Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrast-enhanced digital mammography: initial clinical experience.

PURPOSE To investigate the potential of using intravenous contrast material with full-field digital mammography to facilitate the detection and characterization of lesions in the breast. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-two women scheduled for biopsy because they were suspected of having abnormalities at breast imaging underwent imaging with contrast material-enhanced digital mammography. Six sequential images of the affected breast were obtained, with a contrast agent injected intravenously between the time the first and second images were obtained. Image processing included registration and logarithmic subtraction. Lesions were evaluated for the presence, morphology, and kinetics of enhancement. Lesion type, size, and pathologic findings were correlated with the findings at contrast-enhanced digital mammography. RESULTS At contrast-enhanced digital mammography, enhancement was observed in eight of 10 patients with biopsy-proved cancers. In one case of ductal carcinoma in situ and one case of invasive ductal carcinoma, enhancement was not observed. No enhancement was seen in seven of 12 cases in which lesions were suspected of being malignant at initial imaging but were benign. Morphology generally correlated with the pathologic diagnosis. The kinetics of lesion enhancement showed similarity to that seen with gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging but was not consistent. CONCLUSION The results of this preliminary study suggest that contrast-enhanced digital mammography potentially may be useful in identification of lesions in the mammographically dense breast. Further investigation of contrast-enhanced digital mammography as a diagnostic tool for breast cancer is warranted.
Urban Crime, Criminals, and Victims: The Swedish Experience in an Anglo-American Comparative Perspective

The rate, structure and trends in urban crime the urban offender the social contexts of urban crime the urban victim Stockholm - its crime and urban structure housing, population composition and offending routine activities, area crime and victimization patterns integration and discussion of findings. Appendices: the Stockholm 1982 crime survey legal definitions of studied crimes.
Motivations for an Organisation within a Developing Country to Report Social Responsibility Information: Evidence from Bangladesh

Purpose - The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country. Design/methodology/approach - Senior executives from a major organisation in Bangladesh are interviewed to determine the pressures being exerted on them in terms of their social and environmental performance. The perceptions of pressures are then used to explain – via content analysis – changing social and environmental disclosure practices. Findings - The results show that particular stakeholder groups have, since the early 1990s, placed pressure on the Bangladeshi clothing industry in terms of its social performance. This pressure, which is also directly related to the expectations of the global community, in turn drives the industry's social policies and related disclosure practices. Research limitations/implications - The findings show that, within the context of a developing country, unless we consider the managers' perceptions about the social and environmental expectations being imposed upon them by powerful stakeholder groups then we will be unable to understand organisational disclosure practices. Originality/value - This paper is the first known paper to interview managers from a large organisation in a developing country about changing stakeholder expectations and then link these changing expectations to annual report disclosures across an extended period of analysis.
A Nearest-Neighbor Spatial-Association Measure for the Analysis of Firm Interdependence

Retail locational factors and strategies have been a focus of research among geographers, location analysts, marketing analysts, and regional scientists. Well known in the literature are the cumulative-attraction and interceptor-retail-location strategies. To analyze these strategies or forces of firm interdependence, one approach taken has been to describe the spatial pattern of the firms by certain probability models and the nearest-neighbor statistics. However, when studying the spatial association between retail firms from two different chains or between two different types of firms, the familiar Clark and Evans nearest-neighbor statistic no longer applies. What is needed is a method that is capable of measuring the spatial association between two distributions of points. More specifically, the method should determine whether the spatial association between two groups of points is one of aggregation, independence, or avoidance, as a result of the location strategy employed. The nearest-neighbor method developed in this paper for such a task is a modification of that of Clark and Evans. The probability distribution, the mean, and the variance of the nearest-neighbor statistic are derived, and several empirical analyses of the retail-location strategies among convenience-food stores are provided.
Tree-Structured Multiple Regimes in Interest Rates

This article develops a generalized tree-structured (GTS) model of the short-term interest rate that accommodates regime-dependent mean reversion and regime-dependent volatility clustering and level effects in the conditional variance. The model is constructed using the idea of multivariate tree-structured thresholds and nests the popular generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity and square root processes as simple special cases. It allows us to estimate the optimal number of regimes endogenously from the data and to exploit possible additional information in the term structure and in other macroeconomic variables. We provide empirical evidence of the strong potential of the GTS model in forecasting conditional first and second moments, also in comparison with alternative models of the short rate.
Ultrasound-based 2D strain estimation of the carotid artery: an in-silico feasibility study

