cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Measuring, monitoring, and managing the green practices in mid-sized restaurants in China

ABSTRACTThis study explored the economic feasibility of adopting green practices in medium-sized restaurants in China. In particular, the short-term and long-term savings and environmental impact of adopting changes that do not require large investment were examined. Concepts from waste hierarchy and lean manufacturing served as the basis. Two mid-sized restaurants that were similar in terms of sales revenue, number of customers served, and payroll were selected. A number of incremental interventions were implemented and tested to identify the costs and/or benefits of sustainable management. Finally, this study made recommendations to restaurant owners, managers, and stakeholders.
Multimodality word-finding distinctions in cortical stimulation mapping.

Background Cortical stimulation mapping (CSM) commonly uses visual naming to determine resection margins in the dominant hemisphere of patients with epilepsy. Visual naming alone may not identify all language sites in resection-prone areas, prompting additional tasks for comprehensive language mapping. Objective To demonstrate word-finding distinctions between visual, auditory, and reading modalities during CSM and the percentage of modality-specific language sites within dominant hemisphere subregions. Methods Twenty-eight patients with epilepsy underwent CSM by the use of visual, auditory, and sentence-completion tasks. Hierarchical logistic regression analyzed errors to identify language sites and provide modality-specific percentages within subregions. Results The percentage of sites classified as language sites based on auditory naming was twice as high in anterior temporal regions compared with visual naming, marginally higher in posterior temporal areas, and comparable in parietal regions. Sentence completion was comparable to visual and auditory naming in parietal regions and lower in most temporal areas. Of 470 sites tested with both visual and auditory naming, 95 sites were distinctly auditory, whereas 48 sites were distinctly visual. The remaining sites overlapped. Conclusion Distinct cortical areas were found for distinct input modalities, with language sites in anterior tip regions found most often by using auditory naming. The vulnerability of anterior temporal tip regions to resection in this population and distinct sites for each modality suggest that a multimodality approach may be needed to spare crucial language sites, if sparing those sites can be shown to significantly reduce the rate of postoperative language deficits without sacrificing seizure control.
Geographic variation in size of female wild Rock Doves

The Rock Dove (Columba livia) was domesticated around 5,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean region generally called the Near East (Levi 1974). Escapes of domestics from confinement for thousands of years have provided stocks that developed into feral populations. Feral pigeons now have characteristics of both wild and domestic ancestry, frequently live essentially as though they are wholly wild, and are capable of broadscale genetic introgression in wild colonies (Johnston et al. 1988, Johnston and Janiga 1995). In western Europe, wild colonies are known to exist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and perhaps on the coastline of northern and western Ireland; in the Mediterranean basin, wild colonies are known from coastal Sardinia, northwestern Egypt, and perhaps Libya and montane sectors of the former Yugoslavia. Interior montane North Africa, the Near East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, northwestern montane India, southwestern China, Uzbekistan, and Russia probably have Rock Dove populations that are still isolated from feral pigeons, but recent information is fragmentary. No information exists on the degree to which wild Rock Doves are killed for food by humans living under high densities in politically and economically unstable regions, but the birds can be subjected to overharvesting when their nesting cliffs are discovered by people short of dietary protein. For these reasons, as well as of the difficulties in travelling to some of the regions just noted, specimen samples of wild Rock Doves are not likely to be significantly augmented in the near future. An earlier report (Johnston 1992) on size variation was restricted to samples of male specimens, although a display of sexual size dimorphism over the characters employed was provided. Here I provide comparable data for females.
Medical student research exposure via a series of modular research programs.

Background The falling percentage of doctors of medicine applying for National Institute of Health-funded research grants is 1 indicator that physician-scientists are a disappearing breed. This is occurring at a time when increased translational, disease-oriented, patient-oriented, and clinical research are national goals. One of the keys to providing sufficient numbers of physician-scientists to support this goal is the active targeting of medical students. We hypothesize that an improved research program infrastructure and responsiveness to changing student needs will increase student participation in research-oriented electives. Methods We have developed a student research program consisting of 2 Students Interested in Research noncredit electives (lecture and laboratory based), summer fellowships, support for year-out fellowships, and a Distinction in Research program that spans undergraduate medical education. Student participation and short-term research outcomes from fall 2004 through spring 2008 are analyzed to examine program efficacy. Results Students involved in the early parts of the program initially experienced higher application and success rates for summer funding opportunities, but as the program has matured, these rates have fallen in line with the class average. Independently, students participating in later portions of the program increasingly submit or publish a first author paper and have taken a year off for research during medical school. Overlap of participation in the programs is generally smaller than expected. Conclusion Although structured programs can provide step-wise research experiences of increasing intensity, students may not experience a training pipeline in which each stage relies on those before and after, and instead may sample an a la carte selection of research-based enrichment opportunities.
Impulse propagation in the Purkinje system and myocardium of intact dogs

