Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-dose fractionated total-body irradiation, etoposide, and cyclophosphamide followed by autologous stem-cell support in patients with malignant lymphoma.

PURPOSE To evaluate a high-dose treatment regimen of fractionated total-body irradiation (TBI), etoposide, and cyclophosphamide (Cy) followed by autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT) in patients with malignant lymphoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty-three patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL; n = 43) or Hodgkin's disease (HD; n = 10) received 12.0 Gy of fractionated TBI, etoposide 60 mg/kg, and Cy 100 mg/kg followed by infusion of autologous hematopoietic stem cells. RESULTS Thirty-one of 53 patients are alive a median of 643 (range, 177 to 1,144) days after transplant. The 2 year Kaplan-Meier (K-M) estimates of survival, event-free survival (EFS), and relapse for all 53 patients were 54%, 45%, and 43%, respectively. Sixteen of 24 patients with less advanced disease and 10 of 29 patients with more advanced disease survive free of disease for K-M estimates of EFS of 61% and 31%, respectively (P = .006). The K-M estimates of relapse were 34% for patients with less advanced disease and 53% (P = .05) for patients with more advanced disease. The K-M estimates of dying from causes other than relapse were 8% in patients with less versus 25% in patients with more advanced disease (P = .09). CONCLUSION These data indicate that approximately 60% of patients transplanted early after failure of initial therapy for malignant lymphoma are projected to be disease-free more than 2 years after treatment with fractionated TBI, etoposide, and Cy and infusion of autologous hematopoietic stem cells. The transplant-related mortality rate is low and relapse is the main cause of treatment failure in patients with less advanced disease. For patients with more advanced disease, the K-M estimates of both transplant-related deaths (25%) and relapse (53%) remain major problems.
Strategic HRM: enablers and constraints in the NHS

The UK Government has frequently referred to the importance of strategic human resource management (HRM) to the success of the National Health Service (NHS). However, relatively little is known about whether HR departments within individual NHS Trusts play a strategic role and, if so, how this has been achieved. Reports on the findings of a unique study into HRM at the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust over the period 1994‐2000. In particular, focuses on the factors that have enabled or constrained the development of a strategic role over time. Whilst it was found that the NHS context often served as a constraining factor, also shows that much can be done at the level of the individual Trust to foster a strategic role for the HR function. Of particular importance were the HR director role, the attitudes of senior management towards HRM and the way in which HR interventions were implemented.
Empirical evaluation of the revised technology acceptance model

Davis et al. Davis, F. D. , R. P. Bagozzi, P. R. Warshaw. 1989. User acceptance of computer technology: A comparison of two theoretical models. Management Sci.358 982-1003. proposed, tested, and revised the Technology Acceptance Model TAM, which attempts to explain and predict why users sometimes accept and sometimes reject information systems IS. The research reported here 1 provides a confirmatory, empirical test of the revised TAM and 2 introduces and objective measure of technology acceptance, actual usage rather than self-report usage. Subjects' beliefs about the usefulness and ease of use of an electronic mail system, their intentions to use the system, and their usage of it 15 weeks later were measured in a longitudinal study. The results confirmed that the TAM is a valuable tool for predicting intentions to use an IS. The findings here combined with results from other studies in this area suggest that the original TAM may be more appropriate than the two-version revised TAM. However, the addition of an experience component to the original TAM may be a significant enhancement. In addition, the results support that self-report usage may not be an appropriate surrogate measure for actual usage.
Do Transparent Firms Pay Out More Cash to Shareholders? Evidence from International Cross-listings

This article examines the relationship between agency costs and corporate payout policies using a sample 755 firms that cross-list shares abroad. I document that firms cross-listing on exchanges with comparatively high standards of transparency and shareholder protection increase their cash payouts to shareholders by about 9% of earnings after cross-listing. The shift in payout policy is more pronounced in firms controlled by management, and it is not observed if external shareholder protection in the country of incorporation is already strong, or if the host exchange does not mandate additional disclosure. These findings provide support for the theory of La Porta et al. (2000) that high corporate payouts are the outcome of transparency and shareholder protection.
Training Services in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Evidence from Poland

In the knowledge-based economy knowledge and skills are becoming more and more significant for the success of companies. This applies also to firms from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector. As large companies in many cases posses special divisions devoted to trainings, they normally have no problems with updating the knowledge and skills of their employees. The situation is different with regard to SMEs, which often have no resources and abilities to train their employees. In the article, the following aspects are examined: 1.What are the differences in demand for training services among firms from the SMEs sector and larger companies? 2. What are the determinants of making the decision about using particular training company and training topic? This article analyses the characteristics of using training services by SMEs from the Pomeranian region of Poland and compares the results with those for larger companies. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.ss. 84.2. 7492
Temporary Contracts and Work—Family Balance in a Dual Labor Market

