598 research outputs found
The Impact of the Global Commodity and Financial Crises on Poverty in Vietnam
Economic growth in Vietnam has been fairly resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. In addition, the impact of the crises on employment and poverty is in dispute. We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to decompose impacts and estimate distributional outcomes. Our results indicate that the 2008 commodity crisis increased employment and reduced poverty by favouring labour-intensive exports, especially in agriculture. The 2009 financial crisis reversed these gains. It pushed more than a million workers into unemployment and about 3 million people below the US$2-a-day poverty line, with the vast majority of these being rural dwellers. The net effect of the crises left Vietnam little changed from a baseline (no crises) path in terms of aggregate indicators including the poverty rate. An effective stimulus package has the potential to offset one third of the increase in poverty caused by the financial crisis leaving poverty rates below the (no crises) baseline.Economic crisis, growth, poverty, Vietnam
Bayesian view on the training of invertible residual networks for solving linear inverse problems
Learning-based methods for inverse problems, adapting to the data's inherent
structure, have become ubiquitous in the last decade. Besides empirical
investigations of their often remarkable performance, an increasing number of
works addresses the issue of theoretical guarantees. Recently, [3] exploited
invertible residual networks (iResNets) to learn provably convergent
regularizations given reasonable assumptions. They enforced these guarantees by
approximating the linear forward operator with an iResNet. Supervised training
on relevant samples introduces data dependency into the approach. An open
question in this context is to which extent the data's inherent structure
influences the training outcome, i.e., the learned reconstruction scheme. Here
we address this delicate interplay of training design and data dependency from
a Bayesian perspective and shed light on opportunities and limitations. We
resolve these limitations by analyzing reconstruction-based training of the
inverses of iResNets, where we show that this optimization strategy introduces
a level of data-dependency that cannot be achieved by approximation training.
We further provide and discuss a series of numerical experiments underpinning
and extending the theoretical findings
Invertible residual networks in the context of regularization theory for linear inverse problems
Learned inverse problem solvers exhibit remarkable performance in
applications like image reconstruction tasks. These data-driven reconstruction
methods often follow a two-step scheme. First, one trains the often neural
network-based reconstruction scheme via a dataset. Second, one applies the
scheme to new measurements to obtain reconstructions. We follow these steps but
parameterize the reconstruction scheme with invertible residual networks
(iResNets). We demonstrate that the invertibility enables investigating the
influence of the training and architecture choices on the resulting
reconstruction scheme. For example, assuming local approximation properties of
the network, we show that these schemes become convergent regularizations. In
addition, the investigations reveal a formal link to the linear regularization
theory of linear inverse problems and provide a nonlinear spectral
regularization for particular architecture classes. On the numerical side, we
investigate the local approximation property of selected trained architectures
and present a series of experiments on the MNIST dataset that underpin and
extend our theoretical findings
The morphology of doubly-clamped graphene nanoribbons
Understanding the response of micro/nano-patterned graphene to mechanical forces is instrumental for applications such as advanced graphene origami and kirigami. Here, we analyze free-standing nanoribbons milled into single-layer graphene by focused ion beam processing. Using transmission electron microscopy, we show that the length L of the structures determines their morphology. Nanoribbons with L below 300 nm remain mainly flat, whereas longer ribbons exhibit uni-axial crumpling or spontaneous scrolling, a trend that is well reproduced by molecular dynamics simulations. We measure the strain of the ribbons as well as their crystallinity by recording nanometer-resolved convergent beam electron diffraction maps, and show that the beam tails of the focused ion beam cause significant amorphization of the structures adjacent to the cuts. The expansive or compressive strain in the structures remains below 4%. Our measurements provide experimental constraints for the stability of free-standing graphene structures with respect to their geometry, providing guidelines for future applications of patterned graphene
Current treatment options in RAS mutant metastatic colorectal cancer patients: a meta-analysis of 14 randomized phase III trials
PURPOSE Although biomarkers for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer exist, the benefit patients with RAS mutated tumors derive from established regimens is unclear. METHODS Efficacy of therapeutic strategies available for RAS mutated patients (addition of chemotherapeutic agents and/or anti angiogenic agents) were investigated in fourteen randomized controlled phase III trials at trial level by meta-analysing individual study hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS). RESULTS 6810 of 10,748 patients (63.3%) were available (48.5% RAS wildtype, 51.5% RAS mutated). Across all treatment lines, additional treatment efficacy (chemotherapy and/or anti angiogenic agents) was significantly smaller in RAS mutated compared to wildtype tumors for OS and PFS. In detail, patients with RAS mutated metastatic colorectal cancer derived significant benefit in PFS but not in OS by the addition of either chemotherapy or anti angiogenic agents to the respective comparator. In patients with RAS wildtype metastatic colorectal cancer, PFS and OS were improved by the addition of chemotherapy or anti angiogenic agent. CONCLUSION The therapeutic benefit of additional substances is less distinct in patients with RAS mutated as compared to RAS wildtype metastatic colorectal cancer, especially with regard to OS
LHC as and Collider
We propose an experiment at the LHC with leading neutron production.The
latter can be used to extract from it the total cross-sections. With
two leading neutrons we can get access to the total
cross-sections. In this note we give some estimates and discuss related
problems and prospects.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, 8 tables, to be publishe
Radiotherapy for hormone-sensitive prostate cancer with synchronous low burden of distant metastases.
