cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Fueling Platelets: Where Does the Glucose Come From?

There has long been interest in the metabolic pathways occurring in platelets and their relationship to function. Despite their reliance on crude analytic tools and inhibitors, early studies showed that platelets must produce ATP to maintain functionality.1 Platelet activation leads to a significant increase in glucose uptake, glycolysis, and lactate production,2–5 suggesting that, in addition to oxidative phosphorylation, glycolysis is a significant producer of ATP to fuel platelet function. Electron microscopy studies clearly show that platelets contain glycogen granules, which could serve as a reservoir for energy production. Glucose can also be imported from the outside through 3 classes of facilitative transporters (glucose transporters [GLUTs], sodium GLUTs, and sugars will eventually be exported transporters).6,7 These proteins facilitate the transmembrane movement of glucose down a concentration gradient of either glucose or sodium.6 Platelets contain at least 2 members of the GLUT family of uniporters, GLUT1 and GLUT3.8,9 Although GLUT1 may account for basal uptake of glucose in resting cells, GLUT3 has drawn attention because it is mobilized from α-granules to the plasma membrane on platelet activation (Figure 1).4,5 In this issue, Fidler et al9 used a platelet-specific knockout of GLUT3 to probe its role and, thus, the roles of regulated glucose uptake, in platelet function. Figure 1. Mobilization of glucose transporters (GLUT3) in activated platelets. Although GLUT1 resides on the plasma membrane (PM), GLUT3 is present mainly in the α-granules of resting platelets and is mobilized to the PM on activation. There, GLUT3 promotes …
HERA: A dynamic web application for visualizing community exposure to flood hazards based on storm and sea level rise scenarios

Abstract The Hazard Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA) dynamic web application was created to provide a platform that makes research on community exposure to coastal-flooding hazards influenced by sea level rise accessible to planners, decision makers, and the public in a manner that is both easy to use and easily accessible. HERA allows users to (a) choose flood-hazard scenarios based on sea level rise and storm assumptions, (b) appreciate the modeling uncertainty behind a chosen hazard zone, (c) select one or several communities to examine exposure, (d) select the category of population or societal asset, and (e) choose how to look at results. The application is designed to highlight comparisons between (a) varying levels of sea level rise and coastal storms, (b) communities, (c) societal asset categories, and (d) spatial scales. Through a combination of spatial and graphical visualizations, HERA aims to help individuals and organizations to craft more informed mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate-driven coastal hazards. This paper summarizes the technologies used to maximize the user experience, in terms of interface design, visualization approaches, and data processing.
Distal femoral flexion deformity from growth disturbance treated with a two-level osteotomy and internal lengthening nail

Salter Harris fractures of the distal femur can lead to growth disturbance with resulting leg length inequality and knee deformity. We have looked at a case series (3) of patients who presented with a distal femur flexion malunion and shortening treated with a distal femoral osteotomy and plating and a proximal femoral osteotomy with a magnetic internal lengthening nail. Does a two-level osteotomy and internal fixation approach provide a reliable result both radiographically and functionally? The average knee extension loss was 12°, LLD 47 mm, PDFA 65°, MAD 2 mm. The patients were treated with an acute, posterior, opening wedge osteotomy of the distal femur stabilized with a lateral plate and screws and grafted with cancellous chips and putty. A second osteotomy was made proximally in the femur percutaneously, and the internal lengthening nail was inserted. Lengthening was done at approximately 1 mm/day. The average extension gain was 12°; amount of lengthening at the proximal site was 40 mm, LLD was 3 mm. The average PDFA was 81°, and MAD 3 mm. There were no complications. Functional results were excellent. Bone healing index was 24 days/cm. The average distance from the distal osteotomy to the joint line was 57 mm. The technique of two-level femur osteotomy stabilized with a plate and lengthening nail yielded excellent results with acceptable correction of deformity, full knee extension, and improved function. There were no complications including implant failure, infection, need for blood transfusion, knee stiffness, nonunion, compartment syndrome, or malunion.
A Displacement Reconstruction Strategy for Long, Slender Structures from Limited Strain Measurements and Its Application to Underground Pipeline Monitoring

In this paper, we discuss about reconstructing the global deformed shape of slender structures such as pipelines, tethers, or cables from a limited set of scalar surface strain measurements. We present a comprehensive approach that captures the effect of curvature, shear, torsion, and axial deformation. Our primary focus is to demonstrate the applicability of the approach to aid in damage detection algorithms. This theory utilizes Cosserat rod theory and exploit localized linearization approach that helps to obtain local basis function set for the displacement solution in director frame. The uniaxial strain vector and the surface strain for the Cosserat beam incorporating the above-mentioned effects are obtained and used to develop the reverse algorithm to reconstruct global shape of the structure. Error analysis due to noise in measured strain values is performed and results are discussed.
Characterizing lentic fish assemblages and community-environment relationships: An evaluation of natural lakes and reservoirs in Iowa, USA

