cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effect of rapid thoracic compression on the cerebral blood flow-velocity patterns of small infants.

We measured the middle cerebral artery (MCA) flow-velocities of 12 small infants (mean weight, 2,882 ± 602 g) before, during, and after the rapid thoracic compression (RTC) maneuvers of partial forced expiratory flow-volume studies. Cerebral flow-velocities were measured using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography. RTC increased MCA end diastolic flow-velocities and Pourcelot indices of all infants (P < 0.001). These values returned to baseline immediately after the release of chest compression. We also measured the MCA flow-velocities of several preterm infants during their normal daily activities. The changes in flow-velocity patterns observed during normal daily life were similar to those observed during RTC. These findings demonstrate that RTC produces real, but likely not pathologic, changes in cerebral blood flow-velocities. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Transition to instability in a periodically kicked Bose-Einstein condensate on a ring

A periodically kicked ring of a Bose-Einstein condensate is considered as a nonlinear generalization of the quantum kicked rotor, where the nonlinearity stems from the mean-field interactions between the condensed atoms. For weak interactions, periodic motion antiresonance becomes quasiperiodic quantum beating but remains stable. There exists a critical strength of interactions beyond which quasiperiodic motion becomes chaotic, resulting in an instability of the condensate manifested by exponential growth in the number of noncondensed atoms. In the stable regime, the system remains predominantly in the two lowest energy states and may be mapped onto a spin model, from which we obtain an analytic expression for the beat frequency and discuss the route to instability. We numerically explore a parameter regime for the occurrence of instability and reveal the characteristic density profile for both condensed and noncondensed atoms. The Arnold diffusion to higher energy levels is found to be responsible for the transition to instability. Similar behavior is observed for dynamically localized states essentially quasiperiodic motions, where stability remains for weak interactions but is destroyed by strong interactions.
Development of a knowledge-based-multi-scheme cancer microarray data analysis system

Comparing genes expressed in normal and diseased states assists the understanding of cancer pathophysiology, detection, prognosis, and therapeutic target study. Many existing expression analysis papers show that microarray data are usually case dependent, have small sample (patients) sizes, and have large gene dimensions. Thus, we have been developing a robust multi-parameter, multi-scheme knowledge-based optimization system that integrates the strengths of statistics, pattern-recognition, and support vector machines (SVM). The optimization logic identifies optimal cancer signature genes by utilizing different analysis models based on unsupervised and supervised clustering. Our system is being finalized by testing over public and in-house datasets with the intention of validation through clinical knowledge feedback.
A Perspective on Recurrent Vertigo

The recurrent nature of the 3 most common vestibulopathies suggests a recurrent cause. Histopathology in temporal bones from patients with these syndromes - vestibular neuronitis (VN, n = 7), Meniere's disease (MD, n = 8) and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV, n = 5) - shows focal degeneration of vestibular nerve axons and degenerated nearby facial nerve meatal ganglion cells. Transmission electron microscopic confirmation of intracytoplasmic viral particles in surgically excised vestibular nerves from patients with VN and MD support a viral etiology in these vestibulopathies. Antiviral treatment of these syndromes in a series of 211 patients with a 3- to 8-year follow-up resulted in complete control of vertigo in VN (88%), MD (90%) and BPPV (60%).
Characterization of the Effect of the Histidine Kinase CovS on Response Regulator Phosphorylation in Group A Streptococcus

Two-component gene regulatory systems (TCSs) are a major mechanism by which bacteria respond to environmental stimuli and thus are critical to infectivity. For example, the control of virulence regulator/sensor kinase (CovRS) TCS is central to the virulence of the major human pathogen group A Streptococcus (GAS). Here, we used a combination of quantitative in vivo phosphorylation assays, isoallelic strains that varied by only a single amino acid in CovS, and transcriptome analyses to characterize the impact of CovS on CovR phosphorylation and GAS global gene expression. We discovered that CovS primarily serves to phosphorylate CovR, thereby resulting in the repression of virulence factor-encoding genes. However, a GAS strain selectively deficient in CovS phosphatase activity had a distinct transcriptome relative to that of its parental strain, indicating that both CovS kinase and phosphatase activities influence the CovR phosphorylation status. Surprisingly, compared to a serotype M3 strain, serotype M1 GAS strains had high levels of phosphorylated CovR, low transcript levels of CovR-repressed genes, and strikingly different responses to environmental cues. Moreover, the inactivation of CovS in the serotype M1 background resulted in a greater decrease in phosphorylated CovR levels and a greater increase in the transcript levels of CovR-repressed genes than did CovS inactivation in a serotype M3 strain. These data clarify the influence of CovS on the CovR phosphorylation status and provide insight into why serotype M1 GAS strains have high rates of spontaneous mutations in covS during invasive GAS infection, thus providing a link between TCS molecular function and the epidemiology of deadly bacterial infections.
MPI-2 one-sided usage and implementation for read modify write operations: a case study with HPCC

