Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of recurrence and prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after resection by use of CLIP score.

AIM The survival time of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after resection is hard to predict. Both residual liver function and tumor extension factors should be considered. A new scoring system has recently been proposed by the Cancer of the Liver Italian Program (CLIP). CLIP score was confirmed to be one of the best ways to stage patients with HCC. To our knowledge, however, the literature concerning the correlation between CLIP score and prognosis for patients with HCC after resection was not published. The aim of this study is to evaluate the recurrence and prognostic value of CLIP score for the patients with HCC after resection. METHODS A retrospective survey was carried out in 174 patients undergoing resection of HCC from January 1986 to June 1998. Six patients who died in the hospital after operation and 11 patients with the recurrence of the disease were excluded at 1 month after hepatectomy. By the end of June 2001, 4 patients were lost and 153 patients with curative resection have been followed up for at least three years. Among 153 patients, 115 developed intrahepatic recurrence and 10 developed extrahepatic recurrence, whereas the other 28 remained free of recurrence. Recurrences were classified into early (< or =3 year) and late (>3 year) recurrence. The CLIP score included the parameters involved in the Child-Pugh stage (0-2), plus macroscopic tumor morphology (0-2), AFP levels (0-1), and the presence or absence of portal thrombosis (0-1). By contrast, portal vein thrombosis was defined as the presence of tumor emboli within vascular channel analyzed by microscopic examination in this study. Risk factors for recurrence and prognostic factors for survival in each group were analyzed by the chi-square test, the Kaplan-Meier estimation and the COX proportional hazards model respectively. RESULTS The 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-,and 10-year disease-free survival rates after curative resection of HCC were 57.2%, 28.3%, 23.5%, 18.8%, and 17.8%, respectively. Median survival time was 28, 10, 4, and 5 mo for CLIP score 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 to 5, respectively. Early and late recurrence developed in 109 patients and 16 patients respectively. By the chi-square test, tumor size, microsatellite, venous invasion, tumor type (uninodular, multinodular, massive), tumor extension (< or = or >50% of liver parenchyma replaced by tumor), TNM stage, CLIP score, and resection margin were the risk factors for early recurrence, whereas CLIP score and Child-Pugh stage were significant risk factors for late recurrence. In univariate survival analysis, Child-Pugh stages, resection margin, tumor size, microsatellite, venous invasion, tumor type, tumor extension, TNM stages, and CLIP score were associated with prognosis. The multivariate analysis by COX proportional hazards model showed that the independent predictive factors of survival were resection margins and TNM stages. CONCLUSION CLIP score has displayed a unique superiority in predicting the tumor early and late recurrence and prognosis in the patients with HCC after resection.
The Matthew Effect: Evolutionary Implications

This article suggests that, in prehistoric man, the results of competition magnified the effect of small genetic differences between competing individuals, thereby increasing the differential in their relative reproductive success (difference amplification). This had the effect of accelerating the evolution of early man. The differential effect of success and failure on competing individuals led to “difference amplification”. These mechanisms can still be observed today. This model is relevant to psychotherapy with depressed clients.
Application of the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( fMRI ) for the Assessment of the Primary Auditory Cortex Function in Partial Deafness Patients – A preliminary study

Auditory cortex functioning is an important factor of successful rehabilitation after cochlear implantation, particularly in partially deafened patients who have to integrate the natural acoustic hearing with the electric one. This subject has not yet been properly recognized, especially regarding the auditory cortex’ tonotopic organization in such patients. Method: Material included 20 patients referred for the Partial Deafness Treatment – Electric Complement (PDT-EC according to Skarzynski’s PDT Classification). fMRI was performed with 3T MAGNETOM TRIO scanner. Subjects were presented with chirps of two bandwidths: 50-950 Hz (middle frequency 500Hz) and 3000-5000Hz (middle frequency 4000 Hz) at 90dB (C) via MRI-compatible earphones. SPARSE paradigm was used. Results: Bilateral auditory cortex activation was observed in response to 500Hz frequency sounds. No significant activations were found in response to 4000 Hz for p<0.05 with FWE correction; some activations for lower threshold were found. Conclusions: Paradigm applied in this study gives stable and reproducible auditory cortex responses. fMRI can be considered as method of assessing residual hearing function in auditory cortex of partially deafened patients. Cortical activity in PDT-EC candidates reflects hearing levels determined before study; patients demonstrate residual cortex capacity in response to detected frequency.
Metaheuristic Based Scheduling Meta-Tasks in Distributed Heterogeneous Computing Systems

