Sorafenib may improve progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the survival benefit is short lived and survivals after progressive disease (PD) have not been well characterized. This study aimed to evaluate the survival predictors of OS and postprogression survival (PPS) in advanced HCC patients receiving sorafenib treatment....

Hedging academic claims has been recognized as one of integral pragmatic features of academic writing in which most EFL academic writers seem to face substantial problems. Explicit instruction has been proposed by some scholars as an effective approach to make EFL writers aware of the importance, different forms, and pragmatic functions of hedging devices some of which are polysemous and polypr...

Pay-for-performance advertising schemes such as pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-sale (PPS) have grown in popularity with the recent advances in digital technologies for targeting advertising and measuring outcomes. However, several publishers still continue to use well-established pay-per-impression (PPI) payment schemes. Given the choice of multiple payment schemes PPI, PPC, and PPS our study ...

The use of politeness strategies can help interlocutors promote and/or maintain social harmony in telephone interactions. Using the Rapport Management Model proposed by Spencer-Oatey (2008), this study aimed primarily to reinvestigate the closing structures of telephone conversation (hereafter abbreviated as TC) in Persian and to discover the common politeness strategies used by native Persian ...

Five sampling schemes for price index construction one cut-off sampling technique and four probability proportional to size (pps) methods are evaluated by comparing their performance on a homescan market research data set across 21 months for each of the 13 COICOP food groups. Classifications are derived for each of the food groups and the population index value is used as a reference to derive...

The number of global precipitation datasets (PPs) is on the rise and they are commonly used for hydrological applications. A comprehensive evaluation their performance in modeling required to improve performance. This study comprehensively evaluates eight widely PPs by comparing with gauge-observed a large catchments. These include Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), Climate Hazards...

background: pragmatics is appropriate use of language across a variety of social contexts  that  provides accurate interpretation   of   intentions.   the   occurrence    of   the right hemisphere lesions can interfere with pragmatic abilities, and particularly with the processing of nonliteral speech acts. methods: since the objective of this study was to assess different  aspects of pragmatic...