cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
High-Resolution Laser Scanning Reveals Plant Architectures that Reflect Universal Network Design Principles

Summary Transport networks serve critical functions in biological and engineered systems, and yet their design requires trade-offs between competing objectives. Due to their sessile lifestyle, plants need to optimize their architecture to efficiently acquire and distribute resources while also minimizing costs in building infrastructure. To understand how plants resolve this design trade-off, we used high-precision three-dimensional laser scanning to map the architectures of tomato, tobacco, or sorghum plants grown in several environmental conditions and through multiple developmental time points, scanning in total 505 architectures from 37 plants. Using a graph-theoretic algorithm that we developed to evaluate design strategies, we find that plant architectures lie along the Pareto front between two simple length-based objectives—minimizing total branch length and minimizing nutrient transport distance—thereby conferring a selective fitness advantage for plant transport processes. The location along the Pareto front can distinguish among species and conditions, suggesting that during evolution, natural selection may employ common network design principles despite different optimization trade-offs.
PROGNOSIS OF SEVERE ASYMPTOMATIC AORTIC STENOSIS WITH AND WITHOUT SURGERY

This study sought to determine outcomes in patients with severe, asymptomatic aortic stenosis (AS), stratified by treatment recommendation. Between January 2005 and December 2013, 4998 patients had severe AS by echocardiography, of whom 308 were identified as asymptomatic by chart review. Five
Predicting critical care unit-level complications after long-segment fusion procedures for adult spinal deformity

Background: To identify predictive factors for critical care unit-level complications (CCU complication) after long-segment fusion procedures for adult spinal deformity (ASD). Methods: The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database [2010–2014] was reviewed. Only adult patients who underwent fusion of 7 or more spinal levels for ASD were included. CCU complications included intraoperative arrest/infarction, ventilation >48 hours, pulmonary embolism, renal failure requiring dialysis, cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction, unplanned intubation, septic shock, stroke, coma, or new neurological deficit. A stepwise multivariate regression was used to identify independent predictors of CCU complications. Results: Among 826 patients, the rate of CCU complications was 6.4%. On multivariate regression analysis, dependent functional status (P=0.004), combined approach (P=0.023), age (P=0.044), diabetes (P=0.048), and surgery for over 8 hours (P=0.080) were significantly associated with complication development. A simple scoring system was developed to predict complications with 0 points for patients aged Conclusions: The findings in this study suggest that older patients, patients with diabetes, patients who depend on others for activities of daily living, and patients who undergo combined approaches or surgery for over 8 hours may be at a significantly increased risk of developing a CCU-level complication after adult deformity surgery.
Medically Supervised Weight Loss Programs

Obesity is a multifactorial chronic disease affecting nearly 60 million adult Americans. Anti-obesity medications may have an important role in helping people to lose weight in the context of a lifestyle intervention program. Pharmacotherapy has shown to improve metabolic control in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Due to scarce accessibility to surgery for all patients with severe obesity, there is a need for medical treatment options. Thus, it is necessary to develop effective multidisciplinary medical therapies alternative and complementary to bariatric surgery. In this chapter, we describe the role of anti-obesity drugs to treat obesity and T2D.
Dysplastic Nevi Melanocytic Grading Criteria

The criteria for diagnosis of dysplastic melanocytic nevi are defined as architectural and cytological. Cytological atypia is required for the diagnosis of dysplastic nevus, however, there is a range of degree of cytological atypia. When criteria for dysplastic nevi are met the tumors are graded based on the degree of melanocytic atypia.
Granulysin: A novel antimicrobial peptide of cytolytic T lymphocytes and natural killer cells

Granulysin is a novel antimicrobial protein produced by human cytolytic T lymphocytes and natural killer cells. It is active against a broad range of microbes, including Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, fungi, and parasites. The fact that it kills Mycobacterium tuberculosis is particularly important, since the current vaccine (Bacille Calmette-Guerin, BCG) is of limited efficacy and antibiotic resistance is increasing. Although functionally related to other antibacterial peptides, defensins and magainins, granulysin is structurally distinct. Like porcine NK lysin and amoebapores made by Entamoeba histolytica, granulysin is related to saposins, small lipid-associated proteins present in the central nervous system. The identification of this novel molecule indicates a broader and perhaps more significant role for T lymphocytes in both innate and acquired antimicrobial defenses.
The Benefits of Focus vs. Heterogeneity: Dissimilar Directors and Coordination within Corporate Boards

We examine dispersion in director characteristics within a board. Directors with different skills can augment the board’s overall expertise and decision making flexibility, but they also face coordination problems. Empirically, the negative effect of dispersion on value prevails. To establish causality, we exploit external constraints that prompt firms to deviate from optimal board dispersion levels, conduct an acquisition event study, and examine market reaction to dispersion changes following director appointments, departures and deaths. Firms with disperse boards experience adverse market reaction to acquisitions. Growth firms experience a negative reaction to dispersion increases. Board dispersion also affects value relevant firm decisions.
A heuristic for non-convex variance-based clustering criteria

