Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intraoperative molecular margin analysis in head and neck cancer.

BACKGROUND Tumor-specific molecular alterations in surgical margins have been shown to predict risk of local recurrence. However, assays used for these analyses are time-consuming and therefore cannot be used in the intraoperative setting. OBJECTIVE To detect and quantify tumor-specific methylated promoter sequences in surgical margins in a time frame suitable for intraoperative use. DESIGN A novel quantitative methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (QMSP) protocol. METHODS A total of 13 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) were initially characterized for molecular alterations in their tumor at the time of biopsy. Six primary tumors were found to harbor promoter hypermethylation for p16 and O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT) genes. Rapid QMSP was then used to identify promoter hypermethylation of these genes in the surgical margins. Results were compared with standard intraoperative histologic frozen section analysis and with conventional QMSP. RESULTS Using our rapid QMSP assay, we found that 3 patients had methylation-positive margins. Tumor margins from 2 patients were methylated for p16 alone, and margins from 1 patient were methylated for p16 and MGMT simultaneously. Molecular margin analysis was completed in less than 5 hours, a time frame appropriate for selected major HNSCC resections that require combined primary tumor resection, cervical lymphadenectomy, and complex reconstruction. This technique was comparable in sensitivity to conventional QMSP. CONCLUSION Rapid molecular margin analysis using QMSP is feasible and may be performed intraoperatively in selected patients with HNSCC that requires extensive resection.
Assessment of voltage stability risks under stochastic net loads using scalable SVM classification

A novel approach is presented to identify and assess voltage stability risk in power networks that include nodes with variable loads and intermittent renewable generation. Given a power network configuration, the approach firstly assesses voltage instability boundaries at selected nodes in response to stochastic operational conditions (variable load and intermittent decentralised generation). By iteratively calculating Saddle Node Bifurcation (SNB) points one node at a time given a set of loads and intermittent generation conditions at the other nodes, those data points are used as training sets for support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. Secondly, a marginal voltage stability risk probability distribution for the intermittent buses is derived using Monte Carlo simulation methods with stochastic net load profiles within the system where instability status at each simulation is derived from the trained set of SVM classifiers. The key advantage of the proposed method is its scalability to higher dimension networks for which the SVM training date set must be calculated only once. The voltage risk probability distribution acquires a significant importance in the design of quantitative risk valuation framework for planning and expansion purposes in a context of network with decentralised and intermittent generation. This paper focuses on describing the approach to derive a voltage risk probability using SVM technique, while the construction and use of the probability distribution in a comprehensive risk valuation framework for planning is left for future work to the authors.
The Culture of Horsemanship and Horse-Based Tourism in Iceland

The nature of attractions in tourism is complex. Attractions can be places, events or experiences. In this paper the attraction of experience in horse-based tourism as promoted by horse-based tourism businesses, and in documentation from riders, is discussed. The argument is made that attractions must be considered as philosophical topics. Horsemanship is a cultural phenomenon, hence horse-based tourism is essentially cultural tourism. Classical perspectives of defining culture are used to interpret the findings, which suggest that the ideal of horse-based tourism is rather a romantic notion of horsemanship that incidentally fits very well with the elements of nostalgia and romance inherent in tourism as experience.
HARD CURRENCIES FOR HARD TIMES. TERROR ATTACKS AND THE CHOICE OF MONETARY ANCHORS

As terror’s victims increase, hard currency commitments gain effectiveness in reducing inflation, and central bank independence loses its effectiveness, because terror reduces transparency and the number of veto players in domestic politics. PCSE (Panel‐Corrected Standard Error) estimations of inflation are run on pooled cross‐section time‐series sample of 87 countries from 1975–2005. When the trend level rises to 100 victims annually a currency board reduces inflation by up to 7.5%, and an independent bank raises inflation by up to 8%. When victims exceptionally exceed the trend by 100, a currency board reduces inflation by 2.5%, and an independent bank raises it by 2%.
Strengthening infrastructure in management of drug resistant tuberculosis in India

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ The emergence of resistance to first-line drugs used to treat tuberculosis (TB) has become a significant public health concern and an obstacle in implementation of effective TB control activities globally. In India, Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) introduced the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB (PMDT) services to address the needs of MDR-TB patients. To execute the plan with perfection, RNTCP has devised MDR suspect criteria – A, B, and C so that gradually PMDT services can be extended to the whole country. These criteria were framed to run in tandem with the strengthening of the laboratory services so that the existing certified laboratories can carry out the culture and DST services without being overburdened. Altogether, RNTCP is committed for the strengthening and capacity building of its resources to offer culture and DST services right at the time of diagnosis.
Estimating Hourly Electric Load with Generalized Least Square Procedures

