cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Human aneuploidy: mechanisms and new insights into an age-old problem

Trisomic and monosomic (aneuploid) embryos account for at least 10% of human pregnancies and, for women nearing the end of their reproductive lifespan, the incidence may exceed 50%. The errors that lead to aneuploidy almost always occur in the oocyte but, despite intensive investigation, the underlying molecular basis has remained elusive. Recent studies of humans and model organisms have shed new light on the complexity of meiotic defects, providing evidence that the age-related increase in errors in the human female is not attributable to a single factor but to an interplay between unique features of oogenesis and a host of endogenous and exogenous factors.
Avoided Heat-Related Mortality through Climate Adaptation Strategies in Three US Cities

Heat-related mortality in US cities is expected to more than double by the mid-to-late 21st century. Rising heat exposure in cities is projected to result from: 1) climate forcings from changing global atmospheric composition; and 2) local land surface characteristics responsible for the urban heat island effect. The extent to which heat management strategies designed to lessen the urban heat island effect could offset future heat-related mortality remains unexplored in the literature. Using coupled global and regional climate models with a human health effects model, we estimate changes in the number of heat-related deaths in 2050 resulting from modifications to vegetative cover and surface albedo across three climatically and demographically diverse US metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix, Arizona. Employing separate health impact functions for average warm season and heat wave conditions in 2050, we find combinations of vegetation and albedo enhancement to offset projected increases in heat-related mortality by 40 to 99% across the three metropolitan regions. These results demonstrate the potential for extensive land surface changes in cities to provide adaptive benefits to urban populations at risk for rising heat exposure with climate change.
Lagrange multiplier approaches to the design of two-channel perfect-reconstruction linear-phase FIR filter banks

Two approaches are presented for the design of two-channel perfect-reconstruction FIR (finite impulse response) filter banks, which yield linear-phase filters. The optimization o perfect-reconstruction filter banks is first formulated as a quadratic programming problem with linear constraints, and then as one with nonlinear constraints. Closed-form solutions for the first approach and for the iteration problem in the second approach have been obtained. Design examples for both approaches are given. >
CADMIUM IN TISSUES OF SWINE FED BARLEY GROWN ON MUNICIPAL SLUDGE‐AMENDED SOIL

Barley was grown on soil which had been amended five years earlier with a municipal sewage sludge from Syracuse, New York. The harvested grain was fed to growing male swine for 73 days and, following slaughter, animal tissues were analyzed for cadmium. The concentration of cadmium in kidney and liver were greater (p 0.05) between the two treatment groups.
School-Based Mental Health Programs for Students Who Have Emotional Disturbances: Academic and Social-Emotional Outcomes

Most schools offer some type of school-based mental health service to students, and there is a growing body of empirically rigorous studies examining the effects on academic and mental health outcomes for students. However, students classified as having emotional disturbances are under-represented in these studies. Using a convenience sample of four different types of school-based mental health programs, changes in achievement levels and social and emotional functioning in youth with emotional disturbances served in special education (n = 148) were examined. Longitudinal results reveal there was improvement in either the emotional or social functioning of these youth in all four programs, while results for improvement in achievement levels were less consistent. Results reveal that in the targeted sample of programs with intensive or multifaceted services, there was improvement in academic as well as social and emotional functioning in these youth. Implications for school-based mental health services are discussed.
Changes in Public Support for U.S. Military Spending

The proportion of Americans believing the United States is spending too little on national defense has varied considerably over the past four decades. In recent years; this proportion has increased from 12% in 1973 to 30% in 1978. Using data from the NORC General Social Surveys for 1973 through 1978, this article studies the correlates of opinions about defense spending and seeks to account for the trend toward increased support for greater arms spending.The results of this analysis suggest that factors important in explaining variations in opinions about arms spending vary with different historical periods. Three interconnected changes over the six years under study are suggested by the data to produce the aforementioned trend: the decline of the impact of the Vietnam war, a rise in particular elements of conservative ideology, and an increase in anti-Soviet and anticommunist sentiment.
Impact of child health and disability on subsequent maternal fertility

The prevalence of chronic conditions among children has been rising in the past four decades. Despite the policy relevance and plausible mechanisms through which child disability and severe early life health conditions can impact subsequent maternal reproductive behavior, there has been limited investigation of this question particularly in the US. Child disability or severe early life health problems such as very preterm birth (VPTB) and very low birth weight (VLBW) can constrain household resources to have another child but may also increase parental demand for healthy children and modify allocation of resources between children. Empirical assessment of this question is complicated by unobservables such as maternal health and preferences. We examine whether giving birth to a child with disabilities or severe adverse birth outcomes including VPTB and VLBW impacts subsequent maternal fertility. We employ a mother fixed-effect duration model for maternal fertility over time as a function of the proportion of previously born children with disabilities/health conditions in order to account for time-invariant unobservables, using merged data from the 1993 National Health Interview Survey and 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. We find no evidence that having disabled children reduces subsequent live births when using the mother fixed-effect model, in contrast to the classical model using within and between mother variation which suggests a fertility decline. Similarly, we find no evidence that having VPTB or VLBW children reduces fertility. Overall, our findings indicate no impact of child disability or health conditions on subsequent maternal fertility. Additional analyses excluding women who may qualify for AFDC show overall a similar pattern of results, suggesting that the findings may be generalizable post the AFDC. Time-varying unobservables may still be at work, but they likely result in an opposite (negative) bias toward reduction in fertility.
The Diagnosis of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

