cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Cracking the TSCH Channel Hopping in IEEE 802.15.4e

Industrial networks typically connect hundreds or thousands of sensors and actuators in industrial facilities, such as steel mills and oil refineries. Although the typical industrial applications operate at low data rates, they pose unique challenges because of their critical demands for reliable and real-time communication in harsh industrial environments. IEEE 802.15.4 based Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks (WSANs) technology is appealing for use to construct industrial networks because it can be deployed and maintained inexpensively. Battery-powered wireless modules easily and inexpensively retrofit existing sensors and actuators in industrial facilities without running cabling for communication and power. To address the stringent real-time and reliability requirements, WSANs adopt a set of novel design choices such as employing the Time-Synchronized Channel Hopping (TSCH) technology that distinguish themselves from traditional Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) that require only best effort services. The equation-based channel hopping used in TSCH simplifies the network operations at the cost of security. Our case study shows that an attacker can reverse engineer the channel hopping sequence by silently observing the channel activities and then perform smart collision attacks. In this poster proposal, we describe our target problem and present our case study based on a publicly accessible implementation of TSCH.
Cross training of APPs on inpatient oncology units as a safe and cost-effective model.

56Background: Oncology Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) have not been optimally trained to care for each other’s sub specialty of patients. In times of high census and/or short staffing, inpatien...
Novel Targets of Current Analgesic Drug Development

The development of new pharmaceutical agents for the treatment of pain seems at first like an ideal target for pharmaceutical companies. There is an enormous unmet need with a vast potential market. For many years, opioids and NSAIDs have remained the mainstay treatments in chronic pain, and while the advent of antiepileptic drugs and antidepressant medications into the indication arena for chronic and neuropathic pain has been helpful, it is far from adequate to meet the demands for controlling both acute and chronic pain. Hence, the pursuit of new novel medications for pain seems a rational action, but further insight shows how difficult the task truly is, not to mention the financial risks of such innovation.
Optimal Variable Switching Frequency Scheme to Reduce Loss of Single-Phase Grid-Connected Inverter With Unipolar and Bipolar PWM

Reducing the power loss of a converter without increasing its volume or cost in hardware has always been a much sought-after but challenging goal. This article proposes a comprehensive variable switching frequency (VSF) scheme to improve the overall system efficiency while still meeting a given total harmonic distortion (THD) requirement without any hardware changes, achieved only by changes to the controller. In this article, it is analyzed that for the H-bridge inverter, the inductor copper loss and the switch conduction loss are independent of the switching frequency (SF), while the device switching loss and the inductor core loss are functions of the SF. This article aims at weighting the combined switching loss and inductor core loss for both the unipolar and bipolar modulation techniques, with the constraint on the output THD, which, for fixed passive components, is a function of inductor ripple current that in turn depends on the SF. An optimal VSF scheme is devised through rigorous mathematical analysis of the output ripple component and the SF-dependent losses. In each switching cycle, the inductor ripple current is predicted with the circuit parameters, such as duty cycle, switching period, inductance, and dc voltage, and by implementing the VSF scheme, the current ripple is optimally varied such as to satisfy the THD requirement while reducing the SF-dependent losses. A generalized method to design VSF schemes for any topology and specifications is also presented, which would help future users in designing the VSF controller. A 1-kW H-bridge inverter using SiC MOSFETs and powdered iron/ferrite core has been built to validate the theoretical analysis. Both constant SF (CSF) scheme (200 kHz) and optimal VSF scheme with simple controller modification have been implemented in the experimental prototype using DSP TMS320f28335. Compared with the CSF scheme, the optimal VSF scheme shows a significant improvement in the system efficiency at rated power from 94.7% to 95.4% with a corresponding saving of 16.5% in the SF-dependent loss in unipolar modulation and from 95.5% to 96.8% with a corresponding saving of 36.5% in the SF-dependent loss in bipolar modulation.
An Innovation Platform for Diffusing Public Health Practices across a Global Network

Abstract Hospitals and health systems in high-income countries (HIC) develop the capacities of peer healthcare organizations around the world by diffusing clinical, quality, and public health improvement practices in lower and middle-income countries (LMIC). In turn, these HIC healthcare institutions are exposed to innovative approaches developed and used by global communities to advance care despite resource constraints in the LMIC contexts. Attention has been growing in recent years to the potential these innovations can have to improve care delivery, lower costs, and drive quality within resource-constrained communities in HIC. Often referred to as “reverse innovations,” the identification, adaptation, and diffusion of these practices face challenges in uptake related to limited evidence, perceptions of poor quality or irrelevance, and a complicated regulatory and policy environment. This paper suggests the development of an approach to improve the capacity of the healthcare organizations in the HIC as well, based on lessons learned from diffusing practices in LMIC. It concludes with the need for a knowledge platform to support innovation diffusion in both directions.
Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States: The Art of the Possible

Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States examines the challenge of promoting democracy in the aftermath of civil war. Hartzell and Hoddie argue that minimalist democracy is the most realistic form of democracy to which states emerging from civil war violence can aspire. The adoption of power-sharing institutions within civil war settlements helps mitigate insecurity and facilitate democracy's emergence. Power sharing promotes 'democratization from above' by limiting the capacity of the state to engage in predatory behavior, and 'democratization from below' by empowering citizens to participate in politics. Drawing on cross-national and case study evidence, Hartzell and Hoddie find that post-civil war countries that adopt extensive power sharing are ultimately more successful in transitioning to minimalist democracy than countries that do not. Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States presents a new and hopeful understanding of what democracy can look like and how it can be fostered.
Well-conditioned ultraspherical and spectral integration methods for resolvent analysis of channel flows of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids

Abstract Modal and nonmodal analyses of fluid flows provide fundamental insight into the early stages of transition to turbulence. Eigenvalues of the dynamical generator govern temporal growth or decay of individual modes, while singular values of the frequency response operator quantify the amplification of disturbances for linearly stable flows. In this paper, we develop well-conditioned ultraspherical and spectral integration methods for frequency response analysis of channel flows of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids. Even if a discretization method is well-conditioned, we demonstrate that calculations can be erroneous if singular values are computed as the eigenvalues of a cascade connection of the frequency response operator and its adjoint. To address this issue, we utilize a feedback interconnection of the frequency response operator with its adjoint to avoid computation of inverses and facilitate robust singular value decomposition. Specifically, in contrast to conventional spectral collocation methods, the proposed method (i) produces reliable results in channel flows of viscoelastic fluids at high Weissenberg numbers (∼500); and (ii) does not require a staggered grid for the equations in primitive variables.
Blood transfusion utilization in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

BACKGROUND: The acute respiratory illness designated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and caused a worldwide pandemic. Concerns arose about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on blood donations and potential significant blood transfusion needs in severely ill COVID-19 patients. Data on blood usage in hospitalized COVID-19 patients are scarce. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We performed a retrospective observational study of blood component transfusions in the first 4 weeks of COVID-19 ward admissions. The study period began 14 days before the first COVID-19 cohort wards opened in our hospital in March 2020 and ended 28 days afterward. The number of patients and blood components transfused in the COVID-19 wards was tabulated. Transfusion rates of each blood component were compared in COVID-19 wards versus all other inpatient wards. RESULTS: COVID-19 wards opened with seven suspected patients and after 4 weeks had 305 cumulative COVID-19 admissions. Forty-one of 305 hospitalized COVID-19 patients (13.4%) received transfusions with 11.1% receiving red blood cells (RBCs), 1.6% platelets (PLTs), 1.0% plasma, and 1.0% cryoprecipitate (cryo). COVID-19 wards had significantly lower transfusion rates compared to non-COVID wards for RBCs (0.03 vs 0.08 units/patient-day), PLTs (0.003 vs 0.033), and plasma (0.002 vs 0.018; all p < 0.0001). Cryo rates were similar (0.008 vs 0.009, p = 0.6). CONCLUSIONS: Hospitalized COVID-19 patients required many fewer blood transfusions than other hospitalized patients. COVID-19 transfusion data will inform planning and preparation of blood resource utilization during the pandemic.
Implementation-induced Inconsistency and Nondeterminism in Deterministic Clustering Algorithms

A deterministic clustering algorithm is designed to always produce the same clustering solution on a given input. Therefore, users of clustering implementations (toolkits) naturally assume that implementations of a deterministic clustering algorithm A have deterministic behavior, that is: (1) two different implementations I 1 and I 2 of A are interchangeable, producing the same clustering on a given input D, and (2) an implementation produces the same clustering solution when run repeatedly on D. We challenge these assumptions. Specifically, we analyze clustering behavior on 528 datasets, three deterministic algorithms (Affinity Propagation, DBSCAN, Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering) and the deterministic portion of a fourth (K-means), as implemented in various toolkits; in total, we examined 13 algorithm-toolkit combinations. We found that different implementations of deterministic clustering algorithms make different choices, e.g., default parameter settings, noise insertion, input dataset characteristics. As a result, clustering solutions for a fixed algorithm-dataset combination can differ across runs (nondeterminism) and across toolkits (inconsistency). We expose several root causes of such behavior. We show that remedying these root causes improves determinism, increases consistency, and can even improve efficiency. Our approach and findings can benefit developers, testers, and users of clustering algorithms.
Ecosystem implications of fine-scale frontal disturbances in the oligotrophic ocean – An idealized modeling approach

