Marketing authorization procedures for advanced cancer drugs: exploring the views of patients, oncologists, healthcare decision makers and citizens in France

International audienceBackground. The past decades have seen advances in cancer treatments in terms of toxicity and side effects but progress in the treatment of advanced cancer has been modest. New drugs have emerged improving progression free survival but with little impact on overall survival, raising questions about the criteria on which to base decisions to grant marketing authorizations and about the authorization procedure itself. For decisions to be fair, transparent and accountable, it is necessary to consider the views of those with relevant expertise and experience. Methods. We conducted a Q-study to explore the views of a range of stakeholders in France, involving: 54 patients (18 months after diagnosis); 50 members of the general population; 27 oncologists; 19 healthcare decision makers; and 2 individuals from the pharmaceutical industry. Results. Three viewpoints emerged, focussing on different dimensions entitled: 1) ‘Quality of life (QoL), opportunity cost and participative democracy’; 2)‘QoL and patient-centeredness’; and 3) ‘Length of life’. Respondents from all groups were associated with each viewpoint, except for healthcare decision makers, who were only associated with the first one. Conclusion. Our results highlight plurality in the views of stakeholders, emphasize the need for transparency in decision making processes, and illustrate the importance of a re-evaluation of treatments for all 3 viewpoints. In the context of advanced cancer, our results suggest that QoL should be more prominent amongst authorization criteria, as it is a concern for 2 of the 3 viewpoints

Service Quality Of University Library: A Survey Amongst Students At Osmangazi University And Anadolu University

Student satisfaction is an important measure of service quality in libraries. Students’ perceptions about libraries seem to have been largely ignored by library management in developing countries. The assessment of service quality provides an important feedback for libraries to assess and improve its service to its users. The aim of this study is to develop a reliable and valid instrument measure student satisfaction in Osmangazi University Library and Anadolu University Library. A questionnaire to measure the service quality of university libraries was used and a total of 400 students at two university libraries were interviewed. Factor analysis was utilized to determine the factor structure. The instrument of the student satisfaction developed in this study provides insights to the researches who study the improvement of student satisfaction with service quality of university libraries and decision markers.Library, Satisfaction, Servqual, Service Quality, Perception, Expectation, Factor Analysis, Regression Analysis

Masculinity as Governance: police, public service and the embodiment of authority, c. 1700-1850

About the book: Public Men offers an introduction to an exciting new field: the history of masculinities in the political domain and will be essential reading for students and specialists alike with interests in gender or political culture. By building upon new work on gender and political culture, these new case studies explore the gendering of the political domain and the masculinities of the men who have historically dominated it. As such, Public Men is a major contribution to our understanding of the history of Britain between the Eighteenth and the Twentieth centuries

Efficiently Disassemble-and-Pack for Mechanism

In this paper, we present a disassemble-and-pack approach for a mechanism to seek a box which contains total mechanical parts with high space utilization. Its key feature is that mechanism contains not only geometric shapes but also internal motion structures which can be calculated to adjust geometric shapes of the mechanical parts. Our system consists of two steps: disassemble mechanical object into a group set and pack them within a box efficiently. The first step is to create a hierarchy of possible group set of parts which is generated by disconnecting the selected joints and adjust motion structures of parts in groups. The aim of this step is seeking total minimum volume of each group. The second step is to exploit the hierarchy based on breadth-first-search to obtain a group set. Every group in the set is inserted into specified box from maximum volume to minimum based on our packing strategy. Until an approximated result with satisfied efficiency is accepted, our approach finish exploiting the hierarchy.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figure

Effect of a rotor wake on the local heat transfer on the forward half of a circular cylinder

Turbine rotor-stator wake dynamics was simulated by a spoked wheel rotating in annular flow, generating rotor wakes. Spanwise averaged circumferentially local heat transfer in the circular cylindrical leading edge region of a turbine airfoil was obtained. Reynolds numbers ranged from 35,000 to 175,000. Strouhal numbers ranged from 0.63 to 2.50. Wakes were generated by 2 sets of circular cylindrical bars, 1.59 and 3.18 mm in diameter. The rotor could be rotated either clockwise or counterclockwise. Grid turbulence was introduced upstream yielding freestream turbulence of 1.0 to 2.5% at the stator. Data represented an extensive body of local heat transfer coefficients, which can be used to model the leading edge region of a turbine airfoil. In the presence of rotor wakes, an asymmetry from the leeward to windward side was noted. Windward side levels were 30 to 40% higher than the corresponding leeward side

Searching the Sky with CONFIGR-STARS

SyNAPSE program of the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (HRL Laboratories LLC, subcontract #801881-BS under DARPA prime contract HR0011-09-C-0001); CELEST, a National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center (SBE-0354378)CONFIGR-STARS, a new methodology based on a model of the human visual system, is developed for registration of star images. The algorithm first applies CONFIGR, a neural model that connects sparse and noisy image components. CONFIGR produces a web of connections between stars in a reference starmap or in a test patch of unknown location. CONFIGR-STARS splits the resulting, typically highly connected, web into clusters, or "constellations." Cluster geometry is encoded as a signature vector that records edge lengths and angles relative to the cluster’s baseline edge. The location of a test patch cluster is identified by comparing its signature to signatures in the codebook of a reference starmap, where cluster locations are known. Simulations demonstrate robust performance in spite of image perturbations and omissions, and across starmaps from different sources and seasons. Further studies would test CONFIGR-STARS and algorithm variations applied to very large starmaps and to other technologies that may employ geometric signatures. Open-source code, data, and demos are available from http://techlab.bu.edu/STARS/