cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist as an adjunct in the treatment of Haemophilus influenzae otitis media in the chinchilla.

Objectives This purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of blockade of the inflammatory cytokine pathway on experimentally induced otitis media in the chinchilla model. Study Design Pilot, randomized placebo-controlled trial. Methods Ampicillin-sensitive Haemophilus influenzae otitis media was induced in 45 adult chinchillas. The animals were randomly assigned to the following treatment groups: 1) transbullar injections (TBI) of interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) and intramuscular ampicillin, 2) TBI of saline and intramuscular ampicillin, 3) TBI of IL-1ra and intramuscular saline or 4) TBI of saline and intramuscular saline. Blinded investigators measured resolution of otitis media by otomicroscopy, tympanogram, and culture results. Results Comparisons were made between the treatment groups to assess the ability of IL-1ra to assist with resolution of otitis media using exact two-group binomial tests with the StatXact statistical program. The group with TBI of IL-1ra and intramuscular ampicillin as a treatment demonstrated trends suggesting more rapid resolution of positive cultures and more rapid and complete return to normal results on tympanograms and otomicroscopic findings compared with the group treated with TBI of saline and intramuscular ampicillin. These trends did not achieve statistical significance with the relatively small sample sizes used in this pilot study. Conclusions This investigation provides further evidence that the inflammatory cytokine cascade plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of otitis media and that modulation of this inflammatory pathway may provide novel and efficacious treatments for otitis media. Further studies with larger groups of animals are warranted to determine whether the trends identified in this pilot study are reproducible and achieve statistical significance.
Repetition effects and the ordered recall of categorized serial lists

Two-store memory theories predict no repetition effects for last-presented items in serial lists. Thirty lists of 10 numbers were categorized by recording half the list in a male voice and the other in a female voice. The order of the number was repeated every third list in one of the categories. Four groups of Ss (N= 10) recalled the categories in serial or reverse order. The results indicated that repetition effects were isolated principally to the first-presented category.
Inhaled Insulin: Exubera

OBJECTIVE:To review the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, efficacy, and safety of Exubera, a novel, dry-powder formulation of insulin for inhalation, and describe patient satisfaction and quality-of-life data.DATA SOURCES:A MEDLINE search (1966–November 2004) was conducted using the key words inhaled insulin and Exubera for clinical trials limited to human research published in English. BIOSIS Previews and the American Diabetes Association Scientific Abstracts were used for published abstract information.STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION:All available human studies of Exubera were selected for review. References of identified articles were used for additional citations.DATA SYNTHESIS:Exubera is a rapid-acting insulin administered by oral inhalation before meals with long-acting insulin administered subcutaneously once or twice daily for type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus. Exubera provides similar efficacy and improved patient satisfaction compared with standard subcutaneous insulin therapy (ie, NPH twice daily...
A Retrospective Review: Argyris's Personality and Organization

The article presents a review of the book “Personality and Organization,” by Chris Argyris.
Assembly of Maize Storage Proteins into Protein Bodies in Developing Endosperm

Storage proteins are synthesized in developing seeds and stored for use during germination. In legumes and most other dicots, the principle storage proteins are globulins that are distinguished as 7S and US based on their sedimentation coefficients.1 The 7S globulin is composed of three spherical subunits and approximates a flattened, six-pointed spheroid. The 11S globulin is composed of six subunits that are arranged in two sets of trimers stacked one atop the other and offset by 60°. The two types of proteins are randomly distributed within membrane-bound aggregates (protein bodies) that form after deposition of the proteins into the vacuole.
Biodiversity loss under existing land use and climate change: an illustration using northern South America

Aim Species richness depends on climate and land use. Maintaining locations with favourable climate and land-use patterns is critical for protecting biodiversity because the loss of either can reduce the species richness that an area supports. Currently, the Guiana Shield (GS) receives abundant precipitation and has relatively light land use. For species richness this constitutes a good‐good combination of climate and land use, respectively. In contrast, much of eastern Brazil receives low levels of precipitation and has heavy land use, which is a bad‐bad combination for species richness. Thus, the current distribution of precipitation and land use in northern South America is relatively favourable for biodiversity. Palaeoclimate and model studies suggest, however, that the precipitation patterns for the two regions have switched before and could switch in response to greenhouse gas emissions. This paper examines the potential consequences of reconfiguring climate with respect to existing land-use patterns using South America as an example. Location South America north of 20 ° S and east of the Andes. Methods Ecosystem structure and function are modelled under (1) historical climate and (2) altered precipitation following a shift in the location of the InterTro pical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The distribution of precipitation, biomes, net primary productivity (NPP) and land use are then used to predict levels of species richness under the two climate scenarios. Results Climate changes could shift the distribution of vegetation and NPP such that conditions favourable for species richness in the GS region disappear. If land-use patterns were not prohibitive in eastern Brazil, the improved climate conditions there could compensate for the GS loss (assuming migratory barriers are overcome). Instead, existing land-use patterns cause the combined species richness projected for the two regions to plummet. Main conclusions Human activities will alter current configurations of land use and climate throughout the world. For species richness, new configurations are likely to include both positive and negative combinations of climate and land use. However, the irreversibility of past extinctions due to land-use patterns loads the dice against species richness.
Manipulating articulated objects with interactive perception

