Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phase IIb multicenter trial of vorinostat in patients with persistent, progressive, or treatment refractory cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.

PURPOSE To evaluate the activity and safety of the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat (suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid) in persistent, progressive, or recurrent mycosis fungoides or Sézary syndrome (MF/SS) cutaneous t-cell lymphoma (CTCL) subtypes. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with stage IB-IVA MF/SS were treated with 400 mg of oral vorinostat daily until disease progression or intolerable toxicity in this open-label phase IIb trial (NCT00091559). Patients must have received at least two prior systemic therapies at least one of which included bexarotene unless intolerable. The primary end point was the objective response rate (ORR) measured by the modified severity weighted assessment tool and secondary end points were time to response (TTR), time to progression (TTP), duration of response (DOR), and pruritus relief ( > or = 3-point improvement on a 10-point visual analog scale). Safety and tolerability were also evaluated. RESULTS Seventy-four patients were enrolled, including 61 with at least stage IIB disease. The ORR was 29.7% overall; 29.5% in stage IIB or higher patients. Median TTR in stage IIB or higher patients was 56 days. Median DOR was not reached but estimated to be >or = 185 days (34+ to 441+). Median TTP was 4.9 months overall, and 9.8 months for stage IIB or higher responders. Overall, 32% of patients had pruritus relief. The most common drug-related adverse experiences (AE) were diarrhea (49%), fatigue (46%), nausea (43%), and anorexia (26%); most were grade 2 or lower but those grade 3 or higher included fatigue (5%), pulmonary embolism (5%), thrombocytopenia (5%), and nausea (4%). Eleven patients required dose modification and nine discontinued due to AE. CONCLUSION Oral vorinostat was effective in treatment refractory MF/SS with an acceptable safety profile.
Corruption and confidence in Australian political institutions

Corruption is inimical to public support for democratic government. This article uses Australian public opinion surveys to clarify the link between corruption and views of political institutions. The results show that citizens' personal experiences of corruption among public officials are negligible, but that three in four believe that there is some corruption among politicians and almost half believe that corruption in Australia is increasing. Perceptions of corruption matter much more than personal experiences of corrupt public officials in shaping confidence in political institutions. For policy-makers, the findings have implications for how corruption is handled, and in the measures that should be put in place to allay the public's fears about the increase in corruption. 腐败妨碍了公众对民主政府的支持。 本文使用澳大利亚舆论调查，澄清了腐败与政治体制观的联系。 研究显示公民个人对于公职人员腐败的经验可以忽略不计。 倒是四分之三的人相信政客中存在某种腐败，几乎近一半人相信腐败在澳大利亚与日俱增。 对腐败的认识，比个人对公职人员中腐败的耳闻目见，对于形成对政治体制的信赖要重要得多。 对于政策制定者，这些发现有助于他们处理腐败，采取措施缓和公众对于日增的腐败的恐惧。
Using Evaluation To Recreate a Middle Level Teacher Education Program.

// T eachers in middle grade schools should be selected and specially educated to teach young adolescents" (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989, p. 19). With the growing number of middle schools being established and the consequent decrease in the number of junior high schools, the need for intentional teacher preparation in middle level education has surged (McEwin, 1992). Indeed as early as 1983, Boyer "found that teachers felt they had not been prepared for teaching effective ly at the middle level and that specialized preparation programs would have been helpful" (cited in McEwin, 1984, p. 115). In the past, teacher education programs have been designed to emphasize content areas (secondary certification) or the teach ing of young children (elementary certifica tion). "Far too many teachers and other mid dle level personnel are simply unprepared for the task of understanding, coping with, and educating early adolescents" (McEwin, 1984, p. 109). Perhaps the middle school phi losophy has been so difficult to "sell" to the public that researchers have given too much attention to the public relations aspect rather than teacher preparation for this age group (Sheppard, 1991). However, teacher preparation pro grams are increasing, and it is critical for the middle level education movement that pro grams already existing be evaluated. According to Sheppard (1991), "Unless we evaluate our own strategies for teaching these middle school classes, we may be developing teachers who 'know', but who do not 'act'" (p. 49). Maryville University, located in subur ban St. Louis, Missouri, created a middle level teacher certification program for both undergraduates and graduates, beginning in the fall of 1990. Faculty members were com mitted to preparing teachers who, in Schon's (1982) words, "reflect IN action" as well as "reflect ON action. " Further, the faculty believed that teachers must be makers of their own meaning, not people who mind lessly teach children or young adults with out consciously reflecting intellectually and ethically upon their own beliefs and prac tices.
Evaluating the Housing Unit Method: A Case Study of 1990 Population Estimates in Florida

