Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving patient selection towards personalized treatment decisions in esophageal cancer

Om de overleving van patienten met een lokaal gevorderd slokdarmcarcinoom te verbeteren worden patienten behandeld met chemoradiotherapie alvorens geopereerd te worden. Echter, niet iedereen heeft baat bij deze neoadjuvante chemoradiotherapie (nCRT). Het doel van dit promotieonderzoek was om de selectie en behandeling van patienten met slokdarmkanker te verbeteren en zo toe te werken naar een gepersonaliseerde behandeling. In dit proefschrift werd aangetoond dat endoechografie de behandeling in 29% van de patienten beinvloedde na stadiering met een 18F-FDG PET/CT-scan. Echter, zelfs na stadiering met deze beeldvormende technieken bleek de beoordeling van lymfekliermetastasen vaak inaccuraat. Re-stadiering na nCRT en voor de slokdarmoperatie met CT-scans bleek nuttig, maar matig effectief, waarbij op basis van literatuuronderzoek een prominentere rol blijkt te zijn weggelegd voor 18F-FDG PET/CT-scans. In een gepersonaliseerde behandeling is naast een adequate stadiering, een goede inschatting welke patient baat heeft bij nCRT onmisbaar. Hoewel uitbreiding van traditionele inclusiecriteria voor nCRT niet tot een toename van bijwerkingen en mortaliteit leidde, was de overleving wel significant lager. Daarnaast veranderde nCRT de prognostische waarde van een vrije circumferentiele resectie marge op de overleving. Patienten met een pathologisch complete respons (pCR: 25-42%) zouden in de toekomst mogelijk voordeel hebben bij een ‘wait-and-see’ beleid. In dit proefschrift werd aangetoond dat textural features, verkregen uit PET/PET-CT-scans, waardevol zijn in de predictie van pCR. Tot slot bleek in een pilotstudie dat diffusie gewogen magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) van additionele waarde was op de standaard 18F-FDG PET/CT-scan in de detectie van pCR.
Microscopic anatomy of the sural nerve in the postnatal developing rat: a longitudinal and lateral symmetry study

Rat sural nerve is widely used in experimental studies investigating injury and regeneration of the peripheral nervous system. However, it has not yet been established whether morphological and morphometric parameters differ within corresponding levels of the rat sural nerve. The aims of the present study were to investigate the normal morphological and morphometric aspects of the sural nerve in postnatal developing female rats, with special attention to longitudinal morphology and lateral symmetry. Rats aged 30, 90 and 180 days were killed, and proximal and distal segments of the right and left sural nerves were prepared for light microscopy and morphometric study. No differences were found between the proximal and distal segments or between the right and left sides at the same levels. In addition, postnatal growth continuously and symmetrically affected the sural nerve fascicles and myelinated fibres. Fibre population distribution was also affected by increasing body weight; distribution was unimodal at 30 days, and by 180 days this distribution was established as bimodal. We concluded that the sural nerve is long and constant in its morphology and presents a continuous and symmetrical growth, more pronounced between 30 and 90 days of age, thus providing a good model for experimental neuropathies.
Talking in Multiple Voices: Using Qualitative Research Modalities to Challenge the Language of Assessment, Diagnostics and Labeling in Schools

Abstract This paper looks at the ways in which various modalities of qualitative research can complexify children in the face of statistically-based assessment measures, psychiatric diagnoses, and other labels of risk labels used in schools. The authors look at such labeling as what Bhabha (1994) terms “metonymy,” or a perceptual flattening process by which a part of a person comes to represent the whole. They undermine, and counteract this process of metonymy by using two different qualitative research methods—metaphorical analysis and arts-based research. They extend their arguments to posit that we are in a period where researchers, administrators, and policy makers are increasingly using statistics to place humans into categories, and to determine “best-practices” that obscure individual characteristics and needs. They argue that the multiple and particularistic lenses provided by various types of the qualitative gaze are useful to remind us of the rich and complex ways in which humans differ from each other.
The orbital evolution induced by baryonic condensation in triaxial haloes