BACKGROUND: Gastroesophageal reflux disease is a highly prevalent condition that imposes a significant economic impact on the US health care system. The utility of commonly used tests for the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease has not been adequately reviewed. METHODS: A comprehensive review of the literature was undertaken to provide an evidence-based approach to the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease. EMBASE (1980-December 2008), OVID MEDLINE, and PubMed, (1966-December 2008) were searched using “gastroesophageal reflux” and “adults” with other terms, including medications, diagnostic tests, symptoms, and epidemiologic terms. Studies were limited to human trials, English language, and full articles. RESULTS: Heartburn is a reasonably sensitive symptom for the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease, although it does not reliably predict esophagitis. Standardized questionnaires have limited specificity, whereas the double-contrast barium swallow has a low sensitivity to diagnose gastroesophageal reflux. The role of esophageal manometry is limited to accurate placement of a pH-measuring device. pH testing has reasonable sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease. The sensitivity of upper endoscopy to diagnose gastroesophageal reflux is lower than that of pH tests. CONCLUSION: The diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease remains difficult. In the absence of alarm symptoms, empiric treatment with acid suppression is warranted. pH testing provides valuable information in many patients, although the clinical utility of newer tests needs to be determined. Endoscopy should not be the first test used to diagnose gastroesophageal reflux.
Performance of Egg White in the Presence of Yolk Fractions

Abstract Hens’ egg yolk was separated into three components (lipovitellenin, lipovitellin and livetin) and each component added to egg white preparation at 0.1%. Normal egg white and lysozyme-ovumucin-free egg white were tested for performance in angel cakes before and after adding yolk fractions. The yolk fractions, lipovitellenin and lipovitellin, reduced angel cake volume when added to normal egg white. Livetin did not affect cake volume. Yolk fractions, however, did not further reduce volume of cakes made from lysosyme- and ovomucin-free egg white.
An Experimental Study of Men’s and Women’s Personal Ads

Personal ads have long served as a potentially rich source of information for social scientists regarding what women and men appear to be looking for in a partner and what they believe potential partners are looking for in them. Almost every study of this type has content analyzed existing personal ads in print media or, more recently, on the Internet. Many of the limits of this research approach were addressed in a study by Strassberg and Holty (2003) utilizing an experimental research design. Contrary to theory, prior research, and prediction, the most popular female seeking male (FSM) ad in that study was one in which the woman described herself as “financially independent, successful [and] ambitious,” producing over 50 % more responses than the next most popular ad, describing the writer as “very attractive and slim.” The present study replicated the Strassberg and Holty methodology, placing the same fictitious MSF and FSM personal ads using far more accessible Internet personal ad sites. Contrary to the previous finding, but consistent with evolutionary theories and social psychological experiments (e.g., Townsend & Wasserman, 1998), ads that presented the woman as attractive and the man as financially successful elicited the most interest.
Joint bias correction of temperature and precipitation in climate model simulations

Bias correction of meteorological variables from climate model simulations is a routine strategy for circumventing known limitations of state-of-the-art general circulation models. Although the assessment of climate change impacts often depends on the joint variability of multiple variables, commonly used bias correction methodologies treat each variable independently and do not consider the relationship among variables. Independent bias correction can therefore produce non-physical corrections and may fail to capture important multivariate relationships. Here, we introduce a joint bias correction methodology (JBC) and apply it to precipitation (P) and temperature (T) fields from the fifth phase of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) model ensemble. This approach is based on a general bivariate distribution of P-T and can be seen as a multivariate extension of the commonly used univariate quantile mapping method. It proceeds by correcting either P or T first and then correcting the other variable conditional upon the first one, both following the concept of the univariate quantile mapping. JBC is shown to not only reduce biases in the mean and variance of P and T similarly to univariate quantile mapping, but also to correct model-simulated biases in P-T correlation fields. JBC, using methods such as the one presented here, thus represents an important step in impacts-based research as it explicitly accounts for inter-variable relationships as part of the bias correction procedure, thereby improving not only the individual distributions of P and T, but critically, their joint distribution.
Severity measurement in multiple trauma by use of ICDA conditions