A well-established finding in the literature is that self-employment enables mothers to accommodate work and family needs better than when they are engaged in organizational employment. With this result in mind, the authors investigate within a dual system of job protection if women under temporary contracts face greater work-family conflicts than those under permanent contracts. The authors use data on women's work and fertility histories from the Spanish Continuous Sample of Working Histories to analyze whether women under temporary contracts transition to self-employment upon motherhood more than those who are under permanent contracts. Analyses show that being under a temporary contract increases women's likelihood of transitioning to self-employment upon childbirth. Supplementary analyses show that this is partly the result of voluntary transitions and not an employer's decision to terminate a temporary contract upon motherhood. Overall, these findings reveal a hidden cost of temporary contracts: the greater difficulty in balancing work and family.
Privatisation Discontent and Utility Reform in Latin America

Abstract Privatisation faces strong and increasingly popular opposition in Latin America. This paper uses individual data on social attitudes, socioeconomic status and demographic information from three waves of Latinobarometro surveys (1998, 2000 and 2002) in 17 countries to study the role of privatisation of utilities and its distributional impact. We find that disagreement with privatisation is most likely when the respondent is on a low-to-middle income and when it involves a high proportion of public services such as water and electricity. This complements recent empirical research that points to distributional concerns in the implementation of privatisation in Latin America, particularly because of inadequate regulation of utilities.
Nonindustrial Private Forest Landowner Use of Geographic Data: A Precondition for Ecosystem-Based Management

Ecosystem-based forest management requires geographic data at a landscape scale that often extends across ownership boundaries. Implementing ecosystem-based management for lands owned by small, nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) land owners depends in part upon their attitudes and experiences regarding geographic data. A mail survey of NIPF landowners in northwestern Connecticut assessed their perceived importance and previous use of geographic data for a variety of ecosystem-based management interests, tasks, and scales. Management activities closely aligned with stewardship objectives scored higher than other activities for both perceived importance and previous use of geographic data . Perceived impor tance scored between two and eight times higher than previous use for all activities. NIPF landowner characteristics of employment status, age, gender, residency, and degree of commitment to forest management goals were related to perceived importance and previous use of geographic data. Assisting NIPF landowners with ecosystem-based management activities will require geographic data that correspond to stewardship objectives .
Pivotal response treatment for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder: Defining a predictor profile

Behavioral characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who respond positively to Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) have been described previously, based on single‐subject design research. The present study examined several such characteristics, as well as positive affect, as predictors of expressive language (EL) gains in a representative sample of preschoolers with ASD (n = 57) enrolled in a PRT‐based community early intervention program. Children's cognitive ability, positive affect, and levels of appropriate toy contact measured at the start of intervention each contributed significantly to the prediction of EL outcomes. Together these variables accounted for 40% of the total outcome variance. In addition, a profile of increased EL ability, positive affect and appropriate toy contact, and decreased social avoidance and stereotyped and repetitive vocalizations was associated with greater gains during intervention. Results are discussed in relation to their implications for understanding both the variable treatment response documented in children with ASD and how to tailor treatment to optimize individual benefit. Autism Res 2018, 11: 153–165. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
NHTSA SIDE IMPACT RESEARCH: MOTIVATION FOR UPGRADED TEST PROCEDURES

This paper presents the results of a study on crash conditions and occupant characteristics in side impacts to support the development of advanced side impact test procedures. The US vehicle fleet has been changing in recent years with a growing population of light trucks and vans, and the rapid introduction of side impact inflatable restraints for both thoracic and head protection. The study utilizes the US NASS/CDS, and FARS and GES (1990-2001) to characterize the current and projected US side crash environment in order to identify opportunities to improve side impact protection for the modern US fleet. For the covering abstract see ITRD E825082.
How Effective Is the Minimum Wage at Supporting the Poor?