Using spectral methods, we analyse the orbital structure of prolate/triaxial dark matter (DM) haloes in N-body simulations in an effort to understand the physical processes that drive the evolution of shapes of DM haloes and elliptical galaxies in which central masses are grown. A longstanding issue is whether the change in the shapes of DM haloes is the result of chaotic scattering of the major family of box orbits that serves as the backbone of a triaxial system, or whether they change shape adiabatically in response to the evolving galactic potential. We use the characteristic orbital frequencies to classify orbits into major orbital families, to quantify orbital shapes and to identify resonant orbits and chaotic orbits. The use of a frequency-based method for distinguishing between regular and chaotic N-body orbits overcomes the limitations of Lyapunov exponents which are sensitive to numerical discreteness effects. We show that regardless of the distribution of the baryonic component, the shape of a DM halo changes primarily due to changes in the shapes of individual orbits within a given family. Orbits with small pericentric radii are more likely to change both their orbital type and shape than orbits with large pericentric radii. Whether the evolution is regular (and reversible) or chaotic (and irreversible), it depends primarily on the radial distribution of the baryonic component. The growth of an extended baryonic component of any shape results in a regular and reversible change in orbital populations and shapes, features that are not expected for chaotic evolution. In contrast, the growth of a massive and compact central component results in chaotic scattering of a significant fraction of both box and long-axis tube orbits, even those with pericentre distances much larger than the size of the central component. Frequency maps show that the growth of a disc causes a significant fraction of halo particles to become trapped by major global orbital resonances. We find that despite the fact that shape of a DM halo is always quite oblate following the growth of a central baryonic component, a significant fraction of its orbit population has the characteristics of its triaxial or prolate progenitor.
EEG compression using JPEG2000: How much loss is too much?

Compression of biosignals is an important means of conserving power in wireless body area networks and ambulatory monitoring systems. In contrast to lossless compression techniques, lossy compression algorithms can achieve higher compression ratios and hence, higher power savings, at the expense of some degradation of the reconstructed signal. In this paper, a variant of the lossy JPEG2000 algorithm is applied to Electroencephalogram (EEG) data from the Freiburg epilepsy database. By varying compression parameters, a range of reconstructions of varying signal fidelity is produced. Although lossy compression has been applied to EEG data in previous studies, it is unclear what level of signal degradation, if any, would be acceptable to a clinician before diagnostically significant information is lost. In this paper, the reconstructed EEG signals are applied to REACT, a state-of-the-art seizure detection algorithm, in order to determine the effect of lossy compression on its seizure detection ability. By using REACT in place of a clinician, many hundreds of hours of reconstructed EEG data are efficiently analysed, thereby allowing an analysis of the amount of EEG signal distortion that can be tolerated. The corresponding compression ratios that can be achieved are also presented.
Is Social Capital a Good Concept?

This paper explores whether the concept of social capital as popularized by Robert Putnam is a good social science concept. Taking Gerring’s work on concept evaluation as the starting point, the paper first presents a set of criteria for conceptual ‘goodness’ and discusses how social capital performs on these criteria. It is argued that social capital eventually may be a good concept if it can be shown empirically to be a unidimensional concept. An empirical section therefore explores the validity of the unidimensionality assumption and rejects it in four separate tests at both the individual and aggregate level. We conclude that even if social capital has been a remarkably productive idea, it is not a good concept as most popular conceptualizations define social capital as several distinct phenomena or as phenomena that already have been conceptualized under other labels.
Social and behavioral characteristics of young adult drink/drivers adjusted for level of alcohol use.

BACKGROUND Alcohol consumption and drink/driving are positively correlated and many predictors of alcohol use also predict drink/driving. Past research has not fully distinguished the contributions of personal risk factors from the level of alcohol use in the prediction of drink/driving. As a result, the extent to which predictors are specific to drink/driving, versus due to a mutual association to alcohol use, is unclear. METHODS This study examined the unique and shared risk factors for drink/driving and alcohol use, and examined the attributable risk (AR) associated with predictors of drink/driving while adjusting for alcohol use. Study data were from a telephone survey of 3,480 Michigan-licensed young adults who were drinkers. Four groups of drink/drivers were formed based on the prior 12-month maximum severity of drink/driving: (1) never drink/driving; (2) driving at least once within an hour of 1 or 2 drinks; (3) driving within an hour of 3 or more drinks or while feeling the effects of alcohol; and (4) drinking while driving. RESULTS Lower perceived risk of drink/driving, greater social support for drinking and drink/driving, greater aggression and delinquency, more cigarette smoking, and more risky driving behaviors uniquely predicted drink/driving severity in models adjusted for alcohol use. The largest ARs were associated with social support for drinking and drink/driving and perceived risk of drink/driving. CONCLUSIONS These results confirm that alcohol use and drink/driving share risk factors, but also indicate that part of the variation in these factors is specific to drink/driving. Implications for interventions to reduce drink/driving are discussed.
Tumor cells derived exosomes contain hTERT mRNA and transform nonmalignant fibroblasts into telomerase positive cells