Robust robotic manipulation and perception remains a difficult challenge, in particular in unstructured environments. To address this challenge, we propose to couple manipulation and perception. The robot observes its own deliberate interactions with the world. These interactions reveal sensory information that would otherwise remain hidden and facilitate the interpretation of perceptual data. To demonstrate the effectiveness of interactive perception we present a skill for the manipulation of articulated objects. We show how UMan, our mobile manipulation platform, obtains a kinematic model of an unknown object. The model then enables the robot to perform purposeful manipulation. Our algorithm is extremely robust, and does not require prior knowledge of the object; it is insensitive to lighting, texture, color, specularities, background, and is computationally highly efficient.
Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in the management of locally advanced oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomata (SCC): disease control and functional outcome using the therapy outcome measure (TOM) score--report from a single U.K. institution.

This paper evaluates tumour control and toxicity especially in relation to swallowing dysfunction in those patients with locally advanced oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma who have undergone either primary chemo-radiation or post-operative parotid sparing IMRT. The TOM scoring system was used to assess dysphagia. All patients with locally advanced (stage 3/4) squamous cell oropharyngeal cancer and who required either primary or post-operative RT were identified. Toxicity was recorded prospectively. The TOM score (0-5 where 5 indicates that the patient is able to eat a normal diet and 0-2 varying degrees of enteral feeding dependency), weights and trismus was recorded immediately prior to and following radiotherapy. 24 patients were identified between 1/2003 and 11/2007. Median weight loss during radiotherapy was 9 kg. All but one patient had a gastrostomy (RIG) tube inserted prophylactically. With a mean follow-up of 37.1 months, 62.5% of pts had a TOM score of 5, 12.5% scored 3, 8% scored and 17% scored 0-2.. For those patients whose swallowing function did recover, it took on average 8.7 months. 15% patients experienced trismus secondary to radiotherapy. 2 year overall survival was 92% and disease specific survival 96%. Excellent disease control with intensified schedules of radiotherapy with IMRT has been achieved in this patient population. Intermediate toxicity is significant but with longer follow-up, dysphagia continues to improve with 75% of patients not requiring any form of enteral or oral supplementation.
Phylogeny-based classification of microbial communities

Motivation: Next-generation sequencing coupled with metagenomics has led to the rapid growth of sequence databases and enabled a new branch of microbiology called comparative metagenomics. Comparative metagenomic analysis studies compositional patterns within and between different environments providing a deep insight into the structure and function of complex microbial communities. It is a fast growing field that requires the development of novel supervised learning techniques for addressing challenges associated with metagenomic data, e.g. sensitivity to the choice of sequence similarity cutoff used to define operational taxonomic units (OTUs), high dimensionality and sparsity of the data and so forth. On the other hand, the natural properties of microbial community data may provide useful information about the structure of the data. For example, similarity between species encoded by a phylogenetic tree captures the relationship between OTUs and may be useful for the analysis of complex microbial datasets where the diversity patterns comprise features at multiple taxonomic levels. Even though some of the challenges have been addressed by learning algorithms in the literature, none of the available methods take advantage of the inherent properties of metagenomic data. Results: We proposed a novel supervised classification method for microbial community samples, where each sample is represented as a set of OTU frequencies, which takes advantage of the natural structure in microbial community data encoded by a phylogenetic tree. This model allows us to take advantage of environment-specific compositional patterns that may contain features at multiple granularity levels. Our method is based on the multinomial logistic regression model with a tree-guided penalty function. Additionally, we proposed a new simulation framework for generating 16S ribosomal RNA gene read counts that may be useful in comparative metagenomics research. Our experimental results on simulated and real data show that the phylogenetic information used in our method improves the classification accuracy. Availability and implementation: http://www.cs.ucr.edu/� tanaseio/ metaphyl.htm.
Human Herpesvirus 8 Infects and Replicates in Primary Cultures of Activated B Lymphocytes through DC-SIGN

Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is the etiological agent of Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and some forms of multicentric Castleman's disease. Although latent HHV-8 DNA can be detected in B cells from persons with these cancers, there is little information on the replication of HHV-8 in B cells. Indeed, B cells are relatively resistant to HHV-8 infection in vitro. We have recently shown that DC-SIGN, a C-type lectin first identified on dendritic cells (DC), is an entry receptor for HHV-8 on DC and macrophages. We have also demonstrated previously that B lymphocytes from peripheral blood and tonsils express DC-SIGN and that this expression increases after B-cell activation. Here we show that activated blood and tonsillar B cells can be productively infected with HHV-8, as measured by an increase in viral DNA, the expression of viral lytic and latency proteins, and the production of infectious virus. The infection of B cells with HHV-8 was blocked by the pretreatment of the cells with antibody specific for DC-SIGN or with mannan but not antibody specific for xCT, a cystine/glutamate exchange transporter that has been implicated in HHV-8 fusion to cells. The infection of B cells with HHV-8 resulted in increased expression of DC-SIGN and a decrease in the expression of CD20 and major histocompatibility complex class I. HHV-8 could also infect and replicate in B-cell lines transduced to express full-length DC-SIGN but not in B-cell lines transduced to express DC-SIGN lacking the transmembrane domain, demonstrating that the entry of HHV-8 into B cells is related to DC-SIGN-mediated endocytosis. The role of endocytosis in viral entry into activated B cells was confirmed by blocking HHV-8 infection with endocytic pathway inhibitors. Thus, the expression of DC-SIGN is essential for productive HHV-8 infection of and replication in B cells.
How the American Heart Association Helped Change Women’s Heart Health

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has historically been the leading cause of death in the United States since 1918, with men carrying the bulk of this burden for decades. In the 1970s, CVD deaths began to decline for the total population. However, for women, the number of annual CVD deaths began to slowly increase. From the mid-1980s to the current decade, more women than men died each year from CVD.1 By 2005, breast cancer caused 1 in 30 female deaths, whereas 1 in 2.7 died from CVD.2 In the same year, ≈45 000 more women died from CVD than men.2 Although research indicated that women could reduce their risk for heart disease and stroke, the population awareness of prevention strategies, signs and symptoms, and even the overall threat represented by these diseases was poor. In 1997, a sobering study from the American Heart Association (AHA) showed that only 8% of women understood that heart disease was their greatest health threat.3 The study was commissioned on the basis of statistics that CVD was their number one killer and concerns that the perception about heart disease risk was not aligned with established risk among women. Telephone interviews were conducted with 1000 women aged 25 years, and it was found that 33% of white women surveyed, 15% of black women surveyed, and 20% of Hispanic women surveyed were aware of the dangers of heart disease. Recognizing that awareness has been shown to be …
Increased rho kinase activity in temporal artery biopsies from patients with giant cell arteritis.

Objective. Aberrant rho kinase (ROCK) activity is implicated in the pathogenesis of several vascular diseases and is associated with Th17 differentiation. Th17 immune response is recognized in the pathogenesis of GCA. The aim of this study was to assess ROCK activity in GCA. Methods. All patients who underwent temporal artery biopsy (TAB) at a tertiary care centre over 5 years were identified and charts reviewed. Subjects were categorized into three groups: TAB-positive GCA, TAB-negative GCA and age- and sex-matched controls. TABs were stained for phosphorylated ezrin/radixin/moesin (pERM), a surrogate of ROCK activity, and reviewed by a pathologist blinded to clinical status. Three areas were scored for staining intensity on a scale of 0–2, with a maximum possible score of 6. Results. Nineteen subjects with TAB-positive GCA, 17 with TAB-negative GCA and 18 controls were analysed. Compared with controls, GCA subjects with either positive or negative TABs had significantly higher pERM intensity scores (P = 0.0109). Adjusting for diabetes, hypertension, prednisone and statin use, GCA subjects still had higher pERM scores [odds ratio 7.3 (95% CI 1.9, 25.9), P = 0.0046]. The high pERM score had a sensitivity of 90% and a negative predictive value of 91% for the diagnosis of GCA in those with a negative TAB, compared with 51% sensitivity for histopathology alone. Conclusion. Subjects with GCA had more intense pERM staining in TAB specimens compared with age- and sex-matched controls, regardless of whether TAB was positive or negative by routine histopathology, suggesting increased ROCK activity in GCA. The ROCK pathway warrants further investigation in GCA, as it may have diagnostic significance in enhancing the sensitivity of TAB.
Hierarchical Market Economies and Varieties of Capitalism in Latin America

