bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of the isoflurane-sparing effects of lidocaine and fentanyl during surgery in dogs
Authors: Steagall Paulo V. M. , Teixeira Neto Francisco J. , Minto Bruno W. , Campagnol Daniela , Corrêa Mariana A.
Published: August 2006

Objective—To evaluate the isoflurane-sparing effects of lidocaine and fentanyl administered by constant rate infusion (CRI) during surgery in dogs.

Design—Randomized prospective study.

Animals—24 female dogs undergoing unilateral mastectomy because of mammary neoplasia.

Procedures—After premedication with acepromazine and morphine and anesthetic induction with ketamine and diazepam, anesthesia in dogs (n = 8/group) was maintained with isoflurane combined with either saline (0.9% NaCl) solution (control), lidocaine (1.5 mg/kg [0.68 mg/lb], IV bolus, followed by 250 μg/kg/min [113 μg/lb/min], CRI), or fentanyl (5 μg/kg [2.27 μg/lb], IV bolus, followed by 0.5 μg/kg/min [0.23 μg/lb/min], CRI). Positive-pressure ventilation was used to maintain eucapnia. An anesthetist unaware of treatment, endtidal isoflurane (ETiso) concentration, and vaporizer concentrations adjusted a nonprecision vaporizer to maintain surgical depth of anesthesia. Cardiopulmonary variables and ETiso values were monitored before and after beginning surgery.

Results—Heart rate was lower in the fentanyl group. Mean arterial pressure did not differ among groups after surgery commenced. In the control group, mean ± SD ETiso values ranged from 1.16 ± 0.35% to 1.94 ± 0.96%. Fentanyl significantly reduced isoflurane requirements during surgical stimulation by 54% to 66%, whereas the reduction in ETiso concentration (34% to 44%) observed in the lidocaine group was not significant.

Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—Administration of fentanyl resulted in greater isoflurane sparing effect than did lidocaine. However, it appeared that the low heart rate induced by fentanyl may partially offset the improvement in mean arterial pressure that would be expected with reduced isoflurane requirements.
Sodium iodide I 131 treatment of dogs with nonresectable thyroid tumors: 39 cases (1990–2003)
Authors: Turrel Jane M. , McEntee Margaret C. , Burke Blaise P. , Page Rodney L.
Published: August 2006

Objective—To determine outcome for dogs with nonresectable thyroid carcinomas treated with sodium iodide I 131 and identify factors associated with outcome.

Design—Retrospective case series.

Animals—39 dogs.

Procedures—A definitive or presumptive diagnosis of thyroid tumor was made on the basis of cytologic or histologic examination, abnormal accumulation of sodium pertechnetate Tc 99m during scintigraphy, or both, and dogs were treated with sodium iodide I 131. Dogs with cervical thyroid tumors were evaluated 3 to 6 weeks after 131I therapy, and residual tumor was resected when feasible.

Results—Prior to 131I therapy, 32 dogs had a solitary mass and 7 had metastases; 21 were hyperthyroid, 16 were euthyroid, and 2 were hypothyroid. Median survival time for dogs with local or regional tumors (ie, stage II or III) was significantly longer (839 days) than median survival time for dogs with metastasis (366 days). Tumor site (cervical vs ectopic), dose of sodium iodide I 131, age, body weight, treatment (131I therapy alone vs 131I therapy followed by surgery), and serum T4 concentration prior to 131I therapy were not significantly associated with survival time. Three dogs died of radioiodine-associated myelosuppression within 3 months after treatment, but no specific factor associated with development of toxicosis was identified.

Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—Results suggested that 131I therapy may result in prolonged survival times in dogs with nonresectable thyroid tumors, regardless of serum thyroxine concentration prior to treatment. Dogs undergoing 131I therapy should be monitored for signs of bone marrow suppression.
Panicsville: Paul Virilio and the Esthetic of Disaster
Authors: Thrift Nigel
Published: August 2006

This article is a synoptic review of the recent work of Paul Virilio, conducted through the book, City of Panic. I point to the problems with the increasingly apocalyptic content and tone of Virilio's work on modernity by referring to recent social science research on the city that makes it possible to construct a somewhat more hesitant account, not least, or so I argue, because hesitant accounts are closer to the way the world is.
Dis-Location/re-Location: “Aloerosa”
Authors: Farber Leora
Published: August 2006

This paper explores ways in which difference is grafted into/onto skin, with reference to a selected series of photographic prints. These prints form part of a larger body of artwork and an educational program and research project, titled Dis-location/Re-location. The project investigates personalized postcolonial identity through reference to colonialism, geographies, histories, political positions, and cultural affiliations. Artwork is used as a space within which to interrogate personal and collective relationships to South African British colonial history and its current personal and public residues of identity construction within the context of postcolonial, post-apartheid South Africa. In the artwork, skin forms a figurative and metaphorical site of intervention for the grafting of tensions, ambiguities, and differences in the formation of new hybrid, transforming conceptions of personal and collective identity formations.
Virilio's Electronic Dérive
Authors: Conley Verena Andermatt
Published: August 2006

