cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Characterizing PV Arcing Conditions with Impedance Spectroscopy and Frequency Response Analysis

Photovoltaic arc faults have led to a number of rooftop fires that have caused significant property damage and threatened the safety of building occupants. In response, Article 690.11 was added to the United States 2011 National Electrical Code, requiring new PV systems on or penetrating a building to include a listed arc fault protection device. Many proposed arc fault detectors utilize frequency content on the PV string to remotely determine if an arc fault is occurring. A frequency response analyzer was used to measure the AC frequency and impedance response of an 80 W polycrystalline module with degradation similar to those which have caused arc fault. The module had intermittent electrical connectivity in the junction box because of a failed solder bond, and the quality of the connection could be manipulated by adjusting the external wire orientation. By reorienting the wire, the impedance profile changed and the frequency response transitioned between high-pass, low-pass, and no filtering behavior. This indicated (1) certain module conditions can filter arc fault noise frequencies, and (2) the frequency response or impedance spectroscopy of PV components could be used to identify conditions that cause arc faults in PV systems. The implications for the former are serious because if the detection frequencies used by the fault circuit interrupter (AFCI) are sufficiently filtered, the device will not trip and the arc will not be extinguished. Finally, infrared images were taken of the intermittent module to identify the area of damage and corroborate the impedance spectroscopy results.
Integrating High-Resolution Datasets to Target Mitigation Efforts for Improving Air Quality and Public Health in Urban Neighborhoods

Reducing exposure to degraded air quality is essential for building healthy cities. Although air quality and population vary at fine spatial scales, current regulatory and public health frameworks assess human exposures using county- or city-scales. We build on a spatial analysis technique, dasymetric mapping, for allocating urban populations that, together with emerging fine-scale measurements of air pollution, addresses three objectives: (1) evaluate the role of spatial scale in estimating exposure; (2) identify urban communities that are disproportionately burdened by poor air quality; and (3) estimate reduction in mobile sources of pollutants due to local tree-planting efforts using nitrogen dioxide. Our results show a maximum value of 197% difference between cadastrally-informed dasymetric system (CIDS) and standard estimations of population exposure to degraded air quality for small spatial extent analyses, and a lack of substantial difference for large spatial extent analyses. These results provide the foundation for improving policies for managing air quality, and targeting mitigation efforts to address challenges of environmental justice.
Correlations of expression of cell wall biosynthesis genes with variation in biomass composition in shrub willow (Salix spp.) biomass crops

We have measured significant genetically determined variation in biomass composition among breeding populations of shrub willow, a biomass feedstock crop. This project was aimed to ask whether patterns of cell wall gene expression can be correlated with genetic variation in biomass composition at harvest, in order to develop assays of early differences in gene expression as indicators of harvestable biomass chemical composition and potentially reduce the time of selection for new willow genotypes. Previous studies have demonstrated that manipulation of expression of cell wall biosynthetic genes results in altered biomass chemical composition. We analyzed genes encoding enzymes involved in lignin biosynthesis and carbohydrate active enzymes selected based on their functional characterization and conservation in Populus trichocarpa and Arabidopsis thaliana. Fragments of 20 genes were cloned from young stem cDNA of Salix sachalinensis and Salix miyabeana. Expression profiling in willow stem apical tissue and developing stem tissue was performed for each isolated gene using probe-based quantitative real-time PCR. Two willow parental genotypes and six progeny within a hybrid family were selected for analysis, and significant differences in expression among the individuals and between tissue types were observed for most of the genes. Significant correlations between patterns of gene expression and variation in the biomass chemical composition of those genotypes provide insight into the genetic regulation of lignocellulosic deposition in this important bioenergy crop and could be utilized as a tool for early selection of new genotypes.
Diagnosis of Acute Ischemic Stoke

Acute ischemic stroke is a challenging and time-sensitive diagnosis. Diagnosis begins with rapid detection of acute stroke symptoms by the patient, their family or caregivers, or bystanders. If acute stroke is suspected, EMS providers should be called for rapid assessment. EMS providers will utilize prehospital stroke tools to diagnose and determine potential stroke severity. Once at the hospital, the stroke team works rapidly to solidify the patient history, perform a focused neurologic examination and obtain necessary laboratory tests and brain imaging to accurately diagnose acute ischemic stroke and properly treat the patient.
THD-optimal line-load neutral voltages from three-phase multilevel inverters

For relatively low voltage dc sources such as photovoltaic arrays and fuel cell stacks to supply power for servicing typical AC loads, using multilevel inverters is an approach with several advantages. Under staircase/block modulation of these inverters (to reduce switching losses), it is not yet known what's the minimal total harmonic distortion achievable by the line-load neutral voltages obtained from such inverters. This paper describes the analysis of the distortion of line-load neutral voltages obtained from three-phase staircase modulated multilevel inverters, first for equal dc source ratios, then for unequal source ratios, and finally for a partially unequal source ratio case, which is motivated by the advantages obtained by increased modularity. Simulation results are presented to support the analysis.
Changes in Eastern US Sawmill Employment and Estimated Hardwood Lumber Production from 2001 to 2015

Abstract Sawmills are an important component of the hardwood industry, developing value-added products derived from the timber resources of the eastern United States. Employment in eastern sawmills...
Accuracy in Identifying the Source of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage in the Setting of Multiple Intracranial Aneurysms.