We address the clustering problem in the context of exploratory data analysis, where data sets are investigated under different and desirably contrasting perspectives. In this scenario where, for flexibility, solutions are evaluated by criterion functions, we introduce and evaluate a generalized and efficient version of the incremental one-by-one clustering algorithm of MacQueen (1967). Unlike the widely adopted two-phase algorithm developed by Lloyd (1957), our approach does not rely on the gradient of the criterion function being optimized, offering the key advantage of being able to deal with non-convex criteria. After an extensive experimental analysis using real-world data sets with a more flexible, non-convex criterion function, we obtained results that are considerably better than those produced with the k-means criterion, making our algorithm an invaluable tool for exploratory clustering applications.
Simultaneous Elastic and Photoelastic Calibration of Birefringent Orthotropic Model Materials

Transmission photoelastic analysis of composite models has been shown in recent years to be a viable stress analysis method for composite structures. However, difficulties in the fabrication of the model materials require the development of efficient mechanical and optical calibration procedures. In this paper, the methods for measuring elastic and photoelastic constants of composites are briefly reviewed. Then a new method, utilizing a relatively small calibration specimen, is described. In this method, electrical resistance strain gauges are mounted at selected points of a half plane model and photoelastic measurements and strain readings are simultaneously taken. The data are processed by a least-squares procedure to yield the elastic and photoelastic constants. Comparison of results obtained by the proposed method with the results from conventional tests shows good agreement.
iQCAR: Inter-Query Contention Analyzer

There are many approaches in use today to either prevent or minimize the impact of inter-query interactions on a shared cluster. Preventive measures often provide query execution isolation at the resource allocation level to guarantee a predictable query performance. Despite these measures, performance issues due to concurrent executions of mixed workloads are a common problem in large scale data processing systems. As a result, answering questions like who is causing my query to slowdown is important to diagnose resource conflicts in a multi-tenant environment for accurate blame attribution. However, accurate analysis of resource contention is challenging owing to a complex cause-effect relationship between resource utilization and runtime of concurrent queries (see Figure 1). For example, when some tasks get delayed because of a high demand for a particular resource (e.g. if they are blocked on CPU), they hold on to other resources (e.g. memory) as well, thus causing contention for other concurrently running queries on the held resources. Based on our user-study experience, this process is non-trivial and tedious, and involves hours of manually debugging through a cycle of query interactions.
In search of diners responsive to health cues: Insights from U.S. consumers

Abstract Many consumers rely on summary statistics offered by online and mobile platforms to attain nutrition information on menu items. While positive (vs. negative) summary cues garner more favorable consumer responses, this research provides a more nuanced understanding of this effect by examining the moderating role of two individual-level characteristics: health-consciousness and need for status. Two MTurk samples (Study 1: n = 142, Study 2: n = 119) were recruited in 2018. Findings from Study 1 suggest that health-conscious (vs. less health-conscious) consumers show a wider gap in perceived healthiness of a menu item in response to the valence of a health cue. This greater gap translates into more polarized attitudes toward the menu item. Findings from Study 2 indicate that consumers high (vs. low) in need for status exhibit less favorable attitudes toward a menu item with a negative health cue. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Classification of Antibacterial Peptides Using Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks

Antimicrobial peptides are short amino acid sequences that may be antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral. Most machine learning methodologies applied to identifying antibacterial peptides have developed feature vectors of identical lengths for each peptide in a given dataset although the peptides themselves may differ in number of amino acids. Features are often chosen which represent certain periodic patterns in the peptide sequence without any initial guidance as to whether such patterns are relevant for the classification task at hand. This can result in the construction of a large number of irrelevant features in addition to relevant features. To help alleviate these issues, we choose to extract a feature vector from individual amino acid feature representations through the application of bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory recurrent neural networks. The Long Short-Term Memory network recursively iterates along both directions of the given amino acid sequence and ultimately extracts a finite length feature vector that is then used to classify the peptide. This work demonstrates the application of Long Short-Term Memory recurrent neural networks to classification of antibacterial peptides and compares it to a Random Forest classifier and a k-nearest neighbor classifier.
Hack-and-leak operations: intrusion and influence in the Gulf

ABSTRACTEvents such as the leaking of hacked emails from the US Democratic National Committee before the 2016 presidential election sit between two paradigms of cybersecurity. The first paradigm fo...
Hole doping and antiferromagnetic correlations above the Néel temperature of the topological semimetal ( Sr 1 − x K x ) MnSb 2

