cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Changes Over Time in Community Mobility of Elders with Disabilities

SUMMARYMany elders have difficulty getting to places outside the home and face reduced community mobility. Using a retrospective self-report of places visited by 40 elders with disabilities, this study explored two questions: (1) Does community mobility change over time (6 and 15 years prior to interview)? (2) What factors predict changes in community mobility over time? Decline in community mobility appeared to be related to driving cessation. Occupational therapists can provide information on vehicle modifications and adaptations to assist elders in driving longer and safer. They can also provide information on alternate forms of transportation within the community.
Optimal performance, robustness and reliability based designs of systems with structured uncertainty

This paper presents a study on the optimization of systems with structured uncertainty, whose inputs and outputs can be exhaustively described in the probabilistic sense. By propagating the uncertainty in the space of the probability density functions and the moments, optimization problems that pursue performance, robustness and reliability based designs are studied. Applications to static optimization and stability control are used to illustrate the relevance of incorporating uncertainty in the early stages of the design. Several examples that admit a full probabilistic description of the output in terms of the design variables and the statistics of the uncertain inputs are used to elucidate the features of the generic problem and its solution.
Resiliency and Optimism: An African American Senior Citizen’s Perspective

A total of 52 African American senior citizens (aged 59-99 years) were asked to participate in a study examining psychological resources (ego resilience and dispositional optimism) and the experience of racial stress as a function of geographical location (north vs. south). This is an understudied population, and African American seniors who remain relatively active within their respected communities may provide useful information regarding these psychological constructs in particular and successful aging in general. Participants completed the ego resilience, optimism, stress, and distress surveys. When collapsed across geographical location, resilience was negatively correlated with distress and positively correlated with optimism. Dispositional optimism was negatively correlated with levels of psychological distress. African American seniors who resided in the north reported significantly less distress than those in the south. Findings support resiliency and optimism as stress buffers for older African ...
Enhanced Donor Organ Quality Assurance Using Novel Point-of-View Video Streaming Technology During Harvesting

Purpose: Donation after cardiac death (DCD) to overcome the donor organ shortage is well accepted in the clinical setting, although the longterm outcome after DCD lung transplantation (LTx) remains largely unknown. Methods: In this retrospective study, DCD LTx recipients (n= 59) were compared with a cohort of donation-after-brain-death (DBD) LTx recipients (n= 331) transplanted between February 2007 and September 2013. Survival and incidence of chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD), were assessed and compared over a median follow-up of 33.4 (±2.8) months for DCD and 40.7 (±2.8) months for DBD(p= 0.049). Results: There were no differences between groups with regard to patient characteristics: age (p= 0.78), underlying disease (p= 0.30) and type of type of LTx (p= 0.10); Except for gender more male predominance was seen in the DCD group (37 of 59(62%) vs 160 of 331(48%)) (p= 0.048). Nine patients (15%) in the DCD group developed CLAD vs 65 patients (20%) in the DBD group (p= 0.48). Freedom from CLAD did not differ between the groups (p= 0.90, figure). In the DCD group, 14 of 59 patients (24%) died, vs 62 of 331 patients (19%) in the DBD group (p= 0.38). Actuarial survival rates 1 year, 3 years and 5 years are 88%, 75% and 71% for the DCD group and 91%, 84% and 80% for the DBD group (p= 0.13, figure). Conclusion: In our experience, long-term outcome in DCD lung recipients is comparable to that of DBD lung recipients. ( 671)
On the interaction of an elastic SH-wave with an interface crack in the perfectly rigid joint of a plate with a half-space

We solve the problem of the diffraction of an elastic SH-wave on an interface crack that was formed on the boundary of the perfectly rigid joint of a plate with a half-space. Semiinfinite and finite cracks are considered. We obtain a solution of the diffraction problem for a semiinfinite crack in the analytic form by using the Wiener–Hopf technique. In the case of a finite crack, the problem is reduced to the solution of an infinite system of linear algebraic equations. We investigate the coefficients of wave transformation at the tip of a semiinfinite interface crack. In the case of a finite crack, we obtain the eigenvalues of the operator of the diffraction problem, which determine the complex resonance frequencies of the dynamical system. We also present the dependence of eigenfrequencies and natural vibrations on the structure parameters.
Ecosystem Water Use Efficiency in a Semiarid Shrubland and Grassland Community

