Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Annual Report to the Nation on the status of cancer, 1973–1999, featuring implications of age and aging on U.S. cancer burden

The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, collaborated to provide an annual update on cancer occurrence and trends in the United States. This year's report contained a special feature focusing on implications of age and aging on the U.S. cancer burden.
Person-Environment Fit and Public Service Motivation

This article incorporates insights from Person-Environment Fit theories to the discussion about the effect of Public Service Motivation (PSM) on vocational outcome variables. Analysis of a large Dutch dataset shows that workers with a PSM fit are more satisfied and less inclined to leave their job and the organization they work for than workers without such a fit. This is in accordance with the main hypothesis. Other results underline the importance of the PSM concept as they show that public sector workers have a higher level of PSM than private sector workers. Moreover, private sector workers with high levels of PSM are inclined to look for a job in the public sector, which is in accordance with a main propositions of the PSM framework. The article finishes with a discussion on theoretical and methodological issues raised by the analysis and puts forward some suggestions for further research.
Employee Training in SMEs: Effect of Size and Firm Type—Family and Nonfamily

The study examined the main and interaction effects of size and firm type on a variety of informal and formal training programs in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Samples of 448 family and 470 nonfamily SMEs were separated into four size groups and differences were assessed using multivariate analyses of variance. The results point to prevalence of informal training for all sizes and an increase in adoption of formal, structured, and development‐oriented training with increasing firm size (especially for firms with 20–99 employees). This pattern was evident for nonfamily but not for family firms. For family firms, formal training programs increased significantly during the critical growth phase only (20–49 employees). Gaps in employee training between the two types of firms were greatest at 50–99 employees but narrowed thereafter at 100–199 employees. The approach to employee training in family SMEs is in consonance with their slower growth, informal management styles, limited financial resources, and greater emphasis on efficiency compared with nonfamily SMEs.
Influence of Hotel Information System Quality on System Use and User Satisfaction

ABSTRACT By applying DeLone and McLean's Updated D&M IS Success Model, this study seeks to understand the influence of information system quality on the intention to use the system and user satisfaction within the context of HIS. Data used for the study were obtained from a survey that focuses on hotel employees' evaluation of HIS quality and their intention to use and satisfaction with the system. The results indicate that information system success measures can be meaningfully explained by HIS quality. Service quality that often represents support from information service providers within an organization, among the three aspects of HIS quality considered, has a significant positive influence on users' intention to use HIS and their satisfaction with the system, given the consideration of users' demographic characteristics, career, and the level of work reliance on HIS. Practical and theoretical insights of the findings are addressed.
Revisioning a School Administrator Preparation Program

This article provides a descriptive case study of the process used at one of North Carolina’s public universities to respond to a state-mandated revisioning directive for educational leadership preparation programs. The case provides an overview of the state educational leadership policy context, discussion of state and local support offered, examination of circumstances that facilitated or hindered program redesign and implementation, discussion of the faculty revisioning process, comparison of pre- and post-redesign program features, and the relationship of the redesigned program to recommended educational leadership preparation program guidelines.
Vitamin D treatment in myelodysplastic syndromes

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a group of clonal disturbances with defective cellular differentiation. Vitamin D3 (VD) analogues can act on the differentiation and maturity of different cell lines. We studied the effects of VD on a series of patients with MDS in an open‐design trial. Nineteen patients, 12 men and seven women, with MDS were included. Patients were 74.8 ± 5.6 years (mean ± SD), seven had refractory anaemia with ringed sideroblasts, five had refractory anaemia, one had refractory anaemia with excess of blasts and six had chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia. All the patients were in a low to intermediate risk group. Mean follow‐up period was 26.21 months, range 9–75. Responders were defined as follows: granulocyte or platelet count increase by 50%, or haemoglobin increase of 1.5 g/dl or transfusion needs decrease by 50%. The first five patients received 266 μg of calcifediol three times a week and the other 14 received calcitriol (0.25–0.75 μg/d). Response was observed in 11 patients. In the calcifediol‐treated group, one case responded, three were non‐responders, and one showed progression. In the calcitriol group, 10 were responders (two with major response), and four were non‐responders. No correlation was observed between baseline levels of vitamin D metabolites and the presence of response. No hypercalcaemia was observed. Treatment with vitamin D3 metabolites could induce a long‐standing response of the haematological disturbance in some low‐intermediate risk MDS patients without inducing hypercalcaemia.
ORA waveform-derived biomechanical parameters to distinguish normal from keratoconic eyes.