The extensive scholarship on ‘varieties of capitalism’ offers some conceptual and theoretical innovations that can be fruitfully employed to analyse the distinctive institutional foundations of capitalism in Latin America, or what could be called hierarchical market economies (HMEs). This perspective helps identify four core features of HMEs in Latin America that structure business access to essential inputs of capital, technology and labour: diversified business groups, multinational corporations (MNCs), low-skilled labour, and atomistic labour relations. Overall non-market, hierarchical relations in business groups and MNCs are central in organising capital and technology in Latin America, and are also pervasive in labour market regulation, union representation and employment relations. Important complementarities exist among these features, especially between MNCs and diversified business groups, as well as mutually reinforcing tendencies between these dominant corporate forms and general under-investment in skills and in well-mediated employment relations. These four features of HMEs, their common reliance on hierarchy, and the particular interactions among them add up to a distinct variety of capitalism, different from those identified in developed countries and other developing regions.
A self-timed structural test methodology for timing anomalies due to defects and process variations

We present a new structural self-timed delay test methodology that identifies timing anomalies in the circuit by comparing the relative switching time of the different signal lines feeding the scan chains. These are observed by capturing the circuit's response to a delay test at multiple sample times, at and below the design cycle time. A timing defect is detected if there is a reversal in the switching order of any two outputs from that reliably predicted by simulation (or measurement on golden circuits), while allowing for processes variations
${K}$ -Space and Image-Space Combination for Motion-Induced Phase-Error Correction in Self-Navigated Multicoil Multishot DWI

Motion during diffusion encodings leads to different phase errors in different shots of multishot diffusion-weighted acquisitions. Phase error incoherence among shots results in undesired signal cancellation when data from all shots are combined. Motion-induced phase error correction for multishot diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been studied extensively and there exist multiple phase error correction algorithms. A commonly used correction method is the direct phase subtraction (DPS). DPS, however, can suffer from incomplete phase error correction due to the aliasing of the phase errors in the high spatial resolution phases. Furthermore, improper sampling density compensation is also a possible issue of DPS. Recently, motion-induced phase error correction was incorporated in the conjugate gradient (CG) image reconstruction procedure to get a nonlinear phase correction method that is also applicable to parallel DWI. Although the CG method overcomes the issues of DPS, its computational requirement is high. Further, CG restricts to sensitivity encoding (SENSE) for parallel reconstruction. In this paper, a new time-efficient and flexible k-space and image-space combination (KICT) algorithm for rigid body motion-induced phase error correction is introduced. KICT estimates the motion-induced phase errors in image space using the self-navigated capability of the variable density spiral trajectory. The correction is then performed in k -space. The algorithm is shown to overcome the problem of aliased phase errors. Further, the algorithm preserves the phase of the imaging object and receiver coils in the corrected k -space data, which is important for parallel imaging applications. After phase error correction, any parallel reconstruction method can be used. The KICT algorithm is tested with both simulated and in vivo data with both multishot single-coil and multishot multicoil acquisitions. We show that KICT correction results in diffusion-weighted images with higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and fractional anisotropy (FA) maps with better resolved fiber tracts as compared to DPS. In peripheral-gated acquisitions, KICT is comparable to the CG method.
Predicting Academic Misconduct: A Comparative Test of Four Sociological Explanations

Extant studies have shown academic misconduct, that is, cheating, to be a pervasive problem among college students. A number of avenues have been explored in order to determine those factors related to this type of deviant behavior. This study looks at a variety of traditional theoretical factors, including constructs representing social bond, self-control, social strain, and differential association theories, using data from a stratified random sample of 674 undergraduates at a Southwestern university. We also enter into the equations a host of other factors that have been found to be related to academic misconduct in previous studies. Separate equations were estimated for each theory, and in the full model all theoretical variables were included for a total of six equations. In the full model, the data did not support strain or social bond theories, and moderate support was found for self-control theory; however, strong support was found for differential association theory. The final equation accounted for 53.2 percent of the variance in academic misconduct.
Optimal reactive power dispatch with fuzzy variables

The authors present a consistent treatment of the optimal reactive power dispatch problem taking into account the uncertainty associated with load values. Linguistic declarations of loads are translated into possibility distribution functions via fuzzy sets. The problem is decomposed into four subproblems via Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition for reducing the problem dimensions. Voltage constraints within each subproblem are modeled via fuzzy sets to bias the final solution toward the static security region. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the method. >
Subjectivity Categorization of Weblog with Part-of-Speech Based Smoothing