To characterize Purkinje activation (PA) patterns, we studied 15 alpha-chloralose-anesthetized dogs. During left ventricular basal or apical pacing, PA was mapped with a row of four to eight multipolar electrodes placed in the left ventricular wall to record Purkinje and muscle potentials. PA times increased linearly with distance from the pacing site (r = 0.8, slope 1.8 +/- 0.15 mm/ms, P or = 50 mm) with S1-S2 = 185 +/- 5 (SD) ms, while at peripacing sites (< or = 10 mm), delay was first evident when S1-S2 = 176 +/- 6 ms (Purkinje relative refractory period; P < 0.05). With S2,...S5 such that S1-S2 = S2-S3, and so on, an alternating mode of conduction, both temporally and spatially, occurred. The alternation was due to refractoriness and conduction interactions. With short premature intervals, remote coupling intervals were 30 ms less than the premature intervals. Conduction delay in Purkinje fibers with premature stimuli allowed remote epicardium to be activated by alternate routes. Conduction of constant-rate stimuli in the Purkinje system is relatively uniform. With single premature stimuli, conduction is delayed first remotely from the pacing site, whether apical or basal stimulation was employed. When S1-S2 is less than Purkinje relative refractory period, the usual endocardial-to-epicardial activation sequence is altered. Multiple premature stimuli cause remote coupling intervals to alternate.
Do uncompensated care pools change the distribution of hospital care to the uninsured

In 1983, New York State established an uncompensated care pool using the New York Prospective Hospital Reimbursement Methodology (NYPHRM). Two policy objectives of the NYPHRM were (1) to encourage more equitable distribution of uncompensated care across hospitals and (2) to increase access to hospital care for the uninsured. This article demonstrates that the New York uncompensated care pool was only moderately successful in achieving these goals. The principal findings are that the NYPHRM did result in routine care being redistributed away from hospitals that traditionally provided care to the uninsured, while provision of highly technological care was not significantly redistributed. This article suggests that if the primary policy goal is to increase access to care for the uninsured by changing the distribution of hospitals willing to provide care, the uncompensated care pool approach is moderately effective.
Rebekka Ouer. (2016). Solution-Focused Brief Therapy with the LGBT Community. New York: Routledge, 108 pp., $29.95 (paperback).

One of the many strengths of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is the fact that it is an evidence-based model for working effectively with several populations including minority groups. In Solu...
Reproductive Skew, Cooperative Breeding, and Eusociality in Vertebrates: Hormones

Reproductive skew, or asymmetry in reproductive success within social groups, is most pronounced in cooperatively breeding and eusocial species, in which reproduction is often limited to a small subset of behaviorally dominant group members while subordinates serve as nonbreeding alloparents. In vertebrate cooperative breeders, skew can be generated by the inhibition of either reproductive physiology or reproductive behavior in subordinates. Reproductive failure in males is frequently mediated by the inhibition of sexual behavior, although subordinates in some species also exhibit suppression of the hypothalamic–pituitary–testicular endocrine axis. Similarly, subordinate females often undergo partial or complete suppression of ovulatory function in response to social cues. Subordinate cooperative breeders typically have glucocorticoid levels similar to or lower than those in dominants, suggesting that reproductive suppression is not mediated by stress. The endocrine mechanisms underlying alloparental behavior in nonbreeding individuals are not yet understood, but correlational findings suggest a possible role of prolactin. Additional experimental studies are needed to better characterize the effects of hormones in determining and maintaining the reproductive and behavioral roles of individual animals in high-skew vertebrate societies.
A wild life indeed

In a five-year span in the early 1970s, Robert Trivers published a series of five extraordinarily influential papers [1–5] that provided the theoretical underpinning for much of modern evolutionary biology. These papers cover reciprocal altruism, parent–offspring conflict, parental investment and sexual selection (a book chapter cited more than 10,000 times!), the determinants of sex ratio, and haplodiploidy and the evolution of social organization.
Ethical Care for Vulnerable Populations Receiving Psychotropic Treatment

The increasing use of pharmacotherapy raises specific ethical concerns for psychologists working with vulnerable populations. Due to a shortage of trained specialists, professionals without training in mental health, such as primary care providers, are increasingly prescribing and monitoring psychotropic medications. Vulnerable populations (e.g., older adults, people currently low in social status, immigrants, and racial/ethnic minorities) face additional barriers to mental health treatment and are at heightened risk when these factors intersect. Hence, these patients experience unique barriers to receiving optimal psychopharmacological care and are differentially vulnerable to deleterious outcomes associated with misdiagnosis and overmedication. Taken together, these factors fuel inequities in the access, quality, and utilization of mental health care. Psychologists working with these patients are ethically mandated to protect patients from harm and ensure equitable care across patient populations. Speci...
A Picture You Can Handle: Infants Treat Touch-Screen Images More Like Photographs than Objects.

