cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Diels–Alder Reactions of γ-Hydroxybutenolides: Approach to the Himbacine Tricyclic Core

The Diels–Alder reaction of γ-hydroxybutenolides with dienes gave good yields of cycloadducts under thermal and Lewis acid catalyzed conditions. The application of this methodology to a more complex system was demonstrated by the synthesis of a model system for the tricyclic himbacine core. The stereo- and regioselective Diels–Alder reaction established three of the stereogenic centers, with the fourth stereogenic center secured by diastereoselective alkylation of the cycloadduct.
Drama and education: performance methodologies for teaching and learning

In Drama and Education: Performance Methodologies for Teaching and Learning, Manon van de Water, Mary McAvoy, and Kristin Hunt deftly survey the foundations and practical components of drama and ed...
Temperature Measurement of Cu50 Thermistor with Schneider Temperature Module

Thermistors are most widely used for temperature measurement in hydraulic power plant,but Schneider temperature module does not support all thermistors.In this paper,the principle for the measurement of thermistor temperature and the software modification of Schneider temperature module are introduced.In addition,the engineering implementation method and industrial application of Cu50 thermistor temperature measurement with Schneider temperature module are depicted.
Nitric oxide-mediated excitatory effect on neurons of dorsal motor nucleus of vagus.

The purpose of our study was to explore whether nitric oxide was involved as an intercellular messenger in the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMV). To achieve this purpose we examined DMV motoneurons of the rat in vitro with the use of the extracellular cell-attached recording technique. The motoneurons, in general, exhibit a spontaneous discharge and when exposed to NO-producing drugs (i.e., 3-300 microM L-arginine and 10-100 microM S-nitroso-N-acetylpenicillamine) exhibit a concentration-related increase in their spontaneous firing rate. Because NO activates soluble guanylate cyclase and increases guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cGMP), we tested dibutyryl-cGMP (30-300 microM) and found that it also excites DMV neurons. Perfusion of the DMV neurons with N omega-nitro-L-arginine (300 microM), an inhibitor of NO synthase (NOS), and with NO scavenger, reduced hemoglobin (1 microM), counteracted the excitatory effect of L-arginine and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA). Perfusion of the preparation with LY-83583 (10 microM), an inhibitor of guanylate cyclase, also counteracted the effects of L-arginine and NMDA. These data indicate that NOS is present in DMV neurons, and that the excitatory effect of NMDA on these neurons is due in part to formation of NO and the resulting accumulation of cGMP in DMV neurons.
Can Peer Mentors Improve First-Year Experiences of University Students?.

The effectiveness of a peer-mentoring program was examined at a university in California. Previous studies suggest university peer mentoring might increase students' feelings of engagement, which can contribute to their retention. Pretest and posttest data were collected from 304 freshmen (mentored and nonmentored) during the fall of 2012 in a quasi-experimental design. Results indicated mentored students felt significantly more integrated and connected to their university at the end of their first semester compared with nonmentored students. Mentees also provided qualitative responses about what they found beneficial and what they felt could be improved in the program. Results suggested peer mentoring helped the students feel more integrated and supported at college, which might reinforce their persistence toward graduating.
Psychological interventions for noncardiac chest pain.

Noncardiac chest pain can be caused by gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), panic disorder, or a number of other psychological conditions. Psychotherapy, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, has been shown to reduce the number of days with chest pain significantly over a three-month period, whatever the cause.
Toward a Theory of Democratic Constitutionalism

“Schmitt,” Stephen Holmes writes, “subscribed to the myth of a fundamental opposition between constitutional limitations and democratic government.…Schmitt's democratic mysticism, not to mention its practical consequences, suffices to discredit this entire approach. It is meaningless to speak about popular government apart from some sort of legal framework which enables the electorate to have a coherent will.” According to this line of interpretation, Schmitt sought to replace constitutionalism and a stable legal system with an immutable, boundless sovereign constituent power, often incarnated in a dictatorial president, ruling by arbitrary executive decrees and administrative orders. Schmitt's critique of the rule of law, the separation of powers, and of normative legal formalism, so this argument goes, is part of a broader, more ambitious attempt to abolish constitutionalism. Schmitt's appeal to a fictional constituent subject is seen as a pretext for the establishment of an executive dictatorship. Not only did he abhor liberalism; he also sought to undermine and destroy the idea of the constitution as government under law in order to replace it with a permanent state of exception and a normless emergency. As I try to show in this chapter, these charges lose considerable force and cannot be consistently sustained once we take into consideration two crucial aspects of Schmitt's theory. The first is his stark, clear-cut distinction between the people in an extraconstitutional outside and the people within the constitution, or, to put it in more general terms, between the constituent people and the constituted people.
THE CAPABILITIES OF FISH AND OTHER AQUATIC ORGANISMS FOR XENOBIOTIC METABOLISM

