cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Social acceptability of establishing forest-based biorefineries in Maine, United States.

Abstract Forest-based biomass has a significant role to play in the development of a renewable U.S. energy portfolio, especially in the context of mandated cellulosic biofuel production requirements. Biorefinery development has the potential to create economic, environmental, and social benefits. In Maine, co-location opportunities for biorefineries and existing pulp and paper manufacturing facilities could strengthen industry and mill communities. Understanding general public and local perceptions of bioenergy industries and products may play a key role in their establishment, success, and sustainability. Our aim was to compare the general Maine public and mill towns in their support for forest-based biorefineries, and we surveyed: (1) Statewide residents, and (2) Mill Town residents from 10 communities with major pulp and paper facilities. We found differences between local and state support for biorefineries across all response categories. Mill Town respondents were significantly more supportive of biorefinery projects in their communities, and overall the potential positive impacts of biorefineries were rated higher than the potential negative impacts. Both groups preferred facility siting at pulp mills no longer in operation, and Mill Town respondents expressed less concern about potential negative impacts than Statewide respondents. Our findings provide important insight into forest-based biorefinery issues important to communities. We encourage policy makers, industry leaders, and researchers to use our results as a foundation to actively engage statewide and local communities future biorefinery policies and siting proposals.
Dislocation Networks and the Microstructural Origin of Strain Hardening

When metals plastically deform, the density of line defects called dislocations increases and the microstructure is continuously refined, leading to the strain hardening behavior. Using discrete dislocation dynamics simulations, we demonstrate the fundamental role of junction formation in connecting dislocation microstructure evolution and strain hardening in face-centered cubic (fcc) Cu. The dislocation network formed consists of line segments whose lengths closely follow an exponential distribution. This exponential distribution is a consequence of junction formation, which can be modeled as a one-dimensional Poisson process. According to the exponential distribution, two non-dimensional parameters control microstructure evolution, with the hardening rate dictated by the rate of stable junction formation. Among the types of junctions in fcc crystals, we find that glissile junctions make the dominant contribution to strain hardening.
An Experiment in Second Person Writing: Notes on a Partial Jewish Identity

Jewish people are a unique minority group identified through a religious belief system, a culture, and supposed biological traits. I describe myself here as a partial Jew, indicating my unique stat...
Response by Lerman et al to Letters Regarding Article, "Coronary Plaque Characterization in Psoriasis Reveals High-Risk Features That Improve After Treatment in a Prospective Observational Study".

We appreciate the correspondence brought forward by both groups, who positively support our study,1 and facilitate further fruitful discussion of this study. In response to Drs Jin-shan and Xue-bin, we agree that there is an increase in cardiovascular risk factors in psoriasis. We adjusted for traditional cardiovascular risk factors and body mass index in our study. Our results suggest an independent association of psoriasis with increased subclinical coronary artery disease. Furthermore, we emphasize that high-risk plaque formation in psoriasis is likely multifactorial, and related to a complex interplay between keratinocytes, immune cells, vascular endothelial cells, lipoproteins, oxidative stress, and genetic factors. Therefore, as suggested, we advocate for more in vitro mechanistic studies that use primary human psoriatic skin, and murine models, as well, that recapitulate the human disease state. Only after these careful laboratory-based efforts coupled with a rigorous, randomized controlled cardiovascular outcomes study …
More Than Place-Based: Viewing Geography on a Continuum and the Implications for Social Work Practice:

Communities play an important role within the field of social work as the context within which specific social work activities occur. To date, much of the social work literature divides communities...
Posterior view versus the geometric mean for gastric emptying calculation in children

