Hijacked organic, limited local, faulty fair trade: what's a radical to eat?

Organic farming has been hijacked by big business. Local food can have a larger carbon footprint than products shipped in from overseas. Fair trade doesn't address the real concerns of farmers in the global South.

Determination of the 4 mm Gamma Knife helmet relative output factor using a variety of detectors.

Though the 4 mm Gamma Knife helmet is used routinely, there is disagreement in the Gamma Knife users community on the value of the 4 mm helmet relative output factor. A range of relative output factors is used, and this variation may impair observations of dose response and optimization of prescribed dose. To study this variation, measurements were performed using the following radiation detectors: silicon diode, diamond detector, radiographic film, radiochromic film, and TLD cubes.

Implementation and utility of a daily ultrasound-based localization system with intensity-modulated radiotherapy for prostate cancer.

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical feasibility of daily computer-assisted transabdominal ultrasonography for target position verification in the setting of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) for prostate cancer.

Methods And Materials: Twenty-three patients with clinically localized prostate cancer were treated using a sequential tomotherapy IMRT technique (Peacock) and daily computer-assisted transabdominal ultrasonography (BAT) for target localization. Patients were instructed to maintain a full bladder and were placed in the supine position using triangulation tattoos and a leg immobilizer to minimize pelvic rotation.

Quasi-independent monitor unit calculation for intensity modulated sequential tomotherapy.

The number of linac monitor units (MU) from intensity modulated sequential tomotherapy (IMST) is substantially larger than the MU delivered in conventional radiation therapy, and the relation between MU and dose is obscure due to complicated variation of the beam intensities. The purpose of this work was to develop a practical method of verifying the MU and dose from IMST so that the MU of each arced beam could be double-checked for accuracy. MU calculations for 41 arced beams from 14 IMST patients were performed using the variables of vane open fraction time, field size, target depth, output factor, TMR, and derived intensity distribution.