Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping the location of peritoneal metastases using the peritoneal cancer index and the correlation with overall survival: a retrospective study.

PURPOSE Cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) is a promising treatment for patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC). Our objective was to identify new prognostic factors within the Peritoneal Cancer Index (PCI) score in PC patients. METHODS 140 patients (60 ovarian, 45 colon, 14 gastric, 10 pseudomyxoma peritonei, 5 mesothelioma, 6 sarcoma) with PC treated with CRS+HIPEC from 2007 to December 2013 were retrospectively included. Tumor extent and location were assessed by the PCI and residual disease was recorded using the Completeness of Cytoreduction (CC) score. All clinical data were computed in univariate and multivariate analysis using survival as primary endpoint. RESULTS The PCI remains the most important factor concerning the long-term survival. Involved areas 4, 5 and 8 are more favorable in survival vs areas 9, 10 and 11, which predict a significantly worse outcome (p<0.002). Prognosis varies not only depending on how many peritoneal areas are involved but also on the location of the primary tumor. CONCLUSION We demonstrated that the involvement of different areas in the PCI system has a significant impact on the final prognosis and survival.
Tailoring Properties of Biocompatible PEG-DMA Hydrogels with UV Light

Hydrogels are highly water-absorbent hydrophilic polymer networks, which show potential in many biocompatible applications. In previous work, we demonstrated the feasibility of using poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEG-DMA) gels polymerized with a photoinitiator for encapsulation and stabilization of painted biomimetic membrane arrays for novel separation technologies or biosensor applications. These gels were formed from PEG-DMA monomers suspended in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution and gelated by radical polymerization in the presence of the photoinitiator Darocur 1173. In this work, we show that the properties of a PEG-DMA hydrogel formed by photoinitiated polymerizetion can be tailored by varying the photocrosslinking time. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman Spectroscopy (RS) showed that the optimal crosslinking time for the gel was 6 - 10 minutes and that the water content of the gels could be tuned in the range of 50 - 90 wt%. The resistivity was between 0.8 - 3.5 Ωm, which is comparable to that of PBS. The low resistivity of the gel makes it compatible for encapsulating membranes for (ion channel based) biosensor applications. With FTIR and RS we identified spectral features of the hydrogel, which may serve as a diagnostic tool to monitor changes in the gels due to variation in parameters such as time, pH, temperature, aging or exposure to chemicals or biological material.
Computerised calculation scheme for ocular magnification with the Zeiss telecentric fundus camera

Littmann (1982) described a method to determine the magnification of the eye in order to relate the size of a retinal feature to its measured image size on a telecentric fundus camera film. This required information only about ametropia and corneal curvature. Several other methods have been reported since then which consider other biometric data to enhance the accuracy of this classical method. The purpose of this study is to describe a numerical calculation scheme to determine the magnification q of the eye in two cardinal meridians using paraxial raytracing. Our calculation scheme is based on ametropia, keratometry, as well as biometric data such as axial length, anterior chamber depth and thickness of the crystalline lens. It is described step‐by‐step in order (1) to determine the refractive powers of both surfaces of the crystalline lens, which are not directly measurable in vivo, (2) to derive the retinal image conjugate to a circular object using paraxial raytracing, (3) to fit an ellipse to the retinal image, (4) to determine the secondary principal points (Gaussian length) separately for both cardinal meridians and (5) to calculate the ocular magnification q. The power of the crystalline lens is estimated to compensate for the spherocylindrical refraction at the spectacle plane and the corneal refraction with an astigmatic component thus creating a sharp image focused at the retinal plane. The capabilities of this computing scheme are demonstrated with five clinical examples and are related to the respective values of the classical Littmann formula as well as to enhanced methods described by Bennett (1988) , Bennett et al. (1994) and Garway‐Heath et al. (1998) .
Quantitative Characterization of Heparin Binding to Tau Protein

Neurofibrillary tangles, principally composed of bundles of filaments formed by the microtubule-associated protein Tau, are a hallmark of a group of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease. Polyanionic cofactors such as heparin can induce Tau filament formation in vitro. Here we quantitatively characterize the interaction between recombinant human Tau fragment Tau244–372 and heparin (average molecular mass = 7 kDa) as well as heparin-induced fibril formation by using static light scattering, isothermal titration calorimetry, turbidity assays, and transmission electron microscopy. Our data clearly show that at physiological pH, heparin 7K, and human Tau244–372 form a tight 1:1 complex with an equilibrium association constant exceeding 106 m−1 under reducing conditions, triggering Tau fibrillization. In the absence of dithiothreitol, heparin shows a moderate binding affinity (105 m−1) to Tau244–372, similarly triggering Tau fibrillization. Further fibrillization kinetics analyses show that the lag time appears to be approximately invariant up to a molar ratio of 2:1 and then increases at larger ratios of heparin/Tau. The maximum slope representing the apparent rate constant for fibril growth increases sharply with substoichiometric ratios of heparin/Tau and then decreases to some extent with ratios of >1:1. The retarding effect of heparin in excess is attributed to the large increase in ionic strength of the medium arising from free heparin. Together, these results suggest that the formation of the 1:1 complex of Tau monomer and heparin plays an important role in the inducer-mediated Tau filament formation, providing clues to understanding the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.
Measuring and valuing mental health for use in economic evaluation

