cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Proshares: The Alternative ETF Company

In 2014, ProShares CEO Michael Sapir was meeting with Steve Cohen, managing director and head of the ProShares Strategy Group, whose agenda centered on the progress the firm was making in moving from its core offering of geared ETFs into establishing itself as the leading alternative ETF company. Since 2009, the firm had launched an array of ETFs and Sapir and Cohen were reviewing the current lineup, the assets under management (AUM), and net flows across ProShares' different ETF categories. Could ProShares get another $25 billion in AUM in these more strategic alternative ETFs? Excerpt UVA-F-1729 Nov. 24, 2015 ProShares: The Alternative ETF Company In the summer of 2014, Michael Sapir, the CEO of ProShares, was reviewing the progress in the firm's lineup of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). With its headquarters located in Bethesda, Maryland, the firm was far from Wall Street and was a nontraditional financial company in many respects. Since its first ETF launch in 2006, the firm had successfully democratized access to short and leveraged strategies by offering them in ETFs to individual investors, advisers, and institutions. These “geared” ETFs aimed to deliver two or three times the daily return or the inverse of the return of their underlying indices covering all the major asset classes such as domestic equities (including different market caps, styles, or sectors), international equities, fixed income, commodities, and currencies. ProShares ranked in the top 10 of the largest ETF sponsors in the United States. Sapir was meeting with Steve Cohen, managing director and head of the ProShares Strategy Group whose agenda centered on the progress the firm was making in moving from its core offering of geared ETFs into establishing itself as the leading alternative ETF company. Offering alternative ETFs was a broad concept that encompassed both nontraditional asset classes and investment strategies (Exhibit 1). Although these investments aimed to provide unique sources of risk and return, correlation benefits, and the potential for a better Sharpe ratio in a portfolio, they also might provide potential downside protection in falling markets. These alternative strategies, used for some time by institutional investors, tended to have favorable long-term returns relative to risk. Many of these strategies used leverage, shorting, and derivatives. Since 2009, the firm had launched an array of ETFs that included alternative equity (specialty equity and dividend growers), fixed income strategies (hedged and global fixed income), tactical products to benefit from changes in inflation and market volatility (inflation and volatility), and ETFs that replicated hedge fund strategies (hedge strategies). (See Exhibit 2 for the full product list.) Sapir and Cohen were reviewing the current lineup of ETFs, the assets under management (AUM), and net flows across ProShares' different ETF categories (Exhibit 3). ProShares had become the world's largest manager of geared ETFs with more than $ 25billion in AUM (Exhibit 4). Could it get the next $ 25 billion in AUM in these more strategic alternative ETFs? . . .
Monobactam formation in sulfazecin by a nonribosomal peptide synthetase thioesterase

The N-sulfonated monocyclic β-lactam ring characteristic of the monobactams confers resistance to zinc metallo-β-lactamases and affords the most effective class to combat carbapenem-resistant enterobacteria (CRE). Here we report unprecedented nonribosomal peptide synthetase activities, wherein an assembled tripeptide is N-sulfonated in trans before direct synthesis of the β-lactam ring in a noncanonical, cysteine-containing thioesterase domain. This means of azetidinone synthesis is distinct from the three others known in nature.
Student perceptions of immediate feedback testing in student centered chemistry classes

Feedback is an important aspect of the learning process. The immediate feedback assessment technique (IF-AT®) form allows students to receive feedback on their answers during a testing event. Studies with introductory psychology students supported both perceived and real student learning gains when this form was used with testing. Knowing that negative student perceptions of innovative classroom techniques can create roadblocks, this research focused on gathering student responses to using IF-AT® forms for testing in general chemistry 1 and organic chemistry 2 classes at several institutions. Students’ perceptions on using the IF-AT® forms and how it influenced their thinking were gathered from a 16-item survey. The results of the student surveys are detailed and implementation strategies for using IF-AT® forms for chemistry testing are also outlined in this article.
Modulating Sticking Propensity of Pharmaceuticals Through Excipient Selection in a Direct Compression Tablet Formulation

To investigate how excipient matrix affects punch sticking propensity of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), with the focus on the effect of bonding interactions between API-API (F2) and API-excipient (F3). Sticking kinetics of direct compression formulations, consisting of 20% of celecoxib (CEL) or ibuprofen (IBN) in different excipient matrices, i.e., microcrystalline cellulose (Avicel PH102 and Avicel PH105 dry coated with nano-sized silica (PH105(n)), hypromellose (K15 M), and a 3:1 mixture between starch and Avicel PH102 (S3P1), was assessed using a removable punch tip on a compaction simulator. The amount of material transferred to punch was determined gravimetrically every 10 compressions up to 50 compactions. CEL exhibited higher F2 than IBN. CEL also exhibited more sticking under otherwise identical compaction conditions in the same excipient matrix. Among different excipient matrices, sticking propensity of both APIs followed the ascending order: PH105(n) < PH102 < K15 M < S3P1. This order was exactly opposite to the order of F3, confirming that greater bonding strength of the formulation favors lower sticking propensity of a given API. For an API prone to punch sticking, judicious use of excipients to render higher tablet mechanical strength can mitigate severity of punch sticking.
Contractions of Skeletal Muscles and Underlying Changes: Effects of Strontium

