cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Imaging VCAM-1 as an Indicator of Treatment Efficacy in Metastatic Ovarian Cancer

The inability to successfully treat women with ovarian cancer is due in large part to the advanced stage of disease at diagnosis, the development of platinum resistance, and the lack of sensitive methods to monitor tumor progression and response to treatment. Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) is expressed on the mesothelium of ovarian cancer patients. We investigated VCAM-1 expression as a marker of peritoneal metastasis and tumor response to platinum-based chemotherapy. Methods: Peritoneal or omental biopsies obtained from women diagnosed with stage I, stage II, or stage III/IV ovarian cancer were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. The effects of carboplatin on mesothelial VCAM-1 expression were determined in cultured cells by Western blot. Radiolabeled VCAM-1–specific peptide imaging probes and SPECT were used in a mouse model of ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis to identify VCAM-1 as a viable imaging target. Results: VCAM-1 expression correlated with tumor stage. All specimens from stage I patients were negative, whereas 29% of stage II patients and 73% of stage III/IV patients were positive. Although most women with advanced stage disease expressed VCAM-1, the incidence of expression was reduced among women who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy, suggesting a role for chemotherapy in regulating VCAM-1 expression. Treatment of mesothelial cells in culture with carboplatin resulted in a transient decrease in VCAM-1 expression 4 h after treatment that returned to baseline within 16–24 h. In vivo imaging of VCAM-1 also demonstrated an acute decrease in expression 4 h after carboplatin administration that recovered within 48 h in mice harboring platinum-resistant tumors. Chronic VCAM-1 expression reflected the effect of platinum-based treatment on tumor burden. Specifically, carboplatin treatment of mice with platinum-sensitive tumors showed reduced VCAM-1 expression, which correlated with reduced tumor burden; mice with platinum-resistant tumors retained elevated VCAM-1 expression and tumor burden after treatment. Conclusion: Clinically relevant VCAM-1–specific imaging probes identify VCAM-1 expression as an indicator of ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis and therapeutic response to platinum-based agents. These observations support testing the utility of VCAM-1 imaging probes to monitor treatment response in ovarian cancer patients, thus providing the potential to improve management of women with this disease.
Noxa in rheumatic diseases: present understanding and future impact

Impaired programmed cell death is an important contributing mechanism in the development of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Overexpression of Bcl-2 family proteins in such diseases has led to the concept of targeted suppression of these proteins as a primary therapeutic strategy. However, limited success with this approach has prompted pharmacologists to look at the other side of the coin, with the aim of reactivating jeopardized pro-apoptotic proteins that may neutralize Bcl-2 or other anti-apoptotic molecules. In this effort, BH3-only proteins have gained recent attention as endogenous molecules for the sensitization of resistant cells to undergo apoptosis. Among the BH3-only family, Noxa stands out as exceptional for its specificity to bind Mcl-1 and Bcl-2 and blunt their biological properties. Noxa is now being tested as a promising therapeutic target in cancer biology. Nonetheless, its role and clinical application still lack validation in autoimmune diseases, including rheumatic conditions. This is partly attributed to the significant gap in our understanding of its regulatory role and how either overexpression of Noxa or delivery of BH3 mimetics could be therapeutically exploited. In this review we highlight some recent studies in RA, OA, SLE and SS suggesting that Noxa may be used as a potential therapeutic target to circumvent invasive and tissue destructive processes in these rheumatic diseases.
Flight Test of Stable Automated Cruise Flap for an Adaptive Wing Aircraft

0p-optimization function was effective in producing pressure differentials that would have reduced drag. The effectivenessoftheC 0 p-maintenancefunctioncouldnotbedeterminedbecauseoflargesample-to-samplevariations in measured C 0 p values. It remains unknown whether this high-frequency content actually represented rapidly varying pressures on the airfoil surface or if it was the result of noise in the measurement system.
LC3uArch: a graphical simulator of the LC-3 microarchitecture

The small instruction set size of the LC-3 as well as its similarities to more powerful instruction sets make it an ideal hypothetical machine for introductory computer science and computer engineering students. Several tools are available for working with this hypothetical machine including simulators, and assemblers for various platforms. We have created an additional tool, LC3uArch, that is useful for debugging LC-3 programs like the existing simulators, but unlike existing simulators also helps student to develop an understanding of the LC-3 microarchitecture. The results of a student survey on the use of LC3uArch indicate our students find LC3uArch a valuable learning tool.
Nonclassical Properties of Intelligent SU(1,1) States for Two Modes

