Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Surgical Staging in Early Stage Epithelial Ovarian Cancer: A Sorry State

To the Editor: T he ACTION trial is one of the most important trial for early stage ovarian cancer patients. When Trimbos et al initially published the results of the ACTION trial in 2003, the benefits of chemotherapy were confined to patients whowere not optimally staged. Recently, Timmer et al analyzed the reasons for the suboptimal staging in this trial of early stage ovarian cancer. Surprisingly, complete staging was performed in only one third of the patients even when optimal staging was a prerequisite for recruitment in this trial. Sampling of para-aortic nodes was omitted in 78% of the incompletely staged patients, whereas 52% of these patients had no pelvic lymph node dissection. Taking blind biopsies from different peritoneal sites was not performed in more than one third of the incompletely staged group. Omission of the staging steps ranged from 3% (infracolic omentectomy) to 55% (biopsy of the right hemidiaphragm). A significant difference (P = 0.04) between the fraction of completely staged patients was found when comparing institutes who entered fewer than 5 patients (21%) versus those who included more than 20 patients (37%) in the trial. These results seriously explain the sorry state of optimal staging in early stage ovarian cancer because, even in a randomized trial where comprehensive surgical staging was prespecified in the study protocol, only 34% patients underwent optimal staging. These results seriously cast doubt on the optimal care of ovarian cancer patients all over the world. The ACTION trial was conducted in the developed part of the world, and these discouraging results from optimal staging will be more pronounced in the developing countries. In this trial, however, the results show better staging in institutes that included more than 20 patients; also in these institutes, only 37% of patients were optimally staged. The authors also divided the reasons for suboptimal staging in 2 groups: procedures that were difficult or were associated with increased morbidity and easy procedures with no morbidity. Even in the second group, procedures such as biopsies from paracolic gutters and side wall were not performed in 39% of the patients, and peritoneal washings were not performed in 11% of the patients. As rightly pointed out by the authors, the only answer to the problem of suboptimal staging is the proper referral to a trained gynecologic oncologist. These data definitely suggest that the threshold for adjuvant chemotherapy should be low whenever there is a doubt for optimal staging of early stage ovarian cancer patients.
Spot the difference: consumer responses towards counterfeits

Examines consumers’ motivation for buying counterfeits or pirated goods. The findings indicated that, compared to those who did not buy pirated music CDs, those who bought the counterfeits viewed such purchases as less risky, and trusted stores that sell counterfeits more. They did not see counterfeits as too unfair to singers or the music industry, thought they benefit the society more, and did not see people who buy them as unethical. We also investigated the influence of social, personality, and demographic factors on consumers’ attitude towards piracy. We found that the more value‐conscious and less normatively susceptible one was, and the less integrity one had, the more favorable was one’s attitude towards piracy. Demographic characteristics were also significant in influencing attitude. Males and those from lower income groups held more favorable attitudes. Finally, attitude towards piracy was significant in influencing purchase intention.
Does Gratitude Enhance Prosociality?: A Meta-Analytic Review

Theoretical models suggest that gratitude is linked to increased prosociality. To date, however, there is a lack of a comprehensive quantitative synthesis of results to support this claim. In this review we aimed to (a) examine the overall strength of the association between gratitude and prosociality, and (b) identify the theoretical and methodological variables that moderate this link. We identified 252 effect sizes from 91 studies across 65 papers— (Total N = 18,342 participants). The present meta-analysis revealed a statistically significant, and moderate positive correlation between gratitude and prosociality (r = .374). This association was significantly larger among studies that assessed reciprocal outcomes relative to nonreciprocal outcomes, and in particular among studies that examined direct—compared with indirect—reciprocity. Studies that examined gratitude as an affective state reported significantly larger effect size studies assessing gratitude as a trait. Studies that examined benefit-triggered gratitude (in response to other’s kindness) had a stronger effect that generalized gratitude that focuses on the appreciation of what is valued and cherished in life. Finally, studies that manipulated gratitude in vivo (e.g., economic games) had larger effect sizes compared with those based on recalled incidents when the person felt grateful. We describe the theoretical and practical significance of the results.
Placement Delivery Array Design for Combination Networks with Edge Caching

A major practical limitation of the Maddah-Ali-Niesen coded caching techniques is their high subpacketization level. For the simple network with a single server and multiple users, Yan et al. proposed an alternative scheme with the so-called placement delivery arrays (PDA). Such a scheme requires slightly higher transmission rates but significantly reduces the subpack-etization level. In this paper, we extend the PDA framework and propose three low-subpacketization schemes for combination networks, i.e., networks with a single server, multiple relays, and multiple cache-aided users that are connected to subsets of relays. One of the schemes achieves the cutset lower bound on the link rate when the cache memories are sufficiently large. Our other two schemes apply only to resolvable combination networks. For these network and for a wide range of cache sizes, the new schemes perform closely to the coded caching schemes that directly apply Maddah-Ali-Niesen scheme while having significantly reduced subpacketization levels.
Intertemporal Competition for Institutional Capital in IPOs

