cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Active Damping in Polymer-Based Nanocomposites

In this research, we present the preliminary results related to our investigations on the potential of electrical signals through the network of nanoscale reinforcements and the consequent Joule heating in polymer-based nanocomposites as a means to augment damping in the material. The intended damping mechanism in this case is the creep and relaxation in the matrix phase, which is to be intensified via locally increased temperatures. The reinforcement of choice will be carbon nanotubes. The effectiveness of this method partly depends on rate and special uniformity at which the temperature of the matrix is increased, and as such it scales with the surface to volume ratio of the reinforcements. To demonstrate active damping augmentation experimentally, composites were then fabricated with the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) randomly distributed within an epoxy matrix. The active control of the damping behavior was pursued by joule heating the CNT reinforcements during the dynamic tensile testing on a Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer (DMA). Damping was quantified by the ratio of loss to storage modulus, equivalent to the ratio of dissipated mechanical energy to the elastic energy stored in the material during dynamic loading.
Evaluation Essentials: From A to Z - the ABCs of Program Evaluation [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Evaluation Essentials: From A to Z - the ABCs of Program Evaluation, Marvin C Alkin, 978-1-60623-898-1, The Guilford Press, 2011.
Impinging ring dike complexes in the Sierra Nevada batholith, California: Roots of the Early Cretaceous volcanic arc

In this paper we interpret new and previously published U-Pb zircon data in light of structures mapped within ∼360 km^2 of the southwestern Sierra Nevada batholith. Traces of intrusive contacts and igneous foliations reveal the presence of two ring dike complexes: the eastern ring complex and the western ring(?) complex. These subvolcanic complexes formed during overlapping periods: the eastern ring complex between 123 and 117 Ma (n = 5) and the western ring complex between 120 and 115 Ma (n = 5). Each complex may have been emplaced during a minimum of two events, each 2 to 3 m.y. long and separated by 3 to 4 m.y. In the western ring complex, the presence of a 120 Ma xenolith of silicified porphyry enclosed by unaltered tonalite implies that the ring complexes intruded the shallow crust and stoped the overlying volcanic-hypabyssal constructs. Rare mafic mylonites suggest that collapse of a mafic-ultramafic mass may have assisted western ring complex emplacement. Near-synchronous emplacement of the two ring complexes is consistent with textures and structures indicative of intense magma mingling and synmagmatic deformation preserved in the north-northeast–trending Stone Corral shear zone. The ≥ 13-km-long Stone Corral shear zone separates the impinging magmatic centers and was active ca. 116 ± 2 Ma. Blocks of layered plagioclase-olivine-orthopyroxene cumulates, 0.2–5.5 km long, also record variable synmagmatic deformation ca. 123 ± 3 Ma, thus indicating that the cumulates crystallized in a shallow, dynamic environment immediately preceding or during the earliest stages of ring dike emplacement.
Very-Heavy Precipitation in the Greater New York City Region and Widespread Drought Alleviation Tied to Western US Agriculture

Observed intensification of precipitation extremes, responsible for extensive societal impacts, are widely attributed to anthropogenic sources, which may include indirect effects of agricultural irrigation. However quantifying the effects of irrigation on far-downstream climate remains a challenge. We use three paired Community Earth System Model simulations to assess mechanisms of irrigation-induced precipitation trends and extremes in the conterminous US and the effect on the terrestrial carbon sink. Results suggest precipitation enhancement in the central US reduced drought conditions and increased regional carbon uptake, while further downstream, the heaviest precipitation events were more frequent and intense. Specifically, moisture advection from irrigation in the western U.S. and recycling of enhanced local convective precipitation produced very-heavy storm events that were 11% more intense and occurred 23% more frequently in the densely populated greater New York City region.
Clustering household energy-saving behaviours by behavioural attribute

Abstract Research on household energy conservation often categorizes targeted behaviours by their behavioural attributes (e.g., savings, cost, frequency). The most common distinction in the literature divides behaviours as follows: (1) low-impact, low-cost, repetitive behaviours that result in a loss of comfort or curtailment behaviours and (2) high-impact, high-cost, infrequent behaviours that result in no loss of amenities or efficiency behaviours. However, such categorizations have often been ad hoc and two-dimensional (e.g., low-impact vs. high-impact, low-cost vs. high-cost). In contrast, we systematically assess a large range of household energy-saving behaviours (N=261) across nine attributes – energy savings, cost, frequency of performance, required skill level, observability, locus of decision, household function, home topography, and appliance topography. By clustering behaviours according to these attributes, we discern four clusters of energy-saving behaviours: family style, call an expert, household management and weekend project. We discuss the implications of these clusters for intervention design.
Effect of pH and Chlorine Concentration on Activity of Bacillus thuringiensis Tank Mixes