Ecosystem water use efficiency (EWUE) is defined as the net carbon uptake per amount of water lost from the ecosystem and is a useful measure of the functionality in semiarid shrub and grassland communities. C4 grasses have higher water use efficiency (WUE) than do C3 shrubs, although it has been postulated that C4 plants have lost much of their advantage due to the rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The hypothesis was that C4-grass-dominated ecosystems have a higher EWUE than C3-shrubdominated ecosystems under the present CO2 concentration and climatic variability. Evapotranspiration (ET) and CO2 fluxes were measured with Bowen ratio systems at a shrub and grass site for 6 years in southeastern Arizona. Two different methods were used to evaluate growing season EWUE using the ET and CO2 fluxes. The first method estimated a net daytime growing season EWUE for the grass site at 1.74 g CO2 ? mm 21 ET and 1.28 g CO2 ? mm 21 ET at the shrub site. The second method estimated maximum EWUE during part of the growing season at 7.35 g CO2 ? mm 21 ET for the grass site and 4.68 g CO2 ? mm 21 ET for the shrub site, which was considered a significant difference at P 5 0.056. Data variability of the first method precluded a statistical difference determination between sites, but the results indicated that the grass-dominated ecosystem was between 1.4 and 1.6 times more water use efficient than the shrub-dominated ecosystem. Mean annual growing season precipitation and ET were similar in the two ecosystems, but the higher EWUE of the grassland system enabled it to take up more carbon during the growing season than the shrub ecosystem. Ecosystem differences in CO2 and H2O flux have important management implications including primary productivity, C sequestration, and rangeland health.
Toward predicting community-level effects of climate: relative temperature scaling of metabolic and ingestion rates

Predicting the effects of climate change on ecological communities requires an understanding of how environmental factors influence both physiological processes and species interactions. Specifically, the net impact of temperature on community structure depends on the relative response of physiological energetic costs (metabolism) and energetic gains (ingestion of resources) that mediate the flow of energy throughout a food web. However, the relative temperature scaling of metabolic and ingestion rates have rarely been measured for multiple species within an ecological assemblage and it is not known how, and to what extent, these relative scaling differences vary among species. To investigate the relative influence of these processes, I measured the temperature scaling of metabolic and ingestion rates for a suite of rocky intertidal species using a multiple regression experimental design. I compared oxygen consumption rates (as a proxy for metabolic rate) and ingestion rates by estimating the temperature scaling parameter of the universal temperature dependence (UTD) model, a theoretical model derived from first principles of biochemical kinetics and allometry. The results show that consumer metabolic rates (energetic costs) tend to be more sensitive to temperature than ingestion rates (energetic gains). Thus, as temperature increases, metabolic rates tend to increase faster relative to ingestion rates, causing the overall energetic efficiencies of these rocky intertidal invertebrates to decline. Metabolic and ingestion rates largely scaled in accordance with the UTD model; however, nonlinearity was evident in several cases, particularly at higher temperatures, in which alternative models were more appropriate. There are few studies where multiple rate dependencies are measured on multiple species from the same ecological community. These results indicate that there may be general patterns across species in the temperature scaling of biological rates, with important implications for forecasting temperature effects on ecological communities.
Veterans Administration Cooperative Studies Project No. 147. Part I: A multidisciplinary, multicenter experimental design for the evaluation of alternative metal-ceramic alloys

The factors necessary for a comprehensive multidisciplinary, multicenter clinical study have been incorporated into CSP No. 147. The experimental design provides the potential for multiple laboratory and clinical data comparisons of alternative alloys. The study incorporates clinical performance observations with dental and medical histories that permit many unique correlations. This potential demonstrates the comprehensiveness of the CSP No. 147 study design and its contributions to clinical dental research in the evaluation of restorative materials.
Transition undulator radiation as bright infrared source.

Undulator radiation contains, in addition to the usual component with narrow spectral features, a broadband component in the low frequency region emitted in the near forward direction, peaked at an angle $1/\ensuremath{\gamma}$, with $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ the relativistic factor. This component is caused by a sudden change in the electron's longitudinal velocity as it enters and leaves the undulator and is referred to as the transition undulator radiation, as its characteristics are very similar to the well-known transition radiation. The transition undulator radiation is potentially a bright, intense, infrared radiation source. Its radiation angular cone is much narrower than the infrared radiation from bending magnets or usual undulator harmonics.
Iterative properties of birational rowmotion I: Generalities and skeletal posets

We study a birational map associated to any finite poset $P$. This map is a far-reaching generalization (found by Einstein and Propp) of classical rowmotion, which is a certain permutation of the set of order ideals of $P$. Classical rowmotion has been studied by various authors (Fon-der-Flaass, Cameron, Brouwer, Schrijver, Striker, Williams and many more) under different guises (Striker-Williams promotion and Panyushev complementation are two examples of maps equivalent to it). In contrast, birational rowmotion is new and has yet to reveal several of its mysteries. In this paper, we set up the tools for analyzing the properties of iterates of this map, and prove that it has finite order for a certain class of posets which we call "skeletal". Roughly speaking, these are graded posets constructed from one-element posets by repeated disjoint union and "grafting onto an antichain"; in particular, any forest having its leaves all on the same rank is such a poset. We also make a parallel analysis of classical rowmotion on this kind of posets, and prove that the order in this case equals the order of birational rowmotion.
Discovering Biology in Periodic Data through Phase Set Enrichment Analysis (PSEA).