Neutron diffraction and magnetic susceptibility studies of orthorhombic single crystal $({\mathrm{Sr}}_{0.97}{\mathrm{K}}_{0.03}){\mathrm{MnSb}}_{2}$ confirm the three-dimensional (3D) C-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering of the ${\mathrm{Mn}}^{2+}$ moments at ${T}_{\mathrm{N}}=305\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}3$ K, which is slightly higher than that of the parent ${\mathrm{SrMnSb}}_{2}$ with ${T}_{\mathrm{N}}=297\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}3$ K. Susceptibility measurements of the K-doped and parent crystals above ${T}_{\mathrm{N}}$ are characteristic of 2D AFM systems. This is consistent with high-temperature neutron diffraction of the parent compound that displays persisting 2D AFM correlations well above ${T}_{\mathrm{N}}$ to at least $\ensuremath{\sim}560$ K with no evidence of a ferromagnetic phase. Analysis of the de Haas--van Alphen magnetic oscillations of the K-doped crystal is consistent with hole doping.
Executive Function Deficits Mediate Effects of Poverty on Academic Achievement: An Important Target for Interventions to Enhance Neurocognitive Development in At-Risk Children

Background: Millions of children raised in unstable, impoverished or violent environments fall behind more fortunate peers in brain development, executive cognitive functions (EF), and academic achievement, general health and employment outcomes. It is important to empirically demonstrate the relation between environment-related compromised EF and compromised functional life outcomes in order to establish that interventions to enhance EF in high-risk children could mitigate life-long effects of adverse rearing environments. Methods: EF was assessed in 5717 children grades k-8 in 40 schools across the United States with web-based classroom-administered tests, and poverty level and academic achievement for each school drawn from US Department of Education data. A regression-based EF factor score was used to evaluate the degree of mediation by EF of the association between poverty and academic proficiency. Findings: EF and academic achievement were both related to school poverty (pearson r -.50 to - .65, p =.0009 to <.0001). Estimated indirect effects of poverty through effects on EF were both significant according to bootstrap results (reading: -0.26, 95% CI: -0.47, -0.07; math: -0.23, 95% CI: -0.44, -0.06 ). The effect of poverty, after controlling for EF, was significant, but diminished on both reading (-0.58 to -0.31) and math (-0.59 to -0.35) performance, indicating that the effects of poverty on reading and math proficiency were mediated via effects of poverty on EF. Interpretation: Effects of poverty on academic achievement are mediated by effects of poverty on EF, suggesting that interventions that enhance development of EF in children in impoverished and/or violent environments can mitigate damaging effects of these environments on neurocognitive and associated life and health outcomes. Without such interventions, a large number of young adults in troubled areas of the world will be ill-prepared for productive function in the 21st century world. Funding: Research was supported by C8 Sciences' operating budget. Declaration of Interest: Two of the authors, Professors Morris Bell and Bruce Wexler, have financial interest in the Yale start-up company C8 Sciences. A third author, Dr. Ahmet Esat Imal, is a part time employee of C8 Sciences. C8 Sciences has developed the assessments described in the paper, and an education intervention directed at improving cognitive skills and learning outcomes in children from poverty. The results presented in our manuscript support the value of the assessments done by C8 Sciences and the rationale for the C8 Sciences intervention. Because of this, Drs. Bell, Imal and Wexler could benefit financially from the publication of these findings. Pittman has no competing financial interest. Ethical Approval: The Yale Human Investigations Committee determined that individual consent was not needed.
PIM protein kinases regulate the level of the long noncoding RNA H19 to control stem cell gene transcription and modulate tumor growth

The proviral integration site for Moloney murine leukemia virus (PIM) serine/threonine kinases have an oncogenic and prosurvival role in hematological and solid cancers. However, the mechanism by which these kinases drive tumor growth has not been completely elucidated. To determine the genes controlled by these protein kinases, we carried out a microarray analysis in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) comparing early progenitor (ETP-ALL) cell lines whose growth is driven by PIM kinases to more mature T-ALL cells that have low PIM levels. This analysis demonstrated that the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) H19 was associated with increased PIM levels in ETP-ALL. Overexpression or knockdown of PIM in these T-ALL cell lines controlled the level of H19 and regulated the methylation of the H19 promoter, suggesting a mechanism by which PIM controls H19 transcription. In these T-ALL cells, the expression of PIM1 induced stem cell gene expression (SOX2, OCT-4, and NANOG) through H19. Identical results were found in prostate cancer (PCa) cell lines where PIM kinases drive cancer growth, and both H19 and stem cell gene levels. Small molecule pan-PIM inhibitors (PIM-i) currently in clinical trials reduced H19 expression in both of these tumor types. Importantly, the knockdown of H19 blocked the ability of PIM to induce stem cell genes in T-ALL cells, suggesting a novel signal transduction cascade. In PCa, increases in SOX2 levels have been shown to cause both resistance to the androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and the induction of neuroendocrine PCa, a highly metastatic form of this disease. Treatment of PCa cells with a small molecule pan-PIM-i reduced stem cell gene transcription and enhanced ADT, while overexpression of H19 suppressed the ability of pan-PIM-i to regulate hormone blockade. Together, these results demonstrate that the PIM kinases control the level of lncRNA H19, which in turn modifies stem cell gene transcription regulating tumor growth.
Multihour Stratospheric Flights with the Heliotrope Solar Hot-Air Balloon