1393 Objectives To evaluate the relationship in children between the values of gastric emptying at 1 hour obtained by posterior view only and by using the geometric mean of the anterior and posterior view. Methods The gastric residual of a standard meal after 1 hour post ingestion was calculated in 39 children (6 months to 21 years). The patients were fed a radioactive meal (6 liquid and 33 solid) and imaged in the anterior and posterior views continuously for 1 hour with a dual-head gamma camera. ROIs were drawn about the stomach on both the anterior and posterior images. The gastric residual (% of activity remaining in the stomach at hour compared to that at the start of acquisition) was obtained using two different methods. The first utilized the posterior only acquisition and the second calculated the geometric mean of the anterior and posterior acquisitions. The variation, correlation and bias between these two methods was evaluated in different pediatric age groups. Results There was a high correlation between the residual values using the posterior only as compared to the geometric Mean (r=0.883) for patients under 8 years. Posterior and geometric mean provided essentially the same values in the less than 8YO group (mean values of 58.4 and 58.2, respectively=0.89) presumably due to the small patient size. For the older age groups, the geometric mean yielded higher values than the posterior (65.1 vs 58.8%; p=0.009 for 9-15YO and 60.7 vs 52.8%; p=0.004 for 16YO and older, respectively). Conclusions The calculation of gastric emptying by using the geometric mean method has been validated in the adult literature. In children less than 8 years of age, the posterior-only acquisition is sufficient for calculation of gastric emptying at one hour post ingestion. The acquisition of posterior-only images facilitates patient comfort and immobilization, as is does not require a camera head above the patient. In patients older than 8 year the geometric mean calculation is recommended
The Calcium-Sensing Receptor (CaR) and Human Disease

Shortly after the initial identification of the bovine sequence encoding the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor (CaR) (1), human genetic studies helped clarify the central and non-redundant role of the CaR in normal calcium homeostasis. Through its effects on kidney, bone, and intestine, regulated PTH secretion maintains the concentration of serum Ca2+in humans within a narrow range (between 9.0 and 10.4 mg/dl). In several now well-described disorders resulting from alterations in the gene encoding the CaR (gene name CASR), this precise regulation of serum calcium concentration is disturbed.
Hematology and Serum Chemistry Reference Values for Mother-Reared Squirrel Monkey (Saimiri boliviensis boliviensis) Infants

These reference data were obtained from the database maintained at the Squirrel Monkey Breeding and Research Resource (supported by NIH NCRR P40-RR01254). The samples were collected as part of research protocols and clinical observations. Time of day was not controlled across samples, although the majority were collected between 7 am and 10 am (Tables 28-1 and 28-2). All samples were collected from non-fasted, awake (unanesthetized) Bolivian squirrel monkeys (Saimiri boliviensis boliviensis) that were manually restrained. A 1- or 3-ml syringe was used to collect 0.5–1.5ml of whole blood (amount depending on age) from the femoral vein. Following blood collection the animal was returned to its social group and/or placed back on its dam. The whole procedure required less than 2 min. Open image in new window Table 28-1. Serum Chemistry Reference Values for Bolivian Squirrel Monkeys Aged 1—12 Months Open image in new window Table 28-2. Hematology Reference Values for Bolivian Squirrel Monkeys Aged 1—12 Months
A Systematic and Critical Review of Bacteriophage Therapy Against Multidrug-resistant ESKAPE Organisms in Humans

Bacteriophages (phages) may constitute a natural, safe, and effective strategy to prevent and control multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), and ESKAPE (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species) pathogens in particular. Few clinical studies have assessed the safety and efficacy of phages in patients infected with MDROs. This systematic review summarizes and critically evaluates published studies of phages in clinical practice and presents the appropriate phage selection criteria, as well as recommendations for clinicians and scientists for a successful therapy. Articles were identified through a search of the PubMed, Ovid, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases. Among 1102 articles and abstracts, 30 studies were selected and evaluated using selective inclusion criteria, phage criteria, and study characteristics. Most studies showed efficacy (87%) and safety (67%) of the tested phages, but few studies examined phage resistance (35%). Clinical studies and regulatory changes are needed to determine the safety and efficacy of phages and to advance their use in patients with MDRO infections.
CXSparse-Based Differential Algebraic Equation Framework for Power System Simulation

Simulation is the major approach in power system studies for prototyping new devices, evaluating new scenarios, and implementing new controls. Such a simulator relies on a framework for the dynamic memory management of internal variables. Our work presents a C-based framework that significantly reduces overhead with reduced object conversion and improved matrix storage techniques. Optimized sparse matrix add and set methods take advantage of indexing characteristics of power system equations, avoiding reconstruction of matrices within the framework if possible. Evaluation of the proposed methods substantiates the efficiency and utility of our framework in a differential algebraic equation solver.
Fully Deniable Interactive Encryption

