bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Retrospective analysis of treatment-naive Slovenian patients with metastatic melanoma treated with pembrolizumab – real-world experience
Authors: Hribernik Nezka , Boc Marko , Ocvirk Janja , Knez-Arbeiter Jasna , Mesti Tanja , Ignjatovic Marija , Rebersek Martina 
Published: January 2020

Abstract

Background
Based on recent data from clinical trials, the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab prolongs survival and has a good toxicity profile in patients with advanced or metastatic melanoma. However, the question remains whether these results are transmitted into daily clinical practice. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and toxicity of pembrolizumab in treatment-naive patients with metastatic melanoma in everyday clinical practice in Slovenia and compare it to the results from clinical trials.

Patients and methods
This observational retrospective cohort study included 138 consecutive metastatic treatment-naive melanoma patients treated with pembrolizumab at the Institute of Oncology Ljubljana in Slovenia, from January 2016 to December 2018. Patient and treatment characteristics were retrospectively collected from hospital data base. Statistical data was obtained using the SPSS software version 22. Survival rate was calculated with the Kaplan-Meier method. Observation period took place between January 2016 and the end of June 2019.

Results
The estimated median overall survival (OS) was 25.1 months (95% CI, 14.6–35.6) and the median progression-free survival (PFS) was 10.7 months (95% CI, 5.9–15.4). Among all patients, 29 (21.0%) achieved complete response, 31 (22.5%) partial response and 23 (16.7%) reached stable disease. The number of organs with metastatic involvement and the level of baseline lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) concentration had significant influence on survival rates. Immune-related adverse events (irAE) were reported in 88 (63%) patients, while grade 3–4 irAE occurred in 12 (8.7%). Due to toxicity, 16 (11.6%) patients discontinued the treatment.

Conclusions
Our real-world data from single centre retrospective analysis of treatment-naive metastatic melanoma patients treated with pembrolizumab showed inferior median OS and similar median PFS, compared to the results from clinical trials. However, patients with normal serum levels of LDH and a small number of organs with metastatic involvement had comparable survival outcomes. Toxicity rates of pembrolizumab were quite similar. These results further support the use of pembrolizumab for metastatic treatment-naive melanoma patients.
East Syriac Theological Instruction and Anti-Chalcedonian Identity in Nisibis in Late Antiquity
Authors: Popa Cătălin-Ștefan 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The School of Nisibis was prominent within the East Syriac tradition. Famous among Eastern Christian alma maters, in this learning center students were educated to become clerics and to propagate a theological identity based upon Theodore of Mopsuestia’s legacy, as well as an Anti-Chalcedonian Christology. Focused on different sources, this essay will explore some perceptions against Chalcedon from East Syriac personalities linked to Nisibis from Late Antiquity to the Middle Age. The question lying at the heart of this essay is the following: how influential was the School of Nisibis for the patristic dissemination of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s theological position, and implicitly for shaping and defining a dogmatic identity against Chalcedon’s dogma and terminology?
Efficacy of 4-hour rescue therapeutic plasma exchange in severe septic shock patients
Authors: Ahmed Rabab Mahmoud , Soliman Amin R. , Yousry Ahmad , Marzouk Khaled , Faris Farouk 
Published: January 2020

Abstract

Background.Early intervention for septic shock is crucial to reduce mortality and improve outcome. There is still a great debate over the exact time of therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) administration in septic shock patients. This study aims to investigate the effect of early initiation (within 4 hours) of TPE in severe septic shock on hemodynamics & outcome.

Methods. We conducted a prospective, before-after case series study on 16 septic shock patients requiring high doses of vasopressors admitted in two ICUs from Cairo, Egypt. All of our patients received TPE within 4 hours of ICU admission. The fresh frozen plasma exchange volume = 1.5 × plasma volume.