This study investigates the antipoverty efficacy of minimum wage policies. Proponents of these policies contend that employment impacts are negligible and suggest that consumers pay for higher labor costs through imperceptible increases in goods prices. Adopting this empirical scenario, the analysis demonstrates that an increase in the national minimum wage produces a value-added tax effect on consumer prices that is more regressive than a typical state sales tax and allocates benefits as higher earnings nearly evenly across the income distribution. These income-transfer outcomes sharply contradict portraying an increase in the minimum wage as an antipoverty initiative.
The Political Conditioning of Subjective Economic Evaluations: The Role of Party Discourse

Classic and revisionist perspectives on economic voting have thoroughly analyzed the role of macroeconomic indicators and individual partisanship as determinants of subjective evaluations of the national economy. Surprisingly, however, top-down analysis of parties’ capacity to cue and persuade voters about national economic conditions is absent in the debate. This study uses a novel dataset containing monthly economic salience in party parliamentary speeches, macroeconomic indicators and individual survey data covering the four last electoral cycles in Spain (1996–2011). The results show that the salience of economic issues in the challenger’s discourse substantially increases negative evaluations of performance when this challenger is the owner of the economic issue. While a challenger’s conditioning of public economic evaluations is independent of the state of the economy (and can affect citizens with different ideological orientations), incumbent parties are more constrained by the true state of the economy in their ability to persuade the electorate on this issue.
Economic and survival burden of dysphagia among inpatients in the United States.

The inpatient burden of dysphagia has primarily been evaluated in patients with stroke. It is unclear whether dysphagia, irrespective of cause, is associated with worse clinical outcomes and higher costs compared to inpatients with similar demographic, hospital, and clinical characteristics without dysphagia. The aim of this study is to assess how a dysphagia diagnosis affects length of hospital stay (LOS), costs, discharge disposition, and in-hospital mortality among adult US inpatients. Annual and overall dysphagia prevalence, LOS, hospital charges, inpatient care costs, discharge disposition, and in-hospital mortality were measured using the AHRQ Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) National Inpatient Sample (2009-2013). Patients aged 45 years or older with ≤180 days of stay in hospital with and without dysphagia were included. Multivariable survey regression methods with propensity weighting were used to assess associations between dysphagia and different outcomes. Overall, 2.7 of 88 million (3.0%) adult US inpatients had a dysphagia diagnosis (50.2% male, 72.4% white, 74.6% age 65-90 years) and prevalence increased from 408,035 (2.5% of admissions) in 2009 to 656,655 (3.3%) in 2013. After inverse probability of treatment weighting adjustment, mean hospital LOS in patients with dysphagia was 8.8 days (95% CI 8.66-8.90) compared to 5.0 days (95% CI 4.97-5.05) in the non-dysphagia group (P < 0.001). Total inpatient costs were a mean $6,243 higher among those with dysphagia diagnoses ($19,244 vs. 13,001, P < 0.001). Patients with dysphagia were 33.2% more likely to be transferred to post-acute care facility (71.9% vs. 38.7%, P < 0.001) with an adjusted OR of 2.8 (95% CI 2.73-2.81, P < 0.001). Compared to non-cases, adult patients with dysphagia were 1.7 times more likely to die in the hospital (95% CI 1.67-1.74). Dysphagia affects 3.0% of all adult US inpatients (aged 45-90 years) and is associated with a significantly longer hospital length of stay, higher inpatient costs, a higher likelihood of discharge to post-acute care facility, and inpatient mortality when compared to those with similar patient, hospital size, and clinical characteristics without dysphagia. Dysphagia has a substantial health and cost burden on the US healthcare system.
Skilled labor flows : lessons from the European Union

This study evaluates European Union (EU) experience of the mobility of skilled labor migrants after the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements and from the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) countries. The study concludes that migration generally improves the allocated efficiency of labor markets and there is little if any evidence of statistically significant or economically relevant negative aggregate effects of migration on receiving labor markets. While outflow of young and skilled workers may pose risks to sending countries' economic prospects and public finance, circular migration, brain gain, and remittances attenuate such risks, and have the potential to become powerful engines of convergence. Obstructive legislation and ill-designed migration policies impede migration and deprive sending and receiving of such potential benefits.
Effect of pre-electroacupuncture on p38 and c-Fos expression in the spinal dorsal horn of rats suffering from visceral pain.