Abstract In the subtropical ocean, physical and biogeochemical patchiness exists across a range of spatial and temporal scales. As ocean surface temperatures rise, climate models suggest that the strength of the basin-scale biological carbon pump may diminish due to increased stratification and depleted surface nutrients. However, global model predictions often cannot account for climate-physical-ecosystem interactions occurring at finer spatial scales (e.g., less than a few tens of kilometers). In order to study such fine-scale interactions, we developed a computationally tractable, idealized modeling framework that allows for a systematic assessment of the impact of fine-scale frontal disturbances (i.e., short-lived upwelling and downwelling events) on biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics. The model successfully captured both the mean dynamics and the range of ecosystem variability observed at the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) site in the oligotrophic North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Fine-scale frontal disturbances were shown to impact both phytoplankton assemblages and carbon cycling. Specifically, disturbances of shorter duration but higher intensity favored the growth of large phytoplankton and contributed to elevated carbon export efficiency. However, for disturbances of longer duration and higher intensity, a decoupling between physical changes and biological responses led to a reduced utilization efficiency of upwelled nutrients and thus a reduction in new production. Our results emphasize that future changes in both large and fine-scale physical dynamics may play an important role in shaping marine ecosystems, and could be accounted for in the next-generation global climate models using this type of parameterization.
Machine learning with a convolutional neural network for segmentation of ophthalmological images

Machine learning methods using convolution neural networks (CNN) are one technique which has played an important role in many biomedical applications. Here we apply the techniques to the detection of retinal blood vessels in ophthalmological images. Since the eye is one of the most important sensory organs in the human body, it is critical to diagnose diseases in the early stages. Early symptoms of various diseases like glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and cardiovascular diseases can be detected via the structure of the blood vessels of the retina. Studying the retinal blood vessel structures and network requires blood vessel segmentation. Deep learning has been used for the last five years and achieved state-of-the-art performance. More specifically, the latest development has been implemented to segment blood vessels more efficiently by using the u-net architecture. In the process, we used forward convolutional long short-term memory (convLSTM) to combine the feature map of the encoding path and the corresponding decoding path in lieu of simple concatenation in the skip connection of the u-net. We also used a connected convolution layer to the last layers of the encoding path to obtain more diverse features. The images used were from the DRIVE database and preprocessing was performed to obtain more accurate results. We achieved 95% accuracy, a precision of 91%, a sensitivity of 52%, and a specificity of 99%. Even with a low sensitivity of 52%, all the major blood vessels are found successfully.
Impact of various sizing metrics on female donor to male recipient heart transplant outcomes

BACKGROUND This study evaluated the impact of various sizing metrics on outcomes of female donor to male recipient orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT). METHODS We queried the United Network of Organ Sharing database to analyze all isolated, primary adult OHTs from January 1, 2010 to January 20, 020. Patients were stratified by donor-recipient sex pairing. Logistic regression was used to investigate risk-adjusted effects of current size matching criteria (weight ratio, body mass index [BMI] ratio, predicted heart mass [pHM] ratio) on 1-year posttransplant mortality. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to compare posttransplant survival among cohorts. RESULTS A total of 22,450 patients were analyzed, of which 3019 (13.4%) underwent female-to-male transplantation. Of sex-matched pairs, female-to-male donation had the lowest proportion of undersized hearts using weight and BMI ratio metrics (10.5% and 5.2%) but had the highest proportion of undersizing using pHM metrics (48.1%) (all p < 0.001). Female-to-male recipients had the lowest rate of unadjusted 1-year survival (90.0%, p = 0.0169), and increased hazards of mortality after risk adjustment (odds ratio [OR]: 1.17, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01-1.36, p = 0.034). Undersizing using pHM (donor-recipient ratio <0.85) was the only metric found to be associated in increased mortality after risk adjustment (OR: 1.32, 95% CI: 1.02-1.71, p = 0.035). CONCLUSION Female-to-male heart transplantation has the worst survival of all sex-matching combinations. Although female donors in this cohort are appropriately sized using traditional metrics, half are under-sized using pHM. This, combined with its strong association with mortality, underscores the importance of routine pHM assessment when evaluating female donors for male recipients.
Future perspectives and new directions in chemosensitizing activities to reverse drug resistance in gynecologic cancers: Emphasis on challenges and opportunities

