BACKGROUND The Agricultural Health Study (AHS) is a prospective cohort study of licensed pesticide applicators from Iowa and North Carolina enrolled 1993-1997 and followed for incident cancer through 2002. A previous investigation in this cohort linked exposure to the organophosphate fonofos with incident prostate cancer in subjects with family history of prostate cancer. OBJECTIVES This find...

As part of quality assurance (QA) in high dose rate brachytherapy, it is necessary to verify that the source dwell positions correspond to the radiographic markers used in simulation and treatment planning. The procedure is well established for linear tandem applicators. However, with the advent of ring applicators, this has become more critical and challenging. This work describes a new approa...

AIMS To explore cancer risk from date of birth until 1994 in children, born 1958 or later, of Swedish male pesticide applicators. METHODS Records of male pesticide applicators licensed 1965-76 were linked to the Multigeneration Register. The records of their offspring were then linked to the Swedish Cancer Registry and the Cause of Death Register. RESULTS In total 51 cases of cancer were ob...

Retinal degeneration is the leading cause of visual impairment in older adults. An association between retinal degeneration and fungicide use was observed previously among farmer pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study, a large study of farm families from Iowa and North Carolina. The objective of this investigation was to determine whether wives of these farmer pesticide applicat...

A previous publication of 57,311 pesticide applicators enrolled in the US Agricultural Health Study (AHS) produced disparate findings in relation to multiple myeloma risks in the period 1993-2001 and ever-use of glyphosate (32 cases of multiple myeloma in the full dataset of 54,315 applicators without adjustment for other variables: rate ratio (RR) 1.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.5 to 2.4; ...

Purpose: To evaluate the radiation attenuation properties of PC-ISO, a bio-compatible, sterilizable 3D printing material and its suitability for customized gynecologic (GYN) brachytherapy 15 applicators. Method: A custom radiochromic film dosimetry apparatus was 3D-printed in PC-ISO. The apparatus contained a single catheter channel and a slit to hold a radiochromic segment. A brachytherapy dos...

Uniform heating of tumor tissue to therapeutic temperatures without damaging surrounding normal tissue is required for optimal local heat therapy of cancer. This paper describes an algorithm for online computer control that will allow the therapist to minimize the standard deviation of measured intratumoral temperatures. The method is applicable to systems incorporating multiple surface and/or ...

Current microwave hyperthermia applicators are not well suited for uniform heating of large tissue regions. The objective of this research is to identify an optimal microwave antenna array for clinical use in hyperthermia treatment of cancer. For this aim we present a novel 434MHz applicator design based on a metamaterial zeroth order mode resonator, which is used to build larger array configur...

Pyrethroids are the active ingredients in most insecticides available to consumers for residential use in the United States. Yet despite their dominance in the marketplace, there has been no attempt to analyze for most of these compounds in watercourses draining residential areas. Roseville, California was selected as a typical suburban development, and several creeks that drain subdivisions of...

Antennas are the building block of radiative hyperthermia (HT) applicators. This study proposes a compact UWB antenna specifically tailored to meet requirements for deep HT array The proposed Open Ridged-Waveguide (ORWG) antenna, which is an adaptation double-ridged horn operates over frequency band 400–800 MHz. It was experimentally assessed as single element. quality metrics considered were r...