We propose a model of intertemporal competition for institutional capital in initial public offerings (IPOs) of equity. A firm issuing shares in period t courts institutional investors that also consider investing in a firm that will issue shares in the next period. We characterize stationary equilibria in two regimes: 1) when all issuers use bookbuilding, 2) when all issuers use fixed price offer.Issuers compete for institutional capital and in equilibrium pay rent to institutional investors: the shares are underpriced on average and institutional orders are treated favorably. Bookbuilding is more flexible than fixed price offer and permits the issuer to promise a higher return to institutional investors. When institutional resources are limited individually each issuer prefers bookbuilding. Yet, bookbuilding intensifies intertemporal competition for institutional capital among issuers. In this case the issuers would jointly benefit if bookbuilding would not be allowed. Our theory accords with many empirical findings about IPOs.
The Analysts' Own Analysis

RAINING ANALYSES ARE UNIQUE. Because they are mandated, T take place during psychoanalytic training, and are entered into for professional advancement as well as for relief of suffering, they activate complex issues beyond those mobilized in ordinary therapeutic analyses. Complications are inherent in the candidate’s experiencing the analytic process on his analyst’s couch, responding to the process in and with his patients, learning about it in his courses and clinical conferences, studying it with the help and under the scrutiny of his supervisors and fellow students , and , finally, joining his analyst as colleague, co-worker, or rival. As Calef (1972) points out, these analyses are modifications of therapeutic analyses for the achievement of training ends. How successful are such analyses? How much do these complications compromise the analytic process? What elements in training analysis are most burdensome? Are there elements in the training context that facilitate personal analysis? What proportion of analysts have sought additional analysis subsequent to the training analysis? Was the decision to seek reanalysis the result of disappointment with the therapeutic outcome of training analysis? These questions were the stimulus to an investigation using nonanalytic tools into the nature of the training analysis as recalled and reconstructed retrospectively by 122 analysts. This paper reports the selfassessment of their satisfaction with the therapeutic outcome
EPIDEMIOLOGY OF HUMAN FASCIOLOSIS IN RURAL AREAS OF LAHORE, PAKISTAN*

Epidemiological aspects of fasciolosis in human beings were investigated by faecal examination in six different areas of Lahore i.e., Bhutto colony, Siddiquia colony, Scheme no.2, Sheikhupura road, Khairdin park and Misri shah from April 2003 March 2005. The epidemiological data showed overall infection of 0.31%. Highest infection was observed in Scheme no. 2 i.e., 0,58% followed by Bhutto colony and Sheikhupura road (0.33%), and lowest in Khairdin Park, Misri Shah and Siddiquia colony (0.167%). In month wise, over all, prevalence was highest in August and January (0.667%) and lowest in March (0.0%). Season wise data revealed highest infection in summer (0.42%) followed by winter (0.33%) and lowest in spring and autumn (0.167%). Sex wise prevalence showed higher infection in females (0.30%) than in males (0.28%). All infected persons were below the age of 20 years and showed significantly higher infection (P < 0.05).
Is Impulse Purchasing Really a Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions?

Impulse purchasing is an important aspect of customer in-store behavior as discussed in the previous article. The authors of this paper indicate that the concept, as presently employed, has limited usefulness as a basis for marketing decisions. They outline the problems marketers must confront in order to make the unplanned purchasing concept operational for marketing decisions.
Cross-polarized C-band sea-surface NRCS observations in extreme winds

We report on airborne measurements of the cross-polarized (VH) ocean surface normalized radar crosssection (NRCS) at incidence angles between 15° and 40° obtained at C-band in high-wind (> 30 m s-1) conditions. The present observations were taken in Hurricane Patricia on 23 October 2015 and extend the wind speed range of the existing cross-polarization ocean surface NRCS literature [1]-[4]. The NRCS at the smaller incidence angles decrease as wind speed increases, as expected. At the larger incidence angles, saturation of the NRCS is not observed up to at least 70 m s-1. The results have implications for planned and future scatterometers (e.g., MetOp-SG) that aim to increase the maximum observable wind speeds.
Logistic regression analysis of fixed patient factors for postoperative sickness: a model for risk assessment.