Abstract Resistance to treatment is an unmet challenge in cancer treatment. Gynecologic cancers (cervical, endometrial/uterine, ovarian, vaginal, and vulvar cancers) originate in the female reproductive system tissues. Drug resistance is well established in many of these cancers. Gynecologic cancers are the fourth most common tumors diagnosed in women; as such, it is imperative to understand and address resistance to treatment. During the past decades, the gynecologic oncology field has evolved from radical en-bloc surgical procedures to more limited resections with systematic lymphadenectomy procedures. Cancer treatment has historically been developed through clinical trials; treatment is now determined based on tumor histology and demographic factors, leading to percentages of response for various groups of patients. With advent of the human genome project, tumors can now be categorized on genomic and proteomic signatures while drugs and treatments can be developed/tailored based on specific targets from these bioinformatics analyses (also referred to as personalized medicine approach). Disrupted apoptotic pathways, increased efflux of therapeutic agents, and modulation of the expression of tumor suppressors are major causes for drug resistance in gynecologic cancers. Current and upcoming research is focused to strategize and counteract the mechanisms of drug resistance. The heterogenic nature of tumors, genetic variability, and mutations are major setbacks in addressing the resistance to gynecologic cancers treatment. Information on critical biomarkers, signaling cascades, genes, and transcription factors associated with gynecologic cancers that are potentially involved in acquiring tumor resistance to better standard chemotherapeutic is emphasized. While several strategies are under testing to reverse resistance to chemotherapy, the major focus of this chapter is on chemosensitizers. The ongoing development of immunotherapy in the treatment of gynecologic cancers is promising due to its ability to manipulate the patients’ own immune system as a therapy against cancer. Oncolytic virus therapy is another promising approach of evading the tumor immune suppressive environment for heavily pretreated patients with gynecologic malignancies. Chemosensitization-focused research includes the prospects of using phytochemicals and nanomedicine coupled immunotherapy in gynecological cancer treatment; preclinical/translational and clinical trials of these techniques are highlighted herein.
Family-centered prevention buffers the effect of financial strain on parenting interactions, reducing youth conduct problems in African American families.

OBJECTIVE This study examined whether a family-focused prevention program for African American families could buffer the negative effect of perceived financial strain on protective parent-child interactions and thereby reduce the indirect effect of financial strain on youth conduct problems. METHOD Three hundred and forty-six African American couples with an early adolescent child (M age = 10.9 years at Wave 1 [W1]) participated. Families were randomly assigned to the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) prevention program or to a no-treatment control condition and provided data prerandomization (W1) and postintervention, Wave 2 (W2), 9.4 months after W1. Youth and both parents reported family financial strain at W1 and protective parent-child interactions at W1 and W2. Youth reported their conduct problems at W1 and W2. Hypotheses were tested using moderated mediation analyses. RESULTS ProSAAF significantly moderated the negative effect of youth-reported financial strain on changes in protective parenting interactions such that financial strain was not significantly associated with changes in protective parenting among the intervention group, thus reducing the indirect effect of financial strain on increases in youth conduct problems among this group. Parent-reported financial strain was not significantly associated with changes in protective parenting in either condition, precluding the potential for stress buffering intervention effects. CONCLUSIONS The ProSAAF prevention program buffered the negative effect of youth-reported financial strain on protective parenting interactions and reduced its indirect effect on youth conduct problems. These findings suggest that family-focused prevention has the potential to promote resilience among African American youth perceiving family financial strain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Packaging with flexible barriers

A package is essentially a substitute for a human hand. It frees the hand for other work by ‘holding’ a handful of possessions—isolating them from other matter and securing against loss. The modern package serves also to identify its contents and often to embellish them. Almost all wares tend to deteriorate under the influence of some extraneous factor; properly selected wrappings will delay this process by excluding that factor.
Relationship between body mass index and left atrial appendage thrombus in nonvalvular atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation and obesity are two major growing epidemics in the United States and globally. Obese people are at the increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation. The contribution of obesity as an independent risk factor for stroke in the setting of atrial fibrillation remains unclear. We tested the hypothesis that non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) patients with increased body mass index (BMI) would be at increased risk for the development of left atrial appendage thrombus (LAAT). Consecutive, anticoagulation naive patients with NVAF referred for a transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) between January 1, 2007 and October 21, 2009 were approached for study participation. All clinical, laboratory, and TEE measurement data were collected prospectively. Within a group of 400 anticoagulation naive NVAF patients (mean age 63 ± 15 years, 28 % women; 17 % with LAAT) the prevalence of LAAT was similar across all BMI categories (normal 13 %, overweight 19 %, obese 16 %, morbidly obese 16 %; p = 0.71). Despite a higher CHADS2 score and a higher prevalence of both hypertension and diabetes mellitus, elevated BMI was not an independent predictor of LAAT when analyzed as either a continuous variable, across BMI WHO categories, a dichotomous variable stratified at values above versus below 27 kg/m(2), or BMI stratified on atrial fibrillation duration. Despite a higher prevalence of major risk factors for thromboembolism, the prevalence of LAAT was not increased in overweight, obese, and morbidly obese patients.
Bayesian Nonparametric Prediction and Statistical Inference