Abstract The housing unit (HU) method is the most commonly used approach to making small-area population estimates in the United States. This study evaluates the accuracy and bias of HU population estimates produced for counties and subcounty areas in Florida for April 1, 1990. The major findings are that population size has a negative effect on estimation errors (disregarding sign) but no effect on bias; growth rates have a U-shaped effect on estimation errors (disregarding sign) and a negative effect on bias; electricity customer data provide more accurate household estimates than do building permit data; errors in household estimates contribute more to population estimation error than do errors in estimates of average household size or group quarters population; and the application of professional judgment improves the accuracy of purely mechanical techniques. We believe the HU method offers a number of advantages over other population estimation methods and provides planners and demographers with a po.
In-system diagnosis of RF ICs for tolerance against on-chip in-band interferers

The tolerance of RF ICs against on-chip in-band interferers is diagnosed from the viewpoints of the quality of wireless channels compliant with LTE standards. The on-chip interferers inevitably propagate from other active circuits like digital backend processors through silicon substrate coupling in the same die of system-level integration. An in-system diagnosis platform of RF ICs presented in this paper relates the impacts of such interferers on the circuit-level response and system-level communication performance metrics. The figures of communication quality at a system level, like EVM, BER and throughput are concurrently evaluated with the strengths of interferers in different forms and at different locations in a silicon chip. The interferers are measured as the in-band signal to spurious power ratio at the output of RF ICs, the magnitude of substrate voltage fluctuations at the proximity of RF ICs, and related with the amount of power current consumed by base-band digital ICs. The tolerance of RF ICs is represented by the maximum strength of on-chip interferers for sustaining prescribed communication performance. The diagnosis system is divided into two parts, (i) a system-level RF simulator handling modulation and demodulation of real communication vectors in LTE format and also enabling hardware connectivity with RF ICs, and (ii) a silicon emulator of on-chip interferers coupled to the RF ICs. A 65 nm CMOS chip incorporates an on-chip arbitrary noise generator, an on-chip waveform capture, and RF IC for LTE receiver front end, and demonstrates the entire diagnosis.
Motivations and Use Context in Mobile Tourism Shopping: Applying Contingency and Task–Technology Fit Theories

Mobile tourism shopping is an emerging market, but there is little theoretically based research on the topic. This study investigates the impact of motivations (value, enjoyment, time saving and mobility) on consumer satisfaction by applying contingency and task– technology fit theories in the mobile tourism shopping context. The results show that value and enjoyment have significant effects on satisfaction. Use context is found to have a full mediating role between time saving and satisfaction as well as between mobility and satisfaction. This study offers theoretical and practical contributions to the tourism literature and mobile tourism industry. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 16 December 2012; Revised 13 May 2013; Accepted 20 May 2013
Unequal Exposure or Unequal Vulnerability? Contributions of Neighborhood Conditions and Cardiovascular Risk Factors to Socioeconomic Inequality in Incident Cardiovascular Disease in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Risk factors can drive socioeconomic inequalities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) through differential exposure and differential vulnerability. In this paper, we show how econometric decomposition directly enables simultaneous, policy-oriented assessment of these 2 mechanisms. We specifically estimate contributions of neighborhood environment and proximal risk factors to socioeconomic inequality in CVD incidence via these mechanisms. We followed 5,608 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (2000-2012) to their first CVD event (median length of follow-up, 12.2 years). We used a summary measure of baseline socioeconomic position (SEP). Covariates included baseline demographics, neighborhood characteristics, and psychosocial, behavioral, and biomedical risk factors. Using Poisson models, we decomposed the difference (inequality) in incidence rates between low- and high-SEP groups into contributions of 1) differences in covariate means (differential exposure) and 2) differences in CVD risk associated with covariates (differential vulnerability). Notwithstanding large uncertainty in neighborhood estimates, our analysis suggested that differential exposure to poorer neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, adverse social environment, diabetes, and hypertension accounted for most of the inequality. Psychosocial and behavioral contributions were negligible. Further, neighborhood SEP, female sex, and white race were more strongly associated with CVD among low-SEP (vs. high-SEP) participants. These differentials in vulnerability also accounted for nontrivial portions of the inequality and could have important implications for intervention.
Pharmaceutical and Endocrine Disruptor Compounds in Surface and Wastewater in San Marcos, Texas