Deniable encryption (Canetti et al., Crypto 1996) enhances secret communication over public channels, providing the additional guarantee that the secrecy of communication is protected even if the parties are later coerced (or willingly bribed) to expose their entire internal states: plaintexts, keys and randomness. To date, constructions of deniable encryption—and more generally, interactive deniable communication—only address restricted cases where only one party is compromised (Sahai and Waters, STOC 2014). The main question—whether deniable communication is at all possible if both parties are coerced at once—has remained open.
600.55 Percutaneous Mitral Valve Repair for Patients in Severe Cardiogenic Shock Is Safe and Is Associated with Improved Renal Function

Percutaneous mitral valve (MV) repair with the MitraClip device is effective in patients with severe mitral regurgitation (MR). Patients with NYHA IV heart failure requiring inotropes or mechanical circulatory support (MCS) have been excluded from prior MitraClip studies. Co-existing renal failure
DisSent: Learning Sentence Representations from Explicit Discourse Relations.

Learning effective representations of sentences is one of the core missions of natural language understanding. Existing models either train on a vast amount of text, or require costly, manually curated sentence relation datasets. We show that with dependency parsing and rule-based rubrics, we can curate a high quality sentence relation task by leveraging explicit discourse relations. We show that our curated dataset provides an excellent signal for learning vector representations of sentence meaning, representing relations that can only be determined when the meanings of two sentences are combined. We demonstrate that the automatically curated corpus allows a bidirectional LSTM sentence encoder to yield high quality sentence embeddings and can serve as a supervised fine-tuning dataset for larger models such as BERT. Our fixed sentence embeddings achieve high performance on a variety of transfer tasks, including SentEval, and we achieve state-of-the-art results on Penn Discourse Treebank’s implicit relation prediction task.
A Deep Learning Approach to Phase-Space Analysis for Seizure Detection

Many epileptic patients do not respond to medication or surgery. Recent technology has demonstrated that closed-loop responsive neurostimulation therapy is a realistic treatment for epileptic patients. However, ambulatory care of epileptic patients requires a highly accurate automated seizure detection algorithm. In this research, we implement a method for epileptic seizure detection based on nonlinear phase space analysis and deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). The underlying dynamics of scalp electroencephalography (sEEG) are extracted through time delay embedding and phase-space reconstruction. These features are used for training a CNN with a regression output to predict time until seizure. In experiments using EEG data collected in clinical environments from forty patients, our deep learning approach achieved high accuracy in predicting time until seizure onset, with a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 14.1 minutes and adjusted R-squared of .95 on out of sample testing data.
Breast Cancer Found Incidentally After Reduction Mammaplasty in Young Insured Women

Reduction mammaplasty is a common operation performed for healthy women. The estimated incidence of breast cancer diagnosed at the time of reduction mammaplasty varies from 0.06 to 4.5%, and information on the care of these patients is limited. This study aimed to determine the incidence of breast cancer identified incidentally during reduction mammaplasty and to characterize preoperative imaging. Women 18 years of age or older who underwent reduction mammaplasty from 2013 to 2015 were identified from the Truven Health MarketScan® Research Databases. Patients with prior breast cancer were excluded. Descriptive statistics were calculated for patient characteristics, incidental breast cancer, preoperative breast imaging, and postoperative treatment. Reduction mammaplasty was performed for 18,969 women with a mean age of 42.5 years. Of these patients, 186 (0.98%) were incidentally found to have breast cancer, with 134 (0.71%) having invasive breast cancer and 52 (0.27%) having carcinoma in situ. The patients with incidentally found cancer were older than the patients without cancer (50.8 vs. 42.5 years; p 80%) for the patients older than 40 years. Preoperative mammography was performed for 76.3% of those with a diagnosis of breast cancer at time of reduction mammoplasty. Breast cancer diagnosed incidentally at the time of reduction mammaplasty is uncommon and often radiographically occult. The majority of women older than 50 years appropriately received preoperative mammography. These data can be used to manage patient expectations about the potential for the incidental diagnosis of breast cancer at reduction mammaplasty, even with a negative preoperative mammography.
An unintended consequence? Examining the relationship between visible tattoos and unwanted sexual attention