Although electricity demand receives much attention in the empiri- cal literature (see Taylor (1975) and EPRI (1982b) for excellent surveys on the topic), hourly load demand analysis has only recently begun. Notable contributions are a series of studies sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI (1977. 1979a, 1979b, 1981a, 19816. 1982a) and Platt (1983)). These studies estimate load curve models for regions of the United States. Unfortunately, from a utility perspective, the empirical results presented in these studies are not directly applicable. Further, because the data used in these studies are not generally available at the geographic level of a utility service area, applying their methodology is problematic. This paper presents a practical method for an electric utility to produce an hourly load curve model similar in overall framework to these studies. Our procedure is innovative in that it produces statistically efficient estimates, which the above papers do not. We also demonstrate a method that uses supplementary forecasts to enhance the forecasting performance of the hourly load model.
Alliance portfolios: Designing and managing your network of business-partner relationships

Executive Overview In today's networked economy, relationships with business partners are essential to a company's survival and growth, yet most companies are still struggling to design and manage their key partner relationships for long-term value creation. Most companies approach the design and management of their business partnerships by focusing on optimizing each individual alliance. This approach gives priority to meeting alliance-specific objectives and allocating resources based on the strategic importance of each partner. Typically, however, a company will be involved with several alliance partners, and sharing of information and knowledge across these alliances is rare. In addition, a company's alliances will often compete with one another, and with the internal organization, for limited resources. An emerging perspective is to manage alliances as a portfolio, and to understand how individual alliances impact each other and the internal organization. We offer a portfolio approach to alliance des.
Proposing a sustainable marketing framework for heritage tourism

This study tests a sustainable marketing protocol for heritage tourism institutions. The marketing plans of 20 museums across the United States are examined to grasp the empirical reality of the proposed model. The model is crafted along strategic marketing criteria, including measures such as environment analysis, level of local community involvement, partnership, and maintenance of traditional preservation-based objectives of the museums. A gap between the philosophical underpinnings of the proposed model and the existing marketing strategies is found. It is noted that the contemporary museum ethos in many regions of the United States is centered on short term plans and current survival. Additionally, regardless of locations, funding and short-termism dictate the core elements of all marketing plans. Overall, the results indicate that dedicated efforts and more awareness are needed to sustain the core purpose of contemporary museums. Using an applied approach, this study offers a unique and realistic perspective to a conceptually drawn framework. The results enhance the marketing literature, offer suggestions on how museum marketing plans could include sustainable elements and become part of a sustainable heritage tourism paradigm.
Environmental and Firm Level Influences on Inter‐Organizational Trust and SME Performance

We investigate the effects of focal firm knowledge intensity and uncertainty on inter‐organizational trust and subsequent performance of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). We integrate the trust literature with transaction cost literature as both of these offer partial explanations of the dynamics of inter‐organizational trust in the context of an SME. We propose that knowledge intensity of the focal firm will have a positive relationship while uncertainty will have a negative relationship with inter‐organizational trust in an exchange relationship. Further, we propose a positive relationship between trust and SME performance, which will be contingent on the level of external and internal uncertainty faced by the focal firm. Empirical evidence, based on the survey data of 565 German SMEs, mostly supports our arguments.
The Quality of Democracy: The Chain of Responsiveness

Abstract:“Democratic responsiveness” occurs when the democratic process induces the government to form and implement policies that the citizens want. The linkages that connect citizens’ preferences, electoral choices, selecting policymakers and policymaking can be subverted at each stage. There are also serious conceptual difficulties created by the complexity of citizen preferences and by uncontrollable factors that shape policy outcomes. The subversions include control over information, incoherence of party policy discourse, unrepresentative election outcomes, officials switching parties after elections, use of executive decrees, bait and switch campaign tactics, and corruption in policymaking. I offer some suggestions about the measurement of democratic responsiveness.
The Organizational Innovativeness Inventory for information and electronic enterprises: Development and Validation