Characterizing fish assemblages in lentic ecosystems is difficult due to high habitat heterogeneity and the diversity of methods available to sample fish. Therefore, multiple sampling methods are almost always necessary for gaining reliable estimates of species richness and for sampling different sizes of a particular species. However, most research on the use of multiple sampling methods has targeted recreationally-important species. As such, little information is available regarding the influence of multiple methods and timing (i.e., temporal variation) on characterization of lentic fish assemblages. We sampled six lakes and impoundments seasonally (i.e., spring, summer, fall) with beach seines, benthic trawls, boat electrofishing (i.e., day and night), modified fyke nets, mini-fyke nets, and gill nets (fall only) to evaluate the combined influence of sampling methods and timing on the number of species and individuals sampled. Probabilities of detection for species indicated strong selectivities and seasonal trends. Additionally, patterns in seasonal probabilities of detection and species 1 Iowa State University, Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, 339 Science II, Ames, IA 50010, USA. 2 U.S. Geological Survey, Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844, USA.
Endovascular Management of Traumatic Aortic Disruption

Endovascular management of traumatic thoracic aortic disruption mostly from motor vehicle accidents (Fig. 39.1) offers a minimal invasive approach to managing critically ill patients while avoiding aortic cross-clamping and extracorporeal circulation.1 Younger patients are particularly challenging because their thoracic aorta is often small, narrow with tighter radius angle of the thoracic arch. Other critical issues include small iliac vessels which may be problematic for delivery of the endograft. The smallest thoracic endograft currently available commercially in the United States is the 26 mm diameter Gore TAG device. Attempts to place this device in aorta 23 mm in diameter can create a situation of significant oversizing which have been associated with numerous instances of device collapse.2
Chapter 88 – Hematological Malignancy

Publisher Summary Hematopoiesis is the process that leads to the regulated formation of the highly specialized circulating blood cells from pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow. This chapter focuses on the interaction of 1,25(OH)2D3 with the normal and the malignant hematopoietic system, especially examining the ability of this secosteroid to induce differentiation and inhibit proliferation of normal and leukemic myeloid cells. It also discusses the development and testing in vitro and in vivo of vitamin D analogs. The secosteroid hormone 1,25(OH)2D3 has a role in normal hematopoiesis, enhancing the activity of monocyte–macrophage differentiation. It also has anti-proliferative and pro-differentiation effects against various myeloid leukemia cell lines by both genomic and nongenomic pathways. Nevertheless, hematopoiesis in vitamin D3 receptor deletional mice is fairly normal, suggesting the vitamin D3 pathway has an adjunctive role in blood formation in mammals. Although these compounds, used either alone or combined with other agents, have preclinical activity, their efficacy in clinical trials has thus far appeared to be limited.
Billard in Polygonen

Wir wollen an das Thema des letzten Kapitels anknupfen und nun periodische Billardbahnen in Polygonen untersuchen. Dazu betrachten wir zuerst ein spitzwinkliges Dreieck. Die Bahn aus der folgenden elementaren geometrischen Konstruktion nennt man Fagnano-Billardbahn.
Learning From the Slips of Others: Neural Correlates of Trust in Automated Agents.

With the rise of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI), there is a need to design new methods to monitor AI in a transparent, human-aware manner. Decades of research have demonstrated that people, who are not aware of the exact performance levels of automated algorithms, often experience a mismatch in expectations. Consequently, they will often provide either too little or too much trust in an algorithm. Detecting such a mismatch in expectations, or trust calibration, remains a fundamental challenge in research investigating the use of automation. Due to the context-dependent nature of trust, universal measures of trust have not been established. Trust is a difficult construct to investigate because even the act of reflecting on how much a person trusts a certain agent, can change the perception of that agent. We hypothesized that electroencephalograms (EEG) would be able to provide such a universal index of trust without the need of self-report. In this work, EEGs were recorded for 21 participants (mean age = 22.1; 13 females) while they observed a series of algorithms perform a modified version of a flanker task. Each algorithm’s degree of credibility and reliability were manipulated. We hypothesized that neural markers of action monitoring, such as the observational error-related negativity (oERN) and observational error positivity (oPe), are potential candidates for monitoring computer algorithm performance. Our findings demonstrate that (1) it is possible to reliably elicit both the oERN and oPe while participants monitored these computer algorithms, (2) the oPe, as opposed to the oERN, significantly distinguished between high and low reliability algorithms and that 3) the oPe significantly correlated with subjective measures of trust. This work provides the first evidence for the utility of neural correlates of error monitoring for examining trust in computer algorithms.
Adsorption of nonionic/anionic surfactant mixtures and nonionic surfactants and its effect on mineral dispersion and wettability

