cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Hydrology and history: land use changes and ecological responses in an urban wetland

The impacts of changing land use on hydrology and dominant plant species from 1850–1990 were investigated in a palustrine wetland in southern Wisconsin, USA. Aerial photographs, historic maps and water levels of the area were used to determine changes in land use, wetland vegetation, and groundwater and surface flows over time. Piezometers and water table wells were monitored weekly for two years. Vegetation was quantified in four one-square meter quadrats at each water level measurement site. Linear regression models and multivariate ordinations were used to relate wetland plant species to hydrologic, chemical and spatial variables. The current hydrologic budget of the wetland was dominated by precipitation and evapotranspiration, although overland flow into the wetland from the subwatershed has increased twenty-fold since 1850. Water level stabilization in the adjacent Yahara River, creek channelization, and groundwater pumping have decreased inputs of groundwater and spring-fed surface water, and increased retention of precipitation. Typha spp. and Phalaris arundinacea L. have increased in the wetland, while Carex spp. have decreased. Phalaris arundinacea was found most often in the driest sites, and the sites with the greatest range of water levels. Typha spp. dominated in several hydrologic settings, indicating that water depth was not the only factor controlling its distribution. The distributions of dominant plant species in the wetland were most closely correlated with site elevation and average water levels, with some weaker correlations with vertical groundwater inflows and specific conductance.
Treatment Planning:The Role of Facial Disproportion

Occasionally, in our zeal to expand the facial skeleton to provide adequate soft tissue support, faces may be made abnormally large, at least compared to normative standards, in both the sagittal and vertical dimensions. Accordingly, the following question must be addressed: Can facial disproportion in the sagittal and/or vertical dimensions be attractive and, if so, under what circumstances? Let us first examine the sagittal dimension.
Conserving corals in Atlantic Canada: a historical perspective

Trawling or dragging was introduced into Atlantic Canadian fisheries in the 1950’s and soon became the dominant method of fishing for groundfish in the region. Since its introduction, fishermen warned about its negative impacts on habitat and the productivity of the fishery. In the last decade considerable research has been conducted on the impacts of bottom tending mobile gear on habitat, including major reviews by large scientific agencies. The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas and the U.S. National Research Council both formulated similar conclusions on how to minimize impacts: 1) reduce fishing effort; 2) close areas; and 3) modify and substitute gear. Following the stock collapses and closures of many fisheries in the early 1990’s the Canadian government took steps to reduce fishing effort. In recent years, partly in response to growing concern about the impacts of dragging, the government has embarked on a program to identify and establish marine protected areas. However, the Canadian government has taken no steps to implement the third recommendation: gear substitution or modification. Public and scientific interest in deep-water corals has been a major factor in advancing efforts to investigate and conserve benthic habitat in Atlantic Canada, including the establishment of three marine protected areas (MPAs). Alongside effort reduction and MPAs, gear measures should be an equal and concurrent component of efforts to conserve benthic biodiversity and restore fisheries as the conservation benefits extend to all areas where fishing occurs.
Resurrection and Reactivation of Acetylcholinesterase and Butyrylcholinesterase

Organophosphorus (OP) nerve agents and pesticides present significant threats to civilian and military populations. OP compounds include the nefarious G and V chemical nerve agents, but more commonly, civilians are exposed to less toxic OP pesticides, resulting in the same negative toxicological effects and thousands of deaths on an annual basis. After decades of research, no new therapeutics have been realized since the mid-1900s. Upon phosphylation of the catalytic serine residue, a process known as inhibition, there is an accumulation of acetylcholine (ACh) in the brain synapses and neuromuscular junctions, leading to a cholinergic crisis and eventually death. Oxime nucleophiles can reactivate select OP-inhibited acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Yet, the fields of reactivation of AChE and butyrylcholinesterase encounter additional challenges as broad-spectrum reactivation of either enzyme is difficult. Additional problems include the ability to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) and to provide therapy in the central nervous system. Yet another complication arises in a competitive reaction, known as aging, whereby OP-inhibited AChE is converted to an inactive form, which until very recently, had been impossible to reverse to an active, functional form. Evaluations of uncharged oximes and other neutral nucleophiles have been made. Non-oxime reactivators, such as aromatic general bases and Mannich bases, have been developed. The issue of aging, which generates an anionic phosphylated serine residue, has been historically recalcitrant to recovery by any therapeutic approach-that is, until earlier this year. Mannich bases not only serve as reactivators of OP-inhibited AChE, but this class of compounds can also recover activity from the aged form of AChE, a process referred to as resurrection. This review covers the modern efforts to address all of these issues and notes the complexities of therapeutic development along these different lines of research.
Collusion Resistant Broadcast and Trace from Positional Witness Encryption

An emerging trend is for researchers to identify cryptography primitives for which feasibility was first established under obfuscation and then move the realization to a different setting. In this work we explore a new such avenue—to move obfuscation-based cryptography to the assumption of (positional) witness encryption. Our goal is to develop techniques and tools, which we will dub “witness encryption friendly” primitives and use these to develop a methodology for building advanced cryptography from positional witness encryption.
Decoy exosomes as a novel biologic reagent to antagonize inflammation

