Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Health-Related Quality of Life after Radical Prostatectomy and Low-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy for Localized Prostate Cancer

Objective: To evaluate quality of life (QOL) after radical retropubic prostatectomy (RP) and low-dose-rate brachytherapy (BT). Methods: Between 2001 and 2004, RP or BT was performed in 212 patients. QOL data were evaluated with the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ-C30 version 3.0, the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) and the International Index of Erectile Function-5 questionnaires. QOL data were compared. Results: RP and BT were performed in 142 and 70 patients, respectively. The mean follow-up was 24 months (5–53). The mean overall global health score for patients after RP was 78 (0–100) and after BT it was 83 (33–100), and it showed a trend in favour of BT. The follow-up lasted at most 53 months, and the period was divided into yearly categories. Patients who underwent BT showed worse global health in the first year after operation, but thereafter they showed better health. Patients who received BT showed a trend towards having lower functional-scale and symptom-scale scores in the first year after operation, and then higher scores for any subsequent year of follow-up. Only diarrhoea was temporarily worse in the second year after BT compared to RP. The mean total IPSS and QOL score for BT and RP patients during follow-up showed no significant difference. Conclusion: Patients treated with BT or RP have similar QOL scores. QOL after BT is worse in the first year after treatment, but thereafter it is better than QOL after RP.
Considering Collective Choice: The Route 328 Problem in Kodaira City

Abstract A local referendum was held in Kodaira City, Tokyo on 26 May 2013, but the voting box remained sealed. This was because the voter turnout did not reach the 50% threshold for opening the box. Based on the Rousseauian view on voting, we argue that this hurdle is unjustifiable and further question the adequacy of the local referendum even without such a hurdle. Finally, we examine the use of economic mechanisms for this type of collective choice instead of voting.
Fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 protein is overexpressed in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) is a member of the fibroblast growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase family. It has been identified as a promising therapeutic target in multiple types of cancer. We have investigated FGFR3 protein expression and FGFR3 gene copy‐numbers in a single well‐documented cohort of oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Tissue microarray sets containing 452 formalin‐fixed paraffin‐embedded tissues were immunohistochemically stained with an anti‐FGFR3 antibody and hybridized with a FGFR3 fluorescence in situ hybridization probe. FGFR3 protein expression was correlated with clinicopathological and survival data, which were retrieved from electronic medical records. FGFR3 mRNA data of 522 head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) protein was overexpressed in 48% (89/185) of oral and 59% (124/211) of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Overexpression of FGFR3 protein was not related to overall survival or disease‐free survival in oral (HR[hazard ratio]: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.64–1.39; P = 0.77, HR: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.65–1.36; P = 0.75) and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HR: 1.21; 95% CI: 0.81–1.80; P = 0.36, HR: 0.42; 95% CI: 0.79–1.77; P = 0.42). FGFR3 mRNA was upregulated in 3% (18/522) of HNSCC from the TCGA. The FGFR3 gene was gained in 0.6% (1/179) of oral squamous cell carcinoma but no amplification was found in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. In conclusion, FGFR3 protein is frequently overexpressed in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Therefore, it may serve as a potential therapeutic target for FGFR3‐directed therapies in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.
Mortality Trends During a Program That Publicly Reported Hospital Performance

Background. It is unclear whether publicly reporting hospitals’ risk-adjusted mortality leads to improvements in outcomes. Objectives. To examine mortality trends during a period (1991–1997) when the Cleveland Health Quality Choice program was operational. Research Design. Time series. Subjects. Medicare patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction (AMI; n = 10,439), congestive heart failure (CHF; n = 23,505), gastrointestinal hemorrhage (GIH; n = 11,088), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; n = 8495), pneumonia (n = 23,719), or stroke (n = 14,293). Measures. Risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality, early postdischarge mortality (between discharge and 30 days after admission), and 30-day mortality. Results. Risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality declined significantly for all conditions except stroke and GIH, with absolute declines ranging from –2.1% for COPD to –4.8% for pneumonia. However, the mortality rate in the early postdischarge period rose significantly for all conditions except COPD, with increases ranging from 1.4% for GIH to 3.8% for stroke. As a consequence, the 30-day mortality declined significantly only for CHF (absolute decline 1.4%, 95% CI, −2.5 to −0.1%) and COPD (absolute decline 1.6%, 95% CI, −2.8–0.0%). For stroke, risk-adjusted 30-day mortality actually increased by 4.3% (95% CI, 1.8–7.1%). Conclusion. During Cleveland’s experiment with hospital report cards, deaths shifted from in hospital to the period immediately after discharge with little or no net reduction in 30-day mortality for most conditions. Hospital profiling remains an unproven strategy for improving outcomes of care for medical conditions. Using in-hospital mortality rates to monitor trends in outcomes for hospitalized patients may lead to spurious conclusions.
Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial of modafinil in the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness in narcolepsy