Adsorption of nonionic/anionic surfactant mixtures on kaolinite has been studied, with Synergistic interaction between these surfactants was found to cause adsorption of the nonionic surfactant with its hydrophilic chains protruding into the bulk, leading to substantial changes in wettability and dispersion characteristics of kaolinite. Similarly, hydrophobicity changes are observed also for silica particles upon adsorption of nonionic ethoxylated alcohols owing to possible changes in the orientation of the adsorbed surfactant molecules at the interface.
In-Depth Analysis on Microarchitectures of Modern Heterogeneous CPU-FPGA Platforms

Conventional homogeneous multicore processors are not able to provide the continued performance and energy improvement that we have expected from past endeavors. Heterogeneous architectures that feature specialized hardware accelerators are widely considered a promising paradigm for resolving this issue. Among different heterogeneous devices, FPGAs that can be reconfigured to accelerate a broad class of applications with orders-of-magnitude performance/watt gains, are attracting increased attention from both academia and industry. As a consequence, a variety of CPU-FPGA acceleration platforms with diversified microarchitectural features have been supplied by industry vendors. Such diversity, however, poses a serious challenge to application developers in selecting the appropriate platform for a specific application or application domain.This article aims to address this challenge by determining which microarchitectural characteristics affect performance, and in what ways. Specifically, we conduct a quantitative comparison and an in-depth analysis on five state-of-the-art CPU-FPGA acceleration platforms: (1) the Alpha Data board and (2) the Amazon F1 instance that represent the traditional PCIe-based platform with private device memory; (3) the IBM CAPI that represents the PCIe-based system with coherent shared memory; (4) the first generation of the Intel Xeon+FPGA Accelerator Platform that represents the QPI-based system with coherent shared memory; and (5) the second generation of the Intel Xeon+FPGA Accelerator Platform that represents a hybrid PCIe-based (non-coherent) and QPI-based (coherent) system with shared memory. Based on the analysis of their CPU-FPGA communication latency and bandwidth characteristics, we provide a series of insights for both application developers and platform designers. Furthermore, we conduct two case studies to demonstrate how these insights can be leveraged to optimize accelerator designs. The microbenchmarks used for evaluation have been released for public use.
A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation

Among the institutions that link criminal justice and inequality in the United States, commercial bail remains one of the most important yet least understood. Each year, the bail industry extracts millions of dollars from lower-income Americans, disproportionately draining resources from poor communities of color. We draw on ethnographic research to explore how the bail system operates as a predatory social process, arguing that gender interacts with class and race to structure resource extraction in this field. Poor women of color are especially subject to bail predation because they are seen within the larger social organization of care as bearing primary responsibility for defendants. Gendered care work and emotional labor are thus central to the field’s logic of practice and to bail industry profits.
Study of the Beam Divergence in Diamond Field Emitter Array Cathodes

We present the results of beam divergence studies for the diamond field emitter array (DFEA) cathodes producing high-current-density electron beams. At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), we fabricate and test the micrometer-scale diamond pyramids with nanometer-scale sharp tips for use as an electron beam source for a compact dielectric laser accelerator. For the beam divergence measurements, we assembled a test stand consisting of a DFEA cathode, a small mesh aperture anode, and a screen representing of a sapphire disk coated with ZnO (AZO) for beam visualization. A negative voltage of about 40 keV is applied to the cathode, and the mesh and the screen are kept at ground. We record the spot size corresponding to the size of the electron beam on the AZO screen past the mesh anode at different mesh to screen distances. We also conduct the beam dynamics simulations with General particle Tracer (GPT). In this paper, we present the results of the experimental measurements and GPT simulations, along with calculations of the beam's divergence.
Measuring technological breadth and depth of patent documents using Rao’s Quadratic Entropy

ABSTRACTIn this article we propose indices for technological breadth and depth of patent documents. We conceptually compare and contrast several indices that have been used in the existing literatu...
Discovery and Characterization of Non-coding RNA Through Modern Genomics

Abstract The genome sequencing revealed that there are limited numbers of protein-coding genes in a genome and that the total size of protein-coding sequences is a small portion of the genome. Coding transcripts, i.e. mRNAs, have the capability to codify proteins but are a small portion. Besides mRNAs, other transcripts do not encode for proteins and hence called non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) (Cheng et al., 2005; Eddy, 2001; Shahrouki and Larsson, 2012; Todd and Karbstein, 2007). The existing evidence demonstrated that ncRNAs present in all organisms and have a wide range of functions, and hence, are important in biological and biomedical research. Currently, most of these ncRNAs have yet to be biochemically characterized, but the ncRNA field has received great attention in recent years from the general research community, and it shows that ncRNAs have a much richer functional spectrum than anticipated (Amaral et al., 2008; Brosius, 2005; Chadwick and Scott, 2013; Palazzo and Lee, 2015). The progress has been reviewed (Batista and Chang, 2013; Esteller, 2011; Rinn and Chang, 2012; Yang et al., 2014). The rapid advance in genomics technologies and bioinformatics approaches accelerated the ncRNA researches. Especially, in food science, it deserves to discover and characterize ncRNAs in livestock and various studies using modern genomics and bioinformatics methods. In this chapter, methods, software tools, and related databases for discovery and characterization of non-coding RNA, including small RNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs, were reviewed.
Error in Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Error