Background: Exosomes are ubiquitous naturally secreted stable nanovesicles that can be engineered to target and deliver novel therapeutics to treat a host of human diseases. Methods: We engineered the surfaces of cell-derived nanovesicles to act as decoys in the treatment of inflammation by antagonizing the major proinflammatory cytokine, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα). Results: Decoy exosomes were generated by displaying the TNFα binding domain of human TNF receptor-1 (hTNFR1) on the outer surface of exosomes using stably transfected HEK293 cells. We developed an efficient method to purify the engineered exosomes from conditioned medium based on sequential centrifugation, ultrafiltration, and precipitation. We characterized decoy exosomes using immune-quantification, nanoparticle tracking analysis, and confocal microscopy to confirm that they retain the correct orientation, size, and shape of naturally produced exosomes. We demonstrated the engineered decoy exosomes specifically antagonize activities of TNFα using an inflammatory reporter cell line. Conclusions: Decoy exosomes produced in human cells serve as a novel biologic reagent for antagonizing inflammatory signaling mediated by TNFα.
On Laborde’s Liberalism

This paper discusses Cecile Laborde’s book, Liberalism’s Religion. First, I pose some questions about how Laborde’s central proposal—disaggregating religion—is meant to solve the two most serious challenges that she argues confront existing liberal egalitarian theories. Second, I respond to some of the objections Laborde presses against my conception of political liberalism. Third, I argue that Laborde is mistaken in adopting accessibility as the appropriate standard for reasons within public justification. Finally, I suggest that Laborde’s view is, in the end, too accommodating to perfectionism in politics. Her view allows laws and public policies to promote particular religions or controversial conceptions of the good life when certain conditions are met, but this, I argue, is inconsistent with the foundational ideals of freedom and equality.
A Review of “A Country Merchant, 1495–1520: Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages”: Dyer, Christopher, Oxford: Oxford University Press 256 pp., $125.00, ISBN 978-0-1992-1424-2 Publication Date: July 2012

Christopher Dyer's biography of John Heritage is not strictly a biography. Because of the usual lack of data on middling individuals in this period, the book necessarily expands into prosopography ...
Relationship of bcr breakpoint to chronic phase duration, survival, and blast crisis lineage in chronic myelogenous leukemia patients presenting in early chronic phase [see comments]

Strong evidence implicates fusion of control elements and 5′ sequences of the bcr gene of chromosome 22 with 3′ sequences of the c-abl gene of chromosome 9 in the pathogenesis of Ph-positive and certain cases of Ph- negative chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Since this fusion gene gives rise to a chimeric tyrosine protein kinase with transforming potential, and since the bcr exon contribution to this chimeric protein is variable, the question has arisen as to whether bcr breakpoint location and bcr exon contribution could influence the clinical course of CML. Prior studies have yielded conflicting results on this point. Here we have looked, in a manner approximating a prospective analysis, at the relation of bcr breakpoint localization to the duration of chronic phase, total survival, and blast crisis phenotype in 81 patients presenting in the chronic phase of CML. We have found no significant differences in chronic phase duration or total survival among patients with breakpoints in the three major subregions of a breakpoint cluster region within the bcr gene. These findings indicate that chronic phase duration and total survival cannot be predicted from bcr breakpoint for CML patients presenting in chronic phase and suggest that unknown oncogenic events determining the onset of blast crisis are the prime determinants of prognosis. Combined analysis of blast crisis cell lineage in our patients and patients presented in a previous study has revealed an overall ratio of myeloid:lymphoid (M:L) crisis of 3.4:1, but a striking predominance of myeloid crisis in patients with breakpoints in subregion 2 (M:L of 9:1), and a lower than expected M:L ratio (1.6:1) among patients with breakpoints in subregion 3 (P for subregion 2 versus 3 = .012; subregions 0,1,2 versus 3 = .012; subregions 0,1,3 versus 2 = .032). The molecular basis for this divergence from the anticipated M:L ratio in patients with breakpoints in bcr subregions 2 and 3 is unknown.
DAFoam: An Open-Source Adjoint Framework for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization with OpenFOAM

The adjoint method is an efficient approach for computing derivatives that allow gradient-based optimization to handle systems parameterized with a large number of design variables. Despite this ad...
Diet and Physical Activity Behaviors Among Adolescent Transgender Students: School Survey Results.

