cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Proteinuria: A Link to Understanding Changes in Vascular Compliance?

Hypertension is a well-known risk factor associated with high cardiovascular risk and kidney disease progression. Proteinuria commonly occurs in concert with hypertension in people with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The spectrum of albuminuria, from microalbuminaria (>30 but 300 mg per day) is associated with a linear increase in risk of cardiovascular events.1,2 Microalbuminuria correlates with the magnitude of C-reactive protein (CRP) elevations and has also been associated with a failure of nocturnal drops in arterial pressure, insulin resistance, as well as abnormal vascular responsiveness to a variety of stimuli.3–7 Thus, its presence indicates abnormal responses by vascular tissue, perhaps because of underlying inflammatory responses. Together, these data support the concept that microalbuminuria is associated with increased cardiovascular risk and that proteinuria represents even higher cardiovascular risk with high risk for progression to end-stage kidney disease. Whereas most studies focus on the association between baseline proteinuria and kidney disease progression, others have concentrated on the impact of proteinuria and associated changes in vascular compliance. However, these later studies have focused on microalbuminuria rather than higher levels of proteinuria. In one study of 70 newly diagnosed patients with hypertension demonstrated higher values of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) in those with microalbuminuria. This difference remained statistically significant, even after correction for 24-hour systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), and body …
Stainless steel as bipolar plate material for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Abstract Due to their low cost, high strength, ease of machining and shaping into thin sheets, as well as their corrosion resistance, stainless steels are considered to be good candidates for bipolar plate materials for the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). We have tested several stainless steels in simulated PEMFC environments for application as bipolar plates. The results showed that the chromium content in the steel alloys has an important influence on the anodic behavior. The interfacial contact resistance of the carbon paper/stainless steel interface has been evaluated. Both tests show that 349™ is the best candidate for this application. When 349™ stainless steel was polarized in simulated PEMFC environments, it was found that stable passive films formed within 30 min. The interfacial contact resistance between the carbon paper and stainless steel increased due to the formation of the passive film. However, as soon as a stable passive film is formed, the interfacial contact resistance stabilized.
MECHANICAL MODELING OF FROZEN SOILS INCORPORATING THE EFFECT OF CRYOGENIC SUCTION AND TEMPERATURE

The mechanical behaviour of soil is strongly affected by presence of ice. A constitutive model that incorporates the effect of cryogenic suction and temperature to reproduce the changes in volume, stiffness and strength observed in frozen soils is presented in this work. The model is based on the well know Barcelona Basic Model for unsaturated soils. The model is implemented into the fully coupled finite element program CODE_BRIGHT (Olivella et al., 1996). The capability of the model to describe the behavior of frozen soils has been studied using a series of already published experimental results. The performance of the model is very satisfactory, the main pattern of behavior observed in the tests have been correctly reproduced by the model.
Essential Procedural Methods and Constraints for Parliament

The previous chapter provided a brief overview of the contractarian methods of analysis and briefly showed how contractarian logic can be used to assess broad issues in constitutional design. This chapter takes up the task of designing an effective parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary government is one of the most widely used methods of organizing democratic governance and continues to be a broadly appealing institutional arrangement, as evidenced by the large number of new parliamentary systems that have been established in recent decades.
UK Multicenter Randomized Trial of Hormonal Treatments Vs Vigabatrin for Infantile Spasms

The UK Infantile Spasms Multicenter Study previously showed that seizure control after 14 days and development at 14 months are better following hormonal treatments (prednisolone or tetracosactide depot) than following vigabatrin.
To Dwell on the Earth in Unity: Rice, Arakaki, and the Growth of Citizenship and Voting Rights in Hawaii

When Hawaii was an independent country, everyone born in Hawaii (except children of foreign diplomats) was a citizen. The Kingdom of Hawaii actively encouraged immigration and offered immigrants easy naturalization and full political rights. Race and ethnicity did not matter. In 1978, a state agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was created with voting and office-holding restricted to ethnic Hawaiians. The United States Supreme Court, in Rice v. Cayetano, and the federal district court, in Arakaki v. State, recently drew Hawaii back to the Hawaiian tradition of inclusion, as well as to the American constitutional principle of equal protection, by striking down that racial discrimination. Opponents of Rice have responded with proposals for racial separatism in the name of "recognizing" or "restoring" a race-based Hawaiian nation, but the true successors to the Kingdom, a polity with a multi-racial citizen body, are the multi-racial State of Hawaii and United States of America.
Spatial Variation in Herbivory by Forest Canopy Arthropods Along an Elevation Gradient