PURPOSE To evaluate the ability of the Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA; Reichert Ophthalmic Instruments, Buffalo, NY) to distinguish between normal and keratoconic eyes, by comparing pressure and waveform signal-derived parameters. METHODS This retrospective comparative case series study included 112 patients with normal corneas and 41 patients with bilateral keratoconic eyes. One eye from each subject was randomly selected for analysis. Keratoconus diagnosis was based on clinical examinations, including Placido disk-based corneal topography and rotating Scheimpflug corneal tomography. Data from the ORA best waveform score (WS) measurements were extracted using ORA software. Corneal hysteresis (CH), corneal resistance factor (CRF), Goldman-correlated intraocular pressure (IOPg), cornea-compensated intraocular pressure (IOPcc), and 37 parameters derived from the waveform signal were analyzed. Differences in the distributions among the groups were assessed using the Mann-Whitney test. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were calculated. RESULTS Statistically significant differences between keratoconic and normal eyes were found in all parameters (p<0.05) except IOPcc and W1. The area under the ROC curve (AUROC) was greater than 0.85 for 11 parameters, including CH (0.852) and CRF (0.895). The parameters related to the area under the waveform peak during the second and first applanations (p2area and p1area) had the best performances, with AUROCs of 0.939 and 0.929, respectively. The AUROCs for CRF, p2area, and p1area were significantly greater than that for CH. CONCLUSION There are significant differences in biomechanical metrics between normal and keratoconic eyes. Compared with the pressure-derived parameters, corneal hysteresis and corneal resistance factor, novel waveform-derived ORA parameters provide better identification of keratoconus.
Inspecting the Mechanism Exactly: A Closed-form Solution to a Stochastic Growth Model

This paper considers the canonical stochastic growth model with CRRA utility and Cobb-Douglas technology. It obtains a closed-form solution for the case where capital's share is equal to the reciprocal of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. This provides a useful benchmark that illuminates the transmission mechanism under uncertainty. In particular, it highlights the complicated ways in which risk and nonlinearities interact, via Jensen's inequality, to affect the steady state capital stock.
Evaluation of relative intake of fatty acids according to the Northern Sweden FFQ with fatty acid levels in erythrocyte membranes as biomarkers

Abstract Objective To evaluate the validity of the Northern Sweden eighty-four-item FFQ to estimate intake of fatty acids relative to 24 h diet recalls (24-HDR) and fatty acids in erythrocyte membranes. Design Participants, randomly recruited from the population-based Västerbotten Intervention Project, answered the eighty-four-item FFQ. During the following year each participant carried out ten 24-HDR. Intake of fatty acids measured by the FFQ was compared with intake by the 24-HDR and fatty acid levels in erythrocytes. Setting The county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden. Subjects Ninety-six men and ninety-nine women. Results Spearman correlation coefficients (rs) between intakes of the fatty acids 14 : 0, 15 : 0, 16 : 0, 17 : 0, 18 : 2n-6, 18 : 3n-3, 20 : 5n-3 and 22 : 6n-3 estimated by the FFQ and the 24-HDR were all significant and ranged from 0·29 (22 : 6n-3 in men and women) to 0·60 (16 : 0 in men), whereas significant correlations between FFQ-estimated intake and erythrocyte membrane content were only seen for milk fatty acids 14 : 0, 15 : 0 and 17 : 0 (rs = 0·23–0·34) and fish fatty acids 20 : 5n-3 and 22 : 6n-3 (rs = 0·42–0·51). Conclusion The Northern Sweden eighty-four-item FFQ gives a satisfactory estimate of the intake of fish fatty acids (20 : 5n-3 and 22 : 6n-3) and milk fatty acids (15 : 0 and 17 : 0), whereas its validity for fatty acids 18 : 2n-6 and 18 : 3n-3, derived mainly from vegetable oils, cannot be shown.
Learning in POMDPs with Monte Carlo Tree Search

The POMDP is a powerful framework for reasoning under outcome and information uncertainty, but constructing an accurate POMDP model is difficult. Bayes-Adaptive Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (BA-POMDPs) extend POMDPs to allow the model to be learned during execution. BA-POMDPs are a Bayesian RL approach that, in principle, allows for an optimal trade-off between exploitation and exploration. Unfortunately, BA-POMDPs are currently impractical to solve for any non-trivial domain. In this paper, we extend the Monte-Carlo Tree Search method POMCP to BA-POMDPs and show that the resulting method, which we call BA-POMCP, is able to tackle problems that previous solution methods have been unable to solve. Additionally, we introduce several techniques that exploit the BA-POMDP structure to improve the efficiency of BA-POMCP along with proof of their convergence.
1 × 4 Channel Si-Nanowire Microring-Assisted Multiple Delayline-Based Optical MUX/DeMUX