“Virilio's Electronic Dérive” provides a summary of Ville panique. It shows that the culture critic joins a contemporary debate on the city, democracy, and citizenship. It argues that by writing at the limit of a shift in style and mode of communication, the critic takes what is a tendency for truth. Virilio's apocalyptic style refuses any kind of nuancing. He argues for general disaster under the impact of technologies. Thus, he does not bring out economic injustices, on the one hand, and, on the other, risks losing credibility by being seen as technophobic.
The Redemption of the Real
Authors: Featherstone Mark
Published: August 2006

In this paper I consider Walter Benjamin's final essay, “On the Concept of History,” and Slavoj Žižek's recent essay on political messianism, The Puppet and the Dwarf, in order to emphasize the import of revolutionary politics to both writers. I critique Žižek's implicit condemnation of Benjamin's futuristic messianism by showing how the author of “On the Concept of History” was already materialistic prior to the Slovene's psychoanalytic correction. Apart from this critique of The Puppet and the Dwarf, I also rely on Žižek's thesis to uncover the revolutionary materialism of Benjamin's work. In this respect I seek to follow Žižek's own strategy of philosophical buggery to redeem the profane materialism, or real, of Benjamin's thought from those who would seek to relate his work to current liberal theories of delay and deferral.
Trickster's Metempsychosis in the Mythic Age of Globalization: The Recurrence of the Leprechaun in Irish Political Culture
Authors: Keohane Kieran
Published: August 2006

Tribunals, public inquiries and similar institutions, increasingly common in the political culture of the United Kingdom, the European Union, and in America, can be seen as exemplifying the auto-correcting, self-reflexive capacity of political institutions in information-rich and communicatively fluent societies. They represent the modernization of political culture guided by communicative rationality, paralleling the accelerated modernization of globalization. This view is elaborated and modified by an interpretation based on a philosophy of history as recurrence or “metempsychosis” (Nietzsche, Vico, Joyce) and the mythic figure of Trickster as formulated in anthropology and psychoanalysis (Radin, Hyde, Jung). Specifically, the political culture of globalization is cast in terms of the reconfiguration of the archaic and an intensification of myth (Benjamin). An examination of the ongoing Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians in Ireland shows how tribunals are theaters in which the politician appears as a recurrence of a Trickster archetype adept at negotiating and playing this liminal and changing context. Tribunals struggle not so much to eradicate and replace Trickster by systems of formal rationality, but to redeem his vital energy and creativity.
Going West: Migration and the Post-Communist World in Recent European Film
Authors: Clarke David
Published: August 2006

This article examines a number of recent European films that tackle the issue of migration from former communist countries to Western Europe. The key films discussed in the article all seek to show how the West is constructed as an object of desire for the inhabitants of the former communist bloc and how the protagonists' fantasies of the West are sustained by ideology even in the face of the harsh realities of contemporary capitalism. Slavoj Žižek's Lacanian model of ideology is applied to the film texts in order to highlight these issues, particularly his notion of “traversing fantasy.” The article concludes by examining the position of the audience in relation to this process.
Breaking the Surface
Authors: Griffin Joanna
Published: August 2006

Research for an arts project is often as much about the experience of looking for information as the findings themselves. This article is about an investigation into the presence of submarines in British waters. The research was for a new body of work that resulted in the presentation of film, installation and interactive work at festivals, in galleries and online. In this case the fieldwork, into the inevitably political realm of nuclear submarines, led to a series of uneasy situations.
The New Face of Global Hollywood:Black Hawk Downand the Politics of Meta-Sovereignty
Authors: Lisle Debbie , Pepper Andrew
Published: August 2006

This article uses Ridley Scott's 2001 blockbuster film Black Hawk Down to examine the claim that popular film is the “newest component of sovereignty.” While the topic of the film – the 1993 UN/US intervention in Somalia – lends itself to straightforward politicization, this article is equally interested in the film's production history and its reception by global audiences. While initial reactions to the film focused on its ideological commitments (e.g. racism, collusion between Hollywood and the Pentagon, post-September 11th patriotism), these readings continually posed an imagined “America” against “the world.” This article argues that Black Hawk Down is not about sovereignty as traditionally conceived, that is about national interest shaping global affairs. Rather, Black Hawk Down articulates, and is articulated by, a new and emerging global order that operates through inclusion, management and flexibility. Drawing on recent theoretical debates over this new logic of rule, this article illustrates how Black Hawk Down invokes much more diffuse, complex and deterritorialized categories than national sovereignty. In effect, Scott's film goes beyond traditional notions of sovereignty altogether: its production, signification and reception deconstruct simple notions of “America” and “the world” in favor of what Hardt and Negri call “Empire,” what Zizek calls “post-politics,” and what we refer to as “meta-sovereignty.”
Luck, Power, Corruption, Democracy? Judging Arts Prizes
Authors: Street John
Published: August 2006

