cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Age dependent increase in early resistance of mice to Mycobacterium tuberculosis is associated with an increase in CD8 T cells that are capable of antigen independent IFN-γ production

The lungs of naive 18-month-old mice contain an abundant resident population of CD8 T cells that express typical markers of memory, express elevated levels of Th1 cytokine receptors on their surface, and are capable of non-specific IFN-gamma production in response to a Th1 cytokine cocktail. In this study we characterize this population of CD8 T cells in the lungs and spleens of mice with increasing age. In general, the proportion of CD8 T cells expressing markers of memory and Th1 cytokine receptors increased with age. The enhanced ability of CD8 T cells to produce IFN-gamma in an antigen independent manner followed this pattern as well, beginning to increase between 6 and 12 months of age. Interestingly, the phenotypic and functional age-related changes in CD8 T cells were also associated with a progressive age-related increase in early resistance to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Taken together, these data suggest that as mice age a population of memory CD8 T cells, that are capable of contributing to innate immune responses to M. tuberculosis, gradually emerges and could be relevant for developing strategies to enhance immunity in the elderly.
A non-minimal supergravity model consistent with all experimental constraints

We examine non-minimal supergravity models by omitting some of the usual simplifying assumptions. In particular, the SU(2)x U(1) breaking is uncoupled from the higgsino mass parameter, and the photino to gluino mass ratio is not rigidly fixed. We construct and examine in detail an interesting, and perhaps phenomenologically relevant model, with heavy squarks and light gluinos; the lightest supersymmetric particle is a higgsino ia, so the photino decays $ ~ "tia. We discuss ways to determine all of the parameters of the model, and its experimental implications. One interesting consequence is a new way to produce Higgs bosons, e ÷ e-~ Z°~ ~.---, lalaH °, with a rate that depends on the ~. mass but could be as large as almost one percent of all Z ° decays even for mrt up to about ] of Mz; the signature is H ° + missing energy, which is quite good for detection.
Integrated MAP equalization and turbo product coding for optical fiber communications systems

We propose an integrated maximum a posteriori equalization and turbo product coding (IMAP-TPC) scheme for optical fiber communications systems (OFCS). The scheme uses accurate probabilistic characterization of electrical current in the presence of polarization mode dispersion (PMD)-induced intersymbol interference (ISI) and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise. In the new IMAP-TPC scheme, TPC decoding is integrated with a symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori (MAP) detector. The MAP detector calculates the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of a received symbol using the estimated conditional pdfs, and hence, obtains a much more accurate reliability measure for use in the TPC decoder. Similar to the case in the recent hardware implementation of TPC decoder for optical systems, we generate TPC by serial concatenation of two Bose, Chaudhuri, and Hocquenghem codes with low overhead. Simulation results with all-order PMD and ASE noise demonstrate both the practicality and the effectiveness of the IMAP-TPC scheme for OFCS
Legal Models of the Patient-Physician Relation

I will in this essay attempt to do three things. First, I will try to sketch two ways of thinking about, two models of, the patient-physician relation. Secondly, I will try to show how these two different models are in effect presupposed by two very different legal treatments of the patient-physician relation, the treatment of that relation in most common-law jurisdictions and the treatment of that relation in Judaic Law. Finally, I will try to show how certain different fundamental values lie behind these models and to suggest that a fully adequate moral model needs to find a way to accommodate these different values.
Models and Methods to Characterize Site Amplification from a Pair of Records

Abstract The paper presents a tutorial review of the models and methods that are used to characterize site amplification from the pairs of rock‐ and soil‐site records, and introduces some new techniques with better theoretical foundations. The models and methods discussed include spectral and cross‐spectral ratios, spectral ratios for downhole records, response spectral ratios, constant amplification factors, parametric models, physical models, and time‐varying filters. An extensive analytical and numerical error analysis of spectral and cross‐spectral ratios shows that probabilistically cross‐spectral ratios give more reliable estimates of site amplification. Spectral ratios should not be used to determine site amplification from downhole‐surface recording pairs because of the feedback in the downhole sensor. Response spectral ratios are appropriate for low frequencies, but overestimate the amplification at high frequencies. The best method to be used depends on how much precision is required in the esti...
Detection and quantification of diameter reduction due to corrosion in reinforcing steel bars

Guided wave–based techniques are becoming popular for damage detection in pipes, rods, and plates. For monitoring reinforced concrete beams, the longitudinal guided wave is excited and recorded aft...
Contextualizing the State Mode of Production in the United States: Race, Space, and Civil Rights:

In 1967 Dr Martin Luther King Jr began organizing a “Poor People's Campaign” in an effort to bring 3000 families to Washington, DC to address widespread poverty in the US. King's efforts were the culmination of a political transformation that he underwent in the middle of the 1960s concerning his views on Vietnam and US global hegemony. I argue that by focusing on King and the US Poor People's Campaign we can better understand the changing coordinates of the US political economy, what has been termed the “state mode of production” or SMP Associated with the gradual decline of the Keynesian state, the SMP refers to new kinds of politicospatial arraignments that emerged during the 20th century and continue the process of capital accumulation. I maintain that in the United States the political-economic transformations encapsulated through the growth of the SMP are inseparable from the USA's racial legacy. Hence the failure of the US civil rights struggle to remake economic processes demonstrates the limits o...
Factors associated with fetal macrosomia in offspring of gestational diabetic women.