Abstract It is now recognized that marine and freshwater fish contain virtually all of the enzymatic pathways present in mammals for xenobiotic metabolism (1, 2). The cytochrome P-450-dependent monooxygenase system, essential for the oxidative metabolism of many pollutants, is present in the liver of every fish adequately studied, although activities are substantially lower for most substrates than in mammals. Administration of certain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) to fish causes induction of the hepatic monooxygenase system although phenobarbital-type compounds apparently have no inductive effect in the fish studied. As in mammals, the large increases of hepatic monooxygenase activity after treatment with PAH-type chemicals are related to the presence of one or more novel forms of induced cytochrome P-450 in liver of the treated fish. Recent studies from our laboratory have demonstrated that large numbers (up to 84%) of feral winter flounder ( Pseudopleuronectes americanus ) from Maine have hepatic monooxygenase activities and properties indistinguishable from those of flounder treated with PAH-type inducers (1,2,3,4-dibenzanthracene, DBA; 5,6-benzoflavone, BNF). Thus, many of the fish had elevated 7-ethoxyresorufin deethylase and elevated benzo(a)pyrene hydroxylase (AHH) activities which were inhibited by in vitro 7,8-benzoflavone (ANF). Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of hepatic microsomes from flounder with elevated AHH activities, in the presence of SDS, showed a prominent band of approximate molecular weight 57,000; this band was absent or minor in fish with very low AHH activities. A major electrophoretic band of identical molecular weight (57 K) was also always present in hepatic microsomes from winter flounder treated with DBA or BNF. The data suggest that many feral winter flounder from Maine have induced monooxygenase activities because of exposure to certain chemicals in their environment. These pollutants could be of natural origin (flavonoids) or of anthropogenic origin (e.g., many PAH, certain PCB, PBB or chlorinated dioxin isomers) because chemicals in these classes are known to produce PAH-type induction of the hepatic monooxygenase system in fish.
Celiac Lymph Nodes and Esophageal Cancer

Celiac lymph nodes are considered a distant metastatic site (M1) in esophageal cancer. The M1a subclassification is recommended for distal thoracic esophageal cancer metastatic to celiac lymph nodes. This suggests that although these cancers are beyond cure, they are different from esophageal cancers with other sites of distant metastases (M1b). Of 46 disease sites for which the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) has staging recommendations, only 7 (15%) require subdivision of M1: 2 with 3 subclassifications (M1a, M1b and M1c) — cutaneous melanoma and prostate; and 5 with 2 subclassifications (M1a and M1b) — bone, retinoblastoma, testis, gestational trophoblastic tumor, and esophagus. Only prostate, testis, and esophagus designate nonregional nodes as M1a.
Evaluation of a dialectical behavior therapy-informed partial hospital program: outcome data and exploratory analyses

The use of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) among a variety of programs and patients has recently exploded. Of particular interest is the use of DBT in partial hospital (PH) programs due to the high number of severely ill and suicidal patients who participate in these programs. Recently, Lothes, Mochrie and St. John (2014) examined data from a local DBT-informed PH program and found significant reductions in depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and degree of suffering from intake to discharge. The present study examined these same four symptom constructs by assessing intake and discharge data for additional individuals enrolled in this DBT-informed PH program. In addition, lengths of stay and acuity ratings were analyzed to explore the relationship between these variables and symptom constructs. Significant symptom reduction in depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and degree of suffering from intake to discharge was found among high and medium acuity patients, replicating the results of Lothes et al. (2014). Further, individuals with the highest acuity saw the largest reduction in hopelessness symptoms the longer they participated in the program (i.e., a significant interaction effect between acuity and length of stay). This is meaningful given the connection between hopelessness and suicidal ideation/action, which is of particular concern for those charged with treating clinical populations. DBT-informed PH programs may be a cost-effective and useful way to treat high-risk patients who come from inpatient facilities. Future studies may wish to create follow-up periods (i.e., 3 months, 6 months) post-discharge to assess if symptom reduction remains.
Disease resistance through impairment of α-SNAP-NSF interaction and vesicular trafficking by soybean Rhg1.