Arts prizes have become an increasingly prominent part of the cultural landscape, influencing not only the careers of individual artists but also the policies of cultural industries and cultural institutions. Despite this, relatively little detailed attention has been given to the arts prize. While at the same time media-generated conventional wisdom has tended to portray prize juries as acting either corruptly or irrationally. This article challenges such views, and argues that the prize jury needs to be understood as a form of political institution, in which decision rules, power and other factors play their part. This conclusion is reached through the detailed study of three UK arts prizes.
Distribution and Media Flows
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: August 2006

While production, text and audience have been extensively covered by media and cultural studies scholars, the study of distribution is in its infancy. This essay argues that the distributive moment of the media cycle – incorporating delivery to audiences, business-to-business distribution and the redistribution of profits and information derived from audiences – is critical to an understanding of twenty-first-century cultural politics. It offers an analysis of distribution, and considerations on the politics of alternative modes of distribution.
The Conservative Assault on America: Cultural Politics, Education and the New Authoritarianism
Authors: Giroux Henry A.
Published: August 2006

This article argues that while the United States has been drifting toward the ideological right since the 1980s, the election of George W. Bush marks a qualitative turn toward authoritarianism. This authoritarian turn is traced through the rise of four antidemocratic tendencies in American society: neoliberalism, religious fundamentalism, militarism and educational conformism. All these fundamentalisms will be accentuated with the reelection of George W. Bush, and most of the democratic gains of the last century will be rolled back. In opposition to this rising tide of authoritarianism, the author calls for the primacy of a cultural politics in which learning is linked to social change and pedagogy is embraced as a moral and political practice that takes place in a wide range of cultural sites.
Follow the Image
Authors: Garnett Joy
Published: August 2006

New York artist Joy Garnett outlines her methods as a painter who works from sampled or found images. She discusses her relationship to her sources, which have included science photographs, declassified military and news media imagery. She describes the challenges she has encountered while working with different types of source material: from technical obstacles (invisible phenomena that require lenses and other optical devices) to socio-political mediation (government secrecy and the search for declassified imagery), to legal encumbrances (accusations of “piracy” and copyright infringement regarding a sampled image). Garnett explains her sense of the continued relevance and critical potential of art in light of these challenges, specifically the uses of painting in an age of mass production and digital technology.
Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics
Authors: Dean Jodi
Published: August 2006

What is the political impact of networked communications technologies? I argue that as communicative capitalism they are profoundly depoliticizing. The argument, first, conceptualizes the current political-economic formation as one of communicative capitalism. It then moves to emphasize specific features of communicative capitalism in light of the fantasies animating them. The fantasy of abundance leads to a shift in the basic unit of communication from the message to the contribution. The fantasy of activity or participation is materialized through technology fetishism. The fantasy of wholeness relies on and produces a global both imaginary and Real. This fantasy prevents the emergence of a clear division between friend and enemy, resulting instead in the more dangerous and profound figuring of the other as a threat to be destroyed. My goal in providing this account of communicative capitalism is to explain why in an age celebrated for its communications there is no response.
Mao Zedong’s Impact on Cultural Politics in the West
Authors: Ross Andrew
Published: August 2006

In China, the legacy of Mao Zedong is selectively remembered; the “late Mao,” in particular is officially considered to have made a “mistake” in launching the Cultural Revolution. In the West, we remember the romantic impact of Mao’s ideas on the Cold War left and on the generation of 1968, but we have little understanding of their often subterranean influence on the shape of cultural politics since the 1970s. This essay examines the historical case, and then tries to chart the path of Mao’s influence on educational reform, cultural and community activism, and legislative change in a period dominated by the high-profile campaigns of the Culture Wars. It argues that Maoist precepts like self-criticism, youth revolt and consciousness-raising have had a longer and more successful career in the West than in China itself. The continuing left debate between proponents of cultural justice and advocates of the primacy of social justice has also had a Maoist flavor. The essay concludes that the export of Mao’s ideas - in both the Cultural Revolution and the Culture Wars - has contributed greatly to our global understanding of the changed relationship between culture and politics.
The Anthropologist as Witness in Contemporary Regimes of Intervention
Authors: Marcus George E.
Published: August 2006

Many of the regions of the globe where anthropologists have traditionally worked are now places overtaken by extreme forms of social and political disorder – epidemics, ethnic violence, the dissolution of state apparatuses – necessitating the intervention of supranational forms of aid and authority. This paper surveys the predicament of the producer of anthropological knowledge “as usual” in such regimes of intervention. What identity does the anthropologist create? What is the self-claimed rhetoric of authority for research undertaken in such situations? Three alternatives are surveyed – the expert, the reporter and the witness – with the third focused upon since it has increasingly become an expressed self-identity or ideology of anthropological research within scenes of intervention. Witnessing offers a return to a position of a kind of disinterestedness following on the binds of postcolonial critiques, which makes the presence of independent anthropologists possible but problematic amid projects of interventionist aid, rescue and military action.
Hardt and Negri’s Information Empire: A Critical Response
Authors: Poster Mark
Published: August 2006