Objective: To determine whether there is a relationship between birthweight and interval between 1-h and 3-h glucose tolerance test (GTT) as well as other factors.Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of our computerized diabetes database for the years 1992-1997. Ninety-four women with gestational diabetes fulfilled the inclusion criteria (i.e., singleton gestation, term delivery, absence of medical conditions, and known interval between 1-h and 3-h GTT). They were evaluated based on prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), mean glucose values, interval between diagnostic testing, and gestational age of 3-h GTT.Results: Subjects with GDM had a mean glucose value of 96.8 mg/dl and average prepregnancy BMI of 29.3 kg/m2. When GDM subjects with and without macrosomic infants were compared, mean glucose values (97.4 vs. 96.6 mg/dl) and mean interval (18.1 vs. 17.0 days) between diagnostic testing did not significantly differ. However, maternal prepregnancy BMI was higher in the group of women who gave bir...
Naturalizing Racial Differences Through Comedy: Asian, Black, and White Views on Racial Stereotypes in Rush Hour 2.

In this paper, we examine the ideological implications of racial stereotypes in comedy through a textual and audience analysis of Rush Hour 2. Although Asian, Black, and White focus group participants differentially engaged with racial stereotypes in the film, most participants, regardless of race, found the film's racial jokes inoffensive. Many Asian and Black participants found a positive source of pleasure in the negative portrayals of their own race and did not produce oppositional discourse. Our study suggests that the generic conventions and textual devices of comedy encourage the audience to naturalize racial differences rather than to challenge racial stereotypes.
A Diverse Family of GPCRs Expressed in Specific Subsets of Nociceptive Sensory Neurons

In vertebrates, peripheral chemosensory neurons express large families of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), reflecting the diversity and specificity of stimuli they detect. However, somatosensory neurons, which respond to chemical, thermal, or mechanical stimuli, are more broadly tuned. Here we describe a family of approximately 50 GPCRs related to Mas1, called mrgs, a subset of which is expressed in specific subpopulations of sensory neurons that detect painful stimuli. The expression patterns of mrgs thus reveal an unexpected degree of molecular diversity among nociceptive neurons. Some of these receptors can be specifically activated in heterologous cells by RFamide neuropeptides such as NPFF and NPAF, which are analgesic in vivo. Thus, mrgs may regulate nociceptor function and/or development, including the sensation or modulation of pain.
Splenomegaly with Hypersplenism in Sickle Cell Anemia Treated by Radiation—Case Report

The incidence of splenomegaly in sickle cell anemia (defined as a spleen easily palpated below the costal margin in quiet respiration) appears to be around 10% after 10 years of age. Persistent splenomegaly in older children is rare and frequently is associated with hypersplenism. Splenectomy has been the treatment of choice in several reported cases based on red cell survival studies before and after splenectomy.1-3 Removal of the spleen has been found to be associated with marked improvement of previously very shortened red cell survival. We want to report the case of a 12-year-old boy with sickle cell anemia, splenomegaly, and sickle cell heart disease who was treated by radiation therapy for his enlarged spleen because of hypersplenism.
Electronic states and optical properties of PbSe nanorods and nanowires

A theory of the electronic-structure and excitonic absorption spectra of PbS and PbSe nanowires and nanorods in the framework of a four-band effective-mass model is presented. Calculations conducted for PbSe show that dielectric contrast dramatically strengthens the exciton binding in narrow nanowires and nanorods. However, the self-interaction energies of the electron and hole nearly cancel the Coulomb binding, and as a result the optical absorption spectra are practically unaffected by the strong dielectric contrast between PbSe and the surrounding medium. Measurements of the size-dependent absorption spectra of colloidal PbSe nanorods are also presented. Using room-temperature energy-band parameters extracted from the optical spectra of spherical PbSe nanocrystals, the theory provides good quantitative agreement with the measured spectra.
Parallel On-Chip Power Distribution Network Analysis on Multi-Core-Multi-GPU Platforms

