Arbitrary Borders Research Articles

1980 SONRASI ÇAĞDAŞ TÜRK SANATINDA DİSİPLİNLERARASILIK VE DİSİPLİNLERAŞIRILIK

The coup of 1980 in Turkey was considered a negative impact of effective and long-term changes. Everything, including the historical process, political, economic, social and cultural phenomena, as well as street and art concepts, has been shaped before and after the 80s. The first half of the 80s became a period for Turkish art when works were published and bought and sold as commodities. After 1980, there was a major break in the field of visual arts, both in reviewing the subjects discussed and in the forms of creation. Artists who worked on the distribution of arbitrary border lines between political, economic, social or cultural products until the 80s gained a freer understanding of art in the 80s. With these understandings, after the 1990s, Turkish artists have signed practices that are open to diversity in art and are increasingly appreciated as interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary. This diversity has been provided with opportunities in the interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary period in which the art environment has been cultivated along social and cultural mobility such as global production, freedom, technological developments and international markets. Expanding the interdisciplinary and extreme expressions of disciplines within the scope of the research and examining the selected examples in a more comprehensive manner, revealing the results that Bitcoin has created in the last period and afterwards. Keywords: Turkish Art, Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary

Prostate Cancer in New York City: Impact of Neighborhood Level Social Determinants of Care

Social determinants of health may impact stage and aggressiveness of cancer presentation. As neighborhoods may influence adjacent neighborhoods across often porous and arbitrary borders, an analysis that measures the spatial impact of these social determinants provides a more holistic evaluation than an analysis that treats each neighborhood as independent and unrelated units. In this paper, we study the impact of sociodemographic and environmental characteristics of neighborhoods on cancer presentation in New York City, using both patient-level analysis and spatial autoregression on the New York State Public Access Cancer Epidemiology Data (NYSPACED) and the NYC Open neighborhood-level dataset. Two outcomes of interest were chosen: Presentation with high grade prostate cancer and presentation with distant disease. We performed logistic regression on individual patient level analysis. We created generalized cross sectional autoregressive spatial regression models to assess direct and indirect (via adjacent neighborhoods) impact of neighborhood level independent variables. We analyzed the following neighborhood level variables: 1) Percent population that was Black, 2) Percent population living in poverty, 3) Percent population obese based on self-reported height and weight, 4) Percent who report being current smokers, 5) Percent who report eating one or more servings of fruits and/or vegetables in the last day, and 6) annual average micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air. We identified 95,749 patients diagnosed with prostate adenocarcinoma in New York City from 2001-2018. With reported Black race as the referent value, White patients were less likely to present with high grade disease (OR 0.92 [95% CI 0.89-0.95]). Similarly, self-identified White patients were also less likely to present with distant disease (vs. Black, OR 0.76 [95% CI 0.72-0.81]). Spatial autoregression models revealed no neighborhood level variables associated with direct or indirect impacts on presentation with high grade disease. However, there were several variables initially associated with distant disease presentation, including race, poverty, obesity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and air pollution. However, only neighborhood poverty and obesity levels continued to have significant direct impact on presentation with distant disease when included in the regression model with percent Black residents. In conclusion, we discovered a strong association between Race and poverty with the likelihood of presenting with advanced prostate cancer, at both the individual and neighborhood levels. Geographically targeted outreach to improve prostate cancer screening and access to care should be focused on Black men and neighborhoods with high levels of poverty.

Prostate cancer in New York City: impact of neighborhood level social determinants of care.

Social determinants of health may impact prostate cancer presentation. Since neighborhoods may influence adjacent neighborhoods across often porous and arbitrary borders, we performed generalized spatial two stage least squares cross sections regression to assess direct and indirect (via adjacent neighborhoods) impact of neighborhood level independent variables. Using the New York State Public Access Cancer Epidemiology Data and the NYC Open neighborhood-level dataset, we discovered a direct association between Race and poverty with the likelihood of presenting with advanced prostate cancer. There were no indirect impacts of neighborhood variables, indicating the need to directly target neighborhoods to improve outcomes.