Hardt and Negri’s Empire contains dystopian gestures toward information technology. In this essay I examine these aspects of their important work, without ignoring their more positive understandings of the topic. I hope to sustain three arguments about networked digital information humachines that counter the dystopian thesis: (1) They are an evolving, unavoidable and central aspect of globalization; (2) they contain countless dangers and afford considerable resources for highly dangerous prevailing agglomerations of power; (3) they offer serious points of resistance to those powers and may serve as a base for developing auspicious, decentralized, multicultural global networks. These theses are mutually related, sustainable only together.
Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach
Authors: Kahn Richard , Kellner Douglas
Published: August 2006

We argue that the continued growth of the Internet, both as a form of mainstream media and as a tool for organizing democratic social interactions, requires that Internet politics be retheorized from a standpoint that is both critical and reconstructive. While we undertake an approach that is critical of corporate forms and hegemonic uses of the Internet, we advocate for new software developments such as blogs and trace the oppositional deployments of the Internet made by a wide variety of groups in the cause of progressive cultural and political struggle. In this regard, we describe how the Internet has facilitated the worldwide emergence of the anti-globalization, anti-war and anti-capitalism movements, even as it has coalesced local communities and groups, and so we conclude that the future of Internet politics must be thought dialectically as both global and local. We end by noting the relevance of the ideas of Guy Debord, with his focus on the construction of situations, the use of technology, media of communication and cultural forms to promote a revolution of everyday life.
Changing Palestine–Israel Ecologies: Narratives of Water, Land, Conflict, and Political Economy, Then and Now, and Life to Come
Authors: Fischer Michael M.J.
Published: August 2006

Three forms of narrative heuristics are identified and explored in the search for political inclusiveness, robustness, and legitimacy: (1) environmental topics: toxics and the need for second-order or reflexive institutions of modernization; water and the need for getting beyond zero-sum games; urban public goods and infrastructures; medical services and distributed care; animals and biodiversity and the need to pay attention to feedback that signals our inability to achieve perfect control and hence dependence on one another; (2) perspectival topoi: single-eyed stories of identity, ownership, interest, and mastery; double-voiced stories of mutual recognition, sub-versions, and alternative realities; and triangulated stories of polyvocal, interactive, risk-taking experimentalism; (3) processual narratives of structural transformation: political economies (agrarian, industrial, and postindustrial), second-order modernization and biopolitical forms of governance from societies of discipline to societies of control or regulation (by codes, flows, distributed feedback, desubjugated knowledges, and capillaries of micropower); ecological feedback systems ; and new grammars of multitude or modes of enhanced self-organized civil society coordination that can either work around governments and bureaucracies or can create public spheres from which to address and pressure government.1
Political Culture, Ethical Cosmopolitanism, and Cosmopolitan Democracy
Authors: Nash Kate
Published: August 2006

Sociological theories of cosmopolitanism address its development at different geographical scales, raising questions of the global demos and the global political community. This article considers international human rights as a resource for building global solidarity, and argues that the way in which international human rights are made and enforced primarily by national states must be taken seriously if they are to be considered as such. “Ethical cosmopolitanism” (Benhabib 2002) must be forged among the citizens of national territories for global social democracy to be a real possibility. The concepts of political culture and cultural politics are discussed as valuable for thinking through the relationship between ethical cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan democracy and there is preliminary investigation of three different types of “jurisgenerative politics,” considered as sites of cultural politics rather than – as Benhabib does – as contributing directly to ethical cosmopolitanism.
Protesting Cartography: Places the United States Has Bombed
Authors: O’Hara Slavick Elin
Published: August 2006

Protesting Cartography: Places the United States has Bombed is a series of protest drawings of US military interventions. Utilizing surveillance imagery, military websites such as the US Department of Defense battle plans, aerial photography, mass media, and maps, each drawing is based on a rendering of a place, almost always viewed from the air, which has been targeted by US bombers. I choose to make these drawings by hand rather than to employ photographic or other mechanical means in the hope that people will take their time with them.

This project is an attempt to provide: a comprehensive and more humane acknowledgement of war; a revelation and analysis of our own complicity and passive acceptance of things as they are; different and multiple ways to access, interpret, and act on the magnitude of war and its aftermath; the truth; an uncovering of covert operations; and a remembrance of the dead for the living.
Gam3r 7H30RY
Authors: Wark McKenzie
Published: August 2006

If game theory was objective, rational, abstract; gamer theory is subjective, intuitive, particular. If game theory starts with the self-contained agent, like a prisoner in a cell, looking out at the world; gamer theory wonders how the agency of the gamer comes into being as something distinct in the first place. The rise of the computer game as an emergent cultural form calls for an approach to cultural theory that might emerge organically out of the experience of game play. In an era in which many aspects of everyday life seem increasingly game-like, one might well ask what relation computer games have to this agon of the everyday. Perhaps computer games present the ethos of the digital world in its pure form, as a place where the “playing field” really is level, where the rules really seem to be fair. Perhaps the computer game is the almost-utopian double to a world made over as a gamespace.
Prolegomenon to a Right to Disappear
Authors: Goh Irving
Published: August 2006