Commercial preparations of Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner mixed with water of pH range 1–13 or with water containing free chlorine concentrations of 0.0–100 ppm were bioassayed against Douglas-fir tussock moth, Orgyia pseudotsugata (McDunnough). The natural buffering properties of the B. thuringiensis products caused the pH of the water mixtures to be equivalent to mixtures mixed at a neutral pH (7.0) except at the 2 extreme pH’s. No activity losses were found for the pH range tested; however, activity generally declined with storage time. The chlorine concentrations tested had no effect on activity of B. thuringiensis suspensions.
Temporal Evolution of Optical Gradients during Drying in Cast Polymer Solutions

The development of optical anisotropy gradient as a result of solvent evaporation for poly(amide–imide) (PAI) solution in dimethylacetamide (DMAc) was investigated for the first time. Experiments were carried out using real-time optical measurement with spectral birefringence technique coupled with off-line optical techniques such as the Abbe refractometer and optical compensator method. We have shown that drying process induces temporal evolution of nonuniform out-of-plane birefringence profile through the thickness direction while in-plane birefringence remained zero. The highest birefringence was observed at the substrate–solution interface at early stages of drying. Beyond a critical time, the formation of highly oriented layer was observed at the air–solution interface. This oriented layer progresses through the thickness direction as the solvent concentration is disproportionately reduced in these regions. Abbe refractometer results confirmed the anisotropy is preserved at longer drying times, the a...
Immunological competence of the chicken embryo and neonatal chicken to Mycoplasma gallisepticum.

Burnet and Fenner (1949) postulated that the immunological system of an animal becomes unresponsive to antigens with which it comes into contact in embryonic life. It has been noted that sometimes embryos and neonatal animals are immunologically unresponsive, that newborn animals either respond poorly or fail to respond to antigenic stimulation, and that older animals can on occasion fail to produce antibodies upon antigenic stimulation. Burnet et al (1950) attempted to induce immunological tolerance in chick embryos to influenza virus, bacteriophage, and human blood cells, but they were unsuccessful. Buxton (1954) showed that the intravenous inoculation of killed Salmonella pullorum into developing chicken embryos on or before the 15th day of incubation stimulated the production of practically no demonstrable antibody by the chicks during approximately the first 80 or 100 days after hatching. These chicks showed a marked decrease in capacity to produce demonstrable antibodies in their sera
Host-feeding patterns of mosquitoes, with a review of advances in analysis of blood meals by serology.

In evaluating the host ranges of mosquitoes, 9 basic feeding patterns emerge. There are mosquito species that feed (1) almost entirely on mammals, e.g., anopheline mosquitoes, Culiseta inornata ; (2) almost entirely on birds, e.g., Culiseta melanura, Culex pens ; (3) readily on both birds and mammals, e.g., Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus ; (4) almost exclusively on amphibians, e.g., Culex territans ; (5) predominantly on reptiles but will take an occasional blood meal from a homeothermic animal, e.g., Deinocerites dyari ; (6) entirely on fish, e.g., Uranotaenia lateralis ; (7) readily on both poikilothermic and homeothermic animals, e.g., Deinocerites epitedeus ; (8) preferentially on birds in the spring and early summer with a shift to feeding on significant numbers of mammals in the mid and late summer periods, e.g., Culex tarsalis, Culex nigripalpus ; (9) almost exclusively on mammals in one geographic area and in another on birds, e.g., Culex erythrothorax . Of the several methods used for determination of host ranges, only advances in serologic technique are discussed in detail. The precipitin test, of which there are several variations currently in use, continues to be the basic serological tool for blood-meal identification. The passive hemagglutination inhibition (PHI) test offers promise as a practical method of distinguishing closely related host species. However, the PHI test is a more elaborate and difficult test when compared with the precipitin test.
Hard Copy to Digital: Flora Neotropica and the World Flora Online

One of the greatest challenges in achieving the goals of the World Flora Online (WFO) will be to make available the huge amount of botanical information that is not yet available digitally. The New York Botanical Garden is using the Flora Neotropica monograph series as a model for digitization. We describe our efforts at digitizing Flora Neotropica monographs and why digitization of hardcopy descriptions must be a priority for the WFO project.
Some alternatives to urinary diversion in children.

AbstractMany children with severe urologic problems have been treated by urinary diversions, often after unsuccessful operations to correct the original pathology. Urinary diversion should be avoided when possible, since often it is accompanied by chronic infection and quality of life is less good than it could be. Most diversions can be prevented by use of other alternatives including 1) reimplanting 1 ureter and transureteroureterostomy of the other, 2) psoas hitch, 3) wide mobilization and downward displacement of the kidney and ureter, 4) use of bowel as ureter, 5) cecal cystoplasty and 6) early repair of complex pathology. Autotransplantation is probably seldom indicated in childhood.
The effects of physician-delivered brief smoking cessation on ACRIN/NLST participants' smoking behaviors.