Background Subarachnoid hemorrhage cases with multiple cerebral aneurysms frequently demonstrate a hemorrhage pattern that does not definitively delineate the source aneurysm. In these cases, rupture site is ascertained from angiographic features of the aneurysm such as size, morphology, and location. Objective To examine the frequency with which such features lead to misidentification of the ruptured aneurysm. METHODS : Records of patients who underwent surgical clipping of a ruptured aneurysm at our institution between 2004 and 2014 and had multiple aneurysms were retrospectively reviewed. A blinded neuroendovascular surgeon provided the rupture source based on the initial head computed tomography scans and digital subtraction angiography images. Operative reports were then assessed to confirm or refute the imaging-based determination of the rupture source. Results One hundred fifty-one patients had multiple aneurysms. Seventy-one patients had definitive hemorrhage patterns on initial computed tomography scans and 80 patients had nondefinitive hemorrhage patterns. Thirteen (16.2%) of the cases with nondefinitive hemorrhage patterns had discordance between the imaging-based determination of the rupture source and intraoperative findings of the true ruptured aneurysm, yielding an imperfect positive predictive value of 83.8%. Of all multiple aneurysm cases with subarachnoid hemorrhage treated by surgical or endovascular means at our institution, 4.3% (13 of 303) were misidentified. Conclusion Morphological features cannot reliably be used to determine rupture site in cases with nondefinitive subarachnoid hemorrhage patterns. Microsurgical clipping, confirming obliteration of the ruptured lesion, may be preferentially indicated in these patients unless, alternatively, all lesions can be contemporaneously and safely treated with endovascular embolization.
Prescription extraction using CRFs and word embeddings

Display Omitted A high-performing system to extract and organize prescription information.Evaluating the contribution of real-valued word embeddings in clinical NER.Tackling medication relation extraction as a sequence labeling task using CRFs. In medical practices, doctors detail patients' care plan via discharge summaries written in the form of unstructured free texts, which among the others contain medication names and prescription information. Extracting prescriptions from discharge summaries is challenging due to the way these documents are written. Handwritten rules and medical gazetteers have proven to be useful for this purpose but come with limitations on performance, scalability, and generalizability. We instead present a machine learning approach to extract and organize medication names and prescription information into individual entries. Our approach utilizes word embeddings and tackles the task in two extraction steps, both of which are treated as sequence labeling problems. When evaluated on the 2009 i2b2 Challenge official benchmark set, the proposed approach achieves a horizontal phrase-level F1-measure of 0.864, which to the best of our knowledge represents an improvement over the current state-of-the-art.
Exercise as a Sex-Specific Treatment for Substance Use Disorder.

Exercise is a promising treatment for substance use disorder that may reduce withdrawal symptoms and prevent relapse. In this review, we discuss recent evidence from clinical and preclinical studies for its efficacy, from a behavioral to a molecular level, in order to understand the exercise conditions that lead to beneficial effects. We also highlight the few recent findings of sex-specific differences. Clinical and preclinical findings show that exercise decreases withdrawal symptoms, including craving, in both males and females. Evidence from clinical studies support the efficacy of exercise to prevent relapse to smoking, although further research is needed to examine sex differences, establish long-term efficacy, and to determine if effects extend to other substance use disorders. Preclinical findings also support the potential utility of exercise to prevent relapse with evidence suggesting that its efficacy is enhanced in males and mediated by blocking drug-induced adaptations that occur during early abstinence. Sex differences and timing of exercise availability during abstinence should be considered in future studies examining exercise as an intervention for relapse. A better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the efficacy of exercise to reduce withdrawal symptoms and prevent relapse is needed to guide its development as a sex-specific treatment.
Lymphomatoid Granulomatosis in a 14-Year-Old Boy with Trisomy 21 and History of B-Lymphoblastic Leukemia/Lymphoma.