α-SNAP [soluble NSF (N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive factor) attachment protein] and NSF proteins are conserved across eukaryotes and sustain cellular vesicle trafficking by mediating disassembly and reuse of SNARE protein complexes, which facilitate fusion of vesicles to target membranes. However, certain haplotypes of the Rhg1 (resistance to Heterodera glycines 1) locus of soybean possess multiple repeat copies of an α-SNAP gene (Glyma.18G022500) that encodes atypical amino acids at a highly conserved functional site. These Rhg1 loci mediate resistance to soybean cyst nematode (SCN; H. glycines), the most economically damaging pathogen of soybeans worldwide. Rhg1 is widely used in agriculture, but the mechanisms of Rhg1 disease resistance have remained unclear. In the present study, we found that the resistance-type Rhg1 α-SNAP is defective in interaction with NSF. Elevated in planta expression of resistance-type Rhg1 α-SNAPs depleted the abundance of SNARE-recycling 20S complexes, disrupted vesicle trafficking, induced elevated abundance of NSF, and caused cytotoxicity. Soybean, due to ancient genome duplication events, carries other loci that encode canonical (wild-type) α-SNAPs. Expression of these α-SNAPs counteracted the cytotoxicity of resistance-type Rhg1 α-SNAPs. For successful growth and reproduction, SCN dramatically reprograms a set of plant root cells and must sustain this sedentary feeding site for 2–4 weeks. Immunoblots and electron microscopy immunolocalization revealed that resistance-type α-SNAPs specifically hyperaccumulate relative to wild-type α-SNAPs at the nematode feeding site, promoting the demise of this biotrophic interface. The paradigm of disease resistance through a dysfunctional variant of an essential gene may be applicable to other plant–pathogen interactions.
Instability and Efficiency of Mixed Halide Perovskites CH3NH3AI3–xClx (A = Pb and Sn): A First-Principles, Computational Study

We carried out calculations based on density functional theory to investigate the electronic, vibrational, and dielectric properties of mixed halide perovskites CH3NH3 AI3–xClx with A = Pb and Sn. Computed free energies indicated that Cl mixed systems may be formed only for Cl concentrations not exceeding 1019 cm–3, and phonon calculations showed that the disorder induced in the host lattice by the presence of a smaller halogen is responsible for mechanical instabilities. However, we found that the presence of chloride may be beneficial to the electronic properties of the perovskites. Chloride anions cause the organic cations to be displaced from the center of the cage; such a displacement induces preferential orientations of the cation dipole, which in turn are responsible for notable changes in the dielectric properties of the material and possibly for the formation of local ferroelectric domains. The latter are instrumental in separating electron hole pairs and hence in contributing to long charge-carr...
An easy concession or meaningful representation? Minority women in French politics

Why have minority women in France made more strides than minority men in terms of gaining access to formal political power? Why have they become, in essence, the face of diversity in French politics at the elite national level? In this article, I propose that minority women’s rise to power has been anything but accidental and is the deliberate consequence of a system cognizant of the need to diversify politics, but institutionally and ideologically underprepared to do so. Because Republican assimilation obviates the formal recognition of minorities in the public sphere, politicians have strategically opted to include minority women in greater numbers than minority men on national electoral party lists and Cabinets in order to satisfy the de facto requirement of minority representation in the “safest” way possible. More specifically, I propose that politicians across the ideological spectrum often consider minority women ideal candidates specifically for their ability to serve a uniquely dual political purpose. On the one hand, minority women are visible enough to satisfy the basic need for minority descriptive representation. On the other hand, minority women are also deemed more “assimilable” than men and therefore not too “visible” to actively threaten Republican ideals or alienate conservative voters. Finally, if minority women are favored precisely because they promise not to dramatically rattle the status quo, this paper suggests that their increasing political presence will struggle to facilitate concomitant progress in the substantive representation of minorities in France.
FUsing Hybrid Remote Attestation with a Formally Verified Microkernel: Lessons Learned

Remote Attestation (RA) allows a trusted entity (verifier) to securely measure internal state of a remote untrusted device (prover). RA can be used to establish a static or dynamic root of trust in embedded and cyber-physical systems. There are 3 types of RA designs: hardware-based, software-based, and hybrid, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. This paper presents the first hybrid RA design (HYDRA) that builds upon formally verified software components that ensure memory isolation and protection, as well as enforce memory access controls. HYDRA obtains these properties by using the formally verified seL4 microkernel. We instantiate HYDRA on a popular commodity platform and assess its performance via experiments; we show that HYDRA can attest 10MB of memory in less than 500msec. The paper also discusses the challenges facing development of HYDRA and the lessons learned.
SkinBot: A Wearable Skin Climbing Robot

We introduce SkinBot; a lightweight robot that moves over the skin surface with a two-legged suction-based locomotion mechanism and that captures a wide range of body parameters with an exchangeable multipurpose sensing module. We believe that robots that live on our skin such as SkinBot will enable a more systematic study of the human body and will offer great opportunities to advance many areas such as telemedicine, human-computer interfaces, body care, and fashion.
Clinical Decision Support

Clinical decision support (CDS) systems provide clinicians and patients with intelligently filtered information at appropriate times to foster better health processes, better individual patient care, and better population health. This chapter provides a brief history of CDS systems, reviews best practices for implementing CDS, describes the knowledge management cycle, and highlights unintended consequences of CDS coupled with quality, safety, ethical, legal, and regulatory concerns. Emerging trends include the use of CDS to enable population health management and to conduct clinical trials.
Modeling agent-based traffic simulation properties in Alloy

The advances in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) call for a new generation of traffic simulation models that support connectivity and collaboration among simulated vehicles and traffic infrastructure. In this paper we introduce MATISSE, a complex, large scale agent-based framework for the modeling and simulation of ITS and discuss how Alloy, a modeling language based on set theory and first order logic, was used to specify, verify, and analyze MATISSE's traffic models.
Dynorphin Peptides: Antagonists of Melanocortin Receptors

