cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Experimental bacterial endocarditis in altitude rats. III. Effect of age of infection on response to penicillin.

Summary and ConclusionsRats were exposed daily to simulated high altitude and then inoculated intravenously with a young broth culture of Streptococcus faecalis. (a) Untreated rats developed a vegetative bacterial endocarditis and renal abscesses and necrosis, (b) Treatment with penicillin instituted within 12 or 20 hours after inoculation was highly effective in reducing the mortality, and in aborting or preventing the development of cardiac lesions. In the kidney, such early treatment effected an immediate marked reduction in the average bacterial count and in the incidence and severity of lesions. However, 4-5 weeks after the cessation of treatment renal lesions were noted in 5 of 7 animals, presumably caused by surviving bacteria, (c) When treatment was delayed until 41/2 days after inoculation, permitting extensive bacterial proliferation and the development of pathological changes, penicillin therapy had a much less favorable effect on mortality, bacterial counts, and the regression of lesions.
Computer Ethics

From the Publisher: Author Deborah G. Johnson has updated material throughout this text. Two new chapters on the Internet have been added: one focuses on ethical behavior online, and the other addresses the social implications of the Internet. Topics covered include: What is computer ethics? What are the philosophical foundations of computer ethics? How does computer ethics relate to professional ethics? Privacy. Property rights. Accountability. All topics are presented in compelling and understandable language, so that rigorous, in-depth analysis is accessible to students who may be novices in philosophy or technology studies.
Examining the Presence of Congregational Programs Focused on Violence Against Women

Religious congregations are uniquely poised to provide programs to support survivors of violence against women; yet little is known regarding the prevalence of such programs. In this study, we used data from three waves of the National Congregation Study (N = 3334) to examine change across time in the presence of a congregational program to support survivors of sexual assault or domestic violence. We also explored results among different Christian religious traditions across time. Given the gendered nature of this violence, we also tested whether the (a) gender of the head clergy (i.e., religious leader), and (b) ability of women to serve in congregational leadership roles predicted the presence of programs. As points of comparison, we also examined the total number of congregational social service programs and food programs in particular. Overall, we found different patterns of change across religious traditions for the different programs. Moreover, clergy gender and the ability of women to serve in leadership roles predicted the presence of different types of programs. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research also are discussed.
Exploring minijets beyond the leading power

The crucial parameter in the current Monte Carlo models of high energy hadron-hadron interaction is the transverse momentum cutoff ${p}_{T0}$ for parton-parton interactions, which slowly grows with energy and regularizes the cross section. This modification of the collinear factorization formula goes beyond the leading power, and thus a natural question arises if such a cutoff can be extracted from a formalism that takes into account power corrections. In this work, we consider the high energy factorization (HEF) valid at small $x$ and a new model, based on a similar principle to HEF, which in addition has a limit respecting the Dokshitzer-Dyakonov-Troyan formula for the dijet momentum disbalance spectrum. The minijet cross section and its suppression are then analyzed in two ways. First, we study minijets directly in the low-${p}_{T}$ region and demonstrate that higher twist corrections do generate suppression of the inclusive jet production cross section though these effects are not leading to the increase of the cutoff with incident energy. Second, we consider hard inclusive dijet production where multiparton interactions (MPIs) with minijets produce power corrections. We introduce an observable constructed from the differential cross section in the ratio $\ensuremath{\tau}$ of dijet disbalance to the average dijet ${p}_{T}$ and demonstrate that the $\ensuremath{\tau}g1$ region is sensitive to the cutoff ${p}_{T0}$ in the MPI minijet models. The energy dependence of the cutoff is reflected in the energy dependence of the bimodality coefficient $b$ of the $\ensuremath{\tau}$ distribution. We compare $b$ calculated from pythia, where one can conveniently control MPIs by the program parameters, and HEF for a few unintegrated gluon distributions (UGDs). We find that the energy dependence of $b$ is very sensitive to the particular choice of UGD and in some models it resembles predictions of the Monte Carlo models.
Biomimetic synthesis of hemiketal eicosanoids for biological testing

The hemiketal (HK) eicosanoids HKE2 and HKD2 are the major products resulting from the biosynthetic cross-over of the 5-lipoxygenase and cyclooxygenase-2 pathways. They are formed by activated human leukocytes ex vivo, and, therefore, may be involved in regulation of the inflammatory response as autocrine or paracrine mediators. HKE2 and HKD2 are not commercially available and, so far, no method for their total chemical synthesis has been reported. The limited availability has impeded the characterization of their biological effects. Here, we describe a method for biomimetic preparation of HKE2 and HKD2 by reaction of recombinant human cyclooxygenase-2 with chemically synthesized 5S-HETE. We found that HKE2 did not induce or inhibit the release of TNFα and IL-1β by human THP-1 monocytes and phorbol ester treatment-derived macrophages.
Reconfigurable Optical and Wireless (R-OWN) Network-on-Chip for High Performance Computing