MPI-2's One-sided communication interface is being explored in scientific applications. One of the important operations in a one sided model is read-modify- write. MPI-2 semantics provide MPI Put, MPI Get and MPI Accumulate operations which can be used to implement read-modify-write functionality. The different strategies yield varying performance benefits depending on the underlying one-sided implementation. We use HPCC Random Access benchmark which primarily uses read-modify-write operations as a case study for evaluating the different implementation strategies in this paper. Currently this benchmark is implemented based on MPI two-sided semantics. In this work we design and evaluate MPI-2 versions of the HPCC Random Access benchmark using one-sided operations. To improve the performance, we explore two different optimizations: (i) software based aggregation and (ii) hardware-based atomic operations. We evaluate our different approaches on an InfiniBand cluster. The software based aggregation outperforms the basic one sided scheme without aggregation by a factor of 4.38. The hardware based scheme shows an improvement by a factor of 2.62 as compared to the basic one sided scheme.
The Meditative Approach to Awaken Selfless Insight-Wisdom

This chapter reviews, first, the two complementary categories of meditation: concentrative meditation and receptive meditation. In this context, it then considers the representations and responses of the upper (dorsal) and lower (ventral) attention systems. The potentially reciprocal nature of the responses of the medial fronto-parietal regions vs. those of these two lateral attention systems is emphasized, because they are relevant to the mechanisms that could prompt an unexpected sensory stimulus to trigger the “peak” experience of awakening (J. kensho). In the model proposed, the reticular nucleus is assigned a key role in inhibiting the adjacent dorsal tier of thalamic nuclei. This disruption of the normal coherence of thalamo-cortical oscillations could, simultaneously, diminish Self-relational processing and liberate other-relational (allocentric) processing. The further I go, the better I see that it takes a great deal of work to succeed in rendering what I want to render: ‘instaneity’. Claude Monet (1840–1926)
Flow diversion of large internal carotid artery aneurysms with the surpass device: impressions and technical nuance from the initial North American experience

Background Flow diversion is an important tool for treatment of cerebral aneurysms, particularly large and giant aneurysms. The Surpass flow diverter is a new system under evaluation in the USA. Objective To report our initial experience of 20 cases with the Surpass flow diverter to demonstrate its basic properties, the required triaxial delivery platform, and the methodologies used to deploy it during treatment of large internal carotid artery (ICA) aneurysms Methods Twenty patients with ICA aneurysms ≥10 mm with ≥4 mm neck treated as part of the Surpass IntraCranial Aneurysm Embolization System Pivotal Trial (the SCENT trial; Stryker) were included. Details of patient demographics, aneurysm characteristics, and technical procedures were collected. Results Twenty patients (mean age 63.3±1.3 years; range 51–72) with 20 unruptured aneurysms (mean size 13.4±0.9 mm; range 10–21 mm) were treated. For proximal access, 60% of cases had aortic arch ≥grade II, 55% had significant cervical ICA tortuosity, and 60% had cavernous ICA ≥grade II. The Surpass device was implanted in 19/20 (95%) cases. Of 19 cases, a single device was used in 18 cases (95%) and 2 devices in only 1 case (5%). Balloon angioplasty was performed in 8/19 cases (42%). Complete aneurysm neck coverage and adequate vessel wall apposition was obtained in all 19 cases. Conclusions Surpass is a next-generation flow diverter with unique device-specific and delivery-specific features compared with clinically available endoluminal flow diverters. Our initial experience demonstrates a favorable technical profile in treatment of large and giant ICA aneurysms. Trial registration number NCT01716117.
Abstract 5405: Immuno-phenotyping reveals cell types present in circulation of breast cancer patients and elucidates their funstional potential

Myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) have an identified role in suppressing anti-tumor immunity through Jak/Stat pathway activation and the generation of reactive oxygen species and arginase -1, thus promoting cancer progression. There is robust data on the identification of functionally suppressive MDSCs in preclinical models. However, such knowledge is underdeveloped in human cancers. Specifically, the clear identification of the true MDSC and their role in tumor immunoevasion, cancer progression and metastasis is undefined. Therefore, comprehensive identification of MDSCs and their ability to augment tumor-induced immune suppression in newly diagnosed early stage breast cancer is warranted to define their potential as a novel immunotherapeutic target. To delineate the role of MDSCs in newly diagnosed, untreated breast cancer and their tumor immunosuppressive effects in comparison to normal hosts, we conducted a prospective trial of stage I-IV breast cancer patients enrolled prior to initiation of systemic therapy and their age-matched normal donors. The following immune cell subsets were analyzed: regulatory T cells (CD3+/CD4+/CD25+/Foxp3+), MDSCs (Lin lo /HLA-DR-/CD33+/CD11b+), and DCs (Lin-/CD14-CD4+/CD303+/CD1c+/CD141+). Functional assays of T cell activation and MDSCs mediated-T cell suppression were performed. We identified no significant differences in the percentage of regulatory T cells or mDC2 between breast cancer subjects and normal controls. In contrast, the percent of MDSC, pDCs and conventional DCs detected were suprisingly significantly higher in the healthy donor population as compared to breast cancer subjects. Breast cancer T cells showed reduced capability to respond to external stimulus as measured by up-regulation of CD25 and CD69 as well as T cell proliferation, although not statistically significant relative to normal controls. Breast cancer MDSC were significantly more suppressive of T cell activation relative to normal controls. The granulocytic but not monocyte subset of MDSCs (distinguished by CD15 expression) were identified as the main responders to PMA stimulation. Our results demonstrate immune suppression in newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer is characterized by increased immune suppressive function of MDSCs in the absence of increased cellular levels. When we looked at our cases with the highest MDSC levels, no distinct trend towards advanced stage or poorer prognosis biologic subtype was identified. These data support the identification of MDSCs in breast cancer as a novel therapeutic target to improve treatment outcomes. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5405. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-5405
Comment on "Comparison of two self-consistent Al(111) film calculations"