We report here the results of a study of grading injury severity for patients with multiple traumatic injuries from ICDA codes listed on the face sheets of hospital medical records. We developed a method of scoring the severity of individual ICDA traumatic injuries with use of data from the NCHS Hospital Discharge Survey. When tested on a set of patients having multiple trauma conditions (also from the NCHS Hospital Discharge Survey), these scores had a strong relationship with fatality. The development of an injury severity index based on ICDA codes has considerable impact on the feasibility of conducting studies involving large numbers of patients hospitalized with traumatic injuries.
An adaptive meta-clustering approach: combining the information from different clustering results

With the development of microarray techniques, there is an increasing need for information processing methods to analyze high throughput data. Clustering is one of the most promising candidates because of its simplicity, flexibility and robustness. However, there is no "perfect" clustering approach outperforming its counterparts, and it is hard to evaluate and combine the results from different techniques, especially in a field without much prior knowledge, such as bioinformatics. This paper proposes a meta-clustering approach to extract information from results of different clustering techniques, so that a better interpretation of the data distribution can be obtained. A special distance measure is defined to represent the statistical "signal" of each cluster produced by various clustering techniques. The algorithm is applied to both artificial and real data Simulations show that the proposed approach is able to extract information efficiently and accurately from the input clustering structure.
Arterial pulse wave reflection as feedback

Traditionally, input impedance (Z/sub in/) has been used to characterize the global dynamic properties of an arterial system independent of properties of the heart. Defined as the relationship of pressure and flow at the entrance of an arterial system, it describes the ability of an arterial system to dynamically impede blood flow. Recently, a new description has been developed that also characterizes the arterial system independent of properties of the heart. Apparent arterial compliance (C/sub app/) is defined as the dynamic relationship of input pressure and volume stored in an arterial system, and describes the ability of the arterial system to dynamically store blood. Both Z/sub in/ and C/sub app/ are influenced by pulse wave propagation and reflection. However, the functional form of C/sub app/ lends itself to describing the arterial system in terms of negative feedback. Pulse wave reflection decreases the pulsatile volume stored (gain) at low frequencies, but increases the range of frequencies (bandwidth) in which the pulsatile volume is determined by total arterial compliance. This paper illustrates, by simple analytical formula, large-scale arterial system modeling, and direct analysis of data, how this conceptualization of reflection offers a new means to interpret changes in arterial system dynamics resulting from changes in arterial compliance.
Yersinia pestis YbtU and YbtT Are Involved in Synthesis of the Siderophore Yersiniabactin but Have Different Effects on Regulation

One prerequisite for the virulence of Yersinia pestis, causative agent of bubonic plague, is the yersiniabactin (Ybt) siderophore-dependent iron transport system that is encoded within a high-pathogenicity island (HPI) within the pgm locus of the Y. pestis chromosome. Several gene products within the HPI have demonstrated functions in the synthesis or transport of Ybt. Here we examine the roles of ybtU and ybtT. In-frame mutations in ybtT or ybtU yielded strains defective in siderophore production. Mutant strains were unable to grow on iron-deficient media at 37 degrees C but could be cross-fed by culture supernatants from a Ybt-producing strain of Y. pestis. The ybtU mutant failed to express four indicator Ybt proteins (HMWP1, HMWP2, YbtE, and Psn), a pattern similar to those for other ybt biosynthetic mutants. In contrast, strains carrying mutations in ybtT or ybtS (a previously identified gene required for Ybt biosynthesis) produced all four proteins at wild-type levels under iron-deprived conditions. To assess the effects of ybtT, -U, and -S mutations on transcription of ybt genes, reporter plasmids with ybtP or psn promoters controlling lacZ expression were introduced into these mutants. Normal iron-regulated beta-galactosidase activity was observed in the ybtT and ybtS mutants, whereas a significant loss of expression occurred in the DeltaybtU strain. These results show that ybtT and ybtU genes are involved in the biosynthesis of the Ybt siderophore and that a ybtU mutation but not ybtT or ybtS mutations affects transcription from the ybtP and psn promoters.
Comparative outcomes of oncologic therapy in gastric extranodal marginal zone (MALT) lymphoma: analysis of the SEER-Medicare database

Patients and methods: Gastric MALT lymphoma cases diagnosed between 1997 and 2007 were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare database. Propensity score analysis and competing risk models were used to compare survival in patients with stage IE treated with radiation or chemotherapy, and in patients of all stages treated with rituximab alone or with chemoimmunotherapy. Results: Among 1134 patients, 21% underwent radiation and 24% chemotherapy as initial treatment. In the balanced cohort of 347 patients with stage IE, radiotherapy alone was associated with a better cause-specific survival [hazard ratio (HR) 0.27, P < 0.001]. Patients receiving systemic therapy had better survival if it incorporated rituximab (HR 0.53, P= 0.017). After adjustment for confounding, the outcomes of those who received rituximab alone or combination chemoimmunotherapy were not statistically different (P= 0.14). Conclusions: In elderly patients with stage IE gastric MALT lymphoma, radiotherapy was associated with lower risk of lymphoma-related death than chemotherapy. In those requiring systemic treatment, addition of cytotoxic chemotherapy to rituximab in the first-line regimen was not associated with improved survival.
Imaging by SOI waveguides

