Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
American Society of Clinical Oncology guideline recommendations for sentinel lymph node biopsy in early-stage breast cancer.

PURPOSE To develop a guideline for the use of sentinel node biopsy (SNB) in early stage breast cancer. METHODS An American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Expert Panel conducted a systematic review of the literature available through February 2004 on the use of SNB in early-stage breast cancer. The panel developed a guideline for clinicians and patients regarding the appropriate use of a sentinel lymph node identification and sampling procedure from hereon referred to as SNB. The guideline was reviewed by selected experts in the field and the ASCO Health Services Committee and was approved by the ASCO Board of Directors. RESULTS The literature review identified one published prospective randomized controlled trial in which SNB was compared with axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), four limited meta-analyses, and 69 published single-institution and multicenter trials in which the test performance of SNB was evaluated with respect to the results of ALND (completion axillary dissection). There are currently no data on the effect of SLN biopsy on long-term survival of patients with breast cancer. However, a review of the available evidence demonstrates that, when performed by experienced clinicians, SNB appears to be a safe and acceptably accurate method for identifying early-stage breast cancer without involvement of the axillary lymph nodes. CONCLUSION SNB is an appropriate initial alternative to routine staging ALND for patients with early-stage breast cancer with clinically negative axillary nodes. Completion ALND remains standard treatment for patients with axillary metastases identified on SNB. Appropriately identified patients with negative results of SNB, when done under the direction of an experienced surgeon, need not have completion ALND. Isolated cancer cells detected by pathologic examination of the SLN with use of specialized techniques are currently of unknown clinical significance. Although such specialized techniques are often used, they are not a required part of SLN evaluation for breast cancer at this time. Data suggest that SNB is associated with less morbidity than ALND, but the comparative effects of these two approaches on tumor recurrence or patient survival are unknown.
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy among HIV-infected children receiving care at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), Northern Tanzania: A cross- sectional analytical study

Introduction Paediatric adherence to Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) is a dynamic process involving many factors. Adherence for the majority on therapy matters to prevent failure of 1st and 2st line therapy. The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of adherence to antiretroviral therapy in HIV infected children. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional hospital based analytical study, from October 2011 to April 2012. HIV-infected children aged 2 to 17 years who had been on treatment for at least six months were enrolled. Data were collected by a standard questionnaire. Two-day self-report, one month self-recall report, and pill count were used to assess adherence. Results One hundred and eighty three respondents participated in this research. There were 92 (51%) males and 91 (49%) females. Only 45 (24.6%) had good adherence to their drug regimen when subjected to all three methods of assessment. Males were more adherent to ART than females (OR= 2.26, CI 1.05-4.87, p = 0.04). Adherence was worse among children who developed ART side effects (OR= 0.19, CI 0.07- 0.56;p = 0.01), could not attend clinic on regular basis (OR= 3.4, CI 1.60- 7.36, p = 0.01) and missed drug doses in the six months period prior to interview (OR= 0.40, CI 0.18-0.82, p= 0.01). Conclusion Only 24.6% of paediatric patients had good adherence to ART when subjected to all three measures. Drug side-effects, missing drug doses in the six months period prior to study start, monthly income and affording transportation to the clinicwere strong predictors of adherence.
Lightweight PIM—a new multicast routing protocol

Multicast holds out great promise to significantly reduce network load between the sender and a group of receivers by delivering a single data stream to many recipients. Protocol‐Independent Multicast (PIM) Sparse Mode and its variant PIM Source‐Specific Multicast (PIM SSM) are the most widely used IP multicast protocols. Protocols offer low latency data delivery capabilities with relatively high reliability and are characterized by large signaling overhead. This article presents a new multicast protocol, called Lightweight PIM (LPIM), tackling the main problem hindering widespread usage of IP multicast protocols, which is a large volume of signaling traffic. Given the existing usability of the PIM family protocols, a decision was made to base the new LPIM protocol on PIM SSM. The improvements used in LPIM lead to a considerable reduction of state data and signaling messages required by LPIM as compared with PIM SSM. Similar to its predecessor, LPIM is capable of handling large groups, although with significantly lower overhead. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Massive MIMO full-duplex relaying with hardware impairments

