Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Radioembolization for hepatocellular carcinoma using Yttrium-90 microspheres: a comprehensive report of long-term outcomes.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has limited treatment options; long-term outcomes following intra-arterial radiation are unknown. We assessed clinical outcomes of patients treated with intra-arterial yttrium-90 microspheres (Y90). METHODS Patients with HCC (n = 291) were treated with Y90 as part of a single-center, prospective, longitudinal cohort study. Toxicities were recorded using the Common Terminology Criteria version 3.0. Response rate and time to progression (TTP) were determined using World Health Organization (WHO) and European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) guidelines. Survival by stage was assessed. Univariate/multivariate analyses were performed. RESULTS A total of 526 treatments were administered (mean, 1.8; range, 1-5). Toxicities included fatigue (57%), pain (23%), and nausea/vomiting (20%); 19% exhibited grade 3/4 bilirubin toxicity. The 30-day mortality rate was 3%. Response rates were 42% and 57% based on WHO and EASL criteria, respectively. The overall TTP was 7.9 months (95% confidence interval, 6-10.3). Survival times differed between patients with Child-Pugh A and B disease (A, 17.2 months; B, 7.7 months; P = .002). Patients with Child-Pugh B disease who had portal vein thrombosis (PVT) survived 5.6 months (95% confidence interval, 4.5-6.7). Baseline age; sex; performance status; presence of portal hypertension; tumor distribution; levels of bilirubin, albumin, and alpha-fetoprotein; and WHO/EASL response rate predicted survival. CONCLUSIONS Patients with Child-Pugh A disease, with or without PVT, benefited most from treatment. Patients with Child-Pugh B disease who had PVT had poor outcomes. TTP and overall survival varied by patient stage at baseline. These data can be used to design future Y90 trials and to describe Y90 as a potential treatment option for patients with HCC.
Drowning awareness. Prevention and treatment.

BACKGROUND Drowning is a common, preventable problem, especially in childhood where it is the second most common cause of death by accident in Australia, with 0-4 year olds comprising 22% of all drownings. Commonest sites for drowning are nontidal lakes and lagoons; private swimming pools (especially preschool children); ocean/estuary and surfing beaches; bathtub and bucket drownings (especially in infants and toddlers with up to 10% of bucket drownings due to child abuse). OBJECTIVE This article reviews the current information on the epidemiology, prevention and treatment of drowning. DISCUSSION Despite prevention strategies, including pool fencing, drowning rates in young children have remained relatively static. In older children, drowning rates have declined dramatically despite the lack of prevention. The indigenous population have a much higher rate of drowning than the overall figure and their toddler rate is very high. Approximately 69% of near drowning victims will have complete neurological recovery, 28% will suffer some selective deficit, and 3% survive in a permanent vegetative state. Alcohol has been strongly implicated in drowning and banning alcohol from adjacent swimming areas has reduced drowning rates. Overseas tourists were 4.7% of all nonboating drownings in Australia with 89% of these drowning in the ocean. Further funding for drowning prevention strategies are essential, yet noticeably lacking.
Adaptive observer for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) linear time-varying systems

For joint state-parameter estimation in linear time-varying (LTV) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems, an approach to the design of adaptive observers is proposed. It is conceptually simple and computationally efficient. Its global exponential convergence is established for noise-free systems. In the presence of noises, it is proved that the estimation errors are bounded and converge in the mean to zero if the noises are bounded and have zero means. Potential applications are fault detection and isolation, and adaptive control.
Microstructure and open-circuit voltage of n−i−p microcrystalline silicon solar cells