ABSTRACTBackground: Lymphomatoid granulomatosis is a EBV-driven lymphoproliferative disorder that has been reported in association with immunodeficiency, but only exceptionally in patients with hematopoietic malignancy. Case report: A 14-year-old boy with trisomy-21 and a history of B-lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma (B-ALL) diagnosed 1.5 years prior, on maintenance chemotherapy, presented with fever and respiratory symptoms. Chest X-ray revealed right-lower-lobe consolidation. He was treated for pneumonia but continued to be febrile with worsening respiratory status, with development of additional pulmonary and liver nodules. No infectious etiology was identified. Following nondiagnostic lung and liver biopsies, the largest pulmonary mass was resected. The histopathologic findings were diagnostic of lymphomatoid granulomatosis. There was no residual B-ALL. The patient's status continued to deteriorate and he died shortly thereafter. Conclusion: Relative immunosuppression due to maintenance therapy for B-A...
Metal artifact reduction for radiation therapy: a simulation study

Metal artifacts have been a challenge in computed tomography (CT) for nearly four decades. Despite intensive research in this area, challenges still exist in commercial metal artifact reduction (MAR) solutions. MAR is particularly important for radiation therapy and proton therapy treatment planning because metal artifacts not only degrade the outline of tumors and sensitive organs, but also introduce errors in stopping power estimation, compromising dose prediction accuracy. In this study, we developed a MAR approach that combines hardware and algorithmic innovations to systematically tackle the challenge of metal artifacts in radiation therapy. We propose to operate the X-ray tube at exceptionally high voltage and the detector DAS with adaptive triggering rate to prevent photon starvation in the CT raw data, followed by physics-based sinogram domain precorrection and model-based iterative reconstruction to correct the metal artifacts. We performed an end-to-end simulation of the integrated MAR approach with advanced hardware and algorithmic solutions. We simulated 700mAs/140 kVp and 550mAs/180 kVp CT scans, 984 views, with and without adaptive triggering, of an image volume based on the Visible Human Project CT data set, and after inserting two Titanium hip prostheses. The results demonstrated that the proposed MAR scheme can effectively eliminate metal artifacts and improve the accuracy of proton therapy planning. The dosimetric evaluation showed that with the proposed MAR solution, the error in range calculation was reduced from 7 mm to <1 mm.
Ficciones víricas y ficciones sacrificiales. Notas sobre biopolítica y contagio en España

This article examines the limits of neoliberal discourse as deployed in two different narrative lines, which have become ubiquitous in mass culture over the last few years: fictions of viral infection and fictions of social sacrifice. The first ones include zombie movies and narratives of contagion broadly considered ( 28 Days Later , Land of the Dead , The Walking Dead , Contagion , Containment , Contracted , etc.); the second ones typically concern a dystopian civilization whose stability can only be guaranteed by the sacrifice of one or several of its members, usually under the guise of a game ( The Hunger Games , The Purge , The Cabin in the Woods , Elysium , The Thinning , or The Maze Runner ). These two narratives' shared focus on immunization sets them apart from narratives that rely on the threat of —and conflict with— some form of otherness, but it also seems to condemn them to the dead end of neoliberal ideology, where the new order leaves no room for a viable alternative. As I intend to show, however, fictions of contagion and sacrificial fictions are already paving the way towards an overcoming of such dead end. By linking these accounts to two milestone moments of recent Spanish history, the birth of reality TV during the early 2000s and the first outbreak of the Ebola virus in Madrid in 2014, I try to demonstrate that neoliberal ideology is, in its purest form, a traumatic discourse that can only manifest itself as a state of exception, one that ultimately gives way to something else.
The Future of the Demography of Sexuality

Demography is an ever-evolving field of study, which has moved well beyond the core fields of fertility, mortality, and migration. As evidenced in Poston and Micklin’s (2005) Handbook of Population, the discipline now includes at least two dozen subfields, such as marriage and family, the labor force, biodemography, historical demography, race and ethnicity, and gender. The incorporation of population research on sexuality, therefore, is in many ways simply a continuation of the expansion of the field. As described in this handbook, demographic research increasingly reveals insight into both population patterns on sexual behaviors and identities, as well as the manner in which sexuality affects other demographic outcomes. These findings are likely to contribute to a growth in data collected, and research conducted, on population sexuality.
Negative Masses in General Relativity and the Dirac Equation

It is shown that Einstein’s gravitational field equations imply the existence of negative masses. With the inclusion of negative masses, Dirac spinors can be composed of a large positive and likewise large negative mass. The gravitational interaction of these positive-negative masses is positive and leads to a helical motion and not to an unstable vacuum as claimed by Cavalleri and Tonni.
Structure and Bonding in Heme-Nitrosyl Complexes and Implications for Biology

This review summarizes our current understanding of the geometric and electronic structures of ferrous and ferric heme–nitrosyls, which are of key importance for the biological functions and transformations of NO. In-depth correlations are made between these properties and the reactivities of these species. Here, a focus is put on the discoveries that have been made in the last 10 years, but previous findings are also included as necessary. Besides this, ferrous heme–nitroxyl complexes are also considered, which have become of increasing interest recently due to their roles as intermediates in NO and multiheme nitrite reductases, and because of the potential role of HNO as a signaling molecule in mammals. In recent years, computational methods have received more attention as a means of investigating enzyme reaction mechanisms, and some important findings from these theoretical studies are also highlighted in this chapter.
Personality and morbid obesity. Implications for dietary management through behavior modification.