Bordering Ladakh, Again: From Ecological Flows to Cartographic Competition

ABSTRACT In August 2019, the Indian government dissolved the state of Jammu and Kashmir, designating its Northern region as the Union Territory of Ladakh. Two months later, it released a new Political Map of India on which Ladakh was drawn as one of India’s largest territories. Like most representations of territory on political maps, the claims made were simplified. India’s rendering did not acknowledge that Pakistan and China administered much of Ladakh’s territory; nor did it represent the region’s intricate, multi-ethnic population, topography, or ecosystems. This article approaches the construction of this political map historically. Rather than using regional history to bolster any state’s claims, we argue that the confusion over the map reflects a disconnect between the abstractions of state territory and the realities of high-altitude socio-ecologies. We compare the socio-ecologically and climatically embedded bordering practices of pre-territorial Tibetan–Ladakhi states outlined in local language sources with the abstract understanding of territorialised borders that the new map represents. The Tibetan–Ladakhi approach, which concentrated on pathways and mountain-pass checkpoints, allowed for social and ecological flows around and through these checkpoints. By contrast, the current bordering regimes have bifurcated communities, demanded fixedness, and required three large armies to defend arbitrary borders.

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Does mass repression have a long-term economic legacy, and if so, what explains persistence? I argue repression can undermine development by delimiting human capital. I study the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The regime implemented a campaign of violence to reorganize society, yet governing elites varied across the communist ideological spectrum. I exploit an arbitrary border that allocated villages to either the loyalist Mok or the relatively moderate Sy in Kampong Speu province. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find villages in the more extremist Southwest zone are poorer today compared with villages in the adjacent West zone, and had lower human capital immediately after the regime. Exposure to more intense repression shapes labor markets and child health, explaining intergenerational persistence. I find no conclusive evidence for other persistence channels. My findings add a novel pathway to the library of mechanisms which explain why historical coercion undermines development.

Axisymmetric surface shape correction of optical elements by a wide-aperture ion beam.

Methods for calculating the process of axisymmetric surface shape correction with a wide-aperture ion beam through a forming diaphragm for optical elements with a round and arbitrary border shape are presented. In the case of circular optical elements, an approach based on the separation of the axisymmetric component of the surface shape error from its decomposition by Zernike polynomials is used. In the case of optical elements with an arbitrary border shape (not round), an algorithm for searching the axisymmetric component of the shape error is proposed. The search criterion is to minimize the residual volume of the deviation of the surface shape from the calculated one. The proposed algorithm makes it possible to separate the axisymmetric component of the shape error relative to an arbitrary axis, including one located outside the workpiece. The results of surface treatment in accordance with the above methods are presented.

Leveraging Machine Perfusion to Ameliorate Geographic Disparities in Organ Allocation

Leveraging Machine Perfusion to Ameliorate Geographic Disparities in Organ Allocation