The challenging task of analyzing on-chip power (ground) distribution networks with multimillion node complexity and beyond is key to today's large chip designs. For the first time, we show how to exploit recent massively parallel single-instruction multiple-thread (SIMT)-based graphics processing unit (GPU) platforms to tackle large-scale power grid analysis with promising performance. Several key enablers including GPU-speciflc algorithm design, circuit topology transformation, workload partitioning, performance tuning are embodied in our GPU-accelerated hybrid multigrid (HMD) algorithm (GpuHMD) and its implementation. We also demonstrate that using the HMD solver as a preconditioner, the conjugate gradient solver can converge much faster to the true solution with good robustness. Extensive experiments on industrial and synthetic benchmarks have shown that for DC power grid analysis using one GPU, the proposed simulation engine achieves up to 100× runtime speedup over a state-of-the-art direct solver and more than 50× speedup over the CPU based multigrid implementation, while utilizing a four-core-four-GPU system, a grid with eight million nodes can be solved within about 1 s. It is observed that the proposed approach scales favorably with the circuit complexity, at a rate about 1 s per two million nodes on a single GPU card.
Supervisory Control of Multiple Robots: Effects of Imperfect Automation and Individual Differences

Objective: A military multitasking environment was simulated to examine the effects of an intelligent agent, RoboLeader, on the performance of robotics operators.Background: The participants’ task was to manage a team of ground robots with the assistance of RoboLeader, an intelligent agent capable of coordinating the robots and changing their routes on the basis of battlefield developments.Method: In the first experiment, RoboLeader was perfectly reliable; in the second experiment, RoboLeader’s recommendations were manipulated to be either false-alarm prone or miss prone, with a reliability level of either 60% or 90%. The visual density of the targeting environment was manipulated by the presence or absence of friendly soldiers.Results: RoboLeader, when perfectly reliable, was helpful in reducing the overall mission times. The type of RoboLeader imperfection (false-alarm vs. miss prone) affected operators’ performance of tasks involving visual scanning (target detection, route editing, and situation aware...
Unified approach to the classical statistical analysis of small signals

We give a classical confidence belt construction which unifies the treatment of upper confidence limits for null results and two-sided confidence intervals for non-null results. The unified treatment solves a problem (apparently not previously recognized) that the choice of upper limit or two-sided intervals leads to intervals which are not confidence intervals if the choice is based on the data. We apply the construction to two related problems which have recently been a battle-ground between classical and Bayesian statistics: Poisson processes with background, and Gaussian errors with a bounded physical region. In contrast with the usual classical construction for upper limits, our construction avoids unphysical confidence intervals. In contrast with some popular Bayesian intervals, our intervals eliminate conservatism (frequentist coverage greater than the stated confidence) in the Gaussian case and reduce it to a level dictated by discreteness in the Poisson case. We generalize the method in order to apply it to analysis of experiments searching for neutrino oscillations. We show that this technique both gives correct coverage and is powerful, while other classical techniques that have been used by neutrino oscillation search experiments fail one or both of these criteria.
HEAT SHIELDING : A NOVEL METHOD OF COLONIAL THERMOREGULATION IN HONEY BEES

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, maintain constant colony temperatures throughout the year. Honey bees fan their wings to cool the colony, and often spread fluid in conjunction with this behavior to induce evaporative cooling. We present an additional, previously undescribed mechanism used by the honey bee to maintain constant colony temperature in response to localized temperature increases. Worker bees shield the comb from external heat sources by positioning themselves on hot interior regions of the hive's walls. Although honey comb and brood comb were both shielded, the temperature-sensitive brood received a greater number of heat shielders and was thus better protected from overheating. Heat shielding appears to be a context-dependent adaptive behavior performed by worker bees who would previously have been considered "unemployed."
Acellular Pertussis Vaccines—A Solution to the Pertussis Problem?

The expanded knowledge of the components of Bordetella pertussis has led to the production of new vaccines consisting of one or more components of the organism. The vaccines have been found to be safe and immunogenic in infants and children. Early efficacy studies failed to determine what component of the vaccine and what level of antibody were needed for protection; additional studies with many more vaccines are currently in progress. The role of adults as reservoirs of B. pertussis infections and as victims of symptomatic disease has also been appreciated. Component vaccines have been found to be safe and immunogenic in adults
Efficacy and pregnancy outcome of two methods of semen preparation for intrauterine insemination: a prospective randomized study

Abstract Objective To examine pregnancy outcome with two methods of semen preparation for intrauterine insemination (IUI). Design Prospective and randomized study. Setting Academic tertiary center. Patient(s) Three hundred eleven couples undergoing 676 consecutive cycles of assisted conception using IUI. Intervention(s) Semen samples collected for IUI were randomized to wash only or density gradient centrifugation (DGC) processing. Main outcome measure(s) Various prepreparation and postpreparation semen parameters were used for IUI. The influence of the method of semen processing, and impact of various semen parameters and female factors on pregnancy were examined by receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves, logistic regression, and life table analysis. Result(s) Of the 676 cycles, 88 resulted in conception leading to an overall clinical pregnancy rate of 13.0% per cycle and 28.3% per patient with a miscarriage rate of 34.0%. Eighty-eight percent of pregnancies occurred in the first three cycles of IUI and 95.5% within the first four cycles. The pregnancy rate for wash only was 11.6% (37 of 319) and the rate for DGC was 14.3% (51 of 356). However, in samples with Conclusion(s) Although samples with an acceptable number of motile sperm can be processed efficiently by wash only, poor quality semen samples should be processed using DGC.
Design of commercial-scale gas-liquid contactors