As the title suggests, this article takes its motivation from Blanchot's phrase of “a right to disappear.” For Blanchot then, it was a question of a right of disappearing from biopolitics or the subjectivity of the human to a spatial regulation. That question cannot be more urgent for us today. This is so when one takes into account the technics of the global “War on Terror” as directed by the American political-economic-military complex. Through that, the world is seeing but the accelerated intensification and dissemination of military and civilian surveillance technologies. Everything in this world is gradually marked as an electronic signature, so that when any living being in this world at any moment turns imminently dangerous to the global peace and security, it will be located and destroyed swiftly. That is the irresistible twenty-first-century world-picture in which all lives are being regulated. We are made as if citizens of it. The figure of the citizen today, less than being a figure of the future of the human or of future freedom of the human, is more a figure of citizen-as-target. How does one begin to assert “a right to disappear” against this subjectivity then? This article argues, through a reading of Agamben's The Man Without Content, that such a potentiality – near impossible but nonetheless necessary – lies in life itself, when one re-cognizes living as poiesis.
“The Target Is the People”: Representations of the Village in Modernization and U.s. National Security Doctrine
Authors: Cullather Nick
Published: August 2006

In the 1950s and 1960s, the term village served as a cardinal construct in modernization theory and counterinsurgency doctrine, signifying local resistance to the global power of the United States. Nation builders devised two strategies – community development and strategic hamlets – that reveal the attitudes and characteristics they ascribed to the village and its conceptual opposite, the city. The key innovations came from Albert Mayer, a New York real-estate developer who designed the modernist city of Chandigarh and India's village reconstruction scheme. Mayer's ideas persist in forms as diverse as Washington's country-club suburbs and the Pentagon's techniques for urban assault.
Sars Epidemic and the Disclosure of Singapore Nation
Authors: Huat Chua Beng
Published: August 2006

The 2003 epidemic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) tested the ability of several states in East Asia to keep it under control; this essay chronicles the steps taken by the Singapore government. Once the epidemic broke through confinement in hospitals into the community at large, efforts to keep it under control became discursively a “war against SARS”; epidemic is a “disease” that invades potentially all the bodies of the entire nation and the state is the only organization that is capable of defeating it. Strategically, the government placed exposed individuals under strict quarantine and introduced new regulations for personal hygiene for all. The public had to be mobilized to assist in tracing the exposed, help the quarantined, and to observe the personal hygiene procedures voluntarily. Success of the government's strategies was absolutely dependent on the voluntrism of the entire population. In this sense, during its course, the epidemic produced a “national” community that the long-ruling single-party state government had been skeptical to affirm. The end of the epidemic became a moment of affirmation of the nation as community.
National Stroke Association guidelines for the management of transient ischemic attacks
Authors: Johnston S. Claiborne , Nguyen‐Huynh Mai N. , Schwarz Miriam E. , Fuller Kate , Williams Christina E. , Josephson S. Andrew , Hankey Graeme J. , Hart Robert G. , Levine Steven R. , Biller Jose , Brown Robert D. , Sacco Ralph L. , Kappelle L. Jaap , Koudstaal Peter J. , Bogousslavsky Julien , Caplan Louis R. , van Gijn Jan , Algra Ale , Rothwell Peter M. , Adams Harold P. , Albers Gregory W.
Published: August 2006

Objective

Transient ischemic attacks are common and important harbingers of subsequent stroke. Management varies widely, and most published guidelines have not been updated in several years. We sought to create comprehensive, unbiased, evidence‐based guidelines for the management of patients with transient ischemic attacks.

Methods

Fifteen expert panelists were selected based on objective criteria, using publication metrics that predicted nomination by practitioners in the field. Prior published guidelines were identified through systematic review, and recommendations derived from them were rated independently for quality by the experts. Highest quality recommendations were selected and subsequently edited by the panelists using a modified Delphi approach with multiple iterations of questionnaires to reach consensus on new changes. Experts were provided systematic reviews of recent clinical studies and were asked to justify wording changes based on new evidence and to rate the final recommendations based on level of evidence and quality. No expert was allowed to contribute to recommendations on a topic for which there could be any perception of a conflict of interest.

Results

Of 257 guidelines documents identified by systematic review, 13 documents containing 137 recommendations met all entry criteria. Six iterations of questionnaires were required to reach consensus on wording of 53 final recommendations. Final recommendations covered initial management, evaluation, medical treatment, surgical treatment, and risk factor management.