Massive multiple-input-multiple-output full-duplex relaying (MM-FDR), which exploits both the benefits of large-scale antenna arrays and full-duplex transmission, is considered as a promising technology to achieve very high spectral efficiency in the future wireless network. Despite the inevitable presence of transceiver impairments due to the use of low-cost hardware components, most of the prior works on MM-FDR assume perfect transceiver hardware which is unrealistic in practice. This paper investigates the impact of hardware impairments on the MM-FDR. Based on the recent experimental results, the effect of hardware impairments is modeled using transmit and receive distortion noises. The end-to-end achievable rate is derived and the scaling behaviors of echo interference due to the full-duplex operation, multi-user interference and effective distortions caused by hardware impairments are obtained. The scaling results show that the achievable rate of MM-FDR is limited by the hardware impairments at the sources and destinations, instead of that at the relay or other interferences, as the number of relay antenna tends to infinity. A low-complexity power control scheme is proposed to further improve the energy efficiency of MM-FDR with hardware impairments. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the spectral-energy efficiency tradeoff significantly.
Identifying and supporting behaviours associated with co-operation, assertion and self-control in young children starting school

SUMMARY The transition to the first year of schooling has been perceived as one of the major challenges children have to face in their early childhood years. This transition can be a critical factor for children's adjustment to the demands of the school environment and in determining future school success. When children experience social difficulties in the early years of school they are more likely to continue experiencing these problems throughout their schooling. An understanding of the social skills that predict children's adjustment to the first year of schooling can assist early childhood staff to identify children at risk of maladjustment and to implement appropriate intervention strategies. This paper will identify social skills that contribute to the constructs of co-operation, assertion and self control. Strategies that early childhood staff can use in promoting adjustment to school will be addressed.
Using bluetooth device names to support interaction in smart environments

An increasing trend in mobile and pervasive computing is the augmentation of everyday public spaces with local computation - leading to so called smart environments. However, there are no well accepted techniques for supporting spontaneous interaction between mobile users and these smart environments, though a wide range of techniques have been explored ranging from gesture recognition to downloading applications to a user's phone. In this paper we explore an approach to supporting such interaction based on the use of Bluetooth Device (user-friendly) Names as a control channel between users' mobile phones and computational resources in their local environment. Such an approach has many advantages over existing techniques though it is not without limitations. Our work focuses specifically on the use of Device Names to control and customize applications on large public displays in a campus environment. This paper describes our basic approach, a number of applications that we have constructed using this technique and the results of our evaluation work which has included a range of user studies and field trials. The paper concludes with an assessment of the viability of using our approach for interaction scenarios involving mobile users and computationally rich environments.
Meixner Processes in Finance ∗

In the Black-Scholes option price model Brownian motion and the underlying Normal distribution play a fundamental role. Empirical evidence however shows that the normal distribution is a very poor model to fit real-life data. In order to achieve a better fit we replace the Brownian motion by a special Lévy process: the Meixner process. We show that the underlying Meixner distribution allows an almost perfect fit to the data by performing a number of statistical tests. We discuss properties of the driving Meixner process. Next, we give a valuation formula for derivative securities, state the analogue of the Black-Scholes differential equation, and compare the obtained prices with the classical Black-Scholes prices. Throughout the text the method is illustrated by the modeling of the Nikkei-225 Index. Similar analysis for other indices are given in the appendix.
Strategic Human Resource Management and the Worker's Experience

The relationship between strategic human resource management and various organizational outcomes has been the subject of much recent scholarly research. The literature was examined to uncover the various perspectives from which they are written. The argument presented is that a managerialist perspective dominates much of the existing research, which is consistent with its historical evolution. As a result, however, an understanding of how workers experience strategic human resource management is inherently limited by such approaches. Interpretive and critical perspectives in organizational analysis offer a richer appreciation of how workers may experience new work practices. Some implications from these insights for human resource researchers are presented. MANAGERIALISM VS. THE ALTERNATIVES The argument promoted in this article is that managerial approaches to organizational analysis predominate in the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM). As a result, our understanding of this discipline and, in particular, its effects on workers, may be enhanced through the use of alternative perspectives. This shift is challenging because paradigms of thought contain assumptions that become entrenched by their proponents, to the extent that alternative perspectives are either ignored or seen simply as deviant from the norm [1]. Nevertheless,
Foreigners' Impact on European Societies

The research examines the extent to which attitudes toward foreigners vary across European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey for 21 countries the analysis reveals that foreigners' impact on society is viewed in most countries in negative rather in positive terms. The negative views are most pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on crime and least pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on culture. Multi-level regression analysis demonstrates that the negative views tend to be more pronounced among individuals who are socially and economically vulnerable and among individuals who hold conservative political ideologies. The analysis also reveals that negative attitudes toward foreigners tend to be more pronounced in countries characterized by large proportions of foreigners, where economic conditions are less prosperous, and where support for right-wing political parties is more prevalent. The analysis shows that inflated perception of the size of the foreign population is likely to increase negative views toward foreigners and to mediate the relations between actual size and attitudes toward foreigners' impact on society. The findings are presented and discussed in light of sociological theories on individuals and structural sources of public attitudes toward out-group populations and on the role of perceptions in shaping such attitudes.
Requirements Practice: What Matters to Small Businesses that Develop Packaged Software?