Intelligent states are those states which equalize an uncertainty relation. The ordinary coherent states1 equalize the usual uncertainty relation between the canonical position and momentum variables while exhibiting the noise of the vacuum in each. On the other hand, a squeezed state may also equalize the uncertainty relation while exhibiting less noise than the vacuum in one of the variables with a corresponding enhancement of noise in the other variable2. Other kinds of intelligent states have been constructed on the basis of Lie algebras associated with important symmetry or dynamical groups such as SU(2)3 and SU(1,1)4. It turns out that for a single mode field, the su(1,1) Lie algebra is related to the square of the field amplitude and the corresponding SU(1,1) squeezing is the squeezing of the quadratures of the squared field5. The intelligent states associated with this algebra have been shown to possess a number of nonclassical properties such as squeezing and oscillations of the photocount probabilities6,7. Also a method for generating such states7 has been proposed.
Social Science, Public Policy, and Amnesty for Chickens

This is a story about efforts to develop local policy in Pima County, Arizona, that supports and encourages urban agriculture in Tucson, Arizona. These efforts have been guided by an applied anthropologist, working in consort with local grassroots citizen groups, and policymakers in local government. This paper describes those efforts and highlights how concepts and methods of applied social science have informed the policy development process and created opportunities for citizens to participate meaningfully in developing urban agriculture policy.
Environmental Shareholder Activism Considering Status and Reputation in Firm Responsiveness

Status and reputation have recently gained traction as theoretical mechanisms that, as important parts of decision processes, influence and explain firm behavior. In this study, we examine how environmentally concerned shareholder activists vary in their status and reputation, and how these differences affect firm responsiveness to their concerns. In a sample of 420 resolutions concerning the natural environment in the period 2004 to 2008, our results indicate that firms respond positively to shareholder activists’ high status (a desirable characteristic) and also to their reputation to threaten the firm (an unfavorable characteristic). As such, our study advances a promising explanation to firm responsiveness on environmental issues, rooted in their interpretation of how activists’ status and reputation affect their firm.
Tropical medicine and the acute abdomen.

Summary In conclusion, the most important task in evaluating an immigrant or traveler with abdominal pain is to consider the myriad tropical diseases that mimic common western conditions. A careful history may point to antecedent symptoms and a time course that are incompatible with typical appendicitis, biliary colic, or bowel obstruction, but physical examination is generally not specific enough to differentiate between tropical and ordinary abdominal crises. Blood work for eosinophilia and a rapid examination of the stools by an experienced technician may indicate a need for judicious delay in exploratory laparotomy. In this interval, imaging studies, serologic tests, and therapeutic drug trials may clarify the diagnosis.
Addressing the Need for a Model Selection Framework in Systems Biology Using Information Theory

The field of systems biology thrives upon the use of models to organize biological knowledge and make predictions of complex processes that are hard to measure. When attempting to generate model descriptions for metabolic systems, one arrives at a crossroads. A variety of mathematical explanations are available for metabolic data with varying degrees of resolution from simple to complex. Biological modelers often rely upon subjective arguments to choose one framework over another. While there is no universal rule to determine the absolute utility of a model, certain metrics founded on information theoretical principles, demonstrate promise in providing a coherent, rational, and objective basis for addressing this model selection problem in systems biology. A model seeks to capture the regularity in biological data. Models that best capture regularity in data without excessive complexity are the most useful for applications in optimization and control. To demonstrate the efficacy of such an approach, several metabolic model selection scenarios are investigated. This work develops the argument that information theoretic model selection metrics should be extended to nonnested model comparison applications in systems biology. It also makes a novel comparison of kinetic, constraint-based, and cybernetic models of metabolism based not only on model accuracy, but also model complexity. The results show the strengths of lumped hybrid cybernetic model (L-HCM) and flux balance analysis (FBA) for applications in steady state flux prediction. Also, the hybrid cybernetic model’s (HCM) merit in the modeling of dynamic changes in fluxes is also established.
Contributors to Metabolic Disease Risk Following Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI)-induced changes in neurological function have significant impact on the metabolism and subsequent metabolic-related disease risk in injured individuals. Although alterations in body composition, particularly excess adiposity and its anatomical distribution in the visceral depot or ectopic location in nonadipose organs, are known to significantly contribute to metabolic disease risk, changes in fat mass and fat-free mass do not fully account for this elevated disease risk in subjects with SCI. There are other negative adaptations in body composition including reductions in skeletal muscle mass and alterations in muscle fiber type, in addition to significant reduction in physical activity, which contribute to a decline in metabolic rate and increased metabolic disease risk following SCI. Recent studies in adult humans suggest that cold- and diet-induced thermogenesis through brown adipose tissue (BAT) metabolism may be important for energy balance and substrate metabolism, and particularly sensitive to sympathetic nervous signaling. Considering the physiologic and metabolic phenotypes observed with SCI, particularly across varying anatomic levels, understanding BAT function and impairment with SCI may help improve clinical practice for subjects with SCI while bringing clarity to a broader understanding of the metabolic significance of BAT in adult humans.
Fractional Differential Equations