We show that silicon waveguides can simultaneously be utilized as focusing device and also as detectors in nonlinear fluorescence imaging. Detection and imaging of Lt20mum erbium particles by using 1550 nm excitation are demonstrated experimentally.
High-temperature HgTe/CdTe multiple-quantum-well lasers.

While most previous studies of Hg-based mid-IR lasers have focused on either bulk Hg1-xCdxTe alloys or thick (> 100 A) Hg1-xCdxTe quantum wells with relatively large x, we show that much thinner (20–30 A) HgTe binary wells may be engineered to suppress both Auger recombination and intervalence free carrier absorption. On the basis of detailed numerical simulations, we predict 4.3 μm cw emission at temperatures up to 220 K for optical pumping and 105 K for diode operation. In pulsed mode, we expect maximum lasing temperatures more than 100 K higher than any prior Hg-based mid-IR result.
Unconventional Mental Health Treatment: Reexamining the Racial-Ethnic Disparity in Treatment-Seeking Behavior

Objective:The aim of this study was to examine whether a more inclusive definition of mental health treatment that incorporates unconventional treatment may partially account for the racial disparity in treatment-seeking behavior. Methods:Using 2005–2007 pooled data (N=102,749) from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between race (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic) and the type of mental health treatment sought. Treatment types were classified as conventional care (outpatient or inpatient), psychotropic medication, or unconventional treatment. Unconventional treatment was further classified as complementary and alternative medicine or parochial care, defined as treatment that appeals to a specific religious group that is provided at no cost outside a health delivery system. Results:Compared with whites, blacks had 53% lower odds and Hispanics had 41% lower odds of seeking any type of mental health treatmen...
Bandit Territories: British Outlaws and their Traditions

Reviewed Medium: book Authors: Helen Phillips Year: 2008 Pages: 350 Publisher: University of Wales Press ISBN: 9780708319857 (hard cover).
Course of Substance Abuse in Patients with and without Schizophrenia

The authors compared the course of Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in patients with SUD plus schizophrenia (SCZ) with those having SUD only. Data were obtained through diagnostic interviews and questionnaires on consecutive out-patients and in-patients referred for SUD to two university medical centers with alcohol-drug programs. This study revealed the SCZ-SUD patients (n = 29) had demographic characteristics, onset of their substance use, course of use/abuse, and lifetime SUD diagnoses that closely resembled those with SUD-only (n = 296). The marked similarities argue for a course of SUD in schizophrenic patients that is fully as morbid as that in SUD-only patients. The few differences in course appear linked to the following: (1) patients with SCZ using caffeine early, perhaps to relieve prodromal manifestations of schizophrenia, (2) patients with SCZ-SUD later using less or avoiding use of substances that exacerbate symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g., caffeine, cocaine, opiates), and (3) using tobacco more often to ameliorate the symptoms of schizophrenia or the side effects of medications used to treat schizophrenia. Contrary to expectation, those with comorbid SCZ-SUD employed self-help to deal with SUD as often as did the SUD-only patients.
Chromatin-associated Protein Kinases in Human Normal and Benign Hyperplastic Prostate

Nuclear phosphoproteins and protein kinases of human normal and benign hyperplastic prostate (BPH) were studied in an effort to delineate their properties and to identify any underlying differences therein. Chromatin-associated protein kinases active towards phosvitin, lysine-rich histone, and endogenous nonhistone proteins were characterized in human prostatic nuclei. The general properties of the human chromatin-associated prostatic protein kinases were similar to those of rat ventral prostate chromatin. Polyamines stimulated the phosphorylation of endogenous nonhistone proteins and phosvitin. Protein kinases active towards phosvitin and lysine-rich histones were unaltered in chromatin from BPH tissue as compared with the normal prostate. However, phosphorylation of chromatin-associated nonhistone proteins was markedly enhanced (average, 123%) in BPH tissue as compared with the normal tissue. The results indicate a change in the protein kinase reaction specifically involving chromatin-associated nonhistone proteins of BPH tissue as compared with normal human prostate.
Process–form linkages in meander morphodynamics: Bridging theoretical modeling and real world complexity

Meandering rivers are one of the most dynamic earth-surface systems. They play an important role in terrestrial-sediment fluxes, landscape evolution, and the dynamics of riverine ecosystems. Meande...
Myocardial Capillaries and Coronary Flow Reserve