Several tools use prior biological knowledge to interpret gene expression data. However, existing enrichment tools assume that variables are monotonic and incorrectly measure the distance between periodic phases. As a result, these tools are poorly suited for the analysis of the cell cycle, circadian clock, or other periodic systems. Here, we develop Phase Set Enrichment Analysis (PSEA) to incorporate prior knowledge into the analysis of periodic data. PSEA identifies biologically related gene sets showing temporally coordinated expression. Using synthetic gene sets of various sizes generated from von Mises (circular normal) distributions, we benchmarked PSEA alongside existing methods. PSEA offered enhanced sensitivity over a broad range of von Mises distributions and gene set sizes. Importantly, and unlike existing tools, the sensitivity of PSEA is independent of the mean expression phase of the set. We applied PSEA to 4 published datasets. Application of PSEA to the mouse circadian atlas revealed that ...
Conservation-priority grassland bird response to urban landcover and habitat fragmentation.

As urbanization in the landscape increases, some urban centers are setting aside habitat for wildlife. This habitat may be particularly valuable to declining or conservation-priority species. One group in particular need of conservation actions that may benefit from habitat located in urban areas is grassland birds. Declines of grassland bird species have been particularly severe in the Midwestern U.S., where most grassland cover has been lost, fragmented, and surrounded by unsuitable habitat. Conservation efforts have focused on protecting large grasslands surrounded by minimal amounts of trees and development. Although urban development is considered hostile to grassland birds, this assumption has received little attention. In heavily fragmented landscapes where habitat is limited, urban grasslands may be of significant value to grassland birds. We examined grassland bird response to development and additional landscape and habitat variables in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. In 2012 and 2013, we surveyed bird communities in grassland patches along a gradient of urbanization and patch sizes. Density of Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) increased with amount of development, while density of Sedge Wrens (Cistothorus platensis) decreased. Development did not appreciably impact Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), Dickcissels (Spiza americana), Eastern Meadowlarks (Sturnella magna), Grasshopper Sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum), or Henslow’s Sparrows (Ammodramus henslowii). Patch size had a positive effect on species densities. These results indicate that for many conservation-priority grassland birds, urban landcover surrounding grasslands generally has neutral rather than negative effects on habitat use. Therefore, grasslands in developed landscapes may provide valuable contributions to regional conservation efforts.
Public Participation in Scientific Research: a Framework for Deliberate Design

Members of the public participate in scientific research in many different contexts, stemming from traditions as varied as participatory action research and citizen science. Particularly in conservation and natural resource management contexts, where research often addresses complex social-ecological questions, the emphasis on and nature of this participation can significantly affect both the way that projects are designed and the outcomes that projects achieve. We review and integrate recent work in these and other fields, which has converged such that we propose the term public participation in scientific research (PPSR) to discuss initiatives from diverse fields and traditions. We describe three predominant models of PPSR and call upon case studies suggesting that—regardless of the research context—project outcomes are influenced by (1) the degree of public participation in the research process and (2) the quality of public participation as negotiated during project design. To illustrate relationships between the quality of participation and outcomes, we offer a framework that considers how scientific and public interests are negotiated for project design toward multiple, integrated goals. We suggest that this framework and models, used in tandem, can support deliberate design of PPSR efforts that will enhance their outcomes for scientific research, individual participants, and social-ecological systems.
Critical fields and vortex pinning in overdoped Ba 0.2 K 0.8 Fe 2 As 2

We determine the upper and lower critical fields, the penetration depth and the vortex pinning characteristics of single crystals of overdoped $\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{a}}_{0.2}{\mathrm{K}}_{0.8}\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{e}}_{2}\mathrm{A}{\mathrm{s}}_{2}$ with ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}10\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$. We find that bulk vortex pinning is weak and vortex dynamics to be dominated by the geometrical surface barrier. The temperature dependence of the lower critical field, ${H}_{c1}$, displays a distinctive upturn at low temperatures, which is suggestive of two distinct superconducting gaps. Furthermore, the penetration depth, \ensuremath{\lambda}, varies linearly with temperature below 4 K indicative of line nodes in the superconducting gap. These observations can be well described in a model based on a multiband nodal superconducting gap.
The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work Through the Holocaust by Gardella, L. G.

Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella has given social work—and social work with groups, in particular—a marvelous gift. She has taken the oral history of Louis Lowy, a Holocaust survivor and prominent social...
CRT-500.12 The VITA Program: Promoting Vascular Translational Innovation at NHLBI

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) supports the development of innovative biomedical products, including some that may be considered too risky or insufficiently profitable by the bio/pharma industry. The Vascular Interventions/Innovations and Therapeutic Advances (VITA) Program
Related problems of the standardized training of general practitioners in China at the present stage and its suggestions

The standardized training of general practitioners(GPs) in China has been developed widely,but still at an early exploratory stage.Based on the thinking of the GPs development status in our country,this article analyzes the problems encountered in the standardized training of GPs,and makes practical recommendations and countermeasures,in order to perfect the work of GPs standardized training.
Children with condylomata acuminata.

Background The modes of transmission of genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in children are controversial. Studies have varied in reporting suspicion of sexual abuse in children with condylomata acuminata from zero to 90.9%. Possible modes of transmission include sexual, from mother to infant in utero, passage through an infected birth canal, infection of a nongenital type virus to the genital area, and nonsexual acquisition from a fomite. Methods Seven children, ranging in age from 2 to 12 years, who had genital HPV infections were assessed for sexual abuse. An interview with each child was conducted and an examination with a colposcope of the external genitalia was performed. A shave biopsy of a representative genital lesion was obtained. The tissue was sent for HPV typing. Results Six of the children had perianal warts; the seventh had a labial lesion. Five of the children (71%) had been sexually abused as determined by the history, physical examination, or an investigation by Child Protective Services. Five had HPV type 6 or 11, one had HPV type 16 or 18, and one had a novel HPV type. Conclusions Genital types of HPV (6 or 11, 16 or 18, and others) should alert the family physician to proceed with a careful assessment for sexual abuse. This study supports the findings of other reports that genital HPV infection can be the result of sexual abuse and points out the usefulness of HPV typing.
Chapter 32 Dentate output channels: motor and cognitive components

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the basis for using selected strains of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) as transneuronal tracers to map circuits in the central nervous system (CNS) and presents some anatomical results on the organization of cerebellar projections via the thalamus to the frontal lobe. The results suggest that the cerebellum projects not only to the primary motor cortex but also to areas of the premotor, oculomotor, and prefrontal cortices. Furthermore, the projections to different cortical areas appear to originate from different regions of the cerebellar output nuclei. These findings help propose a new scheme of organization for cerebellar output—namely, the deep cerebellar nuclei; the dentate nucleus specifically contain multiple output channels, each of which projects to a distinct cortical area. The chapter presents some of the physiological observations indicating that individual output channels are concerned with different aspects of motor and/or cognitive behavior. The anatomical and physiological results reveal important features of the basic structural framework, which connects cerebellar output with the cerebral cortex.
Project Management for Assessment: A Case Study

In the fall of 2010, librarians in the Davis Library Research and Instructional Services (R&IS) Department at UNC Libraries made the transition from a reference librarian model to a subject librarian model. In this new organizational arrangement, librarians assumed a range of new responsibilities. In addition to the traditional scope of reference librarian responsibilities, R&IS librarians added collection management and other duties to their job responsibilities. In an effort to provide focus for these new roles, the department created a department-level strategic plan. With a strong emphasis on service assessment, one of the plan’s key components was an evaluation of the Department’s reference desk staffing model.
Measuring Faculty Productivity

As with other aspects of higher education, we now have rankings of faculty productivity. A better understanding of the breadth of measures used for faculty productivity is discussed in this chapter.
Animal-assisted Therapy: Motives and Rewards

Date Presented 4/16/2015 Animal-assisted therapists have specific motives that inspire involvement in therapy and have specific rewards that promote continuation. Through understanding these motives and rewards, occupational therapists can work with animal-assisted therapists to create client-centered interventions. Diversifying the field of occupational therapy with the inclusion of animal-assisted therapy would benefit clients, therapists, and the profession. This study is the first to look at the motives of animal-assisted therapists.
Motivation, Comprehensibility, and Accentedness in L2 Spanish: Investigating Motivation as a Time‐Varying Predictor of Pronunciation Development

