The number of patients on renal transplant waiting list is increasing rapidly in many countries, exacerbating the shortage of organs. We conducted a study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of deceased-donor kidney transplantation from hepatitis B surface antigen

Purpose: The prevalence of esophageal NECs is rising, but to date, no studies have compared its clinicopathological characteristics to those of esophageal ACs and SCCs from the same period. Patients and methods: A 10-year population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted with the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program database. Statistical analyses were performed using Intercooled Stata 12.0 software. Results: A total of 17,196 eligible patients with esophageal tumors, including 246 NECs, 6,102 SCCs and 10,848 ACs, were analyzed. ACs showed an obviously higher prevalence than the other two tumor types, and the prevalence of NECs was increasing. NECs were associated with an obviously worse survival than ACs (log-rank test, P <0.01). Most NECs were poorly differentiated and had an obviously higher percentage of metastasis. NECs and ACs often metastasized to the liver (29.41% and 23.11%, respectively), while SCCs typically metastasized to the lung (15.84%) and distant lymph nodes (15.37%). We divided the patients into two groups for further analysis according to the metastasis status. For NECs, no benefit was obtained by surgery in metastatic disease. For SCCs and ACs, surgery of the primary sites produced survival benefits in both groups, but the benefits of lymphadenectomy and metastasis dissection need further study. Conclusion: NECs of the esophagus have the worst prognosis compared to SCCs and ACs from the same period. Radical surgery provides limited benefits to patients diagnosed with NECs, so systemic treatments should be considered instead of surgical procedures. A unique guideline with a new staging and grading system for esophageal NECs is urgently needed.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between international expansion and firm performance in an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach -The paper firstly explores the relationship between internationalization and firm performance, then investigates the roles of diversification, and examines how diversification moderates the relationship between internationalization and firm performance. For this purpose, panel data on 318 Chinese listed manufacturing firms during the period 1999-2008 were utilized. Three groups of samples of high, medium and low levels of diversified manufacturing firms were obtained. Statistical techniques of fixed-effects panel data model yielded an interesting pattern of findings. On the basis of these results, the paper then discusses the implications for the international expansion of Chinese firms. Findings -At high and low levels of internationalization, internationalization is negatively associated with firm performance, but at medium levels of internationalization, greater internationalization is accompanied by higher performance. Product diversification negatively moderates the relationship between internationalization and performance. As product diversification increases, the relationship between internationalization and performance changes from a horizontal S-curve in firms with low levels of diversification to a U-curve in moderately diversified firms and eventually to an equilibrium level in highly diversified firms. The initial stage of the horizontal S-curve of internationalization and performance declines markedly in Chinese manufacturing firms as a whole, therefore it is by no means easy for Chinese firms to undertake internationalization. Research limitations/implications -These findings do suggest that managers need to take a long-term view of internationalization and make a commitment to internationalization. Originality/value -This is the first paper of its kind to empirically validate the relationship between internationalization, firm performance and diversification in China. It is intended to make a contribution to theoretical research on international business in an emerging market.

D o service provider efforts to educate customers influence customer outcomes? We analyze the outcome of a field experiment executed by a major public cloud infrastructure services provider in 2011. Out of 2,673 customers who adopted the service during the experiment, 366 received a service intervention: an engagement through which the provider offered initial guidance on how to use basic features of the service. Before execution, it was unclear if this proactive customer education would have positive or negative effects on customer retention and demand for technology support. We show the treatment reduces by half the number of customers who churn from the service during the first week. Further, treated customers ask 19.55% fewer questions during the first week of their tenure than the controls. Although the treatment's effects decay within one week, we show that such proactive customer education can have significant economic benefits for the provider. In particular, we find that treated customers increase their accumulated usage of the service by 46.57% in the eight months after sign-up. Finally, we provide evidence that the effects of the treatment are strongest among customers who have less experience with the provider.

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