The general assumption among cardiologists is that myocardial ischemia occurs only in the presence of obstructive coronary artery disease. This is based on the misconception that abnormal coronary flow reserve (CFR) is associated only with coronary stenosis and results from the increased resistance
Latin American Social Movements and the Social Forum Process

Since its founding meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, the World Social Forum (WSF) has quickly become the largest international gathering of progressive social activists seeking to resist neoliberal globalization and to democratize the global economy. Organized annually or biannually by an International Council and Local Organizing Committee in various cities and countries, the WSF has drawn as many as 155,000 people in 2005, with participants from more than 150 countries. Local, national, regional, and thematic forums have also been organized throughout Latin America. Although their role is contested among those espousing horizontal and autonomous forms of organizing, socialist parties and politicians in Latin America have actively participated within and even helped to fund the social forum process. Youth, who predominate among attendees, organized their own Intercontinental Youth Camp. Social forum meetings, and the processes through which they are organized, have helped to strengthen and expand international, cross-generational, and cross-movement ties among Latin American social movement activists, and helped activists to share ideas and deepen their political consciousness. Formal social movement assemblies, which endorse international days of action and transnational campaigns, and public marches and other collective actions occurring during these meetings have helped to move these meetings beyond “talk shops.”
An adaptive simplex cut-cell method for discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of the Navier-Stokes equations

A cut-cell adaptive method is presented for high-order discontinuous Galerkin discretizations in two and three dimensions. The computational mesh is constructed by cutting a curved geometry out of a simplex background mesh that does not conform to the geometry boundary. The geometry is represented with cubic splines in two dimensions and with a tesselation of quadratic patches in three dimensions. High-order integration rules are derived for the arbitrarily-shaped areas and volumes that result from the cutting. These rules take the form of quadrature-like points and weights that are calculated in a pre-processing step. Accuracy of the cut-cell method is verified in both two and three dimensions by comparison to boundary-conforming cases. The cut-cell method is also tested in the context of output-based adaptation, in which an adjoint problem is solved to estimate the error in an engineering output. Two-dimensional adaptive results for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations illustrate automated anisotropic adaptation made possible by triangular cut-cell meshing. In three dimensions, adaptive results for the compressible Euler equations using isotropic refinement demonstrate the feasibility of automated meshing with tetrahedral cut cells and a curved geometry representation. In addition, both the two and three-dimensional results indicate that, for the cases tested, p = 2 and p = 3 solution approximation achieves the user-prescribed error tolerance more efficiently compared to p = 1 and p = 0.
Survival of Rhyzopertha dominica (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae) in stored wheat under fall and winter temperature conditions

Cold temperature survivorship of Rhyzopertha dominica (F.) populations with a natural age structure in stored wheat was estimated for a natural fall cooling rate of 2 degrees C per week and winter temperatures of 17, 13, 9, and 5 degrees C. Logistic equations were fitted to the data to predict the survivorships of the adults outside kernels and immatures and preemergent adults inside kernels as a function of exposure time over the 5-17 degrees C temperature range. During the acclimation period, many insects died, and roughly 80, 55, and 25% of the insects were alive after temperatures had decreased at a rate of 2 degrees C per week from 17 degrees C to 13, 9, and 5 degrees C, respectively. At the end of cold temperature exposure period, many R. dominica survived at 17 degrees C, a few at 13 degrees C, but none at 5 or 9 degrees C. The colder the temperature the more rapidly survivorship decreased. The mostly immature insect population inside kernels was killed less rapidly than the external adult population at 5 and 9 degrees C and more rapidly at 13 and 17 degrees C. Daily survival rates decreased and then increased again indicating that those insects surviving short exposures to cold temperatures had a greater chance of surviving long exposures to cold temperatures. These equations will help extend our population model to predict the survival of R. dominica populations in stored wheat through the winter.
Seismic characterization of the Woodford shale in the Anadarko basin

Seismic analysis plays a very important role in the characterization of shale gas reservoirs. Several seismic attributes including curvature and coherence attributes are commonly used to highlight discontinuities (Marfurt, 2010). But very often, the complexity of the discontinuity pattern is not clearly seen in these attributes. At the same time, studying the discontinuity patterns along with stratigraphic changes can also provide important clues for shale gas exploration. For the current study, we analyzed the Woodford Shale in the Anadarko basin (Figure 1) with the aid of some newly developed geometric attributes including reflector convergence and reflector rotation along with some common attributes including coherence, curvature and coherent energy.
The Training of a Professional Entomologist