Infants actively explore their world in order to determine the different ways in which they can interact with various objects. Although research on infant perception has focused on how infants understand the differences between 2- and 3-dimensional objects, today’s infants increasingly encounter 2D images with interactive qualities on smart-phone screens, tablets, and laptops. The purpose of this experiment was to examine the types of manual behaviors infants direct towards tablet images and to compare these actions to those evoked by 2D photographs or 3D when tactile feedback is controlled. Infants between the ages of 7-10 months sat on their parent’s lap in front of a table with a built-in well covered by a clear, plastic sheet while the three types of displays (photographs, objects, and screen images on a tablet) were presented for 30 seconds each. Infants saw three examples of each type of display presented in the built-in well so that tactile feedback information from the different displays was controlled. Coders noted the proportion of trials in which infants grasped, scratched, rubbed, or patted the display. Results indicate that infants direct significantly more grasps, scratches, and rubs towards 3D objects than 2D photographs. Infants also direct more grasps to objects compared to screen images. Our data suggests that infants are treating screen images more similarly to 2D photographs than 3D objects.
Polarized Localization Microscopy Detects Membrane Curvature and Reveals the Interplay between Membrane Orientation and Protein Dynamics

Nanoscale membrane curvature is a necessary component of countless cellular processes. However, the understanding of these processes is limited by the experimental techniques and its inability to detect and resolve nanoscale membrane curvature. Here we present Polarized Localization Microscopy (PLM), a novel optical microscopy technique that detects and resolves membrane curvature with 15 nm resolution. PLM combines the advantages of polarized total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRF) and fluorescence localization microscopy to reveal single-fluorophore locations and orientations without sacrificing the localization precision of the point spread function. We demonstrate PLM capability of resolving membrane orientations by draping a supported lipid bilayer over polystyrene nanoparticles of varying sizes on a glass coverslip, thus creating a model membrane with coexisting flat and curved regions and membrane radii of curvature as small as 20 nm. Further, we introduce theoretical analysis that enables mapping out the membrane topology from the density of detected localizations in fluorescence excitation polarization. Using this approach, the interplay between membrane topology and cholera toxin subunit B (CTxB) dynamics was addressed. CTxB partitioned to curved membrane over the nanoparticle and further drove formation of lipid tubules. PLM detected the binding of an exocytosis protein complex to nanoscale membrane curvature. PLM was utilized to perform high throughput single particle tracking to reveal the correlated effects of membrane curvature, dynamics, and protein distribution. By providing super-resolution of membrane topology, PLM is able to reveal the critical components in various cellular processes such as endocytosis/exocytosis, viral infections, and neurotransmission.
Isolation of Sarcolemmal Membranes from Smooth Muscle

Smooth muscle tone is dependent on cytoplasmic free Ca2+ concentration, which is regulated by Ca2+ influx and efflux across the sarcolemma and across the membranes of intracellular Ca2+-transporting organelles. These Ca2+ transport processes may be altered by changes in ionic composition, hormonal stimulation, pharmacological treatments, and by disease conditions. The movements of Ca2+ in smooth muscle tissues can be studied by measuring the influx and efflux of 45Ca2+ under different experimental conditions, but the interpretation of these data is difficult because of the limited knowledge of compartmentalization of cellular Ca2+. Another approach is to isolate membrane vesicles in purified form and to study Ca2+ transport in vitro to gain an insight into its function in vivo. Since the number of smooth muscle cells is small, and they are usually surrounded by nonmuscle cells, it is difficult to isolate substantial amounts of purified subcellular membranes from smooth muscle tissues. In this chapter, a procedure is described that has been found useful in our laboratory for the isolation of reasonable amounts of sarcolemmal membranes from rat myometrium, pig coronary arteries, and dog and rat mesenteric arteries.
Learning to Work: The Impact of Curriculum and Assessment Standards on Educational Opportunity

The increased involvement of business in fostering school reform, and the subsequent focus on setting standards for curriculum and assessment, raise a number of questions rooted in public policy and law. In this article, Diana Pullin provides a valuable analysis of the legal issues in current education reform proposals — the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), Goals 2000, and the report of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing (NCEST) — that attempt to link education and employment through assessment and curriculum. She also offers important insights into the complexities that we must consider if these proposals are truly to advance our commitment to equity. The author dissects the issues in governance, contrasting the national assessment programs called for in both SCANS and NCEST with federal approaches, and, given the inherent "high-stakes" nature of these assessments, foresees problems with validity, reliability, and fairness. She explores the grounds for du...
Topological crystalline insulator SnTe nanoribbons