AbstractStandard meteorological balloons can deliver small scientific payloads to the stratosphere for a few tens of minutes, but achieving multihour level flight in this region is more difficult. ...
When Do Predictions Become Performative? Evidence from Simulation Technologies in Urban Planning

This paper details a set of mechanisms that led to a novel conception of a precursor to performativity. We do so by drawing on data conducted through a year-long ethnography of urban planning proce...
Latino immigrants in civil society: Addressing the double-bind of participation for expansive learning in participatory budgeting

The author discusses an in-depth study of the participatory budgeting process in Chicago’s 49th Ward (PB49), a deliberative democratic process in which all residents and ideas were positioned as eq...
Persistent organic pollutants and maternal glycemic outcomes in a diverse pregnancy cohort of overweight women.

Abstract Background Animal and human studies suggest certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs) may impact glucose metabolism; however, few epidemiologic studies have examined environmental determinants of glycemic outcomes during pregnancy. Our objective is to evaluate associations between exposures to individual and mixture of POPs and measures of prenatal fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance during pregnancy in overweight women. Methods A cohort of overweight and obese pregnant women (N = 95) was recruited from California. Blood samples were collected during late first or second trimester (median = 16 weeks’ gestation; range = 10–24 weeks). Exposures included serum concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and hydroxylated metabolites (OH-PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). Outcomes included serum concentrations of fasting plasma glucose, fasting plasma insulin, and calculated homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). Generalized linear models were used to evaluate cross-sectional associations between individual and aggregate POPs and mean percent difference in fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR. Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) was used to assess the relative importance of each exposure to the association with our outcomes, using conditional and group posterior inclusion probabilities (PIPs). Results Study participants were racially/ethnically diverse and nearly half were below the federal poverty level. Across PBDEs and OH-PBDEs, the direction of associations with fasting glucose, fasting insulin and HOMA-IR were varied. A doubling of PCB-138, PCB-153, PCB-180, and ∑PCBs concentrations was associated with a 2.10% mmol/L (95%CI: 0.49%, 3.74%), 2.10% mmol/L (95%CI: −0.14%, 4.39%), 2.10% mmol/L (95%CI: 0.12%, 4.12%), and 2.81% mmol/L (95%CI: 0.38%, 5.31%) increase in fasting glucose, respectively. Exposure to individual PCBs was positively associated with both fasting insulin and HOMA-IR. All PFAS were inversely associated with fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR. In BKMR models of fasting glucose, all four chemical classes were important contributors to the overall mixture, with PFASs identified as the most important contributor. Discussion Prenatal PCB exposure was positively associated while certain PBDE and PFAS analytes were inversely associated with fasting glucose concentrations in overweight women. Further examination of the relationship between POPs exposure and glycemic functioning in a larger study population of women during pregnancy is warranted.
Adolescents’ Reluctance to Express Emotions: Relations to Parent Emotion Socialization

One aspect of emotional development in adolescence is the motivation to express negative emotions to others that is linked to a wide range of psychosocial outcomes (Chaplin et al. Emotion 5:80–88, 2005). Supportive and unsupportive parental emotion socialization responses to adolescent emotional displays are one mechanism that influences adolescent emotional functioning (Garside and Klimes-Dougan Sex Roles 47:115–128, 2002). The present study explored five parental socialization responses to anger, sadness, and worry and how they may differ for youth who vary in their reluctance to express emotions. Participants were 160 adolescents and their parent (74.4% mothers; 58.8% girls, Mage = 12.5 years, 78.1% White, middle-class). Parents reported on their responses to their child’s emotion expressivity and youth reported on their reluctance to express emotions. Using latent class analyses, two groups of adolescents were identified, including those with high (n = 36) and typical (n = 124) levels of reluctance to express emotion. Group and gender effects were examined. Parents reported more validation and less ignoring of negative emotions for adolescents in the typical rather than the high reluctance group. Parents reported more magnification of emotions in response to adolescents’ anger in the typical group in comparison to the high reluctance group, and more magnification of sadness for daughters than for sons. These results suggest that differing levels of adolescents’ reluctance to express emotions are related to parental emotion socialization responses in meaningful ways that may play unique roles in promoting or discouraging the expression of negative emotions.
Clostridioides difficile Infection and Risk of Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease among Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Recipients

