bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Radical Cystectomy in the Treatment of Invasive Bladder Cancer: Long-Term Results in 1,054 Patients
Authors: Stein John P. , Lieskovsky Gary , Cote Richard , Groshen Susan , Feng An-Chen , Boyd Stuart , Skinner Eila , Bochner Bernard , Thangathurai Duriayai , Mikhail Maged , Raghavan Derek , Skinner DonaldG. 
Published: July 2023

PURPOSE: To evaluate our long-term experience with patients treated uniformly with radical cystectomy and pelvic lymph node dissection for invasive bladder cancer and to describe the association of the primary bladder tumor stage and regional lymph node status with clinical outcomes. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All patients undergoing radical cystectomy with bilateral pelvic iliac lymphadenectomy, with the intent to cure, for transitional-cell carcinoma of the bladder between July 1971 and December 1997, with or without adjuvant radiation or chemotherapy, were evaluated. The clinical course, pathologic characteristics, and long-term clinical outcomes were evaluated in this group of patients. RESULTS: A total of 1,054 patients (843 men [80%] and 211 women) with a median age of 66 years (range, 22 to 93 years) were uniformly treated. Median follow-up was 10.2 years (range, 0 to 28 years). There were 27 (2.5%) perioperative deaths, with a total of 292 (28%) early complications. Overall recurrence-free survival at 5 and 10 years for the entire cohort was 68% and 66%, respectively. The 5- and 10-year recurrence-free survival for patients with organ-confined, lymph node–negative tumors was 92% and 86% for P0 disease, 91% and 89% for Pis, 79% and 74% for Pa, and 83% and 78% for P1 tumors, respectively. Patients with muscle invasive (P2 and P3a), lymph node–negative tumors had 89% and 87% and 78% and 76% 5- and 10-year recurrence-free survival, respectively. Patients with nonorgan-confined (P3b, P4), lymph node–negative tumors demonstrated a significantly higher probability of recurrence compared with those with organ-confined bladder cancers ( P < .001). The 5- and 10-year recurrence-free survival for P3b tumors was 62% and 61%, and for P4 tumors was 50% and 45% , respectively. A total of 246 patients (24%) had lymph node tumor involvement. The 5- and 10-year recurrence-free survival for these patients was 35%, and 34%, respectively, which was significantly lower than for patients without lymph node involvement ( P < .001). Patients could also be stratified by the number of lymph nodes involved and by the extent of the primary bladder tumor (p stage). Patients with fewer than five positive lymph nodes, and whose p stage was organ-confined had significantly improved survival rates. Bladder cancer recurred in 311 patients (30%) . The median time to recurrence among those patients in whom the cancer recurred was 12 months (range, 0.04 to 11.1 years). In 234 patients (22%) there was a distant recurrence, and in 77 patients (7%) there was a local (pelvic) recurrence. CONCLUSION: These data from a large group of patients support the aggressive surgical management of invasive bladder cancer. Excellent long-term survival can be achieved with a low incidence of pelvic recurrence.
Transposable elements in normal and malignant hematopoiesis
Authors: Lemerle Eline , Trompouki Eirini 
Published: July 2023

ABSTRACT
Transposable elements (TEs) are dispersed repetitive DNA sequences that can move within a genome. Even though hundreds of years of evolution have led to the accumulation of mutations that render most TEs unable to transpose, they still exert multiple important functions. They play a role in hematopoiesis, especially during periods of high cellular plasticity, such as development, regeneration and aging. This is because TEs can populate functional elements, such as enhancers. Furthermore, TE RNA can be sensed by innate immune sensors that play a role in inflammation and inflammaging. TEs also play an important role in different aspects of leukemia and lymphoma, leading to either beneficial or detrimental outcomes. Further studies into the function of TEs in healthy or diseased hematopoietic systems are necessary to manipulate them for therapeutic benefit.
PASS: A scoring system to evaluate persistent kidney injury in critically ill ICU adult patients
Authors: Prabhu Dattatray , Prabhu Sonali Dattatray , Mahabala Chakrapani , Prabhu Mayoor V 
Published: July 2023