In the wake of the increasing popularity of tattoos, the present study explored whether tattoos have an adverse impact on employees. Specifically, this research examined the relationship between visible tattoos and unwanted sexual attention, along with perceived sexual harassment climate and perceived inclusion climate as potential moderators of this relationship. With a sample of 417 restaurant and retail employees, the results from logistic regression analyses demonstrated that possessing a visible tattoo was associated with increased odds of experiencing unwanted sexual attention. Perceived inclusion climate attenuated this relationship, whereby individuals with visible tattoos were less likely to experience unwanted sexual attention in a more favorable climate. Although perceived sexual harassment climate was directly related to unwanted sexual attention, it did not moderate the visible tattoo-unwanted sexual attention relationship.
Regions of High Dominant Frequency in Chronic Atrial Fibrillation Anchored to Areas of Atrial Fibrosis

Regions within the atria with sustained rapid reentrant or focal activity have been defined as a mechanism of persistent atrial fibrillation (AF). However, the mechanism behind the anchoring of these sites and their stability over time is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that fibrosis anchors sites of high frequency activation during AF and that these sites can be non-invasively determined using cardiac T1 Mapping with MRI.A canine rapid atrial paced model of persistent AF was used (n=12, including 6 controls) for the study. Whole heart T1 Mapping was performed prior to an electrical mapping study. Spatial maps of high dominant frequency (DF) probability were constructed to determine stability of the highest DF sites. These sites were then correlated with fibrotic regions determined by T1 Mapping.The chronic AF animals had at least one site of stable, high DF for at least 22.5 (75%) of 30 minutes of AF. Regions of stable high DF bordered regions offibrosis as determined by T1 Mapping MRI 82% of the time (p<0.05).Heterogeneous atrial remodeling, specifically fibrosis, arising from chronic AF may provide a substrate that anchors sites of high DF. Cardiac T1 Mapping with MRI may determine such sites non-invasively.
Pain in the eye: a case of gonococcal orbital cellulitis.

Orbital cellulitis (OC) causes inflammation of the ocular soft tissues posterior to the orbital septum.1 Untreated OC can cause serious complications including vision loss. Bacterial OC caused by Neisseria gonorrhoea is exceedingly rare.2 Here, we present the third reported case in the literature of postseptal gonococcal OC in adults. A 39-year-old woman presented with progressive eye swelling, drainage and pain (figure …
The Serverless Application Analytics Framework: Enabling Design Trade-off Evaluation for Serverless Software

To help better understand factors that impact performance on Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) platforms we have developed the Serverless Application Analytics Framework (SAAF). SAAF provides a reusable framework supporting multiple programming languages that developers can integrate into a function's package for deployment to multiple commercial and open source FaaS platforms. SAAF improves the observability of FaaS function deployments by collecting forty-eight distinct metrics to enable developers to profile CPU and memory utilization, monitor infrastructure state, and observe platform scalability. In this paper, we describe SAAF in detail and introduce supporting tools highlighting important features and how to use them. Our client application, FaaS Runner, provides a tool to orchestrate workloads and automate the process of conducting experiments across FaaS platforms. We provide a case study demonstrating the integration of SAAF into an existing open source image processing pipeline built for AWS Lambda. Using FaaS Runner, we automate experiments and acquire metrics from SAAF to profile each function of the pipeline to evaluate performance implications. Finally, we summarize contributions using our tools to evaluate implications of different programming languages for serverless data processing, and to build performance models to predict runtime for serverless workloads.
A Critcial Examination of the Figurative Language Used by Physical Education Student Teachers: 體育實習教師使用的圖像語言的一次重要考試