7525 Background: The National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) demonstrated a 20% relative reduction in lung cancer mortality for current and former heavy smokers screened with low-dose CT vs. radiography. The NCCN and ACS recently released lung screening guidelines which promote smoking cessation counseling, but there is no information about the prevalence or effectiveness of brief physician-delivered smoking cessation interventions, such as the 5As (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, and Arrange follow-up) among lung screening patients. Methods: Among 8,878 NLST participants from 23 ACRIN sites who were smoking at enrollment, we conducted a longitudinal examination of the 1) rates and patterns of each reported 5A receipt and 2) association between each A and quitting. Using a case-control logistic regression, which matched participants according to trial arm; sociodemographic; medical; and smoking characteristics, we compared self-reported point-prevalence abstinence following 5A receipt. Results: Participants wer...
Adjuvant rituximab to prevent TTP relapse.

In this issue of Blood, Page et al show that treatment with rituximab at the time of an initial episode of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is associated with a dramatic reduction in the risk of subsequent relapse. Their data raise the question of whether all or selected patients with a first episode of acquired TTP should be treated with adjuvant rituximab to prevent recurrence.1
Improving precision by adjusting for prognostic baseline variables in randomized trials with binary outcomes, without regression model assumptions.

In randomized clinical trials with baseline variables that are prognostic for the primary outcome, there is potential to improve precision and reduce sample size by appropriately adjusting for these variables. A major challenge is that there are multiple statistical methods to adjust for baseline variables, but little guidance on which is best to use in a given context. The choice of method can have important consequences. For example, one commonly used method leads to uninterpretable estimates if there is any treatment effect heterogeneity, which would jeopardize the validity of trial conclusions. We give practical guidance on how to avoid this problem, while retaining the advantages of covariate adjustment. This can be achieved by using simple (but less well-known) standardization methods from the recent statistics literature. We discuss these methods and give software in R and Stata implementing them. A data example from a recent stroke trial is used to illustrate these methods.
Qualitative reasoning with microscopic theories

A model of the elementary particles of a domain and their rudimentary interactions is essential for sophisticated reasoning about the macroscopic behavior of physical system. A microscopic theory can make explicit the deeper mechanisms underlying causal models, collapse a great variety of macroscopic phenomena into a few rudimentary interactions, elaborate upon or validate macroscopic explanations, and so forth. This paper describes a qualitative representation for microscopic theories and, a method for reasoning with microscopic particles to obtain the macroscopic behavior. The representation and reasoning are illustrated using implemented examples from the fluids domain.
Chapter 29 – Neurotoxicology of Pesticides

Publisher Summary The concern over the susceptibility of the developing nervous system to pesticide exposure has continued to expand as exposure scenarios and examples of toxicity are reported. It has been realized that environmental factors and gene–environment interactions contribute to the expression of pesticide-induced developmental toxicity. The complexity of the developing nervous system with the differential time course for ontogeny of the various neurotransmitter receptor systems, and associated enzymes, channels, and receptors, may provide different targets for possible adverse interaction with pesticides. In the postgenomic world, systems biology approaches that involve the iterative and integrative study of perturbations by chemicals of gene and protein expression that are linked firmly to toxicological outcome have been developed. Although the stage of development is a major factor in the vulnerability of the nervous system, it is not currently possible to predict which stage of development, if any, will be susceptible without experimental assessment. This chapter provides a commentary on the system biology that is presented in the study.
3264 and All That

This book can form the basis of a second course in algebraic geometry. As motivation, it takes concrete questions from enumerative geometry and intersection theory, and provides intuition and technique, so that the student develops the ability to solve geometric problems. The authors explain key ideas, including rational equivalence, Chow rings, Schubert calculus and Chern classes, and readers will appreciate the abundant examples, many provided as exercises with solutions available online. Intersection is concerned with the enumeration of solutions of systems of polynomial equations in several variables. It has been an active area of mathematics since the work of Leibniz. Chasles' nineteenth-century calculation that there are 3264 smooth conic plane curves tangent to five given general conics was an important landmark, and was the inspiration behind the title of this book. Such computations were motivation for Poincare's development of topology, and for many subsequent theories, so that intersection theory is now a central topic of modern mathematics.
Investigation of a shallow slope failure on expansive clay in Texas

Abstract Highway slopes constructed with highly plastic clay soils undergo shrink-swell cycles during the wet-dry season, which usually soften the soil and may cause failure a few years following construction. There are two major wet-dry cycles in Texas, where summer to early fall is categorized as the dry period, and late fall to spring is categorized as the wet period. During this study, the failure of a highway slope located in Fort Worth, Texas was investigated, and the effect of rainfall on the slope failure was evaluated. The failure of the slope was investigated using soil test borings, geophysical testing, laboratory testing, slope stability analysis, and unsaturated flow analysis. The site investigation included sample collections from different depths of borings, determination of the soil index properties, and various shear strength testing to determine soil strength parameters. The obtained test results were further utilized in slope stability and flow analyses using the finite element method (FEM) in PLAXIS. The study indicated that both a fully-softened condition and rainfall were responsible for the slope failure. The fully-softened condition provided a factor of safety of 1.46, whereas the perched water condition after rainfall provided a nearly failing factor of safety of 1.05.
Electrowetting-Controlled Optofluidic Window Shelter for Building Natural Daylighting