Background: We evaluated if the course of recovery from sepsis-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) can be predicted using variables collected at admission. Methods: A total of 63 patients admitted for sepsis-induced AKI in our Mangalore ICU were evaluated and baseline demographic and clinical/laboratory parameters, including serum creatinine (SCr), base excess (BE), Plethysmographic Variability Index (PVI), Caval Index, R wave variability index (RVI), mean arterial pressure (MAP) and renal resistivity index (RI) using renal doppler and need for inotropes were assessed on admission. Patients were managed as per standard protocol. After six hours of fluid resuscitation, patients were classified as volume responders or non-responders. Re-assessment was done at 24 hours and 72 hours after admission. Primary outcome was persistent AKI after 72 hours. Secondary outcome was initiation of dialysis or death within 15 days of admission. Results: A total of 34 subjects recovered from AKI, of whom 32 patients were volume responders and 31 were non-responders. Response to fluid, MAP at admission and six hours, BE at admission, inotrope requirement, and PVI at admission did not correlate with recovery. Multiple logistic regression showed that SCr < 2.36 mg%, RVI > 14.45 and RI < 0.8 on admission correlated with recovery and they were evaluated further to model AKI recovery and develop PASS. PASS score = (SCr points × 5.4) + (RVI points × 4.0) + (RI points × 6.2). One point each was allotted if SCr was < 2.36, RVI was > 14.45 and RI was <0.8, and 0 otherwise. A score > 7.8 predicted recovery with a sensitivity of 79.4%, specificity of 72.4%, PPV 81.8%, NPV 76.7% and AuROC of 0.85. Conclusions: The PASS score can be used to identify salvageable cases of sepsis-AKI, guiding fluid resuscitation and aiding early referral from rural to tertiary care centers for better management.
How Learning Strategies and Academic Parameters Predict Medical Student Success.
Authors: O'Connell Michael T. , Badia Rohit R. , Tellez Juan C. , Cook Grayden S. , Sachs Arlene 
Published: July 2023

Background Student scores on the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI), an assessment of academic skills, have been shown in previous studies to be significantly different between U.S. medical students based on their scores in various examinations during the pre-clerkship curriculum. This study aimed to evaluate LASSI and other early academic performance markers for predicting the likelihood of shelf exam underperformance in third-year medical students. Methods A retrospective analysis of student-specific demographic information and medical school exam performance from 220 medical students from the University of Texas Southwestern was performed. Students were then categorized based on underperformance (score in <25th percentile) on each NBME shelf exam and statistical analysis was performed to identify predictors of shelf underperformance. Results For predicting Surgery shelf underperformance, pre-clerkship final exam average (PCA), STEP 1, and LASSI Time Management (TMT) were statistically significant in univariate analysis. Internal Medicine: PCA, STEP 1, LASSI Attitude (ATT), Test Strategies (TST), and TMT. Pediatrics: PCA and STEP 1 quartile. Obstetrics-Gynecology: PCA, STEP 1, and LASSI Anxiety (ANX), with ANX an independent predictor on multivariate analysis. Neurology: PCA, STEP 1, LASSI ANX, Information Processing (INP), TST, and average LASSI, with PCA, LASSI Concentration (CON), TMT, and ANX independent predictors on multivariate analysis. Family Medicine: PCA, STEP 1, LASSI ANX, TST, and Using Academic Resources (UAR), with PCA an independent predictor on multivariate analysis. Psychiatry: only STEP 1 was significant. Conclusion In contrast to previous studies, no single LASSI scale was significantly associated with underperformance on all 7 NBME shelf exams. Univariate analysis identified several LASSI scales that correlated with NBME underperformance, but the drastic inter-clerkship heterogeneity makes use of these scales in early academic intervention impractical. Conversely, PCA was found to be strongly associated with shelf exam underperformance.
The Cost of Clearing Fragmentation
Authors: Benos Evangelos , Huang Wenqian , Menkveld Albert , Vasios Michalis 
Published: July 2023

