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Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess the association of concomitant carcinoma in situ (CIS) with disease recurrence and cancer-related death in a multi-institutional series of patients treated with radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) for upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). Methods We collected retrospectively the data of 772 patients treated with RNU and ipsilateral bladder cuff excision at 9 international institutions in Asia, Europe, and Northern America from 1987 to 2008. Surgical specimens were processed according to standard pathologic procedures at each institution. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression models addressed time to recurrence and cancer-specific mortality. Results Concomitant CIS was present in 88 patients (11.4%); it was associated with more advanced pathologic stage, higher tumor grade, and presence of lymphovascular invasion (all P -values < 0.05). The five-year recurrence-free (RFS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) estimates were 74.4 and 76.3%, respectively, in the absence of CIS compared with 56.4 and 59.9%, respectively, in the presence of CIS ( P -values < 0.0001 for RFS and 0.002 for CSS, respectively). On multivariable Cox regression analyses, concomitant CIS was an independent predictor of both RFS (hazard ratio (HR): 1.9; P  = 0.007) and CSS (HR: 1.7, P  = 0.048). Similar findings were reconfirmed in subgroups analyses limited to T2, organ confined, and N0/Nx UTUC, or patients who did not receive adjuvant chemotherapy. Conclusions Presence of concomitant CIS is an independent predictor of both RFS and CSS in patients treated with RNU for UTUC. This information may be useful in risk stratification of UTUC patients for follow-up and additional therapy.

Shared understanding has been claimed to be crucial for effective collaboration of researchers and practitioners. Heterogeneity in work groups further strengthens the challenge of integrating understanding among diverse group members. Nevertheless, shared understanding and especially its formation are largely unexplored. After conceptualizing shared understanding, we apply collaboration engineering to derive a validated collaboration process module (compound thinkLet \"MindMerger\") to systematically support heterogeneous work groups in building shared understanding. We conduct a large-scale action research study at a German car manufacturing company. The evaluation indicates that with the use of MindMerger, team learning behaviors occur, and shared understanding of the tasks in complex work processes increases among experienced diverse tool and dye makers. Thus, the validated compound thinkLet MindMerger provides designers of collaborative work practices with a reusable module of activities to solve clarification issues in group work early on. Furthermore, findings from the field study contribute to the conceptualization of the largely unexplored phenomenon of shared understanding and its formation.

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments (VEs) are collaboration platforms where group members are represented as avatars and interact in a customizable simulated world. Research from cognitive psychology has shown that it is possible to manipulate nonconscious cognition and behavior through “priming,” a well-known phenomenon in which words and images are used to activate desired concepts in participants’ minds. Our goal in this was to investigate whether priming during the task execution (called contextual priming) using 3D objects in the VE can improve brainstorming performance. To investigate this, we conducted two studies. The first used priming objects specifically related to the task topic and the second used priming objects related to creativity, in general. Compared to VEs without 3D priming objects, our results show that when groups brainstormed in the VEs designed with 3D priming objects, they generated better quality ideas as well as a greater breadth and depth of ideas. Thus, the 3D priming stimuli incorporated in a VE enhances brainstorming, which indicates that the design of VE has a direct effect on team brainstorming performance. Our results also show that target concept activation and task absorption act as the underlying mechanisms, partially mediating the relationship between the design of the VE (i.e., the presence or absence of priming objects) and performance outcomes.

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of vertical and shared e-leadership approaches on self-regulated learning skills, motivation and group collaboration processes (group cohesion, group atmosphere, and group transactive memory system) in online project-based learning. The study was carried out according to a factorial experimental design (2 × 2) and mixed methods approach was used. The study was conducted on 41 teacher candidates randomly assigned to vertical and shared e-leadership groups. As a data collection tool; Self-Regulated Learning Scale, Motivation Scale, Transactive Memory Scale, Group Atmosphere Scale, Group Cohesion Scale, and a semi-structured interview form were used. Research findings indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between vertical and shared e-leadership groups in terms of self-regulated learning skills, motivation and group collaboration processes. In other words, both leadership approaches were found to be useful in the management of groups in online project-based learning. The qualitative findings of the research reveal that there are some advantages and disadvantages in both approaches. In this context, the shared e-leadership approach is determined to be useful especially in terms of fostering the sense of belonging to the group by sharing the leadership role within the group, ensuring a fair distribution of responsibility and workload among the group members. The vertical e-leadership approach was found to be useful in providing communication, cooperation and coordination among the group members thanks to the group leader, ensuring the planned progress of the group works.

