cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Perfect Bibliographic Record: Platonic Ideal, Rhetorical Strategy or Nonsense?

ABSTRACT Discussions of quality in library catalogs and bibliographic databases often refer to “the perfect record.” This paper examines the usage of that phrase in the library literature, finding that its predominant use is as a rhetorical strategy for reducing the complex and context-dependent issue of quality to an absurdity, thus permitting the author to ignore or dismiss all issues of quality. Five documents in which the phrase is not used in this fashion are examined and their value for understanding the inextricably intertwined values of quantity and quality are discussed. The author recommends rejecting both the rhetoric of “the perfect record” and satisfaction with “the imperfect record.”
Cooling Out Undergraduates with Health Impairments: The Freshman Experience

Students with health impairments represent a growing sector of the college population, but health based disparities in bachelor's degree completion persist. The classes students pass and the grades they receive during the first year of college provide signals of degree progress and academic fit that shape educational expectations, potentially subjecting students to a cooling out process (Clark 1960). Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS 04/09), we compare signals of degree progress and academic fit and changes in educational expectations between students with and without health impairments during the first year of college. We find that net of academic preparation, type of institution, enrollment intensity and first year experiences, students with mental impairments are more likely to lower their educational expectations after the first year of college, due partially to negative signals of academic fit. We find limited evidence that gaps in learning are related to the use of academic accommodations for students with health impairments. Our results suggest that students with mental impairments are disadvantaged in reaching first year benchmarks of degree progress and academic fit and are disproportionately cooled out.
An X-band circularly polarized substrate integrated waveguide slot antenna

We present a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed slot antenna with 34% bandwidth at X-band. Dual differential feeding with a phase offset of 90° is employed to achieve circular polarization, resulting in an excellent isolation. The antenna achieves wide-band circularly polarized radiation with symmetric patterns in both principal planes, with average gain of 5.7 dB and simulated radiation efficiency greater than 96%.
Practice and development of key subject of Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention

This article analyzed the basic conditions of the construction for the key subjects in Dis-ease Control and Prevention institutions (CDC), and described the status quo, development direction and goal of the key subject construction using Hunan province CDC (HNCDC) as an example. Finally, it was discussed that four important aspects of the work should be paid more attention during the key subject con-struction in HNCDC. Key words: Centers for disease control; Key subjects; Subjects construction; Hunan
Evaluation of unanticipated 30-day readmission in patients with advanced stage epithelial ovarian cancer.

e17684 Background: Unanticipated 30-day hospital readmission is recognized as a quality of care metric and tied to reimbursement. We looked to analyze rate, risk factors and costs associated with readmission in patients with advanced stage ovarian cancer throughout treatment. Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare (SEER-Medicare) linked database (1992-2010) was used to evaluate readmission rates within 30-days of discharge for 5 years after the date of diagnosis in patients with stage IIIC/IV ovarian/primary peritoneal/fallopian tube cancer. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with readmission. Results: Of 8,411 eligible subjects, 1,783 (21.2%) were readmitted within 30-days of discharge (2,431 total readmissions). Mean patient age was 75 years. Diagnoses associated with readmission included volume depletion (17.9%), metabolic/electrolyte abnormalities (13.4%), anemia (10.2%), urinary tract infection (9.5%) and ascites (6.6%). In multivariate ...
An Incentivized, Workplace Physical Activity Intervention Preferentially Increases Daily Steps in Inactive Employees:

Although physical activity (PA) is associated with decreased risk of chronic diseases, fewer than half of American adults meet the recommendations for daily PA, in part, due to large amounts of sedentary time in the workplace.Purpose:To determine the efficacy of an incentivized workplace PA intervention.Design:Retrospective cohort design.Setting:Large southeastern university.Participants:Of the 16 588 eligible employees working ≥8 h/wk, 6246 (37.6%) participated and 2206 (13.3%) were included in data analysis.Intervention:Six-week PA intervention with tiered incentives (value: $10.50-$29.00).Measures:Steps/day measured via consumer-grade PA monitors for 1-week pre-, 6-weeks during, and 1-week postintervention.Analysis:Participants were grouped by preintervention PA into 4 groups: <6000 (I); 6000 to 7999 (II); 8000 to 9999 (III); and ≥10 000 (IV) steps/d (n = 481, 540, 485, and 700, respectively) in accordance with the tiered incentive schedule. Statistical comparisons were made by repeated-measures analys...
Nanoparticle-based biosensors and bioassays

In this book chapter, we review the recent advances in nanoparticles based bioassay. The nanoparticles include quantum dots, silica nanoparticles and apoferritin nanoparticles. The new nanoparticles-based labels hold great promise for multiplex protein and DNA detection and for enhancing the sensitivity of other bioassays.
Encouraging Development of a Global Mindset among Students in Online International Management Courses.