Abstract Purpose Diet and physical activity behaviors are determinants of health for adolescents; however, few studies have assessed these behaviors among transgender youth. This study examined dietary behaviors, physical activity, weight-based bullying, and weight status among four groups based on transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) status and birth-assigned sex. Methods Data were from a large cross-sectional, population-based, statewide survey of high school students (n = 80,794, Minnesota Student Survey, 2016). Comparisons were made for dietary and physical activity behaviors among TGNC and cisgender youth and among TGNC birth-assigned males and females and cisgender males and females. Results About 2.7% of the total survey respondents identified as TGNC. TGNC students were more likely to be ethnically diverse, not living with a biological parent, participating in free or reduced-price school meals, and skipping meals compared with cisgender students. TGNC youth reported less frequent intake of fruit and milk and more frequent intake of fast food and soft drinks than cisgender students. TGNC students were also more likely to be overweight or obese, bullied for weight or size, and less likely to be physically active compared with cisgender youth. TGNC birth-assigned males reported more frequent intake of fast food and soft drinks and less physical activity compared with TGNC birth-assigned females and cisgender boys and girls. Conclusions TGNC students reported more negative health behaviors than cisgender students. Programs to address disparities in diet and physical activity behaviors may need to be tailored by gender identity and gender identity subgroups.
I’m Afraid of not succeeding in learning: introducing an instrument to measure higher education students’ fear of failure in learning

Studies have examined the impacts of fear of failure on behavior and performance, yet there are few, if any, attempts to empirically identify this construct in the context of learning. The purpose ...
The Shaping Group: Habituating New Behaviors in the Stutterer

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the habituation of new behaviors in the stutter. It presents a behavioral approach to the treatment of stuttering and a behavioral form of group therapy, the Shaping Group, that should theoretically represent the majority of the therapeutic contact that the clinician has with the client who stutters. Treatment programs for stuttering are mainly either psychotherapeutically or behaviorally oriented. Although there have been only minor changes in the theoretical base or the methodology of treatment in the psychotherapeutic-oriented programs, the behavioral treatment programs are going through constant change as new information becomes available from laboratory research. If speech pathologists are still searching for a new and more efficient treatment program, they are almost forced to look toward the behavioral programs as they represent the only dynamic programs for the treatment of stuttering. Stuttering is a behavior disorder. This rather presumptive statement implies that those behaviors associated with the act of stuttering. In planning a treatment program for any behavioral disorder, the clinician must subscribe to some theory that attempts to explain the origin of these behaviors. This theoretical set will then determine the base treatment model used by the clinician to alter the behaviors.
45nm CMOS — Silicon Photonics Monolithic Technology (45CLO) for Next-Generation, Low Power and High Speed Optical Interconnects

GLOBALFOUNDRIES' monolithic 45nm CMOS-Silicon Photonics 300mm high-volume manufacturing platform based on 45nm RF technology node, and optimized for high performance and low power short-reach optical interconnects for on-chip and chip-to-chip applications will be discussed.
Assessment of N95 respirator decontamination and re-use for SARS-CoV-2

The unprecedented pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has created worldwide shortages of personal protective equipment, in particular respiratory protection such as N95 respirators. SARS-CoV-2 transmission is frequently occurring in hospital settings, with numerous reported cases of nosocomial transmission highlighting the vulnerability of healthcare workers. In general, N95 respirators are designed for single use prior to disposal. Here, we have analyzed four readily available and often used decontamination methods: UV, 70% ethanol, 70C heat and vaporized hydrogen peroxide for inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 on N95 respirators. Equally important we assessed the function of the N95 respirators after multiple wear and decontamination sessions.
Chandra Spectral Measurements Of The O Supergiant ζ Puppis Indicate A Surprising Increase In The Wind Mass-Loss Rate Over 18 Yr

New long Chandra grating observations of the O supergiant ζ Pup show not only a brightening of the X-ray emission line flux of 13 per cent in the 18 yr since Chandra’s first observing cycle, but also clear evidence – at more than 4σsignificance – of increased wind absorption signatures in its Doppler-broadened line profiles. We demonstrate this with non-parametric analysis of the profiles as well as Gaussian fitting and then use line-profile model fitting to derive a mass-loss rate of 2.47±0.09×10−6Myr−1, which is a 40 per cent increase over the value obtained from the cycle 1 data. The increase in the individual emission line fluxes is greater for short-wavelength lines than long-wavelength lines, as would be expected if a uniform increase in line emission is accompanied by an increase in the wavelength-dependent absorption by the cold wind in which the shock-heated plasma is embedded.
Judicial Abrogation: Montana and Its Progeny's Effect on Freedmen's Treaty Rights

The 2015 Cherokee election cycle commenced, and campaign rhetoric is rampant. However, descendants of former Cherokee slaves, Freedmen, are in limbo. The Treaty of 1866 with the Cherokee granted citizenship rights to Freedmen. However, the Cherokee Nation consistently changes whether Freedmen receive those rights or can vote in elections. The Nation allowed Freedmen to vote in the 2011 run-off, but Black Caucus pressure and threats of withholding funding forced the compromise. While the final agreement allowed voting, the compromise did not finalize Freedmen rights. Another Constitutional Amendment, policy change, or judicial decision could dramatically alter Freedmen expectations prior to next year’s election.The upcoming election reinvigorated the Freedmen debate. Most scholars and Freedmen advocates focus on Cherokee actions. The rhetoric labels Cherokee as racist and practicing a new form of slavery. Some advocate using the thirteenth amendment to obtain Cherokee citizenship rights. The perception and focus is that the Nation is perpetuating discrimination. However, research is deficient on whether the 1866 Treaty rights still exist. The vast majority of Indian treaties are hollow pronouncements, but the current research assumes Freedmen rights exist and can be enforced. Instead of focusing on Cherokee actions, this article analyzes Federal Indian policies effect on Freedmen rights. I begin by illustrating Indian citizenship and naturalization during the treaty making period. The article then utilizes original negotiation documents and treaty text to determine the category of rights Freedmen received in 1866. The article finishes with the recent Supreme Court jurisdiction decisions alteration of Freedmen rights.
Weight and organ specific immune cell profiling of sleeve gastrectomy in mice.

