01). CONCLUSIONS Our data, reflecting the largest reported experience to date, demonstrate that adjuvant therapy for resected GEP NETs is negatively associated with RFS and confers no OS benefit. Selection bias enriching our treatment cohort for individuals with unmeasured high-risk characteristics likely explains some of these results; future studies should focus on patient subsets who may benefit from adjuvant therapy. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The Housing First (HF) model of permanent supportive housing for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness has a strong evidence base that has largely been driven by researchers in the field of community psychology in partnership with community-based organizations. However, important gaps in the HF literature remain. Implementing rigorous research designs to further the evidence for HF requires immense resources to fund both the housing intervention and the research activities. In the absence of such resources, university-community partnerships may be established to integrate research within business-as-usual services and utilize existing housing units. This first person account presents a “post-mortem” exploration of an attempt to conduct a randomized trial of scattered-site and single-site approaches to HF within a community context from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in the endeavor. Despite strengths of the research collaborative, the project did not come to completion due to a series of both insurmountable and avoidable barriers. Yet, the experience illuminated several potential challenges researchers and housing providers conducting work in this area may encounter, such as ever-changing homeless service system policies that may impact research and organizational procedures. Lessons learned and recommendations for preventing or overcoming systems-level barriers and potential challenges within the university-community partnership are described. © 2020 Society for Community Research and Action.BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The number of patients diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) at an advanced age has increased. The aim of this study is to evaluate the age at which disease-specific survival (DSS) significantly decreases in HNSCC. METHODS We performed a retrospective study of 5469 patients with HNSCC treated at our center (1985-2016). External validation with 2082 oral squamous cell carcinomas from a collaborative institution from another continent was performed. RESULTS We observed an orderly decrease in overall survival as age at diagnosis increased. There were no differences in DSS based on age for patients 85 had a 2.19 times higher risk (95% CI 1.68-2.87; P  less then  .001). CONCLUSIONS DSS started to significantly decrease in HNSCC at 80 years old. These findings, validated in an independent cohort, indicate that chronological age on its own should not withhold curative treatment in the majority of patients with HNSCC. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.PURPOSE To commission an open source Monte Carlo (MC) dose engine, “MCsquare” for a synchrotron-based proton machine, integrate it into our in-house C++ based I/O user interface and our web-based software platform, expand its functionalities, and improve calculation efficiency for intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT). METHODS We commissioned MCsquare using a double Gaussian beam model based on in-air lateral profiles, integrated depth dose of 97 beam energies, and measurements of various spread-out Bragg peaks (SOBPs). Then we integrated MCsquare into our C++ based dose calculation code and web-based second check platform “DOSeCHECK”. We validated the commissioned MCsquare based on twelve different patient geometries and compared the dose calculation with a well-benchmarked GPU-accelerated MC (gMC) dose engine. We further improved the MCsquare efficiency by employing the CT resampling approach. We also expanded its functionality by adding a linear energy transfer (LET)-related model-dependent biological ntly efficient and powerful to achieve Monte Carlo-based and LET-guided robust optimization in IMPT, which will be done in the future studies. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.A simple and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for the determination of Fingolimod in human blood. The analyte and internal standard (IS) Fingolimod-d4 were extracted from 300 μL of human blood using protein precipitation coupled with solid-phase extraction method. The chromatographic separation was achieved by Kinetex biphenyl column (100 × 4.6 mm, 2.6 μm) column under isocratic conditions at the flow rate of 0.8 mL/min and column temperature maintained at 45°C. Isoprenaline nmr The detection of analyte and IS was carried out by tandem mass spectrometry, operated in positive ion and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) acquisition mode. The method was fully validated for its selectivity, precision, accuracy, linearity, stability, detection and quantification limit. The extraction recovery of Fingolimod in human blood ranged from 98.39 % to 99.54 %. The developed method was linear over the concentration range of 5-2500 pg/mL with detection limit of 1 pg/mL. The developed method was validated and successfully applied for pharmacokinetics study after oral administration of Figolimod capsules. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.The importance of microbial and plant communities in the control of the diversity and structure of soil animal communities has been clarified over the last decade. Previous research focused on abiotic factors, niche separation and spatial patterns. Significant gaps still exist in our knowledge of the factors that control the stability of these communities over time. We analysed a nine-year data set form the national Long-term Ecological Research Network of Latvia. We focused on 117 oribatid species from three Scots pine forests of different age (150 yrs) and structure. For each forest type, 100 samples were collected each year, providing very high replication and long time series for a soil community. We assessed different aspects of stability we used a dynamic null model, parametrised on observed growth rates, to test the hypothesis that asynchrony in species populations stabilises total community size; we also analysed alpha and beta diversity over time to test the hypothesis that temporal variation in species composition and relative abundances is controlled by forest attributes.