With the scaling of technology, the industry is experiencing a shift from multi-core to many-core architectures. However, traditional on-chip metallic interconnects may not scale to support these many-core architectures due to the increased hop count, high power dissipation, and increased latency. Recently, attention has recently been shifted to emerging technologies such as optical and wireless interconnects for future on-chip communications. Although emerging technologies show promising results for power-efficient, low-latency, and scalable on-chip interconnects, the use of single technology may not be sufficient to support future many-core architectures. In this paper, we propose a Reconfigurable Optical-Wireless Network-on-Chip (R-OWN) that facilitates communication through static optical links and reconfigurable wireless links. The network diameter of R-OWN is restricted to three hops by dividing the network into several optical domains of 64-cores (called a cluster) and by connecting the clusters using one-hop wireless network. The optical bandwidth is efficiently shared using time division multiplexing (TDM), and the wireless bandwidth is shared using frequency division multiplexing (FDM). Packets routed across optical and wireless networks are proved to be deadlock-free. Our results indicate that R-OWN improves energy-efficiency by 44-51%, performance (throughput and latency) by 13-31%, and area by 4-13% when compared to state-of-the-art wired, wireless, optical, and hybrid on-chip networks.
Topology Based Selection and Curation of Level Sets.

The selection of appropriate level sets for the quantitative visualization of three dimensional imaging or simulation data is a problem that is both fundamental and essential. The selected level set needs to satisfy several topolog-ical and geometric constraints to be useful for subsequent quantitative processing and visualization. For an initial selection of an isosurface, guided by contour tree data structures, we detect the topological features by computing stable and unstable manifolds of the critical points of the distance function induced by the isosurface. We further enhance the description of these features by associating geometric attributes with them. We then rank the attributed features and provide a handle to them for curation of the topological anomalies.
Assessing Alternative Methods of Estimating the Present Value of Future Earnings: A Fifteen-Year Update

In the inaugural issue of this Journal, Dulaney (1987) offered an assessment of the forecast accuracy of four “conventional” methods of estimating the present value of future earnings. He tested the four methods over 15 rolling 20year future periods, with the first period covering 1953-1972 and the last covering 1967-1986. For each method and for each period, he first calculated the estimated present value of the future loss. He then compared this estimated present value to the actual present value,1 the amount of money that actually would have been needed to replace the lost future earnings as determined with the benefit of hindsight. These comparisons between the estimated and actual present values formed the basis for an assessment of the forecast accuracy of each method. In this update, these same four conventional methods are evaluated again over the next 15 rolling 20-year periods, with the first covering 1968-1987 and the last covering 1982-2001. Meaningful comparisons of Dulaney’s and some new results for the earlier periods with the results for the more recent periods are possible for three of the four methods. These comparisons indicate that the forecast accuracy of all three methods was much worse for the more recent periods. Furthermore, results for the fourth method indicate that it is no more accurate than the other three for the more recent periods. These findings are placed in the context of other recent efforts that have been made to assess the forecast accuracy of various estimation methods. Considering this entire body of work, it seems fair to say that there remains considerable room for improvement in the methods used by forensic economists to estimate the present value of lost future earnings.
Poverty, Food Security, and Nutrition

The poor who tend not to benefit from rapid agricultural growth represent a difficult context for poverty reduction. There are substantial geographic areas that have a high proportion of their population in poverty but which are not suitable for the application of the improved technologies that drive agricultural income growth and its transfer to the poor. More amenable to solution are classes that may not fully participate in poverty reduction even though they are in areas suitable for rapid technological advance: female-headed households, subsistence farmers, high proportions of rural non-farm households, and disadvantageous tenure conditions. As poverty is reduced, food security increases and the focus can shift to the complex problem of improving nutritional quality.
Post-Avicennan Physics in the Medical Commentaries of the Mamluk Period

Recent work has shown that Islamicate philosophers engaged meaningfully with Ibn Sīnā’s transformation of Aristotelian physics, particularly his new understanding of motion at an instant and his new category of positional motion. Although Ibn Sīnā considered medicine a derivative science of physics, little work has been done to determine the impact of the new Avicennan physics on medicine. In this paper, I shall examine the discussions on motion contained in the sections on pulse within seven medical commentaries produced between 1200 and 1520 CE. The examination will reveal that Ibn al-Nafīs’s novel, non-Galenic application of the Avicennan category of positional motion to pulse generated an invigorating debate amongst later commentators. Consequently, the paper shows that: a) Ibn al-Nafīs’s transformations of Galenic/Avicennan medical theory were widely discussed in subsequent commentaries; and b) Mamluk-era medical writers continued to engage in philosophical discussions despite Ibn Sīnā’s epistemological arguments against doing so.
Increase in the reduction potential of uranyl upon interaction with graphene oxide surfaces.