Morbidly obese individuals do not have a distinct personality type or psychodynamic conflict pattern; however, they do have an addictive behavior pattern that is seen in people with other types of substance abuse. Behavior modification programs have been moderately successful in treating obesity, but most morbidly obese persons will not lose enough weight to make this type of treatment effective.
Encouraging the Collection of Performance Data in Nonprofit Organizations: The Importance of Organizational Support for Learning

This article provides insight into how to facilitate performance data collection within nonprofit organizations. Following research on organizational learning, we propose that nonprofits that provi...
Management of Sepsis

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction due to dysregulated response infection. Septic shock occurs when underlying circulatory, metabolic, and cellular abnormalities occur with refractory hypotension despite sufficient intravenous (IV) fluid resuscitation and vasopressor requirement to maintain mean arterial pressure (MAP) >65 mmHg. When approaching a patient with sepsis or septic shock, establish IV access and start fluid resuscitation, obtain cultures, and then start empiric broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics as soon as possible. While monitoring these patients, trend labs including lactate and ScVO2, and frequently reassess fluid responsiveness while providing fluid resuscitation. Patients requiring surgical exploration or intervention for emergent source control should be identified with management as soon as medically possible after diagnosis. The major tenets of managing patients with sepsis include fluid resuscitation for sepsis-induced hypoperfusion and elevated lactate, vasopressors for refractory hypotension, antimicrobial therapy and source control, supplemental oxygen or lung protective mechanical ventilation for sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and other supportive therapies.
Identification of anti-flaviviral drugs with mosquitocidal and anti-Zika virus activity in Aedes aegypti

Zika virus (ZIKV), an emerging arbovirus belonging to the genus Flavivirus, is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. ZIKV infection can cause microcephaly of newborn babies and Guillain–Barre syndrome in adults. Because no licensed vaccine or specific antiviral treatment is available for ZIKV infection, the most commonly used approach to control the spread of ZIKV is suppression of the mosquito vector population. A novel proposed strategy to block arthropod virus (arbovirus) transmission is based on the chemical inhibition of virus infection in mosquitoes. However, only a few drugs and compounds have been tested with such properties. Here we present a comprehensive screen of 55 FDA-approved anti-flaviviral drugs for potential anti-ZIKV and mosquitocidal activity. Four drugs (auranofin, actinomycin D (Act-D), bortezomib and gemcitabine) were toxic to C6/36 cells, and two drugs (5-fluorouracil and mycophenolic acid (MPA)) significantly reduced ZIKV production in C6/36 cells at 2 μM and 0.5 μM, respectively. Three drugs (Act-D, cyclosporin A, ivermectin) exhibited a strong adulticidal activity, and six drugs (U18666A, retinoic acid p-hydroxyanilide (4-HPR), clotrimazole, bortezomib, MPA, imatinib mesylate) significantly suppressed ZIKV infection in mosquito midguts. Some of these FDA-approved drugs may have potential for use for the development of ZIKV transmission-blocking strategies.
Simulation and Sensor Optimization for Multifidelity Dynamics Model Calibration

This paper studies a multifidelity resource optimization methodology for simulation and data collection in the calibration of dynamics model parameters. Nonlinear dynamics systems require high-fide...
The influence of risk attitudes on suppression spending and on wildland fire program budgeting

Abstract Research has suggested that excessive risk aversion is a key driver of rising federal suppression costs. To formally understand how alternative risk attitudes of contracted incident managers can affect a public fire management organization's demand for fire management effort, a two-stage sequential game with complete information is presented. Qualitative expressions of the relevant comparative statics are derived and Monte Carlo simulations are constructed from the parameterized game to quantify these relationships. The simulation exercise reveals that risk aversion and a low tolerance for downside risk can have the similar effect of increasing the relative share of agency expenditures devoted to wildfire suppression. This theoretical analysis exposes the potential for multiple types of risk attitudes to influence an incident commander's demand for suppression effort. Consequently, these determinants of suppression demand also influence the organization's overall allocation of fire management budgets, suppression's expenditure share, and the overall agency exposure to downside risk.
Secondary Intracranial Hypertension in Pediatric Patients With Cryopyrin-Associated Periodic Syndrome