In this paper we report an optofluidic window shelter system that can be used for natural daylighting in buildings. The implementation of the optofluidic window shelter is based on electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD). The EWOD effect controls the contact angle between an electrolyte and a dielectric surface through the application of an electric potential difference between them. With two immiscible fluids (oil and water) in a transparent cuvette and with a high-reflectivity membrane film suspended between the fluid-fluid meniscus, we can actively control the contact angles along the fluid-fluid-solid tri-junction lines and hence the orientation of the membrane reflector via EWOD. As-formed dynamic reflector (heliostat) can be used for adaptive sunlight tracking and steering via reflection. Without any mechanical moving parts, this EWOD-tuned liquid prism allows the optofluidic heliostat to adaptively track both the daily and seasonal changes of the Sun’s orbit, i.e., dual-axis tracking, while steering sunlight into buildings for natural daylighting.
Extracting complex optical properties of ultra-thin conductors using time-domain THz spectroscopy

We use terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) in reflection geometry to investigate the complex optical properties of ultra-thin (i.e., < 10 nm) conductors from 0.3 to 3 THz. We discuss the advantages of this approach, and report complex optical properties of graphene and a 9 nm Ti thin-film.
Prospective Evaluation of Results of Reoperation in Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome.

Objective:To determine the role of reoperation in patients with persistent or recurrent Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome (ZES).Background:Approximately, 0% to 60% of ZES patients are disease-free (DF) after an initial operation, but the tumor may recur.Methods:A prospective database was queried.Results:A
Sor Juana y la cosmología barroca: "Primero sueño"

El texto que sigue aprovecha el trabajo que he publicado sobre el barroco y, en especial, mi ensayo “Lirica colonial,” que aparece en la Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, que Gredos publico en el 2006, y que habia aparecido en su version original inglesa en la Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, de 1996. Tambien retomo algunas de las ideas de Celestina´s Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin American Literature, que se publico en Espana como La prole de Celestina. Pero aqui aspiro a ir mas lejos al concentrarme en un solo poema de Sor Juana, “Primero sueno”, y utilizar ideas que he ido desarrollando en los ultimos diez o quince anos. Las mas recientes forman parte de un libro en marcha sobre el infinito y la improvisacion del que ya han aparecido algunos adelantos sobre Cervantes y Calderon. Hay otro sobre Lope en camino.
Sovereign Wealth Funds and Domestic Political Risk

As Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) mature and as the literature describing and analyzing SWFs continues to develop, some of the primary concerns that initially animated SWF analysis — namely, SWFs as a sign of shifting financial power, SWFs as potential political actors, and the corresponding protectionist responses from governments — have turned to fundamental concerns about how SWFs are governed. Even within this literature, however, questions of governance are often focused not on the domestic impacts of SWF governance, but on SWF governance as risk mitigation for other entities and governments. For some analysts and regulators, SWFs must be quarantined; little thought is given to the health of the SWF itself, so long as it does not adversely affect other entities.This draft chapter (forthcoming, Oxford University Press Handbook on Sovereign Wealth Funds) discusses SWF governance as a domestic political issue, and not merely as an international political issue. In particular, this chapter adds to the literature on the domestic legitimacy of SWFs, and how poor management of SWFs can create or exacerbate domestic political risks. Among the threats to legitimacy are issues involving ultimate ownership of the fund, corruption, unclear of shifting purposes of the fund and the use of the fund’s earnings, and misalignment of the fund with societal mores and interests.
Minimal Risk in Pediatric Research: A Philosophical Review and Reconsideration

Despite more than thirty years of debate, disagreement persists among research ethicists about the most appropriate way to interpret the U.S. regulations on pediatric research, specifically the categories of "minimal risk" and a "minor increase over minimal risk." Focusing primarily on the definition of "minimal risk," we argue in this article that the continued debate about the pediatric risk categories is at least partly because their conceptual status is seldom considered directly. Once this is done, it becomes clear that the most popular strategy for interpreting "minimal risk"-defining it as a specific set of risks-is indefensible and, from a pragmatic perspective, unlikely to resolve disagreement. Primarily this is because judgments about minimal risk are both normative and heavily intuitive in nature and thus cannot easily be captured by reductions to a given set of risks. We suggest instead that a more defensible approach to evaluating risk should incorporate room for reflection and deliberation. This dispositional, deliberative framework can nonetheless accommodate a number of intellectual resources for reducing reliance on sheer intuition and improving the quality of risk evaluations.
Political Opportunism, Position Taking, and Court-curbing Legislation

Although there is extensive scholarship on court-curbing efforts directed at the U.S. Supreme Court, much less is known about bills targeting the lower federal courts. This article argues that memb...
Demand for and Supply of Responsible Managerial Behaviour

The principal concern of this chapter is to discuss how to educate business managers more effectively and influence them to move towards social responsibility and at the same time to move away from social irresponsibility.
Campus IoT collaboration and governance using the NIST cybersecurity framework