While Sr2+ is present in the body in only trace amounts and has no identified role in a normal organism, it early attracted the attention of muscle physiologists. One year after the discovery of the need for the presence of Ca2+ in maintaining contractility in spontaneously beating isolated frog hearts, Ringer and Sainsbury (1) reported on the successful replacement of Ca2+ by Sr2+ in the solution. Thus Sr2+ can justly be said to have been present at the first birthday of modern muscle physiology. The philosophy of using this ion for physiological experiments was expressed clearly by Mines (2) in 1911:”. . . the most promising way of attacking the problem of how this or that ion serves its particular role in a living tissue is to discover how far it can be replaced by other ions and what are the physical and chemical relations of those found to be effective substitutes. The enormous physiological importance of calcium lends special interest to the enquiry as to how far it may be replaced by its congeners.”
Broad Learning: An Emerging Area in Social Network Analysis

Looking from a global perspective, the landscape of online social networks is highly fragmented. A large number of online social networks have appeared, which can provide users with various types of services. Generally, information available in these online social networks is of diverse categories, which can be represented as heterogeneous social networks (HSNs) formally. Meanwhile, in such an age of online social media, users usually participate in multiple online social networks simultaneously, who can act as the anchors aligning different social networks together. So multiple HSNs not only represent information in each social network, but also fuse information from multiple networks.Formally, the online social networks sharing common users are named as the aligned social networks, and these shared users are called the anchor users. The heterogeneous information generated by users' social activities in the multiple aligned social networks provides social network practitioners and researchers with the opportunities to study individual user's social behaviors across multiple social platforms simultaneously. This paper presents a comprehensive survey about the latest research works on multiple aligned HSNs studies based on the broad learning setting, which covers 5 major research tasks, including network alignment, link prediction, community detection, information diffusion and network embedding respectively.
Programmed Inequality [Book Reviews]

This book examines how the British computer industry has been adversely affected by the inability to promote and attract female programmers. In the 1960s and 1970s the British government sought to rebuild its wartime dominance in the computing sector to restore its position as a global power. This plan necessitated a gender power shift in computing, from viewing computing as low-wage, unskilled secretarial. or “machine grade” work performed by women, to seeing it as high pay and prestigious work performed by men. In Britain’s effort to rebrand computing as “high value men’s work” they booted out their qualified and experienced workforce of women and tried to replace them with inexperienced and largely uninterested men. The fact that the government’s efforts here were a flop necessitated increasing government micromanagement of the private British computing industry. Their inability to attract a sufficiently large male computing workforce (and, of course, now that computing was important work, women could no longer be allowed to engage in it) meant that Britain’s enormous Civil Service sector needed powerful supercomputers that could be “controlled” by a small number of high level, trained male executives. Note that this obsession with supercomputers took place while the rest of the world was focused on the emergence of the personal computer or PC. But the British government insisted on dictating the future direction of the U.K.’s computing industries, shoring them up with government funds and eventually forcing a merger into a single computing company capable of designing and building the colossal supercomputers to run the country. The author meticulously details the story of Britain’s intertwined desire for world power status in computing with its economic woes as well as its stubborn adherence to a strongly gendered workplace. She also demonstrates why this approach caused Britain to fail, sealing the demise of both its reemergence as a world power and its dominance of worldwide computing. Instead of being a fix for Britain’s economic and political power woes, computing and the changes it ushered in simply exacerbated the inherent problems embedded in both systems.
Questioning democratic notions of governance: A case study examining how a kindergarten teacher and her students give voice to and enact a neoliberal framing of schooling:

An important factor that may be missing from recent attempts to counter, resist, and/or reconceptualize the neoliberal framing of the early education process is the actions of children, particularl...
The Expression of Emotions on Instagram

This preliminary research study examines women farmers on Instagram who use the hashtag #womenwhofarm. We investigate the emotional valence of these posts using a multimodal analysis of both text and images. Previous research has found a positivity bias on Instagram, wherein users predominantly express themselves with a positive emotional tone. Using open-ended coding of 651 Instagram posts, this study finds that women farmers use mostly neutral emotional tonality in their images and text content. The study points to a need for disambiguation between different affective terminology in research on emotions in social media and highlights the need for continued theorization on the relationship between images and emotions.
Abstract IA16: PapGene, PapSEEK, and PapDREAming for early detection of ovarian cancer