Band structures, planar averages of valence charge densities, as well as work functions as determined by self-consistent calculations using two different methods, are shown to be consistent with each other, and hence agreement between theory and experiment for the clean Al(111) surface can now be considered satisfactory.
A probabilistic model for the estimation of shear capacity of bridge piers subjected to dynamic loading

The collision of vehicles has been identified as one of the most probable causes of bridge failure [Wardhana and Hadipriono 2003]. Accidental collisions of vehicles with key components of bridges, such as piers, might lead to severe consequences. In particular, piers are most vulnerable to collisions from high speed heavy vehicles. Recent design guidelines have provisions to design for equivalent static loads ( ESL ), but the loads are sometimes underestimated [El-Tawil et al. 2005]. Furthermore, recent design guidelines and provisions for collision of vehicles with bridges do not take into account the uncertainty associated with the collision event [Staples 2007]. Key issues such as the failure modes, the actual dynamic demand on the bridge due to vehicle collision, the bridge capacity to sustain a vehicle collision, and the interaction between vehicle and bridge are not addressed in the current design provisions. This paper develops probabilistic dynamic shear capacity ( DSC ) models for the bridges subjected to vehicle collision. The current probabilistic models for the shear capacity of bridge piers do not take into account the effect of rate of loading [Choe et al. 2007]. The proposed model accurately predicts the shear capacity of the pier subjected to dynamic loading. The probabilistic DSC model accounts for the uncertainties in the material and geometric property of the pier. The model is assessed using data from detailed Finite Element ( FE ) analyses. The FE model takes into account the rate of loading, different modes of failure and realistic support conditions. The analyses also account for the variability in loading, the material properties, and stiffness properties of the bridge. The FE simulations also provide valuable information to assess the typical failure mode(s) of bridges due to collision. The developed probabilistic DSC model can be used for a reliability-based design of bridge. It can also be used to easily design or estimate the adequacy of a bridge to sustain a collision event.
Game theoretic methods in population dynamics

Game theoretic methods are used to model the dynamics of cellular populations (tissues) in which it is necessary to account for changes in cellular phenotype (usually proliferation) resulting from cell-cell interaction. Results include prediction of long-term steady-state "equilibria" and transient dynamics. These results can be useful for predicting relapse after cytoreduction, assessing the efficacy of alternating combination therapy, and interpreting biopsy specimens obtained from spatially heterogeneous tissues. Mathematical tools range from simple systems of differential equations to computational techniques (individual-based models).
Upper Airway Vibration Perception in School-Aged Children with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Children with the obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have impaired upper airway two-point discrimination compared to controls. In addition, blunted vibration threshold detection (VT) in the palate has been recognized in adults with OSA, but has not been studied in children. Both findings are indicative of a defect in the afferent limb of the upper airway dilator reflex that could prevent upper airway dilation secondary to airway loading, resulting in airway collapse. We hypothesized that children with OSA have impaired palate VT compared to controls, and that this improves after OSA treatment. METHODS Case-control study. Children with OSA and healthy non-snoring controls underwent polysomnography and palate VT measurements. Children with OSA were retested after adenotonsillectomy. RESULTS 29 children with OSA (median [interquartile range] age = 9.5 [7.5-12.6] years, obstructive apnea-hypopnea index [OAHI] = 11.3 [5.7-19.5] events/h, BMI z = 1.8 [1.3-2.1]) and 32 controls (age = 11.2 [9.3-13.5] years, P = 0.1; OAHI = 0.5 [0.1-0.7] events/h, P < 0.001; BMI z = 1 [0.3-1.7], P = 0.004) were tested. OSA palate VT (1.0 [0.8-1.5] vibration units) was similar to that of controls (1 [0.8-1.3], P = 0.37). 20 children with OSA were retested 4.4 (3.2-7.1) months after treatment. OAHI decreased from 13.1 (5.8-19) to 0.6 (0.2-2.5) events per hour (P < 0.001) postoperatively, but palate VT did not change (before = 1 [0.7-1.5], after = 1.2 [0.8-1.4], P = 0.37). CONCLUSIONS Children with OSA and controls have similar palate VT. Unlike in adults, palate VT does not seem to be affected by childhood OSA.
‘… Whenever the Tale of ‘98 is Told’: Constance Markievicz, the National Memory and ‘The Women of Ninety-Eight’