West Texas A&M University established a strategic initiative to develop the Internet of Things across its 176-acre campus that connects more than 42 different buildings, including 11 residence halls and a 2,393-acre working ranch that is dedicated to faculty and student research in agriculture, livestock, crop and land management, and the development and research of wind energy. The University has recently adopted the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which is now used by 30 percent of U.S. organizations and is projected to reach 50 percent by 2020 [1]. This security policy framework, combined with a new information security governance model, has enabled the University to embark on other IoT initiatives that relate to mobile and wireless communications such as smart-connected transportation, smart-connected parking, and the deployment of a LoRaWAN network to support faculty research projects. Through these IoT initiatives, West Texas A&M University will be able to transfer its insights and ideas to other similar regions in the nation, and even beyond our national borders.
The Analysis of Biomolecules by Electrospray Ionization—Mass Spectrometry and Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI—MS) has its origins in research that long preceded the current flurry of activity. The study of electrospray phenomena extends back over perhaps two and one-half centuries to the work of Bose (1) and certainly to that of Zeleny early in this century (2). The seminal research into the use of electrospray as an ionization method was done by Malcom Dole and co-workers (3,4), who, more than 20 years ago, performed extensive studies into the electrospray process and defined many of the important experimental parameters. The purpose of Dole’s studies was to use ESI to produce gas-phase macroions. Dole’s approach was largely an adaptation of the electrospray studies performed in the 1930s by Chapman, who conducted ion mobility studies of low-molecular-weight salts formed from the evaporation of charged droplets (5). Experimental evidence was presented for ionization of zein (M r ∼ 50,000) (6) and lysozyme (7). Interpretation of Dole’s results was problematic, however, because a mass spectrometer was not available, and only ion retardation (3,4,6) and ion mobility (7) measurements were obtained. However, the importance of Dole’s contributions cannot be overstated; his research clearly presaged the ESI-MS of macromolecules, arguably the multiple charging phenomenon, as well as many of the instrumental methods currently utilized (3,4,6-8). In 1984 ESI-MS experiments were reported essentially simultaneously by both Yamashita and Fenn (9) and Aleksandrov et al. (10,11).
Quantification of thoracic aorta blood flow by magnetic resonance imaging during supine cycling exercise of increasing intensity

Background Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be used for the diagnosis and follow-up of diseases affecting the thoracic aorta (TA). Typically, patients are imaged at rest. Quantifying TA blood flow distribution during activity may improve understanding of disease impact by assessing possible factors contributing to exercise intolerance. Blood flow quantification during exercise MRI, though, has heretofore been complicated by prolonged MRI scan times, motion artifact, and gradient field inhomogeneities. We developed a protocol for phase-contrast (PC) MRI flow quantification in the TA and head and neck arteries during three-tiered supine cycling submaximal exercise. Methods PC-MRI was acquired in the ascending aorta (AAo) and innominate (IA), left common carotid (LCCA), and left subclavian (LSA) arteries using a 1.5T Siemens MAGNETOM ® Symphony magnet. Six healthy volunteers (28±2 years) were imaged during rest and supine pedaling of an MRI-compatible cycle to reach 130%, 150%, and 170% of resting heart rate (HR130 ,H R150 ,H R170). Scan parameters balanced image quality with acquisition time, accounting for subject positioning in the magnet and motion from pedaling. Time-resolved volumetric blood flow was calculated from PC-MRI data and estimated in the descending aorta (dAo). Flow quantification included cardiac index from AAo flow, arterial normalized mean flow (NMF,L/min/m 2 ) and flow distribution (FD,% of AAo flow). Significance of flow quantification between HRs and rest was tested post-hoc with Student’s t-test. Results Cardiac index increased linearly (r 2 =0.99) from 3.1±0.3 to 5.2±0.3 L/min/m 2 from rest to HR170 (p<0.05). HR increased to 111±5.9 bpm and workload to 38±9 watts at HR170. In the dAo, NMF increased linearly with respect to HR (r 2 =0.99) by 46%, 72%, and 93% with significance at all levels (Table 1). The IA showed significant increase in NMF of 39% at HR170 compared to rest. Increases in NMF
Cupid: The Very Best of Sam Cooke, 1961–1962

Sam Cooke was born on 22 January 1931. He died from a gunshot wound on 11 December 1964. Music dominated his brief life. As a youngster he performed before several Baptist congregations as a member...
High-Fat Diet During the Perinatal Period Induces Loss of Myenteric Nitrergic Neurons and Increases Enteric Glial Density, Prior to the Development of Obesity.

