Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chemoembolization Adopting Polyethylene Glycol Drug-Eluting Embolics Loaded With Doxorubicin for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy and tolerability of transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) using polyethylene glycol (PEG) drug-elutable microspheres loaded with doxorubicin for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). SUBJECTS AND METHODS Forty-two patients with unresectable HCC, as determined by a tumor board, were assigned to undergo TACE and were treated with PEG drug-elutable embolics loaded with doxorubicin. Patients were prospectively enrolled and included 32 (76%) men and 10 (24%) women. Their median age was 65 years (range, 42-83 years). Patients were treated with 50 mg of doxorubicin loaded in 2 mL of PEG embolics (mean [± SD] diameter, 100 ± 25 µm) that were infused via a chemoembolization method. Data collected included previous cancer therapy, tumor size, number of lesions, history of TACE, tumor response (at 1, 3, and 6 months), type and intensity of adverse events, and quality of life (QOL) analysis. RESULTS One month after TACE, the overall tumor response rate was 79% (50% complete response, 29% partial response, 17% stable disease, and 5% progressive disease). At 3 months, the rates were 48% for complete response, 24% for partial response, 24% for stable disease, and 3% for progressive disease. At 6 months, the rates were 43% for complete response, 19% for partial response, 29% for stable disease, and 10% for progressive disease. TACE was well tolerated by all patients, with no evidence of procedure-related complications or systemic drug-related adverse events. Fever (33%), increase in transaminase level (17%), and pain (33%) were the most frequent adverse events, and their intensity was mostly mild (grades 1 and 2). The QOL scores were 80 at 1 month, 81 at 3 months, and 82 at 6 months after TACE. CONCLUSION These data suggest that PEG embolics are efficacious and safe for the treatment of HCC, as indicated by their good tolerability, QOL scores, and high tumor response.
Summarizing Lengthy Questions

In this research, we propose the task of question summarization. We first analyzed question-summary pairs extracted from a Community Question Answering (CQA) site, and found that a proportion of questions cannot be summarized by extractive approaches but requires abstractive approaches. We created a dataset by regarding the question-title pairs posted on the CQA site as question-summary pairs. By using the data, we trained extractive and abstractive summarization models, and compared them based on ROUGE scores and manual evaluations. Our experimental results show an abstractive method using an encoder-decoder model with a copying mechanism achieves better scores for both ROUGE-2 F-measure and the evaluations by human judges.
The role of package colour in influencing purchase intent of bottled water

Purpose – The purpose of this paper, conducted within an emerging market context, was to investigate the influence of colour in packaging on the purchase intent of consumers for bottled water. Colour, whether in branding or packaging, has always been an important attribute in attracting the attention of consumers. For years, bottled water packaging has largely centred on the colours blue and white. The study looked into the effect of cold colours, warm colours and neutral colours on the purchase intent for bottled water. It also analysed the influence of the demographic variables of age group, gender, language and income group on colour preferences of the product. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental design was utilised for the purposes of this study. Data were collected by means of a mall intercept survey of South African consumers within suburban supermarket stores. Findings – The findings determined that while consumers appear somewhat indifferent between colours, there is a greater preference.
The cross-section of stock return and volatility

There has been increasing research on the cross-sectional relation between stock return and volatility. Conclusions are, however, mixed, partially because volatility or variance is modeled or parameterized in various ways. This paper, by using the Jiang and Tian (2005)’s model-free method, estimates daily option implied volatility for all US individual stocks from 1996:01 to 2006:04, and then employs this information to extract monthly volatilities and their idiosyncratic parts for cross-sectional regression analyses. We follow the Fama and French (1992) cross-sectional regression procedure and show that each of the 4 monthly measures of change of total volatility, total volatility, expected idiosyncratic variance, and expected idiosyncratic volatility is a negative priced factor in the cross-sectional variation of stock returns. We also show that the negative correlation between return and total volatility or expected idiosyncratic variance or expected idiosyncratic volatility strengthens as leverage increases or credit rating worsens. However, leverage does not play a role in the relation between return and change of total volatility. Finally, responding to recent papers, we show that the investor sentiment does not have a significant impact on the cross-sectional relation between return and volatility.
Asset Sales, Recourse, and Investor Reactions to Initial Securitizations: Evidence Why Off-balance Sheet Accounting Treatment Does not Remove On-balance Sheet Financial Risk