Seventy-five patients meeting international diagnostic criteria for narcolepsy enrolled in a 6-week, three-period, randomized, crossover, placebo-controlled trial. Patients received placebo, modafinil 200 mg, or modafinil 400 mg in divided doses (morning and noon). Evaluations occurred at baseline and at the end of each 2-week period. Compared with placebo, modafinil 200 and 400 mg significantly increased the mean sleep latency on the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test by 40% and 54%, with no significant difference between the two doses. Modafinil, 200 and 400 mg, also reduced the combined number of daytime sleep episodes and periods of severe sleepiness noted in sleep logs. The likelihood of falling asleep as measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale was equally reduced by both modafinil dose levels. There were no effects on nocturnal sleep initiation, maintenance, or architecture, nor were there any effects on sleep apnea or periodic leg movements. Neither dose interfered with the patients' ability to nap voluntarily during the day nor with their quantity or quality of nocturnal sleep. Modafinil produced no changes in blood pressure or heart rate in either normotensive or hypertensive patients. The only significant adverse effects were seen at the 400-mg dose, which was associated with more nausea and more nervousness than either placebo or the 200-mg dose. As little as a 200-mg daily dose of modafinil is therefore an effective and well-tolerated treatment of excessive daytime somnolence in narcoleptic persons.
Changing Wage Structures: Trends and Explanations

In this Chapter, I explore changes in the structure of wages that have characterised the UK labour market over the last four decades. I fir st focus upon documenting the patterns of change and trends in wage structures, and then o n explaining why these changes have occurred. The Chapter highlights that there have b een different episodes of changes in wage inequalities. In the 1970s, there were reduced inequalities but, in terms of what followed, these narrowings were small in magnitude. The 1980s saw very rapidly rising wage inequalities, with wage gaps widening out at a ll parts of the wage distribution. In the 1990s, changes were more muted, but wage gaps continued to rise. In the 2000s, a rather different picture emerged, with upper tail i nequality continuing to rise, but lower tail inequality stagnating. Turning to explanations , I argue that the standard supplydemand model of the labour market is successful in picking up some, but not all, of these observed changes. The declining impact of labour m arket institutions, dovetails with this to offer some additional explanatory power.
Proving communal warfare among hunter‐gatherers: The quasi‐rousseauan error

Was human fighting always there, as old as our species? Or is it a late cultural invention, emerging after the transition to agriculture and the rise of the state, which began, respectively, only around ten thousand and five thousand years ago? Viewed against the life span of our species, Homo sapiens, stretching back 150,000–200,000 years, let alone the roughly two million years of our genus Homo, this is the tip of the iceberg. We now have a temporal frame and plenty of empirical evidence for the “state of nature” that Thomas Hobbes and Jean‐Jacque Rousseau discussed in the abstract and described in diametrically opposed terms. All human populations during the Pleistocene, until about 12,000 years ago, were hunter‐gatherers, or foragers, of the simple, mobile sort that lacked accumulated resources. Studying such human populations that survived until recently or still survive in remote corners of the world, anthropology should have been uniquely positioned to answer the question of aboriginal human fighting or lack thereof. Yet access to, and the interpretation of, that information has been intrinsically problematic. The main problem has been the “contact paradox. ” Prestate societies have no written records of their own. Therefore, documenting them requires contact with literate state societies that necessarily affects the former and potentially changes their behavior, including fighting.
Note on the Intergenerational Transfer of Public Higher-Education Benefits

The traditional way of looking at the burdens and benefits of higher education is to distribute the net benefits received by students by the income classes of parents (taxpayers). This sweeps the problem created by the intergenerational nature of the benefit transfer under the rug. It seems to me that a more useful way of looking at the problem is to acknowledge that the benefits of public higher education are received by one generation while the costs are paid by another and that there is no way of merging benefits and costs in one distribution to evaluate the equity of the system. The benefits of higher education are received by the students who attend college (although their parents may also feel better knowing that their children are being educated). The costs are shared by the parents, who pay for most of the out-of-pocket costs (tuition and room and board), the taxpayers, who subsidize higher education, and the students, who bear the cost of foregone earnings. Let us omit foregone earnings for the moment. The remainder of the costs are borne by a generation of people (either parents or taxpayers) who are, in effect, making a gift to those who are going to a public college or university. Of course, there is an understanding that each generation of earners will pay for the higher education of the succeeding generation. There is no practical way of obtaining a distribution of net benefits (or net burdens) by income classes in such a system, because the persons who receive the benefits are not the same persons who pay the costs. '
Innovation, knowledge spillovers and local labour markets