Abstract: This study examined relationships between language learning motivation and the longitudinal development of second language (L2) pronunciation. Twenty‐six English‐speaking learners of Spanish recorded a simplified picture description task 5 times over a year‐long period spanning their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th semesters of Spanish language instruction. Learners also completed a quantitative motivation survey based on the L2 Motivational Self System and an open‐ended questionnaire on their language learning beliefs once per semester, yielding 3 measurements. Eighteen native Spanish listeners rated the learners’ clips for comprehensibility and accentedness. Although mixed modeling of the motivation data revealed a slightly negative trajectory for motivational subcomponents, qualitative analyses of individual patterns indicated that learners were beginning to formulate and evaluate language learning goals that were set into a larger framework of personal and professional objectives. Mixed effects models of the pronunciation data demonstrated that both comprehensibility and accentedness improved over time. When the quantitative motivation measures were integrated into the modeling process as time‐varying fixed effects, effort was significantly related to accentedness, which suggests that effort may have played an increasingly important role in shaping learners’ pronunciation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Contract farming: opportunity cost and trade-offs

An important literature has established that participation in contract farming leads to higher incomes and has a number of other beneficial effects on the welfare of participating households. Yet no one has looked at the opportunity cost of and the various tradeâ€ offs involved in participating in contract farming. I look at the relationship between participation in contract farming and income from (i) livestock, (ii) labor markets, (iii) nonfarm businesses, and (iv) agricultural sources other than livestock and contract farming and (v) unearned income. Using data from Madagascar, I find that participation in contract farming is associated with a 79% decrease in how much income per capita the average household derives from labor markets and a 47% decrease in how much income per capita it derives from nonfarm businesses, but also with a 51% increase in how much income per capita the average household derives from agricultural sources other than livestock and contract farming, possibly due to technological spillovers. Thus, even though contract farming has been shown to improve welfare in multiple ways in this context, it looks as though those gains come at the cost of an â€œagricultural involutionâ€ on the part of participating households, who seem to turn away from nonâ€ agricultural activities. This has important implications for structural transformation narratives.
Time-Resolved Energy Transfer and Conformational Distributions of Biopolymers

In the previous chapter we described the principles of resonance energy transfer and how the phenomenon could be used as a “spectroscopic ruler” to measure distances between donor and acceptor sites on macromolecules. Energy transfer was described as a through-space interaction which occurred whenever the emission spectrum of the donor overlapped with the absorption spectrum of the acceptor. For a given donor—acceptor (D—A) pair, the efficiency of energy transfer decreases as r −6, where r is the D—A distance. Each D—A pair has a characteristic distance, the Forster distance (R 0), at which RET is 50% efficient. The extent of energy transfer, as seen from the steady-state data, can be used to measure the distance, to determine the extent of association based on proximity, or to determine the distance of closest approach between the D—A pair.
Gene Regulation: Selective Control of DNA Helix Openings

Gene regulation implies differential activity of DNA molecules within an individual cell. Such differential activity is observed during both gene transcription and gene replication (Frenster, 1966), and is a feature of DNA molecules within both prokaryotes (Chamberlin, 1974) and eukaryotes (Frenster and Herstein, 1973). Because gene replication appears to be secondary to gene transcription (Klevecz and Hsu, 1964; Champoux and McConaughy, 1975), the critical feature of the regulatory event appears to lie in the molecular details of selective gene transcription (Frenster, 1965d; Chamberlin, 1974). Such selectivity involves both the choice of a particular gene locus and the choice of a particular DNA strand on which to effect messenger RNA synthesis (Frenster, 1966).
Y2k — Einführung in die Problematik

Hinter dem Begriff Y2k steckt ein Komplex von Problemen, der heute besonders medienwirksam ist. Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags wird an den Begriff Jahr-2000-Tauglichkeit herangegangen, und es werden die einzelnen Unterprobleme wie Uberlaufproblem, Schaltjahrproblem und Datumsformat behandelt. Der Standard BSI PD 2000-1:1998 wird naher dargestellt sowie die moglichen Auswirkungen der Fehlfunktionen in den Automatisierungsanlagen. Am Ende des Beitrags wird auf die Testverfahren eingegangen.
Immunology of Invasive Fungal Infections

For most of the twentieth century, clinically apparent, invasive systemic mycoses have been frequently recognized and well known to physicians practicing within endemic areas. Until the last two decades the discovery of a patient with an invasive systemic mycosis outside an endemic area was a rare enough entity to incite animated conversations between interested clinicians. This relative rarity of clinical disease contrasted with the fact that potentially pathogenic fungi are widespread in nature. Human contact with these organisms must be common. In the case of some of these fungi, exposure normally leads to inapparent or mild, self-limited infections (e. g., Histoplasma capsulatum, Coccidioides immitis). For other pathogenic fungi there is at least circumstantial evidence that such subclinical infections occur frequently (e. g., Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, Cryptococcus neoformans). With some mycoses, invasive disease occurs almost exclusively in patients with specific alterations in local or systemic host defense mechanisms (e. g., Absidia, Rhizopus, or Mucor species causing mucormycosis). In recent years systemic mycoses have been recognized with greatly increased frequency. In part this is because immunosuppressive ther- apy for other diseases has become commonplace. In addition, there have been major advances in using immunological markers for diagnosis and estimating prognosis of mycoses. In other words, the nature of the immune response that occurs in an individual patient after exposure to fungi is critical in determining the outcome and extent of infection, and also provides parameters useful in diagnosis and in following the course of therapy. This chapter will review the immune response to several agents which cause invasive mycoses in man (excluding Candida and Aspergillus, which are covered in other chapters).
Presumptive Space and the Tibetan Struggle for Visibility in Lhasa

