Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nodal sampling in pancreaticoduodenectomy: does it change our management?

BACKGROUND Lymph node involvement in periampullary malignancy is the single most important factor in predicting survival in pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD). The role of nodal sampling in PD has not been well evaluated. This study evaluates the utility of nodal sampling of nodal stations 8 and 12, which are easily dissected early in PD, in overall final nodal status. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty patients underwent PD at a single institution by a one surgeon over a 15 month period. Nodal stations 8 and 12 were sent separately for pathologic evaluation. Twenty-eight patients had a final diagnosis of periampullary malignancy. Demographic and pathologic data were collected retrospectively from patient charts. Positive and negative predictive values of nodes 8 and 12 were evaluated. RESULTS Eighteen of 28 patients with a diagnosis of periampullary malignancy had pathologically negative nodes 8 and 12, and a final nodal status (all peripancreatic lymph nodes) negative for nodal involvement. Nine of 28 patients had a negative nodal sampling result, but a positive final nodal status for metastatic tumor. The remaining four patients had both positive nodal sampling and final nodal status for metastatic tumor. The negative predictive value of negative nodes 8 and 12 was 0.625. CONCLUSION The negative predictive of a negative node 8 and 12 of 0.625 suggests that the decision to proceed with or abort PD should not be based on intraoperative evaluation of these nodes. Performance of PD should be undertaken if technically feasible, and not based on intraoperative nodal assessment.
Delayed Hemorrhagic Hypotension Exacerbates the Hemodynamic and Histopathologic Consequences of Traumatic Brain Injury in Rats

Alterations in cerebral autoregulation and cerebrovascular reactivity after traumatic brain injury (TBI) may increase the susceptibility of the brain to secondary insults, including arterial hypotension. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the consequences of mild hemorrhagic hypotension on hemodynamic and histopathologic outcome after TBI. Intubated, anesthetized male rats were subjected to moderate (1.94 to 2.18 atm) parasagittal fluid–percussion (FP) brain injury. After TBI, animals were exposed to either normotension (group 1: TBI alone, n = 6) or hypotension (group 2: TBI + hypotension, n = 6). Moderate hypotension (60 mm Hg/30 min) was induced 5 minutes after TBI or sham procedures by hemorrhage. Sham-operated controls (group 3, n = 7) underwent an induced hypotensive period, whereas normotensive controls (group 4, n = 4) did not. For measuring regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), radiolabeled microspheres were injected before, 20 minutes after, and 60 minutes after TBI (n = 23). For quantitative histopathologic evaluation, separate groups of animals were perfusion-fixed 3 days after TBI (n = 22). At 20 minutes after TBI, rCBF was bilaterally reduced by 57% ± 6% and 48% ± 11% in cortical and subcortical brain regions, respectively, under normotensive conditions. Compared with normotensive TBI rats, hemodynamic depression was significantly greater with induced hypotension in the histopathologically vulnerable (P1) posterior parietal cortex (P < 0.01). Secondary hypotension also increased contusion area at specific bregma levels compared with normotensive TBI rats (P < 0.05), as well as overall contusion volume (0.96 ± 0.46 mm3 vs. 2.02 ± 0.51 mm3, mean ± SD, P < 0.05). These findings demonstrate that mild hemorrhagic hypotension after FP injury worsens local histopathologic outcome, possibly through vascular mechanisms.
Expressive Modulation of Neutral Visual Speech

Expressive speech animation, or expressive visual speech, is the process by which some representation of facial features (graphical, statistical, or otherwise) is smoothly changed over time to articulate verbal speech, convey emotion through facial expression, or express other characteristics such as visual prosody. Used extensively in the production of movies and computer games, current techniques for visual speech animation are slow, laborious, and expensive. Therefore, efforts to automate the complex processes involved are of great interest to these multibillion-dollar industries. In this article, the authors describe a method for transforming speech animation between different emotional expressions. When the same sentence is spoken in two different expressive styles, a large proportion of the two sentences is the same. Intuitively, then, after factoring out timing differences, the residual is the expression. Based on earlier work showing two general categories of facial movements in expressive speech--high-frequency speech components (the content) and low-frequency expressive components (the style)--the authors use independent component analysis (ICA) to factorize these movements and show how the energy for different speaking styles is distributed in this space. They transform speaking style by projecting novel animation curves into the low-dimensional ICA space, redistributing the energy in the independent components, and reconstructing the animation by inverting the projection. As they describe, a single ICA model can be used for factoring multiple expressive styles, and their method works on a variety of data types. Evaluations show that viewers can identify the expressive style generated and have difficulty distinguishing transformed animation from ground truth. Finally, they show how their technique can be used to represent complex blends of expression.
Удосконалення моделі процесу менеджменту підприємства на засадах загальних функцій менеджменту (Improvement of the Model of Enterprise Management Process on the Basis of General Management Functions)