This research explores how a multiple intelligences approach can be used to build a global mindset among students in online international management courses. It draws upon research in the areas of ...
Extending the Sentence Verification Technique to Tables and Node-Link Diagrams

In addition to prose, situation reports used by various organizations often present supporting information in “visual” formats that pose unique challenges for assessing readers’ comprehension. Two of the more common information categories seen in these reports are text-based tables and node-link diagrams. To better understand what readers attend to in these formats, we adapted a proven method for assessing prose comprehension, known as the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT), to these ancillary materials and conducted an exploratory reading study with format, aspects of the SVT, and contextual information as independent variables. Except for tables, error rates were comparatively uniform. Assessments of prose were significantly faster than assessments of diagrammatic information, which in turn were significantly faster than table assessments. The latter also took longer when posed without contextual details. We conclude that the SVT can be successfully adapted for information in ancillary formats and discuss further research issues for this endeavor.
Instrumentation and Positioning

This chapter describes the surgical instruments and equipment utilized by the author during the pterional approach to intracranial lesions. Since part of the instrumentation is used to maintain the proper position and alignment of the patient, positioning is an intimately related subject.
IIS: A marriage of computational linguistics, psychology, and educational technologies

There are numerous projects at the University of Memphis Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS) that involve a marriage of natural language processing, computational linguistics, psychology, and educational technologies. We use natural language and computational linguistic technologies to accomplish a variety of goals related to psychology and educational practice, including text analysis and the development of interactive tutoring systems. This paper describes these technologies and some of our computational methods.
Changing Systems of Social Protection in the Context of the Changing Political Economies since the 1980s

Abstract This article provides an overview of the profound changes in the more advanced welfare states in Europe and Latin America over the past 35 years. Deindustrialization, informalization, and the rise of unstable employment, combined with aging populations rendered traditional employment-based models of social protection less effective and at the same time increased demands on the welfare state. The two main responses to these challenges were efforts at cost containment and inclusion in non-contributory social protection schemes and health services of those in marginal labor market positions. The mix of these two responses and the depth of the changes were shaped by the intensity of the economic and demographic pressures, policy legacies, the partisan preferences of governing parties and coalitional constraints, the strength of groups in civil society, the presence of veto points in the political system, and in Latin America the process of democratization, along with the international context. A broad comparison between Latin America and Europe highlights the importance of the international context in the form of a relentless pursuit of neoliberal models by the International Financial Institutions in Latin America in contrast to the model of Social Europe promoted by the European Union.
Linking intersectional invisibility and hypervisibility to experiences of microaggressions among graduate women of color in STEM

Abstract Given their intersecting identities as both women and people of color within STEM discourses that have been historically shaped to respond to one or the other, women of color are invisible within both (Crenshaw, 1991). These experiences of intersectional invisibility increase the likelihood of being scrutinized, isolated, and marginalized by the dominant group. Thus, exacerbating the chilly STEM climate. Using a nationwide sample of 176 participants, the current study examined microaggressions as an avenue through which women of color are rendered simultaneously invisible and hypervisible in STEM fields. Further, our study explored recommendations for addressing such experiences of microaggressions and intersectional invisibility. The four themes that emerged from participants' microaggressive experiences included: delegitimization of one's skills and expertise, implicit and explicit messages communicating their lack of belonging in STEM, instances where both their voice and physical presence were ignored, and gendered and racialized encounters. Nonetheless, students were encouraged to engage in agentic acts such as cultivating communities of support, internalizing messages of success, and foregrounding reasons for pursuing STEM. Implications are discussed in terms of increasing persistence among women of color in STEM.
The benefits of yoga for people living with HIV/AIDS: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Background People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) often experience psychological stress associated with disease management. This meta-analysis examines the benefits of yoga interventions on psychological distress among PLWHA. Methods Included were studies that (a) evaluated a yoga intervention in PLWHA; (b) provided between-group or within-group changes; and (c) assessed a psychological, physiological, or biomedical outcome. Results Seven studies sampling 396 PLWHA (M age = 42 years, SD = 5 years; 40% women) met inclusion criteria. PLWHA who received yoga interventions reported significant improvements in perceived stress (d+ = 0.80, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = 0.53, 1.07), positive affect (d + = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.49, 0.98), and anxiety (d+ = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.27, 1.14) compared to controls. Conclusion Yoga is a promising intervention for stress management. However, the literature is limited by the small number of studies. Randomized controlled trials with objective measures of HIV-related outcomes are needed to further evaluate the benefits of yoga.
Closing the Brief Case: Klebsiella variicola-Identifying the Misidentified.