This chapter discusses solution of fractional differential equations. There are two main methods for solving fractional differential equations: (1) transformation to an ordinary differential equation, and (2) using the Laplace transform. To transform to an ordinary differential equation, care must be taken because the ordinary chain rule from calculus does not apply to fractional derivatives. Fractional differential equations are also called extraordinary differential equations. Certain diffusion problems can be reduced to the solution of a semi-differential equation (one in which all the derivatives are either to an integer order, or a half integer order). A third technique for solving fractional differential equations is by the use of power series. The chapter discusses an example in which a fractional differential equation is converted into an ordinary differential equation.
Nucleonic Design for a Compact Tokamak Fusion Reactor Blanket and Shield

The nucleonic design features of the NUWMAK are as follows. A tritium breeding ratio of 1.54 is obtained. Li/sub 62/Pb/sub 38/ eutectic is used as the breeding and thermal energy storage material. The total nuclear heating in the blanket and shield is approx. 17.2 MeV per deuterium-tritium neutron. The performance of the superconducting magnet will be satisfactory for more than 2 yr of continuous operation through the use of a 35-cm-thick tungsten shield that extends 2.5 m above the midplane on the inboard part of the torus. The radioactiity is lowered by using a titanium alloy as the structural material and large amounts of lithium lead as the blanket material. One day after shutdown, the dose rate outside the outer shield drops below 2.6 mrem/h, and it is favorable to hands-on shift maintenance.
Integrated Microfluidic Flow-Through Microbial Fuel Cells.

This paper reports on a miniaturized microbial fuel cell with a microfluidic flow-through configuration: a porous anolyte chamber is formed by filling a microfluidic chamber with three-dimensional graphene foam as anode, allowing nutritional medium to flow through the chamber to intimately interact with the colonized microbes on the scaffolds of the anode. No nutritional media flow over the anode. This allows sustaining high levels of nutrient utilization, minimizing consumption of nutritional substrates, and reducing response time of electricity generation owing to fast mass transport through pressure-driven flow and rapid diffusion of nutrients within the anode. The device provides a volume power density of 745 μW/cm3 and a surface power density of 89.4 μW/cm2 using Shewanella oneidensis as a model biocatalyst without any optimization of bacterial culture. The medium consumption and the response time of the flow-through device are reduced by 16.4 times and 4.2 times, respectively, compared to the non-flow-through counterpart with its freeway space volume six times the volume of graphene foam anode. The graphene foam enabled microfluidic flow-through approach will allow efficient microbial conversion of carbon-containing bioconvertible substrates to electricity with smaller space, less medium consumption, and shorter start-up time.
Transformation of Human Tracheal Gland Epithelial Cells in vitro

Cancer of respiratory tract is among the most common neoplasms in the U.S and European countries but etiology and mechanisms of neoplastic transformation are not understood. Different types of respiratory tract lesions including squamous metaplasia, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma have been described. Since the respiratory tract contains different epithelia i.e. mucosal epithelium and submucosal glands, it is possible that various lesions have different cell types of origin. Much effort has been devoted to the study of tracheal and bronchial mucosal cells which have been successfully cultured and neoplastically transformed (1–3). The untransformed and transformed cells in vitro however, lose their inherent property of mucus secretion. Submucosal glands in human trachea constitute the major tissue contributing to respiratory mucus and may also constitute the cell of origin of respiratory adenocarcinoma. We have propagated in serum-free medium, mucin producing epithelial cells from the human tracheal glands (4). The cell cultures however, undergo senescence after few passages precluding studies on biochemical and molecular mechanisms of growth and differentiation which require large numbers of cells. We have transformed the human tracheal gland epithelial (HTGE) cells by infection with adenovirus 12-SV40 hybrid virus (Ad 12-SV40).
Britain-out and Trump-in: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the British referendum on the EU and the US presidential election

Adding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump's election in the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents' ideas enables us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents' rhetorical strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people's anger while challenging experts' power over ideas as they upended the long-standing power in ideas of the liberal order.
Selective alkylation/oxidation of N-substituted isoindolinone derivatives: synthesis of N-phthaloylated natural and unnatural α-amino acid analogues

The interchangeability of the isoindolinone group as a nitrogen protecting group for amino acid intermediates is demonstrated by the preparation of several natural and unnatural α-amino acid derivatives using a two-carbon N-isoindolinone (phthalimidine) scaffold. Using a selective benzylic oxidation, the N-isoindolinone group is then converted to the N-phthaloyl group for convenient removal (65-98%). For preparation of the isoindolinone products which were to be the substrates for benzylic oxidation, a range of side chains were installed on the isoindolinone-protected glycine equivalent on deprotonation to demonstrate the utility of the N-protected isoindolinone synthon (51-93%). While the ensuing benzylic oxidation is employed successfully for converting the N-isoindolinone group to the N-phthaloyl group in simple substrates, substrates bearing unsaturated or electron-rich side chains respond poorly to the oxidation.
NASA Wrangler: Automated cloud-based data assembly in the recover wildfire decision support system