ABSTRACT Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a major cause of infectious diarrhea among allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) recipients. The relationship between CDI and acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) has been a topic of interest, as these 2 conditions may influence each other. We studied the temporal relationship of CDI to aGVHD in the first 100 days post-transplantation in a large cohort of allo-HSCT recipients. We performed a retrospective cohort study of adult patients undergoing their first allo-HSCT at our tertiary care medical center between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2016. Patients were followed for CDI diagnosis, development of aGVHD, and vital status up to day +100 post-transplantation. Descriptive statistics and multivariate Cox models with CDI as a time-varying covariate and aGVHD and high-grade aGVHD as outcomes were used for data analyses. A total of 656 allo-HSCT recipients were included in the analysis. Of these, 419 (64%) developed aGVHD, and 111 (17%) were diagnosed with CDI within the first 100 days post-transplantation. CDI developed before the onset of aGVHD in 72 of the 84 allo-HSCT recipients (85%) with both CDI and aGVHD. Fidaxomicin was used in the treatment of 57 of the 111 CDI cases (50%), whereas vancomycin was used in 52 (47%). Most of the CDI cases (88%) were diagnosed in the peritransplantation period (between day -10 and day +10). The median time to the development of CDI and aGVHD was 3.5 days (range, -7 to 95 days) and 33 days (range, 9 to 98 days) post-transplantation, respectively. Using multivariate Cox model, the following predictors were significantly associated with the development of aGVHD: CDI (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.52; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17 to 1.97; P = .0018), transplantation from a matched related donor (MRD) compared with a matched unrelated donor (aHR, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.85; P = .0003), and myeloablative versus nonmyeloablative conditioning (aHR, 2.45; 95% CI, 1.80 to 3.34; P
Association of Stratification by Proportion of Patients Dually Enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid With Financial Penalties in the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program

Importance The Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program (HACRP) is a value-based payment program focused on safety events. Prior studies have found that the program disproportionately penalizes safety-net hospitals, which may perform more poorly because of unmeasured severity of illness rather than lower quality. A similar program, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, stratifies hospitals into 5 peer groups for evaluation based on the proportion of their patients dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, but the effect of stratification on the HACRP is unknown. Objective To characterize the hospitals penalized by the HACRP and the distribution of financial penalties before and after stratification. Design, Setting, and Participants This economic evaluation used publicly available data on HACRP performance and penalties merged with hospital characteristics and cost reports. A total of 3102 hospitals participating in the HACRP in fiscal year 2020 (covering data from July 1, 2016, to December 31, 2018) were studied. Exposures Hospitals were divided into 5 groups based on the proportion of patients dually enrolled, and penalties were assigned to the lowest-performing quartile of hospitals in each group rather than the lowest-performing quartile overall. Main Outcomes and Measures Penalties in the prestratification vs poststratification schemes. Results The study identified 3102 hospitals evaluated by the HACRP. Safety-net hospitals received $111 333 384 in penalties before stratification compared with an estimated $79 087 744 after stratification—a savings of $32 245 640. Hospitals less likely to receive penalties after stratification included safety-net hospitals (33.6% penalized before stratification vs 24.8% after stratification, Δ = –8.8 percentage points [pp],P Conclusions and Relevance This economic evaluation suggests that stratification of hospitals would be associated with a narrowing of disparities in penalties and a marked reduction in penalties for safety-net hospitals. Policy makers should consider adopting stratification for the HACRP.
Weather and landscape influences on pollinator visitation of flowering winter oilseeds (field pennycress and winter camelina)

Flowers of field pennycress (Thlaspi arvsense L.) and winter camelina (Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz.) produce abundant pollen and nectar in early spring and thereby may be valuable for pollinators. Insects observed in field plots of these flowers were classified into seven easily identifiable groups (bumblebee, honeybee, solitary bee, butterfly/moth, beetle, fly and other) and monitored for 2 years at three sites in the Upper Midwest region of the USA. Average seasonal observations across years and sites varied from 1.6 to 5.3 total insects/min for field pennycress and 1.4 to 4.5 insects/min for winter camelina. Lowest visitation rates occurred in central Iowa and highest rates in south‐eastern Minnesota for both crops. Multiple regressions showed that visitation rates for specific insect groups were correlated poorly but significantly (p < .10) with select variables. For example, in field pennycress, visitation by combined bumblebees and honeybees (Apidae) increased with greater air temperature at sampling time and annual site precipitation, whereas fly (Diptera) visitation was related to sampling date and flower cover. Similarly, in winter camelina, solitary bees were linked to increasing air temperature at sampling time and annual site precipitation, whereas flies were correlated with wind speed and flower cover at sampling. Field pennycress and winter camelina are reliably attractive to beneficial pollinating insects across a wide geographic region, but visitation rates and proportional representation of various insect groups depended on a range of site and weather characteristics.
“Us” and “Them” at the Food Pantry