Coordination of uranyl (U(VI)) with carboxylate groups on functionalized graphene oxide (GO) surfaces has been shown to alter the reduction potential of the sorbed uranium ion. A quantitative measure of the reduction potential and qualitative estimation of sorption/desorption processes were conducted using cyclic voltammetry, and the proposed coordination environment was determined using the surface sensitive attenuated total reflection mode of infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). GO is a nanostructured material possessing a large amount of oxygen-containing functional groups both on basal planes and at the edges, which can form strong surface complexes with radionuclides. The presence of these functional groups on the surface of GO allows efficient immobilization of uranium due to sorption of uranyl (UO22+) to carboxylate, hydroxide, or sulfonate functional groups and the potential for enhanced reduction of U(VI) to more strongly sorbing and insoluble U(IV). Herein, binding of U(VI) to carboxylate groups on the GO surface is proposed as the primary sorption mechanism based on the FTIR study. Furthermore, the coordination of uranium with the surface increases the reduction potential of the U(VI)/U(IV) redox couple as compared to the case of the aqueous U(VI)/U(IV) species. This is consistent with the alteration of the electronic structure of the sorbed ion, which can be determined in our case due to the use of a GO-coated working electrode. Thus, GO-coated glassy carbon electrodes and other semi-conducting electrodes with high ion sorption capacities may provide a means of examining the oxidation/reduction potentials of sorbed ions.
The Role of Biodeterioration In Agriculture, Forestry, Agronomy, Cultural Properties, Economics, And Public Health

Biodeterioration is often a misnomer, in that we tend to use biodegradation, deterioration, degradation, pollution, decay and other terms as synonyms. As authors and editors of this proceedings we are also guilty of a very “loose” application of the definition. For example, numerous examples of health-related issues have crept into this editon via papers relevant to the reduced quality of human food, animal feed, parasites, water quality, air quality, and diseases in general. But the mainstays of biodeterioration are also present and they support the basic definition as follows: Biodeterioration is an undesirable change caused by microorganisms. Generally fungi and bacteria are prime deteriogens, but other organisms such as plants, invertebrates, birds, and rodents are often “legally” included. Not to be confused but often excluded by the “purist”, is biodegradation. The latter is often considered as a planned, controlled, and purposeful breakdown or alteration due to organisms. There is no doubt that this text continues to apply a very broad and multidisciplinary interpretation to biodeterioration.
Physiologic Relationships and Steroid Receptor Binding

The relationship between nuclear binding of receptor-steroid complexes and physiologic responses depends on the concentration of “free” hormone available for binding to unoccupied receptor. The factors that determine the concentration of “free” or available hormone are complex and important; hence we have chosen to discuss them as a preface to the major topic of this chapter.
New designs for high-performance polymer thin-film transistors (Conference Presentation)

One of the important challenges in the field of thin-film transistors is to improve designs that result in performance speeds to the GHz level. With polymer semiconductors, non-quasistatic circuits such as rectifiers in which the maximum frequency depends on the carrier transit time, have been demonstrated to work to a few 10’s of MHz. The challenge is to realize clocked sequential circuits that operate as speeds much larger than the few 10’s of kHz that have been demonstrated so far. One of the keys to this, which has received a lot of attention, is improved carrier mobility in new materials. It is also necessary to reduce the channel length considerably without serious degradation in performance. We present designs based on nanostriped polymer and other semiconductors that are very suitable for scaling down the channel length. We show that in such devices, we can achieve enhanced carrier densities and mobilities compared to regular planar devices at all channel lengths. Importantly, we can also potentially reduce the contact resistance on account of the high conductivities that result from this geometry. This will be helpful in reducing channel length. A nanostriped geometry also improves gate control and reduces short channel effects. With our optimized TFT model we demonstrate all these effects. We also compare our model predictions with experimental data from organic and polymer transistors.
A Framework for Delivering Service Differentiation Through Operating Segments: Research Opportunities and Implementation Challenges

This paper presents a framework for developing a differentiated strategy for the delivery of services. It summarizes the methodology introduced in Guajardo and Cohen in (Manuf Serv Oper Manag 30(3):440–454, 2018 [6]) and discusses modeling and implementation implications associated with application of the framework for the management of value-added services that are bundled with manufactured products. The framework utilizes the concept of operating segments (introduced by Frei and Morriss in (Uncommon service: how to win by putting customers at the core of your business, 2012 [5])) and considers issues associated with the definition of market segments appropriate for differentiated services as well as for the design of such services. The paper also discusses operational processes and the tradeoffs associated with producing and delivering differentiated service products to market segments. This discussion includes a review of a set of representative analytical models for service delivery that illustrate OM Service research opportunities.
SATB2-associated syndrome (SAS) and associated dental findings.