BACKGROUND Acupuncture is an effective way to relieve pain, but the mechanism by which electroacupuncture (EA) decreases the visceral pain state still remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of pre-electroacupuncture on pain behaviors, p38 phosphorylation, and c-Fos protein and mRNA expression in both the colonic wall and spinal dorsal horn of rats suffering from visceral pain. This study also investigated the probable signaling regulatory mechanism of the analgesic effect induced by electroacupuncture. METHODS All rats were randomized into the control (Con) group, the Con + EA group, the visceral pain (VP) group, and VP + EA group (n = 8 for all groups). The visceral pain model was established using 40 microl of 5% formalin solution injected into the colon of rats. EA was applied to the bilateral Jiaji acupoints for 20 minutes before application of visceral pain. Parameters for EA were set at a continuous wave (20 Hz) and intensity where the rats shook their whiskers but did not scrabble (< or = 1 mA). The visceral pain score was recorded and the expressions of p38 and c-Fos protein were detected using Western blotting. Real-time quantitative PCR was also used to determine the expression of c-Fos mRNA. RESULTS Rats in the VP group immediately presented with obvious visceral pain behaviors after being injected with formalin. p38 activity and c-Fos protein and mRNA expression in both the colonic wall and spinal dorsal horn were higher in the VP group than in the Con group (P < 0.05). By contrast, visceral pain behaviors were delayed in rats from the VP + EA group. p38 activity and c-Fos protein and mRNA expression were lower in the VP + EA group than that in the VP group (P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS Pre-electroacupuncture of the Jiaji acupoint has prophylactic analgesic effects on rats suffering from visceral pain. The p38 signal transduction pathway may be partly involved in the regulatory mechanism of this analgesic effect.
Management of gingivobuccal complex cancer.

INTRODUCTION Squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity ranks as the 12th most common cancer in the world and the 8th most frequent in males. It accounts for up to one-third of all tobacco-related cancers in India. Cancer of the gingivobuccal complex is especially common in Indians due to their tobacco habits. This review focuses on the management of lower gingivobuccal complex cancers. PATIENTS AND METHODS References for this review were identified by search of Medline and other bibliographic information available in the PubMed database. The search terms carcinoma oral cavity, and cancer oral cavity, buccal mucosa, gingiva, gingivobuccal complex, and alveolus cancer/carcinoma were used. References from relevant articles and abstracts from international conferences were also included. Only articles published in the English language were used. RESULTS Treatment of gingivobuccal complex cancer is primarily surgical. Radical neck dissection, or its modification, is the standard treatment for the node-positive neck. Supraomohyoid neck dissection is the accepted treatment for the node-negative neck. Radiotherapy is usually not the preferred modality of treatment for early gingivobuccal complex cancer. It is used either as postoperative adjuvant treatment or as definitive treatment for advanced cancer with or without chemotherapy. Chemotherapy has been used as neo-adjuvant, adjuvant or palliative treatment. Advanced cancers are common and continue to pose a challenge to the multidisciplinary team. CONCLUSIONS Gingivobuccal complex cancer remains a major public health problem despite being highly preventable and easily detectable. Advanced cancers constitute a major proportion of patients presenting for treatment. These patients are difficult to treat and have a poor outcome.
Strategic Outsourcing of IT Services: Theoretical Stocktaking and Empirical Challenges

This paper presents a review of existing theoretical perspectives and empirical work on strategic IT outsourcing. By presenting the main findings of various recent studies and elaborating on current research gaps it conveys a picture of the past research, the present findings and the future applications of IT outsourcing. Prior research has generated theoretical insights and largely qualitative evidence on IT outsourcing. While quantitative studies remain sparse, limited to decision making and performance, there is a lack of quantitative empirical research examining outsourcing processes more comprehensively. This paper outlines a simple, yet integrative process model and develops propositions, which serve to integrate and compare theoretical strands, to evaluate existing empirical research and to stimulate new avenues of empirical research.
Psychological impact of genetic testing for familial hypercholesterolemia within a previously aware population: A randomized controlled trial

This trial tests the hypothesis that confirming a clinical diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) by finding a genetic mutation reduces patients' perceptions of control over the disease and adherence to risk‐reducing behaviors. Three hundred forty‐one families, comprising 341 hypercholesterolemia probands and 128 adult relatives, were randomized to one of two groups: (a) routine clinical diagnosis; (b) routine clinical diagnosis plus genetic testing (mutation searching in probands and direct gene testing in relatives). The main outcome measures were perceptions of control over hypercholesterolemia, adherence to cholesterol‐lowering medication, diet, physical activity, and smoking. There was no support for the main hypothesis: finding a mutation had no impact on perceived control or adherence to risk‐reducing behavior (all P‐values > 0.10). While all groups believed that lowering cholesterol was an effective way of reducing the risk of a heart attack, participants in whom a mutation was found believed less strongly in the efficacy of diet in reducing their cholesterol level (P = 0.02 at 6 months) and showed a trend in believing more strongly in the efficacy of cholesterol‐lowering medication (P = 0.06 at 6 months). In conclusion, finding a mutation to confirm a clinical diagnosis of FH in a previously aware population does not reduce perceptions of control or adherence to risk‐reducing behaviors. The pattern of findings leads to the new hypothesis that genetic testing does not affect the extent to which people feel they have control over a condition, but does affect their perceptions of how control is most effectively achieved. Further work is needed to determine whether similar results will be obtained in populations with little previous awareness of their risks. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.