Exosomes are small (30-100nm) vesicles secreted from all cell types serving as inter-cell communicators and affecting biological processes in “recipient” cells upon their uptake. The current study demonstrates for the first time that hTERT mRNA, the transcript of the enzyme telomerase, is shuttled from cancer cells via exosomes into telomerase negative fibroblasts, where it is translated into a fully active enzyme and transforms these cells into telomerase positive, thus creating a novel type of cells; non malignant cells with telomerase activity. All tested telomerase positive cells, including cancer cells and non malignant cells with overexpressed telomerase secreted exosomal hTERT mRNA in accordance with the endogenous levels of their hTERT mRNA and telomerase activity. Similarly exosomes isolated from sera of patients with pancreatic and lung cancer contained hTERT mRNA as well. Telomerase activity induced phenotypic changes in the recipient fibroblasts including increased proliferation, extension of life span and postponement of senescence. In addition, telomerase activity protected the fibroblasts from DNA damage induced by phleomycin and from apoptosis, indicating that also telomerase “extracurricular” activities are manifested in the recipient cells. The shuttle of telomerase from cancer cells into fibroblasts and the induction of these changes may contribute to the alterations of cancer microenvironment and its role in cancer. The described process has an obvious therapeutic potential which will be explored in further studies.
The glacial mid-depth radiocarbon bulge and its implications for the overturning circulation

Published reconstructions of radiocarbon in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean indicate that there is a mid-depth maximum in radiocarbon age during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This is in contrast to the modern ocean where intense mixing between water masses results in a relatively homogenous radiocarbon profile. Ferrari et al. (2014) suggested that the extended Antarctic sea ice cover during the LGM necessitated a shallower boundary between the upper and lower branches of the meridional overturning circulation. This shoaled boundary lay above major topographic features associated with strong diapycnal mixing, isolating dense southern sourced water in the lower branch of the overturning circulation. This isolation would have allowed radiocarbon to decay and thus provides a possible explanation for the mid-depth radiocarbon age bulge. We test this hypothesis using an idealized, 2-D, residual-mean dynamical model of the global overturning circulation. Concentration distributions of a decaying tracer that is advected by the simulated overturning are compared to published radiocarbon data. We find that a 600 km (~5° of latitude) increase in sea ice extent shoals the boundary between the upper and lower branches of the overturning circulation at 45°S by 600 m and shoals the depth of North Atlantic Deep Water convection at 50°N by 2500 m. This change in circulation configuration alone decreases the radiocarbon content in the mid-depth South Atlantic at 45°S by 40‰, even without an increase in surface radiocarbon age in the source region of deep waters during the LGM.
Conditional Frequentist Sequential Tests for the Drift of Brownian Motion

In this paper, we consider the problem of sequentially testing simple hypotheses concerning the drift of a Brownian motion process from a unified Bayesian and frequentist perspective. The conditional frequentist approach to testing statistical hypotheses has been utilized in a variety of settings to produce tests that are virtually equivalent to their objective Bayesian counterparts. Herein, we show that, at least for standard classes of stopping boundaries, the unified theory developed so far does not directly apply to the problem at hand. We thus motivate the need for a new conditioning strategy that ensures the existence of a conditional frequentist test whose answer essentially matches the objective Bayesian test. Under a quite general set of assumptions, we show that the new form of conditioning can still be interpreted as conditioning on the evidence present in the data as represented by P -values. Further properties of the resulting procedure, including ancillarity of the partition associated to the conditioning statistic and the characterization of the no-decision region, are studied in detail in the setting of the familiar sequential probability ratio test. ∗Research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Grants DMS-0073952 at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, DMS-0103265, and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute. This research formed part of the author’s Ph.D. thesis at Duke University, where he was supported by a Ph.D. Fellowship awarded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, with reference PRAXIS XXI/BD/15703/98.
Assessment and comparison of microleakage of a fluoride-releasing sealant after acid etching and Er: YAG laser treatment – An in vitro study

Aim: The aim of the present study was to estimate and compare the microleakage of a pit and fissure sealant after etching and Er:YAG laser treatment. Materials and Methods: Twenty non-carious premolars extracted for orthodontic reasons were equally divided into two groups. Samples in Group- I were treated with 37% phosphoric acid. Samples in Group II were irradiated with Er: YAG laser at 400 mJ at 4 Hz. Sealant was placed and light cured. Then, the samples were subjected to thermocycling. The samples were then immersed in 1% methylene blue. The samples were sectioned and examined under stereomicroscope at ×10 magnification. Results: Acid etched samples showed significantly less microleakage when compared to laser etching and it was statistically significant (P<0.01).
Socialization and Adolescents' Skepticism toward Advertising

