Patterns of care and treatment outcomes of patients with astroblastoma: A National Cancer Database analysis

AIM: To evaluate the use of chemotherapy and radiation, and their outcomes for patients with astroblastoma. PATIENTS & METHODS: This is a retrospective review of patients extracted from the National Cancer Database. We investigated overall survival (OS) using Kaplan-Meier curves. Cox proportional hazards models were used to correlate OS with risk variables and treatments. RESULTS: OS at 5 years was 79.5%. Patients with high-grade tumors were more likely to receive chemotherapy and radiation. Patients with high-grade astroblastoma who did not receive adjuvant radiation had poor survival. CONCLUSION: Patients with astroblastoma should be treated with curative intent. Radiation is likely beneficial in high-grade astroblastoma. The exact role of radiation and chemotherapy following surgical resection warrant further investigation

Magnetic moments of the low-lying JP= 1/2−J^P=\,1/2^-, 3/2−3/2^- Λ\Lambda resonances within the framework of the chiral quark model

The magnetic moments of the low-lying spin-parity $J^P=$ $1/2^-$, $3/2^-$ $\Lambda$ resonances, like, for example, $\Lambda(1405)$ $1/2^-$, $\Lambda(1520)$ $3/2^-$, as well as their transition magnetic moments, are calculated using the chiral quark model. The results found are compared with those obtained from the nonrelativistic quark model and those of unitary chiral theories, where some of these states are generated through the dynamics of two hadron coupled channels and their unitarization

Salaried Strata Investment Behavior Towards Financial Products-review and Prospects for Future Research

The financial surface of the globe at all times reveals a weirdly balanced impact of the public investment preferences, their understanding of the investment requirements, their anticipation of returns on their investments etc. Perhaps forecasting the growth of the business world would be crucial without an opposite comprehension of the investment behavior of the key part of the society called salaried class. This paper covers appraisal of various financial instruments like equity/stocks, term deposits in banks, kisan vikas patra, national savings certificate, insurance policies, mutual fund and converse the factors persuading investment decision process. The major factors influencing the financial investment behavior are demographic factors (like age, income, qualification, gender, etc.) and socio-economic factors (like family income, tax benefits, the safety of fund, risk inclination, return on investment). This study aims to serve a channel to the need for a comprehension of the financial objectives of the salaried class investors with that of their determined desire for the investment returns. Certainly, this information could unwrap the prospect of predicting even the future of Indian Economy itself besides, providing span to fine-tuning the investment prudence of the public towards progressive and fruitful choices for themselves and the nation

Firm Opacity Lies in the Eye of the Beholder

We classify and test empirical measures of firm opacity and document theoretical and empirical inconsistencies across these proxies by testing the relative opacity of banks versus non-banks. We evaluate the effectiveness of these proxies by observing the effect of two cleanly identified shocks to firm-specific information: credit rating initiation and inclusion in the S&P 500 index. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we compare firms that are newly rated and firms that are included in the S&P 500 index with a propensity matched sample of “unchanged” firms. We find that only the number of analysts and Amihud's illiquidity ratio provide consistent patterns across different estimation specifications and different econometric settings. These two proxies show that banks are more opaque than non-banks. Based on our tests, we recommend that these proxies be used as the primary measures of firm opacity