To err is to wander. Aeneas’s errores on his way from Troy to Rome take him to Carthage, where his meeting, loving, and abandoning of Dido bring together the ideas of geographical and moral strayin...
Health outcomes associated with improvement in mouth breathing in children with OSA

Children with mouth breathing (MB) report poor quality of life. It is unknown whether improvement in MB is associated with improvement in behavior or quality of life. We hypothesized that in children with MB and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), improvement in MB is associated with improvement in behavior and quality of life, independent of improvement in OSA. This is a retrospective post hoc analysis utilizing Childhood Adenotonsillectomy Trial (CHAT) dataset, a multicenter controlled study evaluating outcomes in children with OSA randomized into early adenotonsillectomy or watchful waiting. Children with OSA and MB at baseline (determined by reporting 2 or greater to OSA-18 questionnaire on mouth breathing) were divided into 2 groups: improved mouth breathing (IMB, determined by a lower score compared to baseline at follow up) and persistent mouth breathing (PMB, determined by an unchanged or higher score). Baseline characteristics, behavior (Conners GI score), sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale), and quality of life (PedsQL) were compared between the groups using appropriate statistical tests. ANCOVA models were used to analyze change in outcomes, adjusting for treatment arm and change in AHI. Of 273 children with OSA and MB at baseline, IMB (N = 195) had significantly improved score between visits for Conner’s GI Total T score, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and PedsQL compared to PMB (N = 78), after adjusting for treatment arm and change in AHI. Our study suggests an interesting association between mouth breathing and quality of life, independent of polysomnographic evidence. Future studies should explore the effect of mouth breathing on quality of life, in absence of OSA.
Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy: Natural History and Current Management

Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a common disorder in the second half of pregnancy characterized by pruritus and elevated serum bile acids (BAs) with spontaneous resolution after delivery. ICP carries a risk of adverse effects on the fetus which correlates with the degree of BA elevation. ICP occurs in genetically susceptible women as the reproductive hormones increase during pregnancy. Ursodeoxycholic acid is still considered the first-line treatment for ICP though it is of unproven benefit in preventing adverse effects on the fetus. Fetal complications, such as stillbirth, increase with gestational age, so preterm delivery is generally performed in cases of severe ICP, defined as BA levels above 40 μmol/L. ICP may recur in future pregnancies and is associated with an increased risk for future hepatobiliary, immune mediated, and cardiovascular diseases. Children born of mothers with ICP have normal development but may have a risk for subsequent metabolic disease.
Abstract TP253: Ongoing Quality Improvement for Acute Ischemic Stroke at Comprehensive Stroke Center

Background: Ongoing quality improvement is essential for better outcomes and healthcare cost control. The aim of this study is to examine the progressive quality benchmarks for acute ischemic strok...
Distinguishing chemically induced NADPH- and NADH-related metabolic responses using phasor analysis of UV-excited autofluorescence

NADPH and NADH are well known for their role in antioxidant defense and energy metabolism, respectively, however distinguishing their cellular autofluorescence signals is a challenge due to their nearly identical optical properties. Recent studies applying spectral phasor analysis to autofluorescence emission during chemically induced metabolic responses showed that two-component spectral behavior, i.e., spectral change acting as a superposition of two spectra, depended on whether one or multiple metabolic pathways were affected. Here, we use this property of spectral behavior to show that metabolic responses primarily involving NADPH or NADH can be distinguished. We start by observing that the cyanide-induced response at micro- and millimolar concentrations does not follow mutual two-component spectral behavior, suggesting their response mechanisms differ. While respiratory inhibition at millimolar cyanide concentration is well known and associated with the NADH pool, we find the autofluorescence response at micromolar cyanide concentration exhibits two-component spectral behavior with NADPH-linked EGCG- and peroxide-induced responses, suggesting an association with the NADPH pool. What emerges is a spectral phasor map useful for distinguishing cellular autofluorescence responses related to oxidative stress versus cellular respiration.
GnRH pulse frequency and irregularity play a role in male aging