Abstract Background Cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome is characterized by periodic fever, rash, and joint pain. Papilledema rarely occurs. We present our series of patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome who clinically met the diagnostic criteria for Muckle-Wells syndrome and our experience with secondary intracranial hypertension. Methods Retrospective review of all patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome at Nationwide Children's Hospital from October 2015 to September 2017. Results Eighteen children met inclusion criteria: 15 females and three males, aged 1.5 to 16.2 years. Fifteen had periodic fever genetic testing; three had a known genetic defect identified, eight had a defect identified not currently known to be associated with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome, and four had no defect identified. Six patients (30%) developed headaches and were diagnosed with secondary intracranial hypertension. Lumbar puncture opening pressures ranged from 28 to 45 cm H2O. Only one patient had papilledema. Initial treatment was medical in all cases, by increasing interleukin-1 inhibitor dose and/or acetazolamide. One patient required a ventriculoperitoneal shunt for headache management. No visual acuity loss was detected. All six patients with secondary intracranial hypertension had a known genetic mutation or genetic variant of unknown significance; five involved the NLRP3 gene. Conclusions In our series of 18 patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome, secondary intracranial hypertension occurred at a higher than expected rate. We suspect that genetic defects involving the NLRP3 gene may be a risk factor. Papilledema was present in only one patient. Physicians treating cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome should be aware of this vision-threatening association and potential therapeutic approach.
Abstract S10-03: Increased risk of COVID-19-related death among cancer survivors

Significant variations in experience of the COVID-19 pandemic have been observed in the United States. Increased risk of COVID-19-related death has been reported among cancer survivors, but due to limited sample size in those studies, to what extent the previous cancer diagnosis may play a role in the determination of COVID-19-related death is still unclear. In this study, using aggregated real-world data extracted from TriNetx electronic medical record data from 34 hospitals around United States, we assessed the relationship between prior cancer diagnosis in the past 5 years and COVID-19-related death within one month after the diagnosis of virus contraction. A total of 24,534 patients aged 18-80 years old who contracted COVID-19 were identified from January 20th to May 4th, 2020. Among them, 3,619 were cancer survivors. In the univariate analysis, we found that cancer patients had 2.55-fold increased risk ratio (RR) of death than those without cancer (RR=2.55, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 2.25, 2.88), although the risk was decreased but still significant (RR=1.42, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.67) after adjustment for demographics (e.g., age, gender, and race) and other pre-existing chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, chronic ischemic heart disease, chronic kidney disease, asthma, and COPD. When stratified by cancer sites, significant associations were observed between respiratory and intrathoracic, oral, digestive, breast, male genital, urinary, blood, and skin cancers with COVID-19-related death in the univariate analysis. As expected, the most significant cancer site was respiratory and intrathoracic cancer with an RR of 6.49 (95% CI: 5.21, 8.07). However, after adjustment for demographics and other pre-existing chronic diseases, the significant associations remained for respiratory and intrathoracic, digestive, and blood cancers (RR=1.89, 95% CI: 1.31, 2.73; RR=1.59, 95% CI: 1.06, 2.38; RR=2.08, 95% CI: 1.51, 2.86, respectively). In addition, among cancer survivors, men were found to have higher RR of death than women (RR=1.41, 95% CI: 1.12, 1.78), but the RR did not differ between Blacks and Whites. In summary, our data show significant increased COVID-19-related death among cancer survivors. The elevated risk was particularly evident among those who had respiratory and intrathoracic, digestive, and blood cancers. Citation Format: Jie Shen, Hua Zhao. Increased risk of COVID-19-related death among cancer survivors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer; 2020 Jul 20-22. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2020;26(18_Suppl):Abstract nr S10-03.
“I suppose I’ll be patching you up, as usual”: Women’s roles and normative femininity in a team-based video game:

Women are often viewed as outsiders in the videogaming environment, particularly in first-person shooter games. Perceived infringement on an overwhelmingly masculine space pushes women to the margi...
In Support of Trigger Strategies: Experimental Evidence from Two-Person Noncooperative Games

Cooperative equilibria can be supported in a repeated game when players use trigger strategies. This paper tests how well trigger strategies explain behavior in two-person experimental games. Reducing payoffs for choices larger than the Cournot level induces smaller average outputs, behavior generally consistent with trigger strategy models. Reducing payoffs for choices well above the Cournot level will not affect behavior if actions are consistent with a trigger strategy involving longer-lived, less intense punishment phases (the grim-reaper strategy), but would matter for trigger strategies with short-lived but intense punishment phases. Results show that behavior is most consistent with the former.
Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation

We propose a remedy for the discrepancy between the way political scientists analyze data with missing values and the recommendations of the statistics community. Methodologists and statisticians agree that “multiple imputation” is a superior approach to the problem of missing data scattered through one’s explanatory and dependent variables than the methods currently used in applied data analysis. The discrepancy occurs because the computational algorithms used to apply the best multiple imputation models have been slow, difficult to implement, impossible to run with existing commercial statistical packages, and have demanded considerable expertise. We adapt an algorithm and use it to implement a general-purpose, multiple imputation model for missing data. This algorithm is considerably faster and easier to use than the leading method recommended in the statistics literature. We also quantify the risks of current missing data practices, illustrate how to use the new procedure, and evaluate this alternative through simulated data as well as actual empirical examples. Finally, we offer easy-to-use software that implements all methods discussed.
Money or friends: Social identity and deception in networks

Abstract Strategic communication occurs in virtually all committee decision environments. Theory suggests that small differences in monetary incentives between committee members can leave deception a strategically optimal decision ( Crawford and Sobel, 1982 ; Galeotti et al., 2013 ). At the same time, in natural environments social incentives can also play an important role in determining the way people share or withhold truthful information. Unfortunately, little is known about how monetary and social incentives interact to determine truth-telling. We investigate this issue by first building a novel model and then testing its equilibrium predictions using laboratory data. In the absence of social identity, the model׳s predictions are supported: there is more truthful communication between those who share monetary incentives than those who do not. We find that the effect of identity is asymmetric: sharing the same identity does not promote truth-telling but holding different identities reduces truthfulness. Overall, as compared to environments lacking social identity, committees with both monetary and social incentives exhibit truthful communication substantially less frequently.
Safety-Control of Mobile Robots Under Time-Delay Using Barrier Certificates and a Two-Layer Predictor.

Performing swift and agile maneuvers is essential for the safe operation of autonomous mobile robots. Moreover, the presence of time-delay restricts the response time of the system and hinders the safety performance. Thus, this paper proposes a modular and scalable safety-control design that utilizes the Smith predictor and barrier certificates to safely and consistently avoid obstacles with different footprints. The proposed solution includes a two-layer predictor to compensate for the time-delay in the servo-system and angle control loops. The proposed predictor configuration dramatically improves the transient performance and reduces response time. Barrier certificates are used to determine the safe range of the robot's heading angle to avoid collisions. The proposed obstacle avoidance technique conveniently integrates with various trajectory tracking algorithms, which enhances design flexibility. The angle condition is adaptively calculated and corrects the robot's heading angle and angular velocity. Also, the proposed method accommodates multiple obstacles and decouples the control structure from the obstacles' shape, count, and distribution. The control structure has only eight tunable parameters facilitating control calibration and tuning in large systems of mobile robots. Extensive experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed safety-control.
Upper airway effective compliance during wakefulness and sleep in obese adolescents studied via two-dimensional dynamic MRI and semiautomated image segmentation

This study investigated the dynamics of the upper airway at retropalatal and retroglossal sites during wakefulness and sleep by evaluating the effective compliance (EC) of each site and its correla...
Surgical Treatment of the Primary Tumor in Metastatic Breast Cancer

Approximately 5–10% of patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer present with distant metastasis, i.e., de novo metastatic disease. Traditional therapy for patients with stage IV breast cancer has been systemic therapy, with the aims of reducing disease progression and supporting quality of life. In this context, surgery for the primary breast tumor has been reserved for palliative purposes. However, there has been increasing consideration of surgical removal of the primary tumor in patients presenting with de novo stage IV breast cancer. Several studies show that this emerging approach can have a beneficial effect on overall survival in appropriately selected patients. In this review, we identify clinical factors that must be considered when selecting patients for this therapeutic approach. The aim of this chapter is to review the literature and discuss ongoing studies that examine the role of surgical treatment of the primary tumor in de novo metastatic breast cancer.
Palliative care integration: a critical review of nurse migration effect in Jamaica.

Background Provision of palliative care to individuals with late-stage serious illnesses is critical to reduce suffering. Palliative care is slowly gaining momentum in Jamaica but requires a highly skilled workforce, including nurses. Out-migration of nurses to wealthier countries negatively impacts the delivery of health care services and may impede palliative care capacity-building. This critical review aimed to explore the evidence pertaining to the nurse migration effect on the integration of palliative care services in Jamaica and to formulate hypotheses about potential mitigating strategies. Methods A comprehensive search in the PubMed, CINAHL, and ProQuest PAIS databases aimed to identify articles pertinent to nurse migration in the Caribbean context. Grant and Booth's methodologic framework for critical reviews was used to evaluate the literature. This methodology uses a narrative, chronologic synthesis and was guided by the World Health Organization (WHO) Public Health Model and the Model of Sustainability in Global Nursing. Results Data from 14 articles were extracted and mapped. Poorer patient outcomes were in part attributed to the out-migration of the most skilled nurses. 'Push-factors' such as aggressive recruitment by wealthier countries, lack of continuing educational opportunities, disparate wages, and a lack of professional autonomy and respect were clear contributors. Gender inequalities negatively impacted females and children left behind. Poor working conditions were not necessarily a primary reason for nurse migration. Four main themes were identified across articles: (a) globalization creating opportunities for migration, (b) recruitment of skilled professionals from CARICOM by high income countries, (c) imbalance and inequities resulting from migration, and (d) mitigation strategies. Thirteen articles suggested education, partnerships, policy, and incentives as mitigation strategies. Those strategies directly align with the WHO Public Health Model drivers to palliative care integration. Conclusion Emerged evidence supports that nurse migration is an ongoing phenomenon that strains health systems in Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) countries, with Jamaica being deeply impacted. This critical review demonstrates the importance of strategically addressing nurse migration as part of palliative care integration efforts in Jamaica. Future studies should include targeted migration mitigation interventions and should be guided by the three working hypotheses derived from this review.
Location-aware insights: a visual analytics dashboard for location-relevant self-awareness & reflection (demo paper)