A systematic design procedure using a liquid circulation unit for gas-liquid systems containing low-viscosity liquids is developed. The procedure can be used to predict and optimize the fluid mechanics and mass transfer in gas-liquid contactors for a specified performance. Batch liquid mass transfer data obtained from a commercial-scale aeration basin (12.2 m × 12.2 m × 6.7 m; gas flow rate range, 0.0023–0.01 m3/s) are used to verify the model predictions and to test the design procedure.
Suspected incisional hernia leading to resection of rib sequestrum: a rare case report

Intercostal incisional hernias are rarely encountered post-operative complications. Bone sequestra of the ribs are similarly rare. We report a very rare case of a left sided rib bone sequestrum mimicking an incisional hernia after a nephrectomy, splenectomy, and distal pancreatectomy.
Biblical Literalism and Inerrancy: Does the Difference Make a Difference?

Long a central concern of sociologists, the scientific study of religious attitudes has recently been something of a growth industry in political science. In part, this increase in scholarly attention has been occasioned by the rise in public visibility of the "New Christian Right," and has had as a primary focus the political attitudes and behavior of evangelicals and fundamentalists. As research into doctrinally conservative religious groups has increased, there has been an increasing sophistication concerning the operationalization of the independent variable. While some analysts have focused on denominational affiliation as a measure of "evangelicalism," (Kellstedt, 1986a; Smidt, 1983; Morgan, 1979; Jelen, 1984) such a measure is beset with obvious problems. The most easily identifiable problem is also the most acute. Denominations, as well as individual congregations, are often characterized by moderate or high levels of intramural diversity. That is, knowing whether someone is a Baptist or a Catholic is, at best, a crude indicator of the beliefs an individual may hold. Because of the imprecision of denominational measures, many researchers have utilized doctrinal criteria to distinguish "evangelicals" or "fundamentalists" from more theologically liberal Christians (see Kellstedt and Smidt, 1985, and Wilcox, 1986, for excellent overviews of this literature). While the operational strategies for various studies contain important differences, an element common to virtually all doctrinal operational definitions of "evangelicalism" is an item eliciting the respondent's view of the Bible. Evangelicals (and fundamentalists) are thought to hold a "high view" of Scripture (Kellstedt, 1986b:2). That is, the Bible is thought to be an authoritative, divinely inspired work which provides the believer with a highly reliable world view. However, matters are not quite so simple. While the Bible proclaims its own authority (see 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-21; and John 10:24-25), there has been a good deal of dispute among conservative theologians concerning the precise nature of that authority. (See
Adjoint sensitivity analysis for time-dependent partial differential equations with adaptive mesh refinement

A new adjoint sensitivity analysis approach is presented for time-dependent partial differential equations with adaptive mesh refinement. The new approach, called ADDA, combines the best features of both the adjoint of the discretization (AD) and discretization of the adjoint (DA) approaches. It removes the obstacles of applying AD to adaptive methods and, in contrast to DA, requires for its use only a minimal amount of knowledge about the formulation of adjoint PDEs and their boundary conditions. The effectiveness and efficiency of ADDA are demonstrated for several numerical examples.
Magnesium in Subarachnoid Hemorrhage: From Bench to Bedside

Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) is a devastating disease responsible for 5 % of stroke cases and affects approximately 28,000 North Americans annually. Even though its incidence is dwarfed by other subtypes of stroke, the relative youth of the affected patients with a mean age of 50 years [1, 2] and that fewer than 40 % of them so stricken return to functional life despite modern treatment mean that this disease accounts for around 25 % of loss of productive life years, a magnitude comparable to ischemic stroke, the most frequent subtype of stroke [3–5].
Ukraine, Mainstream Media and Conflict Propaganda

In several recent cases of actual or attempted regime change, Western governments alleged their opponents’ possession of weapons of mass destruction as pretexts for war. Many such allegations are now known to have been false or exaggerated. The Ukraine crisis (since 2013) is arguably of a different order of concern, since it has invoked the participation, in one sense or another, of the United States, the European Union and Russia, each of which possesses abundant nuclear weapons capacity. Can Western consumers of mainstream media news, potentially now more informed of the failures of mainstream media to exercise due caution in the face of their own governments’ propaganda, reasonably expect superior future performance? This paper finds little basis for optimism. Drawing from a broader work that monitors mainstream and alternative media, the study identifies 10 key narratives that together forge the battlefield for information warfare between nuclear powers and, with particular respect to mainstream, West...
Hoechst 33342 Staining Identifies the Progenitor Side Population in NOD.Cg-PrkdcscidIL2rgtmWjl/Sz Mice Harboring Pediatric Leukemias

