Eating-disordered patients have relatively high rates of comorbid personality disorder diagnoses, including both anxiety-based personality disorders (obsessive-compulsive and avoidant) and borderline personality disorder. However, there is preliminary evidence that the core cognitions underlying personality pathology in the eating disorders are those related specifically to anxiety. This paper builds on that evidence, replicating and extending the findings with a large sample of eating-disordered patients (N = 374). There were no differences in personality disorder cognitions between eating disorder diagnoses. The study also examines the possibility that there are clusters of patients, differentiated by patterns of personality disorder cognition. Affect-related personality disorder cognitions were key to understanding the role of personality pathology in the eating disorders. It is suggested that those cognitions should be considered when planning psychological treatments.
For the assessment of radiation risk at low doses, it is presumed that the shape of the low-dose-response curve in humans for cancer induction is linear. Epidemiological data alone are unlikely to ever have the statistical power needed to confirm this assumption. Another approach is to use oncogenic transformation in vitro as a surrogate for carcinogenesis in vivo. In mid-1990, six European laboratories initiated such an approach using C3H 10T1/2 mouse cells. Rigid standardisation procedures were established followed by collaborative measurements of transformation down to absorbed doses of 0.25 Gy of x-radiation resulting in a total of 759 transformed foci. The results clearly support a linear dose-response relationship for cell transformation in vitro with no evidence for a threshold dose or for an enhanced, supralinear response at doses approximately 200-300 mGy. For radiological protection this represents a large dose, and the limitations of this approach are apparent. Only by understanding the fundamental mechanisms involved in radiation carcinogenesis will further knowledge concerning the effects of low doses become available. These results will, however, help validate new biologically based models of radiation cancer risk thus providing increased confidence in the estimation of cancer risk at low doses.
A study has been made as to how to develop further the techniques for sensitivity analysis used by Fispact-II. Fispact-II is a software suite for the analysis of nuclear activation and transmutation problems, developed for all nuclear applications. The software already permits sensitivity analysis to be performed by Monte Carlo sampling, and a faster uncertainty analysis is made possible by a powerful graph-based approach which generates a reduced set of nuclides on pathways leading to significant contributions to radiological quantities. The peculiar aspects of the sensitivity analysis problem for activation are the large number, typically thousands, of rate equation parameters(decay rates and reaction cross-sections) which all have some degree of associated error, and the fact that activity as a function of time varies as a sum of exponentials, so appears discontinuous as rate parameters are varied unless the sampling frequency is impractically fast. Nevertheless, Monte Carlo sampling is a generic approach and it is therefore conceivable that techniques more targeted to the activation problem might be beneficial. Moreover, recent theoretical developments have highlighted the importance of a two-stage approach to mathematically similar problems, where in the first stage, information is collected about the global behaviour of the problem, such as the identification of the rate parameters which cause the greatest variation in dose or nuclear activity, before a second stage examines a problem with its scope restricted by the information from the first. In the second stage, for example, Quasi-Monte Carlo sampling may be used in a restricted parameter space. The current work concentrates on the first stage and consists of a review of possible techniques with a detailed examination of the most promising pathways reduction approach, examined directly using Fispact-II. All the evidence obtained demonstrates the strong potential of this approach.
Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) has been advanced as a suitable alternative therapy for the treatment of glioma. BNCT involves the selective uptake of a tumour with a boron-bearing substance and subsequent irradiation with a beam of neutrons. Previous attempts with BNCT have utilized thermal neutrons, but this involves resection of the scalp prior to treatment and is only possible with superficial tumours. An alternative is to use a beam of intermediate-energy neutrons which will produce a peak in the thermal neutron fluence at depth in tissue and so enable deep-seated tumours to be treated. A neutron beam with a mean energy of approximately 9 keV, obtained by filtering neutrons from a reactor with aluminium, argon and sulphur, has been used to explore the radiobiological advantage over thermal and 24 keV neutrons for BNCT. Irradiation of V79 and HeLa cells at various positions in a polythene phantom suggest that the beam is less cytotoxic for a given neutron fluence than the 24 keV neutron beam previously considered as an alternative to thermal neutrons for BNCT. However, optimization of boron distribution via the development of new compounds still appears to be necessary for BNCT to become a safe alternative option for the treatment of glioma.
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