Environ. Entomol. 26(6): 1232-1239 (1997) ABSTRACT Spatial variation has recently been recognized as an important component in ecological processes. Elevation differences are an obvious example of spatial variation, but little is known about the influence of elevation on canopy insect herbivory. We examined elevation effects on canopy insect herbivory in an eastern deciduous forest. Percentage leaf area removed and canopy arthropod guild structure were measured at 3 sites along an elevation gradient in the southern Appalachians. Acer rubrum L. was sampled at all sites; Quercus rubra L. at the lowest and highest sites. Upper and lower canopies of A. rubrum were sampled at the highest site. Canopy walkways were used in most sampling. Our 1st hypothesis was that percentage leaf area removed would decrease as elevation increased because of decreases in temperature. Percentage leaf area removed decreased significantly for both tree species as elevation increased. We also hypothesized that percentage leaf area removed would be greater in the lower canopy, because shade leaves are reportedly more palatable to herbivores. Percentage leaf area removed was significantly greater in the lower canopy compared with the upper canopy of A. rubrum. Our 3rd hypothesis was that arthropod guild structure would vary along the elevation gradient because of environmental differences reflecting elevation differences. Arthropod guild structure was significantly different for A. rubrum at all sites but similar for Q. rubra. Spatial variation, in terms of elevation differences, was shown to have a significant effect on forest insect herbivory and arthropod guild structure.
Solvent Based Hydrogen Bonding: Impact on Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Nanoscale Morphology and Charge Transport Characteristics

We demonstrate that supramolecular assembly and subsequent enhancement of charge transport characteristics of conjugated polymers can be facilitated simply by adding small amounts of a more volatile poor solvent, which can hydrogen bond with the majority solvent. Addition of up to 2 vol % acetone to a precursor solution of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) in chloroform leads to approximately a 4-fold increase in P3HT field-effect mobility. The improvement is associated with hydrogen bonding interactions between acetone and chloroform which decrease the evaporation rate of the mixed solvent. P3HT is less soluble in the binary solvent than in the more readily vaporized chloroform component, and this characteristic enables the supramolecular assembly of P3HT chains at the nanoscale. Two-dimensional molecular ordering of the polymer film was controlled by varying the quantity of poor solvent added to the precursor solution, and the correlation between field-effect mobility and molecular ordering was investigated...
A Science of Individuals: Medicine and Casuistry

Clinical medicine is the application of scientific principles, rules of thumb, and a store of practical wisdom embodied in narratives of individual cases to the care of a person who is ill. Physicians are taught to observe and report the individual case both as a means of fitting nomothetic generalizations to the given circumstances and as a way of refining those generalizations. This narrative construction of illness is a principal way of knowing in medicine. In this view, disease is not so much an entity as an identifiable chronological organization of the events of illness, and medicine, rather than a science, a rational science-using activity in the service of the ill.
Maladaptive trauma appraisals mediate the relation between attachment anxiety and PTSD symptom severity.

OBJECTIVE: In a large sample of community-dwelling older adults with histories of exposure to a broad range of traumatic events, we examined the extent to which appraisals of traumatic events mediate the relations between insecure attachment styles and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. METHOD: Participants completed an assessment of adult attachment, in addition to measures of PTSD symptom severity, event centrality, event severity, and ratings of the A1 PTSD diagnostic criterion for the potentially traumatic life event that bothered them most at the time of the study. RESULTS: Consistent with theoretical proposals and empirical studies indicating that individual differences in adult attachment systematically influence how individuals evaluate distressing events, individuals with higher attachment anxiety perceived their traumatic life events to be more central to their identity and more severe. Greater event centrality and event severity were each in turn related to higher PTSD symptom severity. In contrast, the relation between attachment avoidance and PTSD symptoms was not mediated by appraisals of event centrality or event severity. Furthermore, neither attachment anxiety nor attachment avoidance was related to participants' ratings of the A1 PTSD diagnostic criterion. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that attachment anxiety contributes to greater PTSD symptom severity through heightened perceptions of traumatic events as central to identity and severe. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) Language: en
The Training Clinic as a System

Our local training clinic began the transformation to interprofessional education and the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model of care without much of a road map. This twofold cultural shift was exhilarating—and often times very difficult. We generally made progress but did have problems along the way that required concerted efforts to generate corrections.
A review of the monitored data of 'adverse events following immunization' taking place in Yiwu city in 2012