Advances in genomic technologies are revolutionizing how we understand pathogenesis in ovarian cancer. These technologies are critical in developing innovative strategies to diagnose cancer earlier by detecting rare mutant alleles or aberrant methylation marks among a pool of normal DNA. Studies integrating these technologies provide the fundamental scientific underpinning for designing future standards of care to reduce the burden of ovarian cancer through early detection and prevention. This presentation will focus on two related topics. One is to summarize the recent research findings from the Johns Hopkins Ovarian Cancer Early Detection (JHOCD) group in deciphering the major molecular alterations involving in ovarian cancer in situ lesions (serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma, STIC) and its precursors (including serous tubal intraepithelial lesion, STIL and so-called “p53” signatures) in fallopian tubes. The clinicopathologic and molecular studies we have done have helped define the precursor lesions in many high-grade serous carcinomas (HGSC) of the ovary, the most common and aggressive type of ovarian epithelial cancer. The other focus is to discuss the promise and challenges in applying genetic and epigenetic methods to detect ovarian HGSC. In an effort to replicate the success of cervical cancer screening, several approaches for the early detection of ovarian cancers have been proposed. JHOCD team has first reported the feasibility of using cervical cytology samples to detect ovarian carcinomas. We have extended this original study by determining whether different sample collection methods including cervical cytology specimens, uterine lavage/brush, and blood, alone or in combination with each other or serum CA-125 levels, can achieve a better sensitivity and specificity. The objective of JHOCD is to facilitate the proposed clinical studies to assess the clinical benefit in applying the aforementioned molecular diagnostics for early ovarian cancer diagnosis in high-risk women (including those carrying BRCA mutations). Citation Format: Ie-Ming Shih. PapGene, PapSEEK, and PapDREAming for early detection of ovarian cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Conference: Addressing Critical Questions in Ovarian Cancer Research and Treatment; Oct 1-4, 2017; Pittsburgh, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2018;24(15_Suppl):Abstract nr IA16.
President, Politics and Pardons: Washington's Original (Mis?)Use of the Pardon Power

Recent political events raise an issue that usually remains dormant until a President is about to leave office, namely pardons. Many political watchers fear President Trump’s pardon authority, perhaps for good reason. However, their analysis of the pardon power is normative. They argue that there are proper uses for the pardon power and Trump’s usage and potential usage are not it. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of pardons and the circumstances when they should be granted. Critiques of the pardon power have become commonplace when Presidents inevitably pardon people in the waning days of their Administration for apparent political reasons. This article unearths the origins of Presidential pardons. It asks and answers why President George Washington pardoned the people he pardoned. The article begins by examining recent scholarship on pardons and their use. Then it turns to Washington’s Administration by sketching the origins of federal courts in the United States. The paper’s heart is its detailed look at whom Washington pardoned and whom he did not. Washington’s first pardons had symbolic value and he attempted to choose carefully but circumstances necessitated the first pardon. Most of Washington’s pardons went to merchants who evaded the customs laws in some manner thus advancing Washington’s goal to promote commerce. Another significant number went to people involved in the Whiskey Rebellion. By pardoning so many participants, Washington hoped to end the resistance and reunite the nation. Yet his Whiskey Rebellion pardons also were necessary for practical reasons. Finally, Washington used pardons as part of his foreign policy, especially when dealing with the war between France and Great Britain so that the United States remained neutral. Although mercy may have factored into the decision-making, the article concludes that Washington used his pardon power when it benefited the government.
Frequency response of the leap motion controller and its suitability for measuring tremor.