Material public space is the place where authoritarian assurances that citizens are content may be challenged), 1 a point amply demonstrated as waves of public protest stood against official narratives during the Arab Spring. In addition to rendering perceptible those who are affected by an issues, material public space has the important capacity to affirm the humanity they share with their adversaries. It also overcomes the screen of literacy that limits the Habermasian public sphere. In the dialectic between presumptive and public space, consider Tibet, a colonial project of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1950. Deprived of the instruments of democracy, indigenous Tibetans have resourcefully developed ways to display publicly what presumptive space denies. Given the PRC’s mantra of harmony and stability, the stakes in this encounter are high. In this essay I examine three Lhasa ethnosites that differ in the degree to which the regime has been able to enforce its presumptive power. I also consider a recent, radical strategy for increasing that power and a dramatic mode of Tibetan resistance.
Nutrient-Wise Review of Evidence and Safety of Fortification: Vitamin A

Abstract The fortification of staple and complementary foods with vitamin A is accelerating at a fast pace. This is occurring without appropriate evaluation of vitamin A status in target groups. The immediate focus of fortification is to eradicate vitamin A deficiency. Nonetheless, in some countries where more than one staple or complementary food is fortified, the potential for excessive intakes must be considered. The most common fortificant is retinyl palmitate, which is highly bioavailable from a mixed meal. A parallel approach, known as biofortification, is to enhance provitamin A carotenoid concentrations in staple foods, such as orange maize, orange-fleshed sweet potato, and yellow cassava. Provitamin A carotenoids do not have the same potential for hypervitaminosis A as preformed vitamin A, but they do have technical difficulties as fortificants. If widely adopted, biofortified foods offer a unique way to reduce preformed fortificants in some foods and reach cohorts who may not have access to processed fortified foods.
Biceps Tenodesis versus Tenotomy at the Time of Manipulation and Lysis of Adhesions for Adhesive Capsulitis

Objectives:Although rare in the treatment of adhesive capsulitis, arthroscopic lysis of adhesions and manipulation under anesthesia (LOA/MUA) may be necessary if the patient fails conservative ther...
Development and Performance of Electronic Pediatric Risk of Mortality and Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 Automated Acuity Scores.

OBJECTIVES Develop and test the performance of electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Risk of Mortality-IV and electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 scores. DESIGN Retrospective, single-center cohort derived from structured electronic health record data. SETTING Large, quaternary PICU at a freestanding, university-affiliated children's hospital. PATIENTS All encounters with a PICU admission between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2017, identified using electronic definitions of inpatient encounter. INTERVENTIONS None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS The main outcome was predictive validity of each score for hospital mortality, assessed as model discrimination and calibration. Discrimination was examined with the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve and the area under the precision-recall curve. Calibration was assessed with the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit test and calculation of a standardized mortality ratio. Models were recalibrated with new regression coefficients in a training subset of 75% of encounters selected randomly from all years of the cohort and the calibrated models were tested in the remaining 25% of the cohort. Content validity was assessed by examining correlation between electronic versions of the scores and prospectively calculated data (electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Risk of Mortality-IV) and an alternative informatics approach (Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 score). The cohort included 21,335 encounters. Correlation coefficients indicated strong agreement between different methods of score calculation. Uncalibrated area under the receiver operating characteristics curves were 0.96 (95% CI, 0.95-0.97) for electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 score and 0.87 (95% CI, 0.85-0.89) for electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Risk of Mortality-IV for inpatient mortality. The uncalibrated electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Risk of Mortality-IV standardized mortality ratio was 0.63 (0.59-0.66), demonstrating strong agreement with previous, prospective evaluation at the study center. The uncalibrated electronic version of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 score standardized mortality ratio was 0.20 (0.18-0.21). All models required recalibrating (all Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit, p < 0.001) and subsequently demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit when examined in a test subset (n = 5,334) of the cohort. CONCLUSIONS Electronically derived intensive care acuity scores demonstrate very good to excellent discrimination and can be calibrated to institutional outcomes. This approach can facilitate both performance improvement and research initiatives and may offer a scalable strategy for comparison of interinstitutional PICU outcomes.
Effects of Historical Story Telling on Student Understanding of Nature of Science