Abstract Objective Sleeve gastrectomy (SG) has profound, immediate weight-loss independent effects on obesity related diabetes (T2D). Our prior studies have shown that immunologic remodeling may play a part in this metabolic improvement. However, to date, little is known about how the major immune cell populations change following SG and whether these are weight loss dependent. Methods Using mass cytometry with time of flight analysis (CyTOF), we broadly quantified the organ-specific immune cell repertoire induced by SG from splenic, jejunal, ileal, colonic, and hepatic lymphocyte fractions. Surgeries were performed in both diet-induced obese (DIO), insulin resistant mice and lean mice, which leads to sustained and non-sustained weight loss in SG animals compared to shams, respectively. Intergroup comparisons allow understanding of the relative contribution of diet, weight-loss, and surgery on immune profiling. Conserved immune changes represent surgery-specific, weight-independent, and diet-independent phenotypic changes. Results Initial analysis by way of visualization of t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding analysis revealed changes in the B cell compartment following SG in both DIO and lean mice compared to Sham animals. In depth, traditional gating showed a shift within the splenic B cell compartment toward innate-like phenotype. There was a 1.3-fold reduction in follicular B cells within DIO SG (14% absolute reduction; p = 0.009) and lean SG (15% absolute reduction; p = 0.031) animals with a significant increase in innate-like B cell subsets in DIO SG mice(2.2 to 4.3-fold increase; p Conclusions SG induces surgery-specific, weight-loss independent immune cells changes that have been previously linked to improved glucose metabolism. This immune phenotype may be a major contributor to post SG physiology. Characterizing the complex immune milieu following SG is an important step toward understanding the physiology of SG and the potential therapies therein.
Ossifying pyogenic granuloma: A rare variant usually not recognized.

Pyogenic granuloma (PG) represents a polypoid and lobular, capillary lesion, resembling granulation tissue, usually occurring on skin or mucosal surfaces. The occurrence of metaplastic ossification is extremely rare in PG. We present three cases of PG with metaplastic ossification. All three patients were men, aged 18-66 years. In all cases, the lesions occurred on the digits, particularly in or around the nail bed. Histopathologically, these superficial dermal-based tumors were characterized by classic features of PG, namely circumscribed, exophytic to polypoid proliferations of capillary-sized blood vessels in a lobular arrangement. The characteristic vascular component also was intimately associated with spicules and trabeculae of metaplastic bone formation rimmed by osteoblasts and osteoclasts. This osseous component was diffusely distributed in two cases and more localized in another. We speculate that ossification in PGs possibly represents a reactive process in response to chronic injury. We believe that ossifying PG is likely under-recognized and often mistaken for other entities also arising in the extremities and characterized by osseous metaplasia.
Step-Indexed Normalization for a Language with General Recursion

The TRELLYS project has produced several designs for practical dependently typed languages. These languages are broken into two fragments—a logical fragment where every term normalizes and which is consistent when interpreted as a logic, and a programmatic fragment with general recursion and other convenient but unsound features. In this paper, we present a small example language in this style. Our design allows the programmer to explicitly mention and pass information between the two fragments. We show that this feature substantially complicates the metatheory and present a new technique, combining the traditional Girard‐Tait method with step-indexed logical relations, which we use to show normalization for the logical fragment.
ActionBert: Leveraging User Actions for Semantic Understanding of User Interfaces.

As mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous, regularly interacting with a variety of user interfaces (UIs) is a common aspect of daily life for many people. To improve the accessibility of these devices and to enable their usage in a variety of settings, building models that can assist users and accomplish tasks through the UI is vitally important. However, there are several challenges to achieve this. First, UI components of similar appearance can have different functionalities, making understanding their function more important than just analyzing their appearance. Second, domain-specific features like Document Object Model (DOM) in web pages and View Hierarchy (VH) in mobile applications provide important signals about the semantics of UI elements, but these features are not in a natural language format. Third, owing to a large diversity in UIs and absence of standard DOM or VH representations, building a UI understanding model with high coverage requires large amounts of training data. Inspired by the success of pre-training based approaches in NLP for tackling a variety of problems in a data-efficient way, we introduce a new pre-trained UI representation model called ActionBert. Our methodology is designed to leverage visual, linguistic and domain-specific features in user interaction traces to pre-train generic feature representations of UIs and their components. Our key intuition is that user actions, e.g., a sequence of clicks on different UI components, reveals important information about their functionality. We evaluate the proposed model on a wide variety of downstream tasks, ranging from icon classification to UI component retrieval based on its natural language description. Experiments show that the proposed ActionBert model outperforms multi-modal baselines across all downstream tasks by up to 15.5%.
Non-Fourier phonon heat conduction at the microscale and nanoscale