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) has a role in hypothalamic control of aging, but the underlying patterns and relationship with downstream reproductive hormones are still unclear. Here we report that hypothalamic GnRH pulse frequency and irregularity increase before GnRH pulse amplitude slowly decreases during aging. GnRH is inhibited by nuclear factor (NF)-κB, and GnRH pulses were controlled by oscillations in the transcriptional activity of NF-κB. Exposure to testosterone under pro-inflammatory conditions stimulated both NF-κB oscillations and GnRH pulses. While castration of middle-aged mice induced short-term anti-aging effects, preventing elevation of luteinizing hormone (LH) levels after castration led to long-term anti-aging effects and lifespan extension, indicating that high-frequency GnRH pulses and high-magnitude LH levels coordinately mediate aging. Reprogramming the endogenous GnRH pulses of middle-aged male mice via an optogenetic approach revealed that increasing GnRH pulses frequency causes LH excess and aging acceleration, while lowering the frequency of and stabilizing GnRH pulses can slow down aging. In conclusion, GnRH pulses are important for aging in male mice. The hypothalamus controls systemic aging via involving the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). The authors show that aging is preceded by irregularity and acceleration of GnRH pulses, while lowering GnRH pulse frequency by castration or optogenetically slows aging and promotes longevity.
Commercial Companies in Party Networks: Digital Advertising Firms in US Elections from 2006-2016

Previous research has found that digital advertising companies such as Facebook and Google function similarly to political consultants, influencing the messaging choices of political clients. This ...
A PERTURBATION ANALYSIS OF THE WAVE MAKING OF A SHIP, WITH AN INTERPRETATION OF GUILLOTON'S METHOD

A thin-ship perturbation analysis, suggested by Guilloton's basic ideas, is presented. The analysis may be regarded as an application of Lighthill's method of strained coordinates to a regular perturbation problem. An inconsistant second-order approximation in which the Laplace equation is satisfied to first order, and the boundary conditions both at the free surface and on the ship hull are satisfied to second order, is derived. When sinkage and trim, incorporated into the present analysis, are ignored, this approximate solution is shown to be essentially equivalent to the method of Guilloton.
Recording properties of patterned Co/sub 70/Pt/sub 18/Cr/sub 12/ perpendicular media

Summary form only given. Patterning magnetic media with pre-defined, single-domain magnetic bits is one possible candidate for extending magnetic storage densities beyond the limit set by thermal decay for continuous media. In order to study the writing and read-back characteristics of high density patterned media, prototype nanometer-scale magnetic structures were made by patterning Co/sub 70/Cr/sub 18/Pt/sub 12/ perpendicular medium using a focused ion beam (FIB) of Ga/sup +/. The islands have lateral size of 80 nm and have a 103 nm along track period. For comparison, we have also used the FIB to prepare isolated narrow strips of continuous media. The recording properties of the patterned and unpatterned media were evaluated using a static write/read tester.
Mechanism and Stereochemistry of Transamination

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the mechanism and stereochemistry of transamination. Transamination is the most common reactivity dependent on pyridoxal phosphate. This chapter illustrates the key steps of transamination. The sequence is supported by a wealth of data, most recently by quantitative conversion of glutamic aspartic transaminase (GAT) from its aldehyde to amino forms. For transaminases to show high turnover numbers, they must achieve a remarkable balance between the relative rates of these steps. Both Cα–H and Cp–H bond breaking must be rapid, and rates of reprotonation of the anion at Cα and Cp must be comparable. Both the ketimine and aldimine must be susceptible to rapid hydrolysis. This is in marked contrast to other systems. In the α‑decarboxylases and aldolases, addition of the proton after loss of CO2 or Cβ must always be on Cα. In this chapter, an overview is given of the mechanistic unknowns in transamination. Stereospecificity at the cofactor 4′ carbon (Cp) is explained. The absolute symmetry of the labile cofactor proton is discussed. The mechanism of the prototropic shift is also described.
On the effectiveness of flexible querying heuristics for XML data

The ability to perform effective XML data retrieval in the absence of schema knowledge has recently received considerable attention. The majority of relevant proposals employs heuristics that identify groups of meaningfully related nodes using information extracted from the input data. These heuristics are employed to effectively prune the search space of all possible node combinations and their popularity is evident by the large number of such heuristics and the systems that use them. However, a comprehensive study detailing the relative merits of these heuristics has not been performed thus far. One of the challenges in performing this study is the fact that these techniques have been proposed within different and not directly comparable contexts. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap. In particular, we first abstract the common selection problem that is tackled by the relatedness heuristics and show how each heuristic addresses this problem. We then identify data categories where the assumptions made by each heuristic are valid and draw insights on their possible effectiveness. Our findings can help systems implementors understand the strengths and weaknesses of each heuristic and provide simple guidelines for the applicability of each one.
Educated Guessing: Getting Researchers and Research Knowledge into Policy Innovation