The problem of Bayesian nonparametric prediction and statistical inference is formulated and discussed. A solution is proposed based upon A n and H n as in Hill (1968, 1988). This solution gives rise to the posterior distribution of the number of species (or more generally, the number of distinct values) in a finite population of Hill (1968, 1979), and to the posterior distribution of percentiles of the population of Hill (1968). Next, the meaning of parameters in the subjective Bayesian theory of Bruno de Finetti is discussed in connection both with H n and with conventional parametric models. It is argued that the usual sharp distinction between prediction and parametric inference is largely illusory. The finite version of de Finetti’s theorem is emphasized for the practice of statistics, with the infinite case used only to obtain approximations and insight.
Social Capital and Health

“The real nature of man is the totality of social relations” (Marx 1963: 83). All individuals dwell in a network of social relationships. Their health conditions can be contingent on structural attributes of their network contexts. Since Durkheim’s classic study on suicide ([1897] 1951), there has been a long research tradition on diverse aspects of social relationships and health in sociology and other social sciences (for reviews see Berkman et al. 2000; House et al. 1988; Pescosolido and Levy 2002; Smith and Christakis 2008; Song et al. 2011; Umberson and Montez 2010). In the last two decades social capital has grown into one of the most popular but controversial relationship-based theoretical tools in the multidisciplinary health literature.
Prolonging the Magic: The Political Economy of the 7th Generation Console Game

This paper draws on critical political economic theory to discuss the implications of the dominant mode of production and circulation of "Triple-A" or blockbuster console games. It is argued that the seventh generation Triple-A game is a highly standardized cultural commodity giving way to two distinctive "formatting strategies", which taken together, draw attention to the console game’s hybrid nature; being a physical, disc-based artefact that is digitally extended via DLC (downloadable content). This hybridity invites questions as to the commodity form's techno-economic particularities vis-a-vis publishing strategies of non-software based cultural commodities, such as movies and TV series. The popular Call of Duty series of first person shooters serves as case study to demonstrate how game publisher Activision Blizzard not only formalized and institutionalized the annualization of the serialization strategy, the publisher also upped the ante in terms of post-launch content, theorized as "branched serialization". The Call of Duty series demonstrates that the rules of play for Triple-A games are as much governed by a game's internal ludic properties as they are structured and alternated by a distinctive and very explicit market logic. In this sense, the Triple-A game never seems truly finished; it is marketed by game publishers and positioned by critics as an unfinished commodity.
Integrating and using large databases of text, images, video, and audio

WITH THE ADVENT OF RELAtively cheap, large online storage capacities and advances in digital compression, comprehensive sources of text, image, video, and audio (TIVA) can be stored and made available for research and applications. The processing of a single medium has seen significant progress, especially for pure text sources. Also, images are frequently processed and made available through a queryby-example procedure (that is, find another image that has similar colors, textures, and shapes as this one). However, the processing of a combination of multiple types of data has not been explored as thoroughly. Most TIVA sources were not produced with computer processing in mind. In contrast with text processing, few effective methods exist for understanding or even searching the content of combined TIVA sources. Intelligent, content-understanding systems can greatly improve the usefulness of the huge quantities of existing material from these sources. Collecting and intelligently integrating several of these media sources open up opportunities for novel applications of existing AI techniques and for further development of intelligent technologies. Unfortunately, there is no clear categorization or organization of the various research efforts concerning mixed-media databases.
Fusarium head blight biological control with Lysobacter enzymogenes strain C3

Abstract Fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by Fusarium graminearum (= Gibberella zeae ), is a destructive disease of wheat for which biological controls are needed. Lysobacter enzymogenes strain C3, a bacterial antagonist of fungal pathogens via lytic enzymes and induced resistance, was evaluated in this study for control of FHB. In greenhouse experiments, chitin broth cultures of C3 reduced FHB severity to 80% severity in the controls in some experiments. C3 broth cultures heated to inactivate cells and lytic enzymes, but retaining the elicitor factor for induced resistance, also were effective in reducing FHB severity, suggesting induced resistance is one mechanism of action. C3 broth cultures also were effective when applied in highly diluted form and when applied 1 week prior to pathogen inoculation. When applied to 8 cultivars of hard red spring wheat in the greenhouse, C3 treatments reduced FHB in 5 cultivars but not in the others. These findings also are consistent with induced resistance. Protection offered by C3 treatments, however, was not systemic and required that C3 be applied uniformly to all susceptible florets. Field tests were conducted in South Dakota and Nebraska to evaluate the efficacy of C3 chitin broth cultures in spring and winter wheat, respectively. In experiments involving two hard red spring wheat cultivars, treatment with C3 reduced FHB severity in ‘Russ’ but not in ‘Ingot’. In three other field experiments comparing C3, the fungicide tebuconazole, and the combination of C3 and tebuconazole, treatments with the bacterial culture alone and the fungicide alone were inconsistent across experiments, each treatment being ineffective in controlling FHB in one experiment. The biocontrol agent–fungicide combination was more consistently effective, reducing FHB incidence or severity in all three experiments. Thus, the potential for using L. enzymogenes C3 as a biological control agent for FHB was demonstrated along with a number of factors that might affect control efficacy in the field.
Have “Millennials” Embraced Digital Advertising as They Have Embraced Digital Media?