Results. In the 16 patients included in the study, mean arterial pressure was significantly improved after the initial TPE (p < 0.002) and norepinephrine dose which significantly reduced post TPE (p < 0.001). In addition, norepinephrine dose to mean arterial pressure significantly improved (p < 0.001). There was reduction of a net 6 hours fluid balances following the first TPE were observed in all the patients (p < 0.03) by a mean of 757 ml. Systemic vascular resistance index was markedly improved post-TPE along with statistically improved cardiac index (p < 0.01). Stroke volume variance was also significantly decreased after the TPE sessions (p < 0.01). C-reactive protein significantly improved after TPE (P < 0.01).

Conclusion. Early initiation of TPE in severe septic shock patients might improve hemodynamic measures.
School on the screen: promises and deviations of the new educational technologies
Authors: Wunenburger Jean-Jacques 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The school can therefore accommodate television screens and computers but provided they are confined to specific practices, limited, criticized, to allow time and space for a transmission of knowledge, know-how and skills which require a group, microcosm of humanity, and an authority, carrying values and ends. The screen must lose all its fantastic power, its omnipresence, to remain a complementary and partial tool in a school world, a space and a time proper, intended to instruct and educate the pupil or the student, to lead him towards a citizenship that is not confused with a consumer or with a player on screens.
Ion D. Sîrbu, a classic of the Romanian literature
Authors: Mariș Ioan 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The essay dedicated to I. D. Sîrbu comes in the context of celebrating 100 years since the birth of the great novelist, playwriter and essayist. I insisted at the beginning of the essay on his relationship with Lucian Blaga, professor of philosophy during the time of the refuge of the University “Regele Ferdinand I” from Cluj to Sibiu (1940-1944), focusing on the catalytic influence of the professor in the formation process of the young writers. Lucian Blaga was in favour of a bright “paideic model” like Socrate’s maieutics.
A first monograph synthesis on Pavel Chihaia
Authors: Hasmațuchi Gabriel 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Despite of some whiffs of degradation that we breathe every day, we rejoice, sometimes feeling the scent of the air filled with cultural facts that deserve our consideration. Such success belongs to the writer and Professor Ovidiu Pecican, who wrote a paper on a genuine scholar Pavel Chihaia (1922-2019), an intellectual noteworthy not only for his research, but also an author of a praiseworthy moral character.
The Cioran case – a heideggerian case?
Authors: Buzdugan Adrian 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
If Cioran’s articles could be easily examined in terms of their political message, his aforisms, short texts, or essays have nothing to justify their analysis from the perspective of their “political” content. Cioran’s thoughts, bordering on the poetic, are not comparable to Heidegger’s writings in which, as some try to convince us, the totalitarian ideology has deeply penetrated the very core of the ontology he developed. Even if scholars have identified features of national-socialism in Heidegger’s works, it is still difficult to blame him for his ideas since he has quickly and lucidly reconsidered his approach to the Nazi ideology. Cioran’s writings have nothing in common with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s books, For My Legionaries or The Nest Leader’s Manual. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s hatred for Judeo-Communism has no correspondent in Emil Cioran’s writings.
Gabriel Hasmațuchi, in front of the palette of cultural alternatives
Authors: Radu Valentin 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The „obsession” of Gabriel Hasmațuchi in his book Cultural alternatives (Techno Media, Sibiu, 20181) is the destiny of Romanian culture. The traditional conflict between archaic and modern in Romanian culture and society is being studied in some of its contemporaneous manifestations. The author believes that both the traditionalists and the modernists of this Romanian debate have contributed constructively over the years.
Lucian Blaga and Constantin Noica’s beginnings under the sign of elective approaches
Authors: Sîrghie Anca 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Since he was a high school student in Bucharest, Constantin Noica was fascinated by Lucian Blaga’s philosophical, poetical, and dramaturgical evolution. Between the Two World Wars in Romania only few people managed to understand the expressionist vision in Lucian Blaga’s theater. More notable is the precise intuition with which the young Constantin Noica noticed the extraordinary value of Master Manole, which was played both in Romania and in Switzerland. Later on, this was considered to be Lucian Blaga’s most outstanding dramatic play. In the decades to come, Professor and Academician Lucian Blaga kept Constantin Noica in a high esteem.
Alexandru Macedonski: poetic irony of death
Authors: Bușe Ionel 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Alexandru Macedonski, like most symbolist poets, has a „special relationship” with death. Anchored in the spirit of Western literature, he knew, without a doubt, the great poems dedicated to death, by Byron, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, etc. Not coincidentally, given the relationships, more or less blunt with the Junimea members, marked by polemics, exchange of epigrams, Caragiale called him, Macabronski. The theme of death, with minor exceptions, is, however, in Macedonski a philosophical obsession transfigured into a vision of the Whole, with its full and emptiness.
Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva: Autobiography, Exile, Violence
Authors: Grigore Rodica 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Considered “the great witch of Brazilian literature”, acclaimed as the best woman-writer of Jewish origin and the perfect example of an exquisite reconfiguration of European modernist ideas, Clarice Lispector is a fascinating author. This is obvious since her first novel Perto do coração selvagem (Near to the Wild Heart, 1943), a book that was awarded several literary prizes in Brazil, even if afterwards the text would be often ignored within the critical studies dedicated to Lispector. Compared to Borges and Kafka and even to the narrative strategies used by Virginia Woolf (apparently influenced by James Joyce’s stream of consciousness, even if Lispector underlined that she had not read Joyce’s creation much later) her book entitled Agua viva (1973) represents a perfect example of a very special kind of aesthetic experiment, underlying the importance of art (painting or literature) in its protagonist’s life. Without being precisely an autobiography, this book is obviously influenced by the author’s life and work, also expressing Lispector’s ideas on two important issues of 20th century Latin American literature: exile and violence.
Amorality, Immorality and Individualism in Hanif Kureishi’s Intimacy
Authors: Ciocoi-Pop Ana-Blanca 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Hanif Kureishi, an acclaimed contemporary British writer of Pakistani origin, is known to the Romanian reading public primarily through the translations (under the aegis of the Humanitas publishing house) of his novels Intimacy, The Buddha of Suburbia, The Nothing, Gabriel’s Gift and Something to Tell You. One of the foremost representatives of British postcolonial literature, Kureishi masterfully, and at times shockingly, explores the postmodern urban world of human desolation, loneliness and alienation, with the surgical precision and mercilessness of a “terrorist”, as he himself describes the writer and his artistic mission in an interview. Intimacy, in a classic Proustian or Joycean manner, offers a glimpse into twenty-four hours in the life of a middle-aged Londoner, Jay, who fed up with the monotony and routine of his marriage, decides to leave his wife and children in order to pursue a passionate sexual relationship with a younger lover. The novel thematizes such concerns as the clash between traditional values and (post)modern society, between individualism / narcissism and moral duty, morality versus amorality / immorality, and the inevitable alienation of the individual who experiences these conflicts. The present paper aims at offering a reading of Kureishi’s text starting from the writer’s claim that “I’ve never had any desire to be good. (…) I don’t like goodness particularly. I like passion.” From the vantage point of this confession we shall proceed to analyze Intimacy not as a moral handbook, but as the eternal plight of the human soul, caught between the painfulness of duty and the irresistible call of passion.
The Online Image of the Romanian Gendarmerie after the Diaspora Protest on August 10, 2018: Crisis Communication Strategies
Authors: Mureșan Raluca , Andreea Apriotesei 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
In this study we conducted a research on the Facebook page of the Romanian Gendarmerie, to understand the magnitude of the effects of the crisis this institution is facing after the Diaspora Protest ended in violence. We monitored the posts from August 10 to December 31, 2018 and analyzed the most relevant 50 comments from each post, in order to determine their character: positive, negative or neutral. In conducting this study, we started from the hypothesis that this event has affected the image of the Romanian Gendarmerie in the long time, and the crisis communication strategies used by the representatives of this institution have made a significant contribution to postponing the image restoration.
Conventional Theory’s Relevance: Evidence from Japan
Authors: Sorin Burnete 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The formidable surge in the volume of international trade after 1960 stimulated surveys designed to ascertain to what degree the commercial flows among nations reflected the structure of their economies, in other words, how tight was the correlation between international exchanges and the specific attributes of participating nations. In fact, scholars were keen to test the relevance of the conventional Heckscher-Ohlin theory, that is, to what extent did nations’ exports reflect their endowment with factors of production, more specifically, whether their exports used their abundant factors intensively. I try to show that, although most of the tests reached their purpose in that they confirmed the conventional theory’s predictions, in certain cases such as Japan, whose economy is arguably idiosyncratic, factor specificity is more relevant than factor intensity in explaining, not only the country’s international specialization but also the premises of its uncanny 20th century ascendance to the top of the world economy.
A Proposal for an Automatic Stabilizer in Social Justice
Authors: Emil Dinga , Cristina Tănăsescu , Gabriela-Mariana Ionescu 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Generally, social justice has two sides which are intercorrelated and inter-dependend: a) constitutive social justice (for example, the so called commutative social justice); b) regulative social justice (for example, the so called distributive social justice). The paper approaches the regulative social justice, more exactly, an automatic mechanism to get it. To this end, an automatic stabilizer to provide distributive social justice, according to the Rawlsian principle of difference. Such an automatic stabilizer is grounded on the wealth, more precise, on the share of the wealth which is not invested in order to benefit to the more disadvantaged class of the society. Paper does not test empirically the proposal, such a propose remaining for next intervention in this publication.