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese. In order to follow up previous studies focusing on figurative language amongst physical educators, the following study was performed to determine the amount and type of figurative language used by three physical education student teachers. This study examined and classified three types of figurative language and attempted to identify common pieces of figurative language used by three physical education student teachers. It was found that the three student teachers studied, used figurative language throughout their lessons frequently, however, did not have any common pieces of figurative language. 為了接著集中於圖像語言的早先研究在物理教育家之中，以下研究被進行確定三個體育實習教師和類型使用的圖像語言的數額。這項研究審查了並且分類了圖像語言的三個類型，並試圖辨認三個體育實習敎師使用的圖像語言共同的片斷。它被發現三個實習敎師頻繁地學習了，半新圖像語言在他們的敎訓中，然而，沒有圖像語言任何共同的片斷。
Ultra-Wideband, Compact, and High-Gain Two-Port Antenna System for Full-Duplex Applications

A broadband, dual-polarized, and common-aperture $2\times 2$ cavity-backed slot antenna (CBSA) array for enabling full-duplex wireless communication is presented. The antenna consists of a thin rectangular cavity appropriately loaded with metallic septa to excite multiple resonances of similar desired field distribution to achieve consistent radiation characteristics over a wide bandwidth. Four pairs of concentric orthogonal radiating slots are cut out on one of the broad walls of the cavity all of which are fed by two concentric orthogonal slots on the opposite broad wall of the cavity. The cavity is fed by an end-launch coaxial-to-waveguide transition to excite one of the channels. The other channel is excited by a two-pronged microstrip line symmetrically crossing over the other cavity feeding slot. Due to the out-of-phase coupling from the two prongs of the microstrip line to the other port, this type of excitation is shown to provide an unprecedented level of isolation between the two channels over a wide bandwidth. To achieve a high-efficiency and fabrication accuracy of this complex architecture, the antenna is 3-D printed out of HP PA12 Nylon and is then metalized by the silver spraying technology. The fabricated antenna provides a minimum of 55 dB of isolation and 8 dB of return loss over 44% fractional bandwidth from 4.8 to 7.5 GHz. Keeping its size smaller than $1.3 \lambda _{L} \times 1.3\lambda _{L} \times 0.27\lambda L$ (where $\lambda _{L}$ is the free space wavelength at the lowest frequency), and its weight less than $70g$ , the antenna provides a minimum gain of 10 dB for both polarizations and exhibits more than 20 dB polarization discrimination within the main beam over the entire band.
Evaluation of pro-apoptotic potential of taxifolin against liver cancer

Liver cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-induced deaths worldwide. Liver cirrhosis and cancer are a consequence of the abnormal angio-architecture formation of liver and formation of new blood vessels. This angiogenesis is driven by overexpression of hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (Hif1-α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Apart from this, protein kinase B (Akt) is also impaired in liver cancer. Despite the advancement in conventional treatments, liver cancer remains largely incurable. Nowadays, the use of naturally occurring anticancer agents particularly flavonoids is subject to more attention due to their enhanced physicochemical properties. Therefore, this study underlines the use of a natural anticancer agent taxifolin in the treatment of liver cancer using hepatocellular carcinoma cell line HepG2 and Huh7. The aim of our study is to devise a natural and efficient solution for the disease prevalent in Pakistan. The study involved the assessment of binding of ligand taxifolin using molecular docking. The binding of taxifolin with the proteins (Hif1-α, VEGF and Akt) was calculated by docking using Vina and Chimera. Further evaluation was performed by cell viability assay (MTT 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) Assay), colony formation assay, cell migration assay, DNA ladder assay and flow cytometry. To see whether taxifolin directly affected expression levels, analysis of gene expression of Hif1-α, VEGF and Akt was performed using real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blotting. In silico docking experiments revealed that these proteins showed favorable docking scores with taxifolin. Treatment with taxifolin resulted in the inhibition of the liver cancer growth and migration, and induced apoptosis in HepG2 and Huh7 cell lines at an inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of 0.15 µM and 0.22 µM, respectively. The expression of HIF1-α, VEGF and Akt was significantly reduced in a dose- dependent manner. The inhibitory effect of taxifolin on hepatic cells suggested its chemopreventive and therapeutic potential. The studied compound taxifolin exhibited pronounced pro-apoptotic and hepatoprotective potential. Our study has confirmed the pro-apoptotic potential of taxifolin in liver cancer cell lines and will pave a way to the use of taxifolin as a chemotherapeutic agent after its further validation on the animal models and humans based epidemiological studies.
Responding to Rapid Changes in Libraries: A User Experience Approach: by Callan Bignoli and Lauren Stara, Chicago, Illinois ALA Editions, 2021, 136 pp., $49.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8389-4835-4

Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries: A User Experience Approach seeks to provide “a clear path forward in the face of constant change.” The book’s seven chapters are organized into three parts ...
Why Study Human Language

Until quite recently, researchers tended to study human cognition in terms of what they understood best rather than in terms of what people did best. Marr and Nishihara (1978) made this point rather nicely
Classification of the environment of protein residues.