The serious mistake that I made in agreeing to prepare this paper was including in the title the word “professional.” One definition after another failed to stand the test of trial. A definition such as “one who uses his knowledge of entomology for occupational purposes” would include an illiterate “bee tree” hunter. The other extreme might limit the field to the holders of Ph.D.'s. Neither of these categories fits the large number of professional personnel in whom we are interested. I finally came up with a definition which satisfies me. A professional is one who can do independent, creative occupational tasks without supervision. The key word of the definition is “creative.” It implies that the professional is a mental mastercraftsman, a person who can manipulate ideas in his field with the same facility that a craftsman uses his tools.
21 – AUTOMATION OF IMMUNOASSAYS

This chapter focuses on the concept, principle, issues, and performance of automated immunoassay systems. Over the past 20 years, major advances have been made in automating routine, general clinical chemistry procedures. Discrete and random access analyzers provided a wide spectrum of chemistry tests around the clock to meet the demands of rapid testing. Recently, more attention has been focused on automating the sample-handling and processing steps, especially with regard to infectious specimens from patients with hepatitis or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In the 1990s, the clinical laboratory faced many challenges. These include the chronic shortage of qualified technologists, reengineering, space limitation in the hospital, and decreased available resources for the laboratory. Despite these challenges, the users expect the laboratory to provide better services. To meet these challenges, the clinical laboratory needs to become more efficient by incorporating creative solutions and adapting to changes. One solution is automation and system integration. Because most clinical laboratory procedures are labor intensive, automation reduces the dependency of the labor requirement. Smaller clinical laboratories could justify performing a larger menu of tests “in-house” rather than sending them to outside laboratories.
Frameworks for multi-purpose u-health care interface

Rather than modeling the user-interface as a set of static structures and mappings, the u-health care UI should be modeled as a set of design preferences. Preferences are frequently many-to-one or many-to-many relationships that elude conventional u-health care UI modeling, which has largely focused on one-to-one mappings. There are network compatibility problems among the u-health devices as their different protocols and software which are manufactured depending on the characteristics of companies. In this paper, a spectrum of preference relations is described, and a new syntax for modeling preference is proposed to design the u-healthcare UI. This spectrum extends from simple one-to-one bindings to complex design guidelines that can be structured together to implement decision trees. This new representation allows decision trees to be tightly integrated into the user-interface model itself, enhancing their flexibility and power. we also analyzed ISO/IEEE 11073 which is standard of information exchange among device agent and service manager and designed EMDI(Electronic Medical Data Interchange)interface for the improvement of compatibility in u-healthcare service field. The proposed interface structure can manage and exchange all of service data among device agent and application system on the integrated gateway environment.
A prospective analysis of physical examination findings in the diagnosis of facial fractures: Determining predictive value.

Background There are >150,000 patient visits per year to emergency rooms for facial trauma. The reliability of a computed tomography (CT) scan has made it the primary modality for diagnosing facial skeletal injury, with the physical examination playing more a cursory role. Knowing the predictive value of physical findings in facial skeletal injuries may enable more appropriate use of imaging and health care resources. Objective A blinded prospective study was undertaken to assess the predictive value of physical examination findings in detecting maxillofacial fracture in trauma patients, and in determining whether a patient will require surgical intervention. Methods Over a four-month period, the authors' team examined patients admitted with facial trauma to the emergency department of their hospital. The evaluating physician completed a standardized physical examination evaluation form indicating the physical findings. Corresponding CT scans and surgical records were then reviewed, and the results recorded by a plastic surgeon who was blinded to the results of the physical examination. Results A total of 57 patients met the inclusion criteria; there were 44 male and 13 female patients. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of grouped physical examination findings were determined in major areas. In further analysis, specific examination findings with n≥9 (15%) were also reported. Conclusions The data demonstrated a high negative predictive value of at least 90% for orbital floor, zygomatic, mandibular and nasal bone fractures compared with CT scan. Furthermore, none of the patients who did not have a physical examination finding for a particular facial fracture required surgery for that fracture. Thus, the instrument performed well at ruling out fractures in these areas when there were none. Ultimately, these results may help reduce unnecessary radiation and costly imaging in patients with facial trauma without facial fractures.
Use of intraoperative CT to predict the accuracy of microelectrode recording during deep brain stimulation surgery. A proof of concept study.

Abstract Objectives Intraoperative computed tomography (iCT) is currently used to confirm the target location of the microelectrode (ME) during microelectrode recording (MER) and ultimate location of deep brain stimulation (DBS) leads at our institution. We evaluated whether iCT can be used to predict the trajectory and accuracy of the ME track. Patients and methods Intraoperative imaging profiles of ten consecutive patients who had undergone DBS surgery were retrospectively reviewed. We found that cranial iCT, in addition to visualizing the target, also visualizes the extra-cranial segment of the guide tube (ECGT) used to insert the ME. We propose a hypothetical technique that extrapolates the trajectory of only the ECGT down to target depth using planning software. In order to provide a proof of concept analysis of this hypothetical technique, we retrospectively assessed post MER placement iCT studies and used planning software to visualize only the ECGT. An extrapolated vector was drawn along the long axis of the ECGT down to the same depth ( z ) as the ME. The obtained x and y coordinates were subsequently recorded and compared to the x and y coordinates of the ME tip to validate this technique. Results The average radial error between ECGT trajectory coordinates and final ME tip coordinates was 0.93±0.1mm (mean±SEM). Conclusion The use of iCT to predict accuracy of microelectrode location is feasible. In the future, performing iCT before guide tube penetration of dura can allow for trajectory prediction and if needed, correction of the ME, thereby potentially improving accuracy and reducing the number of MER tracks.
Multiple stressors and the potential for synergistic loss of New England salt marshes