Experts from different domains try to mine users' comments on Weblogs for different reasons such as politics or commerce. All these needs necessitate automatically distinguishing subjective Weblog contents from objective ones, namely subjectivity categorization. Since Weblogs contain various topics from different domains, limited training data can hardly cover all the topics and "unseen words" becomes a serious problem for categorization tasks. In this paper, part-of-speech (POS) based smoothing is proposed to alleviate the "unseen words" problem. In conjunction with a naive Bayes model constructed from limited training data, the probability of an unseen word in a new domain can be well smoothed by the probability of its POS result. Empirical studies on five datasets show that our approach consistently outperforms the basic naive Bayes with Laplace smoothing. In a cross-domain experiment, our approach achieves 22.0% improvement in Macro Fl and 24.4% in Micro Fl over basic naive Bayes. These verify that POS based smoothing can indeed benefit subjectivity categorization, especially in the cases with a large number of unseen words.
Impaired acid secretion and pancreatic polypeptide release in some patients with achalasia

Abstract Achalasia is characterized by an intrinsic denervation of the esophagus. It is not known whether this process extends to other parts of the gastrointestinal tract. By means of the modified sham feeding test, we studied the innervation of the stomach and the pancreas in 13 patients with achalasia. We compared the results with those from a group of 15 healthy controls and a group of 10 vagotomized patients. We saw two patterns of response in the achalasia group: 6 patients secreted acid and released pancreatic polypeptide, as did the controls. The other 7 patients neither secreted acid nor released pancreatic polypeptide after modified sham feeding, as did the vagotomized patients. We conclude that some patients with achalasia have denervation of the stomach and pancreas, as assessed by the modified sham feeding test. These differences are unrelated to age, sex, and duration and severity of the disease or treatment. Interestingly, all patients who responded normally developed reflux esophagitis after dilatation. Besides being an interesting pathophysiologic observation, the response to modified sham feeding can help identify those patients at greater risk of developing reflux esophagitis after esophageal dilatation.
Minimum radar cross section bounds for passive radar responsive tags

A common problem in ground moving target indication (GMTI) radar is detecting a target with even a large radar cross section (RCS) when its line-of-sight velocity falls below the minimum detectable velocity (MDV) for that radar system. In a cooperative scenario, a target may employ a tagging device, which can shift or spread its Doppler signature to become more detectable. In this paper we develop a bound on the minimum modulatable RCS of a passive (non-amplifying) device needed to be detectable as a function of radar and mode parameters, and compute this bound for specific GMTI and SAR radar modes.
AN ARCHITECTURE FOR MAKING JUDGMENTS USING COMPUTING WITH WORDS

Our thesis is that computing with words needs to account for the uncertainties associated with the meanings of words, and that these uncertainties require using type-2 fuzzy sets. Doing this leads to a proposed architecture for making judgments by means of computing with words, i.e., to a perceptual computer—the Per-C. The Per-C includes an encoder, a type-2 rulebased fuzzy logic system, and a decoder. It lets all human-computer interactions be performed using words. In this paper, a quantitative language is established for the Per-C, and many open issues about the perceptual computer are described.
Distributed Branch and Bound Algorithms for Global Optimization

This paper presents computational results of the parallelized version of the αBB global optimization algorithm. Important algorithmic and implementational issues are discussed and their impact on the design of parallel branch and bound methods is analyzed. These issues include selection of the appropriate architecture, communication patterns, frequency of communication, and termination detection. The approach is demonstrated with a variety of computational studies aiming at revealing the various types of behavior of the distributed branch and bound global optimization algorithm can exhibit. These include ideal behavior, speedup, detrimental, and deceleration anomalies.
An Unnatural History of Emerging Infections

PART ONE - THE FIRST TRANSITION PART TWO - THE SECOND TRANSITION PART THREE - THE THIRD TRANSITION
Dentin biomodification: strategies, renewable resources and clinical applications

Objectives The biomodification of dentin is a biomimetic approach, mediated by bioactive agents, to enhance and reinforce the dentin by locally altering the biochemistry and biomechanical properties. This review provides an overview of key dentin matrix components, targeting effects of biomodification strategies, the chemistry of renewable natural sources, and current research on their potential clinical applications.
Achieving universal health coverage in low-income settings

