University of Palermo

About: University of Palermo is a education organization based out in Palermo, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 15621 authors who have published 40250 publications receiving 964384 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Palermo & Universita degli Studi di Palermo.

Semiempirical Correlation between Optical Band Gap Values of Oxides and the Difference of Electronegativity of the Elements. Its Importance for a Quantitative Use of Photocurrent Spectroscopy in Corrosion Studies

Abstract: A semiempirical correlation between the optical band gap of binary oxides and the difference of electronegativity between the oxygen and metallic elements (Pauling's extraionic energy) is proposed. In the frame of the proposed correlation an estimate of the repulsive term in the total lattice energy of ionic oxides is obtained in very good agreement with the existing data. An extension of the correlation to the ternary oxides and hydroxides is proposed by using the concept of average cationic or anionic group electronegativity. The usefulness of the proposed correlation for the in situ characterization of passive films on metals and alloys by photocurrent spectroscopy is illustrated by reporting some preliminary experimental results on Sn and AlTi alloy.

Early Skin Toxicity as a Predictive Factor for Tumor Control in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Treated with Sorafenib

Abstract: Introduction. Sorafenib is an oral multikinase inhibitor that targets Raf kinase and receptor tyrosine kinases and has led to a longer median overall survival (OS) time and time to progression (TTP) in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study was conducted to assess the link between the antitumor efficacy of sorafenib and its early cutaneous side effects in advanced HCC patients. Materials and Methods. All patients received 800 mg dailyofsorafenibuntilprogressionorunacceptabletoxicities. We retrospectively analyzed the incidence of rash and hand–foot skin reactions (HFSR) during the first month of treatment, comparing tumor control (partial response plus stable disease) and TTP. Results. Sixty-five HCC patients treated with sorafenib were included in this analysis: 47 (73.3%) received sorafenib after failure of some local treatment, whereas 18 (27.7%) received it as first-line treatment. Twenty-nine patients developed at least grade 1 skin toxicity (rash, 13; HFSR, 16). In patients who developed skin toxicity, the tumor control rate was 48.3%, versus 19.4% in patients without cutaneous side effects. The median TTPwas8.1monthsinthegroupofpatientswithskintoxicity versus 4.0 months in those without skin toxicity. This difference was also statistically significant on multivariate analysis. A borderline statistically significant difference wasalsoobservedintermsofOSinpatientswithearlyskin toxicity. Conclusions. Skin toxicity should be closely monitored in HCC patients treated with sorafenib in relation to its potential role as a surrogate marker of efficacy. The Oncologist 2010;15:000–000

Interval estimation for the breakpoint in segmented regression: a smoothed score-based approach

Abstract: Summary This paper is concerned with interval estimation for the breakpoint parameter in segmented regression. We present score-type confidence intervals derived from the score statistic itself and from the recently proposed gradient statistic. Due to lack of regularity conditions of the score, non-smoothness and non-monotonicity, naive application of the score-based statistics is unfeasible and we propose to exploit the smoothed score obtained via induced smoothing. We compare our proposals with the traditional methods based on the Wald and the likelihood ratio statistics via simulations and an analysis of a real dataset: results show that the smoothed score-like statistics perform in practice somewhat better than competitors, even when the model is not correctly specified.