Objective Identify, diagnose, and document oral clinical and radiographic evidence associated with the genetic condition known as special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2 (SATB2)-associated syndrome. Through identifying and publishing these common dental and behavioral findings, we hope to educate oral and medical healthcare providers to identify this condition in an attempt to develop meaningful comprehensive care to this patient population. Methods A total of 37 patients (19 female), ranging from ages 2 to 20 were evaluated at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. Patient geographic distribution included: the United States, Canada, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. Patients were clinically and radiographically examined for oral findings. Panoramic radiographs were obtained when patient's behavior allowed. Patient's parents or guardians were also interviewed concerning dental, medical, and behavioral histories. Results Clinical findings included delayed tooth eruption, bruxism, sialorrhea, larger than normal teeth with an increased propensity for maxillary anterior tooth trauma due to unsteady ambulation. Radiographic findings included delayed permanent root formation, significantly delayed or missing second bicuspids, malformed teeth, and taurodontism. Medical and behavioral issues included: insomnia, hyperphagia, cognitive delays, and an extremely high pain threshold. Conclusion Patients with SATB2-associated syndrome have shown to have a consistent and unique set of dental findings both clinically and radiographically. A thorough health and dental history along with the aforementioned results of the study may facilitate a diagnosis of this syndrome. Due to the complexity of the patient's dental needs and behavior, a health practitioner with special needs care experience on a comprehensive craniofacial team would be optimal.
Semimicro/Microscale Adaptation of the Cobalt Chloride/Sodium Borohydride Reduction of Methyl Oleate

The reduction of alkenes usually involves a hydrogen source and a catalyst. This process is both expensive and not well-suited for a large teaching laboratory. This paper presents an alternative procedure using a mixture of cobalt chloride and sodium borohydride to achieve the reduction of methyl oleate to methyl stearate. This procedure is safe, simple, and inexpensive. NMR spectroscopy is used as an analytical tool to determine the extent of the reduction.
“The struggle isn't real”: How need for cognitive closure moderates inferences from disfluency

Abstract Prior research suggests that disfluency leads to unfavorable product judgments and can be mitigated by debiasing techniques (i.e., explicit warnings about disfluency). We suggest a moderating role for the need for cognitive closure (NFCC), such that when information about a favorable brand is present, disfluency leads to less favorable judgments for low NFCC consumers but not for high NFCC consumers. Moreover, warnings about disfluency mitigate the negative effect for low NFCC consumers, but backfire for high NFCC ones. Across five experiments, we demonstrate these effects through individual trait differences and cognitive load manipulations of NFCC. We suggest that the backfiring effect among high NFCC consumers is due to shifts in attention away from brand reputation towards the experience of disfluency, making disfluency (vs. brand reputation) the primary judgmental cue. Implications of the findings for consumer inference are discussed.
The impact of low-dose versus high-dose antibiotic prophylaxis regimens on surgical site infection rates after cesarean delivery.

The objective of this study was to determine if high-dose antibiotic prophylaxis with cefazolin decreases the risk of surgical site infection (SSI) after a cesarean delivery. We performed a retrospective cohort study of women who underwent a cesarean section. Two preoperative antibiotic regimens were compared: low dose versus high dose. The primary outcome was SSI. A sample size of 343 patients per group was calculated for a 50% reduction in risk for SSI. Seven hundred and thirty women were included with an incidence of SSI of 5%. Women who received the high-dose antibiotic regimen had lower rates of risk factors for SSI. The only exception was skin incision closure with staples. The rate of SSI did not differ between the low-dose and high-dose groups, even after adjusting for confounding variables [aOR 1.78, 95% CI (0.82–3.9)]. Higher doses of antibiotic prophylaxis did not decrease the rates of SSI after cesarean delivery.
Trapping conformational states of a flavin-dependent N-monooxygenase in crystallo reveals protein and flavin dynamics

The siderophore biosynthetic enzyme A (SidA) ornithine hydroxylase from Aspergillus fumigatus is a fungal disease drug target involved in the production of hydroxamate-containing siderophores, which are used by the pathogen to sequester iron. SidA is an N-monooxygenase that catalyzes the NADPH-dependent hydroxylation of l-ornithine through a multistep oxidative mechanism, utilizing a C4a-hydroperoxyflavin intermediate. Here we present four new crystal structures of SidA in various redox and ligation states, including the first structure of oxidized SidA without NADP(H) or l-ornithine bound (resting state). The resting state structure reveals a new out active site conformation characterized by large rotations of the FAD isoalloxazine around the C1–′C2′ and N10–C1′ bonds, coupled to a 10-A movement of the Tyr-loop. Additional structures show that either flavin reduction or the binding of NADP(H) is sufficient to drive the FAD to the in conformation. The structures also reveal protein conformational changes associated with the binding of NADP(H) and l-ornithine. Some of these residues were probed using site-directed mutagenesis. Docking was used to explore the active site of the out conformation. These calculations identified two potential ligand-binding sites. Altogether, our results provide new information about conformational dynamics in flavin-dependent monooxygenases. Understanding the different active site conformations that appear during the catalytic cycle may allow fine-tuning of inhibitor discovery efforts.
Enhanced Undergraduate Learning Through Integration of Theory and Computational Tools