Abstract Although tremor is one of the most common movement disorders, it is evaluated using relatively coarse clinical scales. We propose to measure tremor in clinical settings using the Leap Motion Controller (LMC), which is a markerless motion capture sensor that has a low cost, zero set-up time, and dynamic accuracy of 1.2 mm. However, the frequency response of the LMC has not been characterized, so its ability to track oscillations such as tremor is unknown. To characterize the frequency response of the LMC, we measured the position of a mannequin hand simultaneously with the LMC and a high-resolution encoder while the mannequin hand oscillated at various combinations of frequency (1–15 Hz) and amplitudes (0.01–30 mm). We calculated the magnitude ratio and phase shift of the LMC and found the bandwidth of the LMC to range from 0–3 Hz to 0–5 Hz for tremor amplitudes greater than the dynamic accuracy. This bandwidth is too small to accurately measure most tremors. However, we developed an inverse filter to estimate the actual tremor amplitude and phase despite the limited bandwidth. Over the combinations of frequency and amplitude mentioned above, the inverse filter estimated the actual tremor amplitude and phase with errors of 3% and 2%, respectively.
Genetic Strain and Sex Differences in a Hyperoxia-Induced Mouse Model of Varying Severity of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a disease prevalent in preterm babies with a need for supplemental oxygen, resulting in impaired lung development and dysregulated vascularization. Epidemiologic studies have shown that males are more prone to BPD and have a delayed recovery compared with females, for reasons unknown. Herein, we tried to recapitulate mild, moderate, and severe BPD, using two different strains of mice, in males and females: CD1 (outbred) and C57BL/6 (inbred). Aside from higher body weight in the CD1 strain, there were no other gross morphologic differences with respect to alveolar development between the two strains. With respect to lung morphology after oxygen exposure, females had less injury with better preservation of alveolar chord length and decreased alveolar protein leak and inflammatory cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. In addition, housekeeping genes, which are routinely used as loading controls, were expressed differently in males and females. In the BPD mouse model, gonadotropin-releasing hormone was increased in females compared with males. Specific miRNAs (miR-146 and miR-34a) were expressed differently in the sexes. In the severe BPD mouse model, administering miR-146 mimic to males attenuated lung damage, whereas administering miR-146 inhibitor to females increased pulmonary injury.
Combination of acid β-glucosidase mutation and Saposin C deficiency in mice reveals Gba1 mutation dependent and tissue-specific disease phenotype

Gaucher disease is caused by mutations in GBA1 encoding acid β-glucosidase (GCase). Saposin C enhances GCase activity and protects GCase from intracellular proteolysis. Structure simulations indicated that the mutant GCases, N370S (0 S), V394L (4L) and D409V(9V)/H(9H), had altered function. To investigate the in vivo function of Gba1 mutants, mouse models were generated by backcrossing the above homozygous mutant GCase mice into Saposin C deficient (C*) mice. Without saposin C, the mutant GCase activities in the resultant mouse tissues were reduced by ~50% compared with those in the presence of Saposin C. In contrast to 9H and 4L mice that have normal histology and life span, the 9H;C* and 4L;C* mice had shorter life spans. 9H;C* mice developed significant visceral glucosylceramide (GC) and glucosylsphingosine (GS) accumulation (GC»GS) and storage macrophages, but lesser GC in the brain, compared to 4L;C* mice that presents with a severe neuronopathic phenotype and accumulated GC and GS primarily in the brain. Unlike 9V mice that developed normally for over a year, 9V;C* pups had a lethal skin defect as did 0S;C* mice resembled that of 0S mice. These variant Gaucher disease mouse models presented a mutation specific phenotype and underscored the in vivo role of Saposin C in the modulation of Gaucher disease.
The Nuts and Bolts of Interpreting Hemodynamics in Pulmonary Hypertension Associated With Diastolic Heart Failure

With the widespread application of transthoracic echocardiography as a screening tool for pulmonary hypertension (PH), we have come to appreciate the prevalence of PH associated with diastolic hear...
Genome-wide Functional Characterization of Escherichia coli Promoters and Regulatory Elements Responsible for their Function

Summary Despite decades of intense genetic, biochemical, and evolutionary characterizations of bacterial promoters, we still lack the basic ability to identify or predict transcriptional activities of promoters using primary sequence. Even in simple, well-characterized organisms such as E. coli there is little agreement on the number, location, and strength of promoters. Here, we use a genomically-encoded massively parallel reporter assay to perform the first full characterization of autonomous promoter activity across the E. coli genome. We measure promoter activity of >300,000 sequences spanning the entire genome and precisely map 2,228 promoters active in rich media. We show that antisense promoters have a profound effect on global transcription and how codon usage has adapted to encode intragenic promoters. Furthermore, we perform a scanning mutagenesis of 2,057 promoters to uncover regulatory sequences responsible for regulating promoter activity. Finally, we show that despite these large datasets and modern machine learning algorithms, the task of predicting promoter activity from primary sequence sequence is still challenging.
Visual Contrast and Intensity Affect Perch Choice of Brown Tree Snakes (Boiga irregularis) and Boa Constrictors (Boa constrictor).