Scheduling is a key problem in distributed heterogeneous computing systems in order to benefit from the large computing capacity of such systems and is an NP-complete problem. In this paper, we present a metaheuristic technique, namely the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, for this problem. PSO is a population-based search algorithm based on the simulation of the social behavior of bird flocking and fish schooling. Particles fly in problem search space to find optimal or near-optimal solutions. The scheduler aims at minimizing makespan, which is the time when finishes the latest task. Experimental studies show that the proposed method is more efficient and surpasses those of reported PSO and GA approaches for this problem.
The Lasting Effects of Introductory Economics Courses

The so-called Stigler hypothesis suggested that students who have taken a conventional one-year economics course and those who have never had such a course, probably show little difference in test performance five years after completing college. This report is one of the more systematic efforts to test the validity of the Stigler hypothesis. Although it might be argued that Saunders did not directly address the challenge as put forth by Stigler, the results show that students do retain some of their knowledge of economics five years after graduation from college. The report also considers several variables related to retention and discusses methodological problems pertaining to this type of research.
Leadership for Cultural Change: Developing a Community of Learners in Teacher Education, 5(10)

If we understand ‘culture’ (in its simplest sense) to be ‘the way of life’ or ‘the way in which we do things,’ then asking the staff of a university faculty to adopt student-centred approaches and embed them in an outcomes-focused environment is expecting of them quite a degree of cultural change. What many staff are faced with is a massive reassessment of their role — what they are expected to know, to do and to be — even those who thought they were (and were acknowledged as) good teachers in the first place. An outcomes approach to education requires a shift in emphasis from focusing on teaching to focusing on learning. A student-centred approach to education requires focusing on the learner rather than on the syllabus. For most academics, this is a major shift in their understanding of ‘the way in which we do things’ in a university. This paper describes how Faculty of Education staff involved in a university-funded Learning Effectiveness Alliances Program (LEAP) have gone about this process of cultural change, some of the alterations they have made in their practices as university teachers and some of the challenges they have met and grappled with along the way. After two years into a five year project, no one, including the leadership, is totally clear where the end point, if any, might be or what it will exactly look like if they do get there. By listening and responding to the teachers and students as the program is implemented, flexibility is maintained, adaptability encouraged, and ownership achieved. What is already evident is a renewed excitement in the process of education and how it can and should be pursued in a Faculty of Education. For this group at least, it is once again a community of learners with the teachers providing a thought-provoking model for their students. While the program and changes are by no means complete at this stage, and indeed may never be (we keep telling participants and interested parties that it is in draft form only), the challenge of educational leadership roles and cultural change has not been easy for both teaching teams and management. However, one of the most pleasing outcomes has been the success of the collaborative approach to curriculum development and teacher planning with a close working relationship maintained between management and teaching staff.
Gender Differences in Mathematical Achievement at the Norwegian Elementary‐school Level

Abstract The relationship between gender and mathematical achievement was investigated. The subjects were Norwegian elementary‐school third graders (440 girls and 480 boys). The boys had higher total test scores than the girls, but the effect size was small. On subskills, boys performed better than girls in numeracy, mental arithmetic and measurement problems. Marked differences between the sexes were found at the extreme tails of the distribution. Among the 10% scoring highest on numeracy, there were nearly twice as many boys as girls, while among the lowest 9% there were two and a half times as many girls as boys.
The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralization

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The Time Dimension in Predicting Failures: A Case Study

Online Failure Prediction is a cutting-edge technique for improving the dependability of software systems. It makes extensive use of machine learning techniques applied to variables monitored from the system at regular intervals of time (e.g. mutexes/s, paged bytes/s, etc.). The goal of this work is to assess the impact of considering the time dimension in failure prediction, through the use of sliding windows. The state-of-the-art SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier is used to support the study, predicting failure events occurring in a Windows XP machine. An extensive comparative analysis is carried out, in particular using a software fault injection technique to speed up the failure data generation process.
Sympathetic Modulation of Hypercapnic Cerebral Vasodilation in Dogs