The primary purpose of this study is to develop Taiwan localization and suitable inventory for the measuring organizational innovation in information and electronic enterprises. In review of relevant literatures, and with reference to opinions from scholars and practical experience from enterprises, the framework of the inventory would be initially established. Concerning the inventory reliability, Cronbach's  coefficient, item-total correlation and test-retest reliability coefficient have been employed to test the extent of internal consistency and the stability of the inventory. In the construction of validity, Linear Structural Relation was adopted to carry out confirmatory factor analysis. The suitability and fitness of the seven dimensions and 58 questions have been thus verified. As a result, this inventory with adequate validity and reliability can serve as effective instrument for the measurement of organizational innovation in domestic information and electronic enterprises. The developed questionnaire of this study is a method to quantify the organizational innovation. These instrument targets two areas OI and TI evaluation model–to assess innovativeness in an organization.
Introductory Accounting as Theater: A Look Behind the Scenes of Large-Lecture Production

ABSTRACT: Feeling like a bit of a thespian in class? Why not expand your class role and channel your inner Stanley Tucci or Kathleen Marshall? Large-lecture classes offer an opportunity to run a whole production. While much has been written about large-lecture classes, papers have tended to address the relative merits of these classes or some specific issue related to teaching them within a specific discipline. This paper adds to the existing literature by providing an overview of the day-to-day considerations, planning, and mechanics of developing and teaching a large-lecture introductory accounting course, by taking you on a behind-the-scenes tour through the pre-production and production processes for a large-lecture, introductory accounting course. It describes the pre-production process, including the following: understanding the audience, developing a vision for the course, identifying resource and financing needs, determining the cast and crew, designing the set, developing the production elements,.
Optimal Contracting of Separable Production Technologies

This paper addresses the class of agency problems with a risk-neutral principal and a risk-averse agent where hidden action and hidden information (on the agent's efficiency) are jointly present. The commonly used technological assumptions - such as the monotone-likelihood-ratio property (MLRP) - are no longer sufficient to demonstrate such economically appealing properties of the optimal contract as the monotonicity of the sharing rule. We show that these regularity properties obtain for the rather wide class of production technologies that are separable in the agent's inputs. Together with ordinal properties such as monotone differences and affiliation of inputs, separability yields the monotonicity in efficiency of the agent's actions and indirect utility and thereby demonstrates the importance of these properties in stochastic contexts. We also analyze the impact of separability on the stochastic properties of the output, the principal's inference problem and the agent's tradeoffs between effort and efficiency.
Highly Permissive Cell Lines for Subgenomic and Genomic Hepatitis C Virus RNA Replication

ABSTRACT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) replication appears to be restricted to the human hepatoma cell line Huh-7, indicating that a favorable cellular environment exists within these cells. Although adaptive mutations in the HCV nonstructural proteins typically enhance the replicative capacity of subgenomic replicons in Huh-7 cells, replication can only be detected in a subpopulation of these cells. Here we show that self-replicating subgenomic RNA could be eliminated from Huh-7 clones by prolonged treatment with alpha interferon (IFN-α) and that a higher frequency of cured cells could support both subgenomic and full-length HCV replication. The increased permissiveness of one of the cured cell lines allowed us to readily detect HCV RNA and antigens early after RNA transfection, eliminating the need for selection of replication-positive cells. We also demonstrate that a single amino acid substitution in NS5A is sufficient for establishing HCV replication in a majority of cured cells and that the major phosphate acceptor site of subtype 1b NS5A is not essential for HCV replication.
Acquisition and reversal of taste/tactile discrimination after forebrain noradrenaline depletion.

Two experiments were performed to assess the role of noradrenaline (NA) on the acquisition of an aversively motivated discrimination task and its reversal. A conditioned taste aversion procedure was used. The NA depletions were achieved through two different pharmacological means: systemic N-2-chloroethyl-N-ethyl-2-bromo-benzylamine (DSP4) and destruction of the dorsal noradrenergic bundle (DNAB) with 6-hydroxydopamine. Both procedures caused marked reductions of NA in the frontal cortex and hippocampus. In neither of the studies (Experiment 1, DSP4, and in Experiment 2, DNAB) were there any significant changes between controls and NA-depleted rats in either the rate of acquisition of the original discrimination (Phase 1) or the subsequent reversal (Phase 2). This occurred irrespective of which of the two stimuli (a taste cue, i.e., saccharin presented in bottles with nozzles that do not have ball bearings, "silent bottles," or a tongue-tactile cue, i.e., water in bottles with nozzles that had ball bearings "noisy bottles") initially was used as the conditioned stimulus (CS1, i.e., the stimulus first followed by contingent administration of lithium chloride, and later, in Phase 2, followed by saline injections). Thus NA does not appear to be critically involved in the acquisition and reversal of a taste/tactile discrimination task. The significance of forebrain NA for other discrimination tasks is discussed.
Efficacy of Risk‐Based, Culturally Sensitive Ogaa (Walleye) Consumption Advice for Anishinaabe Tribal Members in the Great Lakes Region