Black History in Atlantic Canada: A Bibliography

Black History in Atlantic Canada: A Bibliography Suzanne Morton (bio) and Donald Wright (bio) By definition, a bibliography is a work in progress and this bibliography is no exception. Casting a wide net, it also reflects the arbitrary borders between history and its sister disciplines and the equally arbitrary distinction between published and unpublished. We know that there will be important items missing, we thank our generous colleagues who pointed us to entries that we had missed, and we acknowledge that our bibliography builds on previously published bibliographies. On that note, see George Elliott Clarke, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002) and Flora Blizzard Francis, A Black Canadian Bibliography (Ottawa: Pan-African Publications, 2000). Yet what follows testifies to the remarkable volume of work that has been done on Black history in Atlantic Canada. And we very much hope that it fosters more research. There is research to be done on cases of 18th-century domestic enslaved labour in Newfoundland and the use of West Indian enslaved labour in the banks’ fishery. We also need to know a great deal more about the 19th century throughout the entire region. Finally, we hope that oral historians will record the memories and lives of Black people in the region who struggled to find a measure of political and economic equality across the second half of the 20th century because if this bibliography records Black history, it also reveals Black presence. Books Abucar, Mohamed. Struggle for Development: The Black Communities of North and East Preston and Cherry Brook, Nova Scotia, 1784–1987. Dartmouth, NS: McCurdy Printing, 1988. African Canadian Caucus. Justice Reform and the Black Community of Nova Scotia: The Case of Donald Marshall, Jr. Halifax: African-Canadian Caucus of Nova Scotia, 1992. Africville Genealogical Society. The Spirit of Africville. With contributions by Donald Clairmont, Stephen Kimber, Bridgal Pachai, and Charles Saunders. Halifax: Formac Press, 1992. Africville Genealogy Society, Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, and National Film Board of Canada (Atlantic Centre). Africville: A Spirit That Lives On. Halifax: Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, 1989. Bauld, Florence L. Bear River: Untapped Roots, Moving Upwards. Halifax: Russell K. Grosse, 1997. Beaton Institute of Cape Breton Studies. Inventory of Ethnic Resources in Nova Scotia: Blacks. Sydney, NS: Beaton Institute of Cape Breton Studies, 1984. Bernard, Wanda Thomas. Fighting for Change: Black Social Workers in Nova Scotia. East Lawrencetown, NS: Pottersfield Press, 2006. Best, Carrie. That Lonesome Road: The Autobiography of Carrie M. Best. New Glasgow, NS: Clarion Publishing, 1977. Bishop, Henry, and Frank Stanley Boyd. A Black Community Album Before 1930: Exhibited at the Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, 8 April-8 May 1983 with the Exhibition “The Past in Focus.” Halifax and Dartmouth: Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and Black Cultural Centre, 1983. Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia. Juba’lee: A Celebration of Black Culture in Nova Scotia. Over 300 Years of History. Halifax: Society for Protection and Preservation of Black Culture in Nova Scotia, 2000. ———. Nova Scotia Black Professional Boxers: Past and Present. Dartmouth, NS: Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, 1989. ———. Three Nova Scotia Black Churches: African Orthodox [by] Joyce Ruck, African Methodist Episcopal [by] Edward Matwawana, Disney Chapel/Rose of Sharon Assembly [by] Carolyn Smith (A Collection of Historical Essays). Cherry Brook, NS: Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, 1990. Browne, Joan. South-Western Nova Scotia Black Communities. Halifax: Dalhousie University Institute of Public Affairs, 1978. Burrows, E.H. Captain Owen of the African Survey: The Hydrographic Surveys of Admiral W.F.W. Owen on the Coast of Africa and the Great Lakes of Canada, His Fight Against the African Slave Trade, His Life in Campobello Island, New Brunswick, 1774–1857. Rotterdam: A.A. Balkerna, 1979. Campbell, Mavis Christine. Back to Africa: George Ross and the Maroons from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Trenton, NS: Africa World Press, 1993. ———. Nova Scotia and the Fighting Maroons: A Documentary History. Studies in Third World Societies, Publication No. 41. Williamsburg, VA: College of William and Mary Department of Anthropology, 1990. Caplan, Ron, ed. Pearleen Oliver: Canada’s Black Crusader for Civil Rights. Wreck Cove, NS: Breton...

Legal viable options to incessant closure of Nigeria’s international borders

ABSTRACT Just like in 1984 and 2003 when Nigeria’s borders were closed to the neighbouring countries, the closure of Nigeria’s land border since August 2019 which is intended to combat smuggling of goods and to boost manufacturing and agricultural production has been subject of controversy. This paper observes that although the border closure may have brought some advantages in the area of increased revenue, numerous seizures of illegal materials and encourages local production of rice, the appraisal of the legal, economic, political and security implications however reveal that despite the perceived advantages, it may not be the best option. It concedes that the closure of the Nigerian borders is an exercise within its sovereign authority; but however, notes that the effect of an arbitrary border closure without sufficient notice adversely affects the interests of genuine businessmen as this amounts to a breach of their fundamental right of doing legitimate business across the border. It recommends viable legal options which the government can explore in line with standard global practice such as systemic efforts to boost the economy, by ensuring effective control, management, monitoring and protection of the border. It calls for regional integration and less burdensome procedures without undermining national interests.

Geographic Variation in the Availability of Deceased Donor Kidneys per Wait-Listed Candidate in the United States

Geographic Variation in the Availability of Deceased Donor Kidneys per Wait-Listed Candidate in the United States

Visualizing Lake Ontario through the Installations of Bonnie Devine and Nicole Clouston1

This article explores the efficacy and physicality of Lake Ontario through its lack of a border vista, a physical feature in much of the rest of the country that contributes to the geographic imaginary of Canada. Within this context, the article discusses two art installations––Battle for the Woodlands (2014-2015) by Bonnie Devine and A Portrait of Lake Ontario (2017) by Nicole Clouston––both of which engage with the integrated, material, and lively watershed of Lake Ontario. “Vital materiality” and decolonial literatures are also engaged with to show how the installations reaffirm the efficacy and physicality of Lake Ontario and the ways in which it stands as a resistant space in relation to the colonial nation-state of Canada with its arbitrary borders.