Objective To analyze the monitored data of ‘adverse events following immunization( AEFI) taking place in Yiwu city during 2012 so as to test the performance of the AEFI monitoring system and identify possible problem(s) therein.Method The monitored data of AEFI taking place in Yiwu during 2012 were collected with descriptive epidemiological method. Findings 54 AEFI cases were reported in Yiwu during 2012,including 21 cases with general vaccine reaction(38.89%),29 cases with abnormal vaccine reaction(53. 70%),and 4 cases with coincidental event(7. 41%). The incidence rate of AEFI was 6. 59 people /100000. The reported and investigated rates within 48 h were 100%. The most reported vaccines were DPT vaccine(10 cases) and MR vaccine(6 cases),and the vaccines with the highest incidence reported were JE-i(124. 44 people /100000),Men-AC conjugate vaccine(98. 89 people /100000) and Pneumococcal 7-valent conjugate vaccine(40. 05 people /100000). 19 cases were diagnosed as fever /local swelling /induration(35. 19%) and 17 cases were diagnosed as anaphylactic rash(31. 48%) in 54 cases AEFI. Conclusion The AEFI monitoring system of Yiwu was found to operate normally. However,because of many factors,more abnormal vaccine reaction cases were reported than the general vaccine reaction,and some category B vaccines had a higher reported incidence.
Interaction of right and left ventricular filling pressures at the termination of cardiopulmonary bypass. Central venous pressure pulmonary capillary wedge pressure ratio

In 50 patients who underwent coronary bypass grafting, the interaction of left- and right-sided filling pressures were prospectively evaluated to determine whether restoration and/or maintainance of a normal central venous pressure/pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (CVP/PCWP) ratio could improve biventricular performance. In 40 patients, the CVP/PCWP ratio was normal ( 1). Cardiac index and systolic arterial pressure were low. Restoration of normal ratio by emptying the right heart helped in the improvement of systolic arterial pressure and cardiac index. Thus, in the presence of reversed CVP/PCWP ratio at the termination of cardiopulmonary bypass, restoration of the ratio may prevent unnecessary pharmacologic and/or mechanical intervention, such as inotropic agents, balloon pumps, or assist devices.
A Satyr Play

This tragicomic drama exposes some of the lessons that contemporary criminal jurisprudence in the United States can draw from Aeschylus’s Oresteia. It suggests that Aeschylus hit the mark in his treatment of several basic issues which continue to plague the administration of criminal justice in our time, and that the U.S. Supreme Court has wandered very far from that mark.
Student Debt: Good, Bad, and Misunderstood

Media anecdotes about individuals with student debt are unrepresentative and misleading. The general perception of a student debt “crisis” misses the reality that most education borrowing improves people’s lives by increasing educational opportunities. Higher-income people carry more student debt than lower-income people. However, specific groups of people and specific types of debt cause serious difficulties. Finding solutions to the very real problems requires pinpointing the problems, targeting the solutions, and recognizing the responsibilities of both borrowers and taxpayers.
Handbook of spiritualism and channeling, edited by Cathy Gutierrez, Leiden, Brill, 2015, vii + 511 pp., US$223.00 (hardback), ISBN 9789004263772; US$223 (e-book), ISBN 9789004264083

The goal of the Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling, according to the introduction by its editor, Cathy Gutierrez, is to explore two modern manifestations of the trans-historical phenomenon of ...
Reducing Stereotypes of Female Political Leaders in Mexico

Does electing female political leaders reduce gender stereotypes about leadership? Scholars know little about how the increasing presence of female executives alters gender stereotypes about politi...
Attachment and Its Relationship to Anxiety Sensitivity

This study examined the role of anxiety sensitivity (AS) in relation to attachment as measured by the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) and the inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA). We also examined how well attachment variables, anxiety sensitivity, and trait anxiety predicted panic symptoms as measured by the Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS). Three hundred forty-three participants completed a series of self-report measures assessing attachment perceptions, anxiety sensitivity, trait anxiety, and panic symptom frequency and severity. The study hypotheses were tested in several hierarchical regression analyses that examined the relationship between attachment perceptions and anxiety sensitivity while controlling for sex and trait anxiety. Another study hypothesis tested the relationship between attachment perceptions and panic symptom frequency and severity while controlling for sex, anxiety sensitivity, and trait anxiety. Only attachment Anxiety was a significant predictor of anxiety sensitivity after controlling for sex and trait anxiety. The best predictors of panic symptoms were trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity. None of the attachment variables significantly predicted panic symptoms. Significant differences found across attachment groupings for anxiety sensitivity. The current study found support for the findings of Weems et al. (2002) and Watt et al. (2005) and extended these results to two different attachment measures.
P001: DSA SOLID-PHASE CROSSMATCHING DEMONSTRATES THAT PRONASE-TREATED B CELLS SOMETIMES FAIL TO BIND ANTI-CLASS I IgG