One hundred and forty-seven patients undergoing minor orthopaedic surgery were studied prospectively by logistic regression analysis to determine the association of independent fixed patient factors with the incidence of postoperative sickness (nausea, retching or vomiting). Gender, history of previous postoperative sickness, postoperative opioids and interaction between gender and previous history of sickness were significant independent factors for postoperative sickness; history of motion sickness was weakly associated. The probability of postoperative sickness in the first 24 h after surgery may be estimated from the equation: logit postoperative sickness = -5.03+2.24(postoperative opioids) +3.97 (previous sickness history) +2.4 (gender) +0.78 (motion sickness) -3.2 (gender x previous sickness history). (Log likelihood ratio test for 5 degrees of freedom for the coefficients, chi-square = 53.5 (P < 0.001). ) It is suggested that the calculated probability for sickness may be a useful addition for balancing patient treatment groups and allowing between-study comparisons.
How Colleges Use Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) to Transform Student Support. CCRC Working Paper No. 89.

This paper examines technology-mediated advising reform in order to contribute to the understanding of how colleges engage in transformative change to improve student outcomes. Conceptualizing such change as occurring along three interrelated dimensions of organizational functioning (structural, process, and attitudinal), we seek to understand the contexts that encourage or discourage transformation of advising and student support. We use in-depth pre/post data from six colleges deploying integrated planning and advising for student success (iPASS) to investigate the reform process. Three of the six colleges made steps toward transforming their student support delivery, shifting along all three dimensions. We identify four contextual features that appear to underpin colleges’ likelihood of transformative reform. Technology and vendor relationships form an important foundation. Reform vision and rationale, leadership, and the college’s orientation toward student success are important institutional influences. Our findings support the hypothesis put forth by Karp and Fletcher (2014) in their Readiness for Technology Adoption framework that technology is necessary but not sufficient for transformation, and that project-level and organizational factors are perhaps more important. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that technology can spur substantial institutional change, but only under certain circumstances.
Customer needing: a challenge for the seller offering

Purpose – The present increasingly tough economic climate has uncovered the need to go beyond the prevailing seller‐oriented models and company practices in order to capture the factors that essentially drive buyer companies. What is needed is a genuinely customer‐side concept that corresponds to offering. The purpose of this study is to develop a new concept labeled “customer needing” which emerged from the material collected in an industrial service setting.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reports a case study of a typical high‐technology industrial service with a strong outsourcing trend. The empirical data consist of interviews with eight representatives from the seller company and 16 interviews from different customer companies.Findings – A needing is based on the customers' mental models of their business and business strategies that affect their priorities, decisions, and actions. It is itself a mental model of how the customer conceives the fulfillment of a specific task. In this paper the .
Franchisee satisfaction of goal attainment: a discovery of hierarcy of entrepreneur goals

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the extent to which franchisees are satisfied with the attainment of their personal goals in business. Although franchising continues to be exploited in the business sector, research and studies of franchising were scarcely mentioned in the organizational literature. Obviously, franchising as a body of knowledge has been studied mostly from the franchisor’s perspective than on franchisees. Within franchisee literature, studies on people’s motivation to become a franchisee have received some attention and provided little understanding, but no study has ever measured to what extent franchisees are satisfied with their personal goals in the business. Design/methodology/approach – To investigate the hypotheses, a positivist approach is chosen as the philosophical foundation of this study, and all methodological aspects related with this approach are used in this study. A total of 204 franchisee entrepreneurs in Malaysia were surveyed and answered self-administered ques.
Combined Spectral and Timing Analysis of the Black Hole Candidate MAXI J1659−152, Discovered by MAXI and Swift

We report on X-ray spectral and timing results of the new black hole candidate (BHC) MAXI J1659-152 with the orbital period of 2.41 hours (shortest among BHCs) in the 2010 outburst from 65 Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) observations and 8 simultaneous Swift and RXTE observations. According to the definitions of the spectral states in Remillard & McClintock (2006), most of the observations have been classified into the intermediate state. All the X-ray broadband spectra can be modeled by a multi-color disk plus a power-law with an exponential cutoff or a multi-color disk plus a Comptonization component. During the initial phase of the outburst, a high energy cutoff was visible at 30-40 keV. The innermost radius of the disk gradually decreased by a factor of more than 3 from the onset of the outburst and reached a constant value of 35 d(sub 10)cos(i sup 1/2) km, where d(sub 10) is the distance in units of 10 kpc and i is the inclination. The type-C quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) frequency varied from 1.6 Hz to 7.3 Hz in association with a change of the innermost radius, while the innermost radius remained constant during the type-B QPO detections at 1.6-4.1 Hz. Hence, we suggest that the origin of the type-B QPOs is different from that of type-C QPOs, the latter of which would originate from the disk truncation radius. Assuming the constant innermost radius in the latter phase of the outburst as the innermost stable circular orbit, the black hole mass in MAXI J1659-152 is estimated to be 3.6-8.0 solar mass for a distance of 5.3-8.6 kpc and an inclination angle of 60-75 degrees.
Innovation policy and successfulness of micro and small companies in the Republic of Slovenia