Both accounting and regulatory treatments classify securitizations as a “sale” of assets, therefore allowing the issuer to remove the assets from their books. This “off-balance sheet” treatment relies crucially on the concept of “true” sale. The concept most diametrically opposed from a true sale is a “financing. ” In a financing, assets do not leave the firm’s books, so the transaction is exclusively “on-balance sheet. ” The present paper presents conjectural evidence of recourse activity and bankruptcy seizure that undermine the fundamental concept of true sale. The paper then analyzes investor reactions to firms’ first securitization announcements, demonstrating negative short-term equity returns and negative long-term operating performance following initial securitizations. Such reactions constitute evidence that securitizations are more similar to financings than asset sales. Additional analysis shows that securitization is also associated with increased systematic risk, suggesting that the rapid growth fueled by securitization is similar to increasing leverage. The effect is more pronounced for banks than non-banks, suggesting that there is substantial value to regulatory capital arbitrage in addition to accounting arbitrage.
The Dark Side of Shareholder Protection: Cross-country Evidence from Innovation Performance

Proponents of minority shareholder protection state that national legal institutions protecting small investors boost stock markets and, in turn, long-term countries’ performance. In this paper, we empirically challenge this argument. We perform three-stage least-square estimation on a sample of 48 countries over 1993-2006 and find that countries with stronger shareholder protection tend to have larger market capitalization but also lower innovation activity. We cope with stock market’s endogeneity and industry heterogeneity, and circumvent omitted variables bias, so that this finding is unlikely to be driven by misspecification problems. We interpret our estimation results arguing that stronger shareholder protection may depress, rather than encourage, the most valuable corporate productions, because it enables small and diversified shareholders to play opportunistic actions against undiversified stockholders, after specific investments are undertaken by the company; innovation activity, largely based on specific investing, is particularly exposed to this problem.
Gait generation and control of biped robot with moving torso based on virtual constraint

This paper presents a novel control method of extended virtual constraint to mimic human movement for a three-link planar robot with moving torso. Inspired by two supine yoga movements, the dynamic model of bipedal walker is modified accordingly, which enlarges application of generalized planar biped robot and provides a more stable and robust walking gait. Due to the continuity of kinematics and discreteness of impact, the walking motion is regarded as a hybrid system, whose zero dynamics determines the stable state of robot. Hence, a within-stride feedback controller is designed based on input-output linearization and extension of virtual constraint. Moreover, poincaré return map is adopted to analyze the stability of walking gait. The simulation results demonstrate the validity of proposed control law, leading to asymptotically stable walking with modified planar biped robot.
1 Capital flows and exchange rates : recent Korean and Taiwanese experiences and challenges

We first study the characteristics of the crisis and its impacts on Taiwanese and Korean economies. We have examined 22 macroeconomic fundamentals, such as inflation rates, government budget, trade balance, external debt, money supply, and ratios of average monthly imports and cumulative inward portfolio investment to international reserves, and compared with an extensive data set of the two countries. The comparisons point out that the macro fundamentals of both countries are basically the same, except the international finance sector. After defining currency crisis and banking crisis, the causes of crises are identified as the nominal exchange rates and the short-term external debt to international reserves ratios. In view of this, we use cointegration and causality tests to examine the relationship between these two time series. We have found a unidirectional causality from the short-term debt ratio to the exchange rate for Korea, but no causality between the two for Taiwan. The paper ends with some discussions on the lessons and challenges from the experiences of the two countries.
Isolation and characterization of 11 polymorphic microsatellite loci in the millipede Antichiropus variabilis Attems (Diplopoda: Polydesmida: Paradoxosomatidae)

Eleven polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated from the Western Australian millipede Antichiropus variabilis. The number of alleles observed ranged from 2 to 12, with observed heterozygosities ranging from 0.20 to 0.80. All loci were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, and no pairs of loci were in linkage disequilibrium. Many of the loci amplified successfully in eight other Antichiropus species.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR MODELS: AN OVERVIEW

Any person engaged in the consumption process is a consumer. Consumers are the individuals who buy for personal consumption or to meet the collective needs of the family and households needs. Consumer behavior means how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources like time, money, effort on consumption of different products and services. It includes what they buy, why they buy it, when they buy it, where they buy it, how often they buy it, and how often they use it. This paper presents a review of theory of consumer behavior models. Besides this factors influencing consumer behavior and are discussed in this paper.
Differences in Short-Term Outcomes Between Primary and Revision Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion.