Interpretation

The final recommendations on the care of patients with transient ischemic attacks emphasize the importance of urgent evaluation and treatment. The novel approach used to develop these guidelines is feasible, allows for rapid updating, and may reduce bias. Ann Neurol 2006
Two‐Dimensional Acetylenic Scaffolding: Extended Donor‐Substituted Perethynylated Dehydroannulenes
Authors: Kivala Milan , Mitzel Frieder , Boudon Corinne , Gisselbrecht Jean‐Paul , Seiler Paul , Gross Maurice , Diederich François
Published: August 2006

Starting from (Z)‐bis(N,N‐diisopropylanilino)‐substituted tetraethynylethene (TEE), perethynylated octadehydro[12]‐ and dodecadehydro[18]annulenes were prepared by oxidative Hay coupling. The dodecadehydro[18]annulene with six peripheral N,N‐diisopropylanilino substituents was characterized by X‐ray crystallography. Elongation of the Z‐bisdeprotected TEE by Cadiot–Chodkiewicz coupling with 1‐bromo‐2‐(triisopropylsilyl)ethyne provided a Z‐configured bis(butadiyne), which after alkyne deprotection afforded under Hay coupling conditions N,N‐diisopropylanilino‐substituted perethynylated hexadecadehydro[20]‐ and tetracosadehydro[30]an‐nulenes. The diisopropylanilino substituents enhance the properties of these unprecedented all‐carbon perimeters in several distinct ways. They ensure their solubility, increase their stability, and importantly, engage in strong intramolecular charge‐transfer interactions with the electron‐accepting all‐carbon cores, resulting in intense, bathochromically shifted charge‐transfer bands in the UV/Vis spectra. The charge‐transfer character of these bands was confirmed by protonation‐neutralization experiments. The redox properties of the new carbon‐rich chromophores were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and rotating disk voltammetry, which indicated different redox behavior for aromatic (4n+2 π electrons) and antiaromatic (4n π electrons) dehydroannulenes.
The effect of tamoxifen on the pharmacokinetics of letrozole in female rats
Authors: Tao X. , Brodie A. M. H. , Nnane I. P.
Published: August 2006

The effects of single doses of tamoxifen (TAM; 0.5–5 mg/kg, i.v.) and chronic pretreatment with TAM (0.1–5.0 mg/kg/day, i.p. for 7 consecutive days) on letrozole (0.5 mg/kg, i.v.) pharmacokinetics were evaluated in female Sprague‐Dawley rats. The plasma concentration‐time profiles of letrozole (0.1–2.0 mg/kg) after single i.v. doses were analysed by the non‐compartment model with terminal half‐lives (t1/2,λz) ranging from 34.3 to 37.5 h. The volume of distribution at the terminal phases (Vd(λz)) ranged from 1.9 to 2.1 l/kg and clearance (CL) varied from 0.036 to 0.042 l/(h·kg). After co‐administration of TAM and letrozole intravenously, thet1/2, Vd(λz)andCLof letrozole were not significantly altered. Chronic pretreatment with TAM significantly decreased thet1/2of letrozole by about 33%, and increased its clearance by an average of 40%. However, TAM pretreatment did not significantly affect theVd((λz)of letrozole in female rats. Co‐administration of letrozole and TAM orally increased the absorption half‐life of letrozole threefold although the absolute bioavailability remained unchanged. These observations suggest that single oral doses of TAM delay the absorption of letrozole while chronic pretreatment with TAM accelerates the elimination of letrozole, probably due to induction of cytochrome P450 enzymes in rats. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Is it time for pan‐European, open‐end real estate funds?
Authors: Skinner David , Bradford David
Published: August 2006

Recent changes in Europe's real estate market will probably help open‐end funds become more broadly accepted for pan‐European investment. These changes include greater awareness of the benefits of such structures, the growing appetite of institutional investors for a strategic exposure to non‐domestic real estate and the globalization of the investment management industry. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Atorvastatin has cardiac safety at intensive cholesterol‐reducing protocols for long term, yet its cancer‐treatment doses with chemotherapy may cause cardiomyopathy even under coenzyme‐Q10 protection
Authors: Caner Metin , Sonmez Bingur , Kurnaz Ozlem , Aldemir Caner , Salar Seda , Altug Tuncay , Bilir Ayhan , Altinoz Meric A.
Published: August 2006

Statins provide strong clinical benefits via reducing stroke deaths, and they are also considered for tumor reduction and chemo‐sensitization. High dose atorvastatin in adults (80 mg daily, approx. 1 mg/kg) is proven to afford greater protection against cardiac deaths than does a standard lipid‐lowering dose in coronary syndrome. For cancer trials, mega doses up to 30 mg/kg have been used for short term treatments but neither a high nor a mega‐dose of atorvastatin has been tested for long term cardiac safety. This may be of special concern, since some animal studies showed deleterious effects of statins on cardiac tissue, which may be related with coenzymeQ (CoQ) depletion. We performed an electron microscopic analysis of rat hearts after low, high‐or mega‐dose atorvastatin therapy and with or without MNU (methyl‐nitrosourea)‐stress. MNU + daily high dose atorvastatin treatment for 13 months did not produce severe cardiac toxicity with CoQ. However, at mega doses (30 mg/kg) and with MNU, mitochondrial damage and myofibrillary disintegration was obvious. Strong proliferation of mitochondria under high dose atorvastatin therapy with CoQ may explain the lack of cardiotoxicity; and this finding seems to parallel recent data that statins induce HNF‐4 and PPAR‐alpha, both responsible for mitochondria‐proliferation. Employment of statins for tumor chemo‐sensitization at high‐dosage and for long term treatments may require strategies to direct the mevalonate‐entry differentially into cardiac and tumor cells and to develop a protocol analogous to folic acid salvage of methotrexate toxicity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Acute exercise stimulates macrophage function: possible role of NF‐κB pathways
Authors: Silveira Elza M. S. , Rodrigues Mariana F. , Krause Maurício S. , Vianna Damiana R. , Almeida Bibiana S. , Rossato Juliane S. , Oliveira Lino P. , Curi Rui , de Bittencourt Paulo I. Homem
Published: August 2006