Consumers’ attitudes toward advertising ethics are of interest to marketers who understand that negative attitudes can be harmful to brands. Today advertisers increasingly depend on internet advertising. This study compares attitudes of Millennials (the first generation to use digital media more than traditional media) toward internet advertising with attitudes toward advertising in traditional media. Similar to previous generations who had more negative attitudes toward TV advertising, which was their most frequently used medium, Millennials’ attitudes appeared to be more negative toward internet advertising. Thus, we conclude that advertisers must work to engender positive relationships with Millennials through more ethical internet advertising and other innovative strategies.
Biological markers of age-related memory deficits : Treatment of senescent physiology

In humans, age-related memory impairments begin in mid-life and cognitive weakening continues with advancing age. An important aspect of defining memory decline is the distinction between dementia as a result of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, and memory loss not specifically associated with disease. Within the population of elderly without dementia, there is considerable variability in memory. This variability is likely to be a result of the interaction of genetic make-up and environment, which influences several processes for cell maintenance and repair including oxidative damage and cholesterol metabolism, leading to disruption of Ca2+ homeostasis, and ultimately Ca2+-dependent processes that underlie memory. In humans, several methods have been employed to distinguish biological markers of aging that may predict cognitive decline. Memory deficits associated with normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease have been linked to a decrease in the volume of brain structures, such as the hippocampus and to genetic markers, such as apolipoprotein E. In this regard, examination of CSF for biomarkers of disease can help in differentiating normal aging from Alzheimer’s disease. Measures of oxidative stress and cholesterol in plasma correlate with memory deficits; research suggests that treatments that reduce oxidative stress or cholesterol through exercise, diet or the use of antioxidant vitamins may delay cognitive decline. Nevertheless, to date, very little treatment is available to reverse memory deficits in later life. In this regard it is important to identify individuals at risk for memory deficits in order to discriminate different mechanisms of brain aging and develop treatments. Considerable effort is driving research to develop accurate biological markers of brain aging. In turn, these markers will provide information on mechanisms of aging and cognitive decline and point to potential treatments. Accordingly, the effectiveness of treatment needs to be verified for both cognitive changes and biological markers that are specific for age-related memory deficits.
Investigating dielectric properties of different stages of syngeneic murine ovarian cancer cells

In this study, the electrical properties of four different stages of mouse ovarian surface epithelial (MOSE) cells were investigated using contactless dielectrophoresis (cDEP). This study expands the work from our previous report describing for the first time the crossover frequency and cell specific membrane capacitance of different stages of cancer cells that are derived from the same cell line. The specific membrane capacitance increased as the stage of malignancy advanced from 15.39 ± 1.54 mF m−2 for a non-malignant benign stage to 26.42 ± 1.22 mF m−2 for the most aggressive stage. These differences could be the result of morphological variations due to changes in the cytoskeleton structure, specifically the decrease of the level of actin filaments in the cytoskeleton structure of the transformed MOSE cells. Studying the electrical properties of MOSE cells provides important information as a first step to develop cancer-treatment techniques which could partially reverse the cytoskeleton disorganization of malignant cells to a morphology more similar to that of benign cells.
Finding Spirituality through Confrontation and Celebration of Asianness in the Classroom.

In this chapter, the author explains how teaching and interacting with American Culture and Language Program (ACLP) students allowed him to reconnect with his own Asian roots and gave him an opportunity to find his spirituality by confronting and celebrating Asianness in the hybrid public speaking classroom.
Forage Quality and Alfalfa Characteristics in Binary Mixtures of Alfalfa and Bromegrass or Timothy

Seeding a perennial grass with alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) may provide benefits without significantly reducing forage quality. Our objectives were to determine if including a perennial grass with alfalfa influenced forage quality, and alfalfa quality, maturity, and morphological characteristics at each of three annual harvests. For 2 yr at two locations, alfalfa, alfalfa-smooth bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.) , and alfalfa-timothy (Phleum pratense L.) were sampled three times annually at bud to one-tenth bloom stage of alfalfa. Mean stage by weight, mean stage by count, stem length, and shoot weight of alfalfa were measured. Crude protein (CP), acid detergent fiber, and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) concentrations were determined for each forage and for alfalfa. Seeding bromegrass or timothy with alfalfa reduced CP on average 13% and increased NDF on average 12% at the first spring harvest, but not in subsequent harvests. Forage quality was higher for alfalfa grown with grass than for alfalfa grown alone at second harvest. Alfalfa component yield reduction in the mixtures was not directly proportional to grass yield. As a result, mixtures yielded more than alfalfa alone at the first harvest but less at the second harvest. Grass influenced alfalfa maturity, stem length, and shoot weight primarily at second harvest.
Commodity and Commonwealth in Gammer Gurton's Needle