This article presents research undertaken as part of a wider programme of work concerned with measuring and health and wellbeing for economic evaluation. The focus is on developing quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in mental health, but the issues are common across all areas of health care. The article begins by reviewing the issues of what should be valued (health or broader notions of wellbeing), how mental health and wellbeing should be described, how mental health states should be valued and who should do the valuing. The article presents four pieces of work. The first is a re-analysis of the ONS Psychiatric Morbidity 2000 Survey to provide evidence on the relevance of generic measures across different mental health disorders. It found that common mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, had a significant impact on the generic preference-based measure of health in the SF-6D, but psychosis and personality disorders did not. The article then presents two studies using the ratings of people experiencing the states of health. Both studies found that people experiencing different health states gave mental health greater weight than physical health compared to members of the general public trying to imagine the health states. Finally, the article presents a study developing a condition-specific preference-based measure for calculating QALYs from an existing measure of mental health, the CORE-OM, using modern psychometric methods to construct health states amenable to valuation. It also considers a proposal to develop an entirely new QALY measure in mental health.
Social Acceptance and Readiness for the Knowledge-based Economy in Malaysia

This paper examines Malaysians’ readiness in meeting challenges in the new economy. The model is built based on the hierarchical model of awareness, involvement and contribution. The findings indicate that on average, Malaysians are still at the low level of readiness to assume the knowledge-based economy, despite government efforts to promote the new economy nationwide. Currently Malaysians are at the level of knowing what is going on, but not taking enough effort to participate and contribute to the development of the new economy. The findings support the hierarchical model, in which economic transformation towards the new economy undergoes phases of awareness, involvement and contribution.
Terminal Value Techniques in Equity Valuation - Implications of the Steady State Assumption

This paper examines the conditions necessary for calculating steady state terminal values in equity (company) valuation models. We make explicit use of the fact that a company's income statements and balance sheets can be modeled as a system of difference equations. From these difference equations, we derive conditions for steady state. The conditions ensure that the company remains qualitatively similar year by year after the valuation horizon and that it has a stable development of earnings, free cash flows, dividends and residual income. We show how steady state condition violations cause internal inconsistencies in valuation models and how this can have a substantial impact on the value estimates. Steady state is further a necessary condition for a free cash flow valuation, a dividend valuation and a residual income valuation to yield identical results when terminal values are used. The parameters of the model are common accounting and control concepts, and the derived conditions have accounting meaning, linking stock variables in the balance sheet with the flow variables in (and related to) the income statement.
Stochastic Trends and Economic Fluctuations in a Small Open Economy

In this paper we describe how restricted vector autoregressions can be employed to examine the sources of macroeconomic fluctuations. We show how cointegration restrictions can be used to identify a VAR system with common stochastic trends subject to transitory and permanent changes in average growth, and how we may investigate the system's responses to permanent shocks, i.e. to innovations to the trends. Theoretical cointegration vectors are derived from a small open economy growth model for terms of trade, real GDP, real consumption. and real investments. Applying these methods to Swedish annual data (1875-1986) we find that permanent real (supply) shocks account for most of the fluctuations in GDP, even in the short run. Copyright 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effect of investigational kisspeptin/metastin analog, TAK-683, on luteinizing hormone secretion at different stages of the luteal phase in goats

This study aimed to examine the response of luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion and ovarian steroid profile to TAK-683, an investigational metastin/kisspeptin analog, through treatment during different stages of the luteal phase in goats. Nine cycling Shiba goats (4.4 ± 2.3 years old) were assigned to early luteal phase (ELP, n = 4), mid-luteal phase (MLP, n = 4), and control (n = 5) groups. The ELP and MLP groups were administered 50 µg of TAK-683 intravenously on either day 5 or between days 7–14 after ovulation, respectively. The control group received vehicle between days 7–14 after ovulation. Blood samples were collected at 10-min (2–6 h), 2-h (6–24 h), and 24-h (24–96 h) intervals after treatment. Significant increases in plasma LH concentration were detected during the periods of 3 to 5 h and 2 to 5 h in the ELP and MLP groups, respectively. Estradiol concentrations continuously increased with the rise of basal LH secretion after TAK-683 treatment in two goats of the ELP group with a surge-like release of LH, but not in the goats without LH surge, i.e. the MLP and control group ones. Plasma progesterone concentration and the lengths of estrous cycle in all groups did not change significantly from the time before and after treatment. Present findings indicate that the responses of LH and ovarian steroids to treatment with TAK-683 depend on the stage of the luteal phase of the estrous cycle. We suggest that the stimulatory effects of TAK-683 on LH secretion are reduced in the process leading to the mid-luteal phase in cycling goats.
The role of PGP9.5 as a tumor suppressor gene in human cancer