The purpose of the article is to improve the model of the enterprise (institution, organization) management process on the basis of general management functions. The graphic model of the process of management according to the process-structured management is presented. It has been established that in today's business environment, the model of the management process should include such general management functions as: 1) controlling the achievement of results; 2) planning based on the main goal; 3) coordination and corrective actions (in the system of organization of work and production); 4) action as a form of act (conscious, volitional, directed); 5) accounting system (accounting, statistical, operational-technical and managerial); 6) diagnosis (economic, legal) with such subfunctions as: identification of the state and capabilities; analysis (economic, legal, systemic) with argumentation; assessment of the state, trends and prospects of development. The prospect of further research in this direction is: 1) the formation of a system of interrelation of functions and management methods, taking into account the presented research results; 2) development of the model of effective and efficient communication business process of the enterprise.
Tactical Target Date Funds

We propose target date funds modified to exploit stock return predictability driven by the variance risk premium. The portfolio rule of these tactical target date funds (TTDFs) is extremely simplified relative to the optimal one, making it easy to implement and to communicate to investors. We show that saving for retirement in TTDFs generates economically large welfare gains, even after we introduce turnover restrictions and transaction costs, and after taking into account parameter uncertainty. This predictability also appears to be uncorrelated with individual household risk, suggesting that households are in a prime position to exploit it. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance.
Evaluating the Association Between Corporate Entrepreneurship and Firm Performance

Corporate venturing and entrepreneurial orientation are extensively used as proxies of corporate entrepreneurship. Small and large companies are likely to face different challenges; therefore, both of them need to adopt different business strategies for achieving high performance. For instance, managerial and technical issues are faced by the small and large firms to generate innovation. The study has aimed to assess the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance. A survey approach was used to collect and evaluate the primary data, and 152 questionnaires were distributed in different firms of Jordan. 40.1% of the participants have supported the role of corporate entrepreneurship in improving firm’s performance. Moreover, 42.8% of the participants have supported the role of corporate venturing in the growth and development of an organization. The positive association was identified between corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance. In response to this statement, 77 participants were neutral; however, 48 of them were agreed to this statement. Therefore, the study concluded that there is a strong relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance.
Evaluation of the Do Bugs Need Drugs? program in British Columbia: Can we curb antibiotic prescribing?

OBJECTIVE Antibiotic resistance is accelerated by the overuse of antibiotics. Do Bugs Need Drugs? is an educational program adapted in British Columbia to target both the public and health care professionals, with the aim of reducing unnecessary prescribing. The current article presents a descriptive evaluation of the impact of the program over the first four years. METHOD Program implementation was measured by the amount of educational material distributed and the level of participation in educational sessions. The impact of the program was assessed by measuring changes in knowledge and prescribing habits of participating physicians, and by investigating provincial trends in antibiotic use. RESULTS A total of 51,367 children, assisted-living residents and health care professionals have participated in the program since its inception in the fall of 2005. Pre- and postcourse assessments of participating physicians indicated significant improvements in clinical knowledge and appropriate antibiotic treatment of upper respiratory tract infections. Overall rates of antibiotic use in the province have stabilized since 2006. The rates of consumption of fluoroquinolones and macrolides have levelled off since 2005. Utilization rates for acute bronchitis are at the same level as when the program was first implemented, but rates for other acute upper respiratory tract infections of interest have declined. CONCLUSIONS The Do Bugs Need Drugs? program significantly improves physician antibiotic prescription decisions and is ecologically associated with desirable change in population antibiotic consumption patterns.
Evaluating physical function in an adolescent bone tumor population

Survival rates for patients with bone tumors have increased dramatically over the past few decades. Unfortunately, many patients face functional limitations resulting from disease management, but there is little evidence regarding physical functioning in adolescents with bone tumors. This lack is largely due to the absence of a standardized measure for evaluating adolescent sarcoma physical functioning. This review discusses considerations in searching for a measure of adolescent physical functioning, evaluates measures previously used in assessing functional outcome in young sarcoma patients, reviews self‐report measures of pediatric physical functioning, and makes recommendations for future research.
Regulation with Experimentation: Ex Ante Approval, Ex Post Withdrawal, and Liability

We analyze the optimal mix of ex ante experimentation and ex post learning for the dynamic adoption of activities with uncertain payoffs in a two-phase model of information diffusion. In a first preintroduction phase, costly experimentation is undertaken to decide whether to adopt an activity or abandon experimentation. In a second stage following adoption, learning can continue possibly at a different pace while the activity remains in place; the withdrawal option is exercised following the accumulation of sufficiently bad news. We compare from a law and economics perspective the performance of three regulatory frameworks commonly adopted to govern private experimentation and adoption incentives: liability, withdrawal, and authorization regulation. Liability should be preempted to avoid chilling of activities that generate large positive externalities consistent with the preemption doctrine. Liability should be used to discourage excessive experimentation for activities that generate small positive externalities. Authorization regulation should be lenient whenever it is used consistent with the organization of regulation in a number of areas, ranging from product safety to antitrust. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.
Is ESG Risk Priced?