Purpose. To identify possible targets that mediate the non-opioid effects of dynorphin A (DynA), effects that include inflammation and aggravation of traumatic nerve injury.
Dynamic and Gravitational Effects on the Correlation Volume: Experimental Methods

We report on the design of a new prototype flight instrument that will be used to repeat previous Earth-based measurements of nonlinear heat transport near the superfluid transition in the microgravity laboratory. Since this nonlinear conductivity is associated with dynamic limitations to the divergent correlation length, and since gravitational acceleration also limits the correlation length's divergence, we anticipate that the nonlinear conductivity will depend strongly on gravitational acceleration. The apparatus, data taking procedure, systematic corrections, and error sources are discussed here.
Pseudo-continuous multi-dimensional multi-mode systems

The dynamics of multi-mode multi-dimensional (M 3 D) hybrid systems is described. Such systems have modes of different dimensions, for which the state space is defined as a fibre bundle. The implications of the behavior at the mode transitions is investigated in detail, for which pseudo-continuity is introduced. An M 3 D system is pseudo-continuous if instantaneous switching via higher dimensional modes does not have any effect. Canonical forms and parameterizations are derived for pseudo-continuous M 3 D systems. The system may be actively controlled (exo-M 3 D), or passively switched via a fixed switching surface (auto-M 3 D). M 3 D systems are of interest in the approximate and reduced order modeling for nonlinear systems and the remote control over one-way communication channels. The optimal timing (switching) control for such M 3 D systems is solved in the general case. Necessary conditions for a stationary solution are derived and shown to extend those of the equal dimension case (Egerstedt et al. 2003). We also give a specific solution for the linear quadratic problem, involving a generalization of the Riccati equation. This problem is of interest in deriving neighboring extremal solutions for the control under small perturbations of s nominal solution. Some suggestions towards determining the optimal mode sequence are given. We illustrate the problem with the optimal control for a spring assisted high jump (aka man on a trampoline).
Fusing Content and Context with Causality

This chapter\(^\dagger\) presents a generative framework that uses influence diagrams to fuse metadata of multiple modalities for photo annotation. We fuse contextual information (location, time, and camera parameters), visual content (holistic and local perceptual features), and semantic ontology in a synergistic way. We use causal strengths to encode causalities between variables, and between variables and semantic labels. Through analytical and empirical studies, we demonstrate that our fusion approach can achieve high-quality photo annotation and good interpretability, substantially better than traditional methods.
Longitudinal Developmental Outcomes after Traumatic Brain Injury in Young Children: Are Infants More Vulnerable Than Toddlers?

Abstract Children under 4 years of age have the highest incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among the non-elderly and may be at high risk of poor developmental outcomes. We prospectively enro...
Proliferation of superficial neuromasts during lateral line development in the Round Goby, Neogobius melanostomus

Members of the family Gobiidae have an unusual lateral line morphology in which some of the lateral line canal segments do not develop or enclose. This loss of lateral line canal segments is frequently accompanied by proliferation of superficial neuromasts. Although the proliferation of superficial neuromasts forms intricate patterns that have been used as a taxonomic tool to identify individual gobiid species, there has never been a detailed study that has documented the development of the lateral line system in gobies. The Round Goby, Neogobius melanostomus, is the focus of this study because the absence of the lateral line canal segments below the eye are accompanied by numerous transverse rows of superficial neuromasts. Our results suggest that the origin of some of these superficial neuromast lines could be the result of single presumptive canal neuromasts that have proliferated after canal enclosure is arrested. Many of the intricate patterns of neuromasts observed in gobiids develop from a simplified pattern of neuromast that is very similar among different species of gobies. The proliferation of superficial neuromasts has evolved several times in fish families such as the tetras, gobies, and sculpins, and may provide an adaptive advantage to tune the lateral line system for different environments and prey types.
Special Sorrow: Terminally Ill Children’s Experience of Their Parent’s Distress:

The authors of this paper explore the distress that terminally ill children experience when they see the suffering their illness and dying is causing their parents. The authors refer to this experience as special sorrow. The conceptual framework that guides this reflection of the terminally ill child's experience is the Roy adaptation model. The goal of this paper is to explore the concept of special sorrow as lived, so as to help nurses be with such children and their parents in a way that eases sorrow through effective adaptation and transcendence.
An outdoor sound propagation model in concert with geographic information system software

