cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial to Reduce Readmission for Heart Failure Using Novel Tablet and Nurse Practitioner Education.

Abstract Background Heart failure education programs are not standardized. The best form of education is unclear. We evaluated whether addition of a novel tablet application to nurse practitioner (NP) education was superior to NP education alone in reducing 30-day readmission after heart failure hospitalization. Methods From February 2015-March 2016, patients admitted to a quaternary academic center with primary diagnosis of heart failure were randomized to 1) treatment – NP education plus tablet application (interactive conditional logic program that flags patient questions to medical staff), or 2) control – NP education. The primary outcome was reduction in 30-day readmission rate. Secondary outcomes included satisfaction and education assessed via survey. Results Randomization included 60 patients to treatment and 66 to control. A total of 13 patients withdrew prior to intervention (treatment n = 4, control n = 1) or were lost to follow-up (treatment n = 3, control n = 5). The 30-day readmission rate trended lower for treatment compared with control, but results were not statistically significant (13.2% [7/53], 26.7% [16/60], respectively, P = .08). Similarly, satisfaction trended higher with treatment than control ( P = .08). Treatment patients rated explanations from their physicians higher than control (Always: 83.7%, 55.8%, respectively, P = .01). Conclusions NP education plus tablet use was not associated with significantly lower 30-day readmission rates in comparison with NP alone, but a positive trend was seen. Patient satisfaction trended higher and heart failure explanations were better with NP education plus tablet. A larger study is needed to determine if NP education plus tablet reduces readmission rates following heart failure admission.
Exotic leptoquarks from superstring-derived models

The H1 and ZEUS collaborations have recently reported a significant excess of e{sup +}p {r_arrow} e{sup +} jet events at high Q{sup 2}. While there exists insufficient data to conclusively determine the origin of this excess, one possibility is that it is due to a new leptoquark at mass scale around 200 GeV. We examine the type of leptoquark states that exist in superstring derived standard-like models, and show that, while these models may contain the standard leptoquark states which exist in Grand Unified Theories, they also generically contain new and exotic leptoquark states with fractional lepton number, {+-}1/2. In contrast to the traditional GUT-type leptoquark states, the couplings of the exotic leptoquarks to the Standard Model states are generated after the breaking of U(1){sub B-L}. This important feature of the exotic leptoquark states may result in local discrete symmetries which forbid some of the undesired leptoquark couplings. We examine these couplings in several models and study the phenomenological implications. The flavor symmetries of the superstring models are found to naturally suppress leptoquark flavor changing processes.
The Efficiency Gap, Voter Turnout, and the Efficiency Principle

Abstract Recently, scholars from law and political science have introduced metrics which use only election outcomes (and not district geometry) to assess the presence of partisan gerrymandering. Th...
Covariate-Adjusted Tensor Classification in High Dimensions

In contemporary scientific research, it is often of great interest to predict a categorical response based on a high-dimensional tensor (i.e., multi-dimensional array) and additional covariates. Mo...
Rural Roads and Local Economic Development

Nearly one billion people worldwide live in rural areas without access to the paved road network. This paper measures the impacts of India's $40 billion national rural road construction program using regression discontinuity and data covering every individual and firm in rural India. The main effect of new feeder roads is to allow workers to obtain nonfarm work. However, there are no major changes in consumption, assets or agricultural outcomes. Nonfarm employment in the village expands only slightly, suggesting the new work is found outside of the village. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities.
The Identity-Enactment Account of Associative Duties

Associative duties are agent-centered duties to give defeasible moral priority to our special ties. Our strongest associative duties are to close friends and family. According to reductionists, our associative duties are just special duties—i.e., duties arising from what I have done to others, or what others have done to me. These include duties to (a) abide by promises and contracts, (b) compensate our benefactors in ways expressing gratitude, and (c) aid those whom we have made especially vulnerable to our conduct. I argue, though, that reductionism faces a problem: special duties are not strong enough to account for the strength of our associative duties. At the bar of associative duties, we are required to do what no special duty can warrant. I then present an alternative reductionist analysis of associative duties—the ‘Identity-Enactment Account’—which not only accounts for the peculiar strength of our associative duties, but also characterizes them in an intuitively compelling way. On this account, our strongest associative duties are special duties to protect or promote the welfare of the duty’s beneficiary by adopting and enacting a practical identity in which the duty’s beneficiary features prominently. There are persons who can legitimately demand a prominent place in our mental lives, for the protection and intimacy it affords. They can, in effect, legitimately demand to be among our nearest and dearest. The correlative of such a demand is, on our part, an associative duty we have toward them.
Starting point designs for freeform four-mirror systems