Abstract Habitat structure can affect animal movement both by affecting the mechanical demands of locomotion and by influencing where animals choose to go. Arboreal habitats facilitate studying path choice by animals because variation in branch structure has known mechanical consequences, and different branches create discrete choices. Recent laboratory studies have found that arboreal snakes can use vision to select shapes and locations of destinations that mechanically facilitate bridging gaps. However, the extent to which the appearance of objects unrelated to biomechanical demands affects the choice of destinations remains poorly understood for most animal taxa including snakes. Hence, we manipulated the intensity (black, gray, or white), contrast, structure, and locations of destinations to test for their combined effects on perch choice during gap bridging of brown tree snakes and boa constrictors. For a white background and a given perch structure and location, both species had significant preferences for darker perches. The preference for darker destinations was strong enough to override or reduce some preferences for biomechanically advantageous destinations such as those having secondary branches or being located closer or along a straighter trajectory. These results provide a striking example of how visual cues unrelated to the physical structure of surfaces, such as contrast and intensity, can bias choice and, in some cases, supersede a preference for mechanically beneficial surfaces. Because these two species are so phylogenetically distant, some of their similar preferences suggest a sensory bias that may be widespread in snakes. The manipulation of surface color may facilitate management of invasive species, such as the brown tree snakes, by enhancing the efficiency of traps or making certain objects less attractive to them.
Management of toxicities associated with novel immunotherapy agents in acute lymphoblastic leukemia

The advent of novel immunotherapies, such as blinatumomab, inotuzumab, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, has revolutionized the therapeutic landscape in the treatment of relapsed/refractory B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but can be associated with specific toxicities. We review unique toxicities of each of these in this article. Blinatumomab, a bispecific T cell engager, has been associated with cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurological toxicities, both of which can be prevented and managed with corticosteroids. Inotuzumab is a calicheamicin-conjugated CD22 targeting antibody. The calicheamicin component of the drug is likely associated with the hepatotoxicity seen with inotuzumab, especially sinusoidal obstruction syndrome, which can happen both in the context of the drug alone, and also with allogeneic stem cell transplantation. QT prolongation has also been noted with inotuzumab. CAR T therapy uses genetically modified autologous T cells directed against CD19, a known target on B cells. CRS and neurological symptoms, formally termed as immune-effector-cell-associated neurological syndrome, have been described along with hypogammaglobulinemia, cytopenias, and infections.
Class Action Suit Seeking Equal Rights for Female Swimmers

This case examines a class action suit brought by members of a high school swim team in Hawaii alleging several violations of Title IX.
Analysis of genetic variation and inbreeding among three lines of hatchery-reared Crassostrea virginica broodstock

Abstract Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, aquaculture is a rapidly growing industry in the US. Although selective breeding programs have successfully developed lines of C. virginica with faster growth and improved disease resistance for aquaculture, maintaining genetic diversity in hatchery stocks over successive generations remains a challenge. This study assessed the genetic effects of breeding practices on three lines of hatchery-reared C. virginica derived from wild North Carolina oyster populations that were spawned into multiple cohorts in three successive generations. Utilizing 22 microsatellite markers, parentage assignment was determined for three successive generations of hatchery-produced cohorts. Relatedness, allelic richness, heterozygosity, and genetic differentiation were compared among wild progenitor cohorts and hatchery-produced cohorts from the three lines. Although few crosses between siblings produced offspring that were used as broodstock, results revealed decreased genetic diversity in all three lines as evidenced by reduced allelic richness and increased relatedness in hatchery-produced cohorts when compared to wild progenitor cohorts. Percentages of inbred offspring increased with succeeding generations across the three hatchery-reared lines. Genetic differentiation gradually increased with subsequent generations of hatchery-produced cohorts within and between the three lines. Despite efforts to lessen inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity (equal contributions from single pairwise crosses), uneven performance of offspring make maintenance of genetic variation and control of inbreeding across generations difficult to achieve. Rebuilding genetic variation within lines may be achieved through crossbreeding previously separated, genetically differentiated cohorts.
Madagascar: A Return to Constitutionality?

Madagascar has presidential, legislative, and municipal elections scheduled for mid-2013. This follows four years of political conflict. On March 16, 2009 a faction of the army ousted the elected president, Marc Ravalomanana. The coup itself was murky and the years that followed were dim. The international community united in its outrage but internationally-sponsored talks did not bear fruit until a significant turn was taken in 2011 to further engage civil society. Since then there has been much success with both the protagonists in the conflict agreeing not to run in the upcoming presidential elections. The question remains, however: is an election a return to constitutionality? This paper argues that while elections are a momentous event ending a four year crisis that has wrecked havoc on the economy and lives, it does little to improve state functionality, the guarantees against the excesses of power, or enshrined individual liberties. Governance remains subject to the vicissitudes of predatory leadership networks while cardinal legal frameworks virtually assure the pouring of old wine into new bottles. The return to constitutionality will require for more than elections that fail to meet even the minimum level of institutionalization for an electoral democracy.
Tomato Hornworm Manduca quinquemaculata (Haworth) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Sphingidae)

The tomato hornworm, Manduca quinquemaculata (Haworth), is a common garden pest that feeds on plants in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family including tomato, peppers, eggplant, and potato. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in1206 Also available on the Featured Creatures website at:http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/field/hornworm.htm
Rational Design of Electrolytes for Long-Term Cycling of Si Anodes over a Wide Temperature Range