A Region in Retrospective: The History of Atlantic Canada, 2009-2019

A Region in Retrospective:The History of Atlantic Canada, 2009-2019 Lachlan MacKinnon (bio) REGION IS A SLIPPERY IDEA. From its earliest iteration at the turn of the century, David Russell Jack's magazine Acadiensis concerned itself with the study of the Maritimes from a geographical perspective. With the revival of the journal in 1971, Newfoundland and Labrador were introduced as key areas of interest for scholars of the now-expanded Atlantic region. In the journal's first essay, entitled "Acadiensis II," Philip Bucker describes its focus as encompassing "not only the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland, but also Gaspésia and Maine with further extensions into Central Canada and Northern New England."1 The impetus for a journal dedicated to this area emerged out of a historiographical suspicion of nationally focused historical narratives that ignored regional concerns and produced a collective antipathy towards the sense, famously expressed by Frank Underhill, that "nothing, of course, ever happens" in the Maritimes.2 The assumption of a coherent Atlantic region that conforms with the boundaries of political geography has also inspired calls for political action. Jack, in the earliest years of the original Acadiensis, was a proponent of Maritime Union.3 Ernie Forbes argued in 1979 that the Maritime Rights Movement, the regional flavour of the social gospel, and working class activism in places like industrial Cape Breton revealed a radical sense of regionalism that emboldened various forms of resistance to structural decline.4 This vision of the Atlantic region has also invigorated calls for political action from more conservative perspectives. A future union of the region's provinces, whether under a Maritime Union or Atlantic Union model, would – under this line of argument – reduce wasteful inefficiencies that go hand-in-hand with operating three (or four) distinct provinces. Why bother maintaining such [End Page 230] arbitrary borders, when – in the words of Conservative Senator Stephen Greene – "provincial boundaries are artificial.… They divide a group of people … who have the same, or very similar, ethnicity and histories, and who have very common problems and aspirations?"5 Whatever the fate of such schemes, their continued relevance lends veracity to the assertion that Atlantic Canadians have "increasingly come to share an angle of vision regarding the world they inhabit."6 Since its founding in 1971, the revived Acadiensis has served as a forum for scholars to reflect upon how the region has been expressed through various areas of study. Class, gender, and race were, of course, explored – with an implicit understanding that their expression in the region is distinguished, in some way, from the broader Canadian experience. In 2000, Ian McKay published his modestly titled "A Note on 'Region' in Writing the History of Atlantic Canada," wherein he reflects upon the historical usage of the term at the turn of the 21st century. Recognizing five general themes, he identifies shortcomings in each and calls for regional historians to question "what 'region' – this 'region' we construct in the present and in our heads, to capture the elusive patterns of the past – may come to mean in our work and in our practice."7 Based upon a close reading of Acadiensis and a survey of monographs published on subjects germane to "the Atlantic region" between 2009 and 2019, it is clear that the most transformative work currently being done in the field has responded to this question originally posed by McKay. This is visible in a number of areas, but for the purposes of this reflection I will focus on just three: the re-consideration of "region" as a contested space that encompasses Indigenous and other ways of knowing historical landscapes and places; the recognition that Atlantic Canada has been naturalized as a category of analysis both due to its position vis-à-vis other geographies of Canadian and international capitalism and as a result of periodization within our fields of study; and the utilization of the Atlantic region as a lens through which it becomes possible to understand environmental change in the longue durée. [End Page 231] One of the most significant ways that our consideration of region has opened up in the last ten years is through the work of Indigenous and settler scholars who...