1Mother hood and childhood are to be aff orded special care and assistance. In the same year, the Constitution of the World Health Organization came into force, declaring that “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.” 2 There are two related motivations for the commitment to universal health coverage. The fi rst is that every individual has the right to health, and hence to some measure of health care. The second is that poor health has negative spillovers (externalities), from individuals to the community, and from poor countries to rich countries. Society at large therefore has a vested interest in ensuring that poor individuals have access to health coverage. Despite the commitment to universal coverage, in practice eff ective access to health care and outcomes depends strongly on economic and social conditions. For example, people in the least developed countries have a life expectancy at birth of 59 years and under-5 mortality of 112 per 1000, compared with a life expectancy at birth of 78 years and under-5 mortality of eight per 1000 in the more developed (high-income) countries. 3
Auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians

Numerous studies have shown that musicians outperform nonmusicians on a variety of tasks. Here we provide the first evidence that musicians have superior auditory recognition memory for both musical and nonmusical stimuli, compared to nonmusicians. However, this advantage did not generalize to the visual domain. Previously, we showed that auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Would this be true even for trained musicians? We compared auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians using familiar music, spoken English, and visual objects. For both groups, memory for the auditory stimuli was inferior to memory for the visual objects. Thus, although considerable musical training is associated with better musical and nonmusical auditory memory, it does not increase the ability to remember sounds to the levels found with visual stimuli. This suggests a fundamental capacity difference between auditory and visual recognition memory, with a persistent advantage for the visual domain.
The Psychology of Death and Dying in Later Life

This chapter examines the psychology of death and dying in later life. The chapter is divided into three main sections. First, the chapter reviews significant cultural and societal transformative influences on the contemporary experiences of death and dying; chief among these influences are the triumph of secular values, the dominance of science and technology, increases in the average life-span, and the triumph of the biomedical model. Second, the chapter looks at individual expectations and fears about dying; the efforts to make a good death the norm of medical care is reviewed. Third, attention is given to bereavement, grief, and mourning, including a summary of prominent models to explain human responses to loss and a review of empirical research studies of bereavement in the later years.
Single-Molecule Investigation of Initiation Dynamics of an Organometallic Catalyst

The action of molecular catalysts comprises multiple microscopic kinetic steps whose nature is of central importance in determining catalyst activity and selectivity. Single-molecule microscopy enables the direct examination of these steps, including elucidation of molecule-to-molecule variability. Such molecular diversity is particularly important for the behavior of molecular catalysts supported at surfaces. We present the first combined investigation of the initiation dynamics of an operational palladium cross-coupling catalyst at the bulk and single-molecule levels, including under turnover conditions. Base-initiated kinetics reveal highly heterogeneous behavior indicative of diverse catalyst population. Unexpectedly, this distribution becomes more heterogeneous at increasing base concentration. We model this behavior with a two-step saturation mechanism and identify specific microscopic steps where chemical variability must exist in order to yield observed behavior. Critically, we reveal how structur...
An Employment Systems Approach to Turnover: Human Resources Practices, Quits, Dismissals, and Performance

This study examines the relationship between alternative approaches to employment systems and quits, dismissals, and customer service, using cross-sectional, longitudinal data from nationally repre...
Fabrication of capillary-like structures with Pluronic F127® and Kerria lacca resin (shellac) in biocompatible tissue-engineered constructs(.)

The fabrication of large cellular tissue-engineered constructs is currently limited by an inability to manufacture internal vasculature that can be anastomosed to the host circulatory system. Creation of synthetic tissues with microvascular networks that adequately mimic the size and density of in vivo capillaries remains one of the foremost challenges within tissue engineering, as cells must reside within 200-300 μm of vasculature for long-term survival. In our previous work, we used a sacrificial microfibre technique whereby Pluronic® F127 fibres were embedded and then sacrificed within a collagen matrix, leaving behind a patent channel, which was subsequently seeded with endothelial and smooth muscle cells, forming a neointima and neomedia. We now have extended our technique and describe two approaches to synthesize a biocompatible tissue-engineered construct with macro-inlet and -outlet vessels, bridged by a dense network of cellularized microvessels, recapitulating the hierarchical organization of an arteriole, venule and capillary bed, respectively. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Data Transmission Is the Key Point of Construction Industry Information Building

Combining features and contents of the construction industry information building, the author analyzes development trends of domestic construction industry information building, and emphasizes that industry information building should has the leading direction of wide application of information technologies, the core of information resources and the key point of data transmission.
Existing and emerging mechanisms for transport of iron and manganese to the brain.