Abstract Diet-induced obesity induces peripheral inflammation accompanied by a loss of myenteric neurons. Few studies, however, have investigated the effects of a high-fat diet (HFD) on either the development of myenteric neurons or prior to the occurrence of obesity. The present study assessed the effects of maternal HFD on the density and neurochemical phenotype of myenteric ganglia in the upper gastrointestinal tract. Sprague–Dawley rats were fed either a control or HFD (14% or 60% kcal from fat, respectively) from embryonic day 13; the fundus, corpus and duodenum were fixed thereafter at postnatal 2, 4, 6 and 12 weeks of age for subsequent immunohistochemical studies. While myenteric ganglion size did not differ throughout the study, HFD exposure decreased the number of nitrergic neurons by 6 weeks of age in all regions. This decrease was accompanied by a loss of PGP-immunoreactive neurons, suggesting a decline in myenteric neuronal number. HFD also increased myenteric plexus glial cell density in all regions by 4 weeks of age. These changes occurred in the absence of an increase in serum or gastric inflammatory markers. The present study suggests that exposure to a HFD during the perinatal time period results in glial proliferation and loss of inhibitory nitrergic neurons prior to the onset of obesity, suggesting that dietary alterations may affect gastrointestinal functions independently of increased adiposity or glycemic dysregulation.
Staggering Forward. Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition

Undergraduate international relations (IR) students know IR theorists try to make sense of the world by imposing an ideological order. This exercise is dominated by the often contentious dichotomy ...
Conversion of 2,4-dihydroxybenzaldehyde to 2-benzoyloxy-4-hydroxybenzaldehyde and structural characterization of both precursor and product

2,4-Dihydroxybenzaldehyde can be acylated at the 2 position if the more reactive 4 position is first protected as the methylmethoxy ether. Deprotection permits isolation of 2-benzoyloxy-4-hydroxybenzaldehyde. 2,4-Dihydroxybenzaldehyde, C7H6O3, crystallizes in P21/c, with a = 7.3762(6), b = 11.7455(9), c = 7.3149(6) A, β = 90.533(2)°, Z = 4, and D X = 1.448 g cm−3. The individual molecules are characterized by an intramolecular hydrogen bond. The molecules form sheets with additional intermolecular hydrogen bonds. 2-Benzoyloxy-4-hydroxybenzaldehyde, C14H10O2, crystallizes in Pca21, with a = 24.2629(14), b = 3.8445(2), c = 12.3727(8) A, Z = 4, and D X = 1.394 g cm−3. The molecules consist of two planar halves twisted by 51.63(5)° about the ester linkage. Intermolecular hydrogen bonding joins the molecules into ribbons approximately parallel to c.
Labor History and the Clash of Capabilities

This chapter in an edited volume on labor law and the Capabilities Approach (CA) argues that the congruity between the CA and the American labor movement’s ambitions and tactics has shifted over time. In the early twentieth century, labor activists embraced strong forms of social and economic pressure, rejected minimalism, and disavowed state intervention. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, the American administrative state actively structured the bargaining relationship between unions and employers, and unions surrendered much of their coercive power. In the new legal landscape, it may be plausible to ground labor law in the CA, which combines an emphasis on full equality of freedom of speech and association with support for a strong social safety net. This compatibility, however, is premised on the labor movement’s relinquishment of its most effective historical weapons. That is, the same modifications that have accommodated labor law to the CA have also eroded labor’s strength and accelerated its decline.
IMMUNOGENETICS OF THE MOUSE H-2 SYSTEM

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses immunogenetics of the mouse H-2 system. The H-2 system constitutes the major set of histocompatibility and blood group antigens in the mouse. These antigens are widely distributed on the tissues, and when incompatibilities occur, they play a major role in graft rejection. Because they are on red blood cells and leukocytes, H-2 antigens can also be readily detected and analyzed by standard hemagglutination and cytotoxic methods. The H-2 system of antigens is a highly complex one, comprising at least 30 different alloantigenic specificities. More than 20 alleles or haplotypes are well-defined, and each determines a different combination of these specificities. Genetic control is localized to a complex locus or region in linkage group IX, within which recombination can occur to separate the determinants of certain specificities. In addition to the antigenic factors, a number of other, qualitatively different traits are also closely associated with the H-2 region.
INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF EZH1 IN DEVELOPMENTAL HEMATOPOIESIS

Understanding how hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are produced and maintained is essential to the goal of generating patient-specific HSCs capable of multi-potent long-term function. HSCs are specified in select arterial niches during embryonic development, however the pathways regulating their emergence remain incompletely defined. Recently, an in vitro loss-of-function screen in human hematopoietic progenitors identified the Polycomb group protein, Enhancer of Zeste 1 (EZH1), as a regulator of definitive hematopoiesis. To evaluate whether this observation was conserved in vivo, functional knockdown techniques were employed in zebrafish. Initial analyses using in situ hybridization indicate that morpholino-mediated ezh1 deficiency promotes expression of the conserved HSC markers runx1/c-myb in the ventral wall of the dorsal aorta (VDA) at 36 hours post fertilization; these studies were confirmed and quantified by qPCR and FACS, indicating enhanced HSPC number. Strikingly, ezh1 knockdown increased hemogenic endothelium at the expense of arterial endothelium without disrupting initial arterial/venous specification, suggesting ezh1 expression is spatiotemporally restricted within the endothelium. As Notch signaling has been implicated in both arterial specification and HSC emergence, we examined the potential role of Notch signaling in ezh1 knockdown-mediated HSPC expansion and observed differential regulation of Notch ligands and receptors throughout the endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition compared to wild-type siblings. Notably, the effect on Notch signaling was specific to ezh1 knockdown, as ezh2 knockdown shows a distinct pattern and temporal impact. This strong conservation of function will serve as a platform to identify chemical or genetic factors that regulate ezh1 expression and function to unlock multi-lineage HSC fate.
Error Estimation for Classification