Though Gammer Gurton's Needle (1550-53) is frequently anthologized and routinely taught in surveys of nonShakespearean drama, it has received comparatively little critical attention. 1 The reasons for this neglect are not difficult to intuit: the play is ostentatiously trivial at the level of plot (a needle is lost, lamented, and found), and its comic style is crude and scatological.2 Written for the entertainment of students at Christ's College in Cambridge, the play is self-evidently a schoolboy's farce, and has typically been dismissed as "a college-man's indulgent laugh at unlearned country folk."3 Perhaps because the play's slapstick charm seems timeless, however, more topical aspects of the farce have gone unnoticed. In particular, the basic elements of the play's story-poverty, unruly vagabondage, clerical incompetence, and the greedy hankering after trifling commodities-are also ubiquitous social concerns provoked by the economic crisis of the 1540s and '50s.4 The symptoms of this mid-Tudor crisis were self-evident to anxious contemporaries. Inflation-already a problem throughout the early sixteenth century-accelerated to an intolerable degree. Unprecedented increases in poverty and vagrancy challenged traditional attitudes toward both neediness and its relief, calling into question the ideals of social reciprocity with which contemporaries understood the relationship between rich and poor.5 Peasant uprisings -and Kett's rebellion in particular-made the disorderliness of poverty inescapably vivid for anxious contemporaries. A large body of reform-minded writing from the pe-
An update on feldsher training and practice in the Ukraine.

INTRODUCTION During a recent visit to a feldsher training program in Kiev, Ukraine, the author (a physician assistant [PA] educator with extensive experience in PA education) had an opportunity to meet with Victor Federovich Seedyelkinov, the dean of Kiev Medical College #2 and director of its feldsher training program. The meeting was held in Kiev and conducted in Russian with the assistance of an interpreter. The conversation identified many similarities in the development of the feldsher profession in the former Soviet Union to the PA profession in the United States. Current training and clinical practice of feldshers and PAs also share many similarities. Feldshers are midlevel health care providers whose origins date to 1872, when the first training programs were established.1 The name feldsher was derived from the German word feldscher, meaning field shearer (feld= field, scher=shearer), which was the name of medieval military barbersurgeons who worked as army field surgeons in Germany dating from the first half of the 15th century during the Thirty Years War.2 The term was later transported to Russia by Prussian officers. Director Seedyelkinov reported that Kiev Medical College #2 opened its doors for feldsher training during World War II. At that time, the focus of training was combat-oriented and feldsher students received training on the battlefield. Current training is designed to meet government regulations that are specified by the Ministry of Health, which calculates the feldsher needs of a region by establishing the population size and identifying the numbers of feldshers needed using a predetermined ratio. The government authorizes a feldsher program to train students if it adheres to the government-approved curricula and training standards. Each student is eligible to practice after receiving a certificate of successful completion of feldsher training.3 Successful completion of program and training requirements enables the feldshers to practice and meet the primary care needs of populations in rural areas, where feldshers typically practice upon graduation and where there are no other primary care providers. Nonmilitary feldshers provide primary care for nearly 40% of the population in rural ambulatory clinics.4 A student attending feldsher training at Kiev Medical College #2 is a high school graduate who provides evidence of high scores in the following areas: competency exam (SAT equivalent), biology, and Ukrainian language and literature. Applicants are interviewed by the faculty and are evaluated for maturity and suitability for providing medical care. One of five applicants is accepted into the program. Upon acceptance, each student becomes eligible to receive financial support, including tuition, from the Ukrainian government for the duration of training. Upon matriculation, each student receives a monthly stipend from the government in the amount of 400 hryvnia (US $50). The student uses the Feature Editor’s Note:
Dose dependent pharmacokinetics of nitroglycerin after multiple intravenous infusions in healthy volunteers