Concepts related to the nature of science (NOS) have been considered an important part of scientific literacy as reflected in its inclusion in curriculum documents. A significant amount of science education research has focused on improving learners’ understanding of NOS. One approach that has often been advocated is an explicit and reflective approach. Some researchers have used the history of science to provide learners with explicit and reflective experiences with NOS concepts. Previous research on using the history of science (HOS) in science instruction has approached HOS in many different ways and consequently has led to inconsistent findings regarding its utility for improving learning. One promising method for overcoming this inconsistency and teaching NOS with more traditional science content is using stories based in the history of science. A mixed method approach was used to determine whether and how the use of science stories influences undergraduates’ understanding of NOS. Particular attention was paid to the explanations that students used for their understandings. Intervention and control groups completed the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI) instrument. The intervention group was taught using two historical narratives while the control group was taught using minimal history. A subset of both groups was also interviewed regarding their SUSSI responses and their experiences in the course. Results indicated that the introduction of science stories helped participants gain a better understanding of the role of imagination and creativity in science. Participants mentioned science stories in their explanations for why they changed towards more informed views on SUSSI items related to imagination and creativity. The current study adds to a growing body of literature regarding the use of stories in the science classroom.
Psychotropic Treatment During Pregnancy: Research Synthesis and Clinical Care Principles.

Background: Psychiatric illnesses are common in women of childbearing age. The perinatal period is a particularly high-risk time for depression, bipolar, and anxiety disorders. Methods: The scope of the public health problem of perinatal mental disorders is discussed followed by an examination of the specific research methods utilized for the study of birth and developmental outcomes associated with maternal mental illness and its treatment. The evidence on exposure to common psychotropics during pregnancy and breastfeeding is reviewed. Results: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor medications are not associated with higher rates of birth defects or long-term changes in mental development after adjustment for confounding factors associated with underlying psychiatric illness. Lithium exposure is associated with an increased risk for fetal cardiac malformations, but this risk is lower than previously thought (absolute risk of Ebstein's anomaly 6/1,000). Antipsychotics, other than risperidone and potentially paliperidone, have not been associated with an increase in birth defects; olanzapine and quetiapine have been linked with an elevated risk of gestational diabetes. Due to the dramatic physiological changes of pregnancy and enhanced hepatic metabolism, drug doses may need to be adjusted during pregnancy to sustain efficacy. Untreated maternal psychiatric illness also carries substantial risks for the mother, fetus, infant, and family. Conclusions: The goal of perinatal mental health treatment is to optimally provide pharmacotherapy to mitigate the somatic and psychosocial burdens of maternal psychiatric disorders. Regular symptom monitoring during pregnancy and postpartum and medication dose adjustments to sustain efficacy constitutes good practice.
Outage prediction models for snow and ice storms

Abstract This paper describes the development of two Outage Prediction Models (OPMs) for power outages caused by snow and ice storms on electric distribution networks, and their performance evaluation in the Northeastern United States. The first is a Machine Learning (ML) based model that is set up to predict power outages on a regular grid (4-km grid spacing). The second is a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) that is set up to predict total power outages at the town level. Both models are fed with Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) outputs, satellite-derived leaf area index (LAI) and land cover data, and utility specified infrastructure and historical outage data. For both models the most important variables are the amount of assets on the territory, LAI, snow density, and – for the ice model – the amount of freezing rain. Results from cross-validation experiments based on 54 outage events spanning three orders of magnitude show median absolute percentage errors around 70% for both models. The GLM is able to predict extreme events (such as the devastating October 2011 nor’easter) better than ML models do, while ML models have better performance for lower impact events and present better characterization of the spatial distribution of power outages.
Synthesis, Characterization, and Photophysics of Self-Assembled Mn(II)-MOF with Naphthalene Chromophore

The unique and highly organized three-dimensional structure of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) formed by self-assembled organic chromophores with metal ions emerges as next-generation luminophores ...
Esc2 orchestrates substrate-specific sumoylation by acting as a SUMO E2 cofactor in genome maintenance