We measured cerebral blood flow using both the radioactive microsphere technique and the cerebral venous outflow technique in dogs anesthetized with chloralase. The effect of sympathetic stimulation on cerebral blood flow was observed during both normocapnia and prolonged hypercapnia using both blood flow techniques. The increase in blood flow with hypercapnia was the same with both methods. During hypercapnia the venous outflow method showed a 38% decrease and microspheres an 18% decrease in cerebral blood flow with sympathetic stimulation. At normal CO2, stimulation caused a decrease in cerebral venous flow: no change was observed with the microsphere method. Analysis of the blood flow patterns to extracerebral tissues and evaluation of extracerebral arterial reference samples failed to prove the existence of axial streaming and subsequent Blrimming of microspheres within the cephalic circulation. It is concluded that direct electrical stimulation of the sympathetic innervation of the cerebral vessels is capable of reducing cerebral blood flow even during a profound hypercapnic vasodilation. Circ Res 45: 771-786, 1979
Characterizations of periods of multi-dimensional shifts

Abstract We show that the sets of periods of multi-dimensional shifts of finite type are precisely the sets of integers of the complexity class NP. We also show that the functions counting their number are the functions of #P. We also give characterizations of some other notions of periodicity in terms of space complexity. We finish the paper by giving some characterizations for sofic and effective subshifts.
Perception of emotional content in musical performances by 3–7-year-old children

The emotional content expressed through musical performance has become a widely-discussed topic in music psychology during the past two decades. However, empirical evidence regarding children’s abilities in interpreting the emotional content of a musical performance is sparse. We investigated 3–7-year-old children’s abilities to interpret the emotional content expressed through performance features in music. Short musical pieces previously rated as inexpressive of emotion were recorded by three musicians with five emotional expressions (happy, sad, fearful, angry and neutral) and played to 3–7-year-old children (N = 94), adult non-musicians (N = 83), and adult musicians (N = 118) who made a forced-choice judgement about the emotion that each excerpt conveyed. Significant differences were observed between children, adult non-musicians and musicians in their ability to interpret the emotional content of a performance. Especially for children, the easiest emotions to identify proved to be happiness and sadness, while anger, fear and emotional neutrality appeared to be more difficult to identify. The most salient confusion patterns of the emotions (categorizing angry performance as happy, neutral performance as sad, or mixing up fear with sadness in performance) as well as the least salient ones (mixing up happiness with sadness, as well as anger with emotions other than happiness) are discussed in the context of general theories of emotion.
Stress, oral health behaviour and clinical outcome.

OBJECTIVE Several studies indicate that stress adversely affects various health behaviours. Oral hygiene behaviour, however, has been rarely studied in this context. The present study thus aims to assess the effects of stress on oral hygiene behaviour and clinical outcome. DESIGN In a prospective matched controlled design 12 pairs of medical students, each consisting of 1 student participating in a major academic exam and 1 student not participating in any exams (control) were studied. METHODS A professional tooth cleaning was performed 4 weeks prior to exams to obtain plaque levels of 0 at all sites. Immediately prior to professional tooth cleaning and 4 weeks after exams plaque levels (as indicator of oral hygiene behaviour) and bleeding on probing (an indicator of gingivitis) were assessed. RESULTS No group differences were observed at the beginning of the exam period; after exams significant higher rates of plaque (p=.0005, d=1.74) and gingivitis (p=.016, d=1.01) were observed in exam students as compared with controls. CONCLUSIONS The study illustrates the clinical significance of stress effects on health behaviour. Stress should be included as a factor in models of patient compliance and health behaviour.
Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication PrinciplesA Q-Newton Method Neural Network Model for PEM Fuel Cells

Proton exchange membranes are one of the most promising fuel cell technologies for transportation and residential applications. Considering these two aims applications, a simulation model of the whole fuel cell system is a major milestone. This would lead to the possibility of optimizing the complete system. In a fuel cell system, there is a strong relationship between available electrical power and actual operating conditions: gas conditioning, membrane hydration state, temperature, current set point. Thus, a "minimal behavioural model" of a fuel cell system able to evaluate the output variables and their variations is highly interesting. Artificial neural networks (NN) are a very efficient tool to reach such an aim. In this paper, a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) neural network model is proposed using a Quasi- Newton method. It is implemented on Matlab/Simulinkreg software. The model uses experimental data found in literature as training specimens; on the condition the system is provided enough hydrogen. Considering the cell operational temperature as inputs, the cell voltage and current density as the outputs and establishing the electric characteristic neural network model of PEMFC according to the different cell temperatures and different anode and cathode pressures.
Array comparative genomic hybridization and cytogenetic analysis in pediatric acute leukemias.