Background A sub-population of stem cells termed side population (SP) has a unique ability for the efflux of Hoechst 33342 dye. Recently, it was hypothesized that efflux properties might facilitate the efflux of accumulated chemotherapeutic drugs and as such constitute a tumor escape mechanism. Materials and methods As SP characterization in leukemia is incomplete, we characterized SP frequencies in 19 children diagnosed with acute B cell precursor leukemia (BCP-ALL), AML and T-ALL and described engraftment properties in immune-compromised NOD.Cg-Prkdc(scid)IL2rg(tmWjl)/Sz (NSG) mice. Results SP cells are detectable in children and mice irrespective of the origin of the leukemia and flow-cytometric analysis reveals that the SP population is a distinct sub-population. Functionally, the SP size remains stable over serial transplantations indicating that the "stemness" potential of our SP sample cohort was overall low. Conclusion SP cells exist in pediatric leukemia and are maintainable in NSG mice. Thus, our observations may facilitate down-stream characterization of LSCs in future studies.
A Proposal to Use Iterative, Small Clinical Trials to Optimize Therapeutic HIV Vaccine Immunogens to Launch Therapeutic HIV Vaccine Development

Abstract The HIV cure agenda has rekindled interest in the development of a therapeutic HIV vaccine. An iterative clinical trial strategy that proved successful for the development of effective cancer chemotherapies in the 1960s may be applicable to the development of a CD8 T lymphocyte-based therapeutic HIV vaccine. However, while cancer chemotherapy development could begin with iterative clinical trials to improve the use of active drugs, the first step in therapeutic HIV vaccine design should be discovery of immunogen constructs with potential for activity and their optimization to meet the challenges of HIV-1 sequence diversity and human polymorphism in T cell antigen presentation. A strategy for doing this is discussed in this article. The proposed strategy relies on a major commitment by funding organizations to fund organized and coordinated manufacture and clinical testing of a series of first- and second-generation constructs to test basic concepts in product design. This is presented as an alter...
Abstract 5381: p62/IMP2 promotes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression.

Autoantibodies to autologous cellular antigens in cancer patients have been considered as reporters identifying antigenic changes in cellular factors involved in the transformation process. We have made use of such autoantibodies from hepatocellular carcinoma patients to immunoscreen a cDNA expression library and have identified a cytoplasmic RNA-binding protein p62. Autoantibodies to p62 have been detected in up to 21% of a cohort of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. Further study has demonstrated that p62 is a member of insulin-like growth factor 2 mRNA binding protein family (IMPs), which is an isoform of IMP2. The three members of the IMP family (IMP1, 2 and 3) have been found to regulate translation of insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) mRNA in a post-transcriptional manner. Since several studies have suggested that IMP1 and IMP3 play important roles in cancer progression, whether p62/IMP2 can also play a role in cancer formation remains to be investigated. In this study, we intend to interrogate the role of p62/IMP2 in HCC formation. We found that the expression of p62/IMP2 (57.5%) is significantly higher in HCC specimen than that in normal liver tissue (15.4%) by immunohistochemistry study. Furthermore, p62/IMP2 is detected to be overexpressed in several liver cancer cell lines. Depletion of p62/IMP2 via lentivirus-mediated knockdown in SNU449 liver cancer cell line decreased the cell proliferation. On the contrary, the ectopic overexpression of p62/IMP2 increased cell proliferation. Our data suggested that p62/IMP2 is overexpressed in liver cancer and is functionally correlated with cancer cell growth. Citation Format: Ningjing Lei, Bo Peng, Yang Li, Yurong Chai, Jianying Zhang. p62/IMP2 promotes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5381. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-5381
Economic injury levels for management of stalk borer (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in corn

A computer program was developed to predict yield in corn ( Zea mays L.) infested by stalk borer. Papaipema nebris (Guenee), on the basis of injury profiles for each leaf stage and regression models for predicting yield of individual plants. Yield losses caused by stalk borer declined as corn was attacked later in development. Once the stalk begins to elongate (6-leaf stage), the ability of the stand to tolerate stalk borer injury sharply increases. However, yield loss in 6- and 7-leaf corn was much greater under drought stress than when moisture was adequate. Yield losses for selected leaf stages were comparable to those reported for black cutworm, Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnagel), and European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hubner). Predictions from this model were used to calculate economic injury levels for corn attacked at leaf stages 1-7 under adequate moisture and drought conditions. A management program, which incorporates larval sampling in noncrop areas and prediction of movement on the basis of degree-day accumulations, is presented.
The Palliative Role of Green Space for Somali Bantu Women Refugees in Displacement and Resettlement

