this study indicate that the same indoor sources contaminate both types of dust or that common processes govern the distribution of these compounds in the indoor environment. Therefore, either method is adequate for screening ?OctaBDE and ?DecaBDE in dust. The high variability seen between dust samples confirms results seen in other studies. For hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), divergent results in the two dust types indicate differences in contamination sources to the floor than to above-floor surfaces. Thus, it is still unclear which dust sampling method is most relevant for HBCD as well as for ?PentaBDE in dust and, further, which is most relevant for determining human exposure to PBDEs and HBCD.
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| 9. |
- Fischer, Gunther, et al.
(författare)
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Biofuel production potentials in Europe: Sustainable use of cultivated land and pastures, Part II: Land use scenarios
- 2010
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Ingår i: Biomass and Bioenergy. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-2909 .- 0961-9534. ; 34:2, s. 173-187
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Europe's agricultural land (including Ukraine) comprise of 164 million hectares of cultivated land and 76 million hectares of permanent pasture. A "food first" paradigm was applied in the estimations of land potentially available for the production of biofuel feedstocks, without putting at risk food supply or nature conservation. Three land conversion scenarios were formulated: (i) A base scenario, that reflects developments under current policy settings and respects current trends in nature conservation and organic farming practices, by assuming moderate overall yield increases; (ii) an environment oriented scenario with higher emphasis on sustainable farming practices and maintenance of biodiversity; and (iii) an energy oriented scenario considering more substantial land use conversions including the use of pasture land. By 2030 some 44-53 million hectares of cultivated land could be used for bioenergy feed-stock production. The energy oriented scenario includes an extra 19 million hectares pasture land for feedstocks for second-generation biofuel production chains. Available land is foremost to be found in Eastern Europe, where substantial cultivated areas can be freed up through sustainable gains in yield in the food and feed sector. Agricultural residues of food and feed crops may provide an additional source for biofuel production. When assuming that up to 50% of crop residues can be used without risks for agricultural sustainability, we estimate that up to 246 Mt agricultural residues could be available for biofuel production, comparable to feedstock plantations of some 15-20 million hectares.
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| 10. |
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