First paragraphs: Food pantries have become a regular part of American life, not only for those who receive food but also for those who provide it through canned food drives, donations at the supermarket, and volunteer events. Millions of adults and chil­dren participate in this form of charity, grateful that they have enough to eat and glad that they have a way to “give back.” In her new book, Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries, Rebecca de Souza troubles the narrative by which middle- and upper-class, often white, Americans see themselves as doing good through the charita­ble provision of food. She argues that conventional food assistance reflects and perpetuates the neolib­eral, racist, and patriarchal ideologies that underlie our conventional food system and keep certain people poor and hungry. De Souza uses her ethno­graphic research in two food pantries in Duluth, Minnesota, to show how staff, volunteers, and even cli­ents draw on the neoliberal values of hard work, responsibility, and material wealth to define who deserves food, respect, and citizenship and who deserves suspicion, surveillance, and discipline. . . .
Engineering chromosome rearrangements in cancer

The identification of large chromosomal rearrangements in cancers has multiplied exponentially over the last decade. These complex and often rare genomic events have traditionally been challenging to study, in part owing to lack of tools that efficiently engineer disease-associated inversions, deletions and translocations in model systems. The emergence and refinement of genome editing technologies, such as CRISPR, have significantly expanded our ability to generate and interrogate chromosomal aberrations to better understand the networks that govern cancer growth. Here we review how existing technologies are employed to faithfully model cancer-associated chromosome rearrangements in the laboratory, with the ultimate goal of developing more accurate pre-clinical models of and therapeutic strategies for cancers driven by these genomic events.
Diffused Intra-Oocyte Hydrogen Peroxide Activates Myeloperoxidase and Deteriorates Oocyte Quality

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a relatively long-lived signaling molecule that plays an essential role in oocyte maturation, implantation, as well as early embryonic development. Exposure to relatively high levels of H2O2 functions efficiently to accelerate oocyte aging and deteriorate oocyte quality. However, little precise information exists regarding intra-oocyte H2O2 concentrations, and its diffusion to the oocyte milieu. In this work, we utilized an L-shaped amperometric integrated H2O2-selective probe to directly and quantitatively measure the real-time intra-oocyte H2O2 concentration. This investigation provides an exact measurement of H2O2 in situ by reducing the possible loss of H2O2 caused by diffusion or reactivity with other biological systems. This experiment suggests that the intra-oocyte H2O2 levels of oocytes obtained from young animals are reasonably high and remained constant during the procedure measurements. However, the intra-oocyte H2O2 concentration dropped significantly (40-50% reduction) in response to catalase pre-incubation, suggesting that the measurements are truly H2O2 based. To further confirm the extracellular diffusion of H2O2, oocytes were incubated with myeloperoxidase (MPO), and the diffused H2O2 triggered MPO chlorinating activity. Our results show that the generated hypochlorous acid (HOCl) facilitated the deterioration in oocyte quality, a process that could be prevented by pre-incubating the oocytes with melatonin, which was experimentally proven to be oxidized utilizing HPLC methods. This study is the first to demonstrate direct quantitative measurement of intracellular H2O2, and its extracellular diffusion and activation of MPO as well as its impact on oocyte quality. These results may help in designing more accurate treatment plans in assisted reproduction under inflammatory conditions.
Two-qubit quantum state synthesis

Summary form only given. Entangled states are increasingly important for a number of emergent quantum technologies, including cryptography, teleportation, and computation. In order to fully exploit the potential of these technologies, the ability to create, manipulate and characterize arbitrary quantum states is vital. Here we present theoretical and experimental investigations on the production of general quantum states (e.g., partially mixed and partially entangled) of two qubits, represented by the polarization degrees of freedom of photons.
How New Genetic Technologies Will Transform Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade has three holdings: (1) that the unborn are not constitutional persons, (2) that governments have legitimate and important interests in unborn life and (3) that women have a constitutional right to abortion that trumps those state interests. Although people often identify Roe with its third holding about the right to reproductive privacy, Roe's first and second holdings may prove far more important in the long run. Moreover, Roe's third holding will make more sense not as a general claim about reproductive privacy but as a claim about sex equality. Contraception and abortion were major concerns when Roe was originally decided. But as new genetic and reproductive technologies move to the forefront of public concern, the relative importance of Roe's three holdings will shift, changing the decision's legal and political meaning. Technological advances will expose important differences between the sex equality and reproductive privacy interpretations of Roe. A reproductive privacy interpretation might offer constitutional protection for genetic engineering of offspring and some forms of private genetic discrimination. An equality interpretation might not, especially if genetic technologies are deployed in ways that undermine women's interests and produce new forms of social inequality. Where new reproductive technologies do not further equality between the sexes, their connections to the underlying justification for the abortion right become greatly attenuated. Then Roe's first two holdings control: Although the state need not treat fertilized ova or embryos as persons, it may regulate genetic technologies in the public interest. Thus, in the future Roe will stand for a proposition that seems quite different from the way we currently imagine it: How the state regulates the manipulation and treatment of unborn life and the human genome should be left to the political process except insofar as it conflicts with guarantees of equal citizenship and social equality. This interpretation of Roe's three holdings may well produce new alliances among people who previously thought of themselves as pro-choice and pro-life.
HER2 signaling regulates different angiogenic factors through different pathways in breast cancer cells