1. Which antibiotic-resistant gene found on the IncFII(y) plasmid was associated with the Klebsiella variicola isolate from the Gwangju tributary? Answer: d. Variant of the NDM gene ( bla NDM-9). K. variicola strains GJ1, GJ2, and GJ3 were carbapenem-resistant strains found to possess
Overview of Primary Malignant Tumors Affecting the Hip

Malignancy within the hip joint can present with nonspecific symptoms such as a limp, joint stiffness, and pain. While malignant disease within the hip joint is not as common as in other areas of the body, its recognition is important, as a delay in proper diagnosis may be detrimental to patient outcomes. The authors present an overview of several malignant disease processes involving the hip joint as well as the senior author's preferred technique for endoprosthetic reconstruction in treating these conditions.
A Near-Threshold Spiking Neural Network Accelerator With a Body-Swapping-Based $In \,\,Situ$ Error Detection and Correction Technique

Specialized architecture combined with near- and subthreshold voltage circuits emerges as a promising candidate to improve the energy efficiency in performing complex computing kernels in a resource-constrained device. One of the critical challenges in such design is the large delay variability across process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations. The in situ error detection and correction (EDAC) technique can potentially handle such variations; however, since existing techniques have targeted von-Neumann architecture and nominal voltage circuits, it becomes nontrivial to apply them on near and subthreshold voltage accelerators, many of which do not base on the von-Neumann architecture. In particular, those accelerators often have no instruction, making it difficult to use the popular instruction-replay-based error correction. To tackle this challenge, in this paper, we propose a novel in situ EDAC technique that utilizes dynamic, temporarily, and spatially fine-grained body swapping for error correction without instruction replay. Using the proposed technique, we prototyped a spiking neural network (SNN) sorter in non-von-Neumann architecture. The prototyped chip can successfully remove the worst-case margin and, thus, achieve 49.3% higher energy efficiency and 35.6% higher throughput compared to the baseline that operates with the worst-case margin. The proposed technique incurs only 4.1% silicon area overhead and requires no additional supply voltage.
Where did that noise come from? Memory for sound locations is exceedingly eccentric both in front and in rear space.

Few studies have examined the stability of the representation of the position of sound sources in spatial working memory. The goal of this study was to verify whether the memory of sound position declines as maintenance time increases. In two experiments, we tested the influence of the delay between stimulus and response in a sound localization task. In Experiment 1, blindfolded participants listened to bursts of white noise originating from 16 loudspeakers equally spaced in a 360-degree circular space around the listener in such a way that the nose was aligned to the zero-degree coordinate. Their task was to indicate sounds’ position using a digital pointer when prompted at varying delays: 0, 3, and 6 s after stimulus offset. In Experiment 2, the task was analogous to Exp. 1 with stimulus–response delays of 0 or 10 s. Results of the two experiments show that increasing stimulus–response delays up to 10 s do not impair sound localization. Participants systematically overestimated the eccentricity of the auditory stimulus by shifting their responses either toward the 90-degree coordinate, in alignment with the right ear, or toward the 270-degree coordinate, in alignment with the left ear. Such bias was analogous in the front and in the rear azimuthal space and was only marginally influenced by the delay conditions. We conclude that the representation of auditory space in working memory is stable, but directionally biased with systematic overestimation of eccentricity.
Abstract 4949: Immunological ignorance is an enabling feature of the oligo-clonal T cell response to melanoma neoantigen

The impact of intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) and the neoantigen landscape on T cell immunity is poorly understood. ITH is a widely recognized feature of solid tumors and poses distinct challenges related to the development of effective therapeutic strategies, including cancer immunotherapy. Cutaneous melanoma is characterized by C->T transitions caused by UV exposure which leads to a large mutational burden encoding putative neoantigens. Here, we performed ultra-deep DNA sequencing of multiple metastases from melanoma patients and observed ubiquitious sharing of clonal and subclonal single nucleotide variants (SNV) encoding putative HLA class I restricted neoantigen epitopes among tumors. MEL66, a reference melanoma patient with a large mutational burden (53 SNV/Mb), provided six resected metastases for study. The spontaneous T-cell response features an oligo/monoclonal T cell-receptor (TCR) repertoire which targets a few clonal neoantigens; most neoantigen-specific T cell clones ignore the tumor. CD8+ T cells to additional HLA class I restricted neoantigens can be elicited by DC vaccination (NCT03092453) with tumor-encoded amino acid substituted (mutated) peptides resulting in a diverse, high frequency TCR repertoire. Isolation of T cell clones by limiting dilution from blood and TIL permits functional validation regarding neoantigen-specificity. Gene transfer of paired abTCR heterodimers specific for clonal neoantigens confirmed correct clonotype assignments based on high throughput CDR3 sequencing. Additional melanoma patients with 2-6 resected metastases were investigated and similar observations were found. Our observations implicate ineffective neoantigen cross-presentation as the basis for immunological ignorance. We postulate that therapeutic vaccination is required to increase the breadth and diversity of neoantigen-specific CD8+ T cells as an adjunct to checkpoint inhibitor treatment for cancer. Citation Format: Gerald P. Linette, Beatriz M. Carreno, Zackary L. Skidmore, Jasreet Hundel, Obi L. Griffith, Malachi Griffith, Vincent Magrini, Elaine R. Mardis. Immunological ignorance is an enabling feature of the oligo-clonal T cell response to melanoma neoantigen [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 4949.
A Mother’s Guilt: Female Responses to Child Death in High and Late Medieval England