PURPOSE
The DEGRO Expert Commission on Prostate Cancer has revised the indication for radiation therapy of the primary prostate tumor in patients with synchronous distant metastases with low metastatic burden.
METHODS
The current literature in the PubMed database was reviewed regarding randomized evidence on radiotherapy of the primary prostate tumor with synchronous low metastatic burden.
RESULTS
In total, two randomized trials were identified. The larger study, the STAMPEDE trial, demonstrated an absolute survival benefit of 8% after 3 years for patients with low metastatic burden treated with standard of care (SOC) and additional radiotherapy (RT) (EQD2 ≤ 72 Gy) of the primary tumor. Differences in the smaller Horrad trial were not statistically significant, although risk reduction in the subgroup (< 5 bone metastases) was equal to STAMPEDE. The STOPCAP meta-analysis of both trials demonstrated the benefit of local radiotherapy for up to 4 bone lesions and an additional subanalysis of STAMPEDE also substantiated this finding in cases with M1a-only metastases.
CONCLUSION
Therefore, due to the survival benefit after 3 years, current practice is changing. New palliative SOC is radiotherapy of the primary tumor in synchronously metastasized prostate cancer with low metastatic burden (defined as ≤ 4 bone metastases, with or without distant nodes) or in case of distant nodes only detected by conventional imaging
Prevalence and influence on outcome of HER2/neu, HER3 and NRG1 expression in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer
Our aim was to explore the impact of the HER2/neu, HER3 receptor as well as their ligands' neuregulin (NRG1) expression on the outcome of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). NRG1, HER2/neu and HER3 expression was evaluated in 208 patients with mCRC receiving 5-FU/LV plus irinotecan or irinotecan plus oxaliplatin as the first-line treatment. Biomarker expression was correlated with the outcome of patients. NRG1 (low: 192 vs. high: 16), HER2/neu (low: 201 vs. high: 7) and HER3 (low: 69 vs. high: 139) expressions were assessed in 208 patients. High versus low NRG1 expression significantly affected progression-free survival (PFS) 4.7 vs. 8.2 months, hazard ratio (HR): 2.45; 95{\%} confidence interval (CI): 1.45-4.13; P=0.001, but not overall survival (OS) (15.5 vs. 20.7 months, HR: 1.33; 95{\%} CI: 0.76-2.35; P=0.32). High versus low HER3 expression (PFS: 7.1 vs. 8.8 months, HR: 1.11; 95{\%} CI: 0.82-1.50; P=0.50; OS: 19.8 vs. 21.1 months, HR: 0.95; 95{\%} CI: 0.70-1.30; P=0.75) and high compared with low HER2/neu expression (PFS: 7.7 vs. 8.0 months, HR: 1.07; 95{\%} CI: 0.71-1.60; P=0.75; OS: 16.6 vs. 21.1 months, HR: 1.13; 95{\%} CI: 0.75-1.71; P=0.57) did not influence outcome. High NRG1 expression was associated with inferior PFS in the FIRE-1 trial. We did not detect a prognostic impact of HER2/neu and HER3 overexpression in mCRC. The frequency of overexpression was comparable with other studies
The GALAD Score as Potential Screening Test for Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis: An International Multicenter Study
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