2035 The HER family of receptors, including EGFR (HER1), HER2, HER3, and HER4 are important mediators of cell proliferation, survival, and angiogensis. HER2 overexpression occurs in about 20-30% of breast cancers and is associated with poor prognosis. HER2 signaling has been linked to expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), an angiogenic factor. However, effects of HER2 signaling on other angiogenic factors such as interleukin-8 (IL-8) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and antiangiogenic factor such as thrombspondin-1 (TSP-1) remain to be elucidated. In this study, we have investigated the effects of activation and inhibition of HER2 signaling on several breast cancer cell lines that overexpress HER2 exogenously and endogenously. Reexpression of the HER2 oncogene in MCF-7 and T47D cells that express low levels of HER2 resulted in elevated expression of VEGF and IL-8, decreased expression of TSP-1, and no significant change of bFGF levels on RT-PCR, ELISA, or Western blot analysis. Reexpression of HER2 was associated with elevated PI3K-AKT activity. Inhibition of HER2 function in BT474 cells that overexpress HER2 with its specific antibody trastuzumab (Herceptinâ) led to a decrease in VEGF and IL-8 expression and to an increase in TSP-1 expression. Inhibition of HER2 with a specific small interference RNA (SiRNA) resulted in similar effects to trastuzumab. Inhibition of HER2 with trastuzumab or HER2 SiRNA did not affect bFGF expression. To further elucidate the pathways by which HER2 signaling regulates the expression of VEGF, IL-8, and TSP-1, different signaling inhibitors were employed. Inhibition of the PI3K-AKT pathway with LY294002 downregulated IL-8 and VEGF expression. Inhibition of HER2 with trastuzumab and SiRNA inhibited PI3K-AKT activity. However, LY294002 had no effect on TSP-1 expression, suggesting TSP-1 production, unlike IL-8 and VEGF, did not depend on the PI3K-AKT pathway. Instead, the p38 MAPK specific inhibitor SB203580 inhibited the TSP-1 expression. On the other hand, overexpression of p38 MAPK increased TSP-1 expression. Trastuzumab transiently activated p38 MAPK and was able to reverse the TSP-1 inhibition induced by SB203580. Consequently, HER2 signaling is able to upregulate pro-angiogenic factors VEGF and IL-8 via the PI3K-AKT pathway and to downregulate anti-angiogenic factor TSP-1 via the p38 MAPK pathway. Anti-HER2 antibody trastuzumab is a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis in breast cancer by affecting different angiogenic factors simultaneously.
Estimating Hospital Cost Shift Rates: A Practitioners’ Guide

This paper is a guide to researchers considering estimating cost shift rates or wishing a more detailed, econometric interpretation of the literature that does. It is a companion to Frakt A. 2011. How Much do Hospitals Cost Shift? A Review of the Evidence. Milbank Quarterly 89(1), which I assume the reader has read. (A working paper version of the Milbank Quarterly article is available through SSRN.)
Regulation of Stem Cell Populations

Stem cells are essential for the health of multicellular organisms, as they give rise to all cells of the body during embryonic development, and in adults, maintain the integrity and function of many tissues. Stem cells are functionally defined as cells that have the extended ability to self-renew and to give rise to various cell types present in a given tissue. The behavior of stem cells is remarkably context dependent, underscoring both the existence of complex regulatory mechanisms involved in their maintenance and function, as well as the inherent difficulties of studying their biology in a nonadulterating manner. Despite these difficulties, intense research has revealed that their regulation is achieved via the orchestration of cell-intrinsic factors, locally secreted factors, and extrinsic signals impinging on the tissue. As knowledge of the mechanisms of stem cell regulation expands through the combined study of powerful model systems, we will continue to gain valuable insights into how to manipulate stem cells for the welfare of human kind. Keywords: Basement Membrane; Germline; Knockout Mouse; Model Organisms; Niche; Self-renewal; Transgenic Animal; Transit Amplifying Cells
Long-Acting Opioids for Treating Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: A High Price for a Short Stay?

percentage of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) days attributed to NAS increased 7-fold from 0.6% in 2004 to 4% in 2013; and up to 20% of all NICU days in several centers were attributed to NAS. 2 Although some regional differences exist, this increase has occurred in all communities, all ethnicities, and in all types of hospitals. Because the period of hospitalization for the treatment of NAS now averages 16 days, the treatment costs are substantial. 3 The overall cost of care for a typical neonate with NAS may be $159 000 to $238 000 greater than that of a healthy neonate. At-risk neonates remain in the hospital for obser
A novel method for mitigating the effects of dynamic coexistence on the operation of IEEE 802.15.4-based mobile WSNs

