Fire-mediated habitat change regulates woodland bird species and functional group occurrence.

In an era characterized by recurrent large wildfires in many parts of the globe, there is a critical need to understand how animal species respond to fires, the rates at which populations can recover, and the functional changes fires may cause. Using quantified changes in habitat parameters over a ~400-yr post-fire chronosequence in an obligate-seeding Australian eucalypt woodland, we build and test predictions of how birds, as individual species and aggregated into functional groups according to their use of specific habitat resources, respond to time since fire. Individual bird species exhibited four generalized response types to time since fire: incline, decline, delayed, and bell.

SOCCAR: A randomised phase II trial comparing sequential versus concurrent chemotherapy and radical hypofractionated radiotherapy in patients with inoperable stage III Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and good performance status.

Background: Cure of lung cancer is impossible without local tumour control. This can be compromised by accelerated repopulation of tumour cells during radiotherapy and chemotherapy. A strategy to minimise accelerated repopulation might improve local control.

Clinical commissioning of online seed matching protocol for prostate radiotherapy.

Objectives: Our aim was to clinically commission an online seed matching image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) protocol using modern hardware/software for patients undergoing prostate radiotherapy. An essential constraint was to achieve this within a busy centre without reducing patient throughput, which had been reported with other techniques.

Methods: 45 patients had 3 fiducial markers inserted into the prostate and were imaged daily using kilovoltage orthogonal images with online correction applied before treatment.

The potential clinical benefit of respiratory gated radiotherapy (RGRT) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Background: There is a great deal of excitement regarding respiratory gated radiotherapy (RGRT), however there remain potential errors and controversies surrounding its use. We aim to predict an improvement in the clinical outcome of RGRT in comparison with that of continuous (non-gated) irradiation by analysing toxicity parameters.

Materials And Methods: The 4DCT scans of 15 patients, with node-positive lung cancer and > 5 mm of tumour movement, were used for this retrospective analysis.