A series of microcrystalline silicon n−i−p solar cells has been deposited by very high frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at various values of silane to hydrogen source gas ratio and on two different substrate types. Relationships between microstructure and electrical characteristics of these solar cells are investigated by transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and I(V) measurements. A mixed phase (so-called heterophase) layer consisting of amorphous plus microcrystalline material is observed at the bottom of the solar cell and identified here as one of the key microstructural features of the device: the relationship between the crystalline nuclei density and the heterophase layer thickness is presented as well as its relationship with the open-circuit voltage (Voc). The effects of substrate roughness and of silane to hydrogen gas ratio used for the fabrication of the device on the heterophase layer are evidenced. These observations underline the importance of the fir.
The Corporatization of American Hospitals

Paul Starr, in The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982) (hereafter TSTAM), discussed his expectations for major changes in the U.S. hospital sector. In particular, he focused on the transformation of what were then largely independent, freestanding, nonprofit hospitals into large centralized, corporate organizations in which individual institutions would lose their autonomy and become part of large-scale enterprises with centralized corporate control (428). Starr suggested that the hospital industry was in the early stages of this change in the 1980s and, though preoccupied at the time with increased government regulation, was not aware that hospitals were on the brink of “losing their autonomy to another master” (428). On the face of it, Starr’s predictions appear to have come true given the voracity with which hospitals have affiliated with multihospital arrangements since the 1980s. The percentage of U.S. community hospitals affiliated with systems increased from 30.8 percent in 1979 to 52.6 percent in
Surface shape reconstruction of an undulating transparent object

An algorithm is described for reconstructing the surface shape of a nonrigid transparent object, such as water, from the apparent motion of the observed pattern. This algorithm is based on the optical and statistical analysis of the distortions. It consists of the following parts: extraction of optical flow, averaging of each point trajectory obtained from the optical flow sequence, calculation of the surface normal using optical characteristics, and reconstruction of the surface. The algorithm is applied to synthetic and real images to demonstrate its performance. <<ETX>>
Perceived depth analysis for view navigation of stereoscopic three-dimensional models

Abstract. This paper addresses how to define and control the perceived depth when rendering a single stereoscopic three-dimensional (3-D) model. In most 3-D manipulation software, the control of view navigation is the most important feature needed to visualize 3-D scenes of good quality. In a stereoscopic 3-D situation, however, this becomes more complex. We used two factors, parallax range and average parallax, to quantify the 3-D effect of rendering a 3-D model. After an experiment using subjective questionnaires, the fusional limit and depth perception of 22 subjects were regressed as paraboloid functions of parallax range and average parallax. Then, the comfort region, which is defined according to these parameters, was used again for developing an auto-adjustment algorithm for stereoscopic view navigation. This algorithm iteratively adjusts the parameters of a virtual stereo camera and simultaneously restrains parallax range and average parallax within a comfortable region. Finally, by using questionnaires and critical fusion frequency tests, we verified that this algorithm can significantly improve the comfort index of a user in customary operations.
Association between the treatment length and cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alpha‐2b plus ribavirin and their effectiveness as a combination treatment for Japanese chronic hepatitis C patients: Project of the Kyushu University Liver Disease Study Group

Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between the length of the treatment period and the cumulative dose of pegylated interferon alpha‐2b (peg‐IFN alpha‐2b) plus ribavirin (RBV) and their effectiveness in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C.
The Perceived Impact of Information Technology on Salespeople's Relational Competencies

Over the last decade, a steady stream of academic research and practitioner articles has examined the adoption and use of information technology (IT) applications in sales and customer services. In much of this literature, sales-related IT tools have been heralded as enhancing salespeople's customer service delivery, professionalism and general sales effectiveness. However, the literature has yet to investigate the precise nature of salespeople's experience with IT tools in their daily sales tasks. Specifically, a core area of salespeople's skills – namely their ability to practice relationship selling – has been ignored by the sales management literature examining the impact of such tools. This research investigates how the incorporation of IT tools in salespeople's customer interactions affects salespeople's perceived relational competencies. Results indicate that while IT tools can enhance some relational competencies, they are likely to inhibit other competencies that may be crucial in industries where close personal customer relationships are core to a firm's success.
The nucleotide sequence of maize streak virus DNA.