We have studied the classification of the environment of residues within protein structures. Eisenberg's original idea created environmental categories to discriminate between similar residues [Bowie et al., Science (1991), 253, 164–170]. These environments grouped residues based upon their buried surface area, polarity of the surrounding environment, and secondary structure element in which the residue is found. However, Eisenberg's original categories led to incomplete discrimination between residues that only partially substitute for each other. We have expanded on Eisenberg's original idea of environmental categories, by both considering additional contacts in the calculation of the solvent-accessible molecular surface area and by subdividing the environmental plot into regions based upon its theoretical features. Our alternative surface area calculations were used in conjunction with the polarity of the environment of the residue to define a new set of environmental categories. These new categories were able to discriminate between residues such as threonine, valine, and aspartic acid while reflecting the propensity of these residues to substitute for each other.
Dynamic Discovery, Invocation and Composition of Semantic Web Services

While the Web has emerged as a World Wide repository of digitized information, by and large, this information is not available for automated inference. Two recent efforts, the Semantic Web [1] and Web Services hold great promise of making the Web a machine understandable infrastructure where software agents can perform distributed transactions. The Semantic Web transforms the Web into a repository of computer readable data, while Web services provide the tools for the automatic use of that data. To date there are very few points of contact between Web services and the Semantic Web: research on the Semantic Web focuses mostly on markup languages to allow annotation of Web pages and the inferential power needed to derive consequences, utilizing the Web as a formal knowledge base. Web services concentrate on proposals for interoperability standards and protocols to perform B2B transactions.
Directions in advanced IC lithography: new applications for lasers and coherent sources

Summary form only given. After more than a decade of research, KrF excimer laser sources are finally being introduced into leading edge manufacturing equipment for integrated circuit lithography at 0.25-0.30 /spl mu/m feature sizes. The current industry consensus is that the most likely path for advanced IC lithography over the coming decade will involve excimer laser sources and projection optical systems extending all the way down to about 0.13 /spl mu/m feature size. Such technology will be used to manufacture 4 Gbit memory chips, microprocessors, and other integrated circuit systems with upwards of one billion transistors on a chip. After a discussion of the fundamentals of advanced IC lithography, we will review the rationale behind this view of the future.
Complexing of Fatty Acids by Triton WR1339 in Relation to Growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract Mycobacterium tuberculosis grew in the presence of toxic concentrations of free fatty acids when an adequate amount of triton WR1339 was added to the medium. Triton produced a solubilizing effect on turbid suspensions of fatty acids, indicating the formation of a detergent-lipid complex. Oleic acid complexed with triton served as a source of carbon for growth of M. tuberculosis.
Gause's Competitive Exclusion Principle

The ‘competitive exclusion principle’ (CEP) states that two species with identical niches cannot coexist indefinitely. Natural historians (i.e., Grinnell) and ecological theorists (i.e., Lotka and Volterra) had concluded this during the early part of the twentieth century; however, this concept has been attributed to Georgii Frantsevitch Gause. In Gause’s landmark 1934 book, The Struggle of Existence, his experimental tests using protozoa supported the predictions of Lotka–Volterra equations, finding protozoa that use similar resources could not coexist, leading ecologists to identify him with CEP. Gause helped propel ecology by his approach of experimentally testing mathematical models, and his unifying the concept of the niche with resource competition. Gause’s CEP has been one of the central themes of research in ecology: trying to understand the mechanisms of species coexistence and patterns of biodiversity. Most of the explanations are niche-based in origin, including resource partitioning, character displacement, and niche tradeoffs. Criticisms (e.g., neutral theory) of these explanations state that these deterministic processes cannot, by itself, explain very high levels of species diversity; however, the current consensus is that species coexistence and diversity patterns are likely a combination of stochastic and niche-based explanations.
Deep arid system hydrodynamics 1. Equilibrium states and response times in thick desert vadose zones