Evaluation of the pharmacokinetics of nitroglycerin has been hindered in the past by the lack of specific and sensitive analytical procedures, and the unavailability of parenteral nitroglycerin and infusion sets which did not adsorb nitroglycerin. The purpose for this present study was to determine the pharmacokinetic parameters of nitroglycerin and the dinitrate metabolites after multiple intravenous infusions of nitroglycerin in healthy volunteers. Six volunteers received variable infusion rates of nitroglycerin. Generally, at 0, 40, 80, and 120 min, the infusion rates were adjusted to 10, 20, 40, and 10 μg/min, respectively. Plasma samples were drawn and analyzed for nitroglycerin and its 1,2-and 1,3-dinitraie metabolites using capillary GC. Steady-state nitroglycerin plasma concentrations attained at 10, 20, 40, and 10μg/min were 0.44±0.31, 1.32±0.71, 4.23±1.50 and 1.04±0.43 ng/ml, respectively. As the infusion rate was increased, the steady-state concentrations increased disproportionately. When the dose was decreased from 40 to 10μg/min, the steady-state nitroglycerin concentrations were always higher than those at the initial low infusion rate. Thus, in the majority of subjects, a hysteretic type of response was present. The hysteresis observed in the dose versus steady-state concentration curve may be explained by either end-product inhibition or saturable binding of nitroglycerin to blood vessels. The clearance values (5.5 to 71 l/min) were very high and far exceed the maximum possible hepatic clearance suggesting that nitroglycerin is metabolized by organs other than liver. Clearance was not directly related to plasma concentrations but was found to decrease to a constant value (approximately 11±6 l/min< as nitroglycerin concentrations initially increased.
An economic framework for evaluating agricultural policy and the sustainability of production systems

Abstract Rhetorical definitions of agricultural sustainability abound. However, definitions that can be put to operational use in economic analysis have not been adequately developed. An economic definition of sustainability using natural resource accounting techniques is put forward. Two case studies are examined and physical and economic measures of natural resource impacts are developed. Five policy scenarios are tested to determine the public and private gains possible from different approaches to agricultural support and economic incentives.
Medical decision analysis of chemoprevention against esophageal adenocarcinoma

Abstract Background & Aims: Chemoprevention of esophageal adenocarcinoma using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may reduce the risk of cancer in patients with Barrett's esophagus. The aim of the study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of this strategy. Methods: The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of chemoprevention (compared with endoscopic surveillance or with no surveillance) was analyzed with a computer model of a Markov process. Results: Under baseline conditions for all patients with Barrett's esophagus (neoplastic and nonneoplastic), the ICER of chemoprevention ranges between $12,700 and $18,500 per life-year saved. However, these cost values are sensitive to variations in the costs of chemoprevention, incidence of cancer in patients with Barrett's esophagus, and efficacy of NSAIDs in reducing the incidence of cancer, which can shift the ICER into a cost range that is prohibitively expensive. Conversely, in those patients with Barrett's esophagus and high-grade dysplasia, the ICER ranges between $3900 and $5000. Chemoprevention remains a cost-effective option even under rather unfavorable conditions, such as higher cost and lower efficacy of chemoprevention and lower incidence of cancer. Conclusions: This model suggests that a high incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma in high-grade dysplasia renders chemoprevention cost-effective even in the presence of less-favorable conditions. However, chemoprevention may not be a cost-effective measure in the general population of all patients with Barrett's esophagus, depending on unknown factors such as cost and efficacy of chemoprevention as well as true incidence of cancer.
Design and implementation of IEC 61850 in communication-assisted protection strategy

This paper presents a design and implementation of communication-assisted protection strategy to clear faults on a section of 115 kV transmission lines in Otter Tail Power system. The existing step-distance relaying scheme takes more than 25 cycles (417 ms) to clear faults on this particular three terminal line. In order to reliably clear all faults in less than 20 cycles (333 ms), the transmission line terminals communicate with each other through Ethernet to isolate and clear a fault as fast as possible. Through IEC 61850 Generic Object Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) Messaging, the communication-based Permissive Overreaching Transfer Trip (POTT) scheme is utilized to achieve a faster and reliable clearance of all faults. The proposed method has been verified with ASPEN software and implemented in hardware.
Tube jejunostomy in liver transplant recipients

Background. Nutritional support after liver transplantation most often uses intravenous hyperalimentation followed by nasoduodenal tubes until adequate intake is achieved. Because of difficulties with nasoduodenal tubes, we place jejunostomy tubes (j-tube) at the time of the transplantation, allowing immediate postoperative enteral nutrition. This review analyzes the complications of this procedure in transplant recipients. Methods. J-tubes were placed in 108 of 119 adults who underwent liver transplantation between October 1989 and June 6, 1994. These patients were retrospectively reviewed for the type and frequency of j-tube-related complications. J-tube feeds with a semielemental formula were started within 24 to 48 hours after transplantation. Results. Eighteen complications occurred in 16 patients. Six were mechanical obstructions of the j-tube because of kinking by the fascia. Six exploratory laparotomies were required, two each for infection, small bowel obstruction, or catheter displacement. Four other infections were treated by local incision and drainage or percutaneous drainage. One tube required surgical removal in the operating room. Conclusions. Tube jejunostomies can be safely placed at the time of liver transplantation with a low risk of serious complications. We recommend the routine use of j-tubes in patients receiving a liver transplant for the immediate posttransplantation institution of enteral nutrition.