Constance Markievicz’s plays and journalistic prose created a dialogue betwixt Irishwomen involved in the nation-building process both past and present. By employing different theatrical and rhetorical strategies, Markievicz revealed an alternative condition and potential for women and for Ireland. Her artistry in all its forms was a means to examine themes of insurgency and political strife as they relate to both Ireland and women’s efforts in Ireland. Markievicz’s reappropriation of memory, folklore, commemoration and the interweaving of Irish history with an imagined past created a revised living history for Ireland and the potential for a new cultural and political memory complete with women’s integral involvement, free from British subjugation.
3D-printed microfluidic devices: fabrication, advantages and limitations—a mini review

A mini-review with 79 references. In this review, the most recent trends in 3D-printed microfluidic devices are discussed. In addition, a focus is given to the fabrication aspects of these devices, with the ESI containing detailed instructions for designing a variety of structures including: a microfluidic channel, threads to accommodate commercial fluidic fittings, a flow splitter; a well plate, a mold for PDMS channel casting; and how to combine multiple designs into a single device. The advantages and limitations of 3D-printed microfluidic devices are thoroughly discussed, as are some future directions for the field.
Unsupervised Machine Learning: Datasets Without Outcomes

Often either a dataset doesn’t contain an obvious “outcome” or we wish to explore the entire data set to see if there is some natural “order” to the data. In such cases, unsupervised machine learning is appropriate. Once again, unsupervised means that there isn’t an outcome to compare the results of a model to. It is tempting to try to “force” a regression or classification model, but often it is quite enlightening to use unsupervised methods to better understand the dataset. If the data are nominal “marketbasket” lists of “transactions” (for example the set of laboratory tests ordered at one time for a particular patient on a particular day; or items purchased at the supermarket), the technique of association analysis is most appropriate. If the data are quantitative, with a metric of proximity available, a clustering technique can be used.
Juvenile Multiple Sclerosis

A young girl with recurrent episodes of CNS demyelination associated with defective mitochondrial beta oxidation is reported from the Departments of Pediatrics, Medical Genetics, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, and University of Iowa Hospitals, Iowa City, IA.
Quantitative analysis of myocardial perfusion images

Myocardial perfusion imaging is a widely used test for the detection of coronary artery disease. Automated measurements of perfusion can be obtained from three-dimensional stress and rest images. The software segments the left ventricle of the heart and compares image intensities to normal subject database. In our research, we aim at reduction and ultimately elimination of human supervision in this process to improve overall reproducibility and accuracy for disease detection. We have developed several methods to this end such as automatic detection of potentially incorrect contours and direct measurement of stress-rest changes. Current state-of-the-art analysis methods demonstrate better reproducibility and similar accuracy when compared with experienced physicians. We aim to further improve the diagnostic accuracy by data mining techniques, combining several extracted image features with clinical information about the patients. Preliminary results show further improvements in accuracy, beyond that achieved by expert observers.
American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century

Review of: American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, by Robert E. Gallamore and John R. Meyer.
Knowledge decay and content retention of students in first-semester general chemistry

Topics typical of general chemistry I content that need to be mastered have not changed in over 15 years, but the tools available to assist students in learning general chemistry have. Striving to enhance motivation and give students the practice needed for learning first-semester general chemistry were the reasons behind this case study on the advantages and drawbacks to using electronic homework (e-homework). The effectiveness of online homework is important and needs to be evaluated. The questions that therefore arise are: Are commercially available Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools going to motivate and encourage students to complete the assignments required, and if so, will their use improve the students’ success rate in general chemistry? This case study (n = 1,947) covered a 14-semester span and the use of seven different commercial systems. Of the 1,090 students who voted, 70.7% felt as though the e-homework had been valuable enough to them that it should be continued. Contributions from this study highlight how well do students perform in the class and how well they perform when they advanced to the next general chemistry class. The impacts of e-homework on prevention of knowledge decay and content retention are provided. One of the advantages to using e-homework is that students who master their e-assignments (≥ 90% correct) do better than those who do not. Noted that within these classes is that students who mastered the assignments exhibit less knowledge decay than their peers leading to the conclusion that e-homework is a valuable asset to learning chemistry. The results also indicate that students’ content retention of those who experience e-homework is improved over students who did not use the e-homework available by an average of 15% as scored on an ACS standardized exam given to students the following semester.
Prey behavioural reaction norms: response to threat predicts susceptibility to predation