The translation of research evidence into information that lawmakers will use is a high public health priority. Research focused on evidence translation, and a growing set of credible synthesis tools, aim to promote evidence-based (or at least evidence-informed) public policies. For all the value of these efforts, a practical paradox confronts exponents of evidence-based public health law: if a legal intervention is truly innovative, there will not yet be direct evidence of its impact. Yet direct evidence from policy evaluations hardly exhausts the supply of research knowledge relevant to a policy decision, even under conditions of novelty and uncertainty. In this paper, we discuss how evidence about the problem lawmakers are addressing, combined with widely-used analytic tools and a greater appreciation of the mechanisms of legal effect, can bring existing evidence into the crafting of even very innovative legal interventions for newly perceived problems. Our approach is a mix of the descriptive and the prescriptive. While scientific and critical in spirit, the reasoning process we describe is substantially intuitive and heuristic in practice, and reflects what law makers and advocates do every day. Our prescription consists in making the tacit explicit, and the spontaneous systematic. The implications of our inquiry are modest but useful. We highlight the fact that evidence can have a decisive impact in policy, even at the problem-definition stage. We make the less-often-recognized point that mechanisms of legal intervention have an informative evidence base even when specific uses of those mechanisms do not. And we show how simple heuristic diagrams and matrices can help organize this evidence and promote more systematic thinking even in the innovation stage of policy-making. The result is a clearer picture of the role that researchers and research can play in policy innovation, and a set of tools that policy makers can use to innovate better.
Leptin levels recover normally in healthy older adults after acute diet-induced weight loss.

Objectives: Involuntary weight loss affects 20% of community dwelling older adults. The underlying mechanism for this disorder is unknown. Objective is to determine if failure of older persons to regain weight is associated with elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine and leptin levels.Design: Prospective diet intervention study.Setting: University of Washington Medical Center from 2001–2005.Participants: Twenty-one younger (18–35 years old) and nineteen older (≥ 70 years old) men and women.Intervention: Each subject was placed for two weeks on a weight-maintaining diet, followed in sequence by 2 weeks of 30% caloric restriction, then 4 weeks of ad libitum food intake.Measurements: Plasma leptin levels, fasting serum pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, and peripheral blood mononuclear cell cytokine levels were measured.Results: Leptin levels in the two cohorts decreased after caloric restriction and increased after ad-libitum food consumption resumed. Plasma TNF levels were higher in older subjects compared to younger adults. However, there was no association between changes in TNF levels and changes in AUC leptin.Conclusion: Leptin levels in healthy older individuals responded appropriately in a compensatory manner to changes in body weight. These data do not support a cytokine dependent elevation in leptin levels as being responsible for the failure of older adults to regain weight.
The exact solution of an elimination problem in kinetic theory: II. General pairwise interparticle potentials

Abstract A class of initial value problems is considered where a specified particle has a given distribution ƒ(1)(z1;0) and the rest are in equilibrium at t=0. A formally exact expansion is obtained for a certain n-particle reduced distribution-function ƒ(1)(z1, z2, …, zn;t) in terms of the one-particle reduced distribution-function ƒ(1)(z1;t) for the specified particle at time t. We start with separate expansions for these functions in terms of ƒ(1)(z1; 0) and use direct inversion and combinatorial procedures to obtain a convenient representation of the general term in the resulting expansion. Dynamic characterization and convergence of the integral expression for this term are examined. Applications to the calculation of short-time behaviour for systems with potentials possibly supporting bound states are discussed.
Adaptive Robust Regression by Using a Nonlinear Regression Program

Robust regression procedures have considerable attention in mathematical statistics literature. They, however, have not received nearly as much attention by practitioners performing data analysis. A contributing factor to this may be the lack of availability of these procedures in commonly used statistical software. In this paper we propose algorithms for obtaining parameter estimates and their asymptotic standard errors when fitting regression models to data assuming normal/independent errors. The algorithms proposed can be implemented in the commonly available nonlinear regression programs. We review a nubmer of previously proposed algorithms. As we discuss, these require special code and are difficult to implement in a nonlinear regression program. Methods of implementing the proposed algorithms in SAS-NLIN is discussed. Specifically, the two applications of regeression with the t and the slash family errors are discussed in detail. SAS NLIN and S-plus instructions are given for these two examples. Minor modification of these instructions can solve other problems at hand.
Direct detection of Lyme disease by digital microscopy

Studies were performed to test the hypothesis that an early direct diagnostic test for Lyme disease can be developed. This test involves automatic microscopic scanning of a relatively large volume of body fluids for the sparsely occurring Lyme disease causing agent, the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Preliminary results indicate that segmentation, measurement, and classification techniques can be used to differentiate spirochetes from other materials in microscope images of blood smears stained with a fluorescent dye. >
Wave functions for the Schwarzschild black hole interior

Using the Hamiltonian constraint derived by Ashtekar and Bojowald, we look for preclassical wave functions in the Schwarzschild interior. In particular, when solving this difference equation by separation of variables, an inequality is obtained relating the Immirzi parameter $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ to the quantum ambiguity $\ensuremath{\delta}$ appearing in the model. This bound is violated when we use a natural value for $\ensuremath{\delta}$ based on loop quantum gravity together with a recent proposal for $\ensuremath{\gamma}$. We also present numerical solutions of the constraint.
A comparative study of evaporative water loss and epidermal permeability in an arboreal snake, Opheodrys aestivus, and a semi-aquatic snake, Nerodia rhombifera