NASA Wrangler is a loosely-coupled, event driven, highly parallel data aggregation service designed to take advantage of the elastic resource capabilities of cloud computing. Wrangler automatically collects Earth observational data, climate model outputs, derived remote sensing data products, and historic biophysical data for pre-, active-, and post-wildfire decision making. It is a core service of the RECOVER decision support system, which is providing rapid-response GIS analytic capabilities to state and local government agencies. Wrangler reduces to minutes the time needed to assemble and deliver crucial wildfire-related data.
Screening for Fetal Aneuploidy

The goal of screening is to identify fetuses at increased risk of having a genetic disorder. Screening for aneuploidy can be accomplished using different modalities at specific gestational ages. Examples include first trimester screen, second trimester screen, integrated screen, and sequential screen. Screening should be offered to all women as part of comprehensive prenatal care [1].
Are Native Tree Seedlings Facilitated by an Invasive Shrub Where White-Tailed Deer Are Abundant?

Positive interactions (facilitation) between plant species have been documented, particularly in stressful environments. We investigated whether an invasive shrub enhances growth or survival of native tree seedlings in forests where white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are abundant. Seedlings of four tree species were planted under, or 0.5 m outside of, the canopy of Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) shrubs in plots unfenced or fenced to exclude deer in two stands in southwestern Ohio, USA, and monitored for 1 y. One species succumbed to transplant shock, but browse was extensive on the other three species in unfenced plots. Facilitation was evident on sugar maple (Acer saccharum), as seedlings under shrub cover had higher survival and final leaf count in unfenced plots, but not where deer were excluded. However, there was no significant facilitation by L. maackii of seedling growth or survival for white oak (Quercus alba) or shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), indicating this shrub's branches do not deter deer browse on highly preferred species or the effect is too modest to emerge in a one-year study. In at least some cases, the negative effects of L. maackii on tree seedlings that have been documented previously are offset by mitigation of the negative effects of deer herbivory. This suggests that where browsing impacts are problematic, deer abundance should be reduced before this, and perhaps other invasive shrubs, are managed.
Tunneling Through Single Molecules

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of some basic aspects of single molecule transport. The system of interest is a small organic molecule connected between electrodes. The molecule serves as a bridge for electrons driven from one electrode to the other by an applied bias. While there are a variety of possible transport mechanisms and processes that can influence transport, the chapter only focuses on the simplest case of coherent transport. The theory of electron tunneling through single molecules is introduced with special focus on periodic molecules, where the problem is simply understood in terms of complex wave-vector Bloch states. The molecule length dependence of the current, the Fermi level alignment problem, barrier traversal times, and other important aspects of single molecule transport in general come in to play in this context. The Landauer formalism is a framework for more quantitative treatments of more general structures and a brief introduction to this subject is also given.
Carotid Intima-Media Thickness and Silent Brain Infarctions in a Biracial Cohort: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study

BACKGROUND Both hypertensive and atherosclerotic processes contribute to common carotid artery intima-media thickness (CCA-IMT). Elevated CCA-IMT may be indicative of subclinical cerebrovascular disease; however, its role in the absence of concomitant carotid artery plaque is uncertain, and few studies have examined associations in Black populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS At cohort visit 3 (1993-1995) a subset of stroke-free participants (641 Blacks and 702 Whites, mean age 63) from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study was imaged by brain MRI and carotid ultrasound. A CCA-IMT >0.9 mm was considered elevated. Asymptomatic brain lesions ≥3 mm were considered silent brain infarctions (SBI). Subcortical SBI measuring 3 to <20 mm were considered lacunes. Associations between elevated CCA-IMT and SBI were analyzed with Poisson regression. RESULTS Elevated CCA-IMT was identified in 168 participants (16% of Blacks, 10% of Whites), and SBI were observed in 156 (15% of Blacks, 8% of Whites). Elevated CCA-IMT was strongly related to anterior circulation SBI, posterior circulation SBI, and lacunes. After adjustments, elevated CCA-IMT remained associated with greater number of lacunes in Blacks ([prevalence ratio, PR] = 1.60; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02-2.51), but not Whites (PR = 0.85; 95% CI: 0.35-2.04); P value for interaction = 0.12. Among Black participants without concomitant carotid plaque, elevated CCA-IMT was associated with twice the number of lacunes (PR = 2.00; 95% CI: 1.05-3.82). CONCLUSIONS In older Black adults, elevated CCA-IMT is independently associated with lipohyalinosis of the cerebral small vessels, irrespective of concomitant carotid plaque and vascular risk factors.
Resources from Reformed Spirituality for Christian Spiritual Formation in Clinical Practice