Behavioural syndromes (i.e. population-level behavioural correlations) arise when individuals, on average, maintain the same behavioural expression across different ecological contexts. Population-level syndromes can appear maladaptive, such as when prey remain active across the absence and presence of a sit-and-wait predator. Yet in nature, individuals often vary in syndrome adherence, exhibiting individual-level differences in behavioural plasticity. Here, I use an experiment to show that individual behavioural plasticity (a reduction in activity level in the presence of predation threat) increases a prey's likelihood of surviving predator exposure, and further predicts survival better than single-context activity level measures. In an additional experiment, I identify conditioning (nonlethal predator exposure) as a process that reduces prey activity level. This work demonstrates that although population-level behavioural syndromes can appear maladaptive, behavioural plasticity and conditioning could potentially ameliorate negative effects at the individual level.
Understanding and Responding to the Unique Needs and Challenges Facing Adjunct Faculty: A Longitudinal Study

This study reports the results of a longitudinal study of adjunct faculty at a large research-intensive institution.Â A needs assessment found that adjunct faculty felt isolated and disconnected from their departments and colleagues, and reported a lack of formal and informal supports needed for success in their instructional roles.Â Â These findings guided the development and campus-wide implementation of adjunct-specific programming and resources. A program evaluation found improvements in adjunct faculty perceptions of support as well as directions for future programming and development opportunities. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.16.10.3
Modification of Diet and Foraging Range by Harvester Ants in Response to Altered Seed Availability

Food collection is a critical component of an individual’s life, and for eusocial insects, the colony that individual foragers support and maintain. Changes to the distribution and composition of food types in the environment are expected influence diet selection if the economics of foraging are altered. For seed-harvesting ants, the abundance and composition of seed types available on the ground typically shows a high degree of spatial and temporal variability, and not all types of seed are equally valued by foragers. We evaluated the response of Owyhee harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex salinus) to reductions in the availability of Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda) seeds, a preferred food type, while leaving the availability of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) seeds, a less favored food type, unmanipulated. At control colonies (N = 8), cheatgrass seeds comprised 3.9 ± 1.6% of total seed intake, while Sandberg bluegrass seeds accounted for the remainder of the diet. At colonies where bluegrass was trimmed to prevent new seeds from dropping within 12 m of the nest (N = 8), cheatgrass seed intake increased significantly to 8.2 ± 1.4% of the diet. Despite the uptick in collection of cheatgrass seeds, bluegrass seed collection remained high and very similar between treatment and control colonies. Treatment colonies were significantly more likely than control colonies to have at least one trunk trail that extended beyond the 12 m foraging range of the colony, and ants returning along these trails carried bluegrass seeds but not cheatgrass seeds. These results suggest that when preferred seeds dropped in abundance near nests, the economics of foraging by harvester ants favored a small increase in acceptance of less preferred seeds as well as more distant forays to locate and collect preferred seeds.
Peyronie’s Disease: Results with Dermo-Jet Injection of Dexamethasone

AbstractThe results in 21 patients with Peyronie’s disease who were managed with a course of dermo-jet percutaneous injections of dexamethasone into the plaques are described herein. These patients had 6 to 10 injections at intervals of 1 month for 6 months. In a high percentage of the cases there occurred a disappearance or decrease in the size of the plaques, pain on erection and discomfort during sexual relations. Also, there was a high rate of improvement in the chordee. Because of the natural history of resolution of the plaques and the small number of patients, statistical significance is not believed applicable, although 71 per cent of the patients had experienced prior failure with other modes of therapy. Eight patients experienced urinary or prostato-epididymal infections at some time in their medical history, correlating well with the inflammatory theory as the cause of the disorder.
Assembly of Area Array Components

Surface mount technology (SMT) has become the accepted standard for electronic assembly throughout the world. Surface mount packaging dominates the packaging industry due to the space saving and increased wiring capability achieved by directly mounting components on the surface of a board as opposed to the need for through holes in a printed circuit board (PCB). Cost, performance and ease of assembly have been the drivers in the trend away from DIP (dual-in-line package) packages and PTH (plated through hole) assembly to SMT. SMT packages include a variety of leaded and ball grid array packages all of which are mounted to conductors on the surface of a circuit card (Fig. 19-1). SMT assembly has increased dramatically over the past ten years typically allowing 1000-10,000 soldered connections per board as opposed to 250-4000 connections for similar through-hole assemblies. This chapter describes SMT assembly materials, equipment and process techniques in assembly of area-array or Ball Grid Array (BGA) packages including ball grid arrays (BGAs) and chip scale packages (CSPs).
A Context-Aware Approach to Selecting Adaptations for Case-Based Reasoning