Climate change and other anthropogenic stressors are converging on coastal ecosystems worldwide. Understanding how these stressors interact to affect ecosystem structure and function has immediate implications for coastal planning, however few studies quantify stressor interactions. We examined past and potential future interactions between two leading stressors on New England salt marshes: sea-level rise and marsh crab (Sesarma reticulatum) grazing driven low marsh die-off. Geospatial analyses reveal that crab-driven die-off has led to an order of magnitude more marsh loss than sea-level rise between 2005 and 2013. However, field transplant experimental results suggest that sea-level rise will facilitate crab expansion into higher elevation marsh platforms by inundating and gradually softening now-tough high marsh peat, exposing large areas to crab-driven die-off. Taking interactive effects of marsh softening and concomitant overgrazing into account, we estimate that even modest levels of sea-level rise will lead to levels of salt marsh habitat loss that are 3x greater than the additive effects of sea-level rise and crab-driven die-off would predict. These findings highlight the importance of multiple stressor studies in enhancing mechanistic understanding of ecosystem vulnerabilities to future stress scenarios and encourage managers to focus on ameliorating local stressors to break detrimental synergisms, reduce future ecosystem loss, and enhance ecosystem resilience to global change.
Evaluación ecocardiográfica intraoperatoria de la función del ventrículo derecho y su correlación con la evolución postoperatoria

Resumen Introduccion La disfuncion del ventriculo derecho (VD) tiene mal pronostico. La evaluacion intraoperatoria de este con ecocardiografia es dificil debido a su compleja anatomia. El doppler tisular es una herramienta ecocardiografica que mide las velocidades miocardicas regionales. Objetivo Estudiar la funcion sistolica del VD con doppler tisular midiendo la onda s’ y correlacionarla con el tiempo de estadia en la unidad de cuidados intensivos y el de hospitalizacion despues de cirugia no cardiaca. Secundariamente, evaluar la incidencia de complicaciones cardiovasculares. Material y metodos La velocidad sistolica (s’) del VD se obtuvo desde el borde libre del anillo tricuspideo, alineandolo en paralelo. Resultados Se estudiaron 73 pacientes, de los que un 53% eran varones, con una edad media de 63 ± 11 anos. La velocidad sistolica del VD (s’) se midio con facilidad en todos los pacientes. Valores de s’ inferiores a 11,3 cm/s se consideraron anormales y se correlacionaron con un mayor tiempo de hospitalizacion (p Discusion Se demostro que la evaluacion de la velocidad de la onda s’ es un buen predictor de la duracion de la estancia en la unidad de cuidados intensivos (p
The Relationship of Triphasic Waves with Intracranial Pressure as a Possible Prognostic Marker in Traumatic Brain Injury

Background. Continuous electroencephalography (CEEG) monitoring is used for detection of convulsive and nonconvulsive seizures and assessing the degree of encephalopathy in critically ill patients. A commonly seen encephalopathic pattern on CEEG is generalized periodic discharges with triphasic wave (TW) morphology. The underlying role and prognostic significance of TW in relationship to intracranial pressure (ICP) remain unknown. We present a case highlighting the relationship of TW with ICP in a case with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method. Case report. Results. A patient with severe TBI and no underlying metabolic abnormalities was admitted to the neurocritical care unit. TW were seen on CEEG. The TW diminished during episodes of intracranial hypertension but reappeared with reduction of the intracranial pressure. Conclusion. This study highlights a possible favorable prognostic marker of finding TW in a patient with intracranial hypertension. We have proposed a preliminary understanding of the relationship between TW and intracranial hypertension, which may be helpful in formulating future studies involving larger cohorts.
Leading causes of cardiovascular hospitalization in 8.45 million US veterans.