The nucleotide sequence of the DNA of maize streak virus (MSV) has been determined. The data were accommodated into one DNA circle of 2687 nucleotides, in contrast to previously characterised geminiviruses which have been shown to possess two circles of DNA. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of the DNA of MSV with those of cassava latent virus (CLV) and tomato golden mosaic virus (TGMV) showed no detectable homology. Analysis of open reading frames revealed seven potential coding regions for proteins of mol. wt. greater than or equal to 10 000, three in the viral (+) sense and four in the complementary (‐) sense. The position of likely transcription signals on the MSV DNA sequence would suggest a bidirectional strategy of transcription as proposed for CLV and TGMV. Nine inverted repeat sequences which have a potential of forming hairpin structures of delta G greater than or equal to ‐14 kcal/mol have been detected. Three of these hairpin structures are in non‐coding regions and could be involved in the regulation of transcription and/or replication.
The average quantitative concentration of cotinine within the system pregnant woman-baby.

The findings presented by the authors of this report contribute to the diagnosis of pathology of pregnancy i.e. they assess the influence of nicotine on the organisms of a mother and a new-born child, estimated by concentration of cotinine, the most important metabolite of nicotine. The mean proportional share of cotinine in the fluids and organs in the pregnant women smoking actively was as follows: urine 72.1%, amniotic fluids 14.3%, colostrum 8.9% and placenta 4.7%. The authors pay a particular attention to the "colostrum-milk way" in the mother-child relationship what is emphasized in this report.
Carbon Pools and Flux of Global Forest Ecosystems

Forest systems cover more than 4.1 x 109 hectares of the Earth's land area. Globally, forest vegetation and soils contain about 1146 petagrams of carbon, with approximately 37 percent of this carbon in low-latitude forests, 14 percent in mid-latitudes, and 49 percent at high latitudes. Over two-thirds of the carbon in forest ecosystems is contained in soils and associated peat deposits. In 1990, deforestation in the low latitudes emitted 1.6 � 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year, whereas forest area expansion and growth in mid- and high-latitude forest sequestered 0.7 � 0.2 petagrams of carbon per year, for a net flux to the atmosphere of 0.9 � 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year. Slowing deforestation, combined with an increase in forestation and other management measures to improve forest ecosystem productivity, could conserve or sequester significant quantities of carbon. Future forest carbon cycling trends attributable to losses and regrowth associated with global climate and land-use change are uncertain. Model projections and some results suggest that forests could be carbon sinks or sources in the future.
Marketing as an applied science: lessons from other business disciplines

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate what the marketing field can learn, with regard to the academic/practitioner divide, from other management disciplines that have a range of different relationships with their respective practitioners.Design/methodology/approach – The authors carried out 68 interviews of academics, practitioners and experts/consultants involved in academic/practitioner engagement from the marketing, accountancy, strategic management and organisation studies disciplines.Findings – The most interesting aspects relate to two areas: exclusive engagement (as exemplified in accountancy) versus inclusive engagement (as exemplified in strategic management), and the practices associated with participative research (as exemplified in organisation studies). The appropriate approach to engagement will depend on the nature of the relationship between the academic field and its particular community of practitioners.Research limitations/implications – The research is limited to academics, practit.
Brand-made children in New Zealand: an interactionist perspective on children's use of social media for interacting with consumer brands

2 Attestation of Authorship 11 List of Figures 12 List of Tables 13 Acknowledgements 14 Chapter One 15 1.0 Background to this Research 15 1.1 Locating this research 18 1.2 Research problem 19 1.2.1 Research objectives and research questions 20 1.2. 2 Researcher’s values (reflexivity) 21 1.3 Definitions 27 Table 1.0 Social Media applications, terms and definitions 30 1.4 Research methodology 31 1.4. 1 Analysis 34 1.5 Delimitations 35 Figure 1.0 Chapter outline and main focus – Chapters Two to Six 37 1.6 Outline of this Thesis 38 1.7 Contribution to knowledge 41 1.8 Conclusion 42 Chapter Two 43 2.0 Children becoming consumers 43 2.1 Psychological-cognitive development: explaining how children become consumers 46 2.1.
Probabilistic feature mapping based on trajectory HMMs