If one knew the feature-label distribution of a problem, then one could in principle compute the exact error of a classifier. In many practical cases, such knowledge is not available, and it is necessary to estimate the error of a classifier using sample data. If the sample size is large enough, it is possible to divide the available data into training and testing samples, design a classifier on the training set, and evaluate it on the test set. In this chapter, it is shown that this produces a very accurate error estimator, provided that there is an abundance of test points. However, large test samples are not possible if the overall sample size is small, in which case training and testing has to be performed on the same data. This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of different classification error estimation procedures and how to assess their performance.
HAN: a Hierarchical AutotuNed Collective Communication Framework

High-performance computing (HPC) systems keep growing in scale and heterogeneity to satisfy the increasing computational need, and this brings new challenges to the design of MPI libraries, especially with regard to collective operations. To address these challenges, we present “HAN,” a new hierarchical autotuned collective communication framework in Open MPI, which selects suitable homogeneous collective communication modules as submodules for each hardware level, uses collective operations from the submodules as tasks, and organizes these tasks to perform efficient hierarchical collective operations. With a task-based design, HAN can easily swap out submodules, while keeping tasks intact, to adapt to new hardware. This makes HAN suitable for the current platform and provides a strong and flexible support for future HPC systems. To provide a fast and accurate autotuning mechanism, we present a novel cost model based on benchmarking the tasks instead of a whole collective operation. This method drastically reduces tuning time, as the cost of tasks can be reused across different message sizes, and is more accurate than existing cost models. Our cost analysis suggests the autotuning component can find the optimal configuration in most cases. The evaluation of the HAN framework suggests our design significantly improves the default Open MPI and achieves decent speedups against state-of-the-art MPI implementations on tested applications.
Boundary-conditioned anticipatory tonal coarticulation in Standard Mandarin

Abstract The goal of this study is to examine (1) whether and how the F0 contour of a sequence of neutral tones in Standard Mandarin is affected by the following full tone due to anticipatory tonal coarticulation, (2) whether and how the degree of anticipatory tonal coarticulation varies as a function of the strength of an intervening boundary, and (3) whether boundary-conditioned anticipatory tonal coarticulatory variations can be accounted for by boundary-induced durational changes. By using generalized additive mixed models to analyze time-varying F0 contours of neutral-tone sequence, we are able to formally detect anticipatory tonal coarticulation effects across different boundary conditions while simultaneously taking into account individual variations of 20 speakers. Results show that (a) F0 contours of neutral-tone sequence can be affected by both assimilatory and dissimilatory anticipatory effects and anticipation could spread to non-adjacent neutral tones, that (b) anticipatory tonal coarticulation becomes weaker when crossing a strong boundary than when crossing a weak boundary, and that (c) boundary-induced anticipatory tonal coarticulation reduction cannot be simply accounted for by boundary-induced lengthening effect. Based on the results, we argue that the anticipatory tonal coarticulation patterns reported in this study are more consistent with the soft template mark-up language (Stem-ML) model than with the parallel encoding and target approximation (PENTA) model, and that boundary-induced anticipatory tonal coarticulation reduction is primarily the result of active speech planning.
CYCLOCIM: A 4-D variational assimilation system for the climatological mean seasonal cycle of the ocean circulation

Abstract We describe a new 4-D variational assimilation system, called CYCLOCIM, to estimate the climatological seasonal cycle of the residual mean ocean circulation. CYCLOCIM assimilates monthly mean potential temperature and salinity data from the World Ocean Atlas, and CFC-11, CFC-12 and natural radiocarbon measurements for the deep ocean from the Global Data Analysis Project, Version 2. CYCLOCIM’s control parameters include: (i) a seasonally varying 3-D field of unresolved eddy-stress divergences that appear in the horizontal momentum equations, (ii) seasonally varying 2-D correction fields for the surface heat and freshwater fluxes, and (iii) a constant scaling factor for the air-sea flux of CFCs. The influence of initial conditions on a fully spun-up ocean model vanishes. Thus, unlike other 4-D variational assimilation systems, CYCLOCIM does not include initial conditions as control parameters. A Bayesian procedure is used to formulate the inverse problem, which is solved by finding the maximum of the posterior probability distribution. The optimization process used to find the maximum includes a forward simulation to calculate the flow velocities and tracer distributions followed by a backward (“adjoint” ) simulation to compute the gradient of the posterior. A quasi-Newton search algorithm is used to find the set of parameters to maximize the posterior probability. We find that by resolving the seasonal cycle the model is able to better fit the observations in the upper ocean compared to a previous steady-state version of the model. The main output from CYCLOCIM is a set of 12 data-constrained monthly tracer transport matrices that will provide a useful circulation model for global marine biogeochemical cycle studies.
Analyzing Music Genre Popularity