The complex 3-dimensional (3D) nature of anatomical abnormalities in congenital heart disease (CHD) necessitates multidisciplinary group discussions centered around the review of medical images such as magnetic resonance imaging. Currently, group viewings of medical images are constrained to 2-dimensional (2D) cross-sectional displays of 3D scans. However, 2D display methods could introduce additional challenges since they require physicians to accurately reconstruct the images mentally into 3D anatomies for diagnosis, staging, and planning of surgery or other therapies. Virtual reality (VR) software may enhance diagnosis and care of CHD via 3D visualization of medical images. Yet, present-day VR developments for medicine lack the emphasis on multiuser collaborative environments, and the effect of displays and level of immersion for diagnosing CHDs have not been studied. The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the diagnostic accuracies and preferences of various display systems, including the conventional 2D display and a novel group VR software, in group discussions of CHD. A total of 22 medical trainees consisting of 1 first-year, 10 second-year, 4 third-year, and 1 fourth-year residents and 6 medical students, who volunteered for the study, were formed into groups of 4 to 5 participants. Each group discussed three diagnostic cases of CHD with varying structural complexity using conventional 2D display and group VR software. A group VR software, Cardiac Review 3D, was developed by our team using the Unity engine. By using different display hardware, VR was classified into nonimmersive and full-immersive settings. The discussion time, diagnostic accuracy score, and peer assessment were collected to capture the group and individual diagnostic performances. The diagnostic accuracies for each participant were scored by two experienced cardiologists following a predetermined answer rubric. At the end of the study, all participants were provided a survey to rank their preferences of the display systems for performing group medical discussions. Diagnostic accuracies were highest when groups used the full-immersive VR compared with the conventional and nonimmersive VR (χ =9.0, P=.01) displays. Differences between the display systems were more prominent with increasing case complexity (χ =14.1, P<.001) where full-immersive VR had accuracy scores that were 54.49% and 146.82% higher than conventional and nonimmersive VR, respectively. The diagnostic accuracies provided by the two cardiologists for each participant did not statistically differ from each other (t=-1.01, P=.31). The full-immersive VR was ranked as the most preferred display for performing group CHD discussions by 68% of the participants. The most preferred display system among medical trainees for visualizing medical images during group diagnostic discussions is full-immersive VR, with a trend toward improved diagnostic accuracy in complex anatomical abnormalities. Immersion is a crucial feature of displays of medical images for diagnostic accuracy in collaborative discussions.

The transformation of technology and collaboration methods driven by the e-government system forces government employees to reconsider their daily workflow and collaboration with colleagues. Despite the extensive existing knowledge of technology usage and collaboration, there are limitations in explaining the synergy between technology usage and group collaboration in achieving agile response from the perspective of government employees, particularly in the e-government setting. To address these challenges, this study provides a holistic understanding of the successful pathway to agile response in e-governance from the perspective of government employees. This study explores a dual path to achieve agile response in e-governance through qualitative analysis, involving 34 in-depth semi-structured interviews with government employees in several government sectors in China. By employing three rounds of coding processes and adopting Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM), this study identifies the five-layer mechanisms leading to agile response in e-governance, considering both government employee technology usage and group collaboration perspectives. Findings of this study provides suggestions and implications for achieving agile response in e-governance.

Given two operations ∗ and ∘ on a set S , an operation ⋆ on S is said to be a collaboration between ∗ and ∘ if for all a , b ∈ S , a ⋆ b ∈ { a ∗ b , a ∘ b } . Another term for collaborations is two-option operations. We are interested in learning what associative collaborations of two given operations ∗ and ∘ there may be. We do not require that ∗ and ∘ themselves be associative. For this project, as an initial experiment, we consider Plus-Minus operations (i.e. collaborations between addition and subtraction on an abelian group) and Plus-Times operations (i.e. collaborations between the addition and multiplication operations on a semiring.) Our study of Plus-Minus operations focuses on the additive integers but extends to ordered groups. For Plus Times operations, we make some headway in the case of the semiring of natural numbers. We produce an exhaustive list of associative collaborations between the usual addition and multiplication on the natural numbers N . The Plus-Times operations we found are all examples of a type of construction which we define here and that we call augmentations by multidentities . An augmentation by multidentities combines two separate magmas A and B to create another, A ( B ), having A ⊔ B as underlying set, and in such a way that the elements of B act as identities over those of A . Hence, B consists of a sort of multiple identities (explaining the moniker multidentities.) When A and B are both semigroups then so is A ( B ). Understanding the connection between certain collaborations and augmentation by multidenties removes, in several cases, the need for cumbersome computations to verify associativity. A final section discusses connections between group collaborations and skew braces.

With the development of big data and communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) has permeated all aspects of smart cities. IoT smart city application scenarios are distributed with a large number of edge servers to accomplish large-scale data collection, transmission, analysis, and decision-making. However, in many emergency services, network communication faces data congestion and insufficient computational resources for nodes. To alleviate the situation that some nodes operate efficiently with insufficient cache and resource shortages, edge servers need to collaborate to handle tasks together and form an edge service community to realize fast message reception, response, and processing. Based on this, this study proposes an optimized edge server group collaboration architecture strategy in IoT smart cities application (ESGCA). It is based on the coalition to accomplish the optimal edge service community generation to collaborate on the messaging task. We design a multivariate discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm based on the discrete nearest past position update policy to improve the search utility. The algorithm can effectively solve the problem that current algorithms are prone to falling into local optimal solutions, long running times, and instability in the case of too many transmission tasks and edge nodes. Experimental results show that in the environment of insufficient node cache space and urgent transmission tasks, our ESGCA method can equalize the energy consumption of nodes, conserve computational resources, reduce the message transmission delay and the data loss rate.

Technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry learning has gained a firm position in curricula across disciplines and educational settings and has become particularly pervasive in science classrooms. However, understanding of the teacher’s role in this context is limited. This study addresses the real-time shifts in focus and distribution of teachers’ guidance and support of different student groups during in-person computer-supported collaborative inquiry learning in science classrooms. Teachers’ self-perceptions of their guidance and affect were supplemented with students’ self-reported affect. A mixed-methods approach using video analyses and questionnaire data revealed differences between teacher guidance and support associated with teacher perceptions and group outcomes. Groups’ prior science competence was not found to have an effect on teacher guidance and support, rather the teachers guided the groups they perceived as motivated and willing to collaborate. Teacher affect was compounded by student affect, suggesting that consideration of the reciprocal perceptions of teachers and students is necessary in order to understand the teachers’ role in collaborative learning.