The current business trends, such as Industry 4.0, require a modern chemical engineer to know about programming, advanced computational tools, and holistic thinking. To this end, an integrated approach, where theoretical concepts are supplemented by computational lab-based exercises and team projects promoting “Design Thinking” is presented. For each course topic, a supporting computer lab session was designed to substantiate learning. Additionally, guidelines for topic selection, workplan development, and evaluation rubric were provided for team projects.
A Pedagogical Model of CO2 and O2 Atmospheric Abundances and Tree Population due to Human Population

A pedagogical model of the effects of human population on the global tree population and the atmospheric abundances of carbon dioxide and oxygen is provided, which, though too simple to be precise, offers meaningful insights with the virtue of being solvable by analytical means using only elementary calculus.
Improving the assessment and documentation of patient mobility using a quality improvement framework

Abstract Objective To implement a system for assessing and documenting patient mobility in an inpatient geriatric unit using a quality improvement framework. Methods Whiteboards incorporating the Johns Hopkins Highest Level of Mobility scale were placed on each door of the unit. Staff were trained to assess and document patient mobility, and documentation compliance was measured. Nurses were surveyed to assess perceived burden of the system. Fall rates were calculated and analyzed for change from baseline. Results Median daily documentation rates reached 79% by the end of the project. Surveys indicated a low perceived burden of the system. Fall rates did not increase when compared to the previous year baseline (p = 0.80) and the analogous time frames during the previous two years (p = 0.84). Conclusion A quality improvement framework may be used to improve mobility assessment and documentation in a geriatric unit without increasing patient falls or nursing burden.
Usability Challenges with EHRs During Pre-Rounding in the Pediatric Acute Care Department:

Health providers heavily rely on Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in the daily patient care. While EHRs have improved the quality of patient care, issues related to implementation and trainin...
Noncontact Exercise Monitoring in Multi-Person Scenario With Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave Radar

Monitoring exercise activities is crucial for athletes to reach specific fitness goals. Portable radars are an emerging technology for noncontact exercise monitoring. However, the existing works only relies on the Doppler effect caused by one motion in the sensor's field of view, which is not practical in scenarios with multiple moving targets. In this paper, the feasibility of using FMCW radars to monitor exercises when multiple moving targets are illuminated by the same sensor is investigated. By using the range capability of FMCW radars, interference rejection is achieved. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the noncontact exercise monitoring based on FMCW radars in the presence of multiple interferences.
CREDBANK: A Large-Scale Social Media Corpus With Associated Credibility Annotations

Social media has quickly risen to prominence as a news source, yet lingering doubts remain about its ability to spread rumor and misinformation. Systematically studying this phenomenon, however, has been difficult due to the need to collect large-scale, unbiased data along with in-situ judgements of its accuracy. In this paper we present CREDBANK, a corpus designed to bridge this gap by systematically combining machine and human computation. Specifically, CREDBANK is a corpus of tweets, topics, events and associated human credibility judgements. It is based on the real-time tracking of more than 1 billion streaming tweets over a period of more than three months, computational summarizations of those tweets, and intelligent routings of the tweet streams to human annotators — within a few hours of those events unfolding on Twitter. In total CREDBANK comprises more than 60 million tweets grouped into 1049 real-world events, each annotated by 30 human annotators. As an example, with CREDBANK one can quickly calculate that roughly 24% of the events in the global tweet stream are not perceived as credible. We have made CREDBANK publicly available, and hope it will enable new research questions related to online information credibility in fields such as social science, data mining and health.
Letter to the editor cytosolic estrogen and progesterone receptors in exocrine pancreatic adenocarcinoma

The results of sex-hormone therapy have been negative or inconclusive, but the proposed interactions of the hormones on normal or malignant acinar cells continue to open new horizons. To date, however, neither the standard estrogen/progesterone receptor assays nor the therapeutic use of tamoxifen demonstrates any benefit to the patient with pancreatic exocrine adenocarcinoma. Nevertheless, the disease is so devastating that consideration of a limited trial of orchiectomy, oophorectomy, or even adrenalectomy might be justified. From the hormonal aspects of these cancers, believed to be mainly of ductal origin, perhaps a study of the relationship of secretin or even cholecystokinin metabolism to the cancer might open new horizons.
Transient kinetics of oxygen dissociation from ferrous subunits of iron-cobalt hybrid hemoglobins. The principal reaction controlling the co-operativity