PatchSwapper: A novel real-time single-image editing technique by region-swapping

While many image composition and synthesis techniques have been proposed, neither existing work nor professional image editing softwares such as Adobe Photoshop© provide a program explicitly for the task of realistically swapping regions within a single image. In this paper, we present an easy-to-use image-editing tool explicitly for that purpose, named as PatchSwapper. Users can simply determine the centre and radius of a pair of candidate regions or specify arbitrary borders by sketches; then, the swapping step is automatically and optimally executed. A graph-based approach is designed to find the optimal borders of two irregular regions to avoid generating visible seams. We use this approach to handle both non-transformed and transformed patches. For non-transformed cases, we not only achieve realtime performance with CPU multi-thread implementation, we also provide a location recommendation algorithm to help users find the appropriate exchangeable areas. For transformed patches, our method searches for the optimal transformation to generate interesting appearance changes on both the source and target locations. A Poisson color blending is performed onto the stitched patches. Overall the proposed approach is not only suitable for swapping image objects of any shapes but also for some other applications, e.g., image completion and composition.The experiments demonstrate that common images often contain potentially exchangeable areas and that large content variations can be obtained by simply swapping their locations.

The Return of the Empire: The Ukraine Crisis in the Historical Perspective

This essay describes how Ukraine, the second-largest post-Soviet republic, has played a crucial role in preventing successive Russian attempts to reintegrate the "near abroad" in economic, military, and political terms. Plokhii is clear that what we see today is not a reenactment of the Cold War or a new version of the Great Game, a superpower rivalry that played itself out in Central Asia in the nineteenth century and in East Central Europe through most of the twentieth century, because the United States and the European Union are at best reluctant participants in the current crisis. However, the need to respond to Russian aggression comes from the simple fact that such blatant violations of bilateral and multilateral agreements signed by that country have shaken and continue to threaten the foundations of the post-World War II and post-Cold War political order, raising the specter of arbitrary border revisions, regional conflicts, and global instability.

The Powerful Method of Characteristics Module in Advanced Neutronics Lattice Code KYLIN-2

Due to powerful geometry treatment capability, method of characteristics (MOC) currently becomes one of the best method to solve neutron transport equation. In MOC method, boundary condition treatment, complex geometry representation, and advanced acceleration method are the key techniques to develop a powerful MOC code to solve complex problem. In this paper, we developed a powerful MOC module, which can treat different boundary conditions with two methods. For problems with special border shapes and boundary condition, such as rectangle, 1/8 of square, hexagon, 1/3 of hexagon, 1/6 of hexagon problems with reflection, rotation, and translation boundary condition, the MOC module adopts periodic tracking method, with which rays can return to start point after a certain distance. For problems with general border shapes, the MOC module uses ray prolongation method, which can treat arbitrary border shapes and boundary conditions. Meanwhile, graphic user interface based on computer aided design (CAD) software is developed to generate the geometry description file, in which geometry is represented by “lines and arcs” method. With the graphic user interface, the geometry and mesh can be described and modified correctly and fast. In order to accelerate the MOC transport calculation, the generalized coarse mesh finite difference (GCMFD) is used, which can use irregular coarse mesh diffusion method to accelerate the transport equation. The MOC module was incorporated into advanced neutronics lattice code KYLIN-2, which was developed by Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) and used to simulate the assembly of current pressurized water reactor (PWR) and advanced reactors, to solve the transport equation with multigroup energy structure in cross sections database. The numerical results show that the KYLIN-2 code can be used to calculate 2D neutron transport problems in reactor accurately and fast. In future, the KYLIN-2 code will be released and gradually become the main neutron transport lattice code in NPIC.

The Political Sources of Religious Identification: Evidence from the Burkina Faso–Côte d’Ivoire Border

Under what conditions does religion become a salient social identity? By measuring religious attachment among the people living astride the Burkina Faso–Côte d’Ivoire border in West Africa, an arbitrary boundary that exposes otherwise similar individuals to different political contexts, this article makes a case for the importance of the political environment in affecting the weight that people attach to their religious identities. After ruling out explanations rooted in the proportion of different religious denominations, the degree of secularization and the supply of religious institutions on either side of the border, as well as differences in the degree of religious pluralism at the national level, it highlights the greater exposure of Ivorian respondents to the politicization of religion during Côte d’Ivoire’s recent civil conflict. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the power – and challenges – of exploiting Africa’s arbitrary borders as a source of causal leverage.