SUMO modification regulates diverse cellular processes by targeting hundreds of proteins. However, the limited number of sumoylation enzymes raises the question of how such a large number of substrates are efficiently modified. Specifically, how genome maintenance factors are dynamically sumoylated at DNA replication and repair sites to modulate their functions is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate a role for the conserved yeast Esc2 protein in this process by acting as a SUMO E2 cofactor. Esc2 is required for genome stability and binds to Holliday junctions and replication fork structures. Our targeted screen found that Esc2 promotes the sumoylation of a Holliday junction dissolution complex and specific replisome proteins. Esc2 does not elicit these effects via stable interactions with substrates or their common SUMO E3. Rather, we show that a SUMO-like domain of Esc2 stimulates sumoylation by exploiting a noncovalent SUMO binding site on the E2 enzyme. This role of Esc2 in sumoylation is required for Holliday junction clearance and genome stability. Our findings thus suggest that Esc2 acts as a SUMO E2 cofactor at distinct DNA structures to promote the sumoylation of specific substrates and genome maintenance.
Automatic Endocardial Cushion Segmentation and EMT Cell Density Characterization Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been applied for understanding heart development because of its capability of imaging both the structure and function of tiny beating embryonic hearts. Labeling endocardial cushions is necessary for quantifying morphological characteristics of the looping hearts. Since manual segmentation is time-consuming and prone to subjectivity, this study aims to use V-net to automatically segment endocardial cushions from OCT images. This will benefit research on heart development, especially studies requiring large cohorts of embryos, for example those investigating the teratogenic effects of ethanol or drugs and the prevention of these effects on the developing hearts.
Characterization of temperature criteria using gas-phase fuel streams for MILD coal combustion

Abstract MILD combustion is achieved when the reactants’ inlet temperature ( T inlet ) is higher than the self-ignition temperature of the reactants ( T self - ignition ) and the temperature increase upon reaction ( Δ T = T max - T inlet ) is lower than T self - ignition . The method to get T inlet and T self - ignition is ambiguous for coal combustion because the multiple fuel streams are released from coal particles through vaporization, devolatilization, tar/soot reaction and char oxidation/gasification at different temperatures and different times as the particles heat up. We propose a method to determine the gas-phase fuel streams in coal combustion using the reaction rate of each subprocess and gas and particle temperature profiles in the reactor before ignition. The mixture of fuel streams with oxidizer is used to get T inlet and T self - ignition for the temperature criteria for MILD coal combustion. By way of example, this method is applied to identify the required dilution rate needed to reach MILD coal combustion. The MILD coal combustion regime does not shift significantly for the two types of coal used in this work (Illinois #6 and Guizhou), even with the temperature and composition of the gas fuel mixture affected by the rank of coal. It is observed that the required dilution rate, K v , to reach MILD regime increases for lower oxidizer temperature, with the decrease of both inlet and maximum temperatures. The required dilution rate to achieve MILD coal combustion is not sensitive to the model for tar/soot reactions, even for a simplified model that uses C2H2 for tar while neglecting the formation of soot.
State lockdown policies, mental health symptoms, and using substances.

Abstract Objective Previous literature finds an increase in depressive symptoms, substance use, and suicidal ideation following the COVID-19 pandemic in the US – suicides do not appear to increase. We examine whether 1) state lockdown policies in the US precede an increase in mental health symptoms; and 2) the extent to which using substances amplifies or attenuates the relation. Methods We specified, as our exposure variable, the timing of state-level lockdown orders. We used, as the outcome variable, the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) that measures anxiety and depression symptoms. We utilized the Understanding America Study (UAS), a nationally representative sample of 7,597 adults across 50 states in the US, surveyed biweekly between March 10, 2020 and November 11, 2020. Linear fixed effect analyses controlled for time-invariant individual factors, as well as employment status, household income, and previous mental health diagnosis. Results Regression results indicate an increase in PHQ-4 scores of approximately 1.70 during lockdown, relative to no lockdown (p Conclusion State lockdown policies precede greater mental health symptoms. Increases in consuming alcohol attenuates the relation between state lockdown policies and mental health symptoms. Results may portend greater addiction following the pandemic warranting further investigation into utilization of substance use treatment.
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Active Target Tracking

We solve active target tracking, one of the essential tasks in autonomous systems, using a deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach. In this problem, an autonomous agent is tasked with acquiring information about targets of interests using its on-board sensors. The classical challenges in this problem are system model dependence and the difficulty of computing information-theoretic cost functions for a long planning horizon. RL provides solutions for these challenges as the length of its effective planning horizon does not affect the computational complexity, and it drops the strong dependency of an algorithm on system models. In particular, we introduce Active Tracking Target Network (ATTN), a unified deep RL policy that is capable of solving major sub-tasks of active target tracking – in-sight tracking, navigation, and exploration. The policy shows robust behavior for tracking agile and anomalous targets with a partially known target model. Additionally, the same policy is able to navigate in obstacle environments to reach distant targets as well as explore the environment when targets are positioned in unexpected locations.