Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of magnetic resonance imaging to assess blood-brain/blood-glioma barrier opening during conformal radiotherapy.

PURPOSE For chemotherapy to act synergistically and safely with radiation against high-grade gliomas, drugs must pass the endothelial junctions of the blood-tumor barrier (BTB) to reach all tumor cells, and should not pass the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to cause toxicity to normal brain. The objective of this study was to assess BBB/BTB status using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during a course of radiotherapy of high-grade gliomas. PATIENTS AND METHODS Sixteen patients with grade 3 or 4 supratentorial malignant glioma receiving conformal radiotherapy (RT) underwent contrast-enhanced MRI before, during, and after completion of RT. A gadolinium diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA) uptake index was analyzed with respect to the tumor and RT dose received. RESULTS In the nonenhanced tumor region, contrast uptake increased significantly after the receipt of approximately 10 Gy (P < .01), and reached a maximum after the receipt of approximately 30 Gy. In the initially contrast-enhanced tumor region, contrast uptake decreased over the course of RT and became significant after completion of RT in patients without progressive disease. The healthy brain showed only nonsignificant changes during and after irradiation. CONCLUSION Contrast MRI reveals increases in Gd-DTPA uptake in the initially nonenhanced tumor region but not in the remaining brain during the course of RT, suggesting opening of the BTB. This finding suggests that the effect of conformal radiation is more selective on the BTB than the BBB, and there may be a window extending from 1 week after the initiation of radiotherapy to 1 month after the completion of treatment during which a pharmaceutical agent has maximum access to high-grade gliomas.
Endometrial Abnormality in Women With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrinopathy associated with infertility and metabolic disorder in women of reproductive age. Although the clinical and biochemical features are heterogeneous with individuals, the most widely accepted clinical characteristics of PCOS are oligo- or anovulation combined with hyperandrogenism. With the higher rate of implantation failure after induction of ovulation or higher risk of spontaneous miscarriage after pregnancy, the reduced fertility is apparently attributed not only to anovulation but also to endometrial dysfunction in patients with PCOS. Here we review the features of the endometrial abnormalities in women with PCOS. The ability to improve the endometrial functions is of potential therapeutic targets to increase reproductive outcome of women with PCOS.
Load forecasting using artificial intelligence techniques: a literature survey

The forecasting of electricity demand has become one of the major research fields in electrical engineering. In recent years, much research has been carried out on the application of artificial intelligence techniques to the load-forecasting problem. Various artificial intelligence (AI) techniques used for load forecasting are expert systems, fuzzy, genetic algorithm, artificial neural network (ANN), etc. This paper presents an extensive bibliography of more than 265 papers on load forecasting during over past 25 years.
Unusual discrepancy between CT and PET/CT in the initial staging of Hodgkin's lymphoma

For decades, CT scans have been considered suffi cient and reliable for staging lymphoma. CT offers high specifi city and sensitivity in pretreatment staging [1,2], while specifi city appears to be lower in response assessment [3]. However, FDG-PET scan (positron emission tomography) has proven to be highly sensitive in detecting nodal and extranodal involvement by most histologic subtypes of lymphoma prior to and following treatment [4 – 6]. Most common subtypes of lymphoma including Hodgkin ’ s lymphoma (HL) are FDG-sensitive, demonstrating sensitivity of over 80% and specifi city of approximately 90%, which is superior to CT [1,2]. Moreover, the combined modality PET/CT has demonstrated even more sensitive and specifi c imaging than either modality alone [7]. We report a case of newly diagnosed HL, with an unusual discrepancy concerning the initial staging performed by clinical and CT evaluation and the FDG-PET/CT scan which followed, which ultimately infl uenced therapy.
Multinational R&D in China: From home-country-based to host-country-based

Current research on multinational R&D assumes that main R&D is based in the home country and views overseas R&D as additional to the home base. However, case studies in China have found that the base itself is also internationalized. Besides home-based-augmenting, home-based-exploiting, and home-based-replacing discussed in the literature, we have identified new types of host-based overseas R&D. Two of these are the host-based technology advancer, which focuses on original component innovation, and the host-based system owner, which focuses on system innovation. Both respond to local market opportunities. In addition, multinationals establish host-based local integrators to coordinate their R&D centers under different firm divisions. These findings suggest four topics for future research.
Effects of systemic and local CXC chemokine administration on the ethanol-induced suppression of pulmonary neutrophil recruitment.