Wireless networks dynamically coexist when their transmission ranges overlap as a result of mobility. Mobile wireless sensor networks WSNs may suffer from significant degradation of performance due to the interference caused by dynamic coexistence, which is particularly critical for health monitoring WSNs. In this paper, we propose a novel method to detect and mitigate the harmful effects of dynamic coexistence on the operation of IEEE 802.15.4-based mobile health monitoring WSNs. IEEE 802.15.4 uses the guaranteed time slots GTS mechanism to eliminate contention; however, successful transmissions cannot be guaranteed for coexisting WSNs. We show that using limited clear channel assessments at the beginning of the GTS enables the mobile WSNs to avoid collisions with minimum overhead. This method can also be used in combination with the previously proposed mechanisms for coexistence management. We analytically investigate the effects of using this method on the performance of the dynamically coexisting WSNs. We use OPNET simulation to investigate the coexistence of health monitoring WSNs and also to validate the proposed method. Our results indicate that using the proposed mechanism, 2-10 coexisting mobile WSNs with relatively high transmission rates 20-30% of maximum throughput can achieve 20-90% higher rates of successful transmissions, with less than 10% increase in power consumption. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Application of monoclonal antibodies to the characterization of cells eluted from human articular cartilage. Expression of Ia Antigens in Certain Diseases and Identification of an 85‐kD Cell Surface Molecule Accumulated in the Pericellular Matrix

Ia antigens were strongly expressed on a considerable proportion of cells eluted from the damaged articular cartilages of certain individuals with osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, traumatic arthritis, or from osteochondromas. In contrast, la antigens were found on less than 1% of cells eluted from the more normal appearing cartilage of certain other patients with osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteonecrosis, femoral neck fractures, an enchondroma, and a chondrosarcoma. The cell preparations obtained from these latter individuals consisted of clusters of 1–4 chondrocytes embedded in a surrounding island of the pericellular matrix, whereas as in the samples that yielded lapositive cells, many chondrocytes were isolated as free cells without a surrounding matrix. The la antigens were detected primarily on this latter cell population, suggesting that their expression might indicate a chondrocyte activated to alter its surrounding matrix. The cytologic features of the la-positive cells were indistin guishable from those of the la-negative chondrocytes. All eluted cells lacked antigens of the monocyte, B cell, or T cell lineages. An antigen detected by the monoclonal reagent MϕR-17 was identified on the membrane of large numbers of chondrocytes, both with and without the pericellular matrix, indicating that the matrix in these preparations was permeable to molecules the size of antibodies. A monoclonal antibody 83c2, demonstrated to react with an 85-kD surface molecule expressed on certain fibroblastoid and other cells, detected an antigen present on the majority of normal chondrocytes and in varying percentages of cartilage cells obtained from patients with osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. Of special interest, the periphery of the pericellular matrix was stained by this reagent in an irregularly distributed ring-like zone, suggesting that the 83c2 molecule was shed into the matrix from the cell surface and accumulated in these areas.
Patient with Sotos syndrome, Wolff-Parkinson-White pattern on electrocardiogram, and two right-sided accessory bypass tracts.

Sotos syndrome is a growth regulation disorder. Accessory conduction pathways, the anatomical structures responsible for Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, are thought to result from developmental failure to eradicate the remnants of the atrioventricular connections during cardiogenesis. Although the reported prevalence of congenital heart disease in Sotos syndrome is 10 times higher than in the general population, there are no reported cases with ventricular pre-excitation. We report a patient with Sotos syndrome with two distinct accessory atrioventricular bypass tracts documented by invasive electrophysiology testing and a curative catheter ablation procedure.
Internalization and Participation as Metaphors of Strategic Reading Development

Many studies of comprehension strategies instruction rely on an internalization metaphor of strategy learning. In this view, strategies eventually enter students' heads after repeated interactions with teachers who introduce strategies and control how they are used. In this article, the author discusses the limitations of the internalization view and proposes an alternative model of strategy learning. It is argued that learning to read strategically is really a process of learning to participate in textual interactions using the language and procedures of strategic readers. The author lays out specific components of strategy learning consistent with this participation view, including: coming to view reading as a strategic process; mastering the procedures and dialogue of strategic reading; and considering the possibility for resistance of the strategic reading identity. He describes key issues made evident by the participation metaphor that teachers should address as they continue to teach comprehension s...
A philosophical framework for thought and practice in human resource development

Philosophy is often thought of as abstract and offering little practical utility. However, it is vitally important for an emerging profession such as HRD. The goal of this paper is to highlight the importance of the act of philosophy by offering a primer for those new to it. A framework that emphasizes a systems perspective of philosophy is proposed and each component is briefly described. Then, the practical contributions of philosophy are demonstrated by examining current issues facing HRD.