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In Human-Dog Communication, Breed Is As Important As Species
Dog breeds selected to work in visual contact with humans, such as sheep dogs and gun dogs, are better able to comprehend a pointing gesture than those breeds that usually work without direct supervision. A series of tests, described in BioMed Central"s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions, should caution researchers against making simple generalizations about the effects of domestication and on dog-wolf differences in the utilization of human visual signals.

Excellence In Oncology Awards 2009 Now Open For Entry
The Excellence in Oncology Awards (EinO) 2009 are now open for entry. The Awards, now in their fourth year, recognise and reward best practice in oncology management, education and patient care throughout the UK. Winners will be announced at a prestigious dinner on 6 October 2009 during the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference.
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USA Today Examines 'Incendiary Debate' Over Abortion Rights
Nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court"s decision in Roe v. Wade, the "incendiary debate over abortion rights endures" and continues to manifest itself in a number of ways, USA Today reports. According to a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll, 78% of U.S. residents want abortion to be legal under at least some circumstances, with 21% saying it should be legal under any circumstance. According to the poll, 18% of respondents said that they want abortion always to be illegal. The poll also found that 46% of U.S. residents self-identify as "pro-choice," while 47% self-identify as "pro-life."Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said, "The enduring divide represents the reality that there are fundamental religious differences on the issue of abortion that do not exist on, say, campaign finance or even on health care." Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest said that abortion-rights opponents are mobilizing to urge congressional lawmakers to exclude abortion coverage and funding from any federal health reform legislation.During the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the judge said that she does not believe previous court rulings on abortion rights have ended the national controversy surrounding the issue. According to USA Today, Sotomayor, who has never ruled on the issue, declined to reveal her personal position on abortion rights. Several antiabortion-rights advocates also protested during Sotomayor"s hearings (Biskupic, USA Today, 7/24).In addition, the Center for Reproductive Rights this week released a report that found physicians and employees of health care clinics providing abortion services in six states -- Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas -- face an increasing level of harassment and death threats. The report was based on a four-month investigation (AP/Houston Chronicle, 7/23). The report was tied to the murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller (USA Today, 7/24). Operation Save America Director the Rev. Flip Benham, whose group is mentioned in the report, said the center is trying to limit the free-speech rights of abortion-rights opponents (AP/Houston Chronicle, 7/23).
Oncology