Child mortality was high in the Middle Ages. Children perished during birth or post-partum, from disease, while performing chores alongside siblings and parents, and while playing around the household and community. Although child deaths were frequent, increasing during times of famine and epidemic, the theory that parents remained largely indifferent to children until they reached an age where survival was more likely, has long been disproven. In fact, medieval writers produced texts and sermons to help parents, specifically mothers, keep children safe around the home and to help them cope with grief in times of crisis. Danielle Griego discusses mother-child relationships and examines descriptions of maternal reactions to child death, with particular attention to the feelings of grief and guilt, in didactic and admonitory literature and lyrics from the High and Late Middle Ages. By considering posthumous miracle stories attributed to Thomas Becket, Thomas Cantilupe, and Henry VI, in conjunction with medieval lullabies and Passion lyrics, the chapter illuminates the expectations that religious men had in regards to childrearing and gender-appropriated emotions associated with child death.
A rapid and highly sensitive optical platform for pathogen detection and antimicrobial sensitivity testing (Conference Presentation)

Antibiotic resistance is a burgeoning global public health threats of our time. Antibiotic resistance is a multifactorial and complex problem which cannot be solved by only developing stronger and better antibiotic compounds. Rapid detection and characterization of pathogenic bacteria are critical for effectively treating bacterial infections without exacerbating the resistance problem. Here, we present a novel highly-sensitive and label-free platform, Rapid-Ultra-Sensitive-Detector (RUSD), that utilizes the high reflectance coefficient of light at the interface between low-refractive-index and high-refractive-index media. The sensitivity of RUSD is three to four orders of magnitude higher than conventional optical density-based methods. Utilizing RUSD, we can detect as low as ~20 bacterial cells or a single fungal cell. This technique does not require any sophisticated signal processing steps and it enables growth rate measurements in less than an hour. Finally, we can now measure antibiotics resistance of several gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli, within two hours.
Naser al-Din Shah’s 1873 Visit to the World’s Fair in Vienna

Naser al-Din Shah's 1873 visit to the World's Fair in Vienna was devised by his advisors to encourage the Shah to adopt European-inspired policies for modernisation, and to put Persia on the map. T...
Network-regulated organ allometry: The developmental regulation of morphological scaling

Morphological scaling relationships, or allometries, describe how traits grow coordinately and covary among individuals in a population. The developmental regulation of scaling is essential to generate correctly proportioned adults across a range of body sizes, while the mis-regulation of scaling may result in congenital birth defects. Research over several decades has identified the developmental mechanisms that regulate the size of individual traits. Nevertheless, we still have poor understanding of how these mechanisms work together to generate correlated size variation among traits in response to environmental and genetic variation. Conceptually, morphological scaling can be generated by size-regulatory factors that act directly on multiple growing traits (trait-autonomous scaling), or indirectly via hormones produced by central endocrine organs (systemically regulated scaling), and there are a number of well-established examples of such mechanisms. There is much less evidence, however, that genetic and environmental variation actually acts on these mechanisms to generate morphological scaling in natural populations. More recent studies indicate that growing organs can themselves regulate the growth of other organs in the body. This suggests that covariation in trait size can be generated by network-regulated scaling mechanisms that respond to changes in the growth of individual traits. Testing this hypothesis, and one of the main challenges of understanding morphological scaling, requires connecting mechanisms elucidated in the laboratory with patterns of scaling observed in the natural world. This article is categorized under: Establishment of Spatial and Temporal Patterns > Regulation of Size, Proportion, and Timing Comparative Development and Evolution > Organ System Comparisons Between Species.
Microbial contamination of tattoo and permanent makeup inks marketed in the US: a follow-up study