Abstract Topological crystalline insulators are systems in which a band inversion that is protected by crystalline mirror symmetry gives rise to nontrivial topological surface states. SnTe is a topological crystalline insulator. It exhibits p-type conductivity due to Sn vacancies and Te antisites, which leads to high carrier density in the bulk. Thus growth of high quality SnTe is a prerequisite for understanding the topological crystalline insulating behavior. We have grown SnTe nanoribbons using a solution method. The width of the SnTe ribbons varies from 500 nm to 2 µm. They exhibit rock salt crystal structure with a lattice parameter of 6.32 A. The solution method that we have adapted uses low temperature, so the Sn vacancies can be controlled. The solution grown SnTe nanoribbons exhibit strong semiconducting behavior with an activation energy of 240 meV. This activation energy matches with the calculated band gap for SnTe with a lattice parameter of 6.32 A, which is higher than that reported for bulk SnTe. The higher activation energy makes the thermal excitation of bulk charges very difficult on the surface. As a result, the topological surfaces will be free from the disturbance caused by the thermal excitations
Deep recurrent neural networks for predicting intraoperative and postoperative outcomes and trends

Intraoperative vital signals convey a wealth of complex temporal information that can provide significant insights into a patient's physiological status during the surgery, as well as outcomes after the surgery. Our study involves the use of a deep recurrent neural network architecture to predict patient's outcomes after the surgery, as well as to predict the immediate changes in the intraoperative signals during the surgery. More specifically, we will use a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model which is a gated deep recurrent neural network architecture. We have performed two experiments on a large intraoperative dataset of 12,036 surgeries containing information on 7 intraoperative signals including body temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, diastolic blood pressure, systolic blood pressure, fraction of inspired O 2 and end-tidal CO 2 . We first evaluated the capability of LSTM in predicting the immediate changes in intraoperative signals, and then we evaluated its performance on predicting each patient's length of stay outcome. Our experiments show the effectiveness of LSTM with promising results on both tasks compared to the traditional models.
Resilient cloud in dynamic resource environments

Traditional cloud stacks are designed to tolerate random, small-scale failures, and can successfully deliver highly-available cloud services and interactive services to end users. However, they fail to survive large-scale disruptions that are caused by major power outage, cyber-attack, or region/zone failures. Such changes trigger cascading failures and significant service outages. We propose to understand the reasons for these failures, and create reliable data services that can efficiently and robustly tolerate such large-scale resource changes. We believe cloud services will need to survive frequent, large dynamic resource changes in the future to be highly available. (1) Significant new challenges to cloud reliability are emerging, including cyber-attacks, power/network outages, and so on. For example, human error disrupted Amazon S3 service on 02/28/17 [2]. Recently hackers are even attacking electric utilities, which may lead to more outages [3, 6]. (2) Increased attention on resource cost optimization will increase usage dynamism, such as Amazon Spot Instances [1]. (3) Availability focused cloud applications will increasingly practice continuous testing to ensure they have no hidden source of catastrophic failure. For example, Netflix Simian Army can simulate the outages of individual servers, and even an entire AWS region [4]. (4) Cloud applications with dynamic flexibility will reap numerous benefits, such as flexible deployments, managing cost arbitrage and reliability arbitrage across cloud provides and datacenters, etc. Using Apache Cassandra [5] as the model system, we characterize its failure behavior under dynamic datacenter-scale resource changes. Each datacenter is volatile and randomly shut down with a given duty factor. We simulate read-only workload on a quorum-based system deployed across multiple datacenters, varying (1) system scale, (2) the fraction of volatile datacenters, and (3) the duty factor of volatile datacenters. We explore the space of various configurations, including replication factors and consistency levels, and measure the service availability (% of succeeded requests) and replication overhead (number of total replicas). Our results show that, in a volatile resource environment, the current replication and quorum protocols in Cassandra-like systems cannot high availability and consistency with low replication overhead. Our contributions include: (1) Detailed characterization of failures under dynamic datacenter-scale resource changes, showing that the exiting protocols in quorum-based systems cannot achieve high availability and consistency with low replication cost. (2) Study of the best achieve-able availability of data service in dynamic datacenter-scale resource environment.
Case of a Girl with Primary Amenorrhea, Cyclic Pelvic Pain, and Absent Vagina

Menstruation requires a patent outflow tract (uterine corpus, cervix and vagina). The most common cause of primary amenorrhea, after gonadal dysgenesis, is Mullerian agenesis, also referred to as Mullerian aplasia or Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome. It results from the embryologic growth failure of the Mullerian ducts with resultant agenesis of the vagina and an absent or rudimentary uterus. There are various clinical presentations of this anomaly due to varying degrees of uterine aplasia and simultaneously affected systems. Vaginal agenesis may occur in conjunction with certain disorders of 46XY sexual differentiation such as mixed gonadal dysgenesis (MGD), complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), and partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS). When a Mullerian duct anomaly is suspected, imaging is essential for diagnosis and management and to direct reproductive counseling. Strategies for managing this condition range from nonsurgical to surgical options and really depend upon patient readiness. Women with MRKH are candidates for in vitro fertilization with a surrogate gestation carrier.
Choosing the right inhaled medication device for COPD.