Abstract The oxygen dissociation constants from Fe subunits in the half-ligated intermediate states of FeCo hybrid hemoglobins, α(FeO 2 ) 2 β(Co) 2 and α(Co) 2 β(FeO 2 ) 2 , have been determined as functions of pH, temperature and inositol hexaphosphate. The oxygen dissociation rates from α(FeO 2 ) 2 β(Co) 2 are estimated to be more than 1300 s −1 for the deoxy quaternary state (T-state) and less than 3 s −1 for the oxy quaternary state (R-state) at 15 °C in 50 m m -Tris or Bis-Tris buffer containing 0·1 m -Cl − , while those of α(Co) 2 β(FeO 2 ) 2 are more than 180 s −1 and less than 5 s −1 for the T and R-states, respectively. The pH dependence of the oxygen dissociation rate from Fe subunits is large enough to be accounted for by the R–T transition, and implies that those half-ligated intermediate hybrids mainly exist in the R-state at pH 8·8, and in the T-state at pH 6·6, while other studies indicated that the half-ligated hybrids are essentially in the R-state at pH 7. Large activation energies of the oxygen dissociation process of 19 to 31 kcal/mol determined from the temperature dependence suggest that the process is entropy-driven.
Electronic Commerce Use in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The Internet and Electronic Commerce (EC) related practices were surveyed in ninety-four small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a region of the Northeastern United States. Only 6.3 percent of the firms’ sales was found to be attributable to e-commerce business. The results suggest some relationships of a firm’s sales and profitability on one hand and the firm’s Internet use on the other hand. Firms that rated their profitability and sales levels to be higher seem to have higher use of the Internet to gather distributor and vendor information, to conduct online purchasing, and to promote their products online. The majority of the firms surveyed tend to use e-mail to a great extent for communications internally among employees and externally with customers, vendors and distributors. Higher levels of e-mail usage for internal and external communications tend to associate with higher levels of reported sales and profitability. However, the findings suggest that most of the SMEs do not employ the Internet to its full capacity. In order for SMEs to advance their EC activities they need to develop their own EC strategies and to secure the managerial, human, financial, and technological resources to effectively implement them.
Association Between Weekend Discharge and Hospital Readmission Rates Following Major Surgery

Importance Although evidence suggests worse outcomes for patients admitted to the hospital on a weekend, to our knowledge, no previous studies have investigated the effects of weekend discharge. Objective To determine whether weekend discharge would be associated with an increased rate of 30- and 90-day hospital readmission. Design, Setting, and Participants Retrospective review of discharge abstracts from the California Office of State Health Planning and Development from 2012 identifying all patients who underwent abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair, colectomy, total hip arthroplasty, and pancreatectomy. This study was conducted from January to December 2012. Main Outcomes and Measures Thirty- and 90-day readmission rates were compared between patients discharged on a weekend vs weekday. Results Of 128 057 patients, 5225 patients (4.1%) underwent AAA repair; 29 388 (22.9%), colectomy; 91 168 (71.2%), hip replacement; and 2276 (1.8%), pancreatectomy. Overall, 29 883 (23.3%) were discharged on a weekend. Although there were no significant differences with respect to sex, age, race/ethnicity, insurance status, or type of admission, patients discharged on a weekend had shorter length of stays and were less often discharged to a skilled nursing facility. Overall, the 30-day readmission rate was 9.4% after AAA repair, 13.6% after colectomy, 7.5% after hip replacement, and 16.3% after pancreatectomy. Hospital readmission rates were similar for those discharged on a weekend vs weekday after AAA repair (8.8% vs 9.3%; P = .55) and pancreatectomy (17.5% vs 15.9%; P = .40). However, weekend discharge was associated with a lower 30-day readmission rate for patients undergoing colectomy (12.1% vs 14.1%; P P Conclusions and Relevance Weekend discharge after major surgery is not associated with higher 30- or 90-day readmission rates.
A web based visual display of business geographic information system

Business Geographic Data provide rich information for today's information decision making. This paper presents a web-based mapping system in which the visual display of the business information can be depicted on the fly instantaneously to aid the decision making. This Bing map web service accessing application using the AJAX technologies can be used as a component of an intelligent information system where detailed implementations are hidden from the end users and sensitive data can be viewed based on preset rules.
Flagellin gene transcription in Bordetella bronchiseptica is regulated by the BvgAS virulence control system.

