Objectives: The aim of this study was to develop a decision support tool to assess the potential benefits and costs of new healthcare interventions.

Methods: The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) commissioned the development of a Cancer Risk Management Model (CRMM)—a computer microsimulation model that simulates individual lives one at a time, from birth to death, taking account of Canadian demographic and labor force characteristics, risk factor exposures, and health histories. Information from all the simulated lives is combined to produce aggregate measures of health outcomes for the population or for particular subpopulations.

Results: The CRMM can project the population health and economic impacts of cancer control programs in Canada and the impacts of major risk factors, cancer prevention, and screening programs and new cancer treatments on population health and costs to the healthcare system. It estimates both the direct costs of medical care, as well as lost earnings and impacts on tax revenues. The lung and colorectal modules are available through the CPAC Web site (www.cancerview.ca/cancerrriskmanagement) to registered users where structured scenarios can be explored for their projected impacts. Advanced users will be able to specify new scenarios or change existing modules by varying input parameters or by accessing open source code. Model development is now being extended to cervical and breast cancers.

Polycaprolactone is a bioresorbable polymer that has potential for tissue engineering of bone and cartilage. In this work, we report on the computational design and freeform fabrication of porous polycaprolactone scaffolds using selective laser sintering, a rapid prototyping technique. The microstructure and mechanical properties of the fabricated scaffolds were assessed and compared to designed porous architectures and computationally predicted properties. Compressive modulus and yield strength were within the lower range of reported properties for human trabecular bone. Finite element analysis showed that mechanical properties of scaffold designs and of fabricated scaffolds can be computationally predicted. Scaffolds were seeded with BMP-7 transduced fibroblasts and implanted subcutaneously in immunocompromised mice. Histological evaluation and micro-computed tomography (μCT) analysis confirmed that bone was generated in vivo. Finally, we have demonstrated the clinical application of this technology by producing a prototype mandibular condyle scaffold based on an actual pig condyle.

A Warren-Averbach1-4 X-ray line profile analysis was applied to broadened X-ray diffraction peaks from copper deformed in fatigue. The copper specimens were fatigued by four-point bending at peak-strain amplitudes between 0.00105 and 0.00442 in./in., and measurements were made at various fractions of the total fatigue life. The analysis results in an estimation of (a) an average coherently diffracting domain size normal to the diffracting planes and (b) an rms strain distribution function where the strain normal to the diffracting planes is averaged over a given distance at all points in the diffracting crystals and expressed as a function of averaging distance.

Prior to fatigue cycling, the annealed copper exhibited extinction, which reduced the integrated intensity from the low-angle reflections. After fatigue cycling, the integrated intensity increased with increasing strain amplitude of fatigue. The integrated intensities and the rms strains were established during the first few percent of the fatigue life and were found to increase with fatigue strain amplitude. The measured strains were larger in the <100> direction than in the <111> direction, but the absolute values were small. On the basis of transmission electron microscopy of thin foils, these results may be explained by assuming the strains are due to the presence of numerous dislocation dipoles.