As industrial technology advances, man-made noise has increasingly contributed to natural environment soundscapes. To predict how this anthropogenic noise can affect these natural environments, engineers build acoustic models over given terrain; however many current models are not compatible with common Geographic Information System (GIS) software, could become outdated due to software version updates, or are written as proprietary packages unavailable to park management. The goal of this study was to create a true open source outdoor sound propagation model compatible with (but not dependent on) outside GIS software. The model was developed to include uneven terrain, atmospheric absorption, screening, wind effects, and ground effects using ISO 9613-2, an international standard for attenuation of sound during propagation outdoors. Given sound source inputs and locations over an input Digital Elevation Map, GIS compatible file types of spatially explicit sound pressure level predictions can be produced by this model. This tool allows for ecologists and park managers to get a better understanding of how anthropogenic noise is affecting soundscapes in natural environments. [Work supported by United Technologies Corporation Professorship.]
Ectopic brown adipose tissue formation within skeletal muscle after brown adipose progenitor cell transplant augments energy expenditure

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis increases energy expenditure (EE). Expanding the volume of active BAT via transplantation holds promise as a therapeutic strategy for morbid obesity and diabetes. Brown adipose progenitor cells (BAPCs) can be isolated and expanded to generate autologous brown adipocyte implants. However, the transplantation of brown adipocytes is currently impeded by poor efficiency of BAT tissue formation in vivo and undesirably short engraftment time. In this study, we demonstrated that transplanting BAPCs into limb skeletal muscles consistently led to the ectopic formation of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1)+pos adipose tissue with long-term engraftment (>4 mo). Combining VEGF with the BAPC transplant further improved BAT formation in muscle. Ectopic engraftment of BAPC-derived BAT in skeletal muscle augmented the EE of recipient mice. Although UCP1 expression declined in long-term BAT grafts, this deterioration can be reversed by swimming exercise because of sympathetic activation. This study suggests that intramuscular transplantation of BAPCs represents a promising approach to deriving functional BAT engraftment, which may be applied to therapeutic BAT transplantation and tissue engineering.-Liu, Y., Fu, W., Seese, K., Yin, A., Yin, H. Ectopic brown adipose tissue formation within skeletal muscle after brown adipose progenitor cell transplant augments energy expenditure.
Abstract 978: Tim-4+tissue-resident macrophages impair antitumor T-cell immunity

Over 600,000 Americans and 8 million worldwide die of cancer each year. The success of immune checkpoint blockade with anti-PD-1 therapy has been a remarkable clinical advance. However, most patients do not respond to anti-PD-1 monotherapy and the majority of those who initially do respond eventually succumb to the disease. There is currently an unmet need to identify therapeutic strategies to overcome resistance and further enhance the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy. Tim-4 is a phosphatidylserine (PS) receptor that has been reported to be expressed on myeloid cells. Prior work has demonstrated that Tim-4 deficiency or blockade in mice is associated with features of autoimmunity and enhanced anti-tumor immunity. Using flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo biodistribution, we determined that Tim-4 is expressed predominantly on tissue-resident macrophages, such as Kupffer cells, peritoneal macrophages, pleural macrophages, and lymph node macrophages, but not tumor-associated macrophages, in mice and humans. We provide evidence that Tim-4+ macrophages produce high levels of the cytokines TNF-α and TGF-β, which have been linked to T cell dysfunction, and also the TGF-β activating integrin αv (CD51). Antibody blockade of Tim-4 enhances the anti-tumor activity of anti-PD-1 therapy after subcutaneous tumor inoculation of B16 melanoma, CT26 colon carcinoma, and MC38 colon carcinoma. Finally, combined blockade of Tim-4 and PD-1 resulted in substantially more curative responses in a MC38 model of peritoneal carcinomatosis, compared to anti-PD-1 monotherapy. This was associated with enhanced CD8+ T cell infiltration into the peritoneal cavity, increased CD8+ T cell/Foxp3+ regulatory T cell ratio, and reduced expression of the exhaustion marker PD-1. Thus, we show that Tim-4+ tissue-resident macrophages impair anti-tumor T cell immunity and antibody blockade of Tim-4 is a strategy that should be considered for clinical studies in cancers resistant to anti-PD-1 monotherapy. Citation Format: Andrew Chow, Sara Schad, Sai K. Sharma, Sadna Budhu, Aditi Gupta, Corrin Pimentel, Hong Zhong, Jason S. Lewis, John T. Poirier, Jedd D. Wolchok, Charles M. Rudin, Taha Merghoub. Tim-4+ tissue-resident macrophages impair antitumor T-cell immunity [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 978.
What Controls the Duration of El Niño and La Niña Events

AbstractThe temporal evolution of El Nino and La Nina varies greatly from event to event. To understand the dynamical processes controlling the duration of El Nino and La Nina events, a suite of ob...
When does matriliny fail? The frequencies and causes of transitions to and from matriliny estimated from a de novo coding of a cross-cultural sample

