The conclusion from our meta-analysis is that the addition of radiation therapy to lumpectomy results in an approximately 60% reduction in breast cancer recurrence, no benefit for survival or distant metastases compared to excision alone. Patients with high-grade DCIS lesions and positive margins benefited most from the addition of radiation therapy. It is not yet clear which patients can be successfully treated with lumpectomy alone; until further prospective studies answer this question, radiation should be recommended after lumpectomy for all patients without contraindications.

In the last two decades, far-right populists have formed governments all over the world. However, systematic analyses on how far-right leaders recreate their countries' foreign policy identity are still underdeveloped. In this article, we analyse how far-right populist leaders use their conservative identity-set to align with other right-wing governments and how they use the same conservative repertoire to deal with ideological rivals. More precisely, we argue that these leaders tend to overemphasize a deep conservative identity-set towards other far-right populist governments, something we call ‘thick conservative identity’. This profoundly conservative identity-set is composed of three national role conceptions: anti-globalism, nationalism and anti-foe. However, they do not repeat this identity-set towards ideological rivals, preferring to use a more nuanced and contradictory one, something we call ‘thin conservative identity’. The trigger of such difference is the anticipated mutual expectation of conservatism between Ego and Alter, in which Ego mimics Alter's deep conservatism. We use Jair Bolsonaro's alignment with Donald Trump and Bolsonaro's relationship with China as illustrative cases. We use the main concepts of role theory to understand both how conservative alignments are created and how far-right governments deal with ideological rivals.

Background: Brain metastases (BM) are the most common form of intracranial cancer. The incidence of BM seems to have increased over the past decade. Recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) of data from three Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) trials (1200 patients) has allowed three prognostic groups to be identified. More recently a simplified stratification system that uses the evaluation of three main prognostics factors for radiosurgery in BM was developed.

This paper analyses public opinion during the João Goulart government in Brazil (1961-1964), focusing on public perceptions on domestic and foreign policies. We employ a recently declassified public opinion survey conducted on behalf of United States Information Agency (USIA) in urban areas. We found that the Brazilian public opinion was somewhat coherent, supporting redistributive reforms domestically and a neutralist approach in foreign affairs.

Can electoral incentives mitigate racial and class prejudices toward underrepresented groups? We use a pair of large-scale field experiments to investigate the responsiveness of Brazilian legislative candidates to information requests from fictitious voters before and after the 2010 elections. Our panel study design allows us to examine how politicians' electoral incentives and prejudices jointly affect their responsiveness to voters with randomly assigned socioeconomic and partisan characteristics. Distinguishing between prejudiced and strategic discrimination in responsiveness, we find that socioeconomically privileged and competitive candidates are equally responsive to underrepresented voters in advance of the election, yet less responsive once in office. At the same time, elections can create incentives for aspiring legislators to be responsive to underrepresented and marginalized groups, especially when electoral institutions facilitate the political participation of these marginalized classes. In sum, the electoral connection may motivate office-seeking politicians to be responsive to voters they would otherwise ignore. We provide insights into this question by reporting the results of a pair of field experiments in Brazil. Our two field experiments involved contacting more than 7,000 politicians competing at the state and federal levels immediately before the October 2010 elections, and again about

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The main goal of this dissertation is to understand the building of bureaucratic autonomy among international financial organizations. The specific goal is to understand why the World Bank has reached more bureaucratic autonomy than the International Monetary Fund regardless the fact that both have similar institutional structures. We believe that the reason for such difference is a more diverse expertise of the World Bank compared to the IMF. We claim that a more diverse bureaucracy increases the likelihood of coalition formation with NGOs. Such coalitions aim to support policies that are important for both the bureaucracy and the NGO's. Consequently, they increase the costs for both State intervention and State control over the organization. The higher costs of intervention and control allow bureaucrats to act more freely according to their interests. Hence, our hypothesis is the following: the more diverse the bureaucratic expertise, the more likely is the formation of coalitions between bureaucracy and NGOs, and the greater the costs for State control and intervention. Higher intervention and control costs, in turn, increase bureaucratic autonomy. We use mainly qualitative research methods with some descriptive statistics.he Washington Post: NYT, The

The dose delivered by in vivo 3-D external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) was verified with L-alanine/electron spin resonance (ESR) dosimetry for patients diagnosed with gynaecological cancer. Measurements were performed with an X-band ESR spectrometer. Dosemeters were positioned inside the vaginal cavity with the assistance of an apparatus specially designed for this study. Previous phantom studies were performed using the same conditions as in the in vivo treatment. Four patients participated in this study during 20-irradiation sessions, giving 220 dosemeters to be analysed. The doses were determined with the treatment planning system, providing dose confirmation. The phantom study resulted in a deviation between -2.5 and 2.1 %, and for the in vivo study a deviation between -9.2 and 14.2 % was observed. In all cases, the use of alanine with ESR was effective for dose assessment, yielding results consistent with the values set forth in the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) reports.