Research and development cooperation relationsrequire face-to-face contact and are the most geographically localized ofinter-firm relations. This study examines the importance of face-to-facecontacts and labor market mobility in fostering innovation. Specifically,it examines the role and importance that various local knowledge transfermechanisms of face-to-face interaction between firms, and between firms andother organizations, and between firms and mobile labor actually play indetermining localized patterns of innovation and growth. A variety of statistical data about high-technology firms in Finland wasutilized, especially innovation surveys conducted by Statistics Finland in1996, 2000, and 2002, to determine whether face-to-face interactions betweenfirms, and between firms and other organizations, were related to innovationperformance. Information from R&D Surveys and the Business Register for1990-2002 were also used. Also considered was whether the variety of other firms or individualsinteracted with is related to the innovation performance of a firm, and theextent to which the localization of a firm's labor force affects innovationperformance. Results provide strong evidence that innovation is positivelyrelated to a firm's having intense face-to-face relations with other firms andorganizations to facilitate knowledge spillovers and exchanges. There is very limited evidence that such relations play any systematic andsignificant role in promoting innovation. Results suggest innovation is relatedto the spatial extent of the firm's labor market, and not to the extent that itis spatially concentrated.These findings broadly question the importanceof urbanization economies in knowledge diffusion in Finland. (TNM)
An assessment of the greenhouse gas reducing activities being implemented in US cities

Local climate protection initiatives are receiving increased attention and support. However, most of the current understanding about their content, motivation, and impact is based on qualitative studies, whose findings cannot be generalised, or quantitative studies, which consider superficial measures of policy adoption. There is a lack of information about the type and extent of greenhouse gas (GHG)-reducing actions that “typical” cities have implemented, whether or not they are explicitly framed as part of a broader climate protection strategy. In an effort to address this gap, this paper examines original data collected from a nation-wide sample of US cities on their implementation of a comprehensive list of GHG-mitigating activities. An assessment of the data reveals considerable variation in the frequency with which the different activities are implemented, particularly when considered across policy instrument type and target population. Further analysis suggests that cities utilise three broad “types” of climate protection strategies, based on the number and nature of the relevant actions that they have implemented.
Decentralization, the Inclusion of Ethnic Citizens, and Support for Democracy in Latin America

Decentralization has been considered a tool of democracy promotion because of its ability to improve citizen participation and increase equity by allocating resources to long-neglected populations. I examine these claims by focusing on decentralization’s effects for indigenous and Afro-Latino individuals in fifteen Latin American countries. Using AmericasBarometer survey data provided by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), I first analyze how the inclusion of ethnic citizens in local government affects attitudes that are considered crucial for democratic consolidation, such as satisfaction with democratic governance. I then assess whether decentralization has increased inclusion by examining how political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization affect ethnic individuals’ participation and engagement in local government. The analyses demonstrate the limits of decentralizing reforms for democratization. I find that the inclusion of marginalized citizens is not substantially enhanced by decentralization, which is especially important given the other significant result of this study: that local inclusion increases ethnic individuals’ support for democracy. The results suggest that individual reserves of social capital may be most important for enhancing local inclusion, and hence support for democracy.
Social expenditure and the politics of redistribution

This article offers a critique and analysis of recent OECD research by Adema and Ladaique identifying the impact of taxes and private benefits on social spending. By using the techniques of multivariate modelling, we show that both gross public and net private expenditures are strongly influenced by partisan incumbency, although in opposite directions, and that the more we net out the effect of taxes, the less politics matters and the more spending is shaped by socio-economic forces. In a second stage of the analysis, we show that the crucial mechanism of welfare state redistribution is the taxation of gross social expenditure and demonstrate that this effect is almost entirely political in nature.
The Real Interest Rate: A Multi-Country Empirical Study

How real interest rates behave over time is critical to our understanding of many macroeconomic issues, and much recent research has pursued this question. Very little of the research, however, has focused on real interest rates outside the United States. This paper is an empirical exploration of real interest rate movements in seven OECD countries from 1967-II to 1979-II. Further research is needed on real rates in other countries for several reasons. Not only are measures of foreign real rates of interest in their ownright, but extending an analysis of real rates to other countries also has the following additional benefits: it can generate more powerful statistical tests of propositions previously tested on U.S. data and yield information on whether results found for the U.S. hold up in other countries.This study pursues several questions that have arisen naturally from this earlier work. Is the hypothesis that the real rate is constant rejected when the analysis is extended to other countries? Does the real rate decline with increased inflation and money growth in other countries besides the United States? How reliable is the Fisher effect, in which nominal interestrates reflect changes in expected inflation? Are movements in nominal interest rates a reliable indicator of movements in real rates? What kind of variationsin real interest rates are there in different countries? Have real rates declined from the '60s to the '70s for other countries besides the U.S.?
An Empirical Assessment of Islamic Index: A Case Study of India