In a 2018 survey, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified microbial contamination in 42 (49%) of 85 unopened tattoo and permanent makeup (PMU) inks purchased from 13 manufacturers in the US between November 2015 and April 2016. To confirm the results of our previous survey, we evaluated the level of microbial contamination in an additional 27 samples from 10 manufacturers from September 2017 to December 2017, including 21 unopened tattoo and PMU inks which were selected based on our previous survey results and 6 ink diluents that were not previously analysed. Aerobic plate count and enrichment culture methods from the FDA's Bacteriological Analytical Manual revealed 11 (52%) out of 21 inks, from six manufacturers, were contaminated with micro-organisms, with contamination levels up to 3·6 × 108 CFU per gram, consistent with our previous survey results. We identified 25 bacterial strains belonging to nine genera and 19 species. Strains of Bacillus sp. (11 strains, 44%) were dominant, followed by Paenibacillus sp. (5 strains, 20%). Clinically relevant strains, such as Kocuria rhizophila and Oligella ureolytica, were also identified, as similar to the findings in our previous survey. No microbial contamination was detected in any of the six ink diluents.
DETECTION OF FREE RADICAL SPECIES DERIVED FROM CUMENE HYDROPEROXIDE IN MODEL HEMEPROTEIN SYSTEMS AND IN RAT LIVER MICROSOMES BY SPIN-TRAPPING TECHNIQUES

Publisher Summary This chapter analyzes a study for the detection of free radical species derived from cumene hydroperoxide in model hemeprotein systems and in rat liver microsomes by spin-trapping techniques. Cumene hydroperoxide has been shown to substitute for O2 and NADPH in numerous oxidation reactions catalyzed by purified and membrane-bound liver microsomal cytochrome P-450. Thus, it has been proposed that these peroxidase activities and the corresponding monooxygenase activities of cytochrome P-450 involve a common oxidized form of the hemeprotein, which transfers an oxygen atom from the oxidant to the substrate. It has been established that other hemeproteins catalyze the hydroperoxide-dependent N-demethylation of several typical cytochrome P-450 substrates via oxidation of the substrate to a free radical species. The results in this suggest that metmyoglobin and microsomal cytochrome P-450 function similarly in initiating a radical decomposition of cumene hydroperoxide, which produces the cumyloxy radical and the methyl radical. The latter species is expected to be a more potent one-electron oxidant than the former. It seems probable that one or both of these reactive species are involved in many, if not all, of the cumene hydroperoxide-supported reactions reported for cytochrome P-450.
Abstract 14338: Prevalence, Associations and Outcomes of Double Orifice and Parachute Mitral Valve

Background: The incidence of congenital mitral valve disease is 0.4%; Double Orifice Mitral Valve (DOMV) and Parachute Mitral Valve (PMV) are two morphologic pathologies that may result in mitral v...
Let’s cut to commercial: where research, evaluation, and design of learning games should go next

This paper is in response to the article titled “Designing and integrating purposeful learning in game play: a systematic review” by Ke (Educ Technol Res Dev 64:219–244, 2016) focusing on research, evaluation, and design. In her article, Ke’s synthesized five major themes related to the design of learning games in published academic research. These are then offered as guideposts for future research-based learning game design. However, to be more responsive to the immediate needs of educators, I contend that we should be able to speak to commercial learning games as well. My proposal is that we use Ke’s work as a starting point for commercial learning game evaluation, and more broadly, expand our research and design so that we can speak more thoughtfully about commercial games and the variety of ways they could be integrated into learning experiences.
A New, Miniaturized Genus and Species of Snake (Cyclocoridae) from the Philippines

The Philippine archipelago is an exceptionally biodiverse region that includes at least 112 species of land snakes from 41 genera and 12 families. Recently, Cyclocoridae (formerly Lamprophiidae: Cyclocorinae) was proposed as a distinct, Philippine-endemic family, containing four genera: Cyclocorus, Hologerrhum, Myersophis, and Oxyrhabdium. Here, we describe an additional cyclocorid genus and species, Levitonius mirus, new genus and species, from Samar and Leyte Islands, Philippines. Molecular data support Levitonius, new genus, to be most closely related to Myersophis and Oxyrhabdium, and it shares multiple skeletal characteristics with these genera; Levitonius, new genus, differs from all of these taxa in body size, scalation, and other characters. Skeletal and other phenotypic data suggest that Levitonius, new genus, is fossorial and likely has a diet that is specialized on earthworms. Levitonius mirus, new genus and species, has a maximum total length of 172 mm and is at present the smallest known species in Elapoidea. Our results highlight the need for future work on Samar and Leyte Islands, which have received relatively little attention from systematists, in part because of a prevailing biogeographic paradigm that predicted (not necessarily correctly) that these islands would simply have a nested faunal subset of the Mindanao faunal region land vertebrates. The discovery of a strikingly distinct and phylogenetically divergent snake lineage on these landmasses joins numerous related studies calling for a wholesale reconsideration of the Pleistocene Aggregate Island Complex model (the PAIC paradigm of diversification) biogeographic framework.
Toward Generalizable Models of I/O Throughput