BACKGROUND Acute alcohol intoxication impairs the neutrophil response to intrapulmonary infection, resulting in impaired host defense and increased patient morbidity and mortality. We recently showed that intratracheal (IT) chemokine administration promotes pulmonary neutrophil migration in rats and that this process is enhanced by systemic administration of the Glu-Leu-Arg (ELR+) and CXC chemokine cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC). Here we hypothesized that exogenous chemokine administration would mitigate the suppressive effect of alcohol on neutrophil recruitment into the lung. METHODS Macrophage inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2), a rat ELR+ CXC chemokine, or live Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) was administered it to induce alveolar neutrophil migration in the absence or presence of acute ethanol intoxication. Depending on the experimental protocol, rats received either intravenous (IV) CINC or IT chemokines (CINC and MIP-2) 20 min after it MIP-2 or K. pneumoniae. Rats were euthanized 90 min or four hr after the first IT injection for sample collection. RESULTS Neutrophil counts were significantly elevated in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of rats receiving IT MIP-2 compared with vehicle-treated rats, and this response was significantly decreased in animals pretreated with ethanol. CINC IV enhanced the neutrophil response to IT MIP-2 in both the absence and presence of acute ethanol intoxication. In rats challenged with K. pneumoniae, ethanol pretreatment significantly reduced BALF levels of CINC and MIP-2, suppressed alveolar neutrophil recruitment, and decreased whole-lung myeloperoxidase activity. CINC IV did not alter BALF neutrophil counts in the absence or presence of ethanol administration 4 hr after IT K. pneumoniae. Alternatively, IT chemokine instillation partially restored BALF neutrophil recruitment but not whole-lung myeloperoxidase activity in ethanol-treated rats. CONCLUSIONS Ethanol significantly inhibits the pulmonary inflammatory responses to both MIP-2 and K. pneumoniae. Exogenous chemokine administration may be a useful means to enhance host defenses in the ethanol-intoxicated host, although the results of this study also indicate that ethanol intoxication can impair neutrophil recruitment, independent of its effects on local chemotactic gradients.
Underpricing and Long-Run Performance Patterns of European Private-Equity-Backed and Non-Private-Equity-Backed IPOs

Fast forward now to the endgame, after the company is public. Starting first with the performance of shares on a public market; how will they perform? Bergström, Nilsson, and Wahlberg present the performance of a data-set of 152 private-equity-backed IPOs against 1,370 non-private equity-backed firms in London and Paris between 1994 and 2004. Have these firms been underpriced by their issuers? Do private-equity-backed IPOs outperform their non-private-equity-backed counterparts? And how do these two groups fare against indexed performance?
On the use of energy in LPC-based recognition of isolated words

Recognition of isolated words by encoding speech into linear predictive coefficients (LPC) is well known and widely accepted as one of the better methods for speech recognition. One of the drawbacks in relying entirely on LPC measures for recognition, however, is that the energy information in the speech is removed during the LPC analysis. Consequently, attempts have been made to include energy pattern information along with the LPC pattern information to achieve greater recognition accuracy. This paper discusses problems involved in combining energy pattern information with the LPC pattern information and presents results of recognition experiments with one method. The energy information and LPC information are combined linearly in a (speech) frame-by-frame manner utilizing the dynamic time warping (DTW) method time alignment. The LPC log likelihood ratio distance function, which determines the spectral difference between two frames of speech, does not lend itself to direct statistical analysis in multiple dimensions. The method for obtaining the weighting for the linear combination involves an iterative minimization of a probability of error function. The combined energy and LPC distance function was tested using a 129-word “airline” vocabulary, which is designed for speaker-independent, isolated word recognition. The inclusion of energy information in the recognition feature space reduces recognition error rates by an average of about 25 percent as compared with LPC alone.
Managing customers as human resources in service organizations

On-site service encounters blur the organizational boundary between employees and customers. The strategic trade-offs involved in having customers on-site, and the HRM practices that can influence the satisfaction and performance of customers within the organization, are described. Central points include the HRM practices that foster a climate for service and that provide customers the role clarity, ability, and motivation they require to contribute to service production and delivery.
The managers versus the consultants