Fragmenting clearing across multiple central counterparties (CCPs) is costly because global dealers cannot net positions across CCPs. They have to collateralize both the short position in one CCP and an offsetting long position in another CCP. This, coupled with a structural net order imbalance across CCPs, can cause prices to persistently differ across them (“the CCP basis”). Tests based on unique CCP data for interest-rate derivatives (IRDs) yield broad empirical support for this intuition and suggest that the clearing friction costs sellers clearing in LCH, the largest European CCP for IRDs, $80 million daily. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). A. Menkveld gratefully acknowledges the support of NWO Vici grant. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4867 .
Managing Customer Churn via Service Mode Control
Authors: Kanoria Yash , Lobel Ilan , Lu Jiaqi 
Published: July 2023

We introduce a novel stochastic control model for the problem of a service firm interacting over time with one of its customers who probabilistically churns depending on the customer’s satisfaction. The firm has two service modes available, and they determine the drift and volatility of the Brownian reward process. The firm’s objective is to maximize the rewards generated over the customer’s lifetime. Meanwhile, the customer might churn probabilistically if the customer’s satisfaction, modeled as an Orstein–Uhlenbeck process controlled by the firm’s service mode, is below a certain threshold. We build upon Markov processes with spatial delay to solve this problem, and we explicitly characterize the firm’s optimal policy, which is either myopic or a sandwich policy. A sandwich policy is one in which the firm deploys the service mode with inferior reward rate when the customer satisfaction level is in a specific interval near the satisfaction threshold and uses the myopically optimal service mode for all other satisfaction levels. Specifically, we find that the firm should use the safe service mode when the customer is marginally satisfied and the risky service mode when the customer is marginally unsatisfied. We find numerically that the customer lifetime value under the optimal policy is large relative to that under the myopic policy. Our results are robust to a variety of alternative model specifications. Funding: J. Lu gratefully acknowledges financial support from Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [Project 72192805]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2021.0179 .
Probabilistic Bounds on the k-Traveling Salesman Problem and the Traveling Repairman Problem
Authors: Blanchard Moïse , Jacquillat Alexandre , Jaillet Patrick 
Published: July 2023

The [Formula: see text]traveling salesman problem (k-TSP) seeks a tour of minimal length that visits a subset of [Formula: see text] points. The traveling repairman problem (TRP) seeks a complete tour with minimal latency. This paper provides constant-factor probabilistic approximations of both problems. We first show that the optimal length of the k-TSP path grows at a rate of [Formula: see text]. The proof provides a constant-factor approximation scheme, which solves a TSP in a high-concentration zone, leveraging large deviations of local concentrations. Then, we show that the optimal TRP latency grows at a rate of [Formula: see text]. This result extends the classic Beardwood–Halton–Hammersley theorem to the TRP. Again, the proof provides a constant-factor approximation scheme, which visits zones by decreasing order of probability density. We discuss practical implications of this result in the design of transportation and logistics systems. Finally, we propose dedicated notions of fairness—randomized population-based fairness for the k-TSP and geographic fairness for the TRP—and give algorithms to balance efficiency and fairness. Funding: This work was partly supported by [Grant ONR N00014-18-1-2122] and the Singapore National Research Foundation through the Singapore–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alliance for Research and Technology Centre for Future Urban Mobility. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2021.0286 .
An Iterated Local Search Metaheuristic for the Capacitated Demand-Driven Timetabling Problem
Authors: Schettini Tommaso , Gendreau Michel , Jabali Ola , Malucelli Federico 
Published: July 2023