The question of when and why societies have transitioned away from matriliny to other types of kinship systems-and when and why they transition towards matriliny-has a long history in anthropology, one that is heavily engaged with both evolutionary theory and cross-cultural research methods. This article presents tabulations from a new coding of ethnographic documents from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), tallying claims of transitions in kinship systems both away from and to matriliny using various levels of stringency. We then use our counts as the outcome variables in a set of Bayesian analyses that simultaneously estimate the probability of a transition occurring given societal covariates alongside the conditional probability of detecting a transition given the volume of ethnographic data available to code. Our goal is to estimate the cross-cultural and comparative frequency of transitions away from and to matriliny, as well as to explore potential causes underlying these patterns. We find that transitions away from matriliny have been significantly more common than 'reverse transitions' to matriliny. Our evidence suggests that both rates may be, in part, an artefact of the colonial and globalizing period during which the data comprising much of the current ethnographic record were recorded. Analyses of the correlates of transitions away from matriliny are consistent with several of the key causal arguments made by anthropologists over the past century, especially with respect to subsistence transition (to pastoralism, intensive agriculture and market economies), social complexity and colonialism, highlighting the importance of ecological factors in such transitions. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals'.
Cyclosporin A Administration During Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion Preserves Lung Grafts in Rat Transplant Model.

Background Despite the benefits of ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) such as lung reconditioning, preservation and evaluation prior to transplantation, deleterious effects including activation of proinflammatory cascades and alteration of metabolic profiles have been reported. Although patient outcomes have been favorable, further studies addressing optimal conditions are warranted. In this study, we investigated the role of the immunosuppressant drug Cyclosporine A (CyA), in preserving mitochondrial function and subsequently preventing proinflammatory changes in lung grafts during EVLP. Methods Using rat heart-lung blocks after 1 hour cold preservation, an acellular normothermic EVLP system was established for 4 hours. CyA was added into perfusate at a final concentration of 1 µM. The evaluation included lung graft function, lung compliance and pulmonary vascular resistance as well as biochemical marker measurement in the perfusate at multiple time points. After EVLP, single orthotopic lung transplantation was performed and the grafts were assessed 2 hours after reperfusion. Results Lung grafts on EVLP with CyA exhibited significantly better functional and physiological parameters as compared to those without CyA treatment. CyA administration attenuated proinflammatory changes and prohibited glucose consumption during EVLP through mitigating mitochondrial dysfunction in lung grafts. CyA-preconditioned lungs showed better posttransplant lung early graft function and less inflammatory events compared to control. Conclusions During EVLP, CyA administration can have a preconditioning effect through both its anti-inflammatory and mitochondrial protective properties leading to improved lung graft preservation which may result in enhanced graft quality after transplantation.
The Impact of Antibiotic-Loaded Bone Cement on Antibiotic Resistance in Periprosthetic Knee Infections

Backgroud Antibiotic-loaded bone cement (ALBC) is commonly used in total knee arthroplasty (TKA), especially among high-risk patients. While previous studies have reported on the efficacy of ALBC in reducing the rate of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI), its impact on antibiotic resistance has not been determined. The purpose of this study was to investigate antibiotic resistance among organisms causing PJIs after TKA in which ALBC was utilized. Methods A retrospective review from December 1998 through December 2017 identified 36 PJIs that met inclusion criteria. Patients with culture-negative infection and unknown cement type were excluded. Patient characteristics, infecting organism, and antibiotic susceptibilities were recorded. ABLC included an aminoglycoside in all cases. Results There was no difference in the type of PJI between the 2 groups. Staphylococcus species was the most commonly isolated, with 9 of 16 cases (56.3%) using non-ALBC and 14 of 20 (65.0%) cases using ALBC. Of those infected with Staphylococcus, there was no significant difference in antibiotic susceptibilities between groups. Overall, there were only 3 cases where the infecting organism was aminoglycoside resistant (standard cement, 1; ALBC, 2). Conclusions These results suggest that the use of ALBC does not increase the risk of antibiotic resistance or affect the pattern of infection, even as the use of ALBC continues to increase, particularly among high-risk patients.
SecureTrain: An Approximation-Free and Computationally Efficient Framework for Privacy-Preserved Neural Network Training

Data privacy is a fundamental challenge for Deep Learning (DL) in many applications. In this work, we propose SecureTrain, which aims to achieve privacy-preserved DL model training efficiently and without accuracy loss. SecureTrain enables joint linear and non-linear computation based on the Homomorphic Secret Share (HSS) technique, to carry out approximation-free non-polynomial operations, to achieve training stability and prevent accuracy loss. Meanwhile, it eliminates the time consuming Homomorphic permutation operation (Perm) and features an efficient piggyback design, by carefully devising the share set and exploiting the dataflow of the whole training process. This design significantly reduces the overall system training time. We analyze the computation and communication complexity of SecureTrain and prove its security. We implement SecureTrain and benchmark its performance with well-known dataset for both inference and training. For inference, SecureTrain not only ensures privacy-preserved inference, but achieves an inference speedup as high as 48x compared with state-of-the-art inference frameworks. For training, SecureTrain maintains the model accuracy and stability comparable to plaintext training, which is a sharp contrast to other schemes. To the best of knowledge, this is the first work that addresses two fundamental challenges, accuracy loss/training instability, and computation efficiency, in privacy-preserved deep neural network training.
The Farthest Point Map on the Regular Octahedron