This paper presents preliminary findings from a grounded theory study of managing changes to packaged software. Our aim is to develop a process theory that describes how developers resolve their main concern of managing a single product vision in a context where that product must suit diverse customer needs. The theory provides an alternate understanding of why traditional requirements engineering methods are not perceived as useful. The process theory developed here describes the interaction of the reciprocal processes of sense-making and influencing with contextual conditions and outcomes in order to explain how the participants resolve their main concern.
Using modern plant trait relationships between observed and theoretical maximum stomatal conductance and vein density to examine patterns of plant macroevolution

Summary Understanding the drivers of geological‐scale patterns in plant macroevolution is limited by a hesitancy to use measurable traits of fossils to infer palaeoecophysiological function. Here, scaling relationships between morphological traits including maximum theoretical stomatal conductance (g max) and leaf vein density (D v) and physiological measurements including operational stomatal conductance (g op), saturated (A sat ) and maximum (A max) assimilation rates were investigated for 18 extant taxa in order to improve understanding of angiosperm diversification in the Cretaceous. Our study demonstrated significant relationships between g op, g max and D v that together can be used to estimate gas exchange and the photosynthetic capacities of fossils. We showed that acquisition of high g max in angiosperms conferred a competitive advantage over gymnosperms by increasing the dynamic range (plasticity) of their gas exchange and expanding their ecophysiological niche space. We suggest that species with a high g max (> 1400 mmol m−2 s−1) would have been capable of maintaining a high A max as the atmospheric CO 2 declined through the Cretaceous, whereas gymnosperms with a low g max would experience severe photosynthetic penalty. Expansion of the ecophysiological niche space in angiosperms, afforded by coordinated evolution of high g max , D v and increased plasticity in g op , adds further functional insights into the mechanisms driving angiosperm speciation.
Evidence based medicine: an approach to clinical problem-solving

Doctors within the NHS are confronting major changes at work. While we endeavour to improve the quality of health care, junior doctors' hours have been reduced and the emphasis on continuing medical education has increased. We are confronted by a growing body of information, much of it invalid or irrelevant to clinical practice. This article discusses evidence based medicine, a process of turning clinical problems into questions and then systematically locating, appraising, and using contemporaneous research findings as the basis for clinical decisions. The computerisation of bibliographies and the development of software that permits the rapid location of relevant evidence have made it easier for busy clinicians to make best use of the published literature. Critical appraisal can be used to determine the validity and applicability of the evidence, which is then used to inform clinical decisions. Evidence based medicine can be taught to, and practised by, clinicians at all levels of seniority and can be used to close the gulf between good clinical research and clinical practice. In addition it can help to promote self directed learning and teamwork and produce faster and better doctors.
Top-$k$ Classification and Cardinality-Aware Prediction

We present a detailed study of top-$k$ classification, the task of predicting the $k$ most probable classes for an input, extending beyond single-class prediction. We demonstrate that several prevalent surrogate loss functions in multi-class classification, such as comp-sum and constrained losses, are supported by $H$-consistency bounds with respect to the top-$k$ loss. These bounds guarantee consistency in relation to the hypothesis set $H$, providing stronger guarantees than Bayes-consistency due to their non-asymptotic and hypothesis-set specific nature. To address the trade-off between accuracy and cardinality $k$, we further introduce cardinality-aware loss functions through instance-dependent cost-sensitive learning. For these functions, we derive cost-sensitive comp-sum and constrained surrogate losses, establishing their $H$-consistency bounds and Bayes-consistency. Minimizing these losses leads to new cardinality-aware algorithms for top-$k$ classification. We report the results of extensive experiments on CIFAR-100, ImageNet, CIFAR-10, and SVHN datasets demonstrating the effectiveness and benefit of these algorithms.
Output Feedback Stabilization for Time-Delay Nonlinear Interconnected Systems Using Neural Networks