An increasingly fast-paced world and a collective sense of urgency has led to a recent rise of self-awareness methods and tools that provide users with insights into various aspects of their life. Meanwhile, recent studies associate our movement patterns and habits with our physical and mental well-being. In the light of the above, this work introduces Location-Aware Insights, a self-awareness platform that enables users to retrospectively reflect upon their whereabouts and helps them to better understand where and how they spend their precious time. In addition, our work supports users to identify "bad" patterns and eventually adapt their behavior towards a higher quality of life. For the purposes of achieving a deeper understanding of the users' visit patterns and promoting a healthier life style, our Insights dashboard attempts to particularly highlight factors that have been proven to affect our well-being. On one hand, this is done by utilizing an extended locations graph that goes beyond containing the typical hierarchical relations and considers additional semantic location attributes that are related with our well-being, such as in-/outdoor, green, bright, quite and open/closed spaces. On the other hand, we focus on similarly important well-being-related statistical features such as visit frequency, regularity and periodicity. Finally, the art of presentation plays a major role in the self-reflection process. For this reason, the presented demo explores a large variety of ways for presenting the generated insights back to the user.
Synthetic Organic Chemicals, Economic Evaluation

The synthetic organic chemicals industry supplies materials to a wide range of industrial operations, which include plastics, fibers, solvents, biochemical agents, food chemicals, and construction materials. The sectors increasingly affected by organic chemicals include electronics and telecommunications, the automotive and transportation industry, biotechnology, agriculture, environmental remediation, and the food sciences. This article gives economic data and patterns for important organic compounds (eg, methanol, ethylene, benzene, propylene, etc.) Economic data include U.S. and international general trends, regional patterns, consumption, supply, and demand. History and process technologies are discussed. Environmental data include information on organic chemicals that have come under regulatory control (eg, methyl-t-butylether and the chlorofluorocarbons). Keywords: synthetic organic chemicals; economic data; global supply and demand; chlorofluorocarbons; Petroleum refining; catalysts; Methyl-t-butylether; Methanol; ethylene; petrochemicals; propylene; polypropylene; butylene; xylenes; hydrocarbons; economics
A convenient preparation of 18O‐dimethylformamide

A method is described by which 18O-DMF can be prepared conveniently and in very high yields (∼ 90%) by reacting at room temperature an equimolar quantity of benzoyl chloride, DMF and 18O-labelled water.
PH- AND CA2+-DEPENDENT AGGREGATION PROPERTY OF SECRETORY VESICLE MATRIX PROTEINS AND THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF CHROMOGRANINS A AND B IN SECRETORY VESICLE BIOGENESIS

Abstract Chromogranins A and B (CGA and CGB), the major proteins of the secretory vesicles of the regulated secretory pathway, have been shown to aggregate in a low pH and high calcium environment, the condition found in the trans-Golgi network where secretory vesicles are formed. Moreover, CGA and CGB, as well as several other secretory vesicle matrix proteins, have recently been shown to bind to the vesicle membrane at the intravesicular pH of 5.5 and to be released from it at a near physiological pH of 7.5. The pH- and Ca-dependent aggregation and interaction of chromogranins, as well as several other matrix proteins, with the vesicle membrane are considered essential in vesicle biogenesis. Therefore, to gain further insight into how vesicle matrix proteins find their way into the secretory vesicles, the pH- and Ca-dependent aggregation and vesicle membrane binding properties of the vesicle matrix proteins were studied, and it was found that most of the vesicle matrix proteins aggregated in the presence of Ca at the intravesicular pH of 5.5. Furthermore, most of the vesicle matrix proteins bound not only to the vesicle membrane but also to CGA at pH 5.5, with the exception of a few matrix proteins that appeared to bind only to CGA or to vesicle membrane. Purified CGB was also shown to interact with CGA at pH 5.5. The extent and Ca-sensitivity of the aggregation of vesicle matrix proteins lay between those of purified CGB and CGA, CGB aggregation showing the highest degree of aggregation and being the most Ca sensitive at a given protein concentration. Hence, in view of the abundance of chromogranins in secretory vesicles and their low pH- and high calcium-dependent aggregation property, combined with their ability to interact with both the vesicle matrix proteins and the vesicle membrane, CGA and CGB are proposed to play essential roles in the selective aggregation and sorting of potential vesicle matrix proteins to the immature secretory vesicles of the regulated secretory pathway.
Protein alchemy: Changing β-sheet into α-helix