In many major cities, metro lines constitute the backbone of urban public transport, providing an efficient and greener alternative to private mobility. An important feature that distinguishes metro lines from other public transport means, such as buses, is that metros are typically tightly resource constrained. The trains operating on a particular line are often specifically fitted for that line, making any capacity expansion extremely costly and time-consuming. Therefore, researchers and operators alike are seeking ways to make better use of existing resources. One possible way of doing so is by adapting timetables to forecasted demand while accounting for limited vehicle capacities. Thus, we consider a demand-driven nonperiodic timetabling problem for a two-directional metro line that minimizes the total passenger waiting time through the efficient scheduling of the available trains. Considering that passengers board trains using a well-mixed policy, we explicitly account for train capacities on a moment-to-moment basis. Last, we consider that trains are allowed to short turn. In this respect, we assume that trains must pass by a given station before short turning and are only allowed to idle after having short turned. We devise a polynomial time algorithm for assessing the total passenger waiting time generated by a given timetable and an effective lower bound that is evaluated in linear time. These are used in a variable neighborhood search algorithm, which is embedded in an iterated local search metaheuristic. Classical local search-based neighborhoods are not effective for our problem because they do not explicitly handle the vehicle scheduling decisions. To handle this challenge, we proposed three tailored neighborhoods. We validate our heuristic on the uncapacitated version of the problem. Considering a benchmark of 48 artificial instances with up to 20 stations, our heuristic achieved an average gap of 0.67% and found eight new best solutions. We also validated our heuristic on three sets of instances based on realistic lines from Milan, Madrid, and Beijing. Furthermore, we demonstrate the operational advantages of our optimized timetables in the capacitated version of the problem by comparing them with regular timetables and with exact solutions obtained for the uncapacitated case. Furthermore, we conduct a sensitivity analysis with respect to the capacity of the trains and investigate the impact of a priority boarding policy. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2022.0271 .
Evaluation of Low-Cost UV-Vis Spectroscopy for Measuring Nitrate Using Synthetic Water Samples
Authors: Carter Joe Barrett , Sarkees Ashley , Singh A. , Bean Eban 
Published: July 2023

Highlights

A novel low-cost, modular spectroscopy system is compared to a standard system using synthetic samples, principal component analysis, and partial least squares regression.

The information contained in the data produced by the two systems is similar according to principal component analysis.

The low-cost system was able to accurately predict nitrate concentrations in concentrated and diluted samples using partial least squares regression.

The methodology could be applied to water quality analysis in agriculture and water resources management.

Abstract. Water quality data collection is an essential component of water systems management. For instance, the effective management of nutrients in hydroponic systems is necessary for maximizing yields efficiently and sustainably. Additionally, nutrients in natural and engineered waterbodies must be monitored to ensure they are meeting the required chemical characteristics for their ecological and social functions. However, conventional water quality data collection methods place limitations on water systems management due to their high resource requirements. Nitrate (NO3) is a major nutrient in ecological and agricultural systems, which can be reliably measured with ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, a highly established technique for water quality analysis. The goal of this research was to evaluate a novel, low-cost, modular UV-Vis spectroscopy setup (GatorSpec) for the measurement of NO3 concentration in chemically complex solutions. UV-Vis absorbance of synthetic samples was measured using the GatorSpec and a commonly used bench-top laboratory spectroscopy system, the NanoDrop2000C. These data were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) to compare the spectral data produced by each system and partial least squares (PLS) regression to compare their ability to predict NO3 concentration. Results showed that data from both measurement systems were similar, indicating that the low-cost GatorSpec provided similar measurement accuracy to that of the laboratory reference system, the NanoDrop2000C. The PLS results revealed that for the diluted samples, the models derived from both systems were very good at predicting NO3 concentration. With these outcomes, it can be concluded that the GatorSpec is effective at measuring NO3 concentration in complex solutions and is comparable in performance to that of the NanoDrop2000C. In the future, this low-cost setup could be used to manage NO3 concentrations more efficiently in various applications such as hydroponic plant production, environmental monitoring, and stormwater treatment, which, in turn, could reduce the economic and environmental costs of these systems. Keywords: Low-cost, Synthetic samples, Ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy, Water quality.
Identifying Optimal Locations for Hardwood CLT Plants in Tennessee: Application of a Spatially Explicit Framework
Authors: Adhikari Ram K. , Poudyal Neelam C. , Brandeis Consuelo , Nepal Prakash 
Published: July 2023

