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The utility of electronic frailty index in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy
No full textBackground: Frail patients with cancer (Ca) have worse survival. Current methods of assessment of fitness (performance status) for cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, are time -consuming and often not used by practicing oncologists. The electronic frailty index (SCARF) is derived from a cumulative deficit frailty model and provides a measure of frailty alongside pre-existing conditions. We used this methodology to investigate whether it can predict outcomes of chemotherapy in patients with Ca. Methods: The study conducted data analysis of Ca patients treated with chemotherapy in England, years 2015-2018; stage II - III breast Ca, stage III colon Ca and stage IIIB–IV non-small-cell lung Ca. The data was linked with hospital admissions to calculate 30-day chemotherapy mortality, overall survival and SCARF. Results: The SCARF was calculated for 78799 patients. The risk of dying within 30 days of chemotherapy in severely frail patients with colorectal cancer ≥70y.o. was twice that of the Conclusion: The SCARF index predicts poor outcomes from SACT, particularly in breast and colon cancer, and it requires further evaluation.</p
MightyPPL: Model Checking MITL with Past and Pnueli Modalities
No full textMetric Interval Temporal Logic (MITL) is a popular formalism for specifying properties of reactive systems with timing constraints.
Existing approaches to using MITL in verification tasks, however, have notable drawbacks: they either support only limited fragments of the
logic (the future only fragment MITL[Fut]) or allow for only incomplete verification. This paper introduces MightyPPL, a new tool for translating formulae in Metric Interval Temporal Logic with Past and Pnueli
modalities (MITPPL) over the pointwise semantics into timed automata, enabling satisfiability and model checking of this expressive specification
logic over both finite and infinite timed words. MightyPPL optimises performance via specialised constructions for simple cases, a novel symbolic transition encoding, and a symmetry reduction technique that yields an exponential improvement in reachable discrete states. The tool generates language-equivalent automata compatible with back-ends such asUppaal, TChecker, and LTSmin. Our evaluation demonstrates that MightyPPL significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art tool MightyL on future-only fragments and across various benchmarks.</p
Dever de Cuidado de Plataformas após a Decisão do Supremo Tribunal Federal sobre o Marco Civil da Internet
No full textThis paper offers a systematic survey of the Brazilian legal scholarship to examine how the duty of care has evolved across different legal fields and to illuminate how these developments can inform current debates on platform regulation and the enforcement of the Brazilian Supreme (STF) Court ruling on intermediary liability. The analysis of the duty of care across various areas of Brazilian law reveals its central role as a principle and often the basis for liability. Essentially, the duty of care imposes a diligent, attentive, and preventive conduct, aiming to avoid damages (as obligations of means), but also serves as the basis for the obligation not to cause harm (as obligations of result). When the duty of care is expressed by an obligation of means, what is required from the agent is the adoption of specific conduct: the application of their best efforts, knowledge, and techniques to achieve a desired goal, without, however, guaranteeing the final outcome. By contrast, where the duty crystallizes as an obligation of result, the legal focus is on the non-occurrence of a specified harm: responsibility is triggered by the materialization of the adverse outcome, independently of the actor’s intent or the efforts undertaken. The STF as the Court recognized a preventive duty of care and identified a series of procedural obligations for digital platforms, yet it did so within a framework that allows those preventive duties to generate liability when serious harm occurs. As Brazilian doctrine already integrates preventive and compensatory logics, it becomes clear the hybrid nature of the STF’s decision and situates it within a broader legal tradition.</p
Topology beyond application: drawing social and mathematical worlds into rhythm
No full textFor more than sixty years, topology has provided geographers with tools for lifting the veils of Euclideanism and showing how spaces are relational, agential, embodied, and ontologically multiple. A field of mathematics since the nineteenth century, topology has been reworked and mobilised by geographers in diverse ways: from spatial science, through networks and assemblages, to the influences of Law and Mol, Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, Barad, and others. Recently, geographers have called for employing topology with greater critical discernment, while continuing to develop its promising and subversive potential.
In this article, we aim to help enrich topology's presence in geography and the social sciences more broadly. Following a brief historical introduction, we examine the bodily basis of mathematical reasoning in order to undo the qualitative/quantitative binary and outline a creative, affective approach to abstraction. This lays the ground for the main contribution of the article, where we detail, with several diagrams, key concepts in mathematical topology which critically engage and augment geographers’ theories of space. The potential for an unlikely alliance emerges between geography and mathematics, with implications for both disciplines – provided the inseparability of object and subject, and of knowledge and social order, are carefully attended to.</p
Institutional barriers to dynamic truck charging: why electric road systems struggle in Europe
No full textElectric road systems (ERS) have been proposed as an efficient solution to dynamically charge electric trucks but have not yet become a dominant solution. This paper provides an institutional explanation for the case of Europe, building on 22 expert interviews in eight European countries, event observations, and policy documents. The analysis identifies three main explanations. Firstly, as a line infrastructure, ERS require government commitment for build-up and coordination, particularly across borders. This conflicts with the widespread idea of technology-open governments that provide R&D funds to initiate market-driven solutions. Secondly, time constraints favour readily available solutions backed by industry, like stationary charging, over sector-specific ERS technologies that lack a unified lobby with policy access. Thirdly, ERS technologies challenge long-standing sectoral designs. If policymakers want to maintain the option of ERS alongside stationary charging, they need to acknowledge this institutional uphill battle and consider compatibility requirements for vehicles and an active commitment for larger routes.</p
Smart textile based wearable sensors for monitoring isolation-related affective states: a step towards loneliness prediction
No full textLoneliness is a significant psychosocial factor that negatively impacting the health and quality of life of individuals, with social isolation recognised as a major risk factor. This paper presents a wearable, textile based multi-sensing system to continuously monitoring physiological changes associated with isolation related affective states which towards future loneliness detection. The system integrates flexible, non-invasive textile sensors for electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyography (EMG), respiration, skin temperature, and galvanic skin response (GSR) within textile, enabling continuous physiological monitoring and analyses for analysing loneliness resulting from isolation.