The purposes of this article are to introduce the reader to Reformed theology and to begin to discuss implications of Reformed spirituality on the practice of Christian psychology. A discussion of ...
Multi-GPU implementation and performance optimization for CSR-based sparse matrix-vector multiplication

Sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV) is a critical operation in scientific computing and engineering applications. CSR (Compressed Sparse Row) is the most popular sparse storage format and CSR-Based SpMV usually has good performance on sparse matrices with large number of non-zero elements. This paper presents our Multi-GPU SpMV implementation to improve CSR-Based SpMV performance. We make use of multiple GPUs to jointly complete SpMV computations and adopt streamed approach to increase concurrency to further improve SpMV performance. We evaluate performance of our Multi-GPU SpMV on a collection of fourteen sparse matrices and demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach in performance improvement on a large-scale cluster. The average speedup achieved from our experiments is 6.68.
Protein Identification with Tandem Mass Spectrometry Data

There are two ways to identify proteins from peptide MS-MS spectra. The first is de novo interpretation of the spectrum to obtain a peptide sequence followed by BLAST searching of the sequence against a sequence database to identify the protein. This is a perfectly reasonable approach—as long as there are only a few spectra to deal with. Manual de novo interpretation of an individual MS-MS spectrum takes between half an hour and a couple of days, depending on the complexity of the spectrum and the experience of the analyst. As noted earlier, some spectra do not contain complete b- or y-ion series and thus it may not be possible to unambiguously interpret a peptide sequence from these spectra. The analyst then must guess at sequence where the spectral clues fall short. Of course, accurate de novo interpretation of MS-MS spectra requires skill and experience. Nevertheless, we could easily use this approach to assign the sequences of several peptides in a sample and identify the precursor protein by BLAST searching within a day or two. This could be perfectly acceptable, for example, to identify one or two proteins from bands on an SDS gel.
The Silver Oar and Other Maces of the Admiralty: Admiralty Jurisdiction in America and the British Empire

With particular reference to the silver mace that manifests the judicial power delegated to an admiralty court, this article revisits the history of the civil or instance jurisdiction of such courts in England and her former overseas dominions, including the United States.
Using computer technology to map local farms for rapid response in agricultural emergencies.

An emergency or disaster can strike at any time without warning. This article describes how educators can use computer technology to map local farms for rapid response in agricultural emergencies. Critical farm data such phone contacts, global position systems location, and resources available for disaster recovery initiatives can quickly be imported into a computer mapping program. Then, at a click of a button, the information provided from a farm is opened in a message box. This allows for quick communication to farms during an emergency. This article also describes how this technology can be used for other Extension applications.
The Nucleome of Developing Murine Rod Photoreceptors

The nuclei of rod photoreceptors in mice and other nocturnal species have an unusual inverted chromatin structure: the heterochromatin is centrally located to help focus light and improve photosensitivity. To better understand this unique nuclear organization, we performed ultra-deep Hi-C analysis on murine retina at 3 stages of development and on purified rod photoreceptors. Predicted looping interactions from the Hi-C data were validated with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). We discovered that a subset of retinal genes that are important for retinal development, cancer, and stress response are localized to the facultative heterochromatin domain. We also used machine learning to develop an algorithm based on our chromatin Hidden Markov Modeling (chromHMM) of retinal development to predict heterochromatin domains and study their dynamics during retinogenesis. FISH data for 264 genomic loci were used to train and validate the algorithm. The integrated data were then used to identify a developmental stage- and cell type-specific core regulatory circuit super-enhancer (CRC-SE) upstream of the Vsx2 gene, which is required for bipolar neuron expression. Deletion of the Vsx2 CRC-SE in mice led to the loss of bipolar neurons in the retina.
4-HPR Is an Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Aggravator and Sensitizes Breast Cancer Cells Resistant to TRAIL/Apo2L