Abstract 1. 1. Evaporative water loss was compared in two snake species, the arboreal Opheodrys aestivus and the semi-aquatic Nerodia rhombifera. 2. 2. Rates of water loss were significantly higher (P X mg H 2 O/cm 2 / hr = 0.666 ) than in O. aestivus ( X mg H 2 O/cm 2 / hr = 0.209 ). 3. 3. Shed epidermis of N. rhombifera was significantly (P X mg H 2 O/cm 2 / hr = 0.764 ) than that of O. aestivus ( X mg H 2 O/cm 2 /hr = 0.476 ). 4. 4. Following lipid extraction the permeability of shed epidermis increased in both species with the greater increase occurring in O. aestivus. 5. 5. The efficacy of epidermal lipids in reducing cutaneous water loss may be an important adaptation to an arboreal environment in O. aestivus.
Leadership as a management competency in rural health organisations.

The management competency of leadership was measured on 34 middle and seniorhealth managers from the Murray Health Service, using Situational LeadershipQuestionnaires. Using self-analysis, the managers found their leadership behavioursto be entrenched, inflexible and less effective than they might otherwise be. Thisconclusion was supported by results of the questionnaires completed on each managerby their followers. In almost half of the cases, followers had a different perception oftheir manager?s leadership style than did the manager. This paper discusses thesefindings in the context of management assessment centres and the Charter for Changenow facing all health organisations.
Jolliet: The Project

The paper overviews the management, design, fabrication and installation of the Jolliet Project and briefly summarises the companion Marguette Project. This work includes the Tension Leg Well Platform (TLWP), the Central Production Platform (CPP), 54 miles of pipeline and the GC52A drilling platform. The TLWP is the first ever tension leg well platform and is the world's deepest offshore production platform. The project took four years to design, fabricate and install. The paper discusses the field history, concept development, the scope of the project and its management, design and construction.
An Empirical Performance Measurement of Microsoft's Search Engine and its Comparison with Other Major Search Engines

This article reports the results of a project attempting to assess the performance of the new Microsoft search engine (MSE) from various perspectives. Specifically, the study collects statistics, such as the average user response time, average process time for a query reported by MSE itself, the number of pages relevant to a query, and comparisons with its competitors. The project also studies the quality of search results generated by MSE and other search engines using RankPower as the metric. We found MSE per-forms well in speed and diversity of the query results, while weaker in other statistics, compared to some other leading search engines. The contribution of this article is to use different measures to assess and compare the quality of different search engines, especially MSE.
M3: high-performance memory management from off-the-shelf components

Real-world garbage collectors in managed languages are complex. We investigate whether this complexity is really necessary and show that by having a different (but wider) interface between the collector and the developer, we can achieve high performance with off-the-shelf components for real applications. We propose to assemble a memory manager out of multiple, simple collection strategies and to expose the choice of where to use those strategies in the program to the developer. We describe and evaluate an instantiation of our design for C. Our prototype allows developers to choose on a per-type basis whether data should be reference counted or reclaimed by a tracing collector. While neither strategy is optimised, our empirical data shows that we can achieve performance that is competitive with hand-tuned C code for real-world applications.
Hypotonic shocks activate rat TRPV4 in yeast in the absence of polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Transient-receptor-potential channels (TRPs) underlie the sensing of chemicals, heat, and mechanical force. We expressed the rat TRPV1 and TRPV4 subtypes in yeast and monitored their activities in vivo as Ca2+ rise using transgenic aequorin. Heat and capsaicin activate TRPV1 but not TRPV4 in yeast. Hypotonic shocks activate TRPV4 but not TRPV1. Osmotic swelling is modeled to activate enzyme(s), producing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to open TRPV4 in mammalian cells. This model relegates mechanosensitivity to the enzyme and not the channel. Yeast has only a single Δ9 fatty-acid monodesaturase and cannot make PUFAs suggesting an alternative mechanism for TRPV4 activation. We discuss possible explanations of this difference.
Point defect concentrations and hardening in binary B2 intermetallics

Point defect hardening in binary B2 intermetallic compounds with the anti-structure defect structure (FeCo and AuZn) and the triple defect structure (NiAl, FeAl, and CoAl) was investigated. Thermodynamic modeling combined with experimental measurements of lattice parameters and bulk densities were used to establish point defect concentrations as functions of composition and temperature. Microhardness measurements were made on samples of varying compositions and quenching temperatures. Solution hardening rates of vacancies were found to be significantly larger than those of anti-site defects. It was possible to relate the hardening rates of anti-site defects to the magnitude of the lattice dilation. This suggests that the elastic size effect was the primary hardening mechanism. No such correlation was found for vacancies.
The prevalence of night eating syndrome and binge eating disorder among overweight and obese individuals with serious mental illness