In this paper, we give a complete description of the farthest point map, as defined on the regular octahedron with its intrinsic flat cone metric. As a consequence we show that every well-defined o...
Nail Psoriasis: A Review of Effective Therapies and Recommendations for Management

Nail psoriasis has a prevalence that ranges from 10 to 82% and can significantly impact the quality of life of patients. Nail psoriasis is one of the most challenging areas to treat, and multiple therapies have been explored. Topical and injectable therapies are recommended for few-nail disease. Systemic therapies, including biologics, can be considered for patients with multiple and resistant nail disease, impaired quality of life, and severe skin and joint involvement, due to their long-term efficacy. Although outcome data are difficult to compare, interleukin (IL)-17 inhibitors may have superior short-term efficacy when compared to IL-23 inhibitors and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha inhibitors, although long-term efficacy is similar to TNF-alpha inhibitors. IL-23 inhibitors and TNF-alpha inhibitors have a similar efficacy for nail psoriasis.
Assessing Performance and Risk in Complex Supply Chains and Tying Performance Measures to Strategic Concepts

Despite the popular notion that ‘supply chains rather than individual firms compete’, an intensive review of supply-chain performance metrics proposed in published works reveals that most measures ...
Large-eddy simulations with ClimateMachine v0.2.0: a new open-source code for atmospheric simulations on GPUs and CPUs

Abstract. We introduce ClimateMachine, a new open-source atmosphere modeling framework using the Julia language to be performance portable on central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). ClimateMachine uses a common framework both for coarser-resolution global simulations and for high-resolution, limited-area large-eddy simulations (LES). Here, we demonstrate the LES configuration of the atmosphere model in canonical benchmark cases and atmospheric flows, using an energy-conserving nodal discontinuous-Galerkin (DG) discretization of the governing equations. Resolution dependence, conservation characteristics and scaling metrics are examined in comparison with existing LES codes. They demonstrate the utility of ClimateMachine as a modelling tool for limited-area LES flow configurations.
DNS of Stable Spatially-Developing Turbulent Thermal Boundary Layers under Weak Stratification

Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of spatially-developing turbulent thermal boundary layers under stratification are performed. It is well known that the transport phenomena of the flow is significantly affected by buoyancy, particularly in urban environmentswhere neutral, stable and unstable atmospheric boundary layers are encountered. In the present investigation, the DynamicMulti-scale approach (DMA) by Araya et al. [3] for turbulent inflow generation is extended to thermally stratified boundary layers. Furthermore, the proposed DMA is based on the original rescaling-recycling method by Lund et al. [12]. The two major improvements are: (i) the utilization of different scaling laws in the inner and outer parts of the boundary layer to better absorb external conditions such as inlet Reynolds numbers, streamwise pressure gradients, buoyancy effects, etc. ([4]), (ii) the implementation of a dynamic approach ([3]) to compute scaling parameters from the flow solution without the need of empirical correlations for the friction velocity and friction temperature as in Lund et al. [12] and Kong et al. [11], respectively.
Multi-phase algorithms for throughput maximization for real-time scheduling

We consider the problem of off-line throughput maximization for job scheduling on one or more machines, where each job has a release time, a deadline and a profit. Most of the versions of the problem discussed here were already treated by Bar-Noy et al. (Proc. 31st ACM STOC, 1999, pp. 622–631; http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/∼amotz/). Our main contribution is to provide algorithms that do not use linear programming, are simple and much faster than the corresponding ones proposed in Bar-Noy et al. (ibid., 1999), while either having the same quality of approximation or improving it. More precisely, compared to the results of in Bar-Noy et al. (ibid., 1999), our pseudo-polynomial algorithm for multiple unrelated machines and all of our strongly-polynomial algorithms have better performance ratios, all of our algorithms run much faster, are combinatorial in nature and avoid linear programming. Finally, we show that algorithms with better performance ratios than 2 are possible if the stretch factors of the jobs are bounded; a straightforward consequence of this result is an improvement of the ratio of an optimal solution of the integer programming formulation of the JISP2 problem (see Spieksma, Journal of Scheduling, vol. 2, pp. 215–227, 1999) to its linear programming relaxation.
Executive veto power and credit claiming

The line-item veto has often be heralded as an effective tool in reducing pork barrel spending. A model of veto bargaining over public goods and pork barrel spending in the presence of credit claiming incentives demonstrates that the item veto does not necessarily reduce pork barrel spending and reduces the executive’s ability to attain his preferred level of spending on public goods. The item veto also has an ambiguous effect on the balance of power between the executive and the legislature while strengthening the position of the legislative agenda setter within the legislature.
Radio and X-Ray Observations of Large Scale Jets in Quasars