ABSTRACTThis article investigates recollections of place attachments among a sample of Somali Bantu women refugees who have resettled in a town in New York State, USA. Using photo-elicitation and narrative interviews we explored their recollections of place attachments in Somalia, their home of origin, in Kenya, where they lived in refugee camps for more than a decade and in community gardens in New York State. We asked about memories of farms in Somalia, of gardens in the Kenyan camps and of the community gardens in resettlement because we were interested in the role of green space in their experiences of displacement and resettlement. Green spaces were important in all three locations but especially with respect to the therapeutic, restorative and spiritual capacities in the gardens in both the camps in Kenya and in resettlement in the United States. The results of this research suggest that emplacement and meaning making in green spaces through farms and gardens in Somalia, in camps, and in community g...
Basaltic Volcanic Fields

Abstract Basaltic volcanic fields consist of one or more volcanoes within a defined area that is separate from other volcanic areas and that has an internally consistent tectonic/structural setting. Most of the volcanoes are monogenetic, each having only a single eruptive episode lasting from weeks to decades before becoming extinct, and are of small volume (typically around 1 km3 or less). These volcanoes share many eruptive processes with larger, polygenetic volcanoes of basaltic composition, including Strombolian, Hawaiian, and phreatomagmatic explosive activity and effusion of lava flows. They form a range of landforms including lava fields, scoria cones, small shields, maars, tuff cones, and tuff rings depending upon the dominance of magmatic volatiles versus phreatomagmatic explosions in driving eruptions, and upon the magma volume flux and processes within the shallow crust. Basaltic volcanic fields typically contain volcano alignments that may be related to crustal structures, and clusters of high spatial vent density that are likely related to variability in the upper mantle magma sources. Hazard assessment is complicated by the many factors that affect the timing and locations of successive eruptions within a volcanic field. Recent research on magma sources and ascent for monogenetic volcanoes suggests an important role for compositional heterogeneity in the upper mantle, and that volatile fluxes during eruptions can be of similar magnitude as at larger polygenetic volcanoes.
In Situ Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Mechanistic Studies of Carbon Dioxide Reactions with Liquid Amines in Non-aqueous Systems: Evidence for the Formation of Carbamic Acids and Zwitterionic Species

In a previous study, we reported the use of in situ 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to elucidate mechanistic pathways for the reaction of carbon dioxide with a broad range of amines (pKa ∼ 4.5–15.5), including alkanolamines of commercial interest, in water. In the aqueous systems of that study, water most importantly functions as a Bronsted acid/Lewis base and, as the amine is consumed and pH decreases, hydrolyzes the initially formed carbamate species (1:2 CO2/amine stoichiometry), into the alkyl ammonium bicarbonate with a more beneficial 1:1 CO2/amine stoichiometry. This study has been extended herein to amines, amidines, and guanidines dissolved in non-aqueous solvent systems, such as dimethyl sulfoxide, sulfolane, toluene, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone, and the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methyl-imidazolium acetate. The use of non-aqueous organic solvents shuts off some CO2 reaction pathways available in aqueous solution. However, more importantly, it opens up new possibilities and reaction pathway...
Continuous functions on R

In previous chapters we have been focusing primarily on sequences. A sequence \( \left( {a_{n} } \right)_{n = 0}^{\infty } \) can be viewed as a function from N to R, i.e., an object which assigns a real number a n to each natural number n. We then did various things with these functions from N to R, such as take their limit at infinity (if the function was convergent), or form suprema, infima, etc., or computed the sum of all the elements in the sequence (again, assuming the series was convergent).
Quantitative Limits on Small Molecule Transport via the Electropermeome - Measuring and Modeling Single Nanosecond Perturbations

The detailed molecular mechanisms underlying the permeabilization of cell membranes by pulsed electric fields (electroporation) remain obscure despite decades of investigative effort. To advance beyond descriptive schematics to the development of robust, predictive models, empirical parameters in existing models must be replaced with physics- and biology-based terms anchored in experimental observations. We report here absolute values for the uptake of YO-PRO-1, a small-molecule fluorescent indicator of membrane integrity, into cells after a single electric pulse lasting only 6 ns. We correlate these measured values, based on fluorescence microphotometry of hundreds of individual cells, with a diffusion-based geometric analysis of pore-mediated transport and with molecular simulations of transport across electropores in a phospholipid bilayer. The results challenge the "drift and diffusion through a pore" model that dominates conventional explanatory schemes for the electroporative transfer of small molecules into cells and point to the necessity for a more complex model.
Review: Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future

Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University 3 September–6 November 2011 Having built a large organization to manufacture, market, and distribute the safety razor (with disposable blades, his crucial innovation), King Camp Gillette (1855–1932) may be forgiven for promoting a new world order along the lines of his own great achievement: a massive corporation. Like other reformers and progressive industrialists of his time, Gillette deplored the political corruption, wasteful competition, and social degradation of laissez-faire capitalism—even if he would become one of its beneficiaries. His solution was a radical reorganization of the world’s productive activities into a single monopolistic “World Corporation,” or “People’s Corporation,” that would eventually subsume all the world’s material assets, displace its governments, and reshape its human communities. Gillette’s proposal called for new urban and architectural forms that served as both the settings and mechanisms for the new social and economic relationships that he prescribed. He planned to recentralize the global population in several massive cities; the inventor developed a geometric diagram of “Metropolis” that resembled the interlocking cogs of a smoothly functioning machine. This diagram, along with a rendering of another Gillette invention—a hygienically planned apartment structure organized around a billowing, glass-domed atrium—was on display in the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University as part of the exhibit Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future , curated by Nathaniel Robert Walker. Gillette promoted his ideas in a series of mass-marketed books, including The Human Drift (1894), the source of the illustrations of Metropolis.1 The strength of “Building Expectation” is its focus on the production and popular circulation of images of the future. The exhibit largely comprises ephemera and printed matter: postcards, magazine illustrations, and book illustrations, for example. In this vein, Building Expectation addresses head-on the ways private individuals and business interests have sponsored visions of the future. The exhibit’s well-illustrated catalog …
A Comparative Study of Log-Structured Merge-Tree-Based Spatial Indexes for Big Data

The proliferation of GPS-enabled mobile devices has generated geo-tagged data at an unprecedented rate over the past decade. Data-processing systems that aim to ingest, store, index, and analyze Big Data must deal with such geo-tagged data efficiently. In this paper, among representative, disk-resident spatial indexing methods that have been adopted by major SQL and NoSQL systems, we implement five variants of these methods in the form of Log-Structured Merge-tree-based (LSM) spatial indexes in order to evaluate their pros and cons for dynamic geo-tagged Big Data. We have implemented the alternatives, including LSM-based B-tree, R-tree, and inverted index variants, in Apache AsterixDB, an open source Big Data management system. This implementation enabled comparison in terms of real end-to-end performance, including logging and locking overheads, in a full-function, query-based system setting. Our evaluation includes both static and dynamic workloads, ranging from a "load once, query many" case to a case where continuous concurrent incremental inserts are mixed with concurrent queries. Based on the results, we discuss the pros and cons of the five index variants.
Time-series Analysis of Heat Waves and Emergency Department Visits in Atlanta, 1993 to 2012.

Background: Heat waves are extreme weather events that have been associated with adverse health outcomes. However, there is limited knowledge of heat waves’ impact on population morbidity, such as ...
Prevalence of Calcification in Human Femoropopliteal Arteries and its Association with Demographics, Risk Factors, and Arterial Stiffness

Objective— Arterial calcification and stiffening increase the risk of reconstruction failure, amputation, and mortality in patients with peripheral arterial disease, but underlying mechanisms and prevalence are unclear. Approach and Results— Fresh human femoropopliteal arteries were obtained from n=431 tissue donors who are aged 13 to 82 years (mean age, 53±16 years) recording the in situ longitudinal prestretch. Arterial diameter, wall thickness, and opening angles were measured optically, and stiffness was assessed using planar biaxial extension and constitutive modeling. Histological features were determined using transverse and longitudinal Verhoeff–Van Gieson and Alizarin stains. Medial calcification was quantified using a 7-stage grading scale and was correlated with structural and mechanical properties and clinical characteristics. Almost half (46%) of the femoropopliteal arteries had identifiable medial calcification. Older arteries were more calcified, but small calcium deposits were observed in arteries as young as 18 years old. After controlling for age, positive correlations were observed between calcification, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and body mass index. Tobacco use demonstrated a negative correlation. Calcified arteries were larger in diameter but had smaller circumferential opening angles. They were also stiffer longitudinally and circumferentially and had thinner tunica media and external elastic lamina with more discontinuous elastic fibers. Conclusions— Although aging is the dominant risk factor for femoropopliteal artery calcification and stiffening, these processes seem to be linked and can begin at a young age. Calcification is associated with the presence of certain risk factors and with elastic fiber degradation, suggesting overlapping molecular pathways that require further investigation.
A Note from the Co-Editors

Politics, Groups, and Identities is kicking off its sixth year of publication, and emerging as the premiere journal for scholarship on the politics of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, ...
Correlation of hospital magnet status with the quality of physicians performing neurosurgical procedures in New York State.