This paper proposes a feature mapping algorithm based on the trajectory GMM or trajectory HMM. Although the GMM or HMM-based feature mapping algorithm works effectively, its conversion quality sometimes degrades due to the inappropriate dynamic characteristics caused by the frame-by-frame conversion. While the use of dynamic features can alleviate this problem, it also introduces an inconsistency between training and mapping. The proposed algorithm can solve this inconsistency while keeping the beneﬁts of the use of dynamic features, and offers an entire sequence-level transformation rather than the frame-by-frame conversion. Experimental results in voice conversion show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional one both in objective and subjective tests.
Momentum in the Corporate Bond Market: European Evidence

This paper is the first to analyze momentum patterns in the European corporate bond market. We study a sample of Euro-denominated investment grade (IG) bonds and non-investment grade (NIG) bonds covering the period January 2000 to December 2014. Our analyses reveal that momentum is concentrated among NIG bonds. Furthermore, we show that the time-varying composition of momentum portfolios is driven by the durations and the default risk of corporate bonds subject to recent changes in interest rates and credit spreads. Thus, in context to performance measurement, we apply time-varying risk adjustments instead of unconditional standard models. Doing so, we are able to explain clearly more variability in bond momentum returns. Furthermore, we find that momentum returns are not a compensation for interest rate risk or default risk, even after dynamic risk-adjustments.
Expert Systems With Applications

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal presents a great potential for highly secure biometric systems due to its characteristics of universality, uniqueness, and natural robustness to spooﬁng attacks. EEG signals are measured by sensors placed in various positions of a person’s head (channels). In this work, we address the problem of reducing the number of required sensors while maintaining a comparable performance. We evaluated a binary version of the Flower Pollination Algorithm under different transf er functions to select the best subset of channels that maximizes the accuracy, which is measured by means of the Optimum-Path Forest classiﬁer. The experimental results show the proposed approach can make use of less than a half of the number of sensors while maintaining recognition rates up to 87%, which is crucial towards the effective use of EEG in biometric applications.
An Investigation of Brand Experience on Brand Attachment, Knowledge, and Trust in the Lodging Industry

ABSTRACT With the increase of tourists to many destinations, the local lodging industry sector is facing intense challenges. The reassurance of name-brand accommodation helps travelers feel more at ease in a new environment and guarantee them a positive lodging experience. This study examines how travelers’ experiences with name-brand hotels influence their attachment to, knowledge of, and trust in brand names. Specifically, brand experience was identified as a holistic concept, incorporating sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual aspects. The results show the significant, positive relationships between brand experience and brand-related variables (brand knowledge, brand attachment, and brand trust). This study provides a foundation for future research investigating tourists’ lodging choices and suggests strategies for hotel brand managers.
In vitro inhibition of human erythrocyte hexokinase by various hyperglycemic drugs

Hemolysis is the red blood cell abnormality most often associated with adverse effect of drug therapy. Drug‐induced or drug‐associated hyperglycemia could decrease the activity of hexokinase. The aim of this study was to investigate the inhibitory effects of some commonly used drugs that have hyperglycemic side effect on the human erythrocyte hexokinase enzyme in vitro. Hexokinase was purified from human erythrocytes using sequential chromatography, with a specific activity of 0.96 ± 0.18 U/g hemoglobin, and assayed in the presence of selected drugs that have hyperglycemic side effect. The IC50 were determined from the regression analysis graph. Correlation analysis showed that there was positive correlation between the hyperglycemic side effect of some of the tested drugs and decrease of hexokinase activity. This suggests that, at least in part, these drugs exert their hyperglycemic effect by inhibiting glucose phosphorylation by the hexokinase, which consequently causes the glucose accumulation.
Personalized medicine: the enabling role of nanotechnology.