The description of phonon heat conduction has typically been based on Fourier diffusion theory. However, over the past three decades, a host of interesting phonon transport phenomena beyond the Fourier diffusion picture have drawn much attention. Although most of the studies focused on classical size effects that lead to reduced thermal conductivity, other phenomena have been observed, often at the microscale and nanoscale, that are either completely novel or appear only at elevated temperatures. Examples are the prediction and observation of phonon second sound at high temperatures, quantized heat conduction and Anderson localization. These developments reveal rich phonon heat conduction phenomena analogous to those of electrical conduction. This Review discusses different non-Fourier heat conduction regimes (including the Casimir–Knudsen classical size effect regime), phonon hydrodynamics, the coherent phonon transport regimes (including localization and quantization of heat conduction) and the possibility of divergent heat conduction in low dimensions. Phonon heat conduction at the microscale and the nanoscale exhibits rich phenomena beyond the predictions of Fourier’s law, rivalling the phenomena of electrons. This Review discusses phonon heat conduction regimes, including the Casimir–Knudsen size effect, hydrodynamic transport, coherent transport (from quantization and localization) and divergence.
Dirac composite fermion theory of general Jain sequences

We reconsider the composite fermion theory of general Jain sequences with filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=N/(4N\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1)$. We show that Goldman and Fradkin's proposal of a Dirac composite fermion leads to a violation of the Haldane bound on the coefficient of the static structure factor. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we add to the effective theory a gapped chiral mode (or modes) that already exists in the Fermi liquid state at $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/4$. We interpret the additional mode as an internal degree of freedom of the composite fermion, related to area-preserving deformations of the elementary droplet built up from electrons and correlation holes. In addition to providing a suitable static structure factor, our model also gives the expected Wen-Zee shift and a Hall conductivity that manifests Galilean invariance. We show that the charge density in the model satisfies the long-wavelength version of the Girvin-MacDonald-Platzman algebra.
Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico

1. Equilibrium party hegemony 2. Structural determinants of mass support 3. Budget cycles under autocracy 4. The politics of vote-buying 5. Judging economic performance in hard times 6. Ideological divisions in the opposition camp 7. How voters choose and mass coordination dilemmas 8. Electoral fraud and the game of electoral transitions 9. Conclusion.
Optical imaging of cerebellar functional architectures: parallel fiber beams, parasagittal bands and spreading acidification.

Publisher Summary An intriguing feature of the cerebellar cortex is its highly ordered circuitry and architectures, and understanding the function of this stereotypic circuitry and neuronal architectures is needed to unravel the nature of the neural computations performed by the cerebellar cortex. This chapter outlines the efforts put to develop and use optical imaging methodologies in the cerebellar cortex in vivo and emphasizes the significance of optical imaging in studying the interactions among the parallel fiber and climbing fiber systems, monitoring synaptic plasticity at the circuitry level, and observing novel phenomena such as spreading acidification and depression. Neutral red imaging has been used to map cerebellar cortical neuronal activity in vivo and has several useful properties for monitoring spatial patterns of neuronal activation in the cerebellar cortex. Thus, neutral red imaging provides a dramatic visualization that the cerebellar cortex is activated in parasagittal zones. Autofluorescence of flavoproteins and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide has been used as an indirect measure of neuronal activity in isolated cell cultures and brain slice, but only to a limited extent in vivo . Spreading acidification and depression (SAD) appears to be a unique type of propagating activity, and multiple factors are likely to contribute to the spread of the acidification and depression such as hyperexcitability of the cerebellar circuitry. Conjunctive stimulation of climbing fiber and parallel fiber inputs results in long term depression at the parallel fiber–Purkinje cell synapse. Spreading acidification and depression in the cerebellar cortex is a newly described propagating activity in the central nervous system; however, much is still to be learned about SAD, including the mechanism of spread and the nature of the regenerative process.
The coming-of-age of the hygiene hypothesis

The hygiene hypothesis, as originally proposed, postulated an inverse relation between the incidence of infectious diseases in early life and the subsequent development of allergies and asthma. New evidence from epidemiological, biological and genetic studies has significantly enlarged the scope of the hypothesis. It now appears probable that environmental 'danger' signals regulate the pattern of immune responses in early life. Microbial burden in general, and not any single acute infectious illness, is the main source of these signals. The latter interact with a sensitive and complex receptor system, and genetic variations in this receptor system may be an important determinant of inherited susceptibility to asthma and allergies.
Protecting Cape Coral's Burrowing Owl Population