Dosimetric Equivalence Of Nonstandard HDR Brachytherapy Catheter Patterns

UroToday.com - Robotic and medical imaging technology has made leaps and bounds over the past few decades, and the practice of brachytherapy should take advantage of these advances. Of course, any new technology cannot be implemented in the clinic without a scientifically validated foundation, which must be established in order to justify the move away from tried-and-true methods. With this in mind, we present this paper as a peek into the future -- alternative, potentially useful implant catheter patterns. Brachytherapy places concentrated s of radiation inside the body inside cancerous tissues and organs using an external template of fixed positions to help the physician guide the insertion needles or catheters. Studies have shown that placing radiation s close to cancer cells results in less damage to healthy tissues than surgery or external beam radiation and does not require multiple hospital visits for treatment [1]. In terms of survival rate, brachytherapy is a highly successful method for treating prostate cancer [1,2,3], but it is a surgical procedure that can produce negative side effects due to the insertion of brachytherapy needles. [4,5,6]. The needle insertion process can be made less invasive by employing robotic brachytherapy, which can take full advantage of the plethora of information that is available when using imaging technologies like MRI to allow the physician to achieve a near-perfect implant. By near-perfect, we mean an implant that minimizes the number of needles inserted (to pierce as few as possible of the sensitive healthy structures around the targeted tissue) and still deliver radiation that conforms to the geometry of the diseased target tissue. For example, an MR image of the prostate region allows us to see the neurovascular bundles, the seminal vesicles, and the penile bulb-information entirely unutilized during a standard transrectal ultrasound-template guided implant procedure. In fact, we can also delineate the main substructures of the prostate: the peripheral zone, the transition zone, and the central zone. A robot would expand the number of possible needle/catheter paths and allow for the placement without the need for the fixed template of needle positions. The ability to see the prostate substructure and perhaps the tumor allows for more optimal placement of needles/catheters for therapeutic treatment. The optimal placement of radiation relies on two factors: seeing where to go and going there. Imaging technology helps us see where we want to go and robot technology will help us in going there. Just as on any given day, there may be a different optimal commute to work due to traffic and weather conditions, the method of driving radiation where it needs to go depends on the conditions of the anatomy of any given patient. And while trains are an excellent mode of transportation, they lock us into pre-defined routes just as template-based brachytherapy (with its restriction to grid-based and parallel needle patterns) doesn"t have the flexibility to access all parts of the prostate while avoiding sensitive tissues. The work presented in this paper shows that by using alternative methods of going there we can still deliver a standard dose distribution that has been shown to be clinically successful. This is key because it shows that alternative catheter patterns made available by robotic devices, combined with dose optimization, can allow us to deliver dose while, at the same time, avoiding the puncture of sensitive non-diseased structures. To some, the benefit of eliminating trauma to critical structures may seem obvious, but nevertheless, it is not clinically proven and it will not be possible until such technology becomes available in the clinic. A full report of this work is available in PDF format for free at the online science archive, arXiv.org: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2358. The original journal article appears in the Medical Physics Journal: Cunha et al., "Dosimetric equivalence of nonstandard HDR brachytherapy catheter patterns ," Med. Phys. 36 (1), pp 233-239, January 2009. References: 1. I. Thompson, J. B. Thrasher, G. Aus, A. L. Burnett, E. D. Canby-Haginoa, M. S. Cookson, A. V. D"Amicoa, R. R. Dmochowski, D. T. Etona, J. D. Formana, S. L. Goldenberga, J. Hernandeza, C. S. Higanoa, S. R. Kraus, J. W. Moul, C. M. Tangena, and Prostate Cancer Clinical Guideline Update Panel, "Guideline for the management of clinically localized prostate cancer: 2007 update," J. Urology, vol. 177, no. 6, pp. 2106-2131, 2007. 2. L. Potters, C. Morgenstern, E. Calugaru, P. Fearn, A. Jassal, J. Presser, and E. Mullen, "12-year outcomes following permanent prostate brachytherapy in patients with clinically localized prostate cancer," J. Urology, vol. 173, pp. 1562-1566, May 2005. 3. J. C. Blasko, T. Mate, J. E. Sylvester, P. D. Grimm, and W. Cavanagh, "Brachytherapy for carcinoma of the prostate: techniques, patient selection, and clinical outcomes," Seminars in Radiation Oncology, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 81-94, 2002. 4. C. Vargas, M. Ghilezan, M. Hollander, G. Gustafson, H. Korman, J. Gonzalez, and A. Martinez, "A new model using number of needles and androgen deprivation to predict chronic urinary toxicity for high or low dose rate prostate brachytherapy," J. Urology, vol. 174, pp. 882-887, Sept. 2005. 5. L. Eapen, C. Kayser, Y. Deshaies, G. Perry, C. E, C. Morash, J. E. Cygler, D. Wilkins, and S. Dahrouge, "Correlating the degree of needle trauma during prostate brachytherapy and the development of acute urinary toxicity," Int. J. Radiat. Oncol., Biol., Phys., vol. 59, no. 5, pp. 1392-1394, 2004. 6. S. K. Kang, R. H. Chou, R. K. Dodge, R. W. Clough, H.-S. L. Kang, M. G. Bowen, B. A. Steffey, S. K. Das, S.-M. Zhou, A. W. Whitehurst, N. J. Buckley, J. H. Kim, R. E. Joyner, I. Sarmina, G. S. Montana, S. S. Ingram, and M. S. Anscher, "Acute urinary toxicity following transperineal prostate brachytherapy using a modified Quimby loading method," Int. J. Radiat. Oncol., Biol., Phys., vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 937-945, 2001. Written by J. Adam M. Cunha, PhD as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com UroToday - the only urology website with original content written by global urology key opinion leaders actively engaged in clinical practice. To access the latest urology news releases from UroToday, go to: www.urotoday.com Copyright © 2009 - UroToday


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