2016 Personalized medicine has recently taken center stage in cancer research and has led to a number of therapeutic success stories in oncological practice. Cancer is an immensely complex, heterogeneous disease that is caused by the interplay of multiple intrinsic (genetic predisposition) and extrinsic (lifestyle) factors. As cancer progresses, genetic drifts in the cell population typically result in heterogeneity with regard to cell antigenicity, differentiation state, proliferation rate, invasiveness, metastatic potential and response to chemotherapeutics. It has been increasingly recognized that cancer is a heterogeneous, evolving and adaptive malady that requires personalization of the treatment, as to the extent where the right drug is administered to the right patient with the right dose at the right time. Given the system complexity and the vastly limited understanding of the underlying pathophysiology, however, this poses a constitutive challenge to modern medicine (multiparameter optimization problem with many unknowns). In recent years, analysis of somatic mutations in cancer genomes has led to the identification of a compendium of aberrations that confer cancer development and has in turn enabled development of drugs that specifically target hallmarks of neoplasia [1]. A range of small-molecule inhibitors and therapeutic antibodies have been developed to target overexpressed proteins, driving the exceedingly rapid translation of genomic discoveries into clinical end points. Selection of patient subsets (so-called responders) out of bigger patient cohorts based on genomic data has proven to be highly beneficial with regard to drug efficacy and patient outcome and has ushered in a new era, the era of precision medicine. Although perceived with much excitement by the scientific community, personalized therapy heavily relies on initial genomic profiling and the constitutive monitoring of biomarkers which require costefficient analysis of massive amounts of data, and hence few personalized medicines have entered clinical routine [2]. While a few years back the challenges in this field were scientific in nature, with the maturation of the ‘-omics’ sciences, it now seems that the major barriers are increasingly related to effective clinical implementation and socioeconomics [3,4]. Personalized medicine requires a re-thinking and transition away from the ‘one drug to fit all’ idea. Every day, millions of people take medications that will not only not help but in the worst case even harm them, hence causing a significant burden to the healthcare system. Still, these very same medications are the drugs that reach blockbuster status and bring the revenue that is so vital for a filled drug development pipeline and thus are critiPersonalized medicine: the enabling role of nanotechnology
A SOLUTION FOR DEFENDING AGAINST DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK ON WIRELESS LAN

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) have come into more popular, the security over wireless network is becoming a significant issue. Together with its higher and higher popularity, the internet has also shown more and more weakness of wireless protocols that leads to attacks from “professional” or “amateur” hackers. There are many improving efforts the security of wireless network (from IEEE 802.11 standard protocol to 802.11i building on top of the IEEE 802.1X standard). However, these cannot defend WLAN from denial of service (DoS) attacks. In this paper, we focus on analyzing denial of service attacks on 802.11-based protocols, especially de-authentication and disassociation attacks that called “dis’ing” attacks. There are some of approaches proposed to prevent kind of these attacks by authenticating management frames. Based on simple, efficient and lower cost of deployment on currently 802.11 protocol, we propose a solution for defending against “dis’sing” attack using letter-envelop protocol to authenticate management frames.
Sovereign Risk: A Macro-Financial Perspective

We examine some of the macro-financial dimensions of sovereign risk and propose a conceptual framework that captures risks other than just the default risk. Morphed under a multi-dimensional notion of sovereign risk, we argue that the existing empirical methodologies to measure sovereign risk cover only partial aspects of sovereign risk and fail to capture its macro-financial dimensions. We highlight a menu of tools that could be used to tackle the broader notion of sovereign risk, and suggest that authorities should actively use them to manage the macro financial dimensions of sovereign risk and before those risks feed into the real economy.