Justification by the US and India for their border controls against illegal immigration

ABSTRACTThe US and India have strengthened their borders against illegal immigration. However, the two states have striking differences with respect to their border control methods. The US strengthened its Mexican border through fences and militarization. In sharp contrast, even though India fenced some parts of its border, it has relied on shooting practices which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Bangladeshi immigrants. Drawing upon Narrative Policy Analysis (NPA), this paper identifies patterns in justification strategies regarding border control against illegal immigration in the US and in India. The findings indicate that in the US, border control was justified by the restoration of law at the border. To the contrary, in India, border control was associated with arbitrariness. The majority of Indian policymakers encourage arbitrary border practices by adopting the view that ‘any method’ is legitimate to curb illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

Revisiting legal harmonisation under the Southern African Development Community Treaty: The need to amend the Treaty

International trade is important for economic development across world including in Africa. Even General Assembly of United Nations has recognised that international trade is the primary instrument for economic development. This is true for Africa which continues to struggle to shake off bonds of poverty. In an effort to maximise participation in international trade, African countries have entered into various bilateral and multilateral trading agreements and arrangements with each other and with rest of world. This has culminated in various regional free trade areas and customs unions arrangements. These initiatives aim to promote movement of goods, services, capital and people within continent. However, to promote international trade, it is not adequate for them to merely focus on export promotion initiatives; is also a need to tackle impediments to trade, which includes problem of diversity of The continent's colonial legacy which introduced arbitrary borders and foreign legal traditions has made issue of harmonisation of laws even more imperative. The emergence of various legal harmonisation initiatives at regional level is testimony to need for legal harmonisation within African context. However, despite apparent legal diversity in SADC, there is not much tangible progress towards harmonisation of laws. This raises question whether this is due to lack of political will or whether there is scope for such harmonisation under SADC Treaty. This article analyses Southern African Development Community (SADC) objectives focussing particularly on whether legal harmonisation is achievable under current SADC Treaty framework. It considers question whether current SADC Treaty creates an adequate framework for effective legal harmonisation using regionally adopted community laws. It proposes amendment of SADC Treaty to make legal harmonisation one of SADC's objectives in line with similar initiatives on African continent.

Prognosis of Mecom(EVI1)- rearranged MDS and AML Patients Strongly Depends on Accompanying Molecular Mutations but Not on Blast Counts