In this paper, dynamic output feedback control problem is investigated for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems with time delays. Decentralized observer independent of the time delays is first designed. Then, we employ the bounds information of uncertain interconnections to construct the decentralized output feedback controller via backstepping design method. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, we show that the designed controller can render the closed-loop system asymptotically stable with the help of the changing supplying function idea. Furthermore, the corresponding decentralized control problem is considered under the case that the bounds of uncertain interconnections are not precisely known. By employing the neural network approximation theory, we construct the neural network output feedback controller with corresponding adaptive law. The resulting closed-loop system is stable in the sense of semiglobal boundedness. The observers and controllers constructed in this paper are independent of the time delays. Finally, simulations are done to verify the effectiveness of the theoretic results obtained.
Breastfeeding and Neonatal Weight Loss in Healthy Term Infants

Background: Neonatal weight loss is universally recognized, yet poorly understood. Limited professional consensus exists on the definition of lower limit of safe weight loss. Objective: Our aim was to assess the extent of neonatal weight loss and its association with selected clinical variables in a population of healthy term infants cared for using a specific protocol on weight loss. Methods: We retrospectively considered 1003 infants consecutively admitted to the regular nursery of the Institute for Maternal and Child Health “Burlo Garofolo” (Trieste, Italy). We studied the relationship of selected variables with neonatal weight loss recorded during the hospital stay. We also analyzed all readmissions in the first month of life as a result of weight loss and its complications. Results: We observed a mean absolute weight loss of 228 g ± 83g, and a mean percent weight loss of 6.7% ± 2.2%. Weight loss ≥ 10% and > 12% were 6% and 0.3%, respectively. In multivariate logistic regression, cesarean section, hot season, any formula feeding, and jaundice not requiring phototherapy were independently associated with neonatal weight loss ≥ 8%. Conversely, low gestational age status was associated with lower weight loss. Readmission within the first month of life because of dehydration occurred in 0.3% of infants. Conclusions: Breastfeeding, compared to formula feeding, may not be a risk factor for greater early neonatal weight loss, at least in contexts in which weight is routinely monitored, breastfeeding is repeatedly assessed and appropriately supported, and careful supplementation is prescribed to limit and promptly treat excess weight loss and its related complications.
Extended Bayesian Model Averaging in Generalized Linear Mixed Models Applied to Schizophrenia Family Data

The study of disease etiology and the search for susceptible genes of schizophrenia have attracted scientists’ attention for decades. Many findings however are inconsistent, possibly due to the higher order interactions involving multi‐dimensional genetic and environmental factors or due to the commingling of different ethnic groups. Several studies applied generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) with family data to identify the genetic contribution to, and environmental influence on, schizophrenia, and to clarify the existence and sources of familial aggregation. Based on an extended Bayesian model averaging (EBMA) procedure, here we estimate the gene‐gene (GG) and gene‐environment (GE) interactions, and heritability of schizophrenia via variance components of random‐effects in GLMMs. Our proposal takes into account the uncertainty in covariates and in genetic model structures, where each competing model includes environmental and genetic covariates, and GE and GG interactions. Simulation studies are conducted to compare the performance of the EBMA approach, permutation test procedure and GEE method. We also illustrate this approach with data from singleton and multiplex schizophrenia families. The results indicate that EBMA is a flexible and stable tool in exploring true candidate genes, and GE and GG interactions, after adjusting for explanatory variables and correlation structures within family members.
Occupational silica exposure and lung cancer risk: a review of epidemiological studies 1996-2005.

BACKGROUND In 1997, a Monograph from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified occupational exposure to crystalline silica as carcinogenic to humans. Large amounts of epidemiological data have been published subsequently. METHODS We conducted a systematic review of epidemiological investigations on silica exposure and lung cancer risk published after the IARC Monograph, including 28 cohort, 15 case-control and two proportionate mortality ratio (PMR) studies. These were identified in the available literature. RESULTS The pooled RR of lung cancer, calculated using random effects models, from all cohort studies considering occupational exposure to silica was 1.34. The RRs were 1.69 in cohort studies of silicotics only, 1.25 in studies where silicosis status was undefined and 1.19 among non silicotic subjects. The pooled RR was 1.41 for all case-control studies. The RRs were 3.27 in case-control studies of silicotics only, 1.41 in studies where silicosis status was undefined and 0.97 among non silicotic subjects. The RR was 1.24 for PMR studies. CONCLUSIONS In this re-analysis, the association with lung cancer was consistent for silicotics, but the data were limited for non silicotic subjects and not easily explained for undefined silicosis status workers. This leaves open the issue of dose-risk relation and pathogenic mechanisms and supports the conclusion that the carcinogenic role of silica per se in absence of silicosis is still unclear.