Since engineering information is rarely available, standard practice is to benchmark managerial performance against best observed practice. We exploit a rare opportunity to benchmark managerial performance against engineering standards. Our managerial performance describes the activities of Spanish electricity distributors, and our engineering standards are obtained from an engineering grid created by an international consultancy. We find the consultancy's network to be much less costly to operate. When we decompose the cost differential, we find that the superior network design, combined with lower input prices, accounts for more than all of the predicted cost savings. However we also find that the managers are more cost efficient than the consultancy, presumably because they exploit their incentive to be cost efficient under a revenue cap regulatory regime. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics", 2002 .
Capital Market Effi ciency and Arbitrage E fficacy

Efficiency in the capital markets requires that capital flows are sufficient to arbitrage anomalies away. We examine the relationship between flows to a "quant" strategy that is based on capital market anomalies, and the subsequent performance of this strategy. When these flows are high, quant funds are able to implement arbitrage strategies more effectively, which, in turn, leads to lower profitability of market anomalies in the future, and vice versa. Thus, the degree of cross-sectional equity market efficiency varies across time with the availability of arbitrage capital.
Business Cycles and the Role of Confidence: Evidence for Europe

This paper examines whether indicators of consumer and business confidence can predict movements in GDP over the business cycle for four European economies. The empirical methodology used to investigate the properties of the data comprises cross-correlation statistics, implementing an approach developed by den Haan ["Journal of Monetary Economics" (2000) , Vol. 46, pp. 3-30]. The predictive power of confidence indicators is also examined, investigating whether they can predict discrete events, namely economic downturns, and whether they can quantitatively forecast point estimates of economic activity. The results indicate that both consumer and business confidence indicators are procyclical and generally play a significant role in predicting downturns. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford 2007.
[Recovery, amnesia and affective state following propofol in comparison with thiopental].

Numerous reports have described a definite sense of well-being after anesthesia with propofol (Disoprivan). The present study was designed to assess postoperative mood as recorded with a quantitative self-rating method. Postoperative recovery and amnesia were also investigated. Thirty unpremedicated female patients aged 20-60 (ASA grade 1 or 2) who were scheduled for minor gynecological operations were enrolled in the study after informed consent. The patients were randomly allocated to three study groups: group A, induction with propofol 2 mg/kg and maintenance with propofol 0.15 mg/kg per min together with N2O/O2; group B, induction with propofol 2 mg/kg and maintenance with enfluran and N2O/O2; group C, induction with thiopental until loss of the eye lash reflex and maintenance with enfluran and N2O/O2. Postoperative amnesia was assessed by showing five picture cards at 5-min intervals, starting when the patients were able to state the correct date of birth. A test of recovery (p-deletion) was carried out after 30 and again after 60 min. The postoperative mood state was evaluated with the adjective checklist of Janke and Debus 5 h after waking. In good agreement with published reports, propofol patients recovered more rapidly than thiopental patients. A significant but irrelevant amnesia occurred after 5 min in group B. However, in some cases amnesia lasting up to 20 min was observed. The global mood status showed a significantly higher score for positive items and a lower score for negative items after propofol administered by either technique than after thiopental (P = 0.001). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Arterial impedance as ventricular afterload.

• "Afterload," defined as the external factors that oppose the shortening of muscle fibers, is as important a determinant of myocardial performance in the intact heart (1-3) as it is in the papillary muscle preparation (4). Many investigators are searching for an "index" of contractile state that will be independent of all external forces, but until there is more general agreement on such an index than is now the case afterload must be measured and taken into account in any evaluation of ventricular performance. An operational definition of afterload appropriate to the intact ventricle is more difficult to formulate, however, than one might at first suppose. In an isotonic experiment on a papillary muscle, the load is simply the weight the muscle is required to lift. Weight has the same dimensions as force, and, if inertial effects are neglected, both are equal to the mass of the object suspended from the muscle multiplied by the gravitational acceleration constant. The force is exerted on a cross section of muscle, and afterload is often expressed as force per unit area or stress. In this kind of experiment, the suspended weight is directly responsible for the muscular stress, and it makes no difference which is regarded as the "load. " In the intact ventricle, however, the assumption that load and stress are synonymous terms leads to confusion. Stress in the ventricular wall is related to the external constraints on ventricular ejection, but the relationship is complicated by the globular shape of the contracting chamber and by the physical properties of the artery into which it ejects blood. The shape of the ventricle is significant because the pressure imparted to the blood by the myocardium is related to, but not the same as, tangential stress in the ventricular wall. The relationship between them would be relatively simple mathematically if the ventricle were of some regular
Antennas and Propagation from a Signal Processing Perspective