Many modern HPC applications do not make good use of the limited available I/O bandwidth. Developing an understanding of the I/O subsystem is a critical first step in order to better utilize an HPC system. While expert insight is indispensable, I/O experts are in rare supply. We seek to automate this effort by developing and interpreting models of I/O throughput. Such interpretations may be useful to both application developers who can use them to improve their codes and to facility operators who can use them to identify larger problems in an HPC system. The application of machine learning (ML) to HPC system analysis has been shown to be a promising direction. However, the direct application of ML methods to I/O throughput prediction often leads to brittle models with low extrapolative power. In this work, we set out to understand the reasons why common methods underperform on this specific problem domain, and how to build models that better generalize on unseen data. We show that commonly used cross-validation testing yields sets that are too similar, preventing us from detecting overfitting. We propose a method for generating test sets that encourages training-test set separation. Next we explore limits of I/O throughput prediction and show that we can estimate I/O contention noise by observing repeated runs of an application. Then we show that by using our new test sets, we can better discriminate different architectures of ML models in terms of how well they generalize.
Endocarditis and systemic embolization from Whipple’s disease

Abstract Whipple’s disease (WD), caused by infection with the organism Tropheryma whipplei, is a rare disease that classically presents with diarrhea, weight loss, and polyarthralgia. Less commonly, Whipple’s Disease can presentation with endocarditis or neurologic infections. The authors report a patient with Whipple’s Disease endocarditis whose initial presentation was acute lower extremity arterial occlusion, and review current literature regarding the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of Whipple’s Disease endocarditis.
Goodness: The Capacity for Goodness

Several theories and definitions of goodness are delineated. Goodness, like relational beauty and truthfulness, is a mode of encountering meanings that are pure and excellent. Phenomenologically, the capacity for perceiving and enacting goodness-saturated meanings organizes our lifeworld. In existential terms, to be good is to make oneself worthy of the loving goodness that has been bestowed upon us and identifying with this life-affirming gift. The capacity for goodness is grounded in an ethic of love. Becoming a good person involves discovering and embodying value-laden meanings such as benevolence, honesty, and justice.
New Developments in Picosecond Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy: Vibrational Relaxation Phenomena

Problems associated with the determination of the pathways and rates of the relaxation of radiatively prepared vibronic states have occupied much attention in recent years. The subject has been approached from two main points of interest. First, the more significant advances have been made in the study of coherence loss phenomena associated not only with vibrational energy but also with “pure” dephasing contributions. This type of approach has some advantages in that it promises much higher spectral resolution and sensitivity since it is possible to work in the frequency domain as well as to make use of coherent amplification techniques including CARS spectroscopy and photon echo studies. On the other hand, the incoherent aspects of the relaxation phenomena are much harder to get at experimentally. Incoherent anti Stokes Raman [1] and two-step excitation of molecular fluorescence [2] have been used to probe vibrational relaxation in the ground state, while studies of the corresponding process in an electronically excited state have mostly used time-resolved fluorescence approaches. One exception has been the transient absorption spectroscopic work of HOCHSTRASSER and co-workers.[3]
Asymptotically optimum multiuser decision feedback detection

The optimum decision feedback multiuser detection rule was obtained in Varanasi (1997) for the joint detection of K simultaneously transmitting users in a synchronous Gaussian correlated waveform multiple access (CWMA) channel. The measure of optimality considered there was the asymptotic symmetric (worst-case over users) effective energy. The resulting optimum decision feedback detector (ODFD) is characterized by a feedforward-feedback matrix pair and requires K additions and K multiplications per user after matched filtering for its implementation. In this paper, it is shown that in addition to its optimality in asymptotic symmetric effective energy, the ODFD can, under certain conditions, achieve optimum asymptotic effective energy for every user, thereby matching the asymptotic efficiency performance of the exponentially complex maximum likelihood detector for all users simultaneously. In proving this result, it is not assumed that interference cancellation is perfect.
A Technique for Representing Course Knowledge Using Ontologies and Assessing Test Problems

In this paper we present a novel method for qualitative assessment of educational resources, specifically ’test problems’. For test problems, the basic elements of design are in the form of concepts arranged in a hierarchy. Course concept knowledge can be represented in the form of prerequisite relation based ontology using which, assessment and information extraction from test problems is possible. Using a schema based on Web Ontology Language (OWL), course ontologies can be represented in a standard and sharable way. Some synthetic parameters for the assessment of a test problem in its concept space are introduced. The assessment system can be further extended to analyze any type educational resource.
A single base mutation that converts glycine 907 of the alpha 2(I) chain of type I procollagen to aspartate in a lethal variant of osteogenesis imperfecta. The single amino acid substitution near the carboxyl terminus destabilizes the whole triple helix.