The purpose of our research is to examine the state of innovation policy and its influence on the successfulness of micro and small companies in the Republic of Slovenia. The effects of particular influential variables on the success and innovation policy (frequency of introduced changes, national co-financing, financial support initiatives, promote programs and innovation planning policy) were analysed empirically on the stratified model of 121 micro and small companies with the method of quantitative research, namely as per the most important and successful statistical regions. On the basis of the analysis based on linear and multiple regression analysis, it may be established that innovation policy influences positively on the success of micro and small companies. We can thus conclude that company’s frequency of introduced changes; national co-financing and financial support incentives, familiarity of employees with the innovation strategy as a part of innovation policy play a significant part in achieving business excellence. Key words: Innovation policy, innovation planning policy, company’s success, management, micro and small companies, Slovenia.
Pediatric patients receiving palliative care in Canada: results of a multicenter review.

OBJECTIVES To describe the patients who received care from the 8 dedicated pediatric palliative care programs in Canada in 2002 and to estimate the number of children who may have benefited but did not receive services from these programs. DESIGN Retrospective review of medical records combined with a survey of each program. SETTING Seven pediatric palliative care programs based in tertiary care settings and 1 freestanding children's hospice. PARTICIPANTS The programs cared for 317 children during 2002, of whom 123 died during that year. An additional 32 children died by the end of 2003. MAIN EXPOSURE Pediatric palliative care program. RESULTS Nearly half (48.6%) of the patients were younger than 5 years, and almost half of these were younger than 1 year. Primary diagnoses were disorders of the nervous system (39.1%), malignancies (22.1%), and conditions arising in the perinatal period or congenital anomalies (22.1%). Most of the children (43.9%) died at home, with those centers reporting more comprehensive home care services having the highest percentage of home deaths. From a national perspective, between 5% and 12% of the children who could benefit from palliative care received services from 1 of these programs. CONCLUSIONS Pediatric palliative care programs in Canada care for a diverse population of patients with a wide range of age and disease conditions. Only a small percentage of children who die, however, receive services from these dedicated programs.
Studies on the biology of the life-cycle of Trichuris suis Schrank, 1788

The biology of the life-cycle of Trichuris suis of the pig is described and discussed together with aspects of the hosi-parasite relationship. Development of the infective L. 1 larval stage within the egg was shown to be influenced by temperature. Following ingestion of infective ova by the pig, all subsequent larval development to the adult stage occurred in the mucosa of the caecum and colon. Eggs hatched in the distal region of the small intestine and throughout the large intestine. Larvae then penetrated the caecum and colonic mucosa via the crypts of Lieberkühn, where they entered the cells lining the crypts. The ensuing histotrophic phase lasted 13 days, during which time a gradual larval migration occurred from the deeper regions of the lamina propria to areas immediately beneath the surface mucosal epithelium. Luminal development was initially seen on day 16 when the posterior extremities of larvae were protruded into the gut lumen; from day 20 the entire posterior body region was exposed, while only the filamentous anterior region of the parasite remained embedded in the mucosal surface. The prepatent period varied from 41 to 47 days. Four moults were observed during development within the host and these occurred on days 10, 16, 20, 32 and 37 (to form the L. 2, L. 3, L. 4 and L. 5 or adult stage respectively). It is suggested that although T. suis may not be an important pathogen in its own right, its activities in the caecal and colonic mucosa may cause sufficient damage to enable secondary pathogenic invaders to become established.
Optimal Feedback Control of Microalgal Growth Based on the Slow Reduction

A state feedback law is proposed for on-line optimization of microalgal growth in a photobioreactor in the presence of non-measurable disturbances. The objective is to maximize a photosynthetic production rate (specific growth rate of microalgae) by manipulating the irradiance. The model describing the growth of microalgae is based on the mechanistic description in the form of the so-called photosynthetic factory. The reduction to a slow dynamics is used to derive analytically the approximation of the optimal feedback control. The analysis of the obtained explicit formula shows that the optimal feedback control actually performs optimal transfer to a constant optimal irradiance developed earlier but does not achieve principally better performance than the optimal control within the class of constant irradiance. Therefore, by reducing fast dynamics one can not reveal possible more complex optimal solutions. At the same time, this contradicts to a common belief in biotechnological community that the fast phenomena may be neglected. Illustrative simulations are included.
Mutual fund performance: a market efficiency perspective

ABSTRACT This study reconciles existing literature on stock market efficiency and mutual fund performance by developing a framework to test whether fund managers are able to exploit market inefficiencies. We find a positive relationship between alpha and weak-form market efficiency. Most funds are unable to outperform the market systematically, although a few are able to exploit relatively inefficient markets. Top performing funds are characterised by a better management of downside risk in times of market distress, whilst simultaneously exploiting learning effects when markets return to equilibrium. By conditioning fund performance on the state of the underlying market, we propose a conditional alpha ratio, which helps to better understand fund performance and can improve the fund selection process for investors.