The products of the bvgAS locus activate expression of a majority of the known Bordetella virulence factors but also exert negative control over a class of genes called vrg genes (bvg-repressed genes). BvgAS negatively controls the production of flagella and the phenotype of motility in Bordetella bronchiseptica. In this study flaA, the flagellin gene, was cloned and characterized to facilitate studies of this negative control pathway. An internal flaA probe detected hybridizing sequences on genomic Southern blots of Bordetella pertussis, Bordetella parapertussis, and Bordetella avium, although B. pertussis and B. parapertussis are nonmotile. FlaA is similar to the FliC flagellins of Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli, and flaA complemented an E. coli flagellin mutant. Insertional inactivation of the chromosomal flaA locus eliminated motility, which was restored by complementation with the wild-type locus. Analysis of flaA mRNA production by Northern (RNA) blotting and primer extension indicated that negative regulation by BvgAS occurs at the level of transcription. The transcriptional start site of flaA mapped near a consensus site for the alternative sigma factor, sigma F, encoded by fliA in E. coli and S. typhimurium. Consistent with a role for a fliA analog in B. bronchiseptica, transcriptional activation of a flaA-lacZ fusion in E. coli required fliA and a flaA-linked locus designated frl.frl also efficiently complemented mutations in the flagellar master regulatory locus, flhDC, of E. coli. Our analysis of the motility phenotype of B. bronchiseptica suggests that the Bordetella virulence control system mediates transcriptional control of flaA through a regulatory hierarchy that includes the frl locus and an alternative sigma factor.
Experiences in Using MPI-IO on Top of GPFS for the IFS Weather Forecast Code

The Integrated Forecast System (IFS) code is a parallel MPI application running on multiple tasks, a specified number of which, during its execution, writes output to a single global file at the end of several output time intervals. It can therefore write output multiple times during a given run. With the appropriate choice of parallel writing routine the overhead of writing to disk can be effectively hidden from the computation. We shall show how this is possible with careful use of MPI-IO routines on top of the IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS).
Length variation and heteroplasmy are frequent in mitochondrial DNA from parthenogenetic and bisexual lizards (genus Cnemidophorus).

Samples of mtDNA isolated from each of 92 lizards representing all color pattern classes of Cnemidophorus tesselatus and two populations of C. tigris marmoratus were digested with the restriction endonucleases Mbo I, Taq I, Rsa I and Msp I. The mtDNA fragment sizes were compared after radioactive labeling and gel electrophoresis. Three features were notable in the comparisons: (1) there was little variation due to gain or loss of cleavage sites, (2) two fragments varied noticeably in length among the samples, one by a variable amount up to a maximum difference of ∼370 base pairs (bp) and the other by a discrete amount of 35 bp, (3) these two fragments occasionally varied within, as well as between, samples. Two regions that corresponded in size to these variants were identified by restriction endonuclease cleavage mapping. One of these is adjacent to the D-loop. Heteroplasmy, heretofore rarely observed, occurred frequently in these same two regions. Variability in the copy number of a tandemly repeated 64-bp sequence appears to be one component of the variation, but others ( e.g. , base substitutions or small additions/deletions) must also be involved. The frequent occurrence of these length variations suggests either that they can be generated rapidly or that they were inherited from a highly polymorphic ancestor. The former interpretation is favored.
The androgen receptor cistrome is extensively reprogrammed in human prostate tumorigenesis

Master transcription factors interact with DNA to establish cell type identity and to regulate gene expression in mammalian cells. The genome-wide map of these transcription factor binding sites has been termed the cistrome. Here we show that the androgen receptor (AR) cistrome undergoes extensive reprogramming during prostate epithelial transformation in man. Using human prostate tissue, we observed a core set of AR binding sites that are consistently reprogrammed in tumors. FOXA1 and HOXB13 colocalized at the reprogrammed AR binding sites in human tumor tissue. Introduction of FOXA1 and HOXB13 into an immortalized prostate cell line reprogrammed the AR cistrome to resemble that of a prostate tumor, functionally linking these specific factors to AR cistrome reprogramming. These findings offer mechanistic insights into a key set of events that drive normal prostate epithelium toward transformation and establish the centrality of epigenetic reprogramming in human prostate tumorigenesis.
Investigation of turbulent recovery factor in hypersonic helium flow

Turbulent boundary layer recovery factor for wedge model in hypersonic helium flow at high Reynolds and Mach numbers
Clinical Utility and DSM-V

The construction of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual has been guided primarily by concerns of construct validity rather than of clinical utility, despite claims by its authors that the highest priority has in fact been clinical utility. The purpose of this article was to further articulate the concept and importance of utility when constructing and evaluating a diagnostic construct. It is suggested that a relative emphasis on validity over utility is justifiable but that matters of clinical utility should not be neglected. Discussed in particular is ease of usage, communication, and treatment planning. Suggestions for future research are provided.
VOP memory management in MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is a multimedia standard that requires Video Object Planes (VOPs). Generation of VOPs for any kind of video sequence is still a challenging problem that largely remains unsolved. Nevertheless, if this problem is treated by imposing certain constraints, solutions for specific application domains can be found. MPEG-4 applications in mobile devices is one such domain where the opposite goals namely low power and high throughput are required to be met. Efficient memory management plays a major role in reducing the power consumption. Specifically, efficient memory management for VOPs is difficult because the lifetimes of these objects vary and these life times may be overlapping. Varying life times of the objects requires dynamic memory management where memory fragmentation is a key problem that needs to be addressed. In general, memory management systems address this problem by following a combination of strategy, policy and mechanism. For MPEG4 based mobile devices that lack instruction processors, a hardware based memory management solution is necessary. In MPEG4 based mobile devices that have a RISC processor, using a Real time operating system (RTOS) for this memory management task is not expected to be efficient because the strategies and policies used by the ROTS is often tuned for handling memory segments of smaller sizes compared to object sizes. Hence, a memory management scheme specifically tuned for VOPs is important. In this paper, different strategies, policies and mechanisms for memory management are considered and an efficient combination is proposed for the case of VOP memory management along with a hardware architecture, which can handle the proposed combination.
Effects of Additives on the Friction of Steel on Steel I. Surface Topography and Film Composition Studies

