This survey confirms that TMZ is established as first-line chemotherapeutic treatment of APT/PC. Clinically functioning tumours, low MGMT and concurrent radiotherapy were associated with a better response. The limited long-term effect of TMZ and the poor efficacy of other drugs highlight the need to identify additional effective therapies.

No abstract

We present measurements of the Galactic halo's X-ray emission for 110 XMM-Newton sight lines, selected to minimize contamination from solar wind charge exchange emission. We detect emission from few million degree gas on ∼4/5 of our sight lines. The temperature is fairly uniform (median = 2.22×10 6 K, interquartile range = 0.63×10 6 K), while the emission measure and intrinsic 0.5-2.0 keV surface brightness vary by over an order of magnitude (∼(0.4-7) × 10 −3 cm −6 pc and ∼(0.5-7) × 10 −12 erg cm −2 s −1 deg −2 , respectively, with median detections of 1.9 × 10 −3 cm −6 pc and 1.5 × 10 −12 erg cm −2 s −1 deg −2 , respectively). The high-latitude sky contains a patchy distribution of few million degree gas. This gas exhibits a general increase in emission measure toward the inner Galaxy in the southern Galactic hemisphere. However, there is no tendency for our observed emission measures to decrease with increasing Galactic latitude, contrary to what is expected for a disk-like halo morphology. The measured temperatures, brightnesses, and spatial distributions of the gas can be used to place constraints on models for the dominant heating sources of the halo. We provide some discussion of such heating sources, but defer comparisons between the observations and detailed models to a later paper.

No abstract

Semagacestat treatment lowers plasma, cerebrospinal fluid and brain A beta in a dose-dependent manner in animals and plasma and cerebrospinal fluid A beta in humans, compared with placebo-treated patients. On the basis of extant data, semagacestat seems to be well tolerated, with most adverse events related to its actions on inhibition of peripheral Notch cleavage. Thus far, clinical efficacy has not been detectable because of the short duration of the current trials. Phase III trials with 21 months of active treatment are currently underway.

We present an analysis of a pair of Suzaku spectra of the soft X-ray background (SXRB), obtained from pointings on and off a nearby shadowing filament in the southern Galactic hemisphere. Because of the different Galactic column densities in the two pointing directions, the observed emission from the Galactic halo has a different shape in the two spectra. We make use of this difference when modeling the spectra to separate the absorbed halo emission from the unabsorbed foreground emission from the Local Bubble (LB). The temperatures and emission measures we obtain are significantly different from those determined from an earlier analysis of XMM-Newton spectra from the same pointing directions. We attribute this difference to the presence of previously unrecognized solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) contamination in the XMM-Newton spectra, possibly due to a localized enhancement in the solar wind moving across the line of sight. Contemporaneous solar wind data from ACE show nothing unusual during the course of the XMM-Newton observations. Our results therefore suggest that simply examining contemporaneous solar wind data might be inadequate for determining if a spectrum of the SXRB is contaminated by SWCX emission. If our Suzaku spectra are not badly contaminated by SWCX emission, our best-fitting LB model gives a temperature of log(T LB /K) = 5.98 +0.03 −0.04 and a pressure of p LB /k = 13,100-16,100 cm −3 K. These values are lower than those obtained from other recent observations of the LB, suggesting the LB may not be isothermal and may not be in pressure equilibrium. Our halo modeling, meanwhile, suggests that neon may be enhanced relative to oxygen and iron, possibly because oxygen and iron are partly in dust. Subject headings: Galaxy:halo-Sun: solar wind-X-rays: diffuse background-X-rays: ISM 1 http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/lheasoft 2

We present an analysis of the X-ray spectrum of the Local Bubble, obtained by simultaneously analyzing spectra from two XMM-Newton pointings on and off an absorbing filament in the Southern galactic hemisphere (b ≈ −45 • ). We use the difference in the Galactic column density in these two directions to deduce the contributions of the unabsorbed foreground emission due to the Local Bubble, and the absorbed emission from the Galactic halo and the extragalactic background. We find the Local Bubble emission is consistent with emission from a plasma in collisional ionization equilibrium with a temperature log(T LB /K) = 6.06 +0.02 −0.04 and an emission measure n 2 e dl = 0.018 cm −6 pc. Our measured temperature is in good agreement with values obtained from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data, but is lower than that measured by other recent XMM-Newton observations of the Local Bubble, which find log(T LB /K) ≈ 6.2 (although for some of these observations it is possible that the foreground emission is contaminated by non-Local Bubble emission from Loop I). The higher temperature observed towards other directions is inconsistent with our data, when combined with a FUSE measurement of the Galactic halo O vi intensity. This therefore suggests that the Local Bubble is thermally anisotropic.Our data are unable to rule out a non-equilibrium model in which the plasma is underionized. However, an overionized recombining plasma model, while observationally acceptable for certain densities and temperatures, generally gives an implausibly young age for the Local Bubble ( 6 × 10 5 yr).

Small changes in T(4) dosage do not produce measurable changes in hypothyroid symptoms, well-being, or quality of life, despite the expected changes in serum TSH and markers of thyroid hormone action. These data do not support the suggestion that the target TSH range for the treatment of primary hypothyroidism should differ from the general laboratory range.