Purpose: The quality of physicians practicing in hospitals recognized for nursing excellence by the American Nurses Credentialing Center has not been studied before. We investigated whether Magnet ...
Bestehende Ansätze zur CRM-Einführung

Eine Auswertung bestehender Ansatze zur CRM-Einfuhrung identifiziert die spezifischen Schwerpunkte und vernachlassigten Gestaltungsbereiche der einzelnen Ansatze, Der Vergleich der Auswertungsergebnisse bildet die Grundlage zur Entwicklung eines Methodenvorschlags zur CRM-Einfuhrung, der die Schwerpunkte der einzelnen Ansatze aufgreift .
Gene Cluster Prediction and Its Application to Genome Annotation

Improvements in sequencing technology have made whole-genome sequencing a lot more accessible to researchers in the life sciences. There has been a huge explosion in genomic sequence data over recent years and automated genome-wide function annotation has become a great challenge. The most popular approaches for gene function assignment have been based on sequence similarity. However, homology-based methods are limited in cases where novel sequences show no significant sequence similarity to known genes. This has led to the exploration of innovative methods that make use of additional information such as co-localization, co-evolution and fusion to assign functions computationally. In the case of prokaryotic genomes, functionally related genes tend to be physically clustered together due to evolutionary pressure. Thus, such gene clusters provide effective clues for gene function assignment in prokaryotes. In this chapter, we survey a few of the prominent techniques in this area of research. We also perform simple experiments to detect gene clusters across a given set of genomes. Finally, we provide a few examples from the results of these experiments to show how gene cluster information can be applied to genome annotation and can resolve ambiguities in function assignment.
TECHNOLOGY FOR MULTI-MeV LIGHT ATOM HEATING BEAMS

We explore the technological requirements for an alternative method of heating plasmas with neutral beams. This would involve producing beams of light neutral atoms (such as Li°, C°, O°, or Si°) at energies of 1–2 MeV/amu and injecting them into the plasma. We find that the heating profiles should be strongly peaked in the central plasma. The light atom beams would be formed from negative ions which have been RF accelerated and then neutralized. We investigate the technological basis for developing the systems to produce such beams.
Contributory Factors Leading Behavioral Health Disability

There several ways that iatrogenic BH disability can occur through actions of (1) the individual, (2) TPs, (3) employers, (4) attorneys, and (5) insurers. The contributions and nuances of each and how these multiple factors can lead to iatrogenic BH disability will be examined further.
The Automaticity of Habitual Behaviours: Inconvenient Questions

It is widely accepted that habits are automatic. In turn, automaticity often has been taken as implying (a) a lack of use of resources, (b) inevitability, and (c) a lack of intentions. All three characteristics of automaticity create conceptual difficulties, at least in the context of habits. Inconvenient questions arise from a careful consideration of each of the implied characteristics habits are said to have, based on an acceptance of the basic premise that habits are automatic. Also of importance, there are underappreciated limitations of research that ostensibly supports the automaticity of habits. These pertain to dissociations, the measurement of behavioural intentions, a dependence on null hypothesis significance testing to draw conclusions, and the lack of validity of mediation analyses for testing real mediation.
Effect of sugar consumption on ethanol fermentation in a tower fermentor packed with self-aggregating yeast

A strain of self-aggregatingSaccharomyces uvarum was cultivated in a 6-L tower fermentor for continuous ethanol fermentation. Large aggregates (2–3 mm) were formed and packed in the column. The height of this packed region depends on the sugar concentration. As sugar concentrations were reduced to below a critical value, most of the large aggregates disintegrated into smaller aggregates (0.1–0.2 mm). Above the packed bed region, small aggregates and small amount of large aggregates were fluidized and formed a well mixed region by the liquid medium and the produced carbon dioxide. A mathematical model of a plug flow with consideration of axial dispersion and a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) in series is proposed to describe such fermentor. The concentration profile of sugar can be simulated by this model. The height of the packed bed region can then be estimated based on the predetermined critical sugar concentration. Final ethanol concentration and the productivity of such fermentor can also be predicted.
The Strength of Low-Cloud Feedbacks and Tropical Climate: A CESM Sensitivity Study

AbstractVariability in the strength of low-cloud feedbacks across climate models is the primary contributor to the spread in their estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). This raises th...
Effects of graphene oxide nanomaterial exposures on the marine bivalve, Crassostrea virginica

Abstract Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been used in a wide variety of fields including biomedicine, electronics, filtration materials, and surface coatings. The rapidly expanding consumer market for graphene family nanomaterials (GFNs), such as graphene oxide (GO), raises concern regarding their environmental toxicity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of GO exposures in a marine filter-feeding bivalve (Crassostrea virginica) using sublethal biomarker approaches that can contribute to the development of an adverse outcome pathway (AOP). A 14-day study was conducted to identify tissue-specific molecular markers of GO toxicity using a static renewal design. Elevated lipid peroxidation and changes in glutathione-s-transferase (GST) activities were observed in gills and digestive gland tissues of the GO-exposed oysters. These cellular changes were noted for 2.5 and 5 mg/L GO exposures in seawater. Based on our results, reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced oxidative damage is identified as a key event in the proposed AOP. Additionally, detoxification enzymes, such as GST, are thought to be involved in stress signaling leading to adverse effects on cellular health. This study is a part of our two-tier approach towards the identification of short- and long-term effects of GO exposures. This work, together with our previous 72 h exposure, represents the application of biomarker-based investigations in the process of AOP development for graphene family nanomaterials.