This thesis studies several topics within the area of antennas and propagation from a signal processing perspective. However, theory and methods from electromagnetics and communications have also been used, contributing to an interdisciplinary character of the thesis. Several physical models are derived in the thesis that describes the wireless communications channel and several novel antennas. On the basis of these models, it is investigated how multiple antennas may be employed to increasing the capacity of future wireless communication systems. Furthermore, several aspects of using antenna arrays for finding the directions of arrival of electromagnetic waves, with applications in radar and acoustic sonar, are studied. An often neglected issue when employing several antennas is that the elements affect each other through mutual coupling. By deriving expressions for the mutual coupling, the achievable direction finding performance is analyzed for this case. It is found that if the coupling is known, the effects on direction finding are small and can even increase performance in some cases. Similar results are also obtained when examining the capacity of communication systems employing multiple closely spaced antennas at both the transmitter and receiver. To evaluate the performance of communication systems, a spatio-temporal channel model is proposed that is based on electromagnetic scattering and fundamental physics. By using a dyad notation and concepts from rough surface scattering, a compact formulation of the channel model is obtained. System models are then derived that employs multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver, so called Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) systems. The polarization properties of the channel as well as those of the antennas are also included in the model, allowing for studies of different antenna arrangements. Two novel antenna solutions are proposed that can be used as diversity receivers in MIMO systems or when performing high-resolution direction finding. By exciting higher order modes of biconical or microstrip antennas, several directionally dependent radiation patterns are obtained. Different patterns can also be obtained by employing parasitic elements. It is found that these antennas, the multimode and switched parasitic antenna, offer performance comparable to that of an antenna array.
Colorectal cancer trends by race and anatomic subsites, 1975 to 1991.

OBJECTIVES To determine whether colorectal cancer rates among black men and women show the abrupt declines seen in whites since the mid-1980s and to determine how the cancer trends vary by anatomic subsites. DATA SOURCES Mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Md, and incidence and survival data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Trends in incidence, survival, and mortality rates. RESULTS For white men and women, cancer incidence rates declined for the right colon, left colon, and rectum after 1985. Stage-specific incidence rates for white men and women for each subsite had generally similar patterns. Distant-disease incidence rates declined beginning in the late 1970s, whereas regional-disease rates increased until the early to mid-1980s and then declined. An exception is the right colon in men, for which the incidence rates of distant disease did not decline, although the regional-disease pattern was similar to other sites. For blacks, colorectal cancer incidence rates changed little in the 1980s for men or women. In particular, there were no significant declines in the cancer incidence rates of the colorectum or of subsites after 1985. Black colorectal cancer mortality trends showed gender and age differences. Black men had significantly increasing colorectal cancer mortality rates from 1975 through 1992, but the increase after 1985 was observed only in men 65 years of age and older. The colorectal cancer mortality rates did not increase overall in black women in the 1980s, but the mortality rates increased slightly in women 65 years of age and older while declining in women younger than 65 years. CONCLUSIONS For whites, the trends in colorectal cancer rates by anatomic subsite support the contention that early-detection procedures, such as sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy, are contributing to the declines in incidence and mortality rates since 1985. The absence in blacks of significant declines in colorectal incidence or mortality rates since 1985 suggests the need for a greater emphasis on early-detection programs in the black community, particularly for elderly blacks.
Current waveform optimization for ripple-free output torque of transverse flux reluctance machines

The following publication describes the method used to calculate current waveforms optimized for minimum RMS value of the current and at the same time ripple-free output torque of the transverse flux reluctance machine. Due to the similarities with switched reluctance machines it is also applicable for this type of electric motors. The method described here, requires detailed characteristics of the machine. This algorithm is based on calculating a range of current combinations for every position instance that will result with set torque value, and then choosing the optimal path through all the position instants with help of dynamic programming. Results of the calculations for an example machine are presented and discussed. In the conclusions section some advantages and disadvantages of this algorithm as well as possible improvements, are briefly discussed.
Demokratie und Wohlfahrtsstaat: eine europäische Regimeform unter dem Stress der europäischen Integration

Die Europaische Union, so ist allenthalben zu lesen, ist ein politisches Gebilde sui generis – kein Staatenbund (mehr), (noch) kein Bundesstaat, eine „would-be polity“. Das ist eine zutreffende, aber wenig instruktive Feststellung. Die negative Kennzeichnung der EU wurde an Informationswert gewinnen, wenn man die Strukturunterschiede bestimmen konnte, die zu der vertrauten Form politischer Herrschaft bestehen, also zum Nationalstaat.