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Background: The tumor, nodes and metastasis (TNM) classification and stage grouping have been updated in the 8th edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) melanoma staging manual. However, restaging all the previous cases are not recommended.Aims: The aims of the study were to investigate the necessity of restaging Korean melanoma patients staged by the previous edition of the AJCC manual.Methods: Differences in the staging criteria of the 7th and 8th editions of the AJCC manual were identified. The staging of 276 primary melanomas from January 2011 to December 2018 was classified by both 7th and 8th editions of the manual and their differences were compared.Results: Staging by 7th and 8th edition of the AJCC manual differed in 64 cases (23.2%). The pathological prognostic staging changed in 35 (12.7%), and 29 (10.5%) had changes in only TNM classification but not the pathological staging. None of the patients needed additional sentinel lymph node biopsy or systemic treatment as a result of restaging. Additional counseling was needed for the patients, because melanoma-specific survival was increased in the 8th edition.Limitations: This is a retrospective study with relatively small number of patients at a single tertiary center in Korea.Conclusion: Assessment of the need for additional sentinel lymph node biopsy or systemic treatment is recommended because of the latest changes in the AJCC melanoma staging manual. Although the restaging of previously staged melanomas is not significantly needed in our patients, still the differences in TNM classification and/or pathological prognostic staging suggest the need to separately recognize the patients previously staged by 7th edition and recently staged by 8th edition. Careful counseling about melanoma-specific survival is needed for Asian patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1992 National Energy Policy Act (NEPA) intensified competition in the electric utility industry by allowing nonutility generators to produce and sell power in wholesale energy markets. Congress expected NEPA to lead to improved operating efficiencies by substituting market forces for regulation. A data set that is unique to the utility industry allows us to test how and whether utility firms reallocated resources to improve efficiencies and, more important for this study, whether CEO compensation changed in accordance with agency theory predictions that CEO compensation would become more incentive-based and more equity-based in the competitive operating environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of September 11, 2001, have led us to rethink the importance of public service and public-sector employees' commitment. In previous research, we argued that employee commitment is a construct comprising three dimensions: commitment to the boss, to the work group, and to the organization. However, this characterization cannot explain the behavior of public employees on September 11. For this article, we argue that employee commitment is a construct that comprises four dimensions: With the help of identity theory, there is reason to include commitment to a job as part of the commitment construct. Based on an analysis of an existing data set, we find that firefighters identified themselves as committed to their job, which they viewed as an honorable profession that performs a valuable service to the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the learning styles of Singaporean students and compares the findings with two previous studies based on United States samples. Researchers in the study measured each type of learning using 12 items in the inventory and totaled the scores for these items to calculate the overall score for each type of learning. They used a multivariate analysis of variance to determine whether the scores for the four types of learning were significantly different from each other. It is hypothesized that students who major in different subjects would have different learning styles, they first tested for the effects of subject background. If these effects proved to be significant, we planned to make disciplines the unit of analysis rather than treating the respondents as an undifferentiated category. They calculated the subjects' average dimensional scores and used them as the intersection points in a learning style grid. Each individual's learning style was established by plotting his or her scores along the two dimensions of the grid. They ascertained the learning style that was most prevalent in each discipline, using the average dimensional scores of the discipline.

Abstract: Knowledge-assisted visualization has been a fast growing field because it directly integrates and utilizes domain knowledge to produce effective data visualization. However, most existing knowledge-assisted visualization applications focus on integrating domain knowledge that is tailored only for specific analytical tasks. This reflects not only the different understandings of what “knowledge” is in visualization, but also the difficulties in generalizing and reapplying knowledge to new problems or domains. In this paper, we differentiate knowledge into two types, tacit and explicit, and suggest four conversion processes between them (internalization, externalization, collaboration, and combination) that could be included in knowledge-assisted visualizations. We demonstrate the applications of these four processes in a bridge visual analytical system for the US Department of Transportation and discuss their roles and utilities in real-life scenarios. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]