In our pilot study, physiological signals were recorded dunder three controlled affective arousal conditions: Low emotional arousal induced by quiet sitting, moderate emotional arousal associated with social conversation, and high emotional arousal elicited by positive emotional arousal. Experimental results demonstrate distinct physiological patterns across conditions, including reduced heart rate variability, more regular respiration, lower skin conductance activity, and decreased muscular engagement under low emotional arousal compared with socially interactive and highly arousing states.
This scalable and cost-effective solution supports proactive monitoring and assessment of loneliness for users, offering potential for timely interventions by caregivers, and clinicians. The work advances emotion-aware wearable systems for geriatric care and mental health support.</p
Innovating during disruption: an assessment of firms’ knowledge absorption from suppliers across disruptive and sustaining technologies
No full textIncumbent firms facing technological disruption are challenged to modify their innovation pursuits and search for new knowledge. This means that product innovation developments must integrate potentially disruptive technologies together with innovations in sustaining technologies. In this study, we investigate how firms absorb knowledge from their supplier base to generate innovations in components experiencing ongoing technological disruption, as well as components comprising sustaining technologies. Using a longitudinal sample of global automotive manufacturers and their most relevant components, we distinguish innovations pertaining to disruptive and sustaining technologies. Our findings reveal that firms increasing absorption of innovation knowledge from current suppliers, in which the firm has an established supply agreement, only benefits value for sustaining technologies, whereas increasing knowledge absorption from potential suppliers with no previous supply agreement benefits value for disruptive technologies. We also found that retrieving back spilled knowledge from suppliers is only advantageous to innovations in sustaining technologies. We conclude with a theoretical assessment of innovation learning from suppliers in the context of technological disruption and its managerial implications.</p
The nonlinear fast diffusion equation on smooth metric measure spaces: Hamilton-Souplet-Zhang estimates and a Ricci-Perelman super flow
No full textThis article presents new gradient estimates for positive solutions to the nonlinear fast diffusion equation on smooth metric measure spaces involving the -Laplacian. The gradient estimates of interest
are mainly of Hamilton-Souplet-Zhang or elliptic type and are proved using different set of methods and
techniques. Various implications notably to parabolic Liouville type results and characterisation of ancient
solutions are given. The problem is considered in the general setting where the metric and potential evolve
under a super flow involving the Bakry-\'Emery -Ricci curvature tensor. The curious interplay between
geometry, nonlinearity, and evolution -- and their intricate roles in the estimates and the maximum
exponent range of fast diffusion -- is at the core of the investigation.</p
Examining critical factors in FCA_SAPO framework: a qualitative and quantitative study on the adoption of fog computing in Saudi Arabian public organisation by IT employees
No full textFog computing is a rapidly evolving domain within information technology and enterprise computing, providing organisations with the opportunity to greatly improve efficiency and productivity. This is particularly pertinent in developing countries, where effective resource utilisation is critical. Despite its potential, there has been limited research on the factors influencing the adoption of fog computing in Saudi Arabia, as well as the associated benefits and challenges. This study seeks to fill this gap by examining the various factors, advantages, and obstacles related to fog computing adoption within Saudi Arabian public organisations. To address the absence of a context-specific model, we employed a mixed-methods approach, gathering qualitative data through semi-structured interviews with 15 IT managers, revealing that complexity was the sole factor hindering adoption. Quantitative data was then collected from 665 IT managers and employees to validate the framework’s constructs, showing that privacy, complexity, awareness, and senior management support were insignificant among 12 factors in influencing adoption intention. The quantitative analysis complements these findings, indicating that while the majority of factors significantly influence the adoption process, a portion of the factors were found to be insignificant. Findings from both qualitative and quantitative analyses highlight the importance of technical, organisational, environmental, and financial contexts in the adoption process. These insights provide valuable guidance for IT managers in the Saudi public sector, emphasising the need to consider these factors comprehensively to achieve successful fog computing implementation.</p
Self-reports map the landscape of task states derived from brain imaging
No full textPsychological states influence our happiness and productivity; however, estimates of their impact have historically been assumed to be limited by the accuracy with which introspection can quantify them. Over the last two decades, studies have shown that introspective descriptions of psychological states correlate with objective indicators of cognition, including task performance and metrics of brain function, using techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Such evidence suggests it may be possible to quantify the mapping between self-reports of experience and objective representations of those states (e.g., those inferred from measures of brain activity). Here, we used machine learning to show that self-reported descriptions of experiences across tasks can reliably map the objective landscape of task states derived from brain activity. In our study, 194 participants provided descriptions of their psychological states while performing tasks for which the contribution of different brain systems was available from prior fMRI studies. We used machine learning to combine these reports with descriptions of brain function to form a 'state-space' that reliably predicted patterns of brain activity based solely on unseen descriptions of experience (N = 101). Our study demonstrates that introspective reports can share information with the objective task landscape inferred from brain activity.</p