Background The observation that MHC Class I expression on B cells is greater than MHC Class I expression on T cells has led to the interpretation that Tpos/Bneg flow crossmatches are not detecting MHC Class I antibodies. While this proves true much of the time, we have previously reported that Tpos/Bneg flow crossmatches can be mediated by Bw4/Bw6 and HLA C antibodies. We now extend this observation to include other commonly encountered MHC Class I antibodies. Methods Ficoll-purified donor PBMC were mildly treated with pronase (0.02 mg/ml at 37 C for 15 min) to reduce B cell MdX for IgG binding with the negative control serum. This treatment does not remove all FcR, nor does it reduce MHC Class I and Class II expression. In our program any positive flow crossmatch is confirmed by solid phase donor crossmatches (DSA) using the manufacturers protocol. Observations We present 5 cases where a Tpos/Bneg result was caused by Class I DSA detectable by single antigen bead testing. Donor lysate-derived Class I crossmatches confirmed IgG binding for HLA-A1, HLA-A2, and HLA-B60. Conclusions These results caution against a blanket interpretation that Tpos/Bneg crossmatches indicate “safe” non-Class I antibody binding. Follow-up analysis is warranted for such flow crossmatch results. We recommend using donor-derived antigen in addition to commercially available single antigen testing to confirm or rule out the presence of DSA.
Validation of the Modified Surgeon Periorbital Rating of Edema and Ecchymosis (SPREE) Questionnaire: A Prospective Analysis of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Procedures

Although periorbital edema and ecchymosis are commonly encountered after facial plastic and reconstructive surgery procedures, there is currently no validated grading scale to qualify these findings. In this study, the modified "Surgeon Periorbital Rating of Edema and Ecchymosis (SPREE)" questionnaire is used as a grading scale for patients undergoing facial plastic surgery procedures. This article aims to validate a uniform grading scale for periorbital edema and ecchymosis using the modified SPREE questionnaire in the postoperative period. This is a prospective study including 82 patients at two different routine postoperative visits (second and seventh postoperative days), wherein the staff and resident physicians, physician assistants (PAs), patients, and any accompanying adults were asked to use the modified SPREE questionnaire to score edema and ecchymosis of each eye of the patient who had undergone a plastic surgery procedure. Interrater and intrarater agreements were then examined. Cohen's kappa coefficient was calculated to measure intrarater and interrater agreement between health care professionals (staff physicians and resident physicians); staff physicians and PAs; and staff physicians, patients, and accompanying adults. Good to excellent agreement was identified between staff physicians and resident physicians as well as between staff physicians and PAs. There was, however, poor agreement between staff physicians, patients, and accompanying adults. In addition, excellent agreement was found for intraobserver reliability during same-day visits. The modified SPREE questionnaire is a validated grading system for use by health care professionals to reliably rate periorbital edema and ecchymosis in the postoperative period. Validation of the modified SPREE questionnaire may improve ubiquity in medical literature reporting and related outcomes reporting in future.
Interfacial Properties of Calcium Phosphates

Interfacial properties such as surface charge are important properties of solids since they control significant processes like adsorption, wettability, dissolution, chemical uptake and adhesion and thus the overall interfacial behavior of the solid. Adsorption of surfactants and macromolecules (polymers, proteins, polysaccharides) itself is widely used in order to modify and control wettability as well as suspension characteristics of solids (flotation, dispersion, flocculation, sedimentation). While considerable information is available on surface charge characteristics of oxides such as alumina, silica, and titania, much less is known about the behavior of sparingly soluble minerals such as apatite. Surface charge properties of these materials are affected by more variables and the charge generation mechanisms are much more involved than in the case of oxides.
Automated detection of local coherence in short argumentative essays based on centering theory

We describe in this paper an automated method for assessing local coherence in short argumentative essays. We use ideas from Centering Theory to measure local coherence of essays' paragraphs and compare it to human judgments on one analytical feature of essay quality called Continuity. Paragraphs which correspond to a discourse segment in our work and which are dominated by one prominent concept were deemed locally coherent according to Centering Theory. A dominance measure was proposed based on which local coherence was judged. Results on a corpus of 184 argumentative essays showed promising results. Our findings also suggest that focusing on nominal subject for detecting candidate concepts for a discourse segment's central concept is sufficient, which confirms previous findings. Compared to previous approaches to assessing local discourse coherence in essays, our method is fully automated.
Strain energy function and stress–strain model for uniaxial and biaxial orientation of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)

Abstract: Polyethylene terephthalate) has wide commercial application because of its excellent end-use properties. To achieve these properties, the polymer must be stretched within the rubbery region to an extent which results in strain hardening. The region for and extent of strain hardening depends upon such processing conditions as temperature, strain rate, extent of strain and mode of stretching. Stretching experiments on film samples produced data which was used to develop an empirical stress–strain model. Such a model can be used to predict the processing behavior of sheet or stretch blow molded bottles during manufacture. Use of this model and stress–strain modeling approaches developed by other researchers are discussed.
Music and migration among the Alevi immigrants from Turkey in Germany

ABSTRACTThere is a sizable Alevi religious minority among the predominantly Sunni Muslim immigrant community from Turkey in Germany. Based on dissertation research among Alevis between 2010 and 201...
(266) Impact of Opioid Analgesics on the Dynamic Functional Connectivity of Resting-State Brain Networks in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain

Growing body of research has described iatrogenic consequences of prescription opioid use in chronic pain including hyperalgesia and impaired executive function. While changes in pain and behavior have been noted, little is known about the brain mechanisms that change with prescription opioid use in chronic pain. Here, we examined whether long-term opioid therapy altered whole-brain functional connectivity in patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP). We focused on dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) because connectivity patterns can be time-varying, and as such it can better capture brain function. Furthermore, DFC approach may be well suited for chronic pain research because chronic pain can fluctuate over time, and the static connectivity measures may not capture the overall intensity or chronicity of the pain (i.e., "state" vs "trait" pain). Using resting-state fMRI data of 10 CLBP patients on opioid (CLBP+; 5 males, mean age ± SD = 48.5 ± 14.8 years) and 10 matched opioid-naive CLBP patients (CLBP-, 5 males, mean age ± SD = 43.6 ± 12.6 years), we performed high-dimensional group independent component analysis (GICA; N = 75) and extracted thirty-six components as intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs). DFC analysis of ICNs was carried out in GIFT software (Medical Image Analysis Lab, USA) with sliding time-window method and k-means clustering algorithm to categorize DFC by matching the time-windowed connectivity patterns ("cluster centroids") to features in a finite set of connectivity patterns ("states"). Different dwell times for cluster states were observed in CLBP- vs CLBP+. Two-sample t-test further revealed different non-stationary, time-varying connectivity patterns particularly involving the default-mode, salience (insula and anterior cingulate cortex), subcortical (amygdala and hippocampus), and sensorimotor networks (p
Structural and Functional Dynamics of Soil Microbes following Spruce Beetle Infestation.

ABSTRACT As the range of bark beetles expands into new forests and woodlands, the need to understand their effects on multiple trophic levels becomes increasingly important. To date, much attention has been paid to the aboveground processes affected by bark beetle infestation, with a focus on photoautotrophs and ecosystem level processes. However, indirect effects of bark beetle on belowground processes, especially the structure and function of soil microbiota remains largely a black box. Our study examined the impacts of bark beetle-induced tree mortality on soil microbial community structure and function using high-throughput sequencing of the soil bacterial and fungal communities and measurements of extracellular enzyme activities. The results suggest bark beetle infestation affected edaphic conditions through increased soil water content, pH, electrical conductivity, and carbon/nitrogen ratio and altered bulk and rhizosphere soil microbial community structure and function. Finally, increased enzymatic activity suggests heightened microbial decomposition following bark beetle infestation. With this increase in enzymatic activity, nutrients trapped in organic substrates may become accessible to seedlings and potentially alter the trajectory of forest regeneration. Our results indicate the need for incorporation of microbial processes into ecosystem level models. IMPORTANCE Belowground impacts of bark beetle infestation have not been explored as thoroughly as their aboveground counterparts. In order to accurately model impacts of bark beetle-induced tree mortality on carbon and nutrient cycling and forest regeneration, the intricacies of soil microbial communities must be examined. In this study, we investigated the structure and function of soil bacterial and fungal communities following bark beetle infestation. Our results show bark beetle infestation to impact soil conditions, as well as soil microbial community structure and function.
Post-translational Modifications of Opioid Receptors

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are key events in signal transduction since they affect protein function by regulating their abundance and/or activity. PTMs involve the covalent attachment of functional groups to specific amino acids. Since they tend to be generally reversible, PTMs serve as regulators of signal transduction pathways. G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are major signaling proteins that undergo multiple types of PTMs. In this Review, we focus on the opioid receptors, members of GPCR family A, and highlight recent advances in the field that have underscored the importance of PTMs in the functional regulation of these receptors. Since opioid receptor activity plays a central role in the development of tolerance and addiction to morphine and other drugs of abuse, understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating receptor activity is of fundamental importance.
Design, synthesis, and evaluation of liver-specific gemcitabine prodrugs for potential treatment of hepatitis C virus infection and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Abstract Many successful anti-viral and anti-cancer drugs are nucleoside analogs, which disrupt RNA and/or DNA synthesis. Here, we present liver-specific prodrugs of the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine (2′,2′-difluorodeoxycytidine) for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and hepatocellular carcinoma. The prodrugs were synthesized by introducing aromatic functional moieties to the cytosine 4-NH2 group of gemcitabine via amide bonds. The chemical modification was designed to i) enable passive diffusion across cellular membrane, ii) protect the prodrugs from inactivating deamination by cellular enzymes, and iii) allow release of active gemcitabine after amide hydrolysis by high levels of carboxylesterases in the liver. We found that many of our prodrugs exhibited similar toxicity as gemcitabine toward liver- and kidney-derived cancer cell lines but were 24- to 620-fold less cytotoxic than gemcitabine in breast- and pancreas-derived cancer cells, respectively. The prodrugs also inhibited an HCV replicon with IC50 values ranging from 10 nM–1.7 μM. Moreover, many of the prodrugs had therapeutic index values of >10,000 and have synergetic effects when combined with other Food and Drug Administration-approved anti-HCV small molecule drugs. These characteristics support the development of gemcitabine prodrugs as liver-specific therapeutics.
Characterization of acrylonitrile exposure in the United States based on urinary n-acetyl-S-(2-cyanoethyl)-L-cysteine (2CYEMA): NHANES 2011-2016