PGP9.5 is a controversial molecule from an oncologic point of view. We recently identified frequent methylation of PGP9.5 gene exclusively in primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), suggesting that it could be a tumor suppressor gene. On the other hand, PGP9.5 was reported to be overexpressed in a subset of human cancers presumably due to intrinsic oncogenic properties or as a result of transformation. To demonstrate that PGP9.5 possesses tumor suppressive activity, we examined forced expression by stable transfection of PGP9.5 in 4 HNSCC cell lines. Although all 4 cell lines demonstrated reduced log growth rates in culture after transfection, only 2 cell lines with wild type p53 (011, 022) demonstrated decreased growth in soft agar. In 2 cell lines with mutant p53 (013, 019), we observed no altered growth in soft agar and increased sensitivity to UV irradiation. We then tested for and found a high frequency of promoter methylation in a larger panel of primary tumors including HNSCC, esophageal SCC, gastric, lung, prostate and hepatocellular carcinoma. Our data support the notion that PGP9.5 is a tumor suppressor gene that is inactivated by promoter methylation or gene deletion in several types of human cancers. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An Intraday Analysis of the Probability of Trading on the ASX at the Asking Price

We explain the probability of a trade at the asking price across time. The database contains intraday bid‐ask quotes and transaction prices on the Australian Stock Exchange. We find systematic patterns in the probability of a trade at the asking price, corresponding to previously documented return anomalies, including the day‐of‐week, end‐of‐day and turn‐of‐year anomalies. The probability is higher when a trade is of lower dollar volume, lower buy‐order imbalance, lower bid‐ask spread, when it is a trade of a smaller firm, a trade of a stock with higher trading frequency, higher price level, and the security is approved for short selling.
Epistemic Network Analysis and Topic Modeling for Chat Data from Collaborative Learning Environment

This study investigates a possible way to analyze chat data from collaborative learning environments using epistemic network analysis and topic modeling. A 300-topic general topic model built from TASA (Touchstone Applied Science Associates) corpus was used in this study. 300 topic scores for each of the 15,670 utterances in our chat data were computed. Seven relevant topics were selected based on the total document scores. While the aggregated topic scores had some power in predicting students’ learning, using epistemic network analysis enables assessing the data from a different angle. The results showed that the topic score based epistemic networks between low gain students and high gain students were significantly different ( 𝑡 = 2.00 ). Overall, the results suggest these two analytical approaches provide complementary information and afford new insights into the processes related to successful collaborative interactions.
Public Expenditures as a Fiscal Policy Tool for Sustainable Economic Growth: Its Quality Achievement and Employability in Nigeria

Empirical framework on what makes up Quality Public Expenditure (QPE) has been missing. This paper attempted to bridge this gap by creating and developing an empirical-dimensional approach on QPE. This paper employed Vector Error correction model and broad based framework based on a growth-accounting approach, through causal examination between the productive and protective expenditures and the real Gross Domestic product in Nigeria for the sample period 1979-2012. Results show that productive and protective expenditures grow along with the real GDP with the protective expenditures consistently expanding over productive expenditures. Causality was found to run from Gross domestic product to both productive and protective expenditures in Nigeria. The implication is that public expenditure has not been determined based on their productiveness but passively as a fiscal policy instrument in Nigeria. It is strongly recommended that budgetary decisions should take account of the nature of expenditure with particular allocation of resources to identified productive areas. It is this framework that should drive the Federal government’s Medium Term Expenditure framework. Keywords: Quality, Public Expenditure, Fiscal Policy, Economic Growth, Causality.
What's not Converging? East Asia's Relative Performance in Income, Health, and Education

This paper discusses East Asia's performance in terms of per capita gross domestic product growth rates over the past 40 years and compares that performance to progress primarily on measures of health. It also compares the region to the rest of the world on a set of broader development measures. It looks at the evidence of East Asian regional and global convergence in health and education, alongside evidence from the region matching global evidence of a comparatively weak link between income growth and health and education growth. This finding is echoed by available within-country evidence from the region. This paper discusses what might be behind these results, suggesting the importance of a few simple supply-side interventions coupled with the spread of demand for health and education services as sufficient to drive quality-of-life convergence.
Predicting shifting sustainability trade‐offs in marine finfish aquaculture under climate change