Case-based reasoning solves new problems by retrieving cases of similar previously-solved problems and adapting their solutions to fit new circumstances. The case adaptation step is often done by applying context-independent adaptation rules. A substantial body of research has studied generating these rules automatically from comparisons of prior pairs of cases. This paper presents a method for increasing the context-awareness of case adaptation using these rules, by exploiting contextual information about the prior problems from which the rules were generated to predict their applicability to the context of the new problem, in order to select the most relevant rules. The paper tests the approach for the task of case-based prediction of numerical values case-based regression. It evaluates performance on standard machine learning data sets to assess the method's performance benefits, and also tests it on synthetic domains to study how performance is affected by different problem space characteristics. The results show the proposed method for context-awareness brings significant gains in solution accuracy.
A Comprehensive Prevention Program for College Students

Drinking by young adults, especially college youth, has been an area of intense interest for many years. Ever since the classic study of college drinking by Strauss and Bacon in 1953, numerous investigators have documented the high prevalence of beverage alcohol consumption and its attendant problems at colleges and universities in the United States (Blane & Hewitt, 1977; Kraft, 1976). Recent reports have focused more directly on the adverse consequences of heavy drinking among college youth (DeLuca, 1981; DHEW, 1976; Noble, 1978) and have led to a large variety of prevention and intervention activities supported by federal, state, local community, and campus efforts (Kraft, 1977, 1979b).
Reflections on Afghanistan

The United States and international community went to Afghanistan because after 9/11 they saw Afghanistan and the people it harbored as a security risk. Given that goal, the non-battle side of counterinsurgency should aim not at state building but at stabilization. Aid delivery by outsiders undermines the Afghan government at both the national and local levels. The People’s Development Fund supported people’s confidence in local government by assigning a great deal of authority to fund development projects to local Afghan governments so long as decisions represented the local population and projects met stringent transparency requirements. A pilot program beginning in June 2010 produced successful projects that responded to local judgments about what communities needed.
Clinical Characteristics of Patients with Chronic Rhinosinusitis without Nasal Polyps in an Academic Setting.

Background Although patients with chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyps (CRSsNP) represent a majority of the chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) population, they have not been completely characterized phenotypically. Objective To perform a comprehensive phenotypic characterization of subjects with CRSsNP, using CRS with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) as a comparator. Methods Patients with a history of CRS with positive sinus computed tomography (>18 years old) evaluated in the allergy/immunology or otolaryngology clinics of an academic center between 2002 and 2012 were identified via International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision codes. A retrospective chart review was performed on a subset of 507 patients with CRSsNP and 874 with CRSwNP. Characteristics analyzed included demographics, comorbid conditions, and radiologic sinus severity. Results Of the total CRS population, approximately 82% had CRSsNP and 18% had CRSwNP. Of the 507 patients in the CRSsNP group, 319 (63%) were female compared with 393 of 847 (45%) in the CRSwNP group. The prevalence of atopy was 52% in CRSsNP versus 76% in CRSwNP (P Conclusions The relative prevalence of CRS phenotypes in the western population is approximately 80% CRSsNP and 20% CRSwNP. Patients with CRSsNP were predominantly female, whereas patients with CRSwNP were predominantly male. The prevalence of asthma was higher in our cohort of patients with CRSsNP than previously described. Atopy was associated with more severe radiographic sinonasal disease in CRSsNP, whereas asthma was not associated with radiographic sinonasal disease severity.
5GReasoner: A Property-Directed Security and Privacy Analysis Framework for 5G Cellular Network Protocol

The paper proposes 5GReasoner, a framework for property-guided formal verification of control-plane protocols spanning across multiple layers of the 5G protocol stack. The underlying analysis carried out by 5GReasoner can be viewed as an instance of the model checking problem with respect to an adversarial environment. Due to an effective use of behavior-specific abstraction in our manually extracted 5G protocol, 5GReasoner's analysis generalizes prior analyses of cellular protocols by reasoning about properties not only regarding packet payload but also multi-layer protocol interactions. We instantiated 5GReasoner with two model checkers and a cryptographic protocol verifier, lazily combining them through the use of abstraction-refinement principle. Our analysis of the extracted 5G protocol model covering 6 key control-layer protocols spanning across two layers of the 5G protocol stack with 5GReasoner has identified 11 design weaknesses resulting in attacks having both security and privacy implications. Our analysis also discovered 5 previous design weaknesses that 5G inherits from 4G, and can be exploited to violate its security and privacy guarantees.
Mechanistic Roles of Matrilin-2 and Klotho in Modulating the Inflammatory Activity of Human Aortic Valve Cells.

