Stage T4B head and neck cancer survival outcome comparisons based on treatment modality: is surgery a viable treatment option?

IMPORTANCE: Advanced stage head and neck cancers are often deemed unresectable due to the aggressive nature of the cancer. In evaluating survival patterns of patients with stage IVb tumors, it is valuable to determine whether patients who undergo oncological surgery have favorable outcomes in order to deem surgery as a viable treatment option and demonstrate that these patients can survive with adequate treatment. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether patients with stage IVb cancers who undergo oncological surgery have favorable survival outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Of 320 cases reviewed of patients treated for head and neck cancer at Boston Medical Center between June 2009 and October 2014, 18 patients with stage IVb tumors were identified. Information regarding date of initial diagnosis, date and type of treatment, and date of death were extrapolated from medical records. Mean survival rates were calculated to compare survival outcomes of those who received and those who did not receive surgical intervention. RESULTS: The mean survival rate for patients who underwent surgical intervention was found to be 29.5 months while those who did not receive surgical intervention had a mean survival of 20.83 months. CONCLUSION: Cancers of the head and neck are associated with poor prognoses and are often deemed unresectable. Patients should be offered definitive treatment despite recommended palliative treatment, as, with adequate treatment, favorable survival outcomes are attainable

Unlabeled Structures and Scrambling Asymmetries: Hindi-Urdu style

We explore and derive the asymmetries noted in Hindi-Urdu (argument) scrambling via the Labeling Algorithm proposed by Chomsky (2013, 2015) to argue that leftward scrambling involves movement to/through a labeled edge of v*, but rightward scrambling necessarily does not. Both scrambling types are analysed as yielding unlabeled projections (with the exception of the copy at the edge of v*), which do not receive an effect on C-I outcome

THREE ESSAYS ON UNCERTAINTY IN SOCIAL DILEMMAS

Social dilemmas are settings where the interest of the individual is at odds with those of society i.e. overharvesting in a fishery, not contributing to a public good. These dilemmas are widespread and take myriad forms with public goods and common-pool resources being the most prominent ones. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how individual behavior is impacted by the presence of uncertainty in public goods and common-pool resources. These dilemmas exhibit two types of uncertainty, strategic and environmental. Strategic uncertainty refers to uncertainty about the actions of other individuals facing the dilemma i.e. will other individuals contribute to the public good or not. Environmental uncertainty pertains to uncertainty about the characteristics of the dilemma i.e. is the resource size large or small. While strategic uncertainty has been extensively examined, the existing research on environmental uncertainty is limited. Since the social dilemmas in the real-world are often marked by environmental uncertainty, policy-makers need to know how individual behavior in social dilemmas is impacted by environmental uncertainty. The dissertation utilizes laboratory experiments to study the issue because laboratory experiments allow us to implement different forms of environmental uncertainty, which would not be possible in the field

A Case for Bare Accusatives in Hindi-Urdu

I propose and evaluate an Agree-based analysis of accusative allomorphy in Hindi-Urdu. Evidence for a bare accusative form comes from the grammaticality of bare objects in non-finite environments. I argue that accusative case is checked compositely by Voice and v. Subject case (nominative and ergative) is checked by Fin, T and Asp. I also argue that case and agreement must be dissociated in HU as T may agree with nominals it does not assign case to

The Urdu Active Impersonal

It has been reported in several works that Urdu can optionally preserve accusative case in passives. In this paper, I show that the accusative-preserving passive construction is different from canonical passives, and reanalyse it as an active construction with a silent pro subject. I also compare it to similar constructions in Polish, Ukrainian, Icelandic and Viennese German

The Interfaith Dimension of Some Recent English Translations of the Quran: A Critical Analysis