We proposed theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated novel 1 × 4 channel flatband optical multiplexer/demultiplexer (MUX/DeMUX) that is based on Si-nanowire microring-assisted multiple delaylines. The proposed optical MUX/DeMUX scheme, which includes all-pass microring-type phase controllers and a Banyan-type 4 × 4 coupler, exhibits superior spectral flatness to any Si-nanowire optical DeMUXs that have previously been experimentally demonstrated.
Research and Evaluation for Educational Development: Learning from the PRISM Experience in Kenya

This book provides a reflective and historically situated analysis of the Kenyan Primary School Management Project (PRISM). This is carried out in the light of a broader international review of the theoretical and methodological literature relating to the role, and potential, of research and evaluation in the process of educational development. The case study of PRISM pays particular attention to the part played by collaborative and participatory research and evaluation in project development and implementation. The book is designed to be read on two main levels. Firstly, it provides a detailed, critical and empirically informed record of the Kenyan PRISM initiative. Secondly, the broader analysis explores implications for changing modalities of international development co-operation; for research and evaluation capacity building; for methodological and theoretical dimensions of development processes; and for the importance of comparative insights in understanding the processes and dilemmas of the international transfer of theories, policies and practices.
Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Increase Organic Carbon Decomposition Under Elevated CO2

A Fungal Culprit to Carbon Loss In some ecosystems, such as in the layer of soil containing plant roots, fungi, and bacteria, increased levels of CO2 should stimulate more efficient aboveground photosynthesis, which in turn should promote increased sequestration of organic carbon in soil through the protective action of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. However, in a series of field and microcosm experiments performed under elevated levels of CO2 thought to be consistent with future emissions scenarios, Cheng et al. (p. 1084; see the Perspective by Kowalchuk) observed that these fungi actually promote degradation of soil organic carbon, releasing more CO2 in the process. Counter to expectations, fungi associated with plant roots diminish the carbon pool in soil ecosystems under elevated levels of carbon dioxide. The extent to which terrestrial ecosystems can sequester carbon to mitigate climate change is a matter of debate. The stimulation of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) by elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has been assumed to be a major mechanism facilitating soil carbon sequestration by increasing carbon inputs to soil and by protecting organic carbon from decomposition via aggregation. We present evidence from four independent microcosm and field experiments demonstrating that CO2 enhancement of AMF results in considerable soil carbon losses. Our findings challenge the assumption that AMF protect against degradation of organic carbon in soil and raise questions about the current prediction of terrestrial ecosystem carbon balance under future climate-change scenarios.
Self-Limiting Dominant Logic: An Exploratory Study of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms

Previous research has found that cognitive frame, mental models, and schema embody a dominant logic of firms that structure the behavioral routines of managers and can become a central force shaping a firm's decisions and actions. This exploratory study seeks to provide insight into an emerging dominant logic among recently established private-sector Chinese enterprises. Using multiple case studies of Chinese entrepreneurial firms, we identify convergence on a surprisingly similar dominant logic based on closely aligned concepts and accompanying behaviors: a defensive perspective of business environment; a conservative strategic decision-making process; and full involvement of owners and top managers in daily operations that substitute for development of elaborate routines and systems. Although a dominant logic may facilitate decision making and growth, it may also act as a perceptual blinder limiting opportunity search as firms seek to minimize risk in an uncertain environment.
From a Somatotopic to a Spatiotopic Frame of Reference for the Localization of Nociceptive Stimuli

To react efficiently to potentially threatening stimuli, we have to be able to localize these stimuli in space. In daily life we are constantly moving so that our limbs can be positioned at the opposite side of space. Therefore, a somatotopic frame of reference is insufficient to localize nociceptive stimuli. Here we investigated whether nociceptive stimuli are mapped into a spatiotopic frame of reference, and more specifically a peripersonal frame of reference, which takes into account the position of the body limbs in external space, as well as the occurrence of external objects presented near the body. Two temporal order judgment (TOJ) experiments were conducted, during which participants had to decide which of two nociceptive stimuli, one applied to either hand, had been presented first while their hands were either uncrossed or crossed over the body midline. The occurrence of the nociceptive stimuli was cued by uninformative visual cues. We found that the visual cues prioritized the perception of nociceptive stimuli applied to the hand laying in the cued side of space, irrespective of posture. Moreover, the influence of the cues was smaller when they were presented far in front of participants’ hands as compared to when they were presented in close proximity. Finally, participants’ temporal sensitivity was reduced by changing posture. These findings are compatible with the existence of a peripersonal frame of reference for the localization of nociceptive stimuli. This allows for the construction of a stable representation of our body and the space closely surrounding our body, enabling a quick and efficient reaction to potential physical threats.
Sequential treatment of biliary atresia with kasai portoenterostomy and liver transplantation: A review