Type I procollagen was examined in cultured skin fibroblasts from a patient with a lethal variant of osteogenesis imperfecta. About half of the pro-α chains were post-translationally overmodified and had a decreased thermal stability. The vertebrate collagenase A fragment had a normal thermal stability, but the B fragment had a decreased thermal stability. Therefore, there was a change in primary structure in amino acids 776–1014 of either the α1(I) or α2(I) chain. Three of five cDNA clones for the α2(I) chain contained a single-base substitution of an A for a G that converted the codon for glycine at amino acid position 907 to aspartate. Complete nucleotide sequencing of bases coding for amino acids 776 to 1014 of the α2(I) chain was carried out in one cDNA clone that contained the mutation in the glycine codon and in one that did not. Also, nucleotide sequencing was performed of bases coding for amino acids 776–1014 of the α1(I) chain in seven independent cDNA clones. No other mutations were found. Therefore, the single base substitution that converts glycine 907 in the α2(I) chain to aspartate is solely responsible for the decreased thermal stability of the type I procollagen synthesized by the proband's fibroblasts. Also, glycine 907 of the α2(I) chain is an important component of a cooperative block that determines the melting temperature of the whole molecule.
A super network of the US Air Force's major operational commands

The author proposes a 21st century command control and communications computer network that connects components of the three major United States Air Force operational commands: the Strategic Air Command (SAC), Military Aircraft Command (MAC), and Tactical Air Command (TAC). The proposed scheme fully connects computers at bases of the three major commands to form the super military network (SUPMILNET). On demand, the topology can be partitioned into totally dedicated separate and independent subnetworks named SACNET, MACNET, and TACNET. >
LACTOSURIA AND LACTASE DEFICIENCY IN ADULT CELIAC DISEASE.

Summary The 5-hr urinary lactose excretion after a 25 g. oral load was measured in 16 patients with adult celiac disease and 18 normal controls. The normal mean excretion was 54 ± 23 mg. In five normal subjects the mean intestinal lactase and invertase activities were 32.0 ± 13.3 and 58.4 ± 25.7 units, respectively. Ten celiac patients on inadequate gluten restriction excreted a mean of 215 ± 80 mg of lactose ( P P P Five out of six adult celiac patients who adhered to strict, gluten-free diets for at least 2 years had normal lactose excretion, but in two the lactase and invertase activity remained low. All of these patients showed at least partial regeneration of the jejunal villi. Increased lactosuria was noted in two out of seven patients with other causes of malabsorption. Lactase activity was measured in five and found to be as low as in the celiac patients on inadequate gluten restriction. It is suggested that the increased lactosuria found in adult celiac disease is related to an increase in mucosal permeability to lactose as well as to lactase deficiency.
Use of Renally Inappropriate Medications in Older Veterans: A National Study.

© 2015, The American Geriatrics Society. Objectives To determine how many ambulatory older adults with chronic kidney disease receive medications that are contraindicated or dosed excessively given their level of renal function. Design Cross-sectional retrospective study. Setting U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinics. Participants Individuals aged 65 and older with a creatinine clearance (CrCl) of 15 to 49 mL/min (N = 83,850; mean age 80; 96% male). Measurements Forty medications that require dose adjustment or are contraindicated in people with impaired renal function were examined. Medication use and CrCl (calculated using the Cockroft-Gault equation) were assessed using VA pharmacy, laboratory, and other data sources as of October 2007. Results Thirteen percent of older veterans with a CrCl of 30 to 49 mL/min and 32% of those with a CrCl of 15 to 29 mL/min received one or more drugs that were contraindicated or prescribed at an excessive dose given the individual's level of renal function. The strongest risk factor for renally inappropriate prescribing was number of medications used; the risk of receiving renally inappropriate medications was 5.5 times as high (95% confidence interval = 5.1-5.9) in older adults taking 10 or more medications as in those taking one to three medications. Ranitidine, allopurinol, and metformin together accounted for 76% of renally misprescribed medications in individuals with a CrCl of 30 to 49 mL/min. Glyburide, ranitidine, gemfibrozil, carvedilol, and allopurinol accounted for 47% of renally misprescribed drugs for individuals with a CrCl of 15 to 29 mL/min. Conclusion Inappropriate prescribing of renally cleared medications is common in ambulatory older veterans, with only a few medications accounting for most of these prescribing problems.
Assessment of engineering design by design

Summary form only given. Over the last ten years, a carefully balanced method of assessment has been created for an introductory junior-level engineering design course at Georgia Tech, USA. Here, the authors describe how it is important to assess design students as they are actually doing the procedures which are being taught. Thus, the assessment of design knowledge by having students do design is important; however it presents difficulties in implementation, some of the pitfalls and successes of which are discussed.
The Complex Energy Landscape of the Protein IscU