أهداف البحث: تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى البحث في البعد الخاص بحوار الأديان في مجموعة مُختارة من الترجمات الإنجليزية لمعاني القرآن الكريم؛ وذلك بهدف الإجابة على السؤالين التاليين: هل هذه الترجمات مُوجَّهة إلى القراء المسلمين دون غيرهم؟ وهل تستوعب الرسالة العالمية للقرآن الكريم وتُعبِّر عنها، وهي الرسالة التي تستهدف المسلمين وغير المسلمين على حد سواء؟ ونظرًا لندرة الدراسات حول هذا الجانب في الترجمات الإنجليزية، فقد جاءت هذه الدراسة كمحاولة لملء هذا الفراغ؛ إذ ستساعد القراء على فهم مواطن القوة والضعف النسبية في الترجمات المختلفة. منهج الدراسة: تناولت الدراسة الترجمات الإنجليزية المُختارة بالتحليل الدقيق والنقد الموضوعي من زاوية حجم إسهامها في تيسير فهم الحوار بين الأديان، حيث برزت بعض الترجمات في هذا المجال، بينما افتقر بعضها الآخر إلى هذا البعد. وعليه، فإن هذه الدراسة تجمع بين المنهجين الاستنباطي والاستقرائي. النتائج: يُقدّم هذا البحث في البداية دراسة تاريخية نقدية استعراضية لترجمات معاني القرآن باللغة الإنجليزية، وعلى وجه الخصوص ترجمات: ألكسندر روس (1649)، وجورج سيل (1734)، وج.م. رودول (1861)، وإ.ه. بالمر (1880)، وريتشرد بيل (1939)، وأ. ج. آربري (1955). ون. ج. داوود (1956)، وآلن جونز (2007)، وأ.ج. دروغ (2014). ثم ينتقل إلى لفت الانتباه إلى الملاحظات الجدلية غير المقبولة المطروحة في ترجمات المستشرقين لمعاني القرآن باللغة الإنجليزية تحت ستار دراسة مقارنة الأديان. وقد أطلق سيد أحمد خان اتجاهًا جديدًا في هذا المجال، وهو فهم الحوار بين الأديان من منظور التعددية. ونجد هذا الاتجاه بصورة أكثر وضوحًا في ترجمات معاني القرآن لكلٍ من: توماس كليري (2004)، وصافي كاسكس (2016)، وديفيد هنغرفورد (2016). ورغم زعم ج. س. رينولدز (2018) وجين ميكالف (2017) التزامهما في ترجمتهما الحديثة للقرآن باتباع منظور الحوار بين الأديان، إلا أنهما في الواقع غالبًا ما لجأا في ترجمتهما إلى الموقف الاستشراقي الجدلي الذي كان هدفه الرئيس التشكيك في القرآن، والقول بأنه تقليد هزيل للإنجيل. ويدرس هذا البحث بعض ترجمات القرآن الصادرة في القرن الحادي والعشرين مثل ترجمات: توماس كليري (2004) ، وصافي كاسكس، وديفيد هنغرفورد  (2016) ، وج. س. رينولدز (2018) وجين ميكالف (2017). أصالة البحث: هذه الدراسة هي الدراسة الأولى من نوعها التي تُقيِّم الترجمات المُختارة من حيث إعلاؤها لقيم التعايش السلمي التي جاءت في القرآن الكريم.Purpose: The objective of the paper is to explore the Interfaith dimension, if any, in select English translations of the Quran. Are these translations addressed only to the Muslim readership? Do these capture and convey the universal message of the Quran, which is directed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike? Since this aspect of the English translations of the Quran has been hardly explored, this study is an attempt to fill this gap. It will help readers realize the relative strengths and weaknesses of various translation. Methodology: Select English translations have been closely and critically analysed in terms of the quantum of their contribution to Interfaith understanding. Some translations stand out on this count while others lack this dimension. So it is based on both inductive and deductive approaches. Findings: This paper first provides a critical, historical survey of the English translations of the Quran, namely, those by Alexander Ross (1649), George Sale (1734), J. M. Rodwell (1861), E. H. Palmer (1880), Richard Bell (1937-1939), A. J. Arberry (1955), N. J. Dawood (1956), Alan Jones (2007) and A. J. Droge (2014). This paper draws attention to the unpalatable note of polemics under the pretext of comparative religion in the Orientalists’ English translations of the Quran. Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), however, set in motion a new trend in the field: interfaith understanding from the perspective of pluralism. This trend is reflected more sharply in the translations by Thomas Cleary (2004) and Safi Kaskas and David Hungerford (2016). Although in their fairly recent English renderings of the Quran, G. S. Reynolds (2018) and Jane McAuliffe (2017) promise to study the Quran from an interfaith dialogue perspective, they often revert to the polemical Orientalist stance of discrediting the Quran as a poor imitation of the Bible. This paper examines the 21st century English translations of the Quran by Thomas Cleary (2004), Safi Kaskas and David Hungerford (2016), G. S. Reynolds (2018) and Jane McAuliffe (2017). Originality: This is the first study of its kind – assessing the select translations in term of their promotion of the ideals of peaceful coexistence as spelled out by the Quran

Literary Orientalism: Main Contours Up to the British Romantic Period

Literary Orientalism assumed the status of a new, fascinating subfield of English literary studies in 1980s, after the publication of Edward Said’s influential work, Orientalism (1978). However, earlier critical studies too, pointed to the varied perception of the other, including the Orient/ Orientals in English literary works down the millennia. The paper under study traces out the genesis of this tradition from 1

Analyzing Human Communities using Fuzzy Graphs

Fuzzy Graphs are used for analyzing and modeling levels of informationin real-time systems (simple or complex networks). A community(network) is formed when human eProfiles (nodes) have links (edges)and interactions with each other. Considering multiple medium ofcommunications like email, chatting and short message service (SMS)in the network, it will make the graph more complex (dense graph orforest). To address this issue in this paper analyzes those humancommunities with the help of fuzzy graphs and highlights the status ofindividuals in a human community. Max-Min Composition (fuzzyrelation) was applied along with statistical analysis on fuzzy graphs ofhuman community. Interaction Index (II) is used to estimate the intensityof communication and Role Index (RI) determine the participation statusof individual in a human community. All this analysis will be used inour research and development of Community Algorithm, which will beused as a tool that will help in identifying, analyzing, manipulating,monitoring, and transforming human communities based on humaneProfiles