Background/aim N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)retinamide (4-HPR) is a synthetic retinoid, less toxic than the parent all-trans retinoic acid (RA). Unlike RA, 4-HPR induces apoptosis in tumor cells. Because 4-HPR can hydrolyze to liberate RA, a potent human teratogen, the unhydrolyzable ketone analog of 4-HPR, 4-hydroxybenzylretinone (4-HBR) has been prepared and has been found to cause apoptosis in tumor cells and shrink carcinogen-induced rat mammary tumors as 4-HPR does. Herein, we examined the mechanism whereby 4-HPR and 4-HBR induce apoptosis and death in breast cancer cells. Materials and methods Gene expression profiling was conducted in MCF-7 cells over a 1.5- to 6-h time course and changes were validated by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible protein 153 (GADD153 or C/EBP homologous protein, CHOP) was knocked down and the effect on 4-HPR-induced cell death and gene expression was assessed. 4-HPR synergy with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL or Apo2 ligand) was also examined. Results Drug treatment induced increased expression of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-related and pro-apoptotic genes. Gene expression changes were verified by qPCR in three invasive ductal breast carcinoma cell lines (MCF-7, T-47D, MDA-MB-231). GADD153 showed the largest increase in the microarray experiment; however, knockdown of GADD153 did not abrogate apoptosis and death. Genes related to the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis including a receptor for TRAIL, death receptor 5 (DR5), were up-regulated by drug treatment. A dose of 4-HPR that alone is ineffective in killing TRAIL-resistant MCF-7 cells, synergized with recombinant TRAIL to induce breast cancer cell death. Conclusion 4-HPR and analogs might be useful in sensitizing tumor cells to death receptor agonists.
Mental health and academic impacts of intimate partner violence among IHE-attending women

Objective: The study assesses the prevalence of physical, psychological, sexual, and cyber forms of intimate partner violence (IPV) among female college students, and associated mental health and a...
Revising Online Assignments and the Impact on Student Performance at a Community College

ABSTRACTRecent developments in technology allow instructors to design meaningful customized homework assignments that enhance student performance, while reducing the time and resources required for...
Implementation of an HDR brachytherapy–based breast IORT program: Initial experiences

Abstract Purpose A multidisciplinary team at our institution developed a novel method of intraoperative breast radiation therapy (precision breast intraoperative radiation therapy [PB-IORT]) that uses high-dose-rate brachytherapy with CT on-rails imaging to deliver high-dose, customized radiotherapy to patients with early-stage breast cancer. This report summarizes our program's experience developing and implementing PB-IORT. Methods and Materials Literature on PB-IORT was reviewed including published articles and abstracts. To evaluate case volume, all patients with a breast cancer diagnosis who underwent breast surgery or breast radiation (2010–2017) at our academic institution were identified. Patients were stratified into pre-IORT and post-IORT eras with initiation of our PB-IORT program in October 2013. Overall trends in surgical and radiation therapy volume in each era were analyzed by linear regression. Travel distance for all surgical patients was calculated using Google Maps (Alphabet Inc.) and then compared between IORT and non-IORT patients. Results Data from a PB-IORT Phase 1 trial found that the primary endpoints were met and that PB-IORT is feasible and safe. The direct health system's delivery costs for PB-IORT exceed those of 16-fraction whole-breast irradiation when accounting for consumable supplies (multilumen balloon applicator = $2,750 per patient). There was a significant increase in yearly growth of breast cancer surgical volume with PB-IORT. Conclusions Accrual rates for the ongoing Phase II trial have been quicker than expected in an area where more research is needed. The rapid accrual indicates patient interest and demand for this treatment and that it is very feasible to get more data from randomized trials.
Beyond generalized ethnocentrism: Islam-specific beliefs and prejudice toward Muslim Americans

Much of what we know theoretically and empirically about attitudes toward racialized minorities in the US is predicated on early research on white opinion toward Black Americans. Although Muslim Am...
The Permanent Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron and Atomic 129 Xe

The most sensitive tests for time reversal symmetry (T) violation outside of the \({K^o} - \overline {{K^o}}\) system come from measurements of the permanent electric dipole moments (edm) of neutral particles. It is easy to show that for a spin \(\overrightarrow J\) degeneracy only, the existence of a permanent electric dipole moment requires a violation of both T and parity (P) symmetry.1 The greatest sensitivity in edm measurements is provided by experiments on neutral particles because the edm is observed by its interaction with an applied electric field, and a zero electric charge permits an application of a strong electric field.
2009 Review—Poultry Science Center. South State Avenue, Ames, Iowa

The ISU Poultry Farm is located on State Street approximately 3 miles southwest of the main campus. It is part of the teaching farm complex that also includes the beef, sheep, and swine teaching units. The unit is utilized for teaching and research activities with broilers, layers, turkeys, and other avian species. At least five courses annually use the farm either directly or indirectly. Animal science faculty and faculty from other departments in the college of agriculture and from the National Animal Disease center utilize the birds and farm facilities for their research. The farm continues to maintain the oldest inbred line of chickens in the world. This line dates back to 1925. The Department of Homeland Security recently deemed the inbred lines of chickens maintained at the farm as essential to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Thermal Psychophysics and Associated Brain Activation Patterns Along a Continuum of Healthy Aging