Background: Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is a chronic inflammatory disease. Soluble extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins can act as damage-associated molecular patterns and may induce valvular inflammation. Matrilin-2 is an ECM protein and has been found to elevate the pro-osteogenic activity in human aortic valve interstitial cells (AVICs). Klotho, an anti-aging protein, appears to have anti-inflammatory properties. The effect of matrilin-2 and Klotho on AVIC inflammatory responses remains unclear. Methods and Results: Isolated human AVICs were exposed to matrilin-2. Soluble matrilin-2 induced the production of ICAM-1, MCP-1, and IL-6. It also induced protein kinase R (PKR) activation via Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 and 4. Pretreatment with PKR inhibitors inhibited NF-κB activation and inflammatory mediator production induced by matrilin-2. Further, recombinant Klotho suppressed PKR and NF-κB activation and markedly reduced the production of inflammatory mediators in human AVICs exposed to matrilin-2. Conclusions: This study revealed that soluble matrilin-2 upregulates AVIC inflammatory activity via activation of the TLR-PKR-NF-κB pathway and that Klotho is potent to suppress AVIC inflammatory responses to a soluble ECM protein through inhibiting PKR. These novel findings indicate that soluble matrilin-2 may accelerate the progression of CAVD by inducing valvular inflammation and that Klotho has the potential to suppress valvular inflammation.
TexAnASD: Text Analytics for ASD Risk Gene Predictions

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an extreme neurodevelopmental disease affecting 1 in every 59 children in the United States, and approximately 1% of US population. The clinical traits of the disorder include noticeable deficits in social interactions, language development and in many cases very narrow and repetitive interests and behaviors. ASD is highly heritable genetic disease, but the known causes including the biomarkers associated with ASD form only the tip of the iceberg. Over the past decade extensive research on exome sequences revealed only about one hundred genetic biomarkers with very high confidence. Number of putative ASD causing genes is rapidly growing with the advent of new technologies while researchers are struggling now to assess which genes are the true causing genes. Manual curation of each of the long list of genes is a cumbersome process that requires huge amount of expert work-hours, and is therefore expensive. An in silico prediction method can assist the human experts to check only a short-list of genes that were filtered through a machine learning system. Most of the existing ASD gene prediction algorithms involve high-performance computing platform to analyze large-scale genetic data which is counter-intuitive to the actual benefit of using an in silico method in the first place. We propose TexAnASD, a text analytics based ASD gene prediction algorithm that only utilizes what we know about each gene that we learn from published literatures. The proposed method outperforms most of the state-of-the-art ASD associated gene prediction methods. Moreover, the method offers an inexpensive model than those of the other competing solutions in terms of computational complexity and running time. All source codes, dataset, predictions and functional insights are available at http://ml.cse.ucdenver.edu/research/TexAnASD.
Automated noise estimation in polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Advanced signal reconstruction in polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) frequently relies on an accurate determination of the signal noise floor. However, current methods for evaluating the noise floor are often impractical and subjective. Here we present a method using the degree of polarization uniformity and known speckle intensity statistics to model and estimate the OCT noise floor automatically. We establish the working principle of our method with a series of phantom experiments and demonstrate the robustness of our noise estimation method across different imaging systems and applications in vivo.
Chapter 7 – Behavioral Experiments

Publisher Summary Behavioral experiments provide: an approach to challenging unhelpful beliefs about sleep and developing/ testing new (and helpful) beliefs about sleep, and an approach to facilitating awareness of perpetuating cognitive and behavioral processes and bringing about change in/reversal of these processes. Based on clinical experience, this treatment modality may be difficult to utilize when the context only allows for short therapy sessions because most behavioral experiments need time to set up and then, in a subsequent session, debrief. Because verbal techniques like directly questioning the logical basis of thoughts and beliefs, Socratic questioning, and guided discovery are typically not enough on their own to bring about profound change, behavioral experiments are used. Behavioral experiments are planned experiential activities, based on experimentation or observation, which are undertaken by patients in or between therapy sessions. Their design is derived directly from formulation of the problem, and their primary purpose is to obtain new information, which contributes to the development and verification of the formulation.
The role of debt contracts in analyst earnings forecasts

Abstract Financial analysts evaluate a firm’s performance and provide earnings forecasts for future periods. Analysts have limited access to firm financial information, particularly following the enactment of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) on October 23, 2000, which may result in information asymmetry between analysts and firm insiders. However, banks are exempt from the Reg FD, and they can still access private information to qualify borrowing firms for better terms on loans. Analysts may accordingly use loan contracts as a source of information to reduce information asymmetry and improve their earnings forecasts. We find that during the quarters wherein companies sign loan contracts, analysts provide more accurate earnings forecasts with lower forecast errors. More importantly, we find that analysts revise their earnings forecasts upward following the issuance of loans with low interest rates, while they revise them downward following the issuance of loans with high interest rates. Overall, these results are consistent with financial analysts using the information provided in debt contracts to better evaluate a firm’s performance and provide more precise earnings forecasts.
Surgeon experience influences patient characteristics and outcomes in spine deformity surgery.