Data suggest that inhaler devices have similar effectiveness in treating patients with COPD; however, a variety of factors must be considered when selecting the best device for each patient.
Time-resolved single-molecule fluorescence microscopy: Pump–probe scheme employing bursts of pulses and gated photon counting

Abstract A practical methodology to conduct the time-resolved fluorescence microscopy has been developed; the technique employs bursts of excitation pulses ( ≤ ms duration) gated by an electro-optic modulator from a 76 MHz ultrafast oscillator and enables incremental stage positioning along with gated photon counting in a pump–probe scheme. A fluorescence trajectory is thus spread into segments of the multiple scans, which advances an efficient data recovery not only over limited photon-cycles but a frequently blinking trajectory owing to the innate heterogeneity present in a single-molecule environment. A typical application that probes ultrafast dynamics of an interfacial electron transfer was demonstrated in a dye-sensitized TiO2 nanoparticles at ambient condition.
Aging, Dietary Restriction, and Glucocorticoids: A Critical Review of the Glucocorticoid Hypothesis

Philosophers and scientists have long been beguiled by the possibility that, like growth and development, senescence and death are biologically programmed. Since development is under endocrine control, by analogy the control of aging has also been sought in this system. Early research concentrated upon the impact of hypophysectomy on biological measures of aging. While this work has produced intriguing evidence for delay or even reversal of some age-related changes (see Regelson 1983; Cole et al. 1982; and Everitt 1976 for reviews), hypophysectomized subjects seldom outlived intact controls and often died of hormonal abnormalities attendant upon this radical procedure. Similarly, the search for a “death hormone” under pituitary regulation (Denckla 1981) continues to be frustrating. Among the known hormones, at this time the adrenal glucocorticoids (GC) are doubtlessly the best candidate for a role in the endocrine modulation (if not control) of some aspects of aging.
An Optimal Control Approach to Seizure Detection in Drug-Resistant Epilepsy

Hidden state transitions are frequent events in complex biological systems like the brain. Accurately detecting these transitions from sequential measurements (e.g., EEG, MER, EMG, etc.) is pivotal in several applications at the interface between engineering and medicine, like neural prosthetics, brain-computer interface, and drug delivery, but the detection methodologies developed thus far generally suffer from a lack of robustness. We recently addressed this problem by developing a Bayesian detection paradigm that combines optimal control and Markov processes. The neural activity is described as a stochastic process generated by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and the detection policy minimizes a loss function of both probability of false positives and accuracy (i.e., lag between estimated and actual transition time). The policy results in a time-varying threshold that applies to the a posteriori Bayesian probability of state transition and automatically adapts to each newly acquired measurement, based on the evolution of the HMM and the relative loss for false positives and accuracy. An application of the proposed paradigm to the automatic online detection of seizures in drug-resistant epilepsy subjects is here reported.
Cystic Pancreatic Masses

Cystic neoplasms of the pancreas have been recognized for almost two centuries. In 1830, Becourt described the first cystic neoplasm of the pancreas as a tumor, “with the size of a child’s head and composed of very strong walls” (Verbesey and Munson in Surg Clin North America 90(2):411–425, 2010). Especially after 1990s, cystic lesions of the pancreas are being increasingly identified primarily due to wide-spread use of CT and other state-of-the-art imaging methods. It is now estimated that they can be detected in approximately 1.2% of abdominal CT scans with increasing prevalence with age and up to 24% of patients have pancreatic cystic lesions at autopsy (Spinelli et al. in Ann Surg 239(5):651–657, 2004; Kimura et al. in Int J Pancreatol 18(3):197–206, 1995). As they encompass a variety of processes of neoplastic, developmental and inflammatory in origin, their discovery prompts management concerns and their accurate characterization is necessary for appropriate patient triage. Many patients with a pancreatic cystic neoplasm (PCN) present with no relevant signs or symptoms and most of these lesions are incidentally diagnosed (Bassi et al. in World J Surg 27:319–323, 2003; Kerlin et al. in Surg Gynecol Obstet 165:475–478, 1987). The proportion of pancreatic resections that were performed for PCN has doubled in the last two decades (Fernandez-del Castillo and Warshaw in Adv Surg 34:237–248, 2000). Multi-detector row CT (MDCT) is the most commonly utilized imaging modality for pancreas imaging and has the capability to provide high resolution images of the pancreas and can depict even small pancreatic cysts. MDCT can also provide information about characterization of pancreatic cystic lesions, their follow-up and staging (Curry et al. in Am J Roentgenol 175(1):99–103, 2000). In this chapter, we will provide an overview of pancreatic cystic lesions and their clinical management and then describe the CT imaging features of common PCN.
Quality of service (qos) support for multimedia applications in large-scale networks