The metals iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) are essential for normal functioning of the brain. This review focuses on recent developments in the literature pertaining to Fe and Mn transport. These metals are treated together because they appear to share several transport mechanisms. In addition, several neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Huntington's Disease are all associated with Fe mismanagement in the brain, particularly in the striatum and basal ganglia. Similarly, Mn accumulation in brain also appears to target the same brain regions. Therefore, stringent regulation of the concentration of these metals in the brain is essential. The homeostatic mechanisms for these metals must be understood in order to design neurotoxicity prevention strategies.
Neutron Capture Cross Sections in 66Zn and 68Zn

The high resolution neutron capture cross section measurements in nuclei provide useful information about the average level properties such as the total radiative widths (Γγ), neutron widths (Γn), strength functions, level density and average capture cross sections. These informations are also useful for a better understanding of the nucleosynthesis process in astrophysicsl and in the design of nuclear reactors.
A note on dependence modeling for Bernoulli variables

ABSTRACTUnderstanding and modeling multivariate dependence structures depending upon the direction are challenging but an interest of theoretical and applied researchers. In this paper, we propose a characterization of tables generated by Bernoulli variables through the uniformization of the marginals and refer to them as Q-type tables. The idea is similar to the copulas. This approach helps to see the dependence structure clearly by eliminating the effect of the marginals that have nothing to do with the dependence structure. We define and study conditional and unconditional Q-type tables and provide various applications for them. The limitations of existing approaches such as Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel pooled odds ratio are discussed, and a new one that stems naturally from our approach is introduced.
Fixed-Priority Dual-Rate Mixed-Criticality Systems: Schedulability Analysis and Performance Optimization

For mixed-criticality (MC) systems, recent studies show that it can be important to provide continuous (albeit degraded) services for low-critical (LC) tasks even in the high running mode. In this paper, focusing on dual-criticality systems, we study a mode-switch fixed-priority (MS-FP) scheduler for a set of dual-rate mixed-criticality (DR-MC) tasks, where each LC task can have a pair of small and large periods to represent its service requirements in the low (LO) and high (HI) running modes, respectively. Moreover, DR-MC tasks may adjust their priorities at the mode-switch point for better system schedulability. By extending the response time analysis (RTA) technique for MC systems, we first derive the schedulability conditions for a set of DR-MC tasks under the MS-FP scheduler with mode transition being considered. Then, we investigate how to select periods and priorities of DR-MC tasks to optimize their control performance and formulate it as a Non-Linear Optimization problem. We propose an efficient heuristic for a simplified optimization problem based on Branch a Bound Search Tree (BBST) technique. The effectiveness of the proposed heuristic and the MS-FP scheduler with DR-MC task model is illustrated through one case study with four tasks and compared against the Ipopt solutions.
Altered expression of a metformin-mediated radiation response in SA-NH and FSa tumor cells treated under in vitro and in vivo growth conditions

AbstractPurpose: To assess the radiosensitizing effect of the biguanide drug metformin used alone or in combination with reactive oxygen species (ROS) modifying agents N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) or emodin, and contrasted to the mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitor rotenone in altering the radiation responses of the p53 wild-type SA-NH and p53 mutant FSa mouse tumor lines grown either in vitro or in vivo.Materials and methods: Tumor cells were grown to confluence in vitro and exposed to a single 4 Gy dose in the presence or absence of metformin (5 mM) and ROS modifiers or to 10 Gy with or without metformin as tumors in the flanks of C3H mice using a tumor growth delay assay.Results: Both metformin and rotenone protected SA-NH (p < .001) while sensitizing FSa (p < .001) to 4 Gy. Neither NAC nor emodin altered metformin’s action. Metformin was also directly toxic to FSa cells (p = .002). In contrast, in vivo metformin (250 mg/kg) sensitized both SA-NH (9-day growth delay, p < .05) and FSa (4-day growth delay, p ...
Complexity and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Exploring Hysteresis in A Grasping Task

In the current paper, we explored the presence of hysteresis in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Hysteresis is a complexity flag, known to shed light on the dynamics of nonlinear systems. We chose a task that elicits hysteresis in typical development and carried it out with children with ASD. Specifically, children were asked to lift cubes that got increasingly bigger and then smaller (or vice versa). Smaller cubes could be lifted with one hand, whereas bigger cubes required two hands to be lifted. Thus, the change in cube size forced participants to switch their grasping patterns (from one hand to two vs. from two hands to one). The dependent variable was the transition point at which the switch in lifting patterns happened. Results show hysteresis for ASD, to the same degree found for typically developing children (Experiment 1). However, when a social component was added to the task (children had to hand the cubes to the experimenter), a clear difference was found between diagnostic groups (Experiment 2): While typically developing children still demonstrated hysteresis in their grasping, ASD participants no longer did so. It appears that the coordination dynamics of a motor task changed when children with ASD were asked to interact with the experimenter. We discuss the extent to which the analysis of coordination dynamics provides a unique window into understanding ASD.
A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950