BACKGROUND Acrylonitrile is a possible human carcinogen that is used in polymers and formed in tobacco smoke. We assessed acrylonitrile exposure in the US population by measuring its urinary metabolites N-acetyl-S-(4-hydroxy-2-methyl-2-buten-1-yl)-L-cysteine (2CYEMA) and N-acetyl-S-(1-cyano-2-hydroxyethyl)-L-cysteine (1CYHEMA) in participants from the 2011-2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. OBJECTIVE To assessed acrylonitrile exposure using population-based biomonitoring data of the US civilian, non-institutionalized population. METHODS Laboratory data for 8057 participants were reported for 2CYEMA and 1CYHEMA using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry. Exclusive tobacco smokers were distinguished from non-users using a combination of self-reporting and serum cotinine data. We used multiple linear regression models to fit 2CYEMA concentrations with sex, age, race/Hispanic origin, and tobacco user group as predictor variables. RESULTS The median 2CYEMA level was higher for exclusive cigarette smokers (145 µg/g creatinine) than for non-users (1.38 µg/g creatinine). Compared to unexposed individuals (serum cotinine ≤0.015 ng/ml) and controlling for confounders, presumptive second-hand tobacco smoke exposure (serum cotinine >0.015 to ≤10 ng/ml and 0 cigarettes per day, CPD) was significantly associated with 36% higher 2CYEMA levels (p < 0.0001). Smoking 1-10 CPD was significantly associated with 6720% higher 2CYEMA levels (p < 0.0001). SIGNIFICANCE We show that tobacco smoke is an important source of acrylonitrile exposure in the US population and provide important biomonitoring data on acrylonitrile exposure.
Pain knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of doctor of physical therapy students: changes across the curriculum and the role of an elective pain science course.

Introduction: Entry-level physical therapist education on pain has been described as lacking. Calls have been made to include pain science courses to address this knowledge gap. Methods: Physical t...
Belarusian Nationalism: Taking Stock of Its Accomplishments

Belarus is a country with a blurred identity that has not cut the umbilical cord connecting it with Mother Russia. According to a representative national survey of April 2020, only 25 percent of Belarusians would prefer to retain statehood and national sovereignty of Belarus even if their living standards worsen whereas 52 percent would opt for limited sovereignty if it is the price to pay for retaining or improving the quality of life. This may be the best-kept secret of Belarus and it has implications more serious than just economic dependency on Belarus’s eastern neighbor. Belarus used to be a contested borderland claimed by both Russians and Poles. Today, it is a country with two historical narratives and nation-building blueprints that have been confronting each other since the inception of the Belarusian national movement. While the neo-Soviet/Russo-centric narrative has held sway over the majority of Belarusians, the Westernizing narrative was hard-hit on several occasions but has been making headway since Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Pluses and minuses of two narratives and the attempts at bridging the gap between them are analyzed. There are essentially two kinds of divisions in Belarusian society: between the respective projects of nation-building and between Lukashenka loyalists and his detractors. These two divisions do not quite coincide, but there is a growing tendency to couch the ongoing political crisis in nationalist terms. The point is made that a lack of cohesive Belarusian identity is an existential threat to Belarusian statehood.
How should clinicians respond to children in transgenerationally traumatized families

Pediatricians have obligations to respond with care to all children's clinical and social vulnerabilities. Finding and addressing causes of children's stress (ie, family separation, child abuse, and trauma) are also obligations. Preventive and rescue interventions should be implemented to address potential short- and long-term harms of toxic stress and their short- and long-term consequences.
Microscale: Edaphic-Topoclimatic Differentiation (Sites)

We may subdivide landscape mosaics into smaller ecosystems called sites or microecosystems. At this point, we turn our attention to the component parts of these mosaics. These are minor in the sense of geographic scale but may play a decisive role in determining the land use.
Carnal Commerce in Counter‐Reformation Rome – By Tessa Storey

This is social history at its best: theoretically informed, historically contextualized, and firmly based on a rich collection of archival and published sources. The story is the suppression of pro...
Lessons learned in single-agent and multiagent learning with robot foraging