This dissertation studied issues pertaining to QoS provision for multimedia applications at the application layer. We initially studied Internet routing pathology and Internet routing stability by repeating experimental and analytical methods conducted by Paxson in 1996. No similar study was done in recent years. Our findings show that routing behavior of the Internet in 2006 are different from those reported in 1996 in some important aspects. Second, we investigated different stochastic models (e.g. self-similar processes, Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving-Average (ARIMA)) in order to find a suitable model that describes available bandwidth over time of an end-to-end path between two Internet hosts. Our finding of the suitable model is beneficial to predicting of future values of available bandwidth along an end-to-end path. To the best of our knowledge, no similar study was conducted. Third, we designed and evaluated a new path monitoring algorithm inferring available bandwidth of an end-to-end path without monitoring all the paths to minimize monitoring overhead. Our algorithm does not rely on underlying network-layer topology information as required in topology-aware path monitoring techniques. Finally, to complement the above study, we introduced our multicast protocol named "core-set routing" for transmitting multimedia data from a set of senders to a set of receivers, taking QoS into account. The protocol is suitable for interactive multi-sender multimedia applications such as video conferencing and network gaming.
Effects of vanadate on myocardial function.

The influence of vanadate (NH4VO3, Na3VO4) and vanadyl (VOSO4) on myocardial function was studied using a variety ofin vivo andex vivo cardiac preparations. In addition, the influence of vanadate on a variety of cardiac subcellular systems was examinedin vitro.
Low-Fidelity Aerostructural Optimization of Aircraft Wings with a Simplified Wingbox Model Using OpenAeroStruct

It is common for aircraft design studies to begin with low-fidelity tools and move to higher-fidelity tools at later stages. After early conceptual design stages, designers can take advantage of developments in high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization, and more recently, coupled aerostructural optimization to improve their designs. Over the past few years, our research group has developed a framework that allows carrying out high-fidelity aerostructural optimization by coupling a RANS CFD solver to an FEM solver that uses shell elements. In addition, we have recently developed OpenAeroStruct, a light-weight and open-source tool for low-fidelity aerostructural optimization that couples a VLM code to an FEM code that uses spatial beam elements. Due to their low cost, such low-fidelity tools remain useful for design studies. In this paper, we present results from OpenAeroStruct for the optimization of a transport aircraft wing and compare them to results from our group’s high-fidelity framework. Additionally, we describe the simplified wingbox model developed and implemented with OpenAeroStruct for this work.
Radical/Polar Annulation Reactions (RPARs) Enable the Modular Construction of Cyclopropanes

An annulation process for the construction of 1,1-disubstituted cyclopropanes via a radical/polar crossover process is described. The cyclopropanation proceeds by the addition of a photocatalytically generated radical to a homoallylic tosylate. Reduction of the intermediate radical alkylation adduct (via single electron transfer) furnishes an anion that undergoes an intramolecular substitution. The process displays excellent functional group tolerance, characteristic of proceeding through odd-electron intermediates, and occurs under mild conditions with visible light irradiation.
Gender and age differences in pre-schoolers’ weight bias beliefs and behavioural intentions

Weight bias is present in children as young as 3 years old; however, research regarding gender differences is mixed. This study examined gender and age differences in weight bias attitudes in a sample of 3- to 5-year-old pre-schoolers. Children assigned positive or negative adjectives to thin, average, or large targets and selected one of these targets as their best friend. Girls showed a larger weight bias than boys in both tasks, and weight bias increased with age in the adjective attribution task. Findings clarify previously mixed gender results and demonstrate that while weight bias beliefs strengthen during the pre-school years, weight bias behavioural intentions do not. The results highlight the importance of continued efforts to address weight bias in young children. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Weight bias is linked to negative consequences in young children. Children as young as 3 years old demonstrate weight bias. Findings regarding gender differences in weight bias in pre-schoolers are mixed. What does this study add? Girls demonstrated higher weight bias than boys in an adjective attribution and best friend selection task. Weight bias increased with age in the adjective attribution task but not in the friend selection task. Weight bias beliefs strengthen during the pre-school years; however, weight bias behavioural intentions do not.
An Adaptive Bayesian Parameter Estimation of a Synchronous Generator Under Gross Errors

Polynomial-chaos-expansion-based surrogate models have recently been advocated in the literature for power system dynamic parameter estimation. Regarding the estimation of the uncertain generator parameters, a Bayesian inference framework has been proposed based on a polynomial-based reduced-order representation of the synchronous machines using assumed parameter values. Then, the non-Gaussian posterior probability distribution functions (pdfs) of these parameters are recovered through the stochastic sampling approach efficiently. However, facing very large parameter errors, the reliability of the surrogate model decreases, yielding biased estimation results. To overcome this problem, this article develops a hierarchical Bayesian inference framework that processes the measurements provided by phasor measurement units, while making use of multifidelity surrogates together with the importance sampling method. The latter allows us to estimate in an efficient manner the posterior pdfs of the uncertain parameters through the normalized weights of the prior samples. To improve the accuracy of the posterior pdfs, an adaptive procedure is further adopted in the importance sampling for the gradual evolution of its proposal functions. The new proposals assist in fine-tuning the sample space and thereby help to construct surrogates with higher fidelity. Through an iterative process, this approach is able to estimate accurately and efficiently non-Gaussian posterior pdfs of the uncertain generator parameters subject to gross errors.
Diagnostic Value of Electroencephalography with Ten Electrodes in Critically Ill Patients