IscU, the scaffold protein for iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster biosynthesis in Escherichia coli, traverses a complex energy landscape during Fe-S cluster synthesis and transfer. Our previous studies showed that IscU populates two interconverting conformational states: one structured (S) and one largely disordered (D). Both states appear to be functionally important because proteins involved in the assembly or transfer of Fe-S clusters have been shown to interact preferentially with either the S or D state of IscU. To characterize the complex structure-energy landscape of IscU, we employed NMR spectroscopy, small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS), and differential scanning calorimetry. Results obtained for IscU at pH 8.0 show that its S state is maximally populated at 25°C and that heating or cooling converts the protein toward the D state. Results from NMR and DSC indicate that both the heat- and cold-induced S→D transitions are cooperative and two-state. Low-resolution structural information from NMR and SAXS suggests that the structures of the cold-induced and heat-induced D states are similar. Both states exhibit similar (1)H-(15)N HSQC spectra and the same pattern of peptidyl-prolyl peptide bond configurations by NMR, and both appear to be similarly expanded compared with the S state based on analysis of SAXS data. Whereas in other proteins the cold-denatured states have been found to be slightly more compact than the heat-denatured states, these two states occupy similar volumes in IscU.
Service Life Assessment of Concrete Pipe Culverts

The durability and service life of concrete pipe culverts are discussed. The study reported includes the analysis of important enabling and triggering events that have caused or have the potential to cause the deterioration of concrete pipes. Regression analyses were used to produce prediction equations for the expected service life of culverts. The findings reveal an expected service life of 86 years. The service life reported herein may be of value to cost engineers performing life-cycle cost studies of these types of culverts. However, the prediction equations given should not be used to predict the service life of a particular culvert.
CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling and other recruitment and homing pathways in fracture repair

Cell recruitment, migration and homing to the fracture site are essential for the inflammatory process, neovascularization, chondrogenesis, osteogenesis and ultimately bone remodeling. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are required to navigate from local sources such as the periosteum and local bone marrow, and may also be recruited from the circulation and distant bone marrow. While the local recruitment process may involve matrix binding and degradation, systemic recruitment may utilize extravasation, a process used by leukocytes to exit the vasculature. CXCL12 (stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1)), a member of the CXC family of chemokines, is thought to have an important role in cell migration at the fracture site. However, there are many molecules upregulated in the hematoma and callus that have chemotactic potential not only for inflammatory cells but also for endothelial cells and MSCs. Surprisingly, there is little direct data to support their role in cell homing during bone healing. Current therapeutics for bone regeneration utilize local or systemic stem cell transplantation. More recently, a novel strategy that involves mobilization of large numbers of endogenous stem and progenitor cells from bone marrow into the circulation has been shown to have positive effects on bone healing. A more complete understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell recruitment and homing subsequent to fracture will facilitate the fine-tuning of such strategies for bone.
Structure-function investigation of vsp serotypes of the spirochete Borrelia hermsii.

Background Relapsing fever (RF) spirochetes are notable for multiphasic antigenic variation of polymorphic outer membrane lipoproteins, a phenomenon responsible for immune evasion. An additional role in tissue localization is suggested by the finding that isogenic serotypes 1 (Bt1) and 2 (Bt2) of the RF spirochete Borrelia turicatae, which differ only in the Vsp they express, exhibit marked differences in clinical disease severity and tissue localization during infection. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we used known vsp DNA sequences encoding for B. turicatae and Borrelia hermsii Vsp proteins with variable regions and then studied whether there are differences in disease expression and tissue localization of their corresponding serotypes during mouse infection. For sequence and structural comparisons we focused exclusively on amino acid residues predicted to project away from the spirochetes surface, referred to as the Vsp dome. Disease severity and tissue localization were studied during persistent infection with individual or mixed serotypes in SCID mice. The results showed that all Vsp domes clustered into 3 main trunks, with the domes for B. turicatae Vsp1 (BtVsp1) and BtVsp2 clustering into separate ones. B. hermsii serotypes whose Vsp domes clustered with the BtVsp1 dome were less virulent but localized to the brain more. The BtVsp2 dome was the oddball among all and Bt2 was the only serotype that caused severe arthritis. Conclusion/Significance These findings indicate that there is significant variability in Vsp dome structure, disease severity, and tissue localization among serotypes of B. hermsii.
NKG2D in NK and T cell-mediated immunity.

One of the best characterized NK cell receptors is NKG2D, a highly conserved C-type lectin-like membrane glycoprotein expressed on essentially all NK cells, as well as on γδ-TcR+ T cells and αβ-TcR+ CD8+ T cells, in humans and mice. Here we review recent studies implicating NKG2D in T cell and NK cell-mediated immunity to viruses and tumors, and its potential role in autoimmune diseases and allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.
Understanding the Pincer - The Importance of Reference Plane Orientation on Acetabular Rim Evaluation

Objectives:Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is a common cause of young adult hip pain. FAI can result from an acetabular-sided bony lesion, or “pincer” lesion. A pincer lesion is defined as an ar...