Background We sought to determine the leading causes of cardiovascular (CV) hospitalization, and to describe and compare national rates of CV hospitalization by age, gender, race, ethnicity, region, and year, among U.S. veterans. Methods We evaluated the electronic health records of all veterans aged ≥18 years who had accessed any healthcare services at either a VA healthcare facility or a non-VA healthcare facility that was reimbursed by the VA, between January 1 2010 and December 31 2014. Among these 8,452,912 patients, we identified the 5 leading causes of CV hospitalization and compared rates of hospitalization by age, gender, race, ethnicity, region, year and type of VA healthcare user. Results The top 5 causes of CV hospitalization were: coronary atherosclerosis, heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, stroke and atrial fibrillation. Overall, 297,373 (3.5%) veterans were hospitalized for one or more of these cardiovascular conditions. The percentage of veterans hospitalized for one or more of these CV conditions decreased over time, from 1.23% in 2010 to 1.18% in 2013, followed by a slight increase to 1.20% in 2014. There was significant variation in rates of CV hospitalization by gender, race, ethnicity, geographic region, and urban vs. rural zip code. In particular, older, male, Black, non-Hispanic, urban and Continental region veterans experienced the highest rates of CV hospitalizations. Conclusions Among 8.5 million patients enrolled in the VA healthcare system from 2010 to 2014, there was substantial variation in rates of CV hospitalization by age, gender, race, geographical distribution, year, and use of non-VA (vs. VA only) healthcare care facilities.
MRI-based active shape model of the human proximal femur using fiducial and secondary landmarks and its validation

Osteoporosis, associated with reduced bone mineral density and structural degeneration, greatly increases the risk of fragility fracture. A major challenge of volumetric bone imaging of the hip is the selection of regions of interest (ROIs) for computation of regional bone measurements. Here, we develop an MRI-based active shape model (ASM) of the human proximal femur used to automatically generate ROIs. Major challenges in developing the ASM of a complex three-dimensional (3-D) shape lie in determining a large number of anatomically consistent landmarks for a set of training shapes. In this paper, we develop a new method of generating the proximal femur ASM, where two types of landmarks, namely fiducial and secondary landmarks, are used. The method of computing the MRI-based proximal femur ASM consists of—(1) segmentation of the proximal femur bone volume, (2) smoothing the bone surface, (3) drawing fiducial landmark lines on training shapes, (4) drawing secondary landmarks on a reference shape, (5) landmark mesh generation on the reference shape using both fiducial and secondary landmarks, (6) generation of secondary landmarks on other training shapes using the correspondence of fiducial landmarks and an elastic deformation of the landmark mesh, (7) computation of the active shape model. An MRI-based shape model of the human proximalfemur has been developed using hip MR scans of 45 post-menopausal women. The results of secondary landmark generation were visually satisfactory and no topology violation or notable geometric distortion artifacts were observed. Performance of the method was examined in terms of shape representation errors in a leave-one-out test. The mean and standard deviation of leave-one-out shape representation errors were 2.27 and 0.61 voxels respectively. The experimental results suggest that the framework of fiducial and secondary landmark allows reliable computation statistical shape models for complex 3-D anatomic structures.
Responsibility, Inefficiency, and the Spirit of Sport.

It may come as a surprise that the main ethical debate surrounding doping in sport is whether the ban on performance-enhancing drugs is justified. When athletic performance is regarded primarily as...
Asian Catholicism, Interreligious Colonial Encounters and Dynamics of Secularism in Asia

The first section of the chapter offers a revisionist account of European secularization in terms of dynamics of state confessionalization and deconfessionalization. The second section presents a reconstruction of the interreligious colonial encounters of the early modern era in Japan and China, mediated by the Jesuits. The final section offers a brief analysis of three different patterns of inculturation of Catholicism in Asia as a key to three different phases of globalization: the early modern phase before Western hegemony, the modern Western hegemonic phase, and the contemporary phase after Western hegemony.
Philosophical Antecedents to Modern Thought

Self, state, law, and church offer four different perspectives of the individual. In each of these lights, the individual is a different type of being.
Molecular composition of the phosphatidylcholines produced by the phospholipid methylation pathway in rat brain in vivo.

We examined the formation in vivo of molecular subspecies of brain phosphatidylcholine (PC) via the phospholipid-methylation pathway. [3H]Methionine was infused into a lateral cerebral ventricle, and 3H-labelled PC was isolated from brains of rats 0.1-18 h after the infusions. Three major subspecies of this PC, differing in their fatty acid compositions, were separated on silver-impregnated t.l.c. plates, and the proportions of radioactivities in these three PC fractions were determined. The results indicate that newly-formed PC synthesized by methylation of phosphatidylethanolamine at 0.1 h after [3H]methionine contains a significantly higher proportion of polyunsaturated subspecies (i.e. those with six or four double bonds) than does PC obtained later times after injection of [3H]methionine. This change in the composition of 3H-labelled brain PC occurs gradually and is not due to an influx of radioactive PC from the periphery. Our data suggest that polyunsaturated PC (hexaenes and tetraenes) produced in the brain by methylation of phosphatidylethanolamine turns over faster than does that containing more-saturated fatty acids.