Background:MECOM-rearrangements (formerly named EVI1 -rearrangements) are known to be prognostically adverse. Within the WHO classification of 2008, only inv(3)(q21q26.2)/t(3;3)(q21;q26.2)/RPN1-EVI1 were classified as separate entity ("classic"), whereas all other MECOM-rearrangements ("other") were not. In addition, patients (pts) have to be assigned to MDS or AML according to percentage of blasts. As progression from MDS to AML is a continuous process this arbitrary border can be questioned.Aim:To evaluate 1) whether MECOM-rearranged pts, regardless of blast count, show a "secondary-type" mutational profile and whether this differs between different types of MECOM-rearrangements. 2) the prognostic impact of the biological and genetic parameters.Patients and Methods:We here focus on a cohort of 116 newly diagnosed adult pts with MECOM-rearrangements all investigated by cytogenetics, fluorescence in situ hybridization and cytomorphology. In addition, all pts were analyzed for molecular mutations by next generation sequencing using a 18-gene panel including genes frequently mutated in MDS and AML encompassing also those defined by Lindsley et al. as "secondary-type" mutations (mut) in AML, which are highly specific for secondary AML (Blood 2015). Data was available for: ASXL1 (n=104), BCOR (n=101), CBL (n=112), DNMT3A (n=114), EZH2 (n=111), FLT3 -TKD (n=115), IDH1 (n=116), IKZF1 (n=106), KIT (n=115), NRAS (n=113), PTPN11 (n=111), RUNX1 (n=109), SF3B1 (n=113), SRSF2 (n=113), TP53 (n=116), U2AF1 (n=116), WT1 (n=116), and ZRSR2 (n=113). Variants of unknown significance were excluded from statistical analyses (n=16).Results:In our cohort of 116 pts (median age: 66 years, range 21-93) 38 (33%) pts harbored <20% bone marrow blast and therefore were classified as MDS and 78 (67%) ≥20% and therefore were AML. According to WHO classification, 45 (39%) carried "classic" and 71 (61%) "other" MECOM-rearrangements. Most common was inv(3)(q21q26) (n=35; 30%), followed by t(3;21)(q26;q22) (13; 11%), t(3;8)(q26;q24) (12; 10%) and t(2;3)(p14~p21;q26) (11; 10%), t(3;3)(q21;q26) (10; 9%), inv(3)(p24q26) (9; 8%), and t(3;21)(q26;q11) (7; 6%). All others were present in less than 5 cases. We found mut in SF3B1 (27%), NRAS (22%), ASXL1 (18%). PTPN11 and SRSF2 (17% each), RUNX1 (15%), DNMT3A (11%), and TP53 (10%). Mutations in the remaining genes were present in less than 10%. In total, 60% of the pts showed at least one of the "secondary-type" mut. Only nine pts (8%) carried no mut.MDS pts harbored more frequently SF3B1 mut than AML pts (45% vs 19%, p=0.007). Overall, "secondary-type" mut were much more frequent in MDS than in AML (82% vs 49%; p=0.001). No differences with respect to clinical parameters or survival were seen.Separating the cohort into "classic" and "other" rearrangements we found "classic" harboring more often SF3B1 mut (40% vs 19%, p=0.019) and PTPN11 mut (28 vs 11%; p=0.037) and less frequent SRSF2 mut (7% vs 23%, p=0.037) compared to "other" pts. No other differences were seen. However, diverse mutation patterns were detected between the distinct rearrangements (Figure 1). Pts with t(3;8) carried 60% CBL and 25% TP53 mut, whereas t(3;3), t(2;3), and t(3;12) yielded none of these mut. Furthermore, t(3;21)(q26;q22) harbored 54% SRSF2 and 39% ASXL1 mut, whereas inv(3)(q21q26) carried only 6 and 7%, respectively, and t(3;21)(q26;q11) carried none of these. Moreover, PTPN11 mut was present in 30% of inv(3)(q21q26) but not in t(3;8), t(2;3), t(3;6), and t(3;12). Further, IDH1 mut were carried by 50% of t(3;21)(q26;q22) and inv(3)(p24q26), but in none of the other pts.An extremely poor prognosis was observed in patients with NRAS mut and TP53 mut compared to pts without these mut (8 vs 23 months; p=0.002, 6 vs 16 months, p<0.001, respectively). Of note, the cumulative number of mutations had a negative impact on survival: pts with 0-1 vs. ≥2 mut, median OS 41 versus 9 months, p=0.001.Conclusions1. A threshold of 20% bone marrow blasts does not separate patients with MECOM-rearrangements according to clinical or genetic parameters or outcome.2. "Classic" MECOM-rearrangements do not differ from "other" ones according to clinical parameters or outcome.3. However, "classic" and "other" MECOM-rearrangements show different profiles of additional mutations.4. Furthermore, additional molecular markers lead to better separation of MECOM-rearranged patients with regard to outcome. [Display omitted] DisclosuresAlpermann:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment. Haferlach:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment, Equity Ownership. Fasan:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment. Schindela:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment. Kern:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment, Equity Ownership. Haferlach:MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory: Employment, Equity Ownership.

Local standardized incidence ratio estimates and comparison with other mapping methods for small geographical areas using Slovenian breast cancer data

Cancer maps are important tools in the descriptive presentation of the cancer burden. The objective is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of mapping methods based on point data in comparison with maps based on aggregated data. Four types of maps were prepared based on the same underlying data set on breast cancer incidence in Slovenian females, 2002–2004. First, the standardized incidence ratios (SIR) by municipalities are mapped in a traditional way. Second, two maps applying widely used smoothing methods are presented, both based on aggregated municipalities’ data: floating weighted averages and the Bayesian hierarchical modelling. Finally, the new alternative method based on exact cancer cases and population coordinates is applied – called the local SIR estimates. The decreasing west to east trend is visible on all map types. Smoothing produced more stable and less noisy SIR estimates. The map of the local SIR estimates emphasizes extremes, but unlike the map, based on the observed SIR, these estimates are statistically stable, enabling more accurate evaluation. The main advantages of local SIR estimates over the other three methods are the abilities of revealing more localized patterns and ignoring the arbitrary administrative borders. The disadvantage is that the geocoded data are not always available.