In critical care settings, electroencephalography (EEG) with reduced number of electrodes (reduced montage EEG, rm-EEG) might be a timely alternative to the conventional full montage EEG (fm-EEG). However, past studies have reported variable accuracies for detecting seizures using rm-EEG. We hypothesized that the past studies did not distinguish between differences in sensitivity from differences in classification of EEG patterns by different readers. The goal of the present study was to revisit the diagnostic value of rm-EEG when confounding issues are accounted for. We retrospectively collected 212 adult EEGs recorded at Massachusetts General Hospital and reviewed by two epileptologists with access to clinical, trending, and video information. In Phase I of the study, we re-configured the first 4 h of the EEGs in lateral circumferential montage with ten electrodes and asked new readers to interpret the EEGs without access to any other ancillary information. We compared their rating to the reading of hospital clinicians with access to ancillary information. In Phase II, we measured the accuracy of the same raters reading representative samples of the discordant EEGs in full and reduced configurations presented randomly by comparing their performance to majority consensus as the gold standard. Of the 95 EEGs without seizures in the selected fm-EEG, readers of rm-EEG identified 92 cases (97%) as having no seizure activity. Of 117 EEGs with “seizures” identified in the selected fm-EEG, none of the cases was labeled as normal on rm-EEG. Readers of rm-EEG reported pathological activity in 100% of cases, but labeled them as seizures (N = 77), rhythmic or periodic patterns (N = 24), epileptiform spikes (N = 7), or burst suppression (N = 6). When the same raters read representative epochs of the discordant EEG cases (N = 43) in both fm-EEG and rm-EEG configurations, we found high concordance (95%) and intra-rater agreement (93%) between fm-EEG and rm-EEG diagnoses. Reduced EEG with ten electrodes in circumferential configuration preserves key features of the traditional EEG system. Discrepancies between rm-EEG and fm-EEG as reported in some of the past studies can be in part due to methodological factors such as choice of gold standard diagnosis, asymmetric access to ancillary clinical information, and inter-rater variability rather than detection failure of rm-EEG as a result of electrode reduction per se.
Cancer Patients' Perception of Usefulness of Wearable Exercise Trackers

Objective To determine the feasibility and perception of usefulness of wearable trackers in inpatient and outpatient cancer rehabilitation patients. Design Prospective Study. Setting Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation and outpatient clinic at a tertiary cancer center. Participants Adult cancer patients (N = 100). Interventions Participants were provided with wearable trackers for the duration of the study. Main outcome measures Survey regarding feasibility (as defined as equal or more than 2/3 of participants reporting use of the wearable tracker) and usefulness of the wearable tracker, and Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS-FS) in both inpatient and outpatient populations. Activity minutes, number of steps, heart rate, and sleep data were collected from the wearable tracker. Results Patients reported the use of wearable tracker is feasible, with 48/50 (96%) outpatients and 47/50 (94%) inpatients reported wearing the wearable tracker daily and 37/49 (76%) outpatients and 29/50 (58%) inpatients reported that they would continue to wear wearable tracker after this study. The majority of cancer patients reported that wearable tracker was useful 41/49 (84%) of outpatient and 33/50 (66%) of inpatient patients and 31/49 (63%) outpatients and 27/50 (54%) inpatients perceived wearable tracker as helping to increase physical activity. Conclusions The use of wearable tracker in cancer patients is feasible and patients perceive wearable tracker as useful in both the inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation setting. Physical activity in these patients was better in the outpatient population, as expected due to less medical acuity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Vascular Endothelial Function in Midlife/Older Adults Classified According to 2017 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Blood Pressure Guidelines.

Background Impaired endothelial function is thought to contribute to the increased cardiovascular risk associated with above‐normal blood pressure (BP). However, the association between endothelial...
Chapter 3: Uniforms for Female eSports Athletes

Despite the rapid growth and tremendous popularity of eSports, the role of women in that domain is still somewhat contentious in terms of underrepresentation, sexualized portrayals, and more. This chapter examines the uniforms worn by some of the most prominent female eSports athletes in order to more deeply understand the role of women in the world of competitive video games.
The Impact of Racial Residential Segregation on Colorectal Cancer Outcomes and Treatment.