To meet the mounting demand for Shariah Compliant Investment Avenues in equity markets, hundreds of Islamic Indices have been launched world over. Dow Jones and FTSE Global were the first to launch the Shariah Compliant Index namely DJIMI and FTSE Global Islamic Index Series (GIIS). While a number of Shariah compliant Indices have been launched by different publishers like S&P, MSCI, FTSE, Dow Jones and Russell to meet the growing demand but a very few studies have been conducted to assess the performance of these indices in comparison to their counterpart indices in terms of their risk and return. The present study has been undertaken to assess and compare the performance of S&P BSE 500 Shariah and S&P BSE 500 for five years time period i.e., June 2009 to May 2014. To assess the performance of these indices, average monthly raw returns, risk adjusted monthly returns were calculated using time series data of daily closing prices. An attempt has also been made to analyze the risk involved Beta and Alpha has been used. The study also investigates the long term relationship between Islamic Index and its counterpart. The study has revealed that S&P BSE 500 Shariah Index has slightly underperformed the conventional index during the period under study on the basis of monthly returns. However, the Islamic Index was found to be far less risky than its counterpart Index. Also the two Indices were cointegrated and exhibited long term relationship.
Computer-Based Vertebral Tumor Cryoablation Planning and Procedure Simulation Involving Two Cases Using MRI-Visible 3D Printing and Advanced Visualization.

OBJECTIVE We report the development and use of MRI-compatible and MRI-visible 3D printed models in conjunction with advanced visualization software models to plan and simulate safe access routes to achieve a theoretic zone of cryoablation for percutaneous image-guided treatment of a C7 pedicle osteoid osteoma and an L1 lamina osteoblastoma. Both models altered procedural planning and patient care. CONCLUSION Patient-specific MRI-visible models can be helpful in planning complex percutaneous image-guided cryoablation procedures.
Reproducibility of changes in behaviour and fMRI activation associated with sleep deprivation in a working memory task.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Although the stability of inter-individual differences in vulnerability to sleep deprivation has been shown behaviourally, the neural basis for these differences has yet to be uncovered. In this study, we assessed the reproducibility of fMRI activation and performance on a working memory task before and after 24 hours of sleep deprivation (SD). DESIGN All volunteers underwent 2 sessions (pairs of fMRI scans) at rested wakefulness (RW) and after SD. PARTICIPANTS 19 healthy, right-handed subjects (mean age = 21.37 +/- 1.54 years). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Brain activation was highly correlated across sessions in a frontoparietal network previously implicated in working memory function. The magnitude of decline in this activation after SD was preserved in bilateral parietal regions. Among several behavioural metrics investigated, the most robust marker of vulnerability to SD was the change in the intra-individual variability of reaction times. This was shown to be both stable over time and correlated with the drop in left parietal activation from RW to SD in both experimental sessions. CONCLUSIONS Because of its reproducibility, the modulation of parietal activation may provide a good physiological marker of vulnerability to SD.
A gene cluster involved in the utilization of both free heme and heme:hemopexin by Haemophilus influenzae type b

The utilization of heme bound to the serum glycoprotein hemopexin by Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) strain DL42 requires the presence of the 100-kDa heme:hemopexin-binding protein encoded by the hxuA gene (M. S. Hanson, S. E. Pelzel, J. Latimer, U. Muller-Eberhard, and E. J. Hansen, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89:1973-1977, 1992). Nucleotide sequence analysis of a 5-kb region immediately upstream from the hxuA gene revealed the presence of two genes, designated hxuC and hxuB, which encoded outer membrane proteins. The 78-kDa HxuC protein had similarity to TonB-dependent outer membrane proteins of other organisms, whereas the 60-kDa HxuB molecule most closely resembled the ShlB protein of Serratia marcescens. A set of three isogenic Hib mutants with cat cartridges inserted individually into their hxuA, hxuB, and hxuC genes was constructed. None of these mutants could utilize heme:hemopexin. The hxuC mutant was also unable to utilize low levels of free heme, whereas both the hxuA and hxuB mutants could utilize free heme. When the wild-type hxuC gene was present in trans, the hxuC mutant regained its ability to utilize low levels of free heme but still could not utilize heme:hemopexin. The hxuA mutant could utilize heme:hemopexin when a functional hxuA gene from a nontypeable H. influenzae strain was present in trans. Complementation analysis using this cloned nontypeable H. influenzae hxuA gene also indicated that the HxuB protein likely functions in the release of soluble HxuA from the Hib cell. These studies indicate that at least two and possible three gene products are required for utilization of heme bound to hemopexin by Hib strain DL42.