The first big radio jet to be found in a quasar was in 4C32.69 (z=.659) (Potash and Wardle, 1980), A new higher resolution map of this jet, made with the VLA at 5 GHz, is shown in Fig. 1. Observationally the important points are 1) it is very luminous, 2) it is very well collimated, 3) the magnetic field is parallel to the jet over its entire length, 4) it bends at least three times along its path to the outer radio lobe. Physically this is interesting because 1) it is a very lossy pipeline to the outer lobe, 2) the high degree of collimation suggests either the jet is confined by external pressure or it is highly supersonic. But the minimum internal energy density is very high (>3×l0-10 erg cm-3), so if it is confined the external pressure must also be very high. On the other hand, if the jet is expanding freely, it is easy to show that the momentum flux is enormous (>4×l038 dynes). Such a jet is very rigid. It is difficult to stop and difficult to bend, but evidently both of these things happen. A detailed discussion of these problems is given in Potash & Wardle (1980), who concluded that the jet cannot be expanding freely. They suggested that the jet might be confined either by the thermal pressure of external hot gas, or by a helical component of magnetic field due to currents in the jet.
APOE genotype-dependent modulation of astrocyte chemokine CCL3 production

Apolipoprotein E (apoE) is well known as a regulator of cholesterol homeostasis, and is increasingly recognized to play a prominent role in the modulation of innate immune response, including cell-to-cell communication and migration. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by neuroinflammation that appears to be an important component of the pathophysiology of the disease. Astrocytes are the majority cell type in brain, exerting significant influence over a range of central nervous system activities, including microglial-mediated neuroinflammatory responses. As the resident innate immune effector cells of the brain, microglia respond to soluble chemical signals released from tissue during injury and disease by mobilizing to lesion sites, clearing toxic molecules, and releasing chemical signals of their own. While microglial-mediated neuroinflammation in the AD brain remains an area of intense investigation, the mechanisms underlying reinforcement and regulation of these aberrant microglial responses by astrocytes are largely unstudied. Moreover, although inheritance of APOE ɛ4 represents the greatest genetic risk factor for sporadic AD, the mechanism by which apoE isoforms differentially influence AD pathophysiology is unknown. Here we show that APOE ɛ4 genotype specifically modulates astrocyte secretion of potent microglial chemotactic agents, including CCL3, thus providing evidence that APOE modulation of central nervous system (CNS) innate immune response is mediated through astrocytes. GLIA 2015;63:51–65
Type-II/III DCT/DST algorithms with reduced number of arithmetic operations

We present algorithms for the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and discrete sine transform (DST), of types II and III, that achieve a lower count of real multiplications and additions than previously published algorithms, without sacrificing numerical accuracy. Asymptotically, the operation count is reduced from 2Nlog"2N+O(N) to 179Nlog"2N+O(N) for a power-of-two transform size N. Furthermore, we show that an additional N multiplications may be saved by a certain rescaling of the inputs or outputs, generalizing a well-known technique for N=8 by Arai et al. These results are derived by considering the DCT to be a special case of a DFT of length 4N, with certain symmetries, and then pruning redundant operations from a recent improved fast Fourier transform algorithm (based on a recursive rescaling of the conjugate-pair split-radix algorithm). The improved algorithms for the DCT-III, DST-II, and DST-III follow immediately from the improved count for the DCT-II.
Defining Corporate Strengths And Weaknesses: Is It Essential for Successful Strategy Implementation?:

This paper discusses the importance of strategic planning, which is generally believed to lead to higher financial performance. The restaurant market appears to be saturated and the competitive environment is growing increasingly turbulent. Operators are facing tough conditions in which to try to survive. To succeed in this dynamic and increasingly competitive environment, restaurant managers must now systematically monitor trends, anticipate threats and opportunities, perform sound internal analyses of strengths and weakesses relative to the firms' capabilities and resources, and formulate effective strategies to gain a competitive advantage. A study was conducted to gain information on the strategic planning activity, and specifically the degree of internal strengths and weaknesses analysis performed by restaurant firms.One hundred and fifty randomly selected restaurant firms were sent a letter soliciting the chief executive officers' participation in the study. Telephone interviews using a structured q...
Wave Propagation and Spallation in Textured Beryllium

Plate impact experiments were conducted on polycrystalline beryllium samples of four different textures to determine the effect of texturing on the wave propagation and spall strength of beryllium. The samples were fabricated from a single billet of hot-pressed beryllium powder and characterized by chemical composition and grain size; the degree of texturing was quantified by basal plane pole figure analyses. Results indicate that (1) although the nominal spall strength is not significantly altered by the texturing, the distribution and character of the spall damage does vary markedly with texture; and (2) the elastic precursor wave is severely ramped in the as-pressed material, but appears as a sharply-rising wave in the highly textured material. A model for unrelaxed thermal microstresses is advanced to explain the suppression of the elastic precursor wave in the as-pressed beryllium.