OBJECTIVE To examine psychophysical and brain activation patterns to innocuous and painful thermal stimulation along a continuum of healthy older adults. DESIGN Single center, cross-sectional, within-subjects design. METHODS Thermal perceptual psychophysics (warmth, mild, and moderate pain) were tested in 37 healthy older adults (65-97 years, median = 73 years). Percept thresholds (oC) and unpleasantness ratings (0-20 scale) were obtained and then applied during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. General linear modeling assessed effects of age on psychophysical results. Multiple linear regressions were used to test the main and interaction effects of brain activation against age and psychophysical reports. Specifically, differential age effects were examined by comparing percent-signal change slopes between those above/below age 73 (a median split). RESULTS Advancing age was associated with greater thresholds for thermal perception (z = 2.09, P = 0.037), which was driven by age and warmth detection correlation (r = 0.33, P = 0.048). Greater warmth detection thresholds were associated with reduced hippocampal activation in "older" vs "younger" individuals (>/ 0.44, P < 0.01) during mild pain. Differential age effects were found for prefrontal activation during moderate pain. In "older" individuals, higher moderate pain thresholds and greater degrees of moderate pain unpleasantness correlated with lesser prefrontal activation (anterolateral prefrontal cortex and middle-frontal operculum; beta < -0.39, P < 0.009); the opposite pattern was found in "younger" individuals. CONCLUSIONS Advancing age may lead to altered thermal sensation and (in some circumstances) altered pain perception secondary to age-related changes in attention/novelty detection and cognitive functions.
MVS-Pheno: A Portable and Low-Cost Phenotyping Platform for Maize Shoots Using Multiview Stereo 3D Reconstruction.

Plant phenotyping technologies play important roles in plant research and agriculture. Detailed phenotypes of individual plants can guide the optimization of shoot architecture for plant breeding and are useful to analyze the morphological differences in response to environments for crop cultivation. Accordingly, high-throughput phenotyping technologies for individual plants grown in field conditions are urgently needed, and MVS-Pheno, a portable and low-cost phenotyping platform for individual plants, was developed. The platform is composed of four major components: a semiautomatic multiview stereo (MVS) image acquisition device, a data acquisition console, data processing and phenotype extraction software for maize shoots, and a data management system. The platform’s device is detachable and adjustable according to the size of the target shoot. Image sequences for each maize shoot can be captured within 60-120 seconds, yielding 3D point clouds of shoots are reconstructed using MVS-based commercial software, and the phenotypic traits at the organ and individual plant levels are then extracted by the software. The correlation coefficient ( ) between the extracted and manually measured plant height, leaf width, and leaf area values are 0.99, 0.87, and 0.93, respectively. A data management system has also been developed to store and manage the acquired raw data, reconstructed point clouds, agronomic information, and resulting phenotypic traits. The platform offers an optional solution for high-throughput phenotyping of field-grown plants, which is especially useful for large populations or experiments across many different ecological regions.
Surface Morphing of Geometrically Patterned Active Skins

Nature is ripe with biological organisms that can interact with its surroundings to continuously morph their surface texture. Many attempts have been made to optimize artificial surfaces depending on operational needs; however, most of these architected materials only focus on enhancing a specific material property or functionality. This study introduces a new class of instability-induced morphable structures, herein referred to as “Active Skins”, which enables on-demand, reversible, surface morphing through buckling-induced feature deployment. By taking advantage of a preconceived auxetic unit cell geometrical design, mechanical instabilities were introduced to facilitate rapid out-of-plane deformations when in-plane strains are applied. Here, these notches were introduced at judiciously chosen locations in an array of unit cells to elicit unique patterns of out-of-plane deformations to pave way for controlling bulk Active Skin behavior. These purposefully designed imperfections were employed for selectively actuating them for applications ranging from camouflage to surface morphing to soft robotic grippers.
Adapting Center for Disease Control and Prevention's immunization quality improvement program to improve maternal vaccination uptake in obstetrics.

INTRODUCTION Maternal vaccination is critical for improving maternal and child health. Quality Improvement (QI) models1, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Assessment, Feedback, Incentives, eXchange (AFIX)2 model, have not yet been adapted to maternal vaccinations. This study assesses the impact of AFIX-OB, an adapted version of AFIX for obstetric settings, on maternal vaccination rates. METHODS Between December 2016 and May 2018, state health departments and obstetric practices in Colorado and Georgia implemented the adapted AFIX-OB model. The model addressed unique patterns in patient encounters, practice flow, health records systems and competing clinical priorities in the obstetric setting through a menu of clearly-defined QI strategies, bi-weekly technical assistance meetings with designated immunization champions, incentives for champions/staff, and adapted tools to aid each practice during implementation. Vaccination rates were assessed by random chart reviews pre- and post-intervention. RESULTS The AFIX-OB model was evaluated in eleven obstetric practices in two states as part of a multi-level intervention to increase maternal vaccination. Post AFIX-OB implementation, documented influenza vaccination rates increased from 56% at baseline to 65% (p < 0.01); and tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccination rates increased from 77% at baseline to 84% (p < 0.02) across all practices. CONCLUSIONS The AFIX-OB model showed improvement in maternal vaccination rates for both influenza and Tdap vaccines. AFIX-OB may provide a useful framework for obstetric practices, as well as for other health care specialties. The focused goal should be on broader dissemination among those interested in adopting an evidence-based model for increasing vaccine uptake.
Who Is the Keyman? Integrating Two-Stage DEA and Social Network Analysis to Evaluate Operational and Environmental Efficiency in the Semiconductor Industry