The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) has produced Ogaa (walleye—Sander vitreus) consumption advisories since 1996 for Anishinaabe from GLIFWC member tribes in the 1837 and 1842 ceded territories of Wisconsin. GLIFWC's advisory maps were revised in 2005 to address cultural sensitivities (to protect tribal lifeways), to utilize recent mercury exposure information, and to incorporate changes in advisory levels for methyl mercury. Lake‐specific, risk‐based, culturally sensitive consumption advice was provided on color‐coded maps for two groups: children under age 15 years and females of childbearing age, and males 15 years and older and females beyond childbearing age. The maps were distributed to, and a behavioral intervention program developed for, the six GLIFWC member tribes in Wisconsin as well as member tribes in Minnesota and the 1842 ceded territory of Michigan. Tribal fish harvesters, tribal health care providers, women of childbearing age or with young children, tribal leaders, elders, and children were targeted specifically for the behavioral intervention. The efficacy of the behavioral intervention was assessed using surveys of 275 tribal fish harvesters from Wisconsin, 139 tribal harvesters from Michigan and Minnesota, and 156 Wisconsin women of childbearing age. Significant increases in the percentage of survey participants who indicated awareness of advisory maps occurred among Wisconsin harvesters (increase from 60% to 77%), Michigan and Minnesota harvesters (29% to 51%), and women of childbearing age in Wisconsin (40% to 87%). A significant increase in preference for smaller Ogaa occurred among tribal harvesters in Wisconsin (41% to 72%) and tribal harvesters in Michigan and Minnesota (49% to 71%), although not among women of childbearing age. The GLIFWC map‐based advisory program did not adversely affect tribal harvest of Ogaa, which increased from 63,000 to 88,000 fish in the three states after the intervention.
Integration and Responsiveness: Marketing Strategies of Japanese and European Automobile Manufacturers

Formulating a strategy to compete effectively in international markets is one of the major challenges a firm faces. The authors provide insight into how automobile firms devise strategies that respond to the conflicting pressures for local responsiveness and integration in the context of Western Europe, where Japanese automobile firms compete with European-based manufacturers. The authors develop a conceptual framework to test integration–responsiveness in terms of marketing-mix responses and market conditions, using data that cover four major European markets (73% of Western European sales) and a critical period in European integration. The findings indicate that Japanese firms are successfully pursuing standardization strategies rather than fully combining integration and responsiveness. These firms competitively adapt to limited differences between markets, and this strategy appears to be quite successful compared with the European firms’ strategies of combining integration and responsiveness. The European strategy appears to undermine the ability to respond to Japanese firms’ targeted competitive moves, despite the presence of significant barriers to Japanese exports. Whereas Japanese firms were able to maintain market share, European firms’ market shares decreased over the three-year period examined.
A new circuit augmentation method for modeling of interconnects and passive components

This paper presents a new methodology for automated broadband model generation from S-parameter data for interconnects and passive components. The new methodology is based on augmenting an existing equivalent circuit model with a macromodel (black-box) network described by rational functions while simultaneously perturbing the equivalent circuit component values. The macromodel network is determined using standard least-squares or vector-fitting approaches. The perturbation of the equivalent circuit parameter values is achieved during the macromodel generation by means of global optimization based on intelligent search algorithms. The new approach is demonstrated on several two-port test example structures including a broadband probe tip structure and a CMOS spiral inductor.
Electronic Voting Machines and Ballot Roll-Off

Innovations in voting systems raise questions about the electoral effects of such developments. This study examines the impact of a new voting device, electronic voting machines, on ballot roll-off. It is found that electronic machines sharply attenuate roll—off—particularly in lower visibility contests at the bottom of the ballot—even after various other forces related to voter fatigue are taken into consideration. These are surprising results, given that recent studies have attributed only minimal effects to electronic machines. Finally, the electoral and normative implications of widespread use of electronic voting machines are considered.