STUDY DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. OBJECTIVE To compare short-term morbidity for primary and revision anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Revision ACDF procedures are relatively common, yet their risks are poorly characterized in the literature. There is a need to assess the relative risk of revision ACDF procedures compared with primary surgery. METHODS The prospectively collected American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database was used to identify patients who underwent primary and revision ACDF from 2005 to 2014. The occurrence of 30-day postoperative complications, readmission, operative time, and postoperative length of stay were compared between primary and revision procedures using multivariate regression to control for patient and operative characteristics. RESULTS A total of 20,383 ACDF procedures were identified, 1219 (6.0%) of which were revision cases. On multivariate analysis, revision procedures were associated with significantly increased risk of any adverse event (relative risk [RR] 2.3, P < 0.001), any severe adverse event (RR 2.2, P < 0.001), thromboembolic events (RR 3.3, P = 0.001), surgical site infections (RR 3.2, P < 0.001), return to the operating room (RR 1.9, P = 0.001), any minor adverse event (RR 2.5, P < 0.001), and blood transfusion (RR 8.3, P < 0.001). Revision procedures had significantly increased risk of readmission within 30 days (RR = 1.6, P = 0.001). Minor, but statistically significant increases in average operative time and postoperative length of stay were identified for revisions procedures (7 min and half a day, respectively [P < 0.001 for both]). CONCLUSION Revision procedures were associated with significantly increased risk of multiple adverse outcomes, including thromboembolic events, surgical site infections, return to the operating room, blood transfusion, and readmission within 30 days. These results are important for patient counseling and risk stratification. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE 3.
A Framework for South African Industrial Cluster Identification and Analysis

Abstract This paper seeks to detect whether a statistically significant relationship can be established between cluster growth and the degree of cluster specialisation and the level of cluster competition in the Eastern Cape Province. It firstly establishes a national industrial clusters framework for the South African economy, based on an analysis of functional inter-industry relationships. Through top-down cluster applications, groups of industries with linked value chains are detected. Secondly, the relationship between cluster growth and economic structure in the Eastern Cape Province is analysed. The findings indicate that a relationship exists between the level of value chain cluster concentration and the ability to outperform its less concentrated cluster counterparts in the rest of the country. The empirical assessment of the impact of competition on value chain cluster performance reveals that neither the differential, nor the total value chain cluster growth variables exhibit a significant relationship with the level of intra-cluster competitiveness.
Design and implementation of a control architecture for robot‐assisted orthopaedic surgery

Recent research in orthopaedic surgery indicates that computer‐assisted robotic systems improve the precision and accuracy of the surgery, which in turn leads to better long‐term outcomes. Increasing demand for minimally invasive bone‐cutting operations has been encouraging surgical robot developments in orthopaedics. An orthopaedic robotic system and an intelligent control architecture that will be used in bone‐cutting operations were developed.
A method of fitting the gravity model based on the Poisson distribution.

"In this paper, [the authors] suggest an alternative method for fitting the gravity model. In this method, the interaction variable is treated as the outcome of a discrete probability process, whose mean is a function of the size and distance variables. This treatment seems appropriate when the dependent variable represents a count of the number of items (people, vehicles, shipments) moving from one place to another. It would seem to have special advantages where there are some pairs of places between which few items move. The argument will be illustrated with reference to data on the numbers of migrants moving in 1970-1971 between pairs of the 126 labor market areas defined for Great Britain. "
Improving the Public Expenditure Outcomes of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme through Social Accountability Interventions in Sirohi District, Rajasthan, India

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), enacted by the government of India in 2006, recognizes employment as a universal legal right for every rural household. Breaking from earlier employment schemes and development programs, NREGA is significant in that it is 'a regime of rights' for poor rural communities. NREGA provides a comprehensive set of entitlements that not only outline judicially enforceable terms for employment but also give citizens a central role in all stages of implementation. The overall objective of this social accountability intervention was to assess NREGS implementation, identify lacunae in program implementation, and build ownership of the findings of this intervention within all levels of government. NREGS has a system of continuous external monitoring and verification to curb corruption and maintain quality implementation. The Citizen Report Card (CRC) survey found that 56 percent of the project worksites were visited fewer than three times by upper level government authorities.
Urethral diverticulum presenting as anterior vaginal wall cyst