Multiagent learning is deeply rooted in single-agent learning. It is common thought that multiagent learning has a better result than single-agent learning with communication and knowledge sharing. This paper gives a different result in the robot foraging domain with multiagent and single-agent reinforcement learning methods. We show how a single-agent reinforcement learning method performs better than various multiagent reinforcement learning methods. Thus we propose a hypothesis: In normal robot foraging tasks with reinforcement learning, single-agent reinforcement learning is better that any multiagent reinforcement learning.
Acute adrenal insufficiency following unilateral radical nephrectomy: A case report

Adrenal insufficiency following unilateral radical nephrectomy has not been previously described in medical literature. We present a 78-year-old male patient who experienced a difficult postoperative course with vague findings, and was ultimately diagnosed with acute adrenal insufficiency. Treatment with glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids resulted in prompt control of the disease.
Causes of Damage in Multilayer Dielectric Coatings Exposed to High Average Power Visible Laser Radiation

Causes of damage in multilayer dielectric coatings exposed to high average power visible lasers have been examined. Damage has been seen to be related to coating defects, surface contamination, and coating absorption. Defects and contamination, particularly those larger than 4um, have been observed to significantly lower the damage threshold for high reflective coatings. Attempts have been made to visually evaluate defects and surface contamination prior to damage in order to find correlation with the damage threshold. The methods used to evaluate coating defects and conduct high average power damage testing as well as test results are presented. This work demonstrates the value of controlling sources of defects in manufacture and contamination for use in high average power visible laser systems. 7 refs., 7 figs., 4 tabs.
Issues and Consequences of Atomic Oxygen Undercutting of Protected Polymers in Low Eerth Orbit

Hydrocarbon polymers that are exposed to atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit are slowly oxidized which results in recession of their surface. Atomic oxygen protective coatings have been developed which are both durable to atomic oxygen and effective in protecting underlying polymers. However, scratches, pin window defects, polymer surface roughness and protective coating layer configuration can result in erosion and potential failure of protected thin polymer films even though the coatings are themselves atomic oxygen durable. This paper will present issues that cause protective coatings to become ineffective in some cases yet effective in others due to the details of their specific application. Observed in-space examples of failed and successfully protected materials using identical protective thin films will be discussed and analyzed. Proposed approaches to prevent the failures that have been observed will also be presented.
Preterm Infants with Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia: Presentation, Response to Therapy, and Outcome

Objectives: We investigated the clinical course of preterm infants with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia in comparison to their term counterparts. Background: Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) is the most common arrhythmia in childhood. It is known to cause significant morbidity and rarely mortality, most commonly in infants. Yet, there is minimal information in the literature on preterm infants with PSVT. Methods: Retrospective review of 40 infants, 26 term and 14 preterm, less than three months of age who presented with PSVT from January 1990 to January 1999. We compared the severity of first clinical presentation, in-hospital response to long-term medications, and outcome after discharge. Results: Symptomatic severity on presentation was not different between preterm and term infants. Preterm infants required fewer medication trials (p=0.01) and had no recurrences after discharge in contrast with 43% recurrence in the term infants (p<0.0001). No preterm infants had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW) in contrast to 42% of term infants (p=0.003). Term infants with WPW were more symptomatic (p=0.01), required more medications (p=0.004), but had a similar recurrence frequency as terms infants without WPW (p=0.95). Excluding infants with WPW, preterm infants were more severely symptomatic (p=0.02), yet no longer was there a difference in response to first medication trial (p=0.30). Conclusions: We found that preterm infants with PSVT are as severely symptomatic on presentation, require fewer medications for adequate in-hospital control, and have fewer recurrences than their term counterparts. Unexpectedly, preterm infants did not present with WPW. The presence of WPW only in the term infants may account for differences in the clinical course between preterm and term infants.
The dating of shallow faults in the Earth's crust

Direct dating of ductile shear zones and calculation of uplift/exhumation rates can be done using various radiometric dating techniques. But radiometric dating of shallow crustal faulting, which occurs in the crust's brittle regime, has remained difficult1,2,3,4 because the low temperatures typical of shallow crusted faults prevent the complete syntectonic mineral recrystallization that occurs in deeper faults. Both old (detrital) and newly grown (authigenic) fine-grained phyllosilicates are thus preserved in shallow fault zones and therefore their radiometric ages reflect a mixture of both mineral populations. Also, the loss of 39Ar during neutron irradiation in dating of clay minerals can produce erroneously old ages. Here we present a method of characterizing the clay populations in fault gouge, using X-ray modelling, combined with sample encapsulation, and show how it can be used to date near-surface fault activity reliably. We examine fault gouge from the Lewis thrust of the southern Canadian Rockies, which we determine to be ∼52 Myr old. This result requires the western North America stress regime to have changed from contraction to extension in only a few million years during the Eocene. We also estimate the uplift/exhumation age and sedimentary source of these rocks to be ∼172 Myr.
Misfolded opsin mutants display elevated β-sheet structure.