Ultrasound based estimation of arterial wall properties is commonly used to assess vessel wall stiffness in studies of vascular diseases. Recently, it was shown that the longitudinal motion of the vessel during systole can be measured using speckle tracking. However, the assessment of longitudinal strain in the vessel wall has to be further investigated. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of simultaneous assessment of radial and longitudinal strain in the carotid artery using computer simulations. A kinematic cylindrical model of the carotid artery with realistic dimensions was constructed. The model was deformed radially according to temporal distention measured in-vivo while longitudinal deformation was the result of conservation of volume. Moreover, longitudinal motion was superimposed based on profiles obtained in-vivo. Ultrasound long axis images were simulated using a generalized convolution model (COLE) with realistic image properties. Four models with different scatterer distributions were built. For each of them, longitudinal and radial motion were estimated using normalized cross-correlation with spline interpolation to detect sub-sample motion. Radial and longitudinal strains, obtained by linear regression were compared with the ground truth from the model. The maximal systolic radial strain was estimated to be -12.77 ± 0.4% (ground truth -13.89%) while longitudinal strain was 5.21 ±0.67% (ground truth 5.3%). This study shows the feasibility of simultaneously measuring radial and longitudinal strain in the carotid artery by making use of currently available hardware.
The Impact of Internal Branding on Employee Engagement and Outcome Variables in the Hotel Industry

The concept of internal branding is well accepted in the service industry. This study examines how internal branding helps service organizations achieve desirable outcomes such as job satisfaction and employee loyalty. The model is developed based on social exchange theory and considers the relationship among internal branding, employee engagement, job satisfaction, and employee loyalty. The model is tested on service employees of hotels in South Korea using a survey method. The study finds internal branding is critical for employees to be engaged with the job and the organization and employee engagement fully mediates the relationship between internal branding and job satisfaction. Several implications are discussed.
Vasopressin versus norepinephrine infusion in patients with septic shock.

BACKGROUND Vasopressin is commonly used as an adjunct to catecholamines to support blood pressure in refractory septic shock, but its effect on mortality is unknown. We hypothesized that low-dose vasopressin as compared with norepinephrine would decrease mortality among patients with septic shock who were being treated with conventional (catecholamine) vasopressors. METHODS In this multicenter, randomized, double-blind trial, we assigned patients who had septic shock and were receiving a minimum of 5 microg of norepinephrine per minute to receive either low-dose vasopressin (0.01 to 0.03 U per minute) or norepinephrine (5 to 15 microg per minute) in addition to open-label vasopressors. All vasopressor infusions were titrated and tapered according to protocols to maintain a target blood pressure. The primary end point was the mortality rate 28 days after the start of infusions. RESULTS A total of 778 patients underwent randomization, were infused with the study drug (396 patients received vasopressin, and 382 norepinephrine), and were included in the analysis. There was no significant difference between the vasopressin and norepinephrine groups in the 28-day mortality rate (35.4% and 39.3%, respectively; P=0.26) or in 90-day mortality (43.9% and 49.6%, respectively; P=0.11). There were no significant differences in the overall rates of serious adverse events (10.3% and 10.5%, respectively; P=1.00). In the prospectively defined stratum of less severe septic shock, the mortality rate was lower in the vasopressin group than in the norepinephrine group at 28 days (26.5% vs. 35.7%, P=0.05); in the stratum of more severe septic shock, there was no significant difference in 28-day mortality (44.0% and 42.5%, respectively; P=0.76). A test for heterogeneity between these two study strata was not significant (P=0.10). CONCLUSIONS Low-dose vasopressin did not reduce mortality rates as compared with norepinephrine among patients with septic shock who were treated with catecholamine vasopressors. (Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN94845869 [controlled-trials.com].).
Does an Extrinsic Reward for R&D Employees Enhance Innovation Outcomes? Evidence from a Japanese Innovation Survey

This paper examines the effects of extrinsic rewards for R&D employees on innovation outcomes based on evidence from a Japanese innovation survey. Theoretical and empirical studies present conflicting findings regarding the relationship between extrinsic rewards and innovation outcomes. This article seeks to shed light on the relationship between rewards and outcomes, as represented by the development of new products and services and their technological superiority and profitability. The analysis produced the following findings. First, companies that have introduced an evaluation system based on R&D performance are more likely to develop new products and services. The introduction of the evaluation system brings about success in product innovation with greater technological superiority. Second, monetary compensation has a negative impact on the development of new products and services and technological superiority. Third, these effects vary with the company size. Small- and medium-sized companies achieve higher technological superiority with performance-based evaluations. Large companies tend to adversely impact the development of new products and services and their technological superiority with monetary compensation.
Charts, Noise and Fundamentals in the London Foreign Exchange Market

This paper presents some empirical evidence on the prevalence, perceived importance and nature of 'chartist' or 'technical' analysis in the London foreign exchange market. If 'noise traders' (see e.g. de Long et al., I987) are defined as those speculators who do not base their trading strategies on a consideration of market fundamentals, then it clearly encompasses those traders who employ chart analysis i.e. those who base their strategies on the analysis and extrapolation of past price movements alone.
A Model for the Detection of Insurance Fraud

