Examining ground and surface water changes in response to environmental variables, land use dynamics, and socioeconomic changes in Canada.

Canada's abundant and high-quality water resources support a growing human population, as well as thriving industrial and agricultural economies. However, recent intense drought conditions have raised concerns for current water resource availability. Patterns of long-term ground and surface water (GSW) changes, and their response to environmental conditions, land-use dynamics, and socioeconomic changes are not well-understood across this large and diverse country.

Outstanding catalytic activity of ultra-pure platinum nanoparticles.

Small (4 nm) nanoparticles with a narrow size distribution, exceptional surface purity, and increased surface order, which exhibits itself as an increased presence of basal crystallographic planes, can be obtained without the use of any surfactant. These nanoparticles can be used in many applications in an as-received state and are threefold more active towards a model catalytic reaction (oxidation of ethylene glycol). Furthermore, the superior properties of this material are interesting not only due to the increase in their intrinsic catalytic activity, but also due to the exceptional surface purity itself.

Differential in vitro effects of chemotherapeutic agents on primary cultures of human ovarian carcinoma.

The treatment of ovarian cancer principally relies on the use of platinum and taxane chemotherapeutic agents. Short-term clinical results have been encouraging, but long-term responses remain limited. In this report, an in vitro assay system that utilizes cells grown from human tumor explants has been used to quantitatively evaluate responses to relevant concentrations of alternative chemotherapeutic agents.

Breast cancer--response rates to chemotherapeutic agents studied in vitro.

Background: The biological efficacy of, and spectrum of action of, agents used in treatment of breast cancer are important issues in therapy planning.

Materials And Methods: Techniques used involve monolayer culture and a quantitative microtiter plate-based chemo-response assay. Precision Therapeutics' overall assessability rate is 90% for tumors of all types.

In vitro responses of ovarian cancers to platinums and taxanes.

We describe the in vitro patterns of response of explanted primary and recurrent ovarian cancers to platinum- and taxane-based chemotherapeutics. The chemoresponse assay utilizes cells that grow out from tumor fragments and are then challenged with varied concentrations of chemotherapeutic agents, coupled with a highly quantitative cell counting analysis system. The in vitro response rates for 268 primary cancer explants were 24% and 54% for carboplatin and cisplatin, respectively, and 31% and 25% for docetaxel and paclitaxel, respectively.