In this innovative legal history of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean, Bishara examines the transformations of Islamic law and Islamicate commercial practices during the emergence of modern capitalism in the region. In this time of expanding commercial activity, a melange of Arab, Indian, Swahili and Baloch merchants, planters, jurists, judges, soldiers and seamen forged the frontiers of a shared world. The interlinked worlds of trade and politics that these actors created, the shared commercial grammars and institutions that they developed and the spatial and socio-economic mobilities they engaged in endured until at least the middle of the twentieth century. This major study examines the Indian Ocean from Oman to India and East Africa over an extended period of time, drawing together the histories of commerce, law and empire in a sophisticated, original and richly textured history of capitalism in the Islamic world.
Individual Differences in Human Path Integration Abilities Correlate with Gray Matter Volume in Retrosplenial Cortex, Hippocampus, and Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Humans differ in their individual navigational abilities. These individual differences may exist in part because successful navigation relies on several disparate abilities, which rely on different brain structures. One such navigational capability is path integration, the updating of position and orientation, in which navigators track distances, directions, and locations in space during movement. Although structural differences related to landmark-based navigation have been examined, gray matter volume related to path integration ability has not yet been tested. Here, we examined individual differences in two path integration paradigms: (1) a location tracking task and (2) a task tracking translational and rotational self-motion. Using voxel-based morphometry, we related differences in performance in these path integration tasks to variation in brain morphology in 26 healthy young adults. Performance in the location tracking task positively correlated with individual differences in gray matter volume in three areas critical for path integration: the hippocampus, the retrosplenial cortex, and the medial prefrontal cortex. These regions are consistent with the path integration system known from computational and animal models and provide novel evidence that morphological variability in retrosplenial and medial prefrontal cortices underlies individual differences in human path integration ability. The results for tracking rotational self-motion-but not translation or location-demonstrated that cerebellum gray matter volume correlated with individual performance. Our findings also suggest that these three aspects of path integration are largely independent. Together, the results of this study provide a link between individual abilities and the functional correlates, computational models, and animal models of path integration.
The Ethics of Suicide

It is time now to turn to some practical problems in ethics. In this way we can see how realistic the approach to ethics recommended so far really is. We can see also just what it means in practice. I have suggested that there might be widespread incoherence in contemporary moral philosophy. In the next few chapters we will see a few examples of this. However, we should not expect ethics after Anscombe to be excessively different from ethics before Anscombe. It is not my claim at all that humanity is radically in error about ethics. In fact I am not sure whether this would even be a claim that could be made sense of. Could it somehow turn out that murder is a good thing, for instance? There is an inherent conservatism in the kind of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy that I am advocating that rules out this kind of radicalism. It is not as conservative as one might think, though, as we shall see in chapter 7.
Psychology's contribution to water conservation: barriers and success stories

Psychologists only started to contribute to the topic of water conservation in the last 15 years by diagnosing barriers, including their own ignorance and neglect of the issue. They have identified both the deeply-rooted mentality and the numerous psychological barriers to conservation. This paper reviews successful efforts for water conservation, both in the lab and in the field. The Target 140 Campaign in Brisbane, Australia was able to reduce water consumption from more than 300 litres to a mere 140 litres per person per day, using only voluntary means and maintained that result for years after the end of the campaign. Other successful field projects were in Jordan, Australia and the USA.
The role of individual differences on perceptions of wearable fitness device trust, usability, and motivational impact.

Abstract Lack of physical activity is a severe health concern in the United States with fewer than half of all Americans meeting the recommended weekly physical activity guidelines. Although wearable fitness devices can be effective in motivating people to be active, consumers are abandoning this technology soon after purchase. We examined the impact of several user (i.e. personality, age, computer self-efficacy, physical activity level) and device characteristics (trust, usability, and motivational affordances) on the behavioral intentions to use a wearable fitness device. Novice users completed a brief interaction with a fitness device similar to a first purchase experience before completing questionnaires about their interaction. We found computer self-efficacy, physical activity level, as well as personality traits indirectly increased the desire to use a fitness device and influenced the saliency of perceived motivational affordances. Additionally, trust, usability, and perceived motivational affordances were associated with increased intentions to use fitness devices.