A silicon (Si) anode is a high-capacity alternative for carbonaceous anodes in lithium ion batteries. However, a large volume change during cycling and continuous side reactions with the electrolyt...
A majorization-minimization scheme for L2 support vector regression

In a support vector regression (SVR) model, using the squared ϵ-insensitive loss function makes the optimization problem strictly convex and yields a more concise solution. However, the formulation...
Water-Dispersible Ti3C2Tz MXene Nanosheets By Acid Free, Molten Salt Etching

Molten-salt etching of Ti3AlC2 MAX phase offers a promising route to produce 2D Ti3C2Tz (MXene) nanosheets without the need for hazardous HF. However, molten-salt etching generally results in MXene clays that are not fully exfoliated or water-dispersible, thus preventing nanosheet processing. This occurs because molten-salt etching generally results in a high level of -F terminal functionalities that render the MXene clay hydrophobic. Here, we demonstrate a molten salt (SnF2) etching method that, for the first time, produces water-dispersible Ti3C2Tz nanosheets without the need for HF. In molten salt etching, SnF2 diffuses between the layers during etching to form AlF3 and Sn as byproducts; Sn spheres form internally and separate the layers. The stable, aqueous Ti3C2Tz dispersion yields a ζ potential of -31.7 mV, because of -OH terminal groups introduced by KOH washing. X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy confirm the formation of Ti3C2Tz etched clay with substantial d-spacing as compared to the clay from a traditional HF-process. This work is the first to use molten salt etching to successfully prepare colloidally stable aqueous dispersions of Ti3C2Tz nanosheets. The Ti3C2Tz nanosheet film and clay produced by this method also show excellent specific and areal capacitance and conductivity.
Pandemic-related work status is associated with self-reported increases in substance use

Abrupt changes in employment status associated with the COVID-19 pandemic can exacerbate maladaptive coping strategies—including substance use behavior. This online study assessed self-reported inc...
Immigrants and International Entrepreneurship: Transnational Dynamic Capability and Dual Social Network Embeddedness

The availability of inexpensive means of communication and affordable transportation are significant drivers for immigrants to engage in transnational entrepreneurship. Transnational Entrepreneurs (TEs) are individuals that migrate from one country to another, concurrently maintaining business-related linkages with their former country of origin (COO), and currently adopted country of residence (COR) and using such dual embeddedness in their COO and COR to advance their entrepreneurial firms. Based on the dynamic capability perspective and the relational theory of social networks, this chapter offers a theoretical framework explaining how TEs develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market. This theoretical framework suggests an explanation of the process TEs may use to recognise opportunities and benefit from the social networks of their COO and COR. It also explains how TEs’ ethnic and nonethnic ties improve firm performance through the mediating effects of TEs’ dynamic capabilities and the moderating effect of institutional distance between the COO and the COR.
Determinants and Impact on the Turkish Economy of Remittances

Remittances have traditionally been an important source of foreign currency for many emigration countries. In Turkey, from the beginning of the current decade, remittances amount on annual average some 3 billion USD and continue to finance a part of the trade balance’s deficit in spite of several peaks and falls. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a case‐study on Turkish migrants’ remittances by analyzing the determinants and impact on the Turkish economy. In this study, in addition to the micro and macroeconomic determinants traditionally emphasized in the remittance literature, we stress out the financial infrastructure offered to Turkish migrants and show that the Turkish commercial banks and the Central Bank of Turkey have been playing a crucial role for attracting remittances into the country. But the analysis of the best practices for channeling remittances towards development testifies that the impact of remittances on Turkish economy remained limited.
Subjectivity in Grammar and Discourse: Theoretical considerations and a case study of Japanese spoken discourse

This book investigates the notion of subjectivity from a pragmatic point of view. There have been attempts to reduce the notion of the speaker or subjectivity as a syntactic category, or to seek an explanation for it in semantic terms. However, in order to understand the vast range of subjectivity phenomena, it is more fruitful to examine how the attributes and the experience of the real speaker affect language. The volume provides a theoretical/methodological basis for the study of various aspects of language and discourse and applies these specifically to Japanese spoken discourse, for which the data are added in an appendix.
Navigation and control of continuous mining systems for coal mining