Knowledge Retention within Small and Mediumsized Enterprises
Authors: Ramona Todericiu , Alexandra Boanta 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
In the constantly changing nowadays economy, all organizations have to be prepared to embrace all technological innovation and become good competitors in the market place all over the world. This need puts a special emphasize on the ability of a company to evolve through employee ability to grow professional. The retention of good, qualified employee is a complex process, because of the importance of the knowledge for the financial efficiency of a company. This article aims is to examine knowledge retention as an advantage of companies in this era of information, an era in which organizations view their employees as the main sources of competitive edge, acknowledging, at the same time, the challenge of reaching the knowledge and sharing it with all the stakeholders.
Measuring Firm and Sector Efficiency in Pakistan: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis
Authors: Saher Touqeer , Malik Muhammad Asad Saleem , Ullah Saif , Ullah Atta 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
This study aims to determine the firm and sector efficiency using data envelopment analysis for 121 listed firms, 3 from 2004 to 2016. Based on the efficiency score of 1 and 0, DEA analysis results indicate that 10% firm was highly efficient in the whole sample, 80% are semi-efficient in selected sectors and 10% slightly inefficient. Thus, we can conclude that all firms are not equally efficient. Also, the study used a Logit/ Probit Regression model, and results indicate that the brand value and type of sector has a positive impact on firm efficiency. The study concludes that Brand value increases firm efficiency, so managers should put more focus on building firm brand value.
Chernozem (czarnoziem) – soil of the year 2019 in Poland. Origin, classification and use of chernozems in Poland
Authors: Kabała Cezary 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The Soil Science Society of Poland has elected chernozem to be the Soil of the Year 2019. Although chernozems cover less than 2% of Poland, they have high importance for agriculture due to their productivity and play a specific scientific role for understanding of soil development and functioning in an environment. Chernozems are also crucial for the reconstruction of Neolithic agriculture development and human impacts on soil and landscape. This introductory paper presents (a) a specific definition of chernozem in Poland, connected with a separate distinction of black earths and colluvial chernozemic soils; (b) a review of the present and former classification schemes for chernozems in Poland and their correlation with international soil classification systems (WRB and Soil Taxonomy); (c) the spatial distribution of chernozems in Poland, their agricultural evaluation and threats for chernozems’ quality and future existence related to intense land use.
Chernozems of Ukraine: past, present and future perspectives
Authors: Pozniak Stepan 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The aim of the paper was to show the significance of chernozems for the Ukrainian economy, science and culture. The spatial distribution as well as variation of features of chernozems in Ukraine (including the uniqueness of these soils) was described. Also a brief history of investigation of Ukrainian chernozems was outlined. Particular emphasis was placed on the problems of degradation and protection of chernozems.
Soil cover patterns in the forest-steppe and steppe zones of the East European Plain
Authors: Khitrov Nikolay , Smirnova Maria , Lozbenev Nikolai , Levchenko Ekaterina , Gribov Vasiliy , Kozlov Daniil , Rukhovich Dmitriy , Kalinina Natalia , Koroleva Polina 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
The soil cover of the forest-steppe and steppe zones of the East European Plain is characterized by diverse soil combinations revealed during large-scale and detailed soil mapping against the background of a traditional zonal sequence of dominant automorphic soils alternating from the north to the south and clearly displayed on small-scale soil maps. The composition, configuration and functioning of particular soil cover patterns are determined by the soil forming factors acting within a given area. The elementary soil areas (detailed scale) and elementary soil cover patterns maps (large scale) of the Central Russian, Kalach, and Volga Uplands are created by both traditional and digital soil mapping methods. Low-contrasting soil combinations with the background Haplic Chernozems (Loamic or Clayic, Pachic) alternating with zooturbated Haplic Chernozems (Loamic or Clayic, Pachic) on convex elements of the microtopography and Luvic Chernozems (Loamic or Clayic, Pachic) on concave elements of the microtopography prevails under conditions of thick clay loamy parent materials and free drainage. Under conditions of shallow embedding by low-permeable clayey sediments, the soil cover includes Chernozems or Chernic Phaeozems with stagnic features in some part of the soil profile or even Mollic Stagnosols. The presence of shrink-swell clays of different ages leads to the formation of Bathyvertic Chernozems, Vertic Chernozems, Vertic Chernic Phaeozems and/or Pellic Vertisols. The presence of soluble salts in the parent material leads to the development of solonetzic soil complexes consisting of Protosodic or Sodic Chernozems and different types of Solonetzes.
Morphological diversity of chernozemic soils in south-western Poland
Authors: Łabaz Beata , Kabała Cezary , Dudek Michał , Waroszewski Jarosław 
Published: January 2020