Objective We sought to examine the impact of racial residential segregation on Black-White disparities in colorectal cancer diagnosis, surgical resection, and cancer-specific survival. Summary background data There are clear Black-White disparities in colorectal cancer diagnosis and treatment with equally disparate explanations for these findings, including genetics, socioeconomic factors, and health behaviors. Methods Data on Black and White patients with colorectal cancer were obtained from SEER between 2005 and 2015. The exposure of interest was the index of dissimilarity (IoD), a validated measure of segregation derived from 2010 Census data. Outcomes included advanced stage at diagnosis (AJCC stage IV), resection of localized disease (AJCC stage I-II), and cancer-specific survival. We used Poisson regression with robust error variance for the outcomes of interest and Cox proportional hazards were used to assess cancer-specific 5-year survival. Results Black patients had a 41% increased risk of presenting at advanced stage per IoD [risk ratio (RR) 1.41, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 1.18, 1.69] and White patients saw a 17% increase (RR 1.17, 95%CI 1.04, 1.31). Black patients were 5% less likely to undergo surgical resection (RR 0.95, 95%CI 0.90, 0.99), whereas Whites were 5% more likely (RR 1.05, 95%CI 1.03, 1.07). Black patients had 43% increased hazards of cancer-specific mortality with increasing IoD (hazard ratio (HR) 1.43, 95%CI 1.17, 1.74). Conclusions Black patients with colorectal cancer living in more segregated counties are significantly more likely to present at advanced stage and have worse cancer-specific survival. Enduring structural racism in the form of residential segregation has strong impacts on the colorectal cancer outcomes.
From Incident Light to Persistent and Regenerable Radicals of Urea-Assembled Benzophenone Frameworks: A Structural Investigation

Herein we probe the effects of crystalline structure and geometry on benzophenone photophysics, self-quenching, and the regenerable formation of persistent triplet radical pairs at room temperature...
Stick-Slip Classification Based on Machine Learning Techniques for Building Damage Assessment

Accelerometers in smart devices have been used to successfully provide valuable information such as early warnings of earthquake activity and health monitoring of buildings. The next important step...
Technical evaluation of a prototype ratio 29:1 grid for adult patient cardiovascular angiography imaging conditions.

The purpose of this work was to assess technical performance of a prototype high-ratio (r29), 80 line cm-1grid for imaging conditions which mimic those for adult cardiovascular angiography. The standard equipment r15, 80 line cm-1grid was used as a reference. Plastic Water®LR phantoms with thickness in the range 20-44 cm were used to simulate adult patient attenuation and scatter. Grids were tested using x-ray field of view 20 and 25 cm and x-ray source to detector distance (SID) 107 and 120 cm. The primary transmission fraction (TP) was measured using both narrow beam geometry and a lead beam stop (BS) technique. Scatter transmission (TS) was measured with the lead BS technique. The quantum signal to noise ratio improvement factor (KSNR) was used to describe relative grid performance. The experimental conditions required revised theory to assess grid performance. Theory to account for the detector glare and underestimation of scatter intensity by the lead BS method was developed. Also, novelKSNRtheory was developed to allow direct comparison of two grids operated at different SID. MeanTPwas modestly lower for the r29 versus r15 grid (0.69 versus 0.75). When tested under equivalent scatter condition, TSof the r29 grid was approximately ½ that of the r15 grid (0.18 versus 0.34).KSNRof the r29 grid at SID 120 cm compared to the r15 grid at SID 107 cm increased linearly with phantom thickness (range 1.0 to ∼1.16). Findings of this work indicate that the r29 grid used at SID 120 cm is expected to provide improved image quality (or reduced patient radiation dose) when compared to the r15 grid used at SID 107 cm for adult cardiovascular patients and that the potential benefit of the r29 grid increases with patient thickness >20 cm.
Gelatinous transformation of bone marrow in a rabbit.

A 9-y-old, spayed female rabbit was presented for evaluation of hypoglycemia and lateral recumbency. The patient was hypothermic and had diffuse muscle wasting; weight loss since a previous visit w...
Songbird subthalamic neurons signal song timing and error and project to dopaminergic midbrain

Skill learning requires motor output to be evaluated against internal performance benchmarks. In songbirds, ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons (DA) signal performance errors important for learning, but it remains unclear which brain regions project VTA and how these inputs may implement the sensorimotor comparisons necessary for error computation. Here we find that the songbird subthalamic nucleus (STN) projects to VTA and that STN microstimulation can excite VTA neurons. We also discover that STN receives inputs from auditory cortical and ventral pallidal brain regions previously implicated in song evaluation. In the first neural recordings from songbird STN, we discover that the activity of most STN neurons is associated with body movements and not singing, but a small fraction of neurons exhibits precise song timing and performance error signals consistent with performance evaluation. Together our results implicate the STN-VTA projection as an evolutionarily conserved pathway important for motor learning and expand the territories of songbird brain associated with song learning.