Abstract
The prospect of using mass timber products, such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), for building material has increased in recent years because of the advantage of these products over their substitutes in terms of structural rigidity, cost efficiency, and climate benefits. However, the American National Standard developed for CLT currently applies to softwood only. With the expected increase in the market for CLT, the supply chain needs to address the projected rise in demand for hardwood as well. Promoting the production of hardwood mass timber like CLT requires studying the feasibility of quality hardwood lumber supply and identifying the optimal locations for investing capital in CLT manufacturing plants. By presenting a case from Tennessee, this study provides a spatially explicit framework to use a variety of factors such as transportation networks, proximity to sawmills, sawmill capacity, and roundwood supply to identify optimal CLT plant locations. Specifically, fuzzy multicriteria analysis was used to identify potential locations, which provided inputs for a location-allocation model to identify optimal locations for CLT plants. Among the several potential locations, three optimal locations suitable for CLT plants were identified with 12,504 thousand cubic feet (MCF) annual production potential of CLT panels in Tennessee. Although increasing transportation distance for lumber procurement would increase CLT production capacity, it would also result in increased lumber supply costs. Potential investors and regional planners interested in using hardwood forest products can benefit from these findings to locate suitable sites for new investment.
The intonation of Spanish spoken in Bucaramanga (Colombia)
Authors: Roberto Yeimy J. 
Published: July 2023

This paper presents the characteristics of the intonation of Spanish spoken in Bucaramanga, Colombia, a variety considered as “strong and rude”. Spontaneous, semi-spontaneous and read utterances from four participants were analysed acoustically. After stylisation with MOMEL, the data was tagged according to the Sp_ToBI system, within the Autosegmental-Metrical model. The declarative, interrogative, and exhortative contours were compared with the intonational inventories available for Spanish. The results confirm prior dialectal boundaries based on lexical data and supports the dichotomy between coastal and mountain varieties in the dialects of Spanish spoken in Colombia.
Plasmon-enhanced fluorescence of gold nanoparticle/graphene quantum dots for detection of Cr3+ ions
Authors: Chen You-Long , Hu Yi-Hua , Yang Xing , Gu You-Lin , Wang Xin-Yu , Xia Yu-Hao , Zhang Xin-Yuan , Zhang Yu-Shuang 
Published: July 2023

Graphene quantum dots (GQDs), fascinating semiconductors with stable photoluminescence (PL), have important potential applications in the fields of biology, medicine, and new semiconductor devices. However, it is still challenging to overcome the weak PL intensity. Here, we report a strategy for selective resonance enhancement of GQD fluorescence using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as plasmas. Interestingly, the addition of low concentration AuNP makes AuNP/GQDs exhibit significant fluorescence enhancement of 2.67 times in the visible range. The addition of high concentration AuNP leads to the formation of an excitation peak at 421 nm and selectively enhances certain radiation modes. We concluded that the main reason for the selective enhancement of PL intensity in high concentration AuNP is the transfer of generous hot electrons at high energy states from AuNP to GQD and relaxation to the ground state. The electron resonance of low concentration AuNP transfers to GQD and relaxes to lower energy levels, exhibiting an overall enhancement of PL intensity. We apply it for detection of the heavy metal ion Cr3+, and verify that it has a correlation coefficient of 97.36%. We believe AuNP/GQDs can be considered excellent candidates for heavy metal detection and high fluorescence bio-imaging.