Moderate physical activity when performed on a regular basis presents a number of benefits to the whole organism, especially regarding immune system function, such as augmenting resistance to infections and to cancer growth. Although glutamine production by active muscle cells as well as neuroendocrine alterations mediated by the chronic adaptation to exercise may play a role, the entire mechanism by which exercise makes the immune system aware of challenges remains mostly uncovered. This is particularly true for the effects of an acute exercise session on immune function. In this work, circulating monocytes/macrophages from sedentary rats submitted to an acute (1 h) swimming session were tested for the ability of phagocytosing zymosan particles, phorbol miristate acetate (PMA)‐induced hydrogen peroxide production, nitric oxide (NO) release (assessed by nitrate and nitrite production) and the expression of NO synthases (NOS‐1, NOS‐2 and NOS‐3). The results showed that an exercise bout induced a 2.4‐fold rise in macrophage phagocytic capacity (p = 0.0041), a 9.6‐fold elevation in PMA‐induced hydrogen peroxide release into the incubation media (1‐h, p = 0.0022) and a 95.5%‐augmentation in nitrite basal production (1‐h incubation; p = 0.0220), which was associated with a marked expression of NOS‐2 (the inducible NOS isoform; p = 0.0319), but not in other NOS gene products. Although NOS‐2 expression is nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB)‐dependent, no systemic oxidative stress was found, as inferred from the data of plasma TBARS and glutathione disulphide (GSSG) to glutathione (GSH) ratio in circulating blood erythrocytes which remained constant after the acute exercise. Also, no stressful situation seemed to be faced by monocytes/macrophages, since the expression of the 70‐kDa heat shock protein (HSP70) remained unchanged. We conclude that NF‐κB‐dependent induction of NOS‐2 and macrophage activation must be related to local factor(s) produced in the surroundings of monocytes/macrophages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Designed Boronate Ligands for Glucose‐Selective Holographic Sensors
Authors: Yang Xiaoping , Lee Mei‐Ching , Sartain Felicity , Pan Xiaohan , Lowe Christopher R.
Published: August 2006

In this study, 2‐acrylamidophenylboronate (2‐APB) was synthesised and its ability to bind with glucose was investigated both in solution and when integrated into a holographic sensor. Multiple forms of 2‐APB, resulting from the neighbouring effect of the amido group with the boronic acid through an intramolecular BO‐coordinated interaction, were shown to exist in solution by using multinuclear NMR spectrometry. It was found that 2‐APB predominantly adopts a zwitterionic tetrahedral form at physiological pH values. The complex formation of 2‐APB with glucose and lactate was investigated in DMSO; 2‐APB favours binding with glucose rather than lactate and generates a five‐membered‐ring complex. Furthermore, a 2‐APB‐based holographic sensor displayed a significant response to glucose with little interference from lactate, and with no dependence on pH in the physiological pH range. These features suggest that the new ligand 2‐APB is a potential candidate for the development of glucose‐selective sensors.
Cover Picture: A Synthetic Breakthrough into an Unanticipated Stability Regime: A Series of Isolable Complexes in which C6, C8, C10, C12, C16, C20, C24, and C28 Polyynediyl Chains Span Two Platinum Atoms (Chem. Eur. J. 25/2006)
Authors: Zheng Qinglin , Bohling James C. , Peters Thomas B. , Frisch Anja C. , Hampel Frank , Gladysz J. A.
Published: August 2006

Record‐breaking PtCxPt polyynes have been synthesized, isolated, and fully characterized by J. A. Gladysz et al.; the results are reported in their Full Paper on page 6486 ff. The spectroscopic and structural properties of PtCxPt establish a number of interesting chain‐length effects, which are becoming increasingly well defined for polyynes.
A phase II study of gemcitabine and capecitabine in metastatic renal cancer
Authors: Stadler Walter M. , Halabi Susan , Rini Brian , Ernstoff Marc S. , Davila Enrique , Picus Joel , Barrier Robert , Small Eric J. ,   for Cancer and Leukemia Group B
Published: August 2006

BACKGROUND

The objective of this study was to verify previous reports of activity with gemcitabine plus a fluoropyrimidine in patients with metastatic renal cell cancer in a multiinstitutional setting.