Across the peninsula of South Florida, people from all walks of life have come to catch a glimpse of a peculiar bird, an owl that makes its home in burrows rather than trees. The owl does not have the majesty of our national symbol, the bald eagle, nor does the owl offer the benefits of game opportunity such as ducks or geese. So, why are bird watchers so interested in this species? One important reason is because people want to see the burrowing owl before they have completely disappeared. Land alterations of various kinds have devastated the bird's natural habitat, and, unless corrective measures are taken, the bird's continued existence will be threatened. As one would expect, loss of habitat is the number one cause of species extinction in the world (Freely, 2004).
Quantifying ichthyofaunal zonation and species richness along a 2800‐km reach of the Rio Chama and Rio Grande (USA)

– Ichthyofaunal zonation occurs when lotic fishes are partitioned into distinct assemblages, usually in response to longitudinally distributed habitats. Several studies have documented zonation within the Rio Grande, but this is the first to quantitatively test the zonation hypothesis along a continuous 2800-km river profile, extending from the Rio Chama headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. Using a large, multi-source dataset, I detected three ichthyofaunal zones: a high gradient (∼1.5%) ‘upper’ zone, a moderate gradient (∼0.2%) ‘middle’ zone and a low gradient (<0.1%) ‘lower’ zone. Species richness was lowest in the upper zone and highest in the lower zone, and all zones contained large numbers of nonnative species. However, species richness did not accumulate in a consistent, downstream manner. Instead, it tracked local-scale changes in mean annual discharge. This demonstrates the strong effect of river regulation and irrigation withdraws on fish diversity in the Rio Grande.
Shape Extraction through Region-Contour Stitching

We present a graph-based contour extraction algorithm for images with low contrast regions and faint contours. Our innovation consists of a new graph setup that exploits complementary information given by region segmentation and contour grouping. The information of the most salient region segments is combined together with the edge map obtained from the responses of an oriented filter bank. This enables us to define a new contour flow on the graph nodes, which captures region membership and enhances the flow in the low contrast or cluttered regions. The graph setup and our proposed region based normalization give rise to a random walk that allows bifurcations at junctions arising between region boundaries and favors long closed contours. Junctions become key routing points and the resulting contours enclose globally significant regions.
A generalized estimating equations approach to fitting major gene models in segregation analysis of continuous phenotypes

This paper discusses the application of estimating equations methods based on a quadratic exponential model [Prentice and Zhao, 1991] as a potential competitor with full likelihood approaches to estimating the effect of major genes in a segregation analysis [Elston, 1981] of continuous phenotypes, in the single allele problem. We show that while the estimating equations methods based on the quadratic exponential family cannot be used by themselves to estimate all parameters of interest, an iterative two-stage approach can be used, in which the population allele frequency is first considered to be a known parameter, which permits the estimating equations method to estimate the remaining parameters. At the second stage a “pseudo-profile” loglikelihood based only on the founders is used to estimate the allele frequency. After each maximization of the pseudo-profile loglikelihood at the second stage, the parameters in the first stage are reestimated using a new value of the allele frequency, and a new value of the second stage pseudo-profile loglikelihood is obtained. We used simulated pedigree data for illustrations. © 1993 Wiley-Liss. Inc.
Extremity Fractures Associated With ATVs and Dirt Bikes: A 6 Year National Epidemiological Study

Objectives:All-terrain vehicle (ATV) and dirt bike use is increasing in the US and is associated with risk of traumatic injury. Extremity fractures are common injures associated with these vehicles. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the patterns extremity fractures associated with ATVs and dirt bikes. Our hypothesis is that these different vehicles will result in similar rates of high impact injuries, but differences in vehicle stability will result in greater proportions of upper extremity fractures associated with ATV use.Methods:The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) was used to acquire data for extremity fractures related to ATV (3-wheels, 4-wheels, and number of wheels undefined) and dirt bike use from 2007-2012. Locations were coded as shoulder, upper arm, elbow, lower arm, wrist, hand, upper leg, knee, lower leg, ankle, foot, and toe. The data were stratified according to age and gender for each year. Incidence rates were calculated on a per vehicle basis usin...
Contemporaneity and its discontents

Never before have we discussed and published so much on “the contemporary.” Drawing from the work of anthropologists Johannes Fabian and Marc Auge and Brazilian novelist Bernardo Carvalho, this essay theorizes contemporaneity as the active sharing of time that informs the transnational flow of culture in our global present, and takes a critical stance in this fashionable debate: critical of Giorgio Agamben’s attempt to identify the contemporary to a mode of “untimeliness,” but also wary of any concept of contemporaneity that does not take seriously the need to think the present beyond the idea of a history of the West.
Stability of risk preference parameter estimates within the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure

This paper reports new data from both selling and buying versions of the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) procedure. First, when using the selling version of BDM, the cross-sectional mean of CRRA risk preference parameter estimates shifts from a value consistent with “as if” risk-seeking behavior in the early baseline to a value closer to “as if” risk neutrality in the late baseline. Second, when using the buying version of BDM, the cross-sectional mean of CRRA risk preference parameter estimates does not appear to change over time in a statistically significant manner. The cross-sectional mean from the late baseline of the buying version of BDM is closer to “as if” risk neutrality and to the late baseline estimates from the selling version of BDM than it is to either early baseline estimates from the selling version of BDM or typical estimates from the first price auction. Use of dominated offers is correlated with deviations from “as if” risk neutrality; this suggests the possibility that the early deviations from “as if” risk neutrality reflect errors.
A randomized, placebo-controlled laboratory study of the effects of d -cycloserine on craving in cocaine-dependent individuals

Rationale d-Cycloserine (DCS), a partial glutamate N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor agonist, enhances extinction of conditioned fear responding; preliminary data suggest that it may facilitate extinction of drug cue reactivity.
Respiratory allergy to ragweed: Correlation of bronchial responses to allergen with bronchial responses to histamine and circulating immunoglobulin E

Abstract Flow-volume loops were recorded before and after quantitative inhalation of increasing concentrations of histamine (H) and ragweed (R) in 26 subjects allergic to ragweed. A threshold response (TR) was defined by a change in forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV 1 ) greater than -10% and the presence of wheezing. In 20 subjects with reproducible TRR and TRH, 14 with asthma and hay fever and six with hay fever only, we measured: (1) total IgE with a solid-phase (paper radioimmunosorbent test [PRIST]) and a double-antibody assay; and (2) specific IgE with four tests using as solid phase paper disks (commerical or laboratory prepared radioallergosorbent test [RAST]), microcellulose, and sepharose. The double-antibody assay and PRIST produced highly correlated results (r = 0.94), but total IgE was not related to TRR. Although the four tests for specific IgE gave highly correlated results, they did not correlate with TRR or TRH. There was a linear correlation between TRH and TRR (r = 0.71). When compared with the corresponding slope reported in sensitized guinea pigs, TRR/TRH was shifted toward lower antigen doses. In summary: (1) in opposition to total or specific IgE, histamine airway responses may be important in the bronchial localization of allergic reactions to ragweed; and (2) the airways seem to be more sensitive to allergen in spontaneous asthma in humans than in anaphylactic "asthma" in guinea pigs.
Perturbative corrections to coupled-cluster and equation-of-motion coupled-cluster energies: A determinantal analysis

We develop a combined coupled-cluster (CC) or equation-of-motion coupled-cluster (EOM-CC) theory and Rayleigh–Schrodinger perturbation theory on the basis of a perturbation expansion of the similarity-transformed Hamiltonian H=exp(−T)H exp(T). This theory generates a series of perturbative corrections to any of the complete CC or EOM-CC models and hence a hierarchy of the methods designated by CC(m)PT(n) or EOM-CC(m)PT(n). These methods systematically approach full configuration interaction (FCI) as the perturbation order (n) increases and/or as the cluster and linear excitation operators become closer to complete (m increases), while maintaining the orbital-invariance property and size extensivity of CC at any perturbation order, but not the size intensivity of EOM-CC. We implement the entire hierarchy of CC(m)PT(n) and EOM-CC(m)PT(n) into a determinantal program capable of computing their energies and wave functions for any given pair of m and n. With this program, we perform CC(m)PT(n) and EOM-CC(m)PT...
Post Keynesian and Ecological Economics: Confronting Environmental Issues

Post Keynesian and Ecological Economics: Confronting Environmental Issues Richard P.F. Holt, Steven Pressman & Clive L. Spash (Eds) Northampton, MA, Edward Elgar, 2010, 352 pp., $135.00 hardcover I...
SPECTROSCOPY OF SHALLOW CENTERS IN SEMICONDUCTORS: PROGRESS SINCE 1960

The article reviews the experimental states of the spectroscopy of donors and acceptors in semiconductors along with their theoretical interpretation.
Leaves in Representation Diagrams of Bipartite Distance-Regular Graphs

Let Γ denote a bipartite distance-regular graph with diameter D ≥ 3 and valency k ≥ 3. Let θ0 > θ1 ··· > θD denote the eigenvalues of Γ and let qhij (0 ≤ h, i, j ≤ D) denote the Krein parameters of Γ. Pick an integer h (1 ≤ h ≤ D − 1). The representation diagram Δ e Δh is an undirected graph with vertices 0,1,…,D. For 0 ≤ i, j ≤ D, vertices i, j are adjacent in Δ whenever i ≠ j and qhij ≠ 0. It turns out that in Δ, the vertex 0 is adjacent to h and no other vertices. Similarly, the vertex D is adjacent to D − h and no other vertices. We call 0, D the trivial vertices of Δ. Let l denote a vertex of Δ. It turns out that l is adjacent to at least one vertex of Δ. We say l is a leaf whenever l is adjacent to exactly one vertex of Δ. We show Δ has a nontrivial leaf if and only if Δ is the disjoint union of two paths.
Input That Contradicts Young Children’s Strategy for Mapping Novel Words Affects Their Phonological and Semantic Interpretation of Other Novel Words