One of the US Department of Energy, Pittsburgh Research Center (PRC) mine safety and health research programs is developing technology that will allow remote-controlled operation of mechanized equipment normally used in underground room-and-pillar coal mining, thereby permitting workers to be located away from the hazardous coal extraction area (the face). As part of this program, advanced machine navigation and control technologies are being developed for underground room-and-pillar and highwall coal mining that can be applied to commercially available mining equipment. These technologies use off-the-shelf components and a flexible control software architecture to minimize the effort required to adapt them to mining equipment. An accurate reliable navigation system that can provide the mining machine's heading and location at all times is a critical requirement for a remote-controlled mining system. After much research involving several different types of navigation sensors, the Honeywell Ring Laser Gyro Inertial Navigation System was selected as showing the most promise. It has been installed on a continuous mining machine at PRCs surface test facility. This paper describes the system being employed on a mining machine while final accuracy and performance testing continues.
Using acoustic waves for the characterization of closed fatigue cracks

Partial contact of two rough fatigue crack surfaces leads to transmission, reflection, diffraction and mode conversion of an acoustic signal at those contacts (asperities). This paper reviews recent experimental and theoretical efforts to understand such interactions and uses them to quantify contact on actual fatigue cracks in greater detail. It is shown that the size and density of individual contacts, or asperities, can be estimated from acoustic measurements. Furthermore, it is shown that this information is needed to calculate the static stress across a partially closed crack as well as the ''effective'' stress intensity range which activates fatigue crack propagation.
An energy efficient hybrid FPGA-GPU based embedded platform to accelerate face recognition application

Nowadays face recognition application is widely used in various industries such as traffic, safety, medical engineering, etc. In this paper, we propose a power and energy efficient heterogeneous platform to accelerate face recognition applications. To achieve this efficiency, we propose a novel hybrid platform which consists of a Xilinx Zynq (ARM+FPGA) and an NVidia's Jetson TK1 (ARM+GPU) coupled with PCIe card. In this application, we optimized local binary pattern and eigenvalue based face detection and recognition in order to achieve a speedup of 69x when compared to sequential execution on the ARM core, 4.8x against Zynq platform (ARM+FPGA), 3.2x against NVidia platform (ARM+GPU) and 40% more energy efficient against sequential execution.
Homosexuality cross‐culturally

This entry presents a historical and cross-cultural survey of same-sex sexual desires, acts, and relationships between both men and women. It considers the variety of ways that cultures organize same-sex sexuality, including on the basis of age, gender, and class/racial/ethnic difference, and the impact of the development of the concept of homosexuality as a defining characteristic and identity. Keywords: same-sex sexuality; gay and lesbian; global sexualities
Quantitative Thermal Diffusivity Measurements on Composite Fiber Volume Fraction (FVF) Samples

A composite’s strength is determined by the interaction between the fiber and matrix. Since the matrix distributes the load onto and between the fibers it is important to know the respective volume amounts to insure proper load distribution. Studies [1] have been done relating axial tensile and axial compressive strengths to fiber volume fraction (FVF). Current methods to determine FVF are destructive and time consuming. They involve removal of the matrix by heat or chemical digestion. In this work a thermal diffusivity measurement technique is investigated for the characterization of FVF in graphite composite plates. A thermal technique is advantageous since it is noncontacting, fast, and nondestructive.
Building your own software model checker using the bogor extensible model checking framework

Model checking has proven to be an effective technology for verification and debugging in hardware and more recently in software domains. We believe that recent trends in both the requirements for software systems and the processes by which systems are developed suggest that domain-specific model checking engines may be more effective than general purpose model checking tools. To overcome limitations of existing tools which tend to be monolithic and non-extensible, we have developed an extensible and customizable model checking framework called Bogor. In this tool paper, we summarize (a) Bogor's direct support for modeling object-oriented designs and implementations, (b) its facilities for extending and customizing its modeling language and algorithms to create domain-specific model checking engines, and (c) pedagogical materials that we have developed to describe the construction of model checking tools built on top of the Bogor infrastructure.
Differential effects of antidepressants escitalopram versus lithium on Gs alpha membrane relocalization

Plasma membrane localization can play a significant role in the ultimate function of certain proteins. Specific membrane domains like lipid rafts have been shown to be inhibitory domains to a number of signaling proteins, including Gsα, and chronic antidepressant treatment facilitates Gs signaling by removing Gsα form lipid rafts. The intent of this study is to compare the effects of the selective serotnin reuptake inhibitor, escitalopram, with that of the mood stabilizing drug, lithium. There are a number of mechanisms of action proposed for lithium as a mood stabilizing agent, but the interactions between G proteins (particularly Gs) and mood stabilizing drugs are not well explored. Of particular interest was the possibility that there was some effect of mood stabilizers on the association between Gsα and cholesterol-rich membrane microdomains (lipid rafts), similar to that seen with long-term antidepressant treatment. This was examined by biochemical and imaging (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching: FRAP) approaches. Results indicate that escitalopram was effective at liberating Gsα from lipid rafts while lithium was not. There are a number of drug treatments for mood disorders and yet there is no unifying hypothesis for a cellular or molecular basis of action. It is evident that there may in fact not be a single mechanism, but rather a number of different mechanisms that converge at a common point. The results of this study indicate that the mood stabilizing agent, lithium, and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, escitalopram, act on their cellular targets through mutually exclusive pathways. These results also validate the hypothesis that translocation of Gsα from lipid rafts could serve as a biosignature for antidepressant action.
Observation of energy-dependent charge states in solar energetic particle events