Case report A 20-year-old woman was referred with a 4-month history of swelling in the vagina. She complained of vaginal discomfort with sexual intercourse. Vaginal examination revealed an anterior vaginal wall cyst measuring 4 – 5cm in size. Digital pressure on the cyst did not show leakage of urine or purulent material through the urethra. With a high index of suspicion of urethral diverticulum, a voiding cystourethrogram was performed preoperatively which did not con rm the diagnosis of urethral diverticulum. Urologists were involved for the excision of the vaginal wall cyst. Cystoscopy was performed initially which was normal. The cyst was intimately related to the upper half of urethra and bladder base and proved to be a urethral divertjculum. The urethral diverticulum was excised and the opened posterior urethral wall was reconstructed over a catheter. The patient was on continuous drainage for 14 days. She had an uneventful postoperative period. Patient was continent and  exible cystoscopy was performed which was normal. Histopathological examination con rmed urethral diverticulum.
Country of Origin and Consumer's Willingness to Purchase an Apparel

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among the consumer’s ethnocentrism, Attention-to- Social-Comparison-Information (ATSCI) level, Country of Manufacture (COM), Country of Design (COD) cues, and Country Image Effect(CIE) and determine what effects they have on consumers’ intentions. The sample included American and Turkish university students. A model incorporating the hypothesized relationship among the variables was tested separately for the two apparel product categories of jeans and sweaters. Data were analyzed by a maximum-likelihood estimation procedure using LISREL VII. Findings indicated that favorable attitudes toward a product significantly predicted intention to purchase the product. The relationship between ethnocentrism, COM and country image were not statistically significant, but the relationship between ATSCI, COD and country image were specific of apparel product category for American consumers. The relationship between COD, ATSCI, ethnocentrism, and country image were statistically significant, but the relationship between COM and country image was not statistically significant of both apparel product categories for Turkish consumers.
Three-Level PWM Rectifier Based High Efficiency Batteries Charger for EV

This paper describes a new type charger for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The three-level PWM rectifier used Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor-Field-Transistor (MOSFET) with direct power control based on space vector PWM (DPC-SVM) is adopted in the front-end PWM rectifier to achieve high power factor as well as reduce system cost, and full-bridge (FB) converter with phase-shifted zero-voltage zero-current-switching (ZVZCS) is applied to the back-end DC/DC converter to improve system efficiency. Decoupling control for instantaneous active and reactive powers of the grid is realized. Experimental results in 8kW prototype show that during the whole charging process, the system efficiency is higher than 85.1% and the input power factor is higher than 99.9%.
Severe non‐occlusive ischemic stroke in young heroin addicts

Two heroin addicts, aged 30 and 35 years, developed severe ischemic stroke shortly after intravenous injection of heroin. Arteriograms, CT‐scans, and Technesium‐99 scintigrams demonstrated non‐occlusive extensive infarctions in the carotid territory. Cerebral blood flow investigation in one showed severe hyperemia of the entire left carotid artery territory, including areas, where infarction did not develop. Stroke was not due to arterial occlusion. It was more likely due to generalized hypoxia combined with decreased perfusion pressure in the carotid territory on one site because of external compression of the carotid artery during the intoxicated comatose state
The role of parasites in the dynamics of a reindeer population

Even though theoretical models show that parasites may regulate host population densities, few empirical studies have given support to this hypothesis. We present experimental and observational evidence for a host–parasite interaction where the parasite has sufficient impact on host population dynamics for regulation to occur. During a six year study of the Svalbard reindeer and its parasitic gastrointestinal nematode Ostertagia gruehneri we found that anthelminthic treatment in April–May increased the probability of a reindeer having a calf in the next year, compared with untreated controls. However, treatment did not influence the over–winter survival of the reindeer. The annual variation in the degree to which parasites depressed fecundity was positively related to the abundance of O. gruehneri infection the previous October, which in turn was related to host density two years earlier. In addition to the treatment effect, there was a strong negative effect of winter precipitation on the probability of female reindeer having a calf. A simple matrix model was parameterized using estimates from our experimental and observational data. This model shows that the parasite–mediated effect on fecundity was sufficient to regulate reindeer densities around observed host densities.