Children tend to choose an entity they cannot already label, rather than one they can, as the likely referent of a novel noun. The effect of input that contradicts this strategy on the interpretati...
Brain connectivity: an opening window into addiction

Almost twenty years ago, brain connectivity based on brain imaging data (or alternatively, mapping of the macro-connectome) was introduced to the field1. Since then we have learned a lot about methodology, imaging approaches, and brain health and disease using approaches based on connectivity. Approaches range from univariate correlation between targeted regions of interest1 to data-driven multivariate approaches like group independent component analysis2. In this commentary I touch on three topic: 1) the prevalence of studies of connectivity in the area of substance use disorders, 2) the information brain connectivity can provide us, and 3) some future directions in brain connectivity.
Power balanced coverage-time optimization for clustered wireless sensor networks

We consider a wireless sensor network in which sensors are grouped into clusters, each with its own cluster head (CH). Each CH collects data from sensors in its cluster and relays them to a sink node directly or through other CHs. The coverage time of the network is defined as the time until one of the CHs runs out of battery, resulting in an incomplete coverage of the sensing region. We study the maximization of coverage time by balancing the power consumption of different CHs. Using a Rayleigh fading channel model for inter-cluster communications, we provide optimal power allocation strategies that guarantee (in a probabilistic sense) an upper bound on the end-to-end (inter-CH) path reliability. Our allocation strategies account for the interaction between routing and clustering by considering the impacts of intra- and inter-cluster traffic at each CH. Two mechanisms are proposed for achieving balanced power consumption: the routing-aware optimal cluster planning and the clustering-aware optimal random relay. For both mechanisms, the problem is formulated as a signomial optimization, which can be efficiently solved using generalized geometric programming. Numerical examples and simulations are used to validate our analysis and study the performance of the proposed schemes.
E-ECC: Low Power Erasure and Error Correction Schemes for Increasing Reliability of Commodity DRAM Systems

Most server-grade memory systems provide Chipkill-Correct error protection at the expense of power and/or performance overhead. In this paper we present low overhead schemes for improving the reliability of commodity DRAM systems with better power and IPC performance compared to Chipkill-Correct solutions. Specifically, we propose two erasure and error correction (E-ECC) schemes for x8 memory systems that have 12.5% storage overhead and do not require any change in the existing memory architecture. Both schemes have superior error performance due to the use of a strong ECC code, namely, RS(36,32) over GF(28). Scheme 1 activates 18 chips per access and has stronger reliability compared to Chipkill-Correct solutions. If the location of the faulty chip is known, Scheme 1 can correct an additional random error in a second chip. Scheme 2 trades off reliability for higher energy efficiency by activating only 9 chips per access. It cannot correct random errors due to a chip failure but can detect them with 99.9986% probability, and once a chip is marked faulty due to persistent errors, it can correct all errors due to that chip. Synthesis results in 28nm node show that the RS (36,32) code results in a very low decoding latency that can be well-hidden in commodity memory systems and, therefore, it has minimal effect on the DRAM access latency. Evaluations based on SPEC CPU 2006 sequential and multi-programmed workloads show that compared to Chipkill-Correct, the proposed Schemes 1 and 2 improve IPC by an average of 3.2% (maximum of 13.8%) and 4.8% (maximum of 31.8%) and reduce the power consumption by an average of 16.2% (maximum of 25%) and 26.8% (maximum of 36%), respectively.
Influences of media on social movements: Problematizing hyperbolic inferences about impacts

Pronouncements about the value of information and communication technology (ICT) (hereafter traditional, new, and social media) to social movements - hyperbolic in popular media references to new and social media (e.g., Facebook revolution, Twitter revolution, etc.) - invite scholarly inquiries that critically assess the implications of these assumptions for African countries. Sensing the tendency toward technological determinism, a position which Castells warns is fraught with failure to recognize complex interactions between society and technology; authors examined popular press vis-a-vis scholarly assumptions about the value of media during social movements. Questions that critically analyze the roles and power of old versus new media in social movements should be posed particularly about 21st century iterations with citizens increasingly doubling as creators and disseminators of news and information. For example: to what extent do various media comparatively facilitate or constrain activists in social movements? How have new ICTs assisted citizen activists in circumventing the power and reach of traditional media? How have the roles of traditional versus new media in social movements been framed in the popular press and academic journals? What contextual factors (e.g., communal networks; third-party- and foreign-interventions, digital divide, etc.) may be accountable for the take-off and successes of social movements? In a continent fraught with cultural, political, and socio-economic divisions of historic proportions, authors critically assessed cases across Africa of variegated employment of old (i.e., radio, newspaper, television) and new media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, mobile telephone text messaging) by four social movements spanning 35years. Assessments underscore citizen empowerment and multiplier capabilities of new media but affirm the value of contextual factors that minimize hyperbolic assumptions about the contribution of new media to the formation and progression of social movements.