Ionic charge states of solar energetic particles (SEPs) provide information about their source environment and acceleration process. For example, SEPs in flare-associated events typically have higher charge states than those in large, interplanetary shock-associated events. This may be explained by the dierent temperatures of the ion populations undergoing acceleration. Recently, some large SEP events have been observed with energy dependent charge states. In these cases, higher energy ions have higher charge states. This phenomenon may be a result of acceleration by shocks or flares in a collisional plasma close to the Sun. In the interplanetary medium, a moderate energy dependence may be created by rigidity-dependent shock acceleration. We present observations of energy dependent charge states for three large SEP events, using data from the ACE, SAMPEX and SOHO spacecraft. The energy range for these data extend from 0.1 MeV/nuc up to as high as 20 MeV/nuc. In each event, the iron charge states increase by at least 9 units over this energy range. These results will be discussed with respect to the cited models for energy dependent charge states.
Procreation, Adoption and the Contours of Obligation

The goal of this article is to evaluate the defensibility of wide-spread beliefs concerning the moral value of procreating. Very many of us are ‘pro-natal’ — that is, we have a positive moral view of making more people — but pro-natalism is under serious threat. In particular, I argue that combining several arguments in procreative ethics generates a powerful case for the Anti-Natal Pro-Adoption View (ANPA), or the view that we are obligated not to procreate, but instead to satisfy any parenting desires through adoption. Although this article ultimately serves as a defence against ANPA, it does so in a very limited way: while it is false that we are obligated to adopt-rather-than-procreate, I contend, this does not mean that we are off the moral hook altogether. Failing in our obligations is only one way to fail morality. Our procreative acts may yet be bad, dishonourable, selfish, and open to multiple other criticisms. And indeed, I'm afraid many of them are.
A computational model for texture perception with chromatic and achromatic images

We have developed a new computational model for texture perception which is physiologically plausible and mimics human performance. Our model tries to simulate the visual processing characteristics by incorporating mechanisms tuned to luminance, orientation, spatial-frequency and color, which are characteristic features of any textural image. We obtained a very good correlation between human performance and our model simulations with various strategic texture patterns. The highlights of our model are incorporation of chromatic mechanisms to treat color images, in addition to grey-level ones, and the extension of the concept of double-opponency beyond color. The model could be utilized in the area of image processing, machine vision and pattern recognition, and scientific visualization. >
Spatial distribution of yarns and mechanical properties in 3D braided tubular composites

This paper outlines a method which links the following analytically simulated events in sequence: (1) braiding of a 3D preform of tubular cross-section – characterized by a set of braiding parameters defining the braiding setup and braiding steps; (2) geometric description of the yarn topology in the braided preform – in explicit terms of a set of topological parameters defined by the preform shape and the braiding parameters; (3) description of the exact yarn distribution after preform consolidation with a binding matrix – the values of the topological parameters are related to the exterior dimensions and surface features of the consolidated preform; and (4) forecasting the mechanical properties in the final composite – via a suitable micromechanics model that takes into account the spatial yarn distribution in the composite and properties of the constituents.
The Misperception of Public Opinion Toward Capital Punishment: Examining the Spuriousness Explanation of Death Penalty Support

Appellate courts in the United States, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have looked to public opinion and legislative trends to interpret the meaning of “evolving standards of decency” in determining whether capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Bowers's spuriousness explanation of public support for capital punishment suggests that lawmakers and appellate judges have misinterpreted public sentiment. Specifically, although the public voices general support for the death penalty, that support vanishes when citizens are given the option of life in prison without possibility of parole coupled with a requirement of work and restitution. This research tests and finds support for Bowers's explanation with data from a sample of Indiana citizens. In addition, the study extends the model by presenting data from Indiana legislators showing that indeed lawmakers do misread the opinions of their constituents on this important issue.
Exploring the Use of Geospatial Technology to Estimate Energy Expenditure and Promote Physical Activity

TECHNOLOGY TO ESTIMATE ENERGY EXPENDITURE AND PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY Author(s): N. Hongu, K. D. Wisneski, K. A. Poschman, M. L. Vance, J. M. Wise, K. N. Kinnard, V. K. Valenzuela, B. J. Orr; Nutritional Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, Office of Arid Lands Studies, AZ Remote Sensing Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, NASA Space Grant Undergraduate Research Intern, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