The study considers the semiconductor industry’s business process to be made up of two stages. In the business development process, a company generates profit and consumes energy while polluting the environment. After the two-stage data envelopment analysis approach was employed for calculating the operational efficiency and environmental efficiency, social network analysis was used to compare the manner in which the internal advantages or individual process factors of 28 semiconductor companies contribute to efficiency. A network graph was plotted to visualize relationships, with each node in the network graph representing a company. This graph was plotted to help decision-makers and manufacturers understand information communication among companies and the importance of the company in the network and help companies develop a mutual understanding to improve operational efficiency. The results of the study indicated that having an efficient company does not necessarily mean that the company plays a key role in the entire industry. The results provide decision-makers with references for improvements and information for learning from these references.
Composición y actividad antifúngica del aceite esencial de Fabiana imbricata contra levaduras del género Candida

El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la actividad anti-fungica del aceite esencial (AE) de Fabiana imbricata Ruiz & Pav contra cinco especies de Candida comunmente asociadas a enfermedades ginecologicas. El aceite esencial de las hojas fresca de F. imbricata fue obtenido por hidrodestilacion y caracterizado mediante la tecnica de cromatografia de gases acoplada a espectrometria de masas (CG/EM). Se evaluo la actividad anti-fungica a diferentes concentraciones del AE mediante el metodo de microdilucion. Los compuestos mas abundantes identificados en el AE (7a-isopropenil-4,5-dimetiloctahidroinden-4-il) metanol (43,66%), bulnesol (17,02%) y T-muurolol (5,75%). El AE mostro una potente y selectiva actividad anti-fungica sobre el crecimiento de la levadura patogena Candida guilliermondii con una concentracion minima inhibitoria de 10 μg/mL, superior al control positivo clotrimazol que presento un valor de 15 μg/mL. Estos resultados confirman las propiedades antimicrobianas de los aceites esenciales y su posible uso en el manejo de las cepas de C. guilliermondii de importancia para pacientes inmune deprimidos y como posibles alternativas a los fungicidas sinteticos.
Statistical Approach to Incorporating Experimental Variability into a Mathematical Model of the Voltage-Gated Na+ Channel and Human Atrial Action Potential

The voltage-gated Na+ channel Nav1.5 is critical for normal cardiac myocyte excitability. Mathematical models have been widely used to study Nav1.5 function and link to a range of cardiac arrhythmias. There is growing appreciation for the importance of incorporating physiological heterogeneity observed even in a healthy population into mathematical models of the cardiac action potential. Here, we apply methods from Bayesian statistics to capture the variability in experimental measurements on human atrial Nav1.5 across experimental protocols and labs. This variability was used to define a physiological distribution for model parameters in a novel model formulation of Nav1.5, which was then incorporated into an existing human atrial action potential model. Model validation was performed by comparing the simulated distribution of action potential upstroke velocity measurements to experimental measurements from several different sources. Going forward, we hope to apply this approach to other major atrial ion channels to create a comprehensive model of the human atrial AP. We anticipate that such a model will be useful for understanding excitability at the population level, including variable drug response and penetrance of variants linked to inherited cardiac arrhythmia syndromes.
Use of advanced cardiac imaging in congenital heart disease: growth, indications and innovations.

Purpose of review Significant improvements in the diagnosis and management of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) have led to improved survival. These patients require life-long noninvasive evaluation. The use of advanced imaging such as cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) and cardiac computed tomography (CCT) has increased to support this need. The purpose of this review is to discuss the basics of advanced cardiac imaging, indications and review the recent innovations. Recent findings Recent literature has demonstrated the increasing reliance of advanced imaging for CHD patients. In addition, research is focusing on CMR techniques to shorten scan time and address previous limitations that made imaging younger and sicker patients more challenging. CCT research has involved demonstrating high-quality images with low radiation exposure. Advances in digital technology have impacted the interactivity of 3D imaging through the use of virtual and augmented reality platforms. With the increased reliance of advanced imaging, appropriate use criteria have been developed to address possible under or over utilization. Summary The utilization of advanced cardiac imaging continues to increase. As CMR and CCT continue to grow, increased knowledge of these modalities and their usage will be necessary for clinicians caring for CHD patients.