The aim of this article is to develop a model to aid insurance companies in their decision-making and to ensure that they are better equipped to fight fraud. This tool is based on the systematic use of fraud indicators. We first propose a procedure to isolate the indicators which are most significant in predicting the probability that a claim may be fraudulent. We applied the procedure to data collected in the Dionne–Belhadji study (1996). The model allowed us to observe that 23 of the 54 indicators used were significant in predicting the probability of fraud. Our study also discusses the model's accuracy and detection capability. The detection rates obtained by the adjusters who participated in the study constitute the reference point of this discussion. As shown in the Caron–Dionne (1998), there is the possibility that these rates underestimate the true level of fraud.
[Maternal factors associated with low birth weight].

BACKGROUND In Peru, low birth weight is an indicator of risk of perinatal problems and childhood, the study objective was to determine maternal factors associated to low birth weight. METHODS Case-control study in 123 low birth weight (cases) and 123 normal-weight newborns (controls) matched for date of birth and district. Associated maternal factors were investigated to low birth weight and compared between cases and controls. Chi square was applied, Odds ratio (OR) with confidence intervals at 95% (95% CI), binary logistic regression and ROC curve. RESULTS Partnerships for maternal history of low birth weight (OR: 41.1; 95 % CI: 5.5-306.7) were found; prematurity (OR: 12.0; 95% CI: 1.5-94.3), history of eclampsia (OR: 5.8; 95% CI: 1.9-17.4), one to three prenatal controls (OR: 5.7; 95% CI: 2.6-12.3), multiple gestation (OR: 4.7; 95% CI: 1.3-17.0) and tobacco consumption (OR: 3.8; 95 % CI: 1.5-9.8), not being a teenager (OR: 0.3; 95% CI: 0.1-0.6), and not having a short birth interval (OR: 0.2; 95% CI: 0.1-0.7). In multivariate analysis, we pointed out that having from 1 to 3 prenatal visits, multiple pregnancy, being a teenager and a short birth interval are associated with low birth weight, the proposed model explained 18.6% of the event, the area under the curve was 72.9%, considering that adequately predicts (p ˂ 0.001). CONCLUSIONS There are maternal risk factors associated with low birth weight in pregnant women in urban areas of the coast as having from 1 to 3 prenatal visits, multiple gestation, being a teenager and having a period between pregnancies shorter than two years.
The implications for classroom practice of the outcomes-based education model for teaching and learning : an evaluation of modes of implementation in KwaZulu-Natal schools.

With the advent of political and social democracy in South Africa in 1994 came the need to restructure education so that it would reflect the new mulitcultural democracy, redress the inequalities of the past and ensure future social justice. South African society, after apartheid, had to be re-formed, in the sense of being formed anew; and it had to be re-constructed, in the sense of being built again. The classroom was perceived to be one of the critical sites in which this change could be effected and outcomes-based education (OBE) is the optimum educational instrument through which to initiate change. At the heart of OBE lies learner-centredness'which entails experiential learning in a physical and metaphysical world viewed as a set of interlocking (mutually dependant) systems. OBE focuses on a subjective being in the world and a subjective becoming in the world. It is because OBE is centred on process rather than product that outcomes are specified as the learning assessment instrument. It is for all the above reasons that the new South African national curriculum was based on OBE. The primary aims of the curriculum are to achieve educational equality across racial groups and, secondly, to develop cultural competence amongst South Africa's previously legislatively divided peoples so that a new nation, united in its diversity, can evolve. This dissertation examines the successes and failures of the implementation of OBE, in the form of the South African National Curriculum Statement (NCS), in the teaching of French as a Second Additional Language. For educational policy to be implemented and the vision of transformation realised, teachers need to translate curriculum principles into pedagogic practices. The implications of the new national curriculum and of the OBE model
The Effects of Recognition versus Disclosure on Shareholder Risk and Executive Compensation

Accounting policymakers must routinely decide whether a given transaction or event warrants formal recognition in corporate financial statements. ' In cases where recognition is not mandated, the transaction or event is often required to be disclosed in the footnotes that accompany thc financial statements. The FASB's concern over formal recognition versus footnote disclosure is evident in many of its deliberations (e.g., other postemployment benefits or market value accounting for financial institutions) and also in a recent article by its research manager (Johnson [1992]). The latter urges academics to (1) address the effects of recognition versus disclosure and (2) assess whether the effects differ depending on the class of user. To address these issues, this paper examines whether decisions madc by two distinct user groups-shareholders and executive compensation committees-are influenced by the footnote disclosures concerning long-term noncancelable operating leases.
Natural history of small and medium-sized side branches after coronary stent implantation.