Defining sustainability goals is a crucial but difficult task because it often involves the quantification of multiple interrelated and sometimes conflicting components. This complexity may be exacerbated by climate change, which will increase environmental vulnerability in aquaculture and potentially compromise the ability to meet the needs of a growing human population. Here, we developed an approach to inform sustainable aquaculture by quantifying spatio‐temporal shifts in critical trade‐offs between environmental costs and benefits using the time to reach the commercial size as a possible proxy of economic implications of aquaculture under climate change. Our results indicate that optimizing aquaculture practices by minimizing impact (this study considers as impact a benthic carbon deposition ≥ 1 g C m−2 day−1) will become increasingly difficult under climate change. Moreover, an increasing temperature will produce a poleward shift in sustainability trade‐offs. These findings suggest that future sustainable management strategies and plans will need to account for the effects of climate change across scales. Overall, our results highlight the importance of integrating environmental factors in order to sustainably manage critical natural resources under shifting climatic conditions.
Seasonal Changes in Cell Proliferation in the Adult Sheep Brain and Pars Tuberalis

To adapt to seasonal variations in the environment, most mammalian species exhibit seasonal cycles in their physiology and behavior. Seasonal plasticity in the structure and function of the central nervous system contributes to the adaptation of this physiology in seasonal mammals. As part of these plasticity mechanisms, seasonal variations in proliferation rate and neuron production have been extensively studied in songbirds. In this report, we investigated whether this type of brain plasticity also occurs in sheep, a seasonal species, by assessing variations in cell proliferation in the sheep diencephalon. We administered the cell birth marker 5′-bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) to adult female sheep in July and December, during long and short photoperiod, respectively. The BrdU incorporation was analyzed and quantified in the hypothalamus, a key center for neuroendocrine regulations, as well as in other structures involved in relaying neuroendocrine and sensory information, including the median eminence, the pars tuberalis of the pituitary gland, and the thalamus. In December, 2-fold and 6-fold increases in the number of BrdU+ nuclei were observed in the hypothalamus and thalamus, respectively, when compared with July. This variation is independent of the influence of peripheral gonadal estradiol variations. An inverse seasonal regulation of cell proliferation was observed in the pars tuberalis. In contrast, no seasonal variation in cell proliferation was seen in the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricle. Many of the newborn cells in the adult ovine hypothalamus and thalamus differentiate into neurons and glial cells, as assessed by the expression of neuronal (DCX, NeuN) and glial (GFAP, S100B) fate markers. In summary, we show that the estimated cell proliferation rates in the sheep hypothalamus, thalamus, and pars tuberalis are different between seasons. These variations are independent of the seasonal fluctuations of peripheral estradiol levels, unlike the results described in the brain nuclei involved in song control of avian species.
A two-methodology comparison study of a spatial gravity model in the context of interregional trade flows

This article argues that the introduction of spatial interactions to model the determinants of origin-destination (OD) flows can potentially result in excessive contiguity. To explain flows between OD regions, it is not only what happens in the origin and destination that is relevant, but also what happens in their neighbouring regions. However, what happens if there is a high degree of overlap between origin neighbouring areas and destination neighbouring areas? The article presents an empirical illustration to re-examine the evidence presented in previous research (Alamá-Sabater et al., 2013) and more closely analyses the territorial level, focusing on the case of interregional trade of goods at the NUTS3 level (Spanish provinces). We then use two different methodologies within the framework of a spatial gravity equation for interregional trade modelling. The findings confirm the importance of spatial dependence on trade flows and in particular that logistics decisions within a province affect shipments from contiguous provinces.
Output and stock prices: an examination of the relationship over 200 years

Using data spanning 200 years we examine the nature of the long-run cointegrating behaviour between real output and real stock prices. A standard cointegration framework demonstrates that such a long-run relationship exists with both variables exhibiting significant equilibrium reversion, albeit quicker for stock prices. To further examine the nature of the equilibrium we consider two exercises. First, we consider possible time-variation in the cointegrating vector, for which we find evidence. Second, we separate the fundamental and bubble components within stock prices. Our results indicate that failure to account for these two issues can lead to errors in determining the nature of any disequilibrium between the two series, including the size and sign of the disequilibrium. Furthermore, our results reveal that the bubble component has a significant impact on future values of output growth. An out-of-sample forecasting exercise for returns shows that the time-varying model performs best and may beat the market. These results have implications for policy-makers and market practitioners alike. For the former, they are interested in the impact of stock market behaviour of the real economy, while the latter group are interested in any possible information about future stock prices.