Music and the culture surrounding it are in perpetual states of change. With such a wide variety of genres continuously overtaking each other in popularity, there is a constant and inherent questioning of which genre is the most popular at any given time. Although billboards help give an overall understanding of what songs are presently dominating, they may not provide a full picture of what all people listen to daily , only scratching the surface. Social media in particular has dramatically increased the debates over music genre popularity and is a tool that can be used to gain insight on what forms of music people listen to in their daily lives that may not appear on the charts. The research in this paper focuses on utilizing social media as such a tool to perform analysis on what genres dominate the music industry today, both in an attempt to validate or find flaws in the billboards as well as understand what affects the popularity of genres as it stands. The analysis performed found both expected as well as contradicting results that answer several questions regarding the popularity of music genres today.
Free Tissue Transfer for Repair of Chronic Esophageal Perforations.

ObjectiveAnterior cervical discectomy and fusion have become a common intervention for cervical spine stabilization. However, complications can cause life-threatening morbidity. Among them, esophag...
Impaired Lower Extremity Biomechanics, Hip External Rotation Muscle Weakness, and Proximal Femoral Morphology Predict Impaired Single-Leg Squat Performance in People With FAI Syndrome.

Background:Impairments in squat depth have been reported in patients with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS). However, little is known about single-leg squat (SLS) performance in these pa...
The Changing Access to Electronic Journals: A Survey of Academic Library Web Sites Revisited

This article analyzes the content, organization, and features of academic library electronic journal Web pages and examines major trends that we found. In a replication of a 1997-1998 study, the authors revisited 114 academic library e-journal Web sites from North American universities to see how they have evolved in the past few years. The authors discovered that the Web sites are much more elaborate and sophisticated than just three years ago, and they discuss the four basic organizational models that they see emerging in this field: high maintenance HTML model, new “low maintenance” HTML model, catalog-driven model and database-driven model.
Zinc status specifically changes preferences for carbohydrate and protein in rats selecting from separate carbohydrate-, protein-, and fat-containing diets.

This study examined how macronutrient intake preferences were specifically altered in the loss of appetite caused by experimentally produced zinc deficiency. Outbred female rats were allowed to freely select from simultaneously provided carbohydrate-, protein-, and fat-rich diets to provide themselves with an acceptable total diet. Rats were divided into two groups and provided the three diets containing either adequate (30 mg/kg ; Zn+) or deficient (1 mg/kg ; Zn-) levels of zinc (Zn). After 28 d, rats offered the Zn- diet were returned to a Zn+ diet (Zn repletion). Intakes from each of the three macronutrient diets were measured to determine macronutrient preferences of Zn-adequate, Zn-deficient, and Zn-repleted rats. In two 28-d studies involving a total of 66 rats, total metabolizable energy intake in Zn deficient rats was between 20 and 35% lower than in Zn+ rats, and carbohydrate intake accounted for essentially 100% of the lower energy intake. Fat and protein intakes were not affected by Zn deficiency. When Zn-deficient rats were repleted with Zn by providing diets containing adequate Zn, carbohydrate intake was restored to normal levels after 1 d of feeding. A transient difference in protein intake was noted during the repletion period, peaking during d 2-4 of repletion. Protein intake increased by more than 50% during this period. We hypothesize that specific changes in macronutrient intake patterns during development and recovery from Zn deficiency may be reflections, at least in part, of Zn-mediated changes in the central control of appetite.
The Supreme Court Assumes Errant Prosecutors Will Be Disciplined by Their Offices or the Bar: Three Case Studies that Prove that Assumption Wrong

Section 19831 creates a civil damages remedy against “every state official for the violation of any person’s federal constitutional or statutory rights.”2 Under § 1983, citizens are empowered to act as “private attorneys general” to enforce the Constitution against individual governmental actors or municipalities.3 In Imbler v. Pachtman,4 the Supreme Court limited the use of this remedy against public prosecutors, finding that, like judges, they are entitled to absolute immunity from liability under § 1983 for conduct “within the scope of [prosecutors’] duties in initiating and pursuing a criminal prosecution.”5 Recognizing that its decision might “leave the genuinely wronged defendant without civil redress against a prosecutor whose malicious or dishonest action deprives him of liberty,”6 the Court reasoned that “the immunity of prosecutors from liability . . . under § 1983 does not leave the public powerless to deter misconduct or punish that which occurs”7 because “a prosecutor stands perhaps unique, among officials whose acts could deprive persons of constitutional rights, in his amenability to professional discipline by an association of his peers.”8