Mutations in rhodopsin can cause misfolding and aggregation of the receptor, which leads to retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive retinal degenerative disease. The structure adopted by misfolded opsin mutants and the associated cell toxicity is poorly understood. Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy were utilized to probe within cells the structures formed by G188R and P23H opsins, which are misfolding mutants that cause autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. Both mutants formed aggregates in the endoplasmic reticulum and exhibited altered secondary structure with elevated β-sheet and reduced α-helical content. The newly formed β-sheet structure may facilitate the aggregation of misfolded opsin mutants. The effects observed for the mutants were unrelated to retention of opsin molecules in the endoplasmic reticulum itself.
Problem-solving therapy for depression: A meta-analysis

Problem-Solving Therapy (PST) is a cognitive-behavioral intervention that focuses on training in adaptive problem-solving attitudes and skills. The purpose of this paper was to conduct a meta-analysis of controlled outcome studies on efficacy of PST for reducing depressive symptomatology. Based on results involving 21 independent samples, PST was found to be equally effective as other psychosocial therapies and medication treatments and significantly more effective than no treatment and support/attention control groups. Moreover, component analyses indicated that PST is more effective when the treatment program includes (a) training in a positive problem orientation (vs. problem-solving skills only), (b) training in all four major problem-solving skills (i.e., problem definition and formulation, generation of alternatives, decision making, and solution implementation and verification), and (c) training in the complete PST package (problem orientation plus the four problem-solving skills).
Effect of combination lipid-modifying therapy on the triglyceride lowering effect of fish oil.

ABSTRACT Background Marine fish oil supplements are frequently administered with other lipid medications for treatment of hypertriglyceridemia. The efficacy of fish oil may be reduced in the presence of other lipid agents, particularly fibrates that also act as PPARα agonists. We therefore sought to determine the efficacy of fish-oil supplements when coadministered with other lipid-modifying agents. Methods Patients receiving fish oil supplements were identified from the computer database of a large governmental HMO. Change in plasma lipoprotein levels after administration of fish oil was compared between patients receiving fish oil as their only treatment and those for whom fish oil was added to other drugs. Results A total of 166 evaluable records were identified, 66 from patients treated with fish oil alone and 100 from patients for whom fish oil was added to another agent or other agents. Fish oil effectively reduced triglyceride levels to an equal extent in the fish oil only and fish oil added groups (−30% versus –27% respectively; P = 0.84). Conclusion Fish oil effectively reduces plasma triglyceride levels when administered with concomitant lipid medications. These findings suggest the presence of additional and even complementary mechanisms of action of fish oil to lower triglyceride when added to other lipid drugs. These findings validate the common clinical practice of combining fish oil supplements with other lipid-lowering medications in patients with hypertriglyceridemia.
POLITICAL ARGUMENTATION AND THE COMPOSITE AUDIENCE : A CASE STUDY

Political leadership typically entails the need to address composite, or heterogeneous, audiences, a situation to which rhetorical theorists have devoted little systematic attention. Close reading of a speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in 1945 on the subject of the Anglo‐American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine provides a microscopic look into argumentative techniques employed when addressing several diverse and attentive audiences simultaneously. Four argumentative techniques are identified in this case. This study indicates that by analyzing these and related techniques, rhetorical theory can contribute significantly to our understanding of political leadership.
Axial scattering by a parabolic cylinder separating two penetrable media when focusing occurs

A parabolic-cylinder interface separates two different media that are either isorefractive or anti-isorefractive to each other. The primary field is symmetrically incident in a direction perpendicular to the focal axis of the interface. When focusing of energy on the focal axis occurs, the boundary-value problem is solved exactly by matching the field imploding on the axis to the one emanating from the axis.
Domain Science Applications on GENI: Presentation and Demo

Multi-tenant cloud infrastructures are increasingly used for high-performance and high-throughput domain science applications. In recent years, machine virtualization has come a long way toward supporting domain science applications. Various cloud platforms, such as Open Stack, Cloud Stack, and Amazon EC2 are attracting scientists to these platforms with the promise of customized environments with virtually infinite compute resources. At the same time, research efforts, such as NSF GENI are bringing together cloud computing with advanced network infrastructure provisioning. This paper presents work toward evaluating the use of GENI to support domain science applications. The evaluation involved two different domain science applications deployed on ExoGENI and Insta GENI. The first application is ADCIRC, a storm surge model that uses Message Passing Interface (MPI). The second is Motif network, a genomics application using the Pegasus workflow management system to manage a large data-intensive workflow.