Thrust ball bearing studies in which the surface topography of bearing races was examined with an electron microscope and in which additive elements were measured on ball surfaces by X-ray fluorescence have indicated that surface films of appreciable thickness are formed by oil additives and that the additive composition controls both surface topography and surface coating composition. Further, additive concentration, friction-time, and oil temperature studies have shown that the composition and/or thickness of the surface film is a function of the additive concentration, and suggest that most of the surface-active additives read in some manner rather than physically adsorb on surfaces. However, friction measurements correlate only to a limited degree with either the measured surface film composition or the observed topography. Presented as an American Society of Lubrication Engineers paper at the Lubrication Conference held in Rochester, New York, October 15–17, 1963.
Identification of Human Gait using Fuzzy Inferential Reasoning

The restoration of healthy locomotion (gait) after stroke, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury, is a major task in neurological rehabilitation. The rehabilitation process is labor intensive. Patient evaluation is often subjective, foiling determination of precise rehabilitation goals and assessment of treatment effects. To date it is the experienced clinician who continues to perform functional gait assessment and training in the absence of virtually any technological assistance. This paper introduces an algorithm capable of identifying human gait patterns. The fuzzy inferential reasoning uses typical joint angle trajectories to identify varying gait patterns. The algorithm will, thus, offer doctors, therapists, and patients a significant tool to assess the efficacy and outcomes of medical rehabilitation therapies and practices.
Micro-deformation mechanisms in thermoformed alumina trihydrate reinforced poly(methyl methacrylate)

Abstract Micro-deformation mechanisms involved in thermoforming of alumina trihydrate (ATH) reinforced poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) was investigated in a new experimental method replicating industrial heavy-gage thermoforming procedure. Uniaxial tension tests under non-steady thermal conditions were carried out at different forming rates and forming temperatures. Stress–strain curves and load–displacement histories of thermoformed samples were studied in terms of specimen temperature at different forming conditions. Neat PMMA samples were stretched to 50% strain under identical thermoforming conditions as PMMA/ATH for comparison purposes. Stress whitening in thermoformed PMMA/ATH samples was monitored with optical microscope and degree of stress whitening was characterized by an index obtained from optical image histograms. Micro-deformation features on the surface of PMMA and PMMA/ATH samples were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Micro-deformation in neat PMMA was in the form of homogenous drawing and did not include any type of void formation. SEM images of PMMA/ATH samples showed that particle cracking is the dominant deformation mechanism at low-forming temperatures, while at high-forming temperatures, combined particle disintegration and interfacial failure are dominant mechanisms. Stress whitening was not observed in neat PMMA which was attributed to absence of micro-voids or craze-like structures. On the other hand, PMMA/ATH samples displayed different levels of stress whitening depending on density, size and type of micro-deformation features.
Case Report: Pasteurella Multocida Liver Abscess

A previously healthy 61-year-old woman was seen with an abnormal chest roentgenogram and a 3-week history of fever, chills, malaise, and right upper quadrant pain. Blood cultures revealed Pasteurella multocida sensitive to penicillin. Liver spleen radioisotope scan and CT scan revealed space occupying lesions in the right lobe of the liver. The patient was a gardener with no pets or animal exposure. This case illustrates P. multocida septicemia and a liver abscess in a patient without animal exposure. In addition, the possibility of soil as another reservoir of infection is raised.
Machine learning in a multimedia document retrieval framework

The Pen Technologies group at IBM Research has recently been investigating methods for retrieving handwritten documents based on user queries. This paper investigates the use of typed and handwritten queries to retrieve relevant handwritten documents. The IBM handwriting recognition engine was used to generate N-best lists for the words in each of 108 short documents. These N-best lists are concise statistical representations of the handwritten words. These statistical representations enable the retrieval methods to be robust when there are machine transcription errors, allowing retrieval of documents that would be missed by a traditional transcription-based retrieval system. Our experimental results demonstrate that significant improvements in retrieval performance can be achieved compared to standard keyword text searching of machine-transcribed documents. We have developed a software architecture for a multimedia document retrieval framework into which machine learning algorithms for feature extraction and matching may be easily integrated. The framework provides a "plug-and-play" mechanism for the integration of new media types, new feature extraction methods, and new document types.