Abstract The authors adopt a socialization explanation for adolescents' skepticism toward advertising. They conceptualize skepticism as an outcome of the socialization process, a negatively valenced attitude learned through interaction with the three socialization agents: parents, peers, and the mass media. In particular, the authors posit that the type of family communication (socio-oriented vs. concept-oriented communication), adolescents' susceptibility to peer influence (susceptibility to informational vs. normative peer influence), and the extent of television viewing are related to skepticism. They also posit that teens' marketplace knowledge mediates the effects of specific types of socialization—agent-based interaction (concept-oriented communication, susceptibility to informational peer influence, and the extent of television viewing) on skepticism. For all but of socio-oriented communication, data from a sample of high school students generally support the proposed socialization model of adolesc.
System evolution at the attribute level: An empirical study of three Java OSS and their refactorings

In this paper, we focus on the net changes in attributes across versions of OSS and use net class change data (class additions and deletions) as well as refactoring data from a previous study to inform our understanding of how those three systems evolved as they did. While the majority of new attributes were added at levels 1 and 2 of the inheritance, these patterns were not consistent. The research question addresses the evolutionary relationship between classes and attributes as well as the connection between those changes and refactorings. Although some evidence of attributes following patterns conformant with class additions was found, we also identified occurrences of attributes being added unilaterally. A strong correspondence was also found between attribute addition and the refactoring data. Finally, we explore features of a fourth system with seven inheritance levels for similar characteristics.
The Strategic Content Learning approach to promoting self-regulated learning : A report of three studies

This article reports findings from three studies investigating the efficacy of an instructional model designed to promote self-regulation, the Strategic Content Learning (SCL) approach. Participants were post-secondary students with learning disabilities who ranged in age from 19 to 48 years. Each study comprised multiple in-depth case studies (total N = 34) embedded within a pre-posttest design. Students were provided with individualized SCL tutoring for two to three hours per week during at least one semester. Both qualitative and quantitative evidence converged to reveal consistent improvements across time in students' metacognitive knowledge about key self-regulated processes, perceptions of task-specific efficacy, attributional patterns, task performance, and strategic approaches to tasks. Students were also found to transfer strategic approaches across contexts and tasks. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.
Chronic Illness and Health Locus of Control Beliefs

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between illness-related experiences and health locus of control (HLC) attitudes in chronically ill patients, including adult-onset diabetics, hypertensives, and pulmonary disease patients. A total of 250 male ambulatory patients averaging 60 years of age were interviewed regarding history of medical treatment, general health status, satisfaction with medical care, and the effects of illness on daily activities. Patients also completed HLC measures Multiple-regression analyses assessed the relationship between illness experience and HLC attitudes. Illness symptoms were related to low internal HLC, and satisfaction with treatment was related to high powerful others HLC Additionally, these older, chronically ill patients expressed stronger chance and stronger powerful others HLC beliefs than did persons from other studies.
Risk Factors for Antisocial Behavior in Juveniles: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

In order to understand the etiology of childhood and adolescent delinquency, researchers now recognize the need to identify risk factors for antisocial behavior across multiple disciplinary domains. Relative to psychological and social factors, biological factors have been the focus of little criminological research. This dissertation addresses this limitation by examining biological risk factors for antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. This dissertation consists of three papers that examine heart rate and hormones in relation to aggression and other antisocial behavior problems in youth. The first paper examines the relationship between reduced heart rate and antisocial behavior. Although low heart rate is a well-replicated biological correlate of antisocial behavior, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains largely unknown. This study addressed this limitation by examining possible mediators of the relationship between heart rate and antisocial behavior in a community sample of adolescent boys. This paper is the first to show that impulsive sensation seeking underlies the relationship between aggression and heart rate. The second paper examines the interaction between heart rate reactivity to stress and neighborhood disadvantage in a community sample of male and female young adolescents. Heart rate reactivity to stress interacted with neighborhood disadvantage to predict antisocial behavior, with a stronger association between neighborhood disadvantage and antisocial behavior amongst subjects with low heart rate reactivity. The third paper examines whether interactions between biological systems predict antisocial behavior in male and female young adolescents. In males, low cortisol reactivity was associated with higher levels of aggression and rule-breaking behavior, but only among subjects with low 2D:4D (i.e., high prenatal testosterone). Together, the papers in this dissertation advance our understanding of the development of antisocial behavior in youth by identifying how biological factors both in interaction with the social environment and in interaction with one another contribute to the etiology of delinquency. At a theoretical level, findings highlight the need for research that examines variables across multiple disciplines in order to understand the development of antisocial behavior. At an intervention level, findings suggest that biological factors could be potential targets for behavioral change. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Criminology First Advisor Adrian Raine