Driven by the development of freeform four-mirror solutions, we review and compare analytical methods to generate starting point designs with various states of correction, surface types, symmetry, and obscuration. The advantages and disadvantages of each are examined. We have combined several concepts and techniques from the literature to analytically generate unobscured freeform starting point designs that are corrected through the third-order image degrading aberrations. The surfaces in these starting point designs are described as base off-axis conics that image stigmatically for the central field point, also known as Cartesian reflectors, with an aspheric departure “cap” (quartic with the aperture) added to the Cartesian reflectors. Tilt angles are chosen to cancel field-asymmetric field-linear astigmatism and unobscure the system. Paraxial data from an equivalent on-axis system are used to solve a system of linear equations to determine the magnitude of the aspheric departure “caps” that are placed on top of the base Cartesian reflectors, in order to eliminate the remaining third-order image degrading aberrations. In this approach, each aspheric departure “cap” is centered about the intersection of the optical-axis-ray, also known as the base ray, with the base surface, rather than being centered about the axis of rotational invariance.
PCA of high dimensional random walks with comparison to neural network training

One technique to visualize the training of neural networks is to perform PCA on the parameters over the course of training and to project to the subspace spanned by the first few PCA components. In this paper we compare this technique to the PCA of a high dimensional random walk. We compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the covariance of the trajectory and prove that in the long trajectory and high dimensional limit most of the variance is in the first few PCA components, and that the projection of the trajectory onto any subspace spanned by PCA components is a Lissajous curve. We generalize these results to a random walk with momentum and to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes (i.e., a random walk in a quadratic potential) and show that in high dimensions the walk is not mean reverting, but will instead be trapped at a fixed distance from the minimum. We finally analyze PCA projected training trajectories for: a linear model trained on CIFAR-10; a fully connected model trained on MNIST; and ResNet-50-v2 trained on Imagenet. In all cases, both the distribution of PCA eigenvalues and the projected trajectories resemble those of a random walk with drift.
HiDDeN: Hiding Data With Deep Networks

Recent work has shown that deep neural networks are highly sensitive to tiny perturbations of input images, giving rise to adversarial examples. Though this property is usually considered a weakness of learned models, we explore whether it can be beneficial. We find that neural networks can learn to use invisible perturbations to encode a rich amount of useful information. In fact, one can exploit this capability for the task of data hiding. We jointly train encoder and decoder networks, where given an input message and cover image, the encoder produces a visually indistinguishable encoded image, from which the decoder can recover the original message. We show that these encodings are competitive with existing data hiding algorithms, and further that they can be made robust to noise: our models learn to reconstruct hidden information in an encoded image despite the presence of Gaussian blurring, pixel-wise dropout, cropping, and JPEG compression. Even though JPEG is non-differentiable, we show that a robust model can be trained using differentiable approximations. Finally, we demonstrate that adversarial training improves the visual quality of encoded images.
A full-scale clinical prototype for proton range verification using prompt gamma-ray spectroscopy.

We present a full-scale clinical prototype system for in vivo range verification of proton pencil-beams using the prompt gamma-ray spectroscopy method. The detection system consists of eight LaBr3 scintillators and a tungsten collimator, mounted on a rotating frame. Custom electronics and calibration algorithms have been developed for the measurement of energy- and time-resolved gamma-ray spectra during proton irradiation at a clinical dose rate. Using experimentally determined nuclear reaction cross sections and a GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo simulation, a detailed model of the expected gamma-ray emissions is created for each individual pencil-beam. The absolute range of the proton pencil-beams is determined by minimizing the discrepancy between the measurement and this model, leaving the absolute range of the beam and the elemental concentrations of the irradiated matter as free parameters. The system was characterized in a clinical-like situation by irradiating different phantoms with a scanning pencil-beam. A dose of 0.9 Gy was delivered to a [Formula: see text] cm3 target with a beam current of 2 nA incident on the phantom. Different range shifters and materials were used to test the robustness of the verification method and to calculate the accuracy of the detected range. The absolute proton range was determined for each spot of the distal energy layer with a mean statistical precision of 1.1 mm at a 95% confidence level and a mean systematic deviation of 0.5 mm, when aggregating pencil-beam spots within a cylindrical region of 10 mm radius and 10 mm depth. Small range errors that we introduced were successfully detected and even large differences in the elemental composition do not affect the range verification accuracy. These results show that our system is suitable for range verification during patient treatments in our upcoming clinical study.
TRANX: A Transition-based Neural Abstract Syntax Parser for Semantic Parsing and Code Generation

We present TRANX, a transition-based neural semantic parser that maps natural language (NL) utterances into formal meaning representations (MRs). TRANX uses a transition system based on the abstract syntax description language for the target MR, which gives it two major advantages: (1) it is highly accurate, using information from the syntax of the target MR to constrain the output space and model the information flow, and (2) it is highly generalizable, and can easily be applied to new types of MR by just writing a new abstract syntax description corresponding to the allowable structures in the MR. Experiments on four different semantic parsing and code generation tasks show that our system is generalizable, extensible, and effective, registering strong results compared to existing neural semantic parsers.
Generative Modeling for Protein Structures

Analyzing the structure and function of proteins is a key part of understanding biology at the molecular and cellular level. In addition, a major engineering challenge is to design new proteins in a principled and methodical way. Current computational modeling methods for protein design are slow and often require human oversight and intervention. Here, we apply Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to the task of generating protein structures, toward application in fast de novo protein design. We encode protein structures in terms of pairwise distances between alpha-carbons on the protein backbone, which eliminates the need for the generative model to learn translational and rotational symmetries. We then introduce a convex formulation of corruption-robust 3D structure recovery to fold the protein structures from generated pairwise distance maps, and solve these problems using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. We test the effectiveness of our models by predicting completions of corrupted protein structures and show that the method is capable of quickly producing structurally plausible solutions.
Automated Game Design via Conceptual Expansion

Automated game design has remained a key challenge within the field of Game AI. In this paper, we introduce a method for recombining existing games to create new games through a process called conceptual expansion.Prior automated game design approaches have relied on hand-authored or crowd-sourced knowledge, which limits the scope and applications of such systems. Our approach instead relies on machine learning to learn approximate representations of games. Our approach recombines knowledge from these learned representations to create new games via conceptual expansion.We evaluate this approach by demonstrating the ability for the system to recreate existing games. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first machine learning-based automated game design system.
Electronic Structure of Polymer Dielectrics: The Role of Chemical and Morphological Complexity

The electronic structure of polymers contains signatures that correlate with their short-term and long-term integrity when subjected to large electric stresses. A detailed picture of the electronic structure of realistic models of polymers has been difficult to obtain, mainly due to the chemical and morphological complexity encountered in polymers. In this work, we have undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the electronic structure of six model polymers displaying chemical and morphological diversity, namely, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), using first-principles density functional theory computations and classical molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we have studied the role of monomer chemistry, tacticity, and large-scale morphological disorders in shaping the electronic structure of these polymers. We find that monomer chemistry and morphological disorder coopera...
Discriminator Rejection Sampling

We propose a rejection sampling scheme using the discriminator of a GAN to approximately correct errors in the GAN generator distribution. We show that under quite strict assumptions, this will allow us to recover the data distribution exactly. We then examine where those strict assumptions break down and design a practical algorithm - called Discriminator Rejection Sampling (DRS) - that can be used on real data-sets. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of DRS on a mixture of Gaussians and on the SAGAN model, state-of-the-art in the image generation task at the time of developing this work. On ImageNet, we train an improved baseline that increases the Inception Score from 52.52 to 62.36 and reduces the Frechet Inception Distance from 18.65 to 14.79. We then use DRS to further improve on this baseline, improving the Inception Score to 76.08 and the FID to 13.75.
Hydrocortisone, Ascorbic Acid and Thiamine (HAT Therapy) for the Treatment of Sepsis. Focus on Ascorbic Acid

Sepsis is a devastating disease that carries an enormous toll in terms of human suffering and lives lost. Over 100 novel pharmacologic agents that targeted specific molecules or pathways have failed to improve the outcome of sepsis. Preliminary data suggests that the combination of Hydrocortisone, Ascorbic Acid and Thiamine (HAT therapy) may reduce organ failure and mortality in patients with sepsis and septic shock. HAT therapy is based on the concept that a combination of readily available, safe and cheap agents, which target multiple components of the host’s response to an infectious agent, will synergistically restore the dysregulated immune response and thereby prevent organ failure and death. This paper reviews the rationale for HAT therapy with a focus on vitamin C.
Publicity Rights and the Estate Tax

The estate tax treatment of publicity rights factors into the debate regarding whether such rights should be transferrable at death. Some point to the estate tax as a reason for making publicity rights non-transferrable. For if they are transferrable, estate-tax inclusion could result. And, the argument goes, the estate or the beneficiaries could well be coerced into commercializing the rights in order to raise the money to pay the tax. Making them nontransferable would eliminate this possibility. This Article considers some of the connections between the federal estate tax and the state law treatment of publicity rights. It concludes with a suggestion about the tax treatment of publicity rights at a more general level. Part I explores the estate tax treatment of publicity rights and, in particular, the provision the celebrity Robin Williams used in his will in order to address his apparent concern about forced commercialization. While the provision appears to be based on dicta in the Ninth Circuit, its effectiveness is questionable. This Part concludes with a recommendation that legislation at the state level permit celebrities to extinguish during life their post-death publicity rights. With such legislation in place, the concern about forced commercialization would be eliminated—thus permitting the state law question of transferability to be resolved solely on the basis of non-tax considerations. Part II considers the characterization of post-death publicity rights as an independent right under state legislation and the estate tax implications of such a characterization. An analogy is made to the estate-tax treatment of wrongful death proceeds, which are typically characterized as independent of the victim’s pre-death claim and are therefore not included in the gross estate. Part III examines two ancillary estate-tax issues that can arise where state law authorizes transferability: first, the impact of retroactive state legislation making publicity rights transferrable in the case of a decedent dying prior to enactment; and, second, the impact of a movement away from traditional choice-of-law rules in this context. Part IV concludes with a broader suggestion: that the estate tax be made entirely inapplicable to publicity rights without regard to the state law question of transferability. Instead, the proceeds from the exploitation of these rights would be fully taxable as income to the beneficiaries when received, obviating the need to engage in a difficult, potentially protracted inquiry into the valuation of the rights at the time of death.
Tuning from failed superconductor to failed insulator with magnetic field

Do charge modulations compete with electron pairing in high-temperature copper oxide superconductors? We investigated this question by suppressing superconductivity in a stripe-ordered cuprate compound at low temperature with high magnetic fields. With increasing field, loss of three-dimensional superconducting order is followed by reentrant two-dimensional superconductivity and then an ultraquantum metal phase. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the latter state is bosonic and associated with the charge stripes. These results provide experimental support to the theoretical perspective that local segregation of doped holes and antiferromagnetic spin correlations underlies the electron-pairing mechanism in cuprates.
Characterizing surface wetting and interfacial properties using enhanced sampling (SWIPES).

We introduce an accurate and efficient method for characterizing surface wetting and interfacial properties, such as the contact angle made by a liquid droplet on a solid surface, and the vapor–liquid surface tension of a fluid. The method makes use of molecular simulations in conjunction with the indirect umbrella sampling technique to systematically wet the surface and estimate the corresponding free energy. To illustrate the method, we study the wetting of a family of Lennard-Jones surfaces by water. For surfaces with a wide range of attractions for water, we estimate contact angles using our method, and compare them with contact angles obtained using droplet shapes. Notably, our method is able to capture the transition from partial to complete wetting as surface–water attractions are increased. Moreover, the method is straightforward to implement and is computationally efficient, providing accurate contact angle estimates in roughly 5 nanoseconds of simulation time.
Isolating the effect of injunctive norms on conservation behavior: New evidence from a field experiment in California

Abstract Social norms messaging campaigns are increasingly used to influence human behavior, with social science research generally finding that they have modest but meaningful effects. One aspect of these campaigns in practice has been the inclusion of injunctive norms messaging, designed to convey a social judgment about one’s behavior (often in the form of encouraging or discouraging language, or a visual smiley or frowny face). While some prominent research has provided support for the use of such messaging as a tool for positive behavior change, causal evidence on the effect of injunctive norms messaging as a motivator (as opposed to just one part of a multifaceted messaging campaign) is limited. This paper presents a field experiment on water conservation behavior conducted by an organization in California, involving over 40,000 households, which provides some of the most precise evidence to date regarding the effect of injunctive norms on decision making. I find that not only do injunctive norms encourage conservation behavior, there is also no evidence that they discourage individuals from further attending to norms messaging–regardless of whether the social judgment conveyed is negative or positive. Taken together, this suggests that injunctive norms are a useful tool in “nudge”-style campaigns tackling behavior change.
Towards Designing Systems with Large Number of Antennas for Range Extension in Ground-to-Air Communications

Providing broadband connectivity to airborne systems using ground based cellular networks is a promising solution as it offers several advantages over satellite-based solutions. However, limited range of terrestrial base stations is a key challenge in full realization of this approach. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a mathematical framework for range extension leveraging large number of antennas at the base station. In contrast to prior works where range is not considered as a design parameter, we model the signal to noise ratio as a function of both number of antennas as well as the range in line-of-sight ground-to-air systems. This allows us to derive analytical expressions to determine the number of antennas required to increase range in different frequency bands and tracking and non tracking scenarios.
Partition algebras

The partition algebra CAk(n) is the centralizer algebra of Sn acting on the k-fold tensor product V×k of its n-dimensional permutation representation V. The partition algebra CAk + ½ (n) is the centralizer algebra of the restriction of V⊗k to Sn-1 ⊆ Sn. We apply the theory of the basic construction (generalized matrix algebras) to the tower of partition algebras CA0(n) ⊆ CA ½ (n) CA1 (n) ⊆ CA1½ (n) ⊆ .... Our main results are: (a) a presentation on generators and relations for CAk(n); (b) a derivation of "Specht modules" from the basic construction; (c) a proof that CAk(n) is semisimple if and only if k ≤ (n + 1)/2 (except for a few special cases); (d) Murphy elements for CAk(n); and (e) an exposition on the theory of the basic construction and semisimple algebras.
M Estimators of Location

An approach to developing measures of location is to search for some value, say c, that is close to the values in a sample, say X1, …, Xn. If we measure closeness with the sum of squared differences between each of the n observations and c, this leads to taking c to be the sample mean. But the sample mean can perform poorly in terms of achieving a small standard error when sampling from nonnormal distributions. M-estimators attempt to correct this problem by replacing squared error with some other measure of closeness. Certain M-estimators have standard errors that compete well with the sample mean under normality, but they continue to perform well in situations in which the sample mean performs poorly. Keywords: robust methods; measures of location; skewness; outliers
Permanental Ideals

We show that the (2 × 2)-subpermanents of a generic matrix generate an ideal whose height, unmixedness, primary decomposition, the number and structure of the minimal components, resolutions, radical, integral closure and Grobner bases all depend on the characteristic of the underlying subfield: if the characteristic of the subfield is two, this ideal is the determinantal ideal for which all of these properties are already well known. We show that as long as the characteristic of the subfield is not two, the results are in marked contrast with those for the determinantal ideals.
Long-wavelength fluctuations and static correlations in quasi-2D colloidal suspensions

Dimensionality strongly affects thermal fluctuations and critical dynamics of equilibrium systems. These influences persist in amorphous systems going through the nonequilibrium glass transition. Here, we experimentally study the glass transition of quasi-2D suspensions of spherical and ellipsoidal particles under different degrees of circular confinement. We show that the strength of the long-wavelength fluctuations increases logarithmically with system sizes and displays the signature of the Mermin–Wagner fluctuations. Moreover, using confinement as a tool, we also measure static structural correlations and extract a growing static correlation length in 2D supercooled liquids. Finally, we explore the influence of the Mermin–Wagner fluctuations on the translational and orientational relaxations of 2D ellipsoidal suspensions, which leads to a new interpretation of the two-step glass transition and the orientational glass phase of anisotropic particles. Our study reveals the importance of long-wavelength fluctuations in 2D supercooled liquids and provides new insights into the role of dimensionality in the glass transition.
An exact quantization of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity

We propose an exact quantization of two-dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity by formulating the JT gravity theory as a 2D gauge theory placed in the presence of a loop defect. The gauge group is a certain central extension of PSL(2, ℝ) by ℝ. We find that the exact partition function of our theory when placed on a Euclidean disk matches precisely the finite temperature partition function of the Schwarzian theory. We show that observables on both sides are also precisely matched: correlation functions of boundary- anchored Wilson lines in the bulk are given by those of bi-local operators in the Schwarzian theory. In the gravitational context, the Wilson lines are shown to be equivalent to the world-lines of massive particles in the metric formulation of JT gravity.
Language, Discourse, and Ostension: Selected Passages

Ostension is the act or process of showing, as in showing a child a fossil while saying “fossil.” Here collected are 59 quotations about language, discourse, ostension, and semantics. A theme is the “facts are theory-laden” spiral between language and discourse, between explananda and explanation – the philosophy-of-science problem (and the pervasive political problem) of justifying our judgment in favor of one over against another outlook. The collection highlights individual personage – and hence history, or historicity – as conditioning the content of a theory (or the complex that spans explanandum and explanation). The individual personage infuses meaning into words or signs in showing his own doings including speech acts (discourse, parole). Multiple quotations are authored by Thomas Kuhn, J.G.A. Pocock, Karl Kraus, Adam Smith, Josep Pieper, Friedrich Hayek, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr., Otto Jespersen, Iain McGilchrist, and Steven Mithen. A single quotation is authored by John Milton, Edmund Burke, Gershom Carmichael, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Soren Kierkegaard, Kenneth Burke, Michael Polanyi, Thomas Schelling, Wayne Booth, and William Graham Sumner.
The Nazarov cyclization in organic synthesis. Recent advances

The authors thank Michael Harmata and Dirk Trauner for providing expert opinions on the chemistry in this review during its preparation. We also thank Marcus Tius for sharing unpublished results, and are grateful to M. Uljana Mayer for invaluable editorial suggestions.
Squeezing Marsquakes Out of Groundwater

Author(s): Manga, M; Zhai, G; Wang, CY | Abstract: Pore pressure in aquifers confined below a cryosphere will increase as Mars cools and the cryosphere thickens. Increased pore pressure decreases the effective stress and hence promotes seismicity. We calculate the rate of pore pressure change from cooling of Mars's interior and the modulation of pore pressure from solar and Phobos tides and barometric loading. Using the time-varying pressure and tidal stresses, we compute Coulomb stress changes and the expected seismicity rate from a rate-and-state friction model. Seismicity rate will vary by several tens of percent to 2 orders of magnitude if the mean pore pressure is within 0.2 and 0.01 MPa of lithostatic, respectively. Seismic events promoted by high pore pressure may be tremor-like. Documenting (or not) tidally modulated shallow seismicity would provide evidence for (or against) water-filled confined aquifers, that pore pressure is high, and that the state of stress is close to failure—with implications for processes that can deliver water to the Martian surface.
Synthesis of 1,3,6,8-Tetrabromophenanthrene via a Stoichiometric Ullmann Reaction

Abstract 1,3,6,8-Tetrabromophenantherene (1) is prepared in four steps from 2,4,6-tribromobenzoic acid (4) in an overall yield of 12%. The key transformation used in the synthesis is a stoichiomteric Ullmann reaction.
A Bayesian Framework for the Estimation of the Single Crystal Elastic Parameters from Spherical Indentation Stress-Strain Measurements

This paper presents a two-step Bayesian framework for the estimation of the intrinsic single crystal elastic stiffness parameters from the measurements of spherical indentation stress-strain responses in multiple individual grains of a polycrystalline sample, whose crystal lattice orientations have been measured using electron back-scattered diffraction technique. The first step requires the establishment of the functional dependence of the indentation elastic modulus given the lattice orientation and the intrinsic single crystal elastic stiffness parameters. Previous efforts for this step required a large database of computationally expensive finite element (FE) simulations in order to establish this function with adequate accuracy. In this paper, it is shown that the introduction of a Bayesian framework can greatly reduce the number of simulations necessary to establish this function, while introducing practically useful measures of uncertainty which can guide the selection of specific additional simulations that are expected to best improve the predictive accuracy of the function. The second step involves a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) sampling of the distribution of possible values for the single crystal elastic stiffness parameters based on a given set of experimentally measured elastic indentation moduli in individual grains of different lattice orientations. This second step is accomplished by calibrating the available experimental data to the function established in the first step. This novel framework is presented and demonstrated in this paper for an as-cast cubic polycrystalline Fe-3% Si sample and a hexagonal polycrystalline commercially pure (CP-Ti) titanium sample.
Hydride addition to 1,2-anhydrosugars: A highly stereoselective route to anhydroalditols

Abstract Stereoselective hydride addition to endocyclic 1,2-anhydrosugars has been achieved providing an efficient route to differentially protected anhydroalditols.
Functionalization of Monofluoroallene and the Synthesis of Aryl-Substituted Conjugated Fluorodienes

4-Fluoroallenol 3a, prepared from 1, cyclized easily to 4 but preserved its fluoroallenyl integrity under oxidation and SN2 displacement to yield aldehyde, amine, mesylate, and halide 6. Allylic isomerization yielded 2-halo-1-fluoro-1,3-butadiene 7, which underwent a Suzuki coupling to give aryl-substituted conjugated diene 8.
New d0 transition metal iodates: synthesis, structure, and characterization of BaTi(IO3)6, LaTiO(IO3)5, Ba2VO2(IO3)4.(IO3), K2MoO2(IO3)4, and BaMoO2(IO3)4.H2O.

Five new d0 transition metal iodates, BaTi(IO3)6, LaTiO(IO3)5, Ba2VO2(IO3)4·(IO3), K2MoO2(IO3)4, and BaMoO2(IO3)4·H2O, have been synthesized by hydrothermal methods using Ba(OH)2·8H2O, La2O3, K2CO3, TiO2, V2O5, MoO3, and HIO3 as reagents. The structures of these compounds were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. All of the reported materials have zero-dimensional or pseudo-one-dimensional crystal structures composed of MO6 (M = Ti4+, V5+, or Mo6+) octahedra connected to IO3 polyhedra. Infrared and Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and UV−vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy are also presented. Crystal data: BaTi(IO3)6, trigonal, space group R-3 (No. 148), with a = b = 11.4711(10) A, c = 11.1465(17) A, V = 1270.2(2) A3, and Z = 3; LaTiO(IO3)5, monoclinic, space group P21/n (No. 14), with a = 7.4798(10) A, b = 18.065(2) A, c = 10.4843(14) A, β = 91.742(2)°, V = 1416.0(3) A3, and Z = 4; Ba2VO2(IO3)4·(IO3), monoclinic, space group P21/c (No. 14), with a = 7.5012(9) A, b = 33.032(4) ...
A mild and practical copper catalyzed amination of halothiophenes

We have found that N,N-dimethylethanolamine (deanol) is a useful solvent and ligand for copper catalyzed amination of a variety of unactivated and activated 2- or 3-halothiophenes. Primary amines, acyclic secondary amines, cyclic secondary amines and acyclic secondary amines with 2-hydroxyethyl functionality react with halothiophenes in moderate to excellent yields. The mildly basic conditions utilized are compatible with many functional groups. The amination of halobithiophenes has also been examined. The aminothiophenes produced by this method are important intermediates in a variety of electronic and optoelectronic materials.
Bismuth(III) chloride-catalyzed direct deoxygenative allylation of substituted benzylic alcohols with allyltrimethylsilane

A highly effective protocol for allylation of sec-benzyl alcohols with allyltrimethylsilane in the presence of a catalytic amount of bismuth(III) chloride has been developed.
Synthesis of esters by selective methanolysis of the trifluoromethyl group

Abstract The trifluoromethyl group of certain compounds containing one or two trifluoromethyl groups can be converted to the carbomethoxy group by treatment with sodium methoxide followed by aqueous acidic work-up. α-Trifluoromethyl esters can be obtained by selective methanolysis of the 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoroisopropyl group in some cases. The structural requirements for the transformation are delineated, and a mechanistic study confirms the proposed mechanism, a dehydrofluorination–addition–elimination process.
A facile synthesis of thienylmethylphosphonates: direct conversion from thiophenes

Abstract An efficient approach to thienylmethylphosphonates has been established through the combination of thienylcoppers with the commercially available diethyl iodomethylphosphonates in a one-pot process.
Asymmetric Lewis Acid-Catalyzed Diels−Alder Reactions of α,β-Unsaturated Ketones and α,β-Unsaturated Acid Chlorides

Conformational analysis, van der Waals attractions, and transition structure calculations are combined to design an asymmetric Lewis acid-catalyzed Diels−Alder reaction for simple acyclic α,β-unsaturated ketones and α,β-unsaturated acid chlorides, giving up to 83 and 92% ee, respectively. The two-point-binding chiral recognition mechanism, Lewis acid−Lewis base coordination with boron and a van der Waals attraction with the naphthyl group, uses the inherent enone unit of simple α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, ending the need for auxiliary oxygen binding sites on the dienophile.
High-affinity inhibitors of dihydrofolate reductase: antimicrobial and anticancer activities of 7,8-dialkyl-1,3-diaminopyrrolo[3,2-f]quinazolines with small molecular size.

A series of 7,8-dialkylpyrrolo[3,2-f]quinazolines were prepared as inhibitors of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). On the basis of an apparent inverse relationship between compound size and antifungal activity, the compounds were designed to be relatively small and compact. Inhibitor design was aided by a GRID analysis of the three-dimensional structure of Candida albicans DHFR, which suggested that relatively small, branched alkyl groups at the 7- and 8-positions of the pyrroloquinazoline ring system would provide optimal interactions with a hydrophobic region of the protein. The compounds were potent inhibitors of fungal and human DHFR, with Ki values as low as 7.1 and 0.1 pM, respectively, and were highly active against C. albicans and an array of tumor cell lines. In contrast to known lipophilic inhibitors of DHFR such as trimetrexate and piritrexim, members of this series of pyrroloquinazolines were not susceptible to P-glycoprotein-mediated multidrug resistance and also showed significant distribution...
Hadronization and chirality in strongly interacting partonic matter — The future of the RHIC Program

New physics and detector concepts for a future pp and heavy ion program at the RHIC-II accelerator facility will be discussed. I will focus on hadronic observables which enable us to gain a better understanding on the hadronization from a sQGP and the chiral symmetry restoration in a sQGP. The ultimate question of how matter acquires mass can be addressed by this program in a complementary way to the Higgs search in high energy physics. The contributions of the RHIC program to the study of QCD will be discussed in detail.
PROPERTIES OF HEAVY B HADRONS

We review recent measurements of heavy B hadron states including masses and lifetimes of the B{sub c}{sup -} meson as well as excited B states (B**, B**{sub s}). We discuss properties of the B{sub s}{sup 0} meson such as lifetime, lifetime difference {Delta}{Lambda}{sub s}/{Lambda}{sub s} and CP violation in B{sub s}{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi}{phi} decays. We also summarize new measurements of the masses and lifetimes of bottom baryons including the {Lambda}{sub b}{sup 0} baryon, the {Sigma}{sub b} baryon states as well as the {Xi}{sub b}{sup -} and {Omega}{sub b}{sup -} baryons.
Improving designer glycan production in Escherichia coli through model-guided metabolic engineering

Asparagine-linked (N-linked) glycosylation is the most common protein modification in eukaryotes, affecting over two-thirds of the proteome. Glycosylation is also critical to the pharmacokinetic activity and immunogenicity of many therapeutic proteins currently produced in complex eukaryotic hosts. The discovery of a protein glycosylation pathway in the pathogen Campylobacter jejuni and its subsequent transfer into laboratory strains of Escherichia coli has spurred great interest in glycoprotein production in prokaryotes. However, prokaryotic glycoprotein production has several drawbacks, including insufficient availability of non-native glycan precursors. To address this limitation, we used a constraint-based model of E. coli metabolism in combination with heuristic optimization to design gene knockout strains that overproduced glycan precursors. First, we incorporated reactions associated with C. jejuni glycan assembly into a genome-scale model of E. coli metabolism. We then identified gene knockout strains that coupled optimal growth to glycan synthesis. Simulations suggested that these growth-coupled glycan overproducing strains had metabolic imbalances that rerouted flux toward glycan precursor synthesis. We then validated the model-identified knockout strains experimentally by measuring glycan expression using a flow cytometric-based assay involving fluorescent labeling of cell surface-displayed glycans. Overall, this study demonstrates the promising role that metabolic modeling can play in optimizing the performance of a next-generation microbial glycosylation platform.
Stereocontrolled synthesis of quaternary β,γ-unsaturated amino acids: chain extension of d- and l-α-(2-tributylstannyl)vinyl amino acids