Water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) and hospitals are major point sources of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in aquatic environments. This study investigated the removal efficiencies of 23 known or suspected EDCs through the San Marcos WRRF to determine which treatment process was the most effective at removal. Results from samples collected at the hospital indicate that the hospital discharge is contributing to the concentration of these compounds in the San Marcos wastewater collection system (0.05–140 μg/L concentrations). The most frequently detected compounds in the WRRF influent included acetaminophen, nonylphenol, caffeine, benzophenone, N,N‐diethyl‐m‐toluamide (DEET), bisphenol A (BPA), and triclosan. Comparison of influent and effluent concentrations showed that the San Marcos WRRF is effectively removing (>92%) of these compounds, with the exception of carbamazepine and tris(2‐chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP). These preliminary results will be used to guide future improvements within the WRRF.
Organizational Networking in UK Biotechnology Clusters

Differences in growth patterns between regional clusters are often attributed to the extent to which they benefit from agglomeration, defined as the advantages that derive from being proximately located with other companies and institutions in the same industry. Foremost among these supply-side externalities are the knowledge 'spillover' effects that can result from firms interacting extensively in both horizontal (complementary equivalent firms) and vertical (value chain) directions. The paper presents evidence from two surveys, one national and one regionally based, of networking patterns in UK biotechnology, focusing on how firms engage with other small firms, with large pharmaceuticals, and with research centres, and how far these interactions are regional, national or international in character. It suggests that where companies do collaborate, there is a tendency for the intensity of activity to increase as the location of the partner moves from the local to the international space. We evaluate the obvious interpretation that local linkages may be satisfactory for idea generation and early product development, but that national and international connections are more important for manufacturing, marketing and distribution activities. However, we conclude that a broader set of largely industry factors account for the networking patterns - namely, the science-technology base, research funding, firms' business models, and competitor strategies in evolving markets - and that these matter more to clustered UK biotechnology firms than the cluster itself. These findings suggest a rethinking of cluster policy and the theoretical basis for clusters.
Bank Integration and Business Volatility in the U.S.

We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations within states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), we conclude that the theoretical effect of integration on business cycle size is ambiguous, as some shocks are dampened by integration, but others are amplified. Empirically, we find that integration diminishes employment growth fluctuations within states, and decreases the deviations in employment growth across states. Business cycles within states become smaller with integration, in other words, but more alike. Our results for the United States bear on the financial convergence underway in Europe, where banks remain highly fragmented across nations.
A cross-cultural examination of weight-related teasing, body image, and eating disturbance in Swedish and Australian samples.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate, cross-culturally, a model for the prediction of eating disturbance from factors such as body image disturbance, negative verbal feedback regarding appearance (teasing), and body mass index (BMI). METHODS Three samples of adolescent girls from Sweden (Grade 8: n = 260; mean age = 14.3) and Australia (Grade 7: n = 159; mean age = 12.8 and Grade 8: n = 210; mean age = 13.7) completed two measures of eating restraint and one scale each reflective of bulimic symptomatology, teasing history, and body dissatisfaction. RESULTS Path analyses revealed that BMI predicted teasing and body dissatisfaction, and body dissatisfaction predicted level of eating restraint. In all three samples, there was evidence of partial mediation by teasing of the connection between BMI and restraint. DISCUSSION The results partially replicate previous work with U.S. samples. The findings are discussed with regard to the need for further cross-cultural work and its relevance for identifying factors for early intervention and prevention programs.
A Continuum Model for Housing Allocation and Transportation Emission Problems in a Polycentric City

ABSTRACT The effect of vehicle emissions on the global climate has prompted increasing concern in the past few decades. Housing development patterns determine people's travel behavior and related vehicle emissions. In this study, we consider a hypothetical city with several central business districts (CBDs) serving several classes of road users, which are continuously distributed over the city. The road network is relatively dense and can be approximated as a continuum. We establish a bi-level model to describe the relationships among housing allocation, traffic volume, and CO2 emissions with a continuum modeling approach. At the lower level, the model achieves the user equilibrium condition of a transport system. At the upper level, it optimizes housing allocation to achieve minimum CO2 emissions. The finite element method, Newton-Raphson algorithm, and convex combination approach are applied to solve the constrained optimization problem established in the bi-level model. A numerical example is then given to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed bi-level approach and solution algorithm in modeling transport demand, traffic intensity, and CO2 emissions with an optimized housing development pattern.
Inserção econômica de Minas Gerais: uma análise estrutural

The aim of this paper is to verify the interdependence between the productive structure of the state of Minas Gerais and the rest of Brazil. To accomplish that, we use data from the inter-regional input-output table Minas Gerais/rest of the Brazil, 1996 (BDMG, FIPE/USP, 2001) in its modified version for 40 sectors (Haddad and Domingues, 2003). The measure of sectoral interdependence was calculated using the method of hypothetical extraction (Dietzenbacher et al, 1993). In order to capture the dependence of Minas Gerais and the rest of Brazil on the rest of the world, the external sector was taken from the final demand vector and was incorporated in the intersectoral transaction matrix.
The role of bone decortication in enhancing the results of guided bone regeneration: a literature review.