To characterize differences in patient demographics and outcomes by surgeon experience in a cohort of patients undergoing adult spinal deformity surgery. Patients undergoing degenerative spinal deformity were included. Patients whose surgeons graduated from fellowship ≤ 5 years prior to surgery versus > 5 years were compared. Multivariable linear and logistic regression, controlling for age, sex, comorbidity burden, number of segments fused, blood loss and operative time were used to evaluate differences in outcomes. Characteristics of operative invasiveness were plotted against surgeons' level of experience, and trends in these measures were assessed with univariate linear regression. Three-hundred sixty-three patients were included. 147 patients’ surgeons had ≤ 5 years of experience. Patient demographics were evenly matched. Patients with junior surgeons had more pre-existing medical complications, and senior surgeons were less likely to take care of patients with Medicare/Medicaid (p < 0.001). Junior surgeons were more likely to operate on non-elective patients (p < 0.001). Patients of junior surgeons received larger fusions (9.6 vs. 7.6 segments fused, p < 0.001). There were no differences in complication rates or death. Patients of junior surgeons had longer overall length of stays (p = 0.037) and higher rates of nonhome discharge (OR 2.0, p < 0.001), 30- and 90-day (p < 0.005) ED visits, and higher costs (+ $8548, 95% CI: $1596 to $15,502; p = 0.016). Junior surgeons tend to perform more extensive deformity operations on more medically complex patients compared to senior surgeons, associated with higher costs and more resource utilization than senior surgeons.
Tumor treating fields (TTFields) impairs aberrant glycolysis in glioblastoma as evaluated by [18F]DASA-23, a non-invasive probe of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) expression

Abstract Despite the anti-proliferative and survival benefits from tumor treating fields (TTFields) in human glioblastoma (hGBM), little is known about the effects of this form of alternating electric fields therapy on the aberrant glycolysis of hGBM. [18F]FDG is the most common radiotracer in cancer metabolic imaging, but its utility in hGBM is impaired due to high glucose uptake in normal brain tissue. With TTFields, radiochemistry, Western blot, and immunofluorescence microscopy, we identified pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) as a biomarker of hGBM response to therapeutic TTFields. We used [18F]DASA-23, a novel radiotracer that measures PKM2 expression and which has been shown to be safe in humans, to detect a shift away from hGBM aberrant glycolysis in response to TTFields. Compared to unexposed hGBM, [18F]DASA-23 uptake was reduced in hGBM exposed to TTFields (53%, P 0.05) for 3 d. A 6-d TTFields exposure resulted in a 31% reduction (P = 0.043) in 60-min uptake of [18F]DASA-23. [18F]DASA-23 was retained after a 10 but not 30-min wash-out period. Compared to [18F]FDG, [18F]DASA-23 demonstrated a 4- to 9-fold greater uptake, implying an improved tumor-to-background ratio. Furthermore, compared to no-TTFields exposure, a 6-d TTFields exposure caused a 35% reduction in [18F]DASA-23 30-min uptake compared to only an 8% reduction in [18F]FDG 30-min uptake. Quantitative Western blot analysis and qualitative immunofluorescence for PKM2 confirmed the TTFields-induced reduction in PKM2 expression. This is the first study to demonstrate that TTFields impairs hGBM aberrant glycolytic metabolism through reduced PKM2 expression, which can be non-invasively detected by the [18F]DASA-23 radiotracer.
Tri-arc growth and characterization of U3Si2 and U3Si5 single crystals

Abstract Single crystals of U3Si2 and U3Si5 were grown using the modified Czochralski tri-arc growth technique in a gettered argon atmosphere. A variety of growth parameters including seed pull rate, seed rotation rate, crystal size, charge size and stoichiometry were evaluated to determine the best growth conditions in an effort to produce high quality single crystals for property measurements and basic studies. The crystals were characterized for quality, phase purity, density, and axial variations in chemistry. Near phase-pure, single crystals 5 mm in diameter and 35 mm in length were grown with minimal variation in stoichiometry and limited cracking using a crystal rotation rate of 30 rpm, a hearth rotation rate of 22 rpm, and a pull rate of 16 mm/h up to solidified fraction of g = 0.75.
Neuroanatomical differences in the memory systems of intellectual giftedness and typical development

INTRODUCTION Studying neuro-structural markers of intellectual giftedness (IG) will inform scientific understanding of the processes helping children excel academically. METHODS Structural and diffusion-weighted MRI was used to compare regional brain shape and connectivity of 12 children with average to high average IQ and 18 IG children, defined as having IQ greater than 145. RESULTS IG had larger subcortical structures and more robust white matter microstructural organization between those structures in regions associated with explicit memory. TD had more connected, larger subcortical structures in regions associated with implicit memory. CONCLUSIONS It was found that the memory systems within brains of children with exceptional intellectual abilities are differently sized and connected compared to the brains of typically developing children. These different neurodevelopmental trajectories suggest different learning strategies. A spectrum of intelligence types is envisioned, facilitated by different ratios of implicit and explicit system, which was validated using a large external dataset.