METHODS

Eligibility included a Zubrod performance status from 0 to 2, no prior gemcitabine or fluoropyrimidine therapy, and normal organ function. Patients received gemcitabine at a dose of 1000 mg/m2 on Days 1, 8, and 15 and capecitabine at a dose of 830 mg/m2 twice daily on Days 1 through 21 on a 28‐day cycle with specified dose reductions for baseline renal insufficiency. The primary endpoint was the response rate, which was assessed every 8 weeks. The statistical plan tested the hypothesis that the response rate was 5% versus an alternative of 15%.

RESULTS

Sixty patients were enrolled, and 4 of those patients never started treatment. Of the 56 evaluable patients, 79% of patients underwent prior nephrectomy, 75% of patients received prior systemic therapy, and 75% of patients had clear cell histology. Risk stratification revealed that 34%, 43%, and 16% of patients were in Risk Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Toxicity (graded according to the National Cancer Institute's Common Toxicity Criteria [version 2.0]) included Grade 3 or 4 neutropenia in 45% of patients, Grade 2 or greater fatigue in 32% of patients, Grade 2 or greater nausea in 29% of patients, Grade 2 or greater hand‐foot reaction in 39% of patients, and Grade 2 or greater diarrhea in 22% of patients. Six patients responded (11%; 95% confidence interval, 4–22%), and the overall median survival was 14.5 months.

CONCLUSIONS

Gemcitabine plus capecitabine had modest activity in patients with metastatic renal cancer, although the degree of activity and its associated toxicity would not support further evaluation in a Phase III trial of unselected patients. More focused investigations to identify patients most likely to benefit or to enhance activity with additional agents would be reasonable. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.
Phase I study of capecitabine in combination with temozolomide in the treatment of patients with brain metastases from breast carcinoma
Authors: Rivera Edgardo , Meyers Christina , Groves Morris , Valero Vicente , Francis Deborah , Arun Banu , Broglio Kristine , Yin Guosheng , Hortobagyi Gabriel N. , Buchholz Thomas
Published: August 2006

BACKGROUND

A single‐institution Phase I clinical trial was conducted to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) and define the safety profile of temozolomide and capecitabine when used in combination to treat brain metastases from breast cancer.

METHODS

Patients were eligible if they had bidimensionally measurable supratentorial or infratentorial brain metastasis from histologically confirmed breast carcinoma. Patients could have received up to 3 prior chemotherapy regimens. Temozolomide and capecitabine were administered concomitantly to 4 sequential cohorts at different dosing levels on Days 1–5 and Days 8–12, with cycles repeated every 21 days until disease progression.

RESULTS

Twenty‐four patients with multiple brain lesions were treated, including 14 patients with newly diagnosed brain metastases and 10 patients with recurrent brain metastases. Only 1 patient was chemotherapy‐naive. Fatigue and nausea were the most commonly observed toxicities observed at any dose levels. Significant antitumor activity was observed, with a total of 1 complete and 3 partial responses (18% objective response rate) in the brain. The median response duration was 8 weeks (range, 6–64 weeks) and the median time to progression in the brain was 12 weeks (range, 3–70 weeks). Neurocognitive function improved or remained stable in patients with a response or stable disease.

CONCLUSIONS

The combination of temozolomide and capecitabine is an active, well‐tolerated regimen. The observed antitumor activity warrants further evaluation of this combination as an alternative to or in combination with whole‐brain radiation therapy for the treatment of multiple brain metastases. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.
Oral outpatient chemotherapy medication errors in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Authors: Taylor James A. , Winter Laura , Geyer Leah J. , Hawkins Douglas S.
Published: August 2006

BACKGROUND.

Although medication errors are 1 of the most common types of medical errors, their frequency in pediatric patients receiving oral outpatient chemotherapeutic agents is unknown. The prescribing, dispensing, and parental administration of these medications to children receiving treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) were systematically reviewed to determine the rate and types of medication errors occurring in these patients.

METHODS.

During a 2‐month study period, parents of children with ALL were contacted and asked to participate in the study before a regularly scheduled clinic appointment. At the visit, the parent demonstrated how each medication was administered. A pediatric oncologist reviewed the medical record to determine the correct treatment regimen for study patients. After comparing the correct treatment regimen with what was administered, a classification of “no medication error,” “medication error,” or “cannot determine” due to insufficient information was made for each indicated drug. Identified medication errors were subclassified as prescribing, dispensing, or administration errors.

RESULTS.

Data on 172 chemotherapeutic medications for 69 patients were analyzed. One or more errors occurred with 17 of the 172 (9.9%) medications; a classification of “cannot determine” was made for 12 (7.0%) medications. Among the 17 medication errors there were 12 (7.0%) administration errors and 5 (2.9%) prescribing errors. There were no pharmacy dispensing errors. All errors were due to incorrect dosing or failure to administer an indicated medication. At least 1 medication error occurred in 13 of the 69 (18.8%) study patients.

CONCLUSIONS.

Prescribing and administration medication errors occurred with nearly 10% of chemotherapeutic drugs administered to outpatient children with ALL. Systematic changes, including computerized physician order entry and simplification of treatment protocols, should be considered. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.