Factor investing entails exposure to ESG risk. How big is the exposure to this risk ? Is this exposure rewarded by the market ? We investigate the relevance of ESG risk for a cross section (15) of market anomalies long-short portfolios. The Environmental dimension of ESG is consistently relevant for the cross sectional variation in returns (alphas) and its beta risk is priced. This result is extremely robust including under shrinkage of the cross section. The market price of risk is shown to be negative and close to -0.200% monthly over the period 1992-2017. It is associated with a loading which varies between -0.450 and 1.093. Defensive equity (i.e., low volatility and/or low beta stocks) load positively on the E Factor. Since the market price of risk is negative, E exposure can potentially explain the low volatility and low beta anomalies.
Corruption and Sexual Scandal: The Importance of Politician Gender

The current experimental study analyzes individuals’ reactions to politicians involved in scandals as a function of scandal type and politician sex ( N = 798). Corruption and sexual scandals were considered. The results indicate that female politicians were judged more harshly than male politicians involved in scandals regardless of the type of scandal. Scandal affected not only assessment of their morality but also competence, contrary to assessment of men. The results were discussed in reference to expectancy violations theory and shifting standards theory which predicts more negative evaluation of women involved in immoral behavior despite lack general prejudices toward women in politics.
Factors associated with breastfeeding in children less than one year of age in the city of Cartagena, Colombia

Introduccion: La practica de la lactancia materna representa multiples beneficios en los ninos; sin embargo, diversos estudios muestran que ha existido una perdida paulatina del habito de la lactancia en los paises industrializados y en via de desarrollo, debido sobre todo a la gran diversidad de tipos de leche, ademas de la presencia de factores biologicos y socioculturales que influyen y modifican esta practica y generan un impacto negativo en la salud de la poblacion infantil. En Colombia, en el ano 2005, se informo que la mediana de duracion de la lactancia materna exclusiva fue de 2.2 meses y la duracion mediana total 14.9 meses; igualmente, el departamento de Bolivar informo un poco mas de medio mes. Objetivo: Determinar la relacion de los factores sociales y biologicos en la prevalencia de la lactancia materna exclusiva en ninos menores de un ano en Cartagena. Material y metodo: Estudio transversal con poblacion constituida por las madres de 23,109 ninos menores de un ano, la muestra fue 562 madres. El muestreo fue probabilistico estratificado por conglomerados de las tres localidades de la ciudad, donde cada barrio representaba un conglomerado. Una vez seleccionado el barrio se realizo un muestro aleatorio simple por manzanas. En las manzanas que resultaron seleccionadas se buscaron en sus domicilios las madres de los ninos menores de un ano. La informacion se recolecto a traves de la encuesta «Lactancia y alimentacion complementaria» utilizada por PROFAMILIA; tambien se indago acerca de las caracteristicas sociodemograficas. Resultados: La mediana de la lactancia fue 2 meses, los factores sociales que se asociaron fueron no usar biberon (IC: 2.37-5.38), pertenecer a familia nuclear (IC: 1.29-2.72), no ser madre jefe de hogar (IC: 0.27-0.62), y el factor biologico que mostro asociacion fue suspension temporal de la lactancia materna (IC: 0.23-0.70). Conclusion: La duracion de la practica de lactancia materna exclusiva en las mujeres resulto muy corta y la practica hasta el sexto mes de vida de sus hijos fue baja. Se encontro que los ninos nacidos por cesarea tuvieron mayor prevalencia de lactancia materna que los nacidos por via vaginal.
Analogies between the autistic brain and the state of the art artificial autonomous agent

The basic idea of this work is to find a analogies between clinical phenomena as Asperger Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and problems in state of the art autonomous agents in dynamic environments. Autistic individuals show a variety of curious behavioural and perceptual patterns which generally seem to lack a common underlying cause. At another place [1] we propose a theory of learning and perception which suggests that the general impairment of the autistic brain may be a restriction on the class of connectivity patterns (or “features”) that can be utilised for learning perceptual and cognitive tasks. In particular, we argue that the autistic brain does not make proper use of features which pool information over larger areas of the input space, which would allow them to make use of symmetries and develop invariants to permutations. In this work we briefly introduce the basic concept of our Autism theory and then go to cognitive problems in autonomous agents; we test the hypothesis that these in both cases similar causes result in certain impairments both seen in artificial autonomous agents and autistic individuals.
Biochemical ripening of dredged sediments. Part 1. Kinetics of biological organic matter mineralization and chemical sulfur oxidation

