One in two cancer patients are routinely treated with radiotherapy, using a linear accelerator to deliver the radiation dose. Conventionally, a treatment meets guidelines when the tumour is uniformly irradiated, but the surrounding normal tissue is avoided [1]. However, our recent study upsets this radiation therapy “dogma” [2]. We have shown that a radiation field with many high dose gradients...

During development of the retina, programmed cell death helps to establish the final size and distribution of various cell classes in distinct layers of the tissue. Here we show that dying cells in the developing ganglion and inner nuclear layers are clustered spatially and that gap junction inhibitors decrease the clustering of dying cells. To confirm the role of gap junctions in cell death, w...

This study aimed to investigate the cell-killing effect of HSV-tk/GCV suicide gene system driven by β-globin matrix attachment region (MAR) on ECA109 cells and its bystander effect. The integration and expression of lentivirus vectors HSV-tk and MAR-HSV-tk in ECA109 were identified using RT-PCR and Western blot; the cell survival rate and cell-killing bystander effect were detected in different...

Encouraging bystanders to intervene safely and effectively in situations that could escalate to violence-known as bystander behavior programs-is a growing yet largely untested strategy to prevent dating violence. Using a quasi-experimental design, we evaluate a low-resource, low-intensity intervention aimed at preventing dating violence among college students. The integrated behavioral model (I...

Security cameras became such a part of everyday life that their presence may escape from our conscious attention. The present research examines the impact of cameras on intervening in crime, a situation in which the classic bystander effect has been uncovered. In our experimental set up, participants witnessed how another participant (a confederate) stole money, in the presence of either two or...

There is strong evidence that biological response to ionizing radiation has a contribution from unirradiated "bystander" cells that respond to signals emitted by irradiated cells. We discuss here an approach incorporating a radiobiological bystander response, superimposed on a direct response due to direct energy deposition in cell nuclei. A quantitative model based on this approach is describe...

We develop and analyze a reaction-diffusion model to investigate the dynamics of the lifespan of a bystander signal emitted when cells are exposed to radiation. Experimental studies by Mothersill and Seymour 1997, using malignant epithelial cell lines, found that an emitted bystander signal can still cause bystander effects in cells even 60 h after its emission. Several other experiments have a...

In social species animals should fine-tune the expression of their social behavior to social environments in order to avoid the costs of engaging in costly social interactions. Therefore, social competence, defined as the ability of an animal to optimize the expression of its social behavior as a function of the available social information, should be considered as a performance trait that impa...