[1] Quantifying moisture fluxes through deep desert soils remains difficult because of the small magnitude of the fluxes and the lack of a comprehensive model to describe flow and transport through such dry material. A particular challenge for such a model is reproducing both observed matric potential and chloride profiles. We propose a conceptual model for flow in desert vadose zones that includes isothermal and nonisothermal vapor transport and the role of desert vegetation in supporting a net upward moisture flux below the root zone. Numerical simulations incorporating this conceptual model match typical matric potential and chloride profiles. The modeling approach thereby reconciles the paradox between the recognized importance of plants, upward driving forces, and vapor flow processes in desert vadose zones and the inadequacy of the downward-only liquid flow assumption of the conventional chloride mass balance approach. Our work shows that water transport in thick desert vadose zones at steady state is usually dominated by upward vapor flow and that long response times, of the order of 104–105 years, are required to equilibrate to existing arid surface conditions. Simulation results indicate that most thick desert vadose zones have been locked in slow drying transients that began in response to a climate shift and establishment of desert vegetation many thousands of years ago.
Structure and magnetic properties of the spin-1/2-based honeycomb NaNi2BiO6-δand its hydrate NaNi2BiO6-δ·1.7H2O

We present the structure and magnetic properties of the honeycomb anhydrate NaNi2BiO6-δ and its monolayer hydrate NaNi2BiO6-δ·1.7H2O, synthesized by deintercalation of the layered α-NaFeO2-type honeycomb compound Na3Ni2BiO6. The anhydrate adopts ABAB-type oxygen packing and a one-layer hexagonal unit cell, whereas the hydrate adopts an oxygen packing sequence based on a three-layer rhombohedral subcell. The metal-oxide layer separations are 5.7 A in the anhydrate and 7.1 A in the hydrate, making the hydrate a quasi 2-D honeycomb system. The compounds were characterized through single crystal diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and elemental analysis. Temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility measurements show both to have negative Weiss temperatures (−18.5 and −14.6 K, respectively) and similar magnetic moments (2.21 and 2.26 μB/Ni, respectively), though the field-dependent magnetization and heat capacity data suggest subtle differences in their magnetic behavior. The ma...
Prior inpatient admission increases the risk of post-operative infection in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery

Abstract Background Hepatobiliary and pancreatic (HPB) operations have a high incidence of post‐operative nosocomial infections. The aim of the present study was to determine whether hospitalization up to 1 year before HPB surgery is associated with an increased risk of post‐operative infection, surgical‐site infection (SSI) and infection resistant to surgical chemoprophylaxis. Methods A retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing HPB surgeries between January 2008 and June 2013 was conducted. A multivariable logistic regression model was used for controlling for potential confounders to determine the association between pre‐operative admission and post‐operative infection. Results Of the 1384 patients who met eligibility criteria, 127 (9.18%) experienced a post‐operative infection. Pre‐operative hospitalization was independently associated with an increased risk of a post‐operative infection [adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.61, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06–2.46] and SSI (aOR: 1.79, 95% CI: 1.07–2.97). Pre‐operative hospitalization was also associated with an increased risk of post‐operative infections resistant to standard pre‐operative antibiotics (OR: 2.64, 95% CI: 1.06–6.59) and an increased risk of resistant SSIs (OR: 3.99, 95% CI: 1.25–12.73). Discussion Pre‐operative hospitalization is associated with an increased incidence of post‐operative infections, often with organisms that are resistant to surgical chemoprophylaxis. Patients hospitalized up to 1 year before HPB surgery may benefit from extended spectrum chemoprophylaxis.
Revisiting Zhang’s scale of transactional distance: refinement and validation using structural equation modeling

