ACCURACY OF THE BRCAPRO RISK ASSESSMENT MODEL IN MALES PRESENTING TO MD ANDERSON FOR BRCA TESTING

ACCURACY OF THE BRCAPRO RISK ASSESSMENT MODEL IN MALES PRESENTING TO MD ANDERSON FOR BRCA TESTING Publication No. _______ Carolyn A. Garby, B.S. Supervisory Professor: Banu Arun, M.D. Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) syndrome is due to mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Women with HBOC have high risks to develop breast and ovarian cancers. Males with HBOC are commonly overlooked because male breast cancer is rare and other male cancer risks such as prostate and pancreatic cancers are relatively low. BRCA genetic testing is indicated for men as it is currently estimated that 4-40% of male breast cancers result from a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation (Ottini, 2010) and management recommendations can be made based on genetic test results. Risk assessment models are available to provide the individualized likelihood to have a BRCA mutation. Only one study has been conducted to date to evaluate the accuracy of BRCAPro in males and was based on a cohort of Italian males and utilized an older version of BRCAPro. The objective of this study is to determine if BRCAPro5.1 is a valid risk assessment model for males who present to MD Anderson Cancer Center for BRCA genetic testing. BRCAPro has been previously validated for determining the probability of carrying a BRCA mutation, however has not been further examined particularly in males. The total cohort consisted of 152 males who had undergone BRCA genetic testing. The cohort was stratified by indication for genetic counseling. Indications included having a known familial BRCA mutation, having a personal diagnosis of a BRCA-related cancer, or having a family history suggestive of HBOC. Overall there were 22 (14.47%) BRCA1+ males and 25 (16.45%) BRCA2+ males. Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed for the cohort overall, for each particular indication, as well as for each cancer subtype. Our findings revealed that the BRCAPro5.1 model had perfect discriminating ability at a threshold of 56.2 for males with breast cancer, however only 2 (4.35%) of 46 were found to have BRCA2 mutations. These results are significantly lower than the high approximation (40%) reported in previous literature. BRCAPro does perform well in certain situations for men. Future investigation of male breast cancer and men at risk for BRCA mutations is necessary to provide a more accurate risk assessment.

(Reseña sobre) Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: An Annotated Bibliography 1975-2002, de Christopher L. Anderson y Paul C. Smith

Fil: Contreras, María de los Angeles. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

(Reseña sobre) Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: An Annotated Bibliography 1975-2002, de Christopher L. Anderson y Paul C. Smith

Fil: Contreras, María de los Angeles. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

(Reseña sobre) Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: An Annotated Bibliography 1975-2002, de Christopher L. Anderson y Paul C. Smith

Fil: Contreras, María de los Angeles. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

(Table 1) Comparison of localities where Switzianthus (Anderson & Anderson) has been found with Dejerseya and Heidiphyllum occurrence

Fossil leaves of the Voltziales, an ancestral group of conifers, rank among the most common plant fossils in the Triassic of Gondwana. Even though the foliage taxon Heidiphyllum has been known for more than 150 years, our knowledge of the reproductive organs of these conifers still remains very incomplete. Seed cones assigned to Telemachus have become increasingly well understood in recent decades, but the pollen cones belonging to these Mesozoic conifers are rare. In this contribution we describe the first compression material of a voltzialean pollen cone from Upper Triassic strata of the Transantarctic Mountains. The cone can be assigned to Switzianthus Anderson & Anderson, a genus that was previously assumed to belong to an enigmatic group of pteridosperms from the Triassic Molteno Formation of South Africa. The similarities of cuticle and pollen morphology, together with co-occurrence at all known localities, indicate that Switzianthus most probably represents the pollen organ of the ubiquitous Heidiphyllum/Telemachus plant.

Second-order Lagrangians admitting a first-order Hamiltonian formalism

Let p: E —» JV be an arbitrary fibred manifold over a connected n-dimensional manifold N oriented by a volume form v = dx1^-...^dxn, and let pk: JkE → N be the bundle of K-jets of local sections of p, with projections Plk : JkE → JlE for every k ≥ 1

Symmetry considerations in the empirical k.p Hamiltonian for the study of intermediate band solar cells

With the purpose of assessing the absorption coefficients of quantum dot solar cells, symmetry considerations are introduced into a Hamiltonian whose eigenvalues are empirical. In this way, the proper transformation from the Hamiltonian's diagonalized form to the form that relates it with Γ-point exact solutions through k.p envelope functions is built accounting for symmetry. Forbidden transitions are thus determined reducing the calculation burden and permitting a thoughtful discussion of the possible options for this transformation. The agreement of this model with the measured external quantum efficiency of a prototype solar cell is found to be excellent.

Involutivity of the Hamilton-Cartan equations of a second-order Lagrangian admitting a first-order Hamiltonian formalism

Involutivity of the Hamilton-Cartan equations of a second-order Lagrangian admitting a first-order Hamiltonian formalism

Empiric k·p Hamiltonian calculation of the band-to-band photon absorption in semiconductors

The Empiric k·p Hamiltonian method is usually applied to nanostructured semiconductors. In this paper, it is applied to a homogeneous semiconductor in order to check the adequacy of the method. In this case, the solutions of the diagonalized Hamiltonian, as well as the envelope functions, are plane waves. The procedure is applied to the GaAs and the interband absorption coefficients are calculated. They result in reasonable agreement with the measured values, further supporting the adequacy of the Empiric k·p Hamiltonian method.

Four-Band Hamiltonian for fast calculations in intermediate-band solar cells

The 8-dimensional Luttinger–Kohn–Pikus–Bir Hamiltonian matrix may be made up of four 4-dimensional blocks. A 4-band Hamiltonian is presented, obtained from making the non-diagonal blocks zero. The parameters of the new Hamiltonian are adjusted to fit the calculated effective masses and strained QD bandgap with the measured ones. The 4-dimensional Hamiltonian thus obtained agrees well with measured quantum efficiency of a quantum dot intermediate band solar cell and the full absorption spectrum can be calculated in about two hours using Mathematica© and a notebook. This is a hundred times faster than with the commonly-used 8-band Hamiltonian and is considered suitable for helping design engineers in the development of nanostructured solar cells.

Integrability of second-order Lagrangians admitting a first-order Hamiltonian formalism

Second-order Lagrangian densities admitting a first-order Hamiltonian formalism are studied; namely, i) necessary and sufficient conditions for the Poincaré–Cartan form of a second-order Lagrangian on an arbitrary fibred manifold p : E → N to be projectable onto J 1 E are explicitly determined; ii) for each of such Lagrangians, a first-order Hamiltonian formalism is developed and a new notion of regularity is introduced; iii) the variational problems of this class defined by regular Lagrangians areprovedtobeinvolutive