[Sarcoma developed in irradiated area: Preliminary results of the SARI trial]. / Sarcomes développés en territoire irradié : résultats préliminaires de l'étude SARI.

Radiotherapy and surgery are the two main pillars of the locoregional treatment of cancer. The risk of second malignancy is better evaluated and constitutes a major issue regarding radioprotection of the patients. Among malignant disease observed in the surviving irradiated patients, the occurrence of sarcoma is a rare event but associated with a poor outcome since the 5 year overall survival is estimated at 10 to 35 %. The SARI protocol, written in 2011, included 120 patients and 240 controlled patients, irradiated in the same conditions but without sarcoma observed during the follow up. The main objective was to identify the clinical and biological factors associated with the occurrence of such a complication. The secondary objective was to identify the dosimetric characteristics of the treatment of the primary. Preliminary results will be presented during the 2016 meeting of the French radiation oncology society.

Thyroid volume measurement in external beam radiotherapy patients using CT imaging: correlation with clinical and anthropometric characteristics.

The aim of this study is to define criteria for accurate representation of the thyroid in human models used to represent external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) patients and evaluate the relationship between the volume of this organ and clinical and anthropometric characteristics. From CT images, we segmented the thyroid gland and calculated its volume for a population of 188 EBRT patients of both sexes, with ages ranging from 1 to 89 years. To evaluate uncertainties linked to measured volumes, experimental studies on the Livermore anthropomorphic phantom were performed. For our population of EBRT patients, we observed that in children, thyroid volume increased rapidly with age, from about 3 cm(3) at 2 years to about 16 cm(3) at 20. In adults, the mean thyroid gland volume was 23.5 ± 9 cm(3) for males and 17.5 ± 8 cm(3) for females. According to anthropometric parameters, the best fit for children was obtained by modeling the log of thyroid volume as a linear function of body surface area (BSA) (p < 0.0001) and age (p = 0.04) and for adults, as a linear function of BSA (p < 0.0001) and gender (p = 0.01). This work enabled us to demonstrate that BSA was the best indicator of thyroid volume for both males and females. These results should be taken into account when modeling the volume of the thyroid in human models used to represent EBRT patients for dosimetry in retrospective studies of the relationship between the estimated dose to the thyroid and long-term follow-up data on EBRT patients.

The perceived intentionality of groups.

Heider and Simmel [Heider, F., Simmel, M., 1944. An experimental study of apparent behavior. American Journal of Psychology 57, 243-259] found that people spontaneously describe depictions of simple moving objects in terms of purposeful and intentional action. Not all intentional beings are objects, however, and people often attribute purposeful activity to non-object individuals such as countries, basketball teams, and families. This raises the question of whether the same effect found by Heider and Simmel would hold for non-object individuals such as groups. We replicate and extend the original study, using both objects and groups as stimuli, and introducing two control conditions with groups that are not engaged in structured movement. We found that under the condition that best promoted the attribution of intentionality, moving groups are viewed as purposeful and goal-directed entities to the same extent that moving objects are. These results suggest that the psychological distinction between the notion of 'intentional entity' and the notion of 'object' can be found even in the perception of moving geometrical figures.

The prime lexicality effect: form-priming as a function of prime awareness, lexical status, and discrimination difficulty.

G. W. Humphreys, D. Besner, and P. T. Quinlan (1988) found that form-primes (e.g., contrast-CONTRACT) were effective only with masked primes. C. Veres (1986) obtained the same effect for word primes but found that nonword primes (e.g., controct) were effective regardless of masking. In a lexical-decision task, the present study failed to find any priming with word primes but only when the nonword distractors were very close to a particular word (e.g., UNIVORSE). With more distant nonword distractors (e.g., ANIVORSE), priming with word primes was restored in the masked condition. In terms of an entry-opening model of priming, this effect was interpreted as a blocking of priming by a postaccess checking operation. Alternatively, in an interactive activation model, this effect could be modeled either by decreasing the strength of lexical competition or by changing the decision criterion from local to global activation.

Substances that interfere with action of viridin B, a Streptococcus mitis bacteriocin.

Several body fluids and various substances were examined for their effects on the action of viridin B, a Streptococcus mitis bacteriocin. Heme has been shown previously to interfere with viridin B action. In the present study, peroxidase and catalase, but not superoxide dismutase, interfered with the bacteriocin. Sulfhydryl-containing compounds had no effect. Trypsin, protease, and amylase exhibited interfering capacities. Of various body fluids tested, serum, saliva, and leukocyte lysate interfered with viridin B. The activity in leukocyte lysate was probably due to myeloperoxidase. Salivary activity was likely due to both peroxidase and amylase. Interfering activity in serum was neither complement dependent nor antibody mediated and was probably due to a combination of enzymatic activities. Temporal studies with these agents suggested more than one mechanism of interference with viridin B.