For most proteins the amino acid sequence determines the tertiary structure. The relative importance of the individual amino acids in specifying the fold, however, remains unclear. To highlight this. Creamer and Rose put forth the ‘Paracelsus challenge’: Design a protein with 50% sequence identity to a protein with a different fold. We have met this challenge by designing a sequence which retains 50% identity to a predominantly β-sheet protein, but which now adopts a four helix bundle conformation and possesses the attributes of a native protein. Our results emphasize that a subset of the amino acid sequence is sufficient to specify a fold, and have implications both for structure prediction and design.
Selective down modulation of L3T4 molecules on murine thymocytes by the tumor promoter, phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate

Treatment of murine thymocytes, but not mature peripheral T cells, with the tumor promoter, phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), 3 results in a rapid disappearance of L3T4 molecules from the surface of thymocytes. The effect of PMA on L3T4 molecules persists in vitro for at least 72 hr. Down modulation of L3T4 molecules was PMA dose-dependent and temperature-dependent. L3T4 molecules on cortisone-resistant thymocytes were significantly less sensitive to the effect of PMA than were L3T4 molecules on cortisone-sensitive thymocytes. Down modulation of L3T4 molecules on thymocytes did not interfere with their capacity to respond to concanavalin A or activation signals delivered via their T cell receptors. The difference in the ability of thymocytes and peripheral T cells to respond to PMA cannot be explained by differences in the number of PMA receptors. Both thymocytes and peripheral T cells have PMA receptors in the range of 1 to 1.5 X 10(5) receptors/cell. However, there is a small difference in the affinity (Kd) of the receptors on thymocytes (Kd = 30 to 40 nM) and peripheral T cells (Kd = 10 to 15 nM). Immunofluorescent staining revealed that the down modulation of L3T4 molecules by PMA was a result of internalization of L3T4 molecules. After down modulation, L3T4 could be readily detected on the cytoplasm of thymocytes. These findings suggest that L3T4 molecules on thymocytes may be subject to different regulatory signals than L3T4 molecules on peripheral T cells.
Can data collected from marine protected areas improve estimates of life-history parameters?

One of the argued research-related benefits of marine protected areas (MPAs) to fisheries management is that because there is no fishing inside of an MPA, it may be possible to precisely estimate t...
Constraint Dominance Determination Methods

Dominance among constraints exists when the satisfaction of a constraint guarantees the satisfaction of another, rendering the second constraint irrelevant. Identifying dominance not only facilitates numerical solution but may also focus the designer’s attention on critical aspects of the design. A number of dominance identification methods have been described in the literature, including the Constraint Difference Method, the Constraint Transformation Method, and the Necessary-Sufficient Interval Method. We elaborate on the basis for and the character of these methods and we discuss relative similarities, differences, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods. We also discuss computational issues relevant to the application of these methods, most specifically function range determination and interval analysis issues. We observe that the differences among the methods lead to advantages for each method in circumstances that depend on the nature of the constraints and the extent of the design space. These distinct advantages suggest a synergism among the methods in the identification of constraint dominance in complex design problems.Copyright © 2003 by ASME
Thin-Film Silicon Heterojunction FETs for Large Area and Flexible Electronics: Design Parameters and Reliability

The design parameters and reliability of thin-film heterojunction FET (HJFET) devices comprised of hydrogenated amorphous Si (a-Si:H) gate-stacks on crystalline Si (c-Si) substrates are discussed. It is shown that the pinchoff voltage of the HJFET can be adjusted over a wide range of voltages, the gate leakage can be reduced both by improving the a-Si:H growth conditions and reducing the gate area, and the gate capacitance can be adjusted by proper layout design. In addition, high-voltage bias effects including breakdown are investigated, and the pinchoff voltage stability is evaluated by accelerated testing and long-term measurements. It is found that even though the HJFET is intended for low operation voltages, it performs well at relatively high voltages. It is also found that the HJFET is a highly stable device and, therefore, promising for demanding applications, such as active-matrix organic light-emitting diode displays. In addition, due to a low process temperature limited to 200 °C, the HJFET is promising to enable the use of low cost and flexible substrates.