Biliary atresia is the most frequent cause of chronic cholestasis in infants. When left untreated, this condition leads to death from liver insufficiency within the first 2 yr of life. The modern therapeutic approach consists of a sequential strategy with Kasai portoenterostomy as a first step and, in case of failure, liver transplantation. After portoenterostomy, no more than 20% to 30% of patients will live jaundice‐free into adulthood. Illness in another third will be palliated, and these patients have extended survival, delaying liver transplantation to later childhood (2 to 15 yr). The remaining 30% to 40% will not benefit from the Kasai operation and will die of liver failure in infancy. The annual need of liver transplantation for biliary atresia is one case per million people. This indication represents 35% to 67% of the reported series of pediatric liver transplantation and between 5% and 10% of the indications for liver transplantation, all ages included. Approximately four of five children transplanted for biliary atresia will become long‐term survivors with good physical and mental development; recurrence of the disease after transplantation has not been observed. Because most candidates are young children (<3 yr) of small size (>10 kg), there is a shortage of size‐matched donors (which has been alleviated by the use of innovative techniques such as reduced and split livers). The resulting redistribution of the adult donor liver pool is ethically justified by the equal quality of the results after transplantation of a full‐size or partial graft. (Hepatology 1994;20:41S–48S.)
Sustained release of ganciclovir from poly(lactide-co-glycolide) microspheres

Biodegradable poly(lactide-co-glycolide) microspheres loaded with ganciclovir were produced using the emulsification/solvent evaporation technique. The effects of drug-to-polymer ratio and dispersion time on the drug content in the microspheres were investigated. The release rate of the drug was studied for 20 weeks in a phosphate buffered solution of pH 7 at 37°C. Data revealed that lower drug content was obtained with increasing drug-to-polymer ratio and decreasing dispersion time. The release of the drug followed a triphasic release pattern, i.e. an initial burst, a diffusive phase and a second burst. The initial burst occurred within the first 2 days of immersion. After the burst, the release was by diffusion for up to 13 weeks, followed by another burst release, which signals the onset of bulk degradation of the polymer. Gel permeation chromatography (GPC), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and ultraviolet spectroscopy (UV) were used to follow the hydrolytic degradation and drug release rate of the microspheres.
The Interest Group Connection: Electioneering, Lobbying, and Policymaking in Washington

Organized interest groups - sometimes referred to as special interests or factions - have always played an important role in American politics. They organize constituencies, helping to protect their rights, defending their interests and giving them a voice in politics. Without organized interests many workers, business leaders and issues advocates would feel that they had no influence on the political process. Interest groups help connect Americans to their government. The connections established by these interest groups are myriad and complex, reflecting the interplay of group goals, resources and structures. These complexities require interest groups to alter their strategies and tactics in response to changing institutional arrangements and political realities. By facilitating political representation and participation, the interest group connection makes an important contribution to American democracy. The chapters of this book focus on contemporary interest group activities in Washington DC at a time of change. The authors explore the electoral, congressional, executive and judicial connections initiated by organized interest groups and examine the impact on interest group activity of the Republican takeover of Congress and the Democratic takeover of the White House.
Heterogeneous information flows and intra-day volatility dynamics: evidence from the UK FTSE-100 stock index futures market

Recent research has suggested that intra-day volatility may possess a component structure due to heterogeneous information arrivals. This paper reports evidence for the existence of such components in FTSE-100 stock index futures returns data. Preliminary GARCH model estimates support previous evidence for other markets indicating the breakdown of theoretical GARCH temporal aggregation properties over the intra-day period. However, the fractional integration properties of absolute and squared returns, and FIGARCH conditional volatility model estimates, lend strong support to the contention that volatility dynamics results from multiple sources given the invariance of the fractional difference parameter estimates to the degree of intra-day data temporal aggregation.
Regional Impact Analyses and the Appropriate Treatment of Regional Budget Constraints under Devolution: An Application to the Impact of Scottish HEIs

There have been numerous studies of the "impact" of HEIs on their host regions. These have typically focused on the demand for goods and services in the host region. The best of these studies employ regional input-output analyses. However, there has developed a "policy scepticism" about the value of such analysis based on notions of either demand-side (binding budget constraints) or supply-side (binding resource constraints) "crowding out", to the point where the demand side impact of HEIs is regarded as negligible. In this paper we provide a systematic critique of this policy scepticism. While we reject the extreme form of policy skepticism we do acknowledge the importance of binding public sector budget constraints under devolution, and argue that such constraints should be accommodated in future impact studies. We focus our own impact analysis on the HEI sector's impact net of its public income by simulating the effect of switching public expenditure funds between HEIs and other activities using a modified HEI-disaggregated input-output model of Scotland. The results suggest that conventional impact studies do overestimate the impact of HEIs, but importantly that the policy scepticism that treats the demand-side impact of HEIs neglects some important impacts of these institutions, in particular their export intensity.