Abstract
Diverse chernozemic soils featured by thick mollic horizon, rich in humus, dark-coloured, structural, and saturated with base cations are relatively common in the loess-belt of SW Poland. It is postulated, that most of these soils may have similar initial (chernozemic) history of thick humus horizon, related to climate conditions and vegetation in the Late Pleistocene and the Neolithic periods. However, these soils exist on various bedrocks and under different moisture conditions that led to the development accompanying features and variable classification of soils, both in Polish and international soil classifications. The aim of the paper is to presents the most important variants of loess-derived chernozemic soils of SW Poland, in relation to local conditions, which influenced soil transformation and present spatial diversification. ‘Typical’ chernozems (WRB: Calcic Chernozems), which have a mollic horizon and secondary carbonates, but are free of strong redoximorphic features, are rather uncommon in the region. Whereas, the black earths (WRB: Gleyic/Stagnic Chernozems/Phaeozems), featured by the presence of mollic horizon and strong gleyic or stagnic properties in the middle and bottom parts of the profiles, are predominant loess-derived chernozemic soils in SW Poland. Their most specific forms, developed on the clayey bedrock, are black earths with a vertic horizon (WRB: Vertic Stagnic Phaeozems). The strongly leached chernozemic soils developed over permeable subsoils, lacking carbonates and free of (strongly developed) stagnic/gleyic properties are called grey soils, often featured by the presence of subsurface diagnostic horizons cambic or luvic (WRB: Cambic/Luvic Phaeozems).