Most patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia (all) are reported to have acquired chromosomal abnormalities in their leukemic bone marrow cells. Many established chromosome rearrangements have been described, and their associations with specific clinical, biologic, and prognostic features are well defined. However, approximately 30% of pediatric and 50% of adult patients with all do not have cytogenetic abnormalities of clinical significance. Despite significant improvements in outcome for pediatric all, therapy fails in approximately 25% of patients, and these failures often occur unpredictably in patients with a favorable prognosis and "good" cytogenetics at diagnosis.It is well known that karyotype analysis in hematologic malignancies, although genome-wide, is limited because of altered cell kinetics (mitotic rate), a propensity of leukemic blasts to undergo apoptosis in culture, overgrowth by normal cells, and chromosomes of poor quality in the abnormal clone. Array comparative genomic hybridization (acgh-"microarray") has a greatly increased genomic resolution over classical cytogenetics. Cytogenetic microarray, which uses genomic dna, is a powerful tool in the analysis of unbalanced chromosome rearrangements, such as copy number gains and losses, and it is the method of choice when the mitotic index is low and the quality of metaphases is suboptimal. The copy number profile obtained by microarray is often called a "molecular karyotype. "In the present study, microarray was applied to 9 retrospective cases of pediatric all either with initial high-risk features or with at least 1 relapse. The conventional karyotype was compared to the "molecular karyotype" to assess abnormalities as interpreted by classical cytogenetics. Not only were previously undetected chromosome losses and gains identified by microarray, but several karyotypes interpreted by classical cytogenetics were shown to be discordant with the microarray results. The complementary use of microarray and conventional cytogenetics would allow for more sensitive, comprehensive, and accurate analysis of the underlying genetic profile, with concomitant improvement in prognosis and treatment, not only for pediatric all, but for neoplastic disorders in general.
Strategies to address management challenges in larger intensive care units.

AIM To illustrate the need for and suggest strategies that will enhance sustainable management of a large intensive care unit (ICU). BACKGROUND The challenges faced by intensive care nursing in South Africa are well documented. However, there appear to be no strategies available to assist nurses to manage large ICUs or for ICU managers to deal with problems as they arise. METHODS Data sources to illustrate the need for strategies were challenges described by ICU managers in the management of large ICUs. A purposive sample of managers was included in individual interviews during compilation of evidence regarding the challenges experienced in the management of large ICUs. The challenges were presented at the Critical Care Society of Southern Africa Congress held on 28 August to 2 September 2012 in Sun City North-West province, South Africa. RESULTS Five strategies are suggested for the challenges identified: divide the units into sections; develop a highly skilled and effective nursing workforce to ensure delivery of quality nursing care; create a culture to retain an effective ICU nursing team; manage assets; and determine the needs of ICU nurses. CONCLUSION ICUs need measures to drive the desired strategies into actions to continuously improve the management of the unit. Future research should be aimed at investigating the effectiveness of the strategies identified. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT This research highlights issues relating to large ICUs and the strategies will assist ICU managers to deal with problems related to large unit sizes, shortage of trained ICU nurses, use of agency nurses, shortage of equipment and supplies and stressors in the ICU. The article will make a contribution to the body of nursing literature on management of ICUs.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Research Article) Title: Reduced longrange functional connectivity in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Short titl : Brain connection in children with autism

1) Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan 2) Department of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan 3) Department of Anesthesiology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan 4) Department of Neuropsychiatry, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan Correspondence to: Mitsuru Kikuchi Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, 13-1 Takara-machi, Kanazawa 920-8641, Japan E-mail address: mitsuru@zc4.so-net.ne. jp Tel. : +81-76-265-2304 Fax: +81-76-234-4254
Ventral Pallidal Representation of Pavlovian Cues and Reward: Population and Rate Codes

We recorded neural activity in the ventral pallidum (VP) while rats learned a pavlovian reward association. Rats learned to distinguish a tone that predicted sucrose pellets (CS+) from a different tone that predicted nothing (CS–). Many VP units became responsive to CS+, but few units responded to CS–. When two CS+ were encountered sequentially, the earliest predictor of reward became most potent. Many VP units were also activated when the sucrose reward was received [unconditioned stimulus (UCS)]. These VP units for UCS remained responsive to sucrose reward after learning, even when sucrose was already predicted by CS+. Neural representation of reward learning and reward itself was characterized by population codes. The population of units that responded to CS+ increased with learning, whereas the population that responded to UCS did not change. A relative firing rate code also represented the identities of conditioned stimuli and UCS. Firing rate differences among stimuli were acquired early and remained stable during subsequent training, whereas population codes and behavioral conditioned responses continued to develop during subsequent training. Thus, the VP makes use of dynamic CS population and rate codes to encode pavlovian reward cues in reward learning and uses stable UCS population and firing codes to encode sucrose reward itself.