After dredged sediments have settled in a temporary upland disposal site, ripening starts, which turns waterlogged sediment into aerated soil. Aerobic biological mineralization of organic matter (OM) and chemical oxidation of reduced sulfur compounds are the major biochemical ripening processes. Quantitative data describing these processes are scarce. Therefore, aerobic oxidation and mineralization of five previously anaerobic dredged sediments were studied during a 160‐d laboratory incubation experiment at 30°C. A double exponential decay model could adequately describe sulfur oxidation and OM mineralization kinetics. During the first 7 d of incubation, 23 to 80% of the total sulfur was oxidized, after which no further sulfur oxidation was observed. Oxygen used for sulfur oxidation amounted up to 95% of the total oxygen uptake in the first 7 d and up to 45% of the oxygen uptake during the entire incubation period. Mineralization rates of the rapidly mineralizable OM fractions that degraded during the first 14 to 28 d of incubation were 102 to 103 times higher than the mineralization rates of the slowly mineralizable OM during the remaining period. First‐order mineralization rates of the slowly mineralizable OM were 0.22 × 10−3 to 0.54 × 10−3 d−1 and can be compared with those of terrestrial soils. Yields of biomass on substrate ranged from 0.08 to 0.45 g Cbiomass/g COM and appeared to be higher for rapidly mineralizing OM than for slowly mineralizing OM. The results of this study can be used to optimize conditions during temporary disposal of sediments, to estimate the potential decrease in OM, and for future studies on the possible link between OM mineralization and degradation of hydrophobic organic contaminants.
How many logic levels does floating-point addition require?

We present an algorithm for IEEE floating-point addition. The latency of the addition algorithm for double precision is roughly 24 logic levels, not including delays of latches between pipeline stages. The algorithm accepts normalized numbers, supports all four IEEE rounding modes, and outputs the correctly rounded sum/difference in the format required by the IEEE Standard. The presentation of the algorithm is technology independent and can serve as basis for evaluation and comparison with other floating-point addition algorithms.
The Quantitative Assessment of the Cyclical Development in Modern Conditions

The article studies applicability of the resource-oriented approach in assessing the impact of extensive and intensive factors on stable and continuous development of economic systems under cyclic conditions. The quantitative assessment of impact of efficient resource utilization on structural growth rates of the economy dependent on domestic public policy showed that excessive development of financial services makes the economy quite vulnerable to external factors.
Impact of Front Line Demonstration on Turmeric in Mahasamund District of Chhattisgarh

A front line demonstration was conducted at five farmers field in Mahasamund district of Chhattisgarh during Kharif 2016-17 to demonstrate the improved package of practice of Turmeric ( Curcuma longa ). There were two treatments in which one was local check and was cultivation of turmeric with full package of practice.The result revealed that local check gives a yield of 182 q/ha. while turmeric cultivation with full package of practices gives a yield of 241 q/ha. which shows that by adopting package of practices there were 32% increase in yield. The rhizome weight per plant recorded to be 184 g in local check against a 224 g in demonstration field. Similarly net return was also calculated which shows that local check gives a net income of Rs. 179400/ha with a B:C ratio of 2.38 against a net income of Rs. 259700 with B:C ratio of 2.73 in demonstration field. The extension gap recorded was 59 per cent during the period of study.
Corporate debt policy of Malaysian SMEs: empirical evidence from firm dynamic panel data

Financing has been identified as a dominant constraint to Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Yet, limited attention has been given to the challenges faced by the SMEs in financing their operations. This paper investigates the determinants of capital structure and use of financing for Malaysian SMEs in manufacturing sector and examines hypotheses by utilising a static trade-off choice or pecking order framework by employing a series of firm characteristics including: size, age, asset structure, profitability, growth, taxation and risk. The system Generalised Method of Moment (GMM) approach has been used for the estimation. The findings suggest that most of the determinants of capital structure presented by the theory of finance appear to be relevant for the Malaysian SMEs. Firm size and asset structure have a significantly positive effect on the leverage ratio in SMEs, while age and taxation have a negative effect. Though, growth has an impact on the total debt of the firms, profitability and risk does not have any significant effect on the decision of debt decision making in Malaysian SMEs. Furthermore, the findings of the study show that Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector generally operate based on a combination of the pecking order and the trade-off theory while borrowing in the long-term and short-term.