Monthly Archives: September 2023

New eBook: Khan’s Treatment Planning in Radiation Oncology

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The fifth edition of Khan’s Treatment Planning in Radiation Oncology has been added to the library’s collection. This is a comprehensive text of the clinical, physical, and technical aspects of radiation treatment planning. 

Khan’s Treatment Planning in Radiation Oncology incorporates the most up-to-date imaging techniques and radiation treatment modalities used to treat patients with cancer. The fifth edition contains new chapters on patient safety, knowledge-based treatment planning and the treatment planning implications of combined radiation and immunotherapy.

MSKCC contributors include Dr. Gig S. Mageras, Dr. Ellen D. Yorke, Dr. Guang Li, and Dr. Andrew Jackson.

New Researcher Support Tools in Scopus

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Scopus has updated their website and with it has added several new tools and resources aimed to provide additional support for researchers and authors.

Researcher Discovery

Scopus introduced it’s new Researcher Discovery tool to help researchers find and connect with leading researchers in their discipline as well as find collaborators for projects, all with simple keyword searching.

How to Use Researcher Discovery

  1. To get started, click on Researcher Discovery, found on the Scopus main page menu bar
  2. Enter the keywords to quickly find researchers in a particular field
  3. Choose the criteria you want to use to sort your search results
  4. Quickly refine results based publication date, country, or even organization
  5. Preview Profile includes a synopsis of the authors information (including most recent affiliation and e-mail address, years of experience, and research topics)
  6. Clicking on Full Profile allows you to explore an author’s full Scopus profile including metrics

Make Connections in Scopus!

Researcher Discovery is a vital tool for early and mid-career researchers that can increase their visibility, and support collaboration, network building, and career development; or for those researchers embarking into a new or emerging field to identify, connect, and build collaboration among researchers.

For more information, please see Scopus’s Researcher Discovery FAQ page.

 

Author Position Metric

Scopus just announced a new metric available within their Author Profile pages. This new Author Position metric is designed to help researchers better track and understand their research performance, including providing a comprehensive overview of their performance over time that can be used for promotion, tenure, and grant applications.

What is Author Position and how does it work?

Most research includes a number of contributing authors, and using traditional author metrics all co-authors are weighed equally when accounting for citation impact. This often over-inflates the contributions of some authors and minimizes the contributions of other authors.

With the new Author Position metric, Scopus now captures the following authorship positions, including:

  • First author: The first author mentioned in the publication
  • Last author: The last author mentioned in the publication
  • Corresponding author: An author is marked as the corresponding author in the publication (since June 2020, all new documents in Scopus can contain multiple corresponding authors, prior published and indexed documents can only have one corresponding author)
  • Co-author: Co-authors are any author that is not a first, last or corresponding author
  • Single author: An author is the only author of a publication

How to Find Author Position Metrics

From the Author Profile page, find the Author Position preview in the lower right column. From there, select View Author Position Details to expand details on authorship position metrics.

Joan Massague Scopus Author Profile    Joan Massague expanded Author Position metrics

Antioxidants Promoting Cancer Growth, A First-In-Class Targeted microRNA Therapy and More

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  • New research by scientists at Vanderbilt and Cornell universities demonstrated that cancer-killing immune system T cells become dysfunctional or “exhausted” within hours of encountering a tumor, significantly reducing the effect of immunotherapy. The challenge now becomes to identify targets that could prevent or reverse it. So far, the researchers have identified biomarkers that allow them to predict whether T cells will respond to a tumor or not, which is helpful for personalizing immunotherapies. The study was published in Nature Immunology.
  • A recent study discovered that two new genes, NEK2 and INHBA, cause resistance to chemotherapy in head and neck cancer patients and that “silencing either gene can make cancer cells previously unresponsive to chemotherapy subsequently respond to it.” These two genes also play role in other cancers, so these findings can potentially expand to managing different cancer types. The study is published in Molecular Cancer.
  • A new study found that antioxidants such as vitamins C and E can promote cancer growth and metastasizing by stimulating the development of new blood vessels in tumors, boosting their growth and spread. This new finding warrants caution in taking antioxidant supplements without true medical necessity. The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
  • A new cancer therapy has been introduced by Purdue University researchers. “A first in class” targeted microRNA therapy that slows tumor growth was reported in an article published in Oncogene.
  • A randomized trial demonstrated that Artificial Intelligence-enabled breast cancer mammography screening was more effective than the standard reading by two experienced radiologists. The study was published in Lancet Oncology. At the same time, two other studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that AI didn’t improve the detection of advanced adenomas leading to colorectal cancer. Thus, it remains unclear whether AI use could reduce the incidence of colon cancer. The first study is a randomized trial, and the second one is a systematic review and meta-analysis.
  • Two recent studies evaluated Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbox responses to cancer related searches on the World Wide Web. The first study found that chatbox responses were of high quality but had some limitations. The second study found that a chatbot’s responses on cancer treatments were inconsistent with recommendations in National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines.