cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The impact of oxytocin on stress: the role of sex

Accumulating research indicates oxytocin plays a significant role in regulating the behavioral and neurobiological responses to stress. Evidence from preclinical models suggests the effect of oxytocin on stress-responsivity appears to be dependent on individual characteristics, including sex. Although the interaction between oxytocinergic and stress systems has been widely studied in rodents, recent efforts have been made to examine the interface between these two systems in humans. This brief review examines how administration of oxytocin can influence the neuroendocrine, behavioral, and neural responses to stress, explores how sex may impact these effects, and provides considerations for future work.
Lead Removal from Contaminated Water by a Mixed Microbial Ecosystem

The research reported here explored the advantages of using an integrated ecosystem for the uptake of lead and examined some of the possible mechanisms for the transfer of the metal through the system with eventual binding in the microbial biomass. Strategies were applied to (1) stimulate enhanced production of biomass and consequent lead recovery by simple enrichments of the microbial environment, and (2) increase the microbial tolerance and lead uptake capacity by adaptation of the component species. The microbial ecosystem employed here was one which arose spontaneously after pond enrichment with silaged grass clippings and moved through a predictable microbial succession. Ecosystem processes and microbial relationships resulted in the mobilization of metal in the soil bed and water column with ultimate deposition in the surface biomass. The stable silage-microbe biomass, floating at the top of the pond, bound the metal for extended periods of time.
VARIANTS OF ALPHA-1-ACID GLYCOPROTEIN.

IN a recent publication1, α1-acid glycoprotein, a human plasma glycoprotein, was shown to be polymorphic. At pH 2.9, that is, near its isoelectric point, seven zones were observed if the mentioned protein had been isolated from pooled normal blood. Moreover, it could be demonstrated that, following enzymatic removal of essentially all sialic acid, the modified pooled α1-acid glycoprotein resolved at pH 4.8 into two major and a minor faster moving component2.
On-chip laser phase and frequency control

A review of our work in electronic-photonic co-design including integrated LiDAR for 3D imaging with 15μm resolution at 0.5m range, wideband optical synthesis, and integrated Pound-Drever-Hall stabilization achieving 25dB laser frequency noise reduction is presented.
Heidegger Never Got Beyond Facticity

(1) The “thing itself” of Heidegger’s thinking was Ereignis. (2) But Ereignis is a reinscription of what Being and Time had called thrownness or facticity. (3) But facticity/Ereignis is ex-sistence’s ever-operative appropriation to its proper structure as the ontological “space” or “clearing” that makes possible practical and theoretical discursivity. (4) Such facticity is the ultimate and inevitable presupposition of all activities of ex-sistence and thus of any understanding of being. (5) Therefore, for ex-sistence – and a fortiori for Heidegger as a thinker of Ereignis – there can be no going beyond facticity.
Energy Loss at the Base of a Free Overfall

Experimental studies were made of a free overfall with a view to obtaining information that would be of value to designers of hydraulic structures. Detailed laboratory measurements showed that the ...
Private Practice Social Workers’ Commitment to Social Justice

The privatization of mental healthcare among social workers has situated them under scrutiny by others in the profession who question private practice clinicians’ commitment to social justice. Some social workers accuse colleagues in private practice of a dereliction of duty, while others in the profession contend that the entrepreneurship of mental healthcare is the only way to freely realize real-world social justice change. Hence, this qualitative research study explores how clinical social workers define social justice as well as if and how they integrate it in a private practice setting. This small qualitative research study was designed to begin to illuminate strengths and gaps regarding how clinical social workers define as well as if and how they integrate social justice in a private practice setting.
The Certificate of Division and the Early Supreme Court

The history and development of Supreme Court review over state courts in the early Republic is well known. The equally important history and development of Supreme Court review of federal trial courts under the “Certificate of Division” is not. This Article addresses this largely forgotten yet critically significant feature of the early Court’s appellate power. During much of the nineteenth century, the main federal trial courts were generally staffed with two judges—a Supreme Court Justice riding circuit and a resident district judge. As a result, there were often tie votes on questions of law. Congress’s remedy was the certificate of division, which called for mandatory interlocutory Supreme Court review when the judges were divided. This unusual and understudied appellate mechanism proved critical to the development of law and the role of the Court during the Chief Justiceships of Marshall and Taney, and it implicated procedural issues that are still relevant today. As this Article will show, many of the early Court’s most important cases came to it via certificate of division. And certification produced almost as many Supreme Court decisions as did the Court’s direct review of the state courts, the more widely-studied practice. In addition, because review was obligatory when there was division, disagreement between the judges was sometimes feigned, in order to steer certain legal questions to the Court that the judges wished it to hear, many of which might otherwise have escaped review. In this regard, we include a heretofore unavailable dataset that collects all cases—civil and criminal—that reached the Court via certification. And we undertake an empirical analysis of the dataset to ascertain, among other things, which Justices used (and sometimes abused) the practice. This Article will also show how certification by division allowed for practices that scholars tend to assume arose much later. For example, it provided an early opportunity for interlocutory appeals from lower federal courts, and it provided Supreme Court Justices with a form of discretionary control over the Court’s docket (simply by disagreeing with the district judge), long before discretionary review became the norm. Finally, certification was important as one of a variety of possible approaches that judicial systems use to break ties—here, by allowing an appeal as of right to a higher court.
Replicated inflection? Plot twists behind apparent borrowed plurals

Morphology, particularly inflectional morphology, has sometimes been considered among the last features of language to be transferred under conditions of language contact. It has become clear, however, that numerous factors can affect the susceptibility of bound morphology to transfer. One of these involves typological similarities among the languages involved, similarities which might increase over long periods of contact and in turn set the stage for elaboration of particular domains. Here such effects are examined in what is commonly viewed as a prototypical kind of inflection: plural marking on nouns. The languages involved are indigenous to a well-known linguistic area in Northern California, but they represent three unrelated families: Pomoan, Yukian, and Wintun. While shared plural markers often ride into languages in contact on the backs of borrowed nouns, speakers of these languages have a history of avoiding much lexical borrowing. The shared markers apparently entered the languages via a more circuitous route. Throughout the area, inflectional number marking on nouns is rare, but related distinctions on verbs can be elaborate. It appears that what was transferred were verbal distributive and collective suffixes, which then evolved within the individual languages, to varying degrees, into number marking on nouns.
Assessing Hidden Hearing Loss After Impulse Noise in a Mouse Model

Introduction: There are several key differences between impulse and continuous noise: the nature of the noise itself, the cochlear and neuronal structures affected, the severity to which they damage the auditory system, and the period of time in which damage occurs. Notably, no work on hidden hearing loss after impulse noise exposure has been done to this point, though it has been extensively studied after continuous noise. Hidden hearing loss manifests physiologically with reductions in suprathreshold amplitudes of the first wave of the auditory brainstem response, while auditory thresholds can remain relatively normal. Objective: This study aimed to assess the extent to which, if at all, hidden hearing loss is present after exposure to impulse noise in C57BL6/J mice. Methods: Thirty-one C57BL6/J mice were used in the experiment, in accordance with IACUC protocols. Auditory brainstem responses were recorded before and after noise exposures. The noise exposures consisted of 500 impulses at 137 dB peSPL. Results: Suprathreshold amplitude reductions in the P1 wave of the mouse auditory brainstem response were seen, but only at frequencies with significant threshold shift. Conclusion: These amplitude changes were consistent with hidden hearing loss, and we conclude that impulse noise can cause hidden hearing loss, but future studies are required to determine the specific mechanisms involved and if they parallel those of hidden hearing loss after continuous noise.
2 – Mathematical Background

Publisher Summary This chapter explains the ideas and principles behind generating fractals based on sets of equations. The familiar spaces such as points, lines, and planes are called Euclidean spaces. The position of a point on the line can be described by a single number. An IFS is a collection of contractive affine transformations. Iterations of IFS on an initial set result in a unique image, regardless of the initial image. The unique image that is produced by iterations of IFS is a fractal attractor of the given IFS. No matter what the initial image is, many iterations of the IFS always result in the same image—the attractor. Thus, an IFS describes a unique fractal attractor. Repeated applications or iterations of the IFS to any initial image will result in that unique attractor.
Pancreatic Cancer Treatment: Better, but a long way to go.

Remarkable progress has been made in treating pancreatic cancer over the past century, including refinement of our surgical techniques and improvements in adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies. Despite these advances, the incidence of pancreatic cancer is rising globally, and it remains a deadly disease. In this review, we highlight the historical perspectives of pancreatic cancer treatment and outline the areas of future advancement that will assist progression towards better outcomes. Areas of future advancement include improving prevention strategies and early detection, refining our molecular understanding of pancreatic cancer, identifying more effective systemic therapies, and improving quality of life and surgical outcomes. Furthermore, systems need to be put in place to ensure all patients with pancreatic cancer receive high quality care and are given the appropriate options and sequence of therapy. This is best achieved through multidisciplinary care.
Impact of Stress and Loneliness on Health-Related Quality of Life Among Low Income Senior African Americans.

Low income senior African Americans are at risk for low health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Loneliness may exacerbate the effects of stress on health. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of perceived stress and loneliness on the HRQoL of low income senior African Americans (N = 281). Results indicate that loneliness may exacerbate the inverse relationship of perceived stress with psychological HRQoL among this sample. Additionally, both loneliness and perceived stress were associated with poorer physical HRQoL. The present study has implications for interventions seeking to improve HRQoL among a similar sample of senior adults given that loneliness is a modifiable variable.
Adaptation and restructuring of an academic anesthesiology department during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City: Challenges and lessons learned

The novel SARS-CoV-2 pandemic starting in 2019 profoundly changed the world, and thousands of residents of New York City were affected, leading to one of the most acute surges in regional hospital capacity. As the largest academic medical center in the Bronx, Montefiore Medical Center was immediately impacted, and the entire hospital was mobilized to address the needs of its community. In this article, we describe our experiences as a large academic anesthesiology department during this pandemic. Our goals were to maximize our staff's expertise, maintain our commitment to wellness and safety, and preserve the quality of patient care. Lessons learned include the importance of critical care training presence and leadership, the challenges of converting an ambulatory surgery center to an intensive care unit (ICU), and the management of effective communication. Lastly, we provide suggestions for institutions facing an acute surge, or subsequent waves of COVID-19, based on a single center's experiences.
AI and its Applications in the Cloud strategy

The fourth industrial revolution identifies cloud computing, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) as opportunity clusters with double digit growth in the next couple of years. As part of the cloud and digital transformation, the role of AI is crucial in enabling that transformation as well as creating the new breed of applications on top. AI mechanisms can help accelerate the modernization of applications, their management, and the testing on cloud architectures. I will focus on two sub-problems: 1) Refactoring of massive monolith applications using AI techniques. This problem statement is particularly relevant in understanding legacy un-optimized code and transforming them to be more cloud-ready. Microservices are indeed becoming the de-facto design choice for software architecture. It involves partitioning the software components into finer modules such that the development can happen independently [2]. It also provides natural benefits when deployed on the cloud since resources can be allocated dynamically to necessary components based on demand. We are exploring how AI can help accelerate the transformation of existing applications to microservices. 2) Detecting faults in application behavior at runtime from operational data. This problem statement is particularly relevant in understanding how to manage this new architecture of multiple microservices across the cloud stack [1], [3]. Operational data artifacts span across logs, metrics, tickets, and traces. Looking at signals across the artifacts and across the stack presents a challenging data correlation problem. AI mechanisms can help accelerate problem determination in these complex environments. I will also share my thoughts on how fundamental breakthroughs in AI Research will be needed as we address some of the core problems of cloud computing.
Animals in Environmental Sociology

It is well established that nonhuman animals have substantial social significance in human society (Arluke & Sanders, 1996; Irvine, 2008; Nibert, 2013). However, some aspects of sociological investigation have not fully engaged with the question of how animals are embedded in human social systems. Wilkie (2015) calls for a reimagining of C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination into an “animalizing of the sociological imagination” to recognize that animals are an integral part of human social systems and how we treat and engage with animals impacts human social life. It is curious that animals often are invisible in environmental sociology, a subdiscipline constructed in opposition to human exceptionalism (Tovey, 2003). When animals do appear, they are considered primarily as part of ecological systems or “wild nature,” with the billions who exist as food, domestic or service animals largely ignored (Tovey, 2003). Yet, it is clear that humans and other animals live in co-constituted, collaborative worlds (Despret, 2013; Haraway, 2008; Porcher, 2017). Indeed, animals are so embedded into the social fabric that society cannot be fully understood without including them, and we are challenged to “think from the animal” and ask “what matters for them?” (Despret, cited in Carter & Charles, 2018). To “think from the animal” involves a recognition that our engagement and use of animals alters natural and social systems in often profound ways. Engaging with environmental sociology from a sociology of animal studies perspective, this chapter begins a conversation on “thinking from the animal” by asking what matters for animals in environmental sociology?
Further evidence for the role of prolactin on human fetoplacental osmoregulation

Abstract The addition of ovine prolactin (oPRL) to the fetal side of human term amnion in vitro is associated with a decrease in membrane permeability to tritiated water (THO). As the concentration of oPRL is increased from 2.5 to 20.0 μg per milliliter, permeability is progressively impaired. The addition of a specific prolactin receptor antibody completely abolished the effect of oPRL. Also, the addition of Ouabain abolished the effect of oPRL. When an osmotic gradient was created using Dextran-10 on the maternal side of the amnion, the bulk flow of water in control and oPRL-treated membranes was not significantly different. These findings suggest that PRL acts predominantly on the diffusional flow rather than the bulk flow of water across amnion and that it is a transcellular transport. These studies also represent indirect evidence for the existence of prolactin receptor sites at the level of the amnion.
Tropomodulin binding to tropomyosins

Tropomodulin is a human erythrocyte membrane cytoskeletal protein that binds to one end of tropomyosin molecules and inhibits tropomyosin binding to actin filaments [Fowler, V. M. (1990) J. Cell Biol. 111, 471-482]. We have characterized the interaction of erythroid and non-erythroid tropomyosins with tropomodulin by non-denaturing gel electrophoresis and by solid-phase binding assays using 125I-tropomyosin. Non-denaturing gel analysis demonstrates that all tropomodulin molecules are able to bind tropomyosin and that tropomodulin forms complexes with tropomyosin isoforms from erythrocyte, brain, platelet and skeletal muscle tissue. Scatchard analysis of binding data using tropomyosin isoforms from these tissues indicate that tropomodulin binds preferentially to erythrocyte tropomyosin. Specificity is manifested by decreases in the apparent affinity or the saturation binding capacity of tropomodulin for non-erythrocyte tropomyosins. Erythrocyte tropomyosin saturates tropomodulin at approximate stoichiometric ratios of 1:2 and 1:4 tropomyosin/tropomodulin (apparent Kd = 14 nM-1 and 5 nM-1, respectively). Brain tropomyosin saturates tropomodulin at a 1:2 ratio of tropomyosin/tropomodulin, but with a threefold lower affinity than erythrocyte tropomyosin. Platelet tropomyosin saturates tropomodulin at a tropomyosin/tropomodulin ratio of 1:4, but with a sevenfold lower affinity than erythrocyte tropomyosin at the 1:4 ratio. These results correlate with oxidative cross-linking data which indicate that tropomodulin can self-associate to form dimers and tetramers in solution. Since tropomodulin interacts with one of the ends of tropomyosin, varying interactions of tropomyosin isoforms with tropomodulin probably reflect the heterogeneity in N-terminal or C-terminal sequences characteristic of the different tropomyosin isoforms. Isoform-specific interactions of tropomodulin with tropomyosins may represent a novel mechanism for selective regulation of tropomyosin/actin interactions.
Applications of non-uniform sampling and processing

Modern high-field NMR instruments provide unprecedented resolution. To make use of the resolving power in multidimensional NMR experiment standard linear sampling through the indirect dimensions to the maximum optimal evolution times (~1.2T 2) is not practical because it would require extremely long measurement times. Thus, alternative sampling methods have been proposed during the past 20 years. Originally, random nonlinear sampling with an exponentially decreasing sampling density was suggested, and data were transformed with a maximum entropy algorithm (Barna et al., J Magn Reson 73:69–77, 1987). Numerous other procedures have been proposed in the meantime. It has become obvious that the quality of spectra depends crucially on the sampling schedules and the algorithms of data reconstruction. Here we use the forward maximum entropy (FM) reconstruction method to evaluate several alternate sampling schedules. At the current stage, multidimensional NMR spectra that do not have a serious dynamic range problem, such as triple resonance experiments used for sequential assignments, are readily recorded and faithfully reconstructed using non-uniform sampling. Thus, these experiments can all be recorded non-uniformly to utilize the power of modern instruments. On the other hand, for spectra with a large dynamic range, such as 3D and 4D NOESYs, choosing optimal sampling schedules and the best reconstruction method is crucial if one wants to recover very weak peaks. Thus, this chapter is focused on selecting the best sampling schedules and processing methods for high-dynamic range spectra.
A sliding-window data aggregation method for super-resolution imaging of live cells

Super resolution localization microscopy (SRLM) techniques such as STORM and PALM overcome the ∼200nm diffraction limit of conventional light microscopy by randomly activating separate fluorophores over time and computationally aggregating their nanometer resolution detected locations for image reconstruction. However, a basic limitation of current SRLM approaches for live cell imaging is their low temporal resolution due to motion blur, which arises if image objects move during image acquisition of the substantial number of raw images required for constructing the super-resolution image for a given time point. To overcome this limitation, we propose a sliding-window data aggregation method, which exploits the temporal correlation between the collected fluorescence images to achieve significantly higher frame rate and therefore better temporal resolution than current approaches. Specifically, images within a sliding window are aligned so that locations of detected fluorophores within them are aggregated to accelerate image reconstruction for higher temporal resolution. We tested and validated our method using both simulated and real live cell STORM image data.
Ciliary neurotrophic factor maintains motoneurons and their target muscles in developing rats

Ciliary neutrophic factor (CNTF) can enhance motoneuron survival during naturally occurring cell death in the chick (Oppenheim et al, 1991). Because receptors for CNTF are expressed in both motoneurons and their target muscles (Davis et al., 1991; lp et al., 1993), both tissues are potential sites of CNTF action in development. We examined the ability of CNTF to prevent the degeneration of a neuromuscular system in developing female rats. The death of motoneurons in the spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus (SNB) extends postnatally and is sexually dimorphic, with many more motoneurons dying in females than in males. The bulbocavernosus (BC), a target muscle of SNB motoneurons, also degenerates postnatally in females. Female rats treated with daily injections of 1 microgram CNTF from embryonic day 22 through postnatal day 3 (P3) had 70% more SNB motoneurons on P4 than did control animals, and the number of pyknotic profiles in the SNB area was markedly reduced by CNTF. In addition, the degeneration of the BC was completely prevented by CNTF treatment of perinatal female rats. These results demonstrate that CNTF can preserve mammalian motoneurons from developmental death, but also suggest that the sparing effect of CNTF on motoneurons in vivo may be a secondary consequence of effects on target muscles.
Aging with a Disability: What the Clinician Needs to Know, edited by Bryan J. Kemp and Laura Mosqueda. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-8019-7817-9. 328 pp., softcover, $26. Amazon

Rehabilitation practitioners and students are provided fresh and unique perspectives on working with people who have a disability and are aging. The primary audience includes occupational therapist...
A gene related to the proto-oncogene fps/fes is expressed at diverse times during the life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster.

Abstract The proto-oncogene fps/fes encodes a distinctive type of protein-tyrosine kinase. We identified a Drosophila gene (dfps85D) whose product resembles the proteins encoded by vertebrate fps/fes and the closely related gene fer. dfps85D is located at chromosomal position 85D10-13 and is unlikely to correspond to any previously defined genetic locus in Drosophila melanogaster. Expression of the gene is entirely zygotic in origin and occurs throughout the life cycle. But hybridization in situ revealed that the pattern of expression is specialized and evolves in a provocative manner. The most notable feature of expression is the diversity of developmental periods, tissues, and cells in which it occurs. In some tissues, expression is transient; in others, it is continuous. Expression occurs in both mitotic and terminally differentiated tissue and, at various times in development, is prominent in imaginal disks, gut, muscle, testes, ovaries, retina, and other neural tissues. It appears that the use of dfps85D is more diversified than that of other Drosophila protein-tyrosine kinases reported to date and contrasts sharply with the restricted expression of fps itself in vertebrates. The detailed description of expression provided here will help guide the search for mutants in dfps85D.
Staphylococcal Infection in Chick Embryos: The Effect of Hydrocortisone on Intra-Allantoic Infection

trol of infection (Kass and Finland, 1958). Little information is available concerning the direct effects corticosteroids may have on the virulence of the infectious agent. The majority of studies on the relationship of corticosteroids and bacterial infection have employed accepted pathogens such as pneumococci (Germuth et al, 1952; Kass et al, 1954), coagulase-positive staphylococci (Kligman et al, 1951), group A hemolytic streptococci (Mogabgab and Thomas, 1952), Salmonella typhosa (Jungk et al, 1952), brucellae (Abernathy and Spink, 1952), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Lurie et al, 1953), and others. In addition, in most studies the experimental host has been treated with large doses of corticosteroids prior to initiation of infection (Robinson and Smith, 1953; Auerbach et al, 1955; Cohn, 1962; Miller and Hedberg, 1965). Few studies have been conducted with usually nonpathogenic microorganisms and low corticosteroid dosages. The chick embryo is an excellent experimental model for the study of staphylococcal infection (Sonnea and Frappier, 1954; McCabe, 1964; Lyles et al, 1965; Werner and Riddle, 1967) as well as for the study of direct effects of adrenal corticosteroids on embryonic development (Karnofsky et al, 1951; Moscona and Karnofsky, 1960). The present investigations were undertaken to study the effects of minimal doses of corticosteroids on the course of a usually benign staphylococcal infection in chick embryos.
Pattern recognition of the electroencephalogram by artificial neural networks

Abstract A back-propagation network was trained to recognize high voltage spike-wave spindle (HVS) patterns in the rat, a rodent model of human petit mal epilepsy. The spontaneously occurring HVSs were examined in 137 rats of the Fisher 344 and Brown Norway strains and their F1, F2 and backcross hybrids. Neocortical EEG and movement of the rat were recorded for 12 night hours in each animal and analog data were filtered (low cut: 1 Hz; high cut: 50 Hz) and sampled at 100 Hz with 12 bit precision. A training data set was generated by manually marking durations of HVS epochs in 16 representative animals selected from each group. Training data were presented to back-propagation networks with variable numbers of input, hidden and output cells. The performance of different types of networks was first examined with the training samples and then the best configuration was tested on novel sets of the EEG data. FFT transformation of EEG significantly improved the pattern recognition ability of the network. With the most effective configuration (16 input; 19 hidden; 1 output cells) the summed squared error dropped by 80% as compared with that of the initial random weights. When testing the network with new patterns the manual and automatic evaluations were compared quantitatively. HVSs which were detected properly by the network reached 93–99% of the manually marked HVS patterns, while falsely detected events (non-HVS, artifacts) varied between 18% and 40%. These findings demonstrate the utility of back-propagation networks in automatic recognition of EEG patterns.
Multi-band summary correlogram-based pitch detection for noisy speech

A multi-band summary correlogram (MBSC)-based pitch detection algorithm (PDA) is proposed. The PDA performs pitch estimation and voiced/unvoiced (V/UV) detection via novel signal processing schemes that are designed to enhance the MBSC's peaks at the most likely pitch period. These peak-enhancement schemes include comb-filter channel-weighting to yield each individual subband's summary correlogram (SC) stream, and stream-reliability-weighting to combine these SCs into a single MBSC. V/UV detection is performed by applying a constant threshold on the maximum peak of the enhanced MBSC. Narrowband noisy speech sampled at 8kHz are generated from Keele (development set) and CSTR - Centre for Speech Technology Research-(evaluation set) corpora. Both 4-kHz fullband speech, and G.712-filtered telephone speech are simulated. When evaluated solely on pitch estimation accuracy, assuming voicing detection is perfect, the proposed algorithm has the lowest gross pitch error for noisy speech in the evaluation set among the algorithms evaluated (RAPT, YIN, etc.). The proposed PDA also achieves the lowest average pitch detection error, when both pitch estimation and voicing detection errors are taken into account.
Parallel hierarchical computation of specular radiosity

Computing radiosity is a very expensive problem in computer graphics. Recent hierarchical methods have greatly speeded up the computation of first diffuse and now also specular radiosity. The authors present a parallel algorithm for computing both diffuse and specular radiosity together, and discuss the techniques they used to improve its performance. The algorithm is both irregular and highly unpredictable. Despite this, by carefully designing a parallel algorithm that minimizes synchronization and memory access overhead and by identifying and correcting several synchronization bottlenecks that they did not anticipate, they were able to obtain speedups of 26.3 on a 32-processor machine with distributed memory and 14.2 on a 16-processor machine with centralized memory. They demonstrate how execution profiles obtained at runtime, for example time spent waiting at different locks, can be used to significantly improve the performance of complex, irregular parallel applications.
Millimeter-Wavelength Galactic Observations with the Mobile Anisotropy Telescope

Spatially filtered maps of a portion of the Galactic plane are presented in Ka band (26–36 GHz), Q band (36–46 GHz), and D band (138–150 GHz) near a declination of -60° with resolutions ranging from 02 to 09. The maps are optimized to detect unresolved source emission and are calibrated through observations of the planet Jupiter. Six millimeter-bright regions are detected, including the Carina Nebula and RCW 57, of which three are visible in all bands. Variability of flux density over a 3 month period has an upper limit of 3.8% for all sources seen in Ka and Q bands and 10% in D band. A fractional polarization upper limit of 0.08 is placed for all sources seen in Ka and Q bands.
The Authority to Propose Issues for Formal Decision in Business Consortia

One aspect of organizational governance is the power to propose issues for consideration in the formal decision process. Consortia composed of autonomous business organizations appear to be a good context for investigating this “proposal authority,” because when a consortium is not too large it tends to be governed by a board of directors on which all the members are represented. This makes it possible to test hypotheses about the effects of the consortium’s internal structure on the rules that govern who may propose issues for decision and how they may do so. We study here the formal rules, given in organizational charters and by-laws, for initiating specific types of decision in 53 consortia in the electric power industry in the USA. Hypotheses are developed from numerous theoretical perspectives, including the institutional, ecological, developmental, structuralist, resource-dependence, economic, and political-economic. We find a fair degree of heterogeneity in the practices of initiative control among these organizations, yet only the familiar structuralist theory is able to predict significantly the variation in these decision rules. This weak result poses interesting problems for future research.
Cultural Brokers: Race-Based Hiring in Inner-City Neighborhoods

Race matters in today's inner-city job market. Small business owners in predominantly Black neighborhoods prefer hiring Blacks for reasons that have nothing to do with Title VII or government pressure for affirmative action. Instead, these entrepreneurs hire Blacks because of their perceived use as cultural brokers in dealing with a Black clientele. Based on 75 in-depth merchant interviews from five predominantly Black neighborhoods in New York City and Philadelphia, the author finds race-based hiring does not necessarily mean that African Americans will benefit. Black is an overinclusive category that carries both racial and ethnic meanings, and consequently, although firms may hire Blacks, these small business owners prefer hiring immigrants over native-born Americans, including Black immigrants. Affirmative action for Blacks and entrepreneurs' preferences for Blacks as cultural brokers may involve race-conscious hiring, yet both can work to miss or exclude African Americans.
Patient-Centered Research: The Relationship Between Concerns About Body Weight and Smoking Behavior

PURPOSE: Prior studies suggest that adolescents may smoke to control their weight. Whether weight control is a strong incentive for tobacco smoking among adults is unclear. We examined whether concerns about body weight influence smoking and smoking cessation behavior among adults in the United States. METHODS: Health and sociodemographic data were obtained from 17,317 adult respondents to the Year 2000 supplement of the 1995 National Health Interview Survey, a household population-based survey (mean age 44 years, 20% with a body mass index/BMI ≥30, 52% female, 24% nonwhite, and 43% college educated). Respondents reported whether they were trying to lose weight (LOSE), maintain weight (MAINTAIN), or gain weight/indifferent (INDIFF). We performed bivariable and multivariable analyses to examine whether concerns about weight were associated with smoking among adults, the desire to quit among smokers and having a quit attempt in the past year. Analyses were weighted and adjusted for the complex cluster sampling design. RESULTS: Of the 15,540 respondents with complete data on weight concerns and tobacco use, 27% reported being current smokers. Of INDIFF respondents, 31% were current smokers, while 25% of LOSE and 25% of MAINTAIN respondents smoked currently, p < .001. After adjustment for BMI, sex, education, marital status, age, income and race, LOSE and MAINTAIN respondents were less likely to smoke currently; the adjusted odds ratios (AOR) were 0.88 (95% CI 0.79–0.99) and 0.83 (0.73–0.93), respectively. When we excluded former smokers from our sample, the result for MAINTAIN respondents was similar, AOR 0.83 (0.73–0.95); however, the result for LOSE respondents was attenuated, AOR 0.94 (0.83–1.08). Among current smokers (n = 3904), 74% expressed a desire to quit smoking. Of INDIFF respondents, 70% expressed a desire to quit, while 73% of MAINTAIN and 81% of LOSE respondents expressed the same desire, p < .001. After adjustment for BMI, age, and marital status, LOSE respondents were more likely to express the desire to quit smoking, AOR 1.72 (95% CI 1.42–2.07) compared to INDIFF respondents. Other sociodemographic factors did not confound this relationship. Our analyses showed a similar relationship between body weight concerns and making a quit attempt in the past year. All adjusted analyses were similar when stratified by sex. CONCLUSION: Adults who are trying to lose or maintain weight are no more likely to smoke than those not concerned about losing weight. Moreover, concerns about body weight do not appear to be a disincentive to smoking cessation. Patient's concern about weight control should not discourage clinicians from counseling smokers to quit.
Design Of Distributed Feedback(DFB) Laser-Based External Cavity Structures For Coherent Communications

Abstract Critical parameter combinations, which govern the reduction of the linewidth and tunability in a DFB laser - based external cavity structure, are determined by a mathematical model. The coupling coefficient, operating point of the DFB laser, refractive index and the external cavity length are found to greatly determine the absolutelinewidth of this structure. An optimum continuous tuning range of 55 GHz is predicted. However, the usabletuning range is much smaller as will be seen. 1. Introduction The possibility of frequency division multiplexing with coherent detection techniques has prompted the needfor a narrow -linewidth, tunable optical source. These types of systems offer the ability to transmit many channelssimultaneously with narrow channel spacings depending upon the data rates transmitted. For a phase shift keyedmodulation scheme(PSK) the required linewidth is of the order of between 0.1 and 0.5% of the channel bandwidth.Since solitary semiconductor lasers do not provide such narrow linewidths, the addition of passive external cavitiesis one technique to reduce the linewidth.Previous research on the addition of passive external cavities, which utilize the high feedback regime, to DFBsemiconductor lasers has been most promising. These types of structures produced optical sources with reductionof the linewidth by a factor of 1000 and increased stabilization from reflections to -20 dBill. Even for relatively
Isolation of novel tRNAAla mutants by library selection in a tRNAAla knockout strain

Abstract The relationship between tRNA structure and function has been widely investigated by site-directed mutagenesis. This method has been a very useful tool to reveal the critical bases in tRNAs that are important for recognition and aminoacylation, but has been limited by the large number of possible base combinations in tRNA molecules. We have devised a new method that uses tRNA knockout cells for selection of functional tRNAs from a mutant tRNA gene library to overcome this limitation. To explore the mechanism of tRNA Ala recognition, the bases of the acceptor-stem region were randomized and active mutants were selected in a tRNA Ala knockout strain. Mutants of tRNA Ala having diverse sequence combinations in the acceptor-stem region and a broad range of functional activity to support knockout cell growth were isolated. The mutant tRNAs selected by the method included molecules containing novel base substitutions as well as extensively altered base combinations that would not be readily generated by rationally designed site-directed mutagenesis. Our results emphasize the importance of the acceptor stem as a structural unit in which some nucleotides may carry more weight than others, but in summation every nucleotide contributes to the interaction with the enzyme.
The Internet of Things as greenfield model: A categorization attempt for labeling smart devices

Prognoses predict the number of smart devices building the Internet of Things (IoT) to range between 30 and 50 billions in 2020, in the most conservative outlook triplicating today's numbers of devices connected to the Internet in just 7 years. While hardware developments and new standards for network and application protocols are progressing well, there is little consensus about how such heterogeneous, wide-scale networks should be planned, administrated and integrated with traditional networks, but also with cloud based infrastructure in a holistic, end-to-end fashion. Thousands of different vendor hardware and software options and incompatible technological lifecycle time spans for smart things will result in serious challenges for device orchestration, management and network scaling. The framework for data collection, transmission and storage has already been raised as an elementary question when aspects of social acceptance and regulatory transparency are being discussed. In this paper we propose a basic, holistic categorization model for devices building the IoT which aims at addressing some of the challenges described by introducing an universal, simple, high-level labeling scheme which contains different flags specifying possible application or use cases, data flow and storage options, economic and ecologic parameters as well as management and control elements.
Binding of Small-Molecule Inhibitors To MAP Kinase ERK2, Studied with Resonance Energy Transfer (RET)

The extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) proteins belong to the mitogen-activated protein kinase family. They participate in several important cell-signaling pathways. Unregulated, ERK2 is thought to mediate cell proliferation in many types of cancer. But because ERK also functions in many normal cell activities, inhibition selectivity is necessary for its use in cancer therapy: one needs to block only phosphorylation of those substrates that are involved in cell proliferation, while leaving phosphorylation of other substrates unaffected. Novel small-molecule compounds, which inhibit phosphorylation of selected substrates but do not compete with ATP for its binding site, have been previously identified by computer-aided drug design (CADD) and molecular-dynamics docking algorithms. Herein, we spectroscopically characterized selected compounds, and show that they can serve as resonance energy transfer (RET) acceptors for tryptophan: we determined the values of spectral overlap J between the compounds' absorption and ERK fluorescence, and of the Forster distance R0 for the compound/tryptophan pairs. We then used RET to determine average distances between the bound compounds and the group of three tryptophans in ERK2, thus validating the CADD predictions of the compounds' binding sites. The problem of multiple but closely located donors (tryptophans) that pass the energy to the single acceptor (the bound compound) is discussed, as is the possibility of utilizing RET for mapping the inhibitor-binding sites on other kinases. The novel RET acceptors for tryptophan can conceivably be employed in studies of other protein/ligand systems with suitable spectroscopic properties.
Implications for brokerage firms’ financial disclosures: From CSR perspectives

Given the importance of transparency in today's financial environment, it is surprising that limited research has examined investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures and how their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures influence subsequent responses such as perceived trust and attitude toward brokerage firms. Research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices and the Social Contract Theory suggests that investors may put a relatively high value on brokerage firms that practice financial disclosures responsibly. This research probed the relevance of this assumption by testing the relations among investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures, attitudes toward CSR practices, perceived trust toward brokerage firms, attitudes toward brokerage firms and behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms with a survey study. The study used brokerage firms’ financial disclosures in general as the focus of this study's survey questions and a convenience sample consisting of investors. The results suggested that investors’ positive attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures positively enhanced their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices and perceived trust toward brokerage firms, whereas investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices mediated their attitudes toward financial disclosures to enhancing their perceived trust toward brokerage firms. Moreover, investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms mediated their perceived trust toward brokerage firms on enhancing their behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms.
PHYSICAL GROWTH OF BREAST-FED AND FORMULA-FED INFANTS FROM BIRTH TO AGE TWO YEARS*

Abstract Weight and length data were collected from birth to age two years on the growth of 159 infants breast-fed for 2–15 months and 150 formula-fed infants. Breast-fed male infants were significantly lighter than formula-fed infants at 6 and 12 months of age (p=0.03 and p=0.009 respectively), but at 24 months the differences were not significant. Breast-fed white females weighed less at 24 mo than their formula-fed counterparts. Using two weight to length indices, statistically significantly fewer infants who were breast-fed for longer periods were categorized as overweight. Incremental weight, weight gain per unit time, was statistically significant only for white males at 6 and 12 months of age. The data suggest that longer breast feeding affects weight and not length.
Computational Aspects of Three-Dimensional Crack Growth Simulations

An important task in mixed-mode fracture analysis and prediction is the simulation of crack growth under mixed-mode conditions. To complete such a task, one must have (a) a computer code capable of handling the kinematics of general crack growth and determining the stress and deformation states during crack growth, and (b) a fracture criterion that can properly predict the onset and direction of crack growth. A current challenge is the simulation of mixed-mode crack growth under three-dimensional (3D) conditions, such as the growth of surface cracks, corner cracks, embedded cracks, and cracks with a curved crack surface and/or a curved crack front. This paper focuses on item (a) in the above discussion and describes the computational aspects of a simulation procedure, which can be used together with a given fracture criterion to simulate crack growth. For illustration purposes, a CTOD fracture criterion (e.g. [11]) will be used when needed. The associated algorithms for simulating arbitrary 3D crack growth under general loading conditions have been developed and successfully implemented by the authors in a custom, finite element based, crack growth analysis and simulation code—CRACK3D. In particular, this paper will present strategies for automatic re-meshing of regions around growing crack fronts in a 3D body, and will discuss verification examples.Copyright © 2004 by ASME