BACKGROUND Bone decortication is often performed as part of a guided bone regeneration (GBR) procedure. The biologic rationale for decortication of bone is to allow progenitor cells easy access to a GBR-treated site and to facilitate prompt angiogenesis. It also may enhance the physical connection between a bone graft and a recipient site. However, the concept of decortication prior to a GBR procedure is controversial because there are no human clinical trials to support its effectiveness, and there are opposing points of view derived from animal studies regarding its usefulness. METHODS The literature was assessed to determine whether there are enough data to validate the rationale for using decortication of bone as an integral part of GBR procedures. Eight searches were performed seeking controlled clinical trials that addressed the ability of decortication to enhance GBR. RESULTS Three controlled animal clinical trials were found that supported the use of decortication prior to performing GBR. Two controlled animal clinical trials were located that indicated decortication did not improve GBR procedures. No human controlled clinical trial was identified that addressed the ability of decortication to alter GBR procedures. The literature addressing the capacity of decortication to affect onlay grafting or wound healing also provided mixed results. CONCLUSION There is conflicting information and not enough clinical trials to make a definitive determination as to the merits of bone decortication prior to GBR procedures.
Impact of Conversation Map™ Education Tools Versus Regular Care on Diabetes-Related Knowledge of People With Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized, Controlled Study

Objective. This study compared the effectiveness of Conversation Map™ (CM) education tools versus regular care of adults with type 2 diabetes. Methods. Participants from Spain and Germany were randomized to either four CM education sessions or regular care. Data were collected at baseline (visit 1), immediately post-education (visit 2), and 6 months later (visit 3). The primary objective was to compare diabetes knowledge between education groups at visit 3, using the Audit of Diabetes Knowledge (ADKnowl) questionnaire (score range 0–100). Results. Of 681 participants randomized (CM 330, regular care 351), 91.8% completed visit 3. Median ADKnowl scores increased significantly (P < 0.001) in both groups (CM visit 1, 60.3; visit 2, 73.5; and visit 3, 72.5; regular care visit 1, 63.3; visit 2, 73.5; and visit 3, 73.6). At visit 3, scores were not ranked significantly differently between education groups (P = 0.284). In Spain (n = 310), visit 3 scores were ranked higher for CM than for regular care (P < 0.001); in Germany (n = 371), the opposite was true (P < 0.001). Of participants receiving regular care, 78.3% of those in Germany and 13.5% of those in Spain had non-CM structured education between visits 1 and 2. In Spain, CM patients had higher satisfaction with care and goal attainment than regular-care patients at visit 2 (visit 2 P < 0.001, visit 3 P = 0.055). In Germany, CM patients had less emotional distress than regular-care patients (visit 2 P = 0.025, visit 3 P = 0.003). Median A1C decreased similarly in both groups and countries. Conclusion. Diabetes knowledge and clinical outcomes improved in both education groups. At visit 3, diabetes knowledge in the CM group was not ranked higher than in the regular-care group. In Germany, where regular care frequently involves structured education programs, diabetes knowledge was ranked higher with regular care than with CM. In Spain, where no structured national diabetes education and awareness programs are in place, scores were ranked higher with CM than with regular care.
Using a Balanced Scorecard to Improve the Management of Natural Resources: Experiences from Baden-Württemberg

The balanced scorecard approach is a strategic performance management tool to assist managers’ decisions by guiding the selection of performance measures that reflect desired strategic goals. While typically implemented in the private sector, it has potential application to the public sector, particularly to the management of natural resources. This article investigated the experiences of a public-sector organization, the State Forest Service of Baden Württemberg, in implementing a balanced scorecard. Data were collected from interviews with senior managers and a questionnaire survey of middle managers from the organization. Overall, the results show the underdevelopment of less traditional performance measures, the need for organizational commitment to collection of such measures, and support for an iterative process to develop meaningful measures. The results also support the relationships hypothesized in the conceptual model regarding desired outcomes and the capacity of existing information systems, and the receptivity of managers to change.
The political economy of China's economic reform

In China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett present a withering critique of China's market reforms and development strategy. To assess their critique, I believe it is essential to provide a somewhat fuller discussion of the context within which China's reform strategy emerged than appears in the work of Hart-Landsberg and Burkett. My discussion of this context appears after a brief discussion of their main points, and is followed in turn by a more detailed evaluation of the specific assertions they make. Although I am sympathetic to the spirit of their critique, I believe that in the last analysis they are unable to offer any genuine alternative to the development strategy China has pursued and that their analysis of the consequences of that strategy is in many respects deeply flawed.