A pair of diastereomeric (4S,5S)- and (4S,5R)-4-methoxycarbonyl-5-phenylselenomethyl-2-phenyl oxazolines, derived from L-vinylglycine, serve as precursors to protected, quaternary, L- and D-α-(2-tributylstannyl)vinyl amino acids, respectively, in three steps {(i) alkylative side chain installation, (ii) eliminative ring-opening and (iii) vinyl selenide to vinyl stannane interconversion}. The title compounds may be protodestannylated to the corresponding free, quaternary L- and D-vinyl amino acids. Alternatively, the 2-stannylvinyl α-branch (or the derivative 2-iodovinyl branch) may be exploited to access novel quaternary, L- and D-β,γ-unsaturated amino acids via a range of transition metal-mediated cross coupling reactions.
Targeting light-gated chloride channels to neuronal somatodendritic domain reduces their excitatory effect in the axon

One way to study the role of a specific neuron is to activate or inhibit the cell and then observe the consequences. This can be achieved by using optogenetics, a technique that involves introducing ‘light-gated’ ion channels in the outer membrane of a target neuron. When light is shone on the cell, these pore-like proteins open their channels: this allows ions to move into or out of the neuron. Ions flow from high concentration to low concentration areas. Typically, when a neuron is at rest, there are fewer chloride ions inside the cell than outside. Activating a light-gated chloride channel should thus cause these negatively charged ions to enter the neuron. The charge inside of the cell would become more negative relative to the outside: this would inhibit the neuron, making it less likely to fire. Here, Messier et al. looked into using a light-gated chlorine channel called GtACR2 to inhibit the activity of neurons in mouse brain slices, but the results were not as expected. Activating the chloride channel did inhibit the cell body, the area of the neuron that contains the nucleus. Yet, it had the opposite effect in the axon, the structure that carries electrical signals away from the cell body. There, activating GtACR2 caused chloride ions to leave the axon, which resulted in the neuron firing. Testing other types of optogenetic chloride channels produced the same result. Further experiments revealed that the concentration of chloride ions is higher inside the axon than the cell body, explaining the observed effects. Messier et al. then tried to redistribute the channels from the axon to the cell body, where the proteins are inhibitory. This was accomplished by fitting GtACR2 with a molecular tag that acts like an address label, with the cell body as the target destination. Overall, when these modified channels were activated, the neuron was more strongly inhibited. Ultimately, the GtACR2 channel designed by Messier et al. is a powerful new inhibitory optogenetic tool. In addition, this tool could be used to study chloride gradients in brain regions, cell types and areas of cells that are otherwise difficult to access.
Regenerative capacity in the lamprey spinal cord is not altered after a repeated transection

The resilience of regeneration in vertebrates is not very well understood. Yet understanding if tissues can regenerate after repeated insults, and identifying limitations, is important for elucidating the underlying mechanisms of tissue plasticity. This is particularly challenging in tissues, such as the nervous system, which possess a large number of terminally differentiated cells and often exhibit limited regeneration in the first place. However, unlike mammals, which exhibit very limited regeneration of spinal cord tissues, many non-mammalian vertebrates, including lampreys, bony fishes, amphibians, and reptiles, regenerate their spinal cords and functionally recover even after a complete spinal cord transection. It is well established that lampreys undergo full functional recovery of swimming behaviors after a single spinal cord transection, which is accompanied by tissue repair at the lesion site, as well as axon and synapse regeneration. Here we begin to explore the resilience of spinal cord regeneration in lampreys after a second spinal transection (re-transection). We report that by all functional and anatomical measures tested, lampreys regenerate after spinal re-transection just as robustly as after single transections. Recovery of swimming, synapse and cytoskeletal distributions, axon regeneration, and neuronal survival were nearly identical after spinal transection or re-transection. Only minor differences in tissue repair at the lesion site were observed in re-transected spinal cords. Thus, regenerative potential in the lamprey spinal cord is largely unaffected by spinal re-transection, indicating a greater persistent regenerative potential than exists in some other highly regenerative models. These findings establish a new path for uncovering pro-regenerative targets that could be deployed in non-regenerative conditions.
A Short Enantioselective Total Synthesis of the Third-Generation Oral Contraceptive Desogestrel

Desogestrel (1) has been synthesized enantioselectively by a 14-step process from the known and readily available precursor 3, as outlined in Chart 2. At the heart of this process is the short, convergent, and stereocontrolled method for forming the tetracyclic ring system and the critical 11-exomethylene function, that is, the sequence of steps 6 → 8 → → 12. All steps of the synthesis proceed in good yield.
Scope of the Desulfinylative Palladium-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling of Aryl Sulfinates with Aryl Bromides

Herein is described the full scope of a desulfinylative cross-coupling of aryl sulfinates with aryl bromides. Optimized conditions were established and a bidentate phosphine ligand was found to be the key in obtaining good cross-coupling yields. Preliminary efforts to elucidate the reaction mechanism suggest that a Pd(0)-catalyzed mechanism is operative.