The prevalence of night eating syndrome (NES) and binge eating disorder (BED) was assessed among overweight and obese, weight-loss-seeking individuals with serious mental illness (SMI). Sixty-eight consecutive overweight (BMI > or = 25 kg/m(2)) and obese (BMI > or = 30 kg/m(2)) individuals with SMI (mean age = 43.9 years; mean BMI = 37.2 kg/(2); 67.6% Caucasian, 60.3% female) who were enrolled in a group behavioral weight loss treatment program were assessed at baseline for NES and BED with clinician-administered diagnostic interviews. Using conservative criteria, 25.0% met criteria for NES, 5.9% met criteria for BED, and only one participant met criteria for both NES and BED. This is the first study to find that obese individuals with SMI, compared with previously studied populations, are at significantly greater risk for NES, but are not at greater risk for BED. Stress, sleep, and medication use might account for the high prevalence of NES found in this population.
Ethnicity and second-line antihypertensive medication response in the ASCOT Trial.

Hypertension, defined as systolic blood pressure (SBP) greater than 140 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) greater than 90 mm Hg, remains a significant problem that results in increased risk of cardiovascular disease [1]. Despite heightened recognition of this problem, less than 40% of patients are at their goal blood pressure (BP) [2]. There are multiple pharmacologic treatments for hypertension, and it has been known for some time that a patient’s likelihood to respond to a particular treatment may depend on that patient’s ethnic background [3]. This information has been used to guide initial monotherapy in different racial groups in order to provide optimal treatment, but there is little information regarding combination therapies across different ethnicities. Many patients require multiple drugs to achieve BP less than 140/90, and some guidelines suggest beginning treatment with a combination of two drugs if the initial BP is more than 20/10 points above goal [4]. The ASCOT (Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial) study evaluated BP reduction in response to monotherapy as well as specific combinations of BP drugs in three different ethnic groups (European origin, African origin, and those from the Indian subcontinent) to evaluate whether a patient’s ethnicity plays a role in the outcomes of initial or combination BP therapy.
Catalysis of the cycloaddition of 2-phenylallylmagnesium phenoxide to trans-stilbene by macrocyclic complexing agents and hexamethylphosphoramide

Abstract 2-Phenylallylmagnesium phenoxide and trans-stilbene in tetrahydrofuran do not react in 96 h at 25° C, but in the presence of one equivalent of [2.1.1]cryptate or two equivalents of hexamethylphosphoramide (HMPA) they are completely consumed in HMPA > dimethyldiaza-15-crown-5 ≈ 15-crown-5 > dimethyldiaza-18-crown-6 > tetramethylcyclam > 12-crown-4. 18-Crown-6 and tetramethylethylenediamine are catalytically inactive.
In situ measurement of stratospheric nitric oxide using a balloon-borne tunable diode laser spectrometer

The stratospheric mixing ratio of nitric oxide at an altitude of 36 km has been measured using a balloon-borne tunable diode laser (TDL) instrument operating in the 5.2-micron wavelength region. Currently the instrument operates with two TDLs, and the capability exists to measure four stratospheric species simultaneously: NO, NO2, O3, and H2O. During the NO measurements reported here, the second TDL operating near 6.2 microns was used to monitor water vapor concentration in the vicinity of the gondola by observing the 1889.57 per cm line absorption in the reference channel path length (1 m).
Visually evoked oscillations of membrane potential in cells of cat visual cortex

In response to visual stimulation, cells of the cat visual cortex fire rhythmically at frequencies between 30 and 60 hertz. This rhythmic firing can be synchronized among cells in widespread areas of the visual cortex. The visual stimulus conditions under which this process occurs suggest that the synchronization may contribute to the integration of information across broadly displaced parts of the visual field. An intricate mechanism must control the regularity of firing and its synchronization. In vivo whole-cell patch recordings from cells in area 17 have now shown that robust oscillations of membrane potential underlie the regularity of firing seen extracellularly. In the cells studied, the characteristics of the oscillations of membrane potential suggest that such oscillations are produced by rhythmic activity in synaptic inputs. These rhythmic synaptic inputs form the most likely mechanism for the synchronization of activity in neighboring cortical cells.
Transposition of volumetric information derived from computed tomography scanning into stereotactic space

A method for translation of a tumor volume defined by computed tomography (CT) into stereotactic space using a CT-comparible stereotactic headholder, localizing system, arc--quadrant stereotactic instrument, and operating room computer system is described. Clinical applications, including computer-assisted stereotactic laser resection of deep-seated neoplasms of the central nervous system and simulation of stereotactically implanted radionuclide sources, are discussed.
Food selection during recovery from protein restriction in lactation.

Abstract Lactating rats were fed a 12% or 25% casein diet. After the pups were weaned on Day 21, dams were given ad lib access to three food cups containing protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Both groups were hyperphagic for three to four weeks. Previously, protein-restricted rats consumed more protein than controls during Weeks 2 and 3, but protein intake returned to control levels as body weight recovered.