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Diodes are also used as a radiation detector in radiotherapy: https://oncologymedicalphysics.com/diode-detectors/

joconneon Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct

My understanding is that even though immunotherapy's mechanism may seem more natural than chemotherapy and radiation, and in some instances may be a magic bullet, up-regulating the immune system can have serious consequences. I remember reading about a clinical trial showing similar progression free survival but increased grade 4-5 toxicities (requiring hospitalization or being fatal). My assumption was that these are autoimmune conditions that are aggravated in some of the patient population.

joconneon The story behind the NeuralRad organ and tumor segmentation cloud service

As a medical physicist in radiation oncology who looks at segmentations generated like these I think you are missing the application slightly. The application of these segmentations is not in diagnosis or intervention, they are used mostly by a treatment planning algorithm.

The radiation oncologist will outline the tumour and a few organs at risk manually. This segmentation algorithm would then steps in and outlines organs that the doctor would not have traditionally contoured. For a lung lesion the RO may contour the lesion and the heart but might not contour both lungs and the diaphragm.

We can then input these segmentations into a treatment planning optimization algorithm that sets the radiation beam angles and collimation to meet constraints that minimize organ dose and maximize tumour dose. So in effect the application of this sort of segmentation is to give more information to an optimizer.

Not that it doesn't have its problems! But I think it's important to note that the application is not diagnostic

joconneon Online notes from physics professor of 50 years

An emeritus professor in my department needed help setting up a printer last week. He told me he comes in to maintain his notes as he doesn't have internet at home. Started teaching in '69 and just retired.

Anyways, seemed like he has a gem of a website the type of which HN likes. He has a fondness for Lewis Carol which sometimes comes through in the notes. Also I couldn't help but to try to game his hit counter on the home page as I thought it might make him happy.

joconneon The history of wildfire modeling

The Canadian wildfire forecasting model can be downloaded at http://www.firegrowthmodel.ca/prometheus/software_e.php for those curious. I've always found these predictions lacking due to limitations in weather forecasting.

joconneon 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

Yes agreed. I worked as a Wildfire Fighter for BC gov. for the past 6 years. We had big fire seasons in 2017/2018 which were quite anomalous [0].

For example, the largest fire in 2017 was larger than the total area burned in any previous year. While 2018 surpassed the record breaking total area burned from 2017.

They were accompanied by a weather pattern that we hadn't seen before: We were setting records for the BUI, an index to track moisture content in trees, by mid June. This was accompanied by record flooding. I watched on lookout as 70 km winds pushed a fire 40 km down a valley in one day. So the primary variable in my mind was always the odd weather. I'm sure that fire suppression and invasive species are variables but the weighting was perhaps 10:1 to weather in the anomalous years.

[0] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/ab...