The addition of ifosfamide to cisplatin, doxorubicin, and methotrexate did not enhance EFS or overall survival for patients with osteosarcoma. The addition of MTP to chemotherapy resulted in a statistically significant improvement in overall survival and a trend toward better EFS.

The addition of ifosfamide in this dose schedule to standard chemotherapy did not enhance EFS. The addition of MTP to chemotherapy might improve EFS, but additional clinical and laboratory investigation will be necessary to explain the interaction between ifosfamide and MTP.

The infrared emission limb sounder MIPAS (Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding) will be operated as an ESA core instrument on the ENVISAT-1 satellite. Near real time retrieval of pressure, temperature (p,T) and volume mixing ratio (VMR) of six key species (O 3 , H 2 O, HNO 3 , CH 4 , N 2 O and NO 2 ) from calibrated spectra will be performed in the Level 2 processor of the ENVISAT Payload Data Segment. An ESA supported study was carried out for the development of an optimized (with respect to speed and accuracy) retrieval algorithm suitable for the implementation in MIPAS Level 2 processor. In the framework of this study, an optimized forward / retrieval code was implemented based on the global fit approach. In this approach all the spectra of a limb-scanning sequence are simultaneously fitted in order to correctly account for error correlations in the altitude domain. Besides, only spectral intervals which are sensitive to the retrieved parameters are analyzed by using a microwindow approach. This also minimizes interferences of spectral signatures from atmospheric species with unknown concentration. Finally, a sequential retrieval of the target species VMR profiles is performed. The trade-off between run time and accuracy of the retrieval was optimized from both the physical and mathematical point of view, with optimizations in the program structure, in the radiative transfer model and in the computation of the retrieval Jacobian. The attained performances of the retrieval code are: noise error on temperature < 2 K at all the altitudes covered by the typical MIPAS scan (8-53 km with 3 km resolution), noise error on tangent pressure < 3 % , noise error on VMR of the target species < 5 % at most of the altitudes covered by the standard MIPAS scan. The run-time required to perform p,T and VMR retrieval of the five MIPAS target species from a limb-scanning sequence of 16 limb-views is less than 1 minute on a modern work-station.