OBJECTIVE Our purpose was to identify angiographic and procedural predictors for acute and late side branch occlusion after coronary stent implantation. METHODS We evaluated 185 patients with 185 lesions with 255 side branches with a mean reference diameter of 1.45 +/- 0.38 mm; the lesions were covered by 240 stents. Angiographic follow-up was completed in 99 patients with 133 side branches 206 +/- 120 days after stent implantation and clinical follow-up was available in 136 patients. Side branch occlusion (SBO) was defined as a Thrombolysis In Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) flow < or =1. RESULTS Acute SBO affected 54 side branches in 49 patients and was not associated with death or Q-wave infarction. By logistic regression, independent predictors for acute SBO were (1) the reference side branch diameter (RLD) at baseline (OR [odds ratio] 0.217, 95% CI 0.07-0.67, P =.008); (2) an ostial side branch stenosis before stenting (OR 2.96, 95% CI 1.26-6.95, P =.013); (3) the involvement of the side branch origin within the lesion of the parent vessel (OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.17-6.57, P =.021); and (4) the balloon-to-artery ratio (OR 4.66, 95% CI 1.18-18.42, P =.028). Among the initially occluded side branches, 81.8% were spontaneously reperfused at follow-up. Late SBO involved 12% of the side branches without impaired antegrade flow after stenting and was predicted by the initial RLD of the side branch (OR 0.07, 95% CI 0.01-0.8, P =.032). Chronic SBO occurred in 13.5% of cases and was also predicted by the baseline RLD (OR 0.13, 95% CI 0.02-0.8, P =.028). CONCLUSIONS Acute SBO after stenting occurred in 21.2% of cases and had a benign course. Most acutely occluded side branches underwent late spontaneous reperfusion. A baseline side branch diameter >1.4 mm predicted a preserved antegrade flow immediately after stent implantation, as well as during follow-up.
Treatment of postoperative hypertension after coronary artery bypass surgery. Double-blind comparison of intravenous isradipine and sodium nitroprusside.

BACKGROUND Hypertension commonly occurs after cardiac surgery and requires therapy to prevent the potentially deleterious effects. METHODS AND RESULTS After coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG), 177 patients with elevated blood pressure > or = 90 mm Hg during the initial 6-hour postsurgical period were selected for this random blinded, parallel study to receive intravenous infusions of either isradipine (n = 90) or sodium nitroprusside (n = 87). Isradipine produced a statistically significant decrease in mean arterial pressure (MAP, delta-23 mmHg) during a 90-minute treatment period. Target MAP (< or = 85 mmHg or a decrease of 10 mmHg, if baseline MAP was between 90 and 95 mmHg) was achieved in 94% of patients 30 minutes after initiation of isradipine infusion (total mean dose, 411 micrograms); target MAP was achieved in 75% of nitroprusside-treated patients (total mean dose, 1708 micrograms). The mean time to control MAP was 18 minutes for isradipine compared with 24 minutes for nitroprusside. Global smoothness in MAP control was graded on a scale of 0 (not controlled) to 5 (excellent). Approximately 76% of isradipine-treated patients received a rating of > or = 3 (mean score, 3.5); 40% of the sodium nitroprusside-treated patients achieved a score of > or = 3 (mean score, 2.0). Both isradipine and nitroprusside produced statistically significant reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressures, a decrease in systemic vascular resistance, and increases in heart rate, cardiac index, and stroke volume index. Isradipine produced no significant decreases in pulmonary artery occlusion wedge pressure compared with nitroprusside. CONCLUSIONS Intravenous isradipine was effective and well tolerated in patients with hypertension after CABG and offers an additional therapeutic option to treat patients after cardiac surgery.
Internet Search Behavior as an Economic Forecasting Tool: The Case of Inflation Expectations

This paper proposes a measure of real-time inflation expectations based on metadata, i.e., data about data, constructed from internet search queries performed on the search engine Google. The forecasting performance of the Google Inflation Search Index (GISI) is assessed relative to 37 other indicators of inflation expectations – 36 survey measures and the TIPS spread. For decades, the academic literature has focused on three measures of inflation expectations: the Livingston Survey, Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the Michigan Survey. While useful in developing models of forecasting inflation, these low frequency measures appear anachronistic in the modern era of higher frequency and real-time data. I demonstrate that higher frequency measures tend to outperform lower frequency measures in tests of accuracy, predictive power, and rationality. Furthermore, Granger Causality tests indicate that the GISI metadata indicator anticipates the inflation rate by 12 months, and out-of-sample forecasts show that the GISI has the lowest forecast error of all the inflation expectations indicators tested.