Transactional distance has been defined as barriers to students’ engagement with learning in the online environment. This research updates Zhang’s (2003) scale of transactional distance, which quantified the extent of the barriers, in light of the massive changes in today’s web-based learning environment. The resulting revised scale of transactional distance (RSTD) is a parsimonious version with 12 elements (compared to 31 original) that measure the transactional distance between student and teacher, student and student, and student and content. The RSTD has excellent factorial validity and reliability, yields better fit statistics, and is easier and less time-consuming to apply. The transactional distance values are unique predictors of student satisfaction, which is correlated to learning and persistence (a major concern with massive open online courses). This information can form the basis for a systematic approach to improving the design of today’s contemporary open, flexible, distance education cours...
White matter hyperintensity volume and impaired mobility among older adults

Gait speed is associated with multiple adverse outcomes of aging. White matter hyperintensities (WMH) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have been associated with gait speed, though few studies have examined changes in gait speed over time in population-based studies comprising participants from diverse cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between a decline in gait speed and total and regional WMH volumes in a community-based study of aging. Participants (n = 701) underwent gait-speed measurement via a 4-m walk test at the time of initial enrollment and MRI at a second time interval (mean 4.7 [SD = 0.5] years apart). Logistic regression was used to examine the association between large WMH volume and regional WMH volume with gait speed <0.5 m/s (abnormal speed), and a transition to abnormal gait speed. Analyses were adjusted for demographic and clinical factors. Large WMH volume was associated with abnormal gait speed and a transition to abnormal gait speed between the two visits, but not after adjustment for modifiable vascular disease risk factors. Increased frontal lobe WMH volume was associated with abnormal gait speed and transition to abnormal gait speed, but not in adjusted models. WMH are associated with slowing of gait over time. Prevention of WMH presents a potential strategy for the prevention of gait speed decline.
Spanish Marranism Re-examined

Los estudios de I. S. Revah y C. Amiel han tratado la intensa persecucion inquisitorial entre 1588 y 1600 de un nucleo judaizante constituido por una familia castellana autoctona asentada en Quintanar de la Orden y Alcazar de San Juan (bajo la jurisdiccion de los tribunales de Cuenca y Toledo). Debido a la fecha y al numero de victimas, el episodio constituye una anomalia en los anales de los tribunales inquisitoriales de Castilla. Basandose en el analisis de los procesos, ambos historiadores han concluido la realidad de un criptojudaismo en ambas localidades y que, por lo tanto, la esencia religiosa de un documento inquisitorial es una fuente historica fidedigna. En mi estudio someto el «criptojudaismo» de Quintanar y Alcazar de fines del siglo XVI �tal como lo presentan dichos autores� a una evaluacion critica. La relectura de todas los 64 procesos que conciernen a este episodio me han permitido llegar a conclusiones mucho mas matizadas que las de mis predecesores.
Factors affecting conditional discrimination learning by pigeons. II: Physical and temporal characteristics of stimuli

Four experiments were performed to determine the stimulus characteristics that favor the development of conditional stimulus control in the single reversal paradigm with pigeon subjects. In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained on a successive discrimination between tone frequencies ranging from 350 to 3500 Hz in a particular houselight context condition (houselight-on or -off). The subjects then were trained on the reversal of the tone discrimination in the alternative context. Subsequent tone-frequency generalization testing in the two contexts indicated that they had failed to gain conditional control over the pigeons’ discriminative performance. Such control was obtained in Experiment 2, in which the two problems were alternated daily for 32 sessions of training. The gradients then peaked at the appropriate S+ value in each context. In Experiment 3, the key colors (blue vs. red) served as contexts while pigeons learned a successive discrimination in which the discriminative cues were houselight-on versus houselight-off conditions. This was followed by a reversal of the discrimination in the alternative key-color context condition. The key colors were effective conditional cues in this situation. In a previous experiment (Thomas, McKelvie, & Mah, 1985), key color had been ineffective as a conditional cue when the discriminative cues were lines superimposed on the colored background. In Experiment 4, key color was effective when the color and lines were presented on a single key as in the earlier experiment, but were sequenced such that the onset of the key color preceded and then overlapped the presentation of the lines. We concluded that conditional discriminations are easiest for pigeons when visual cues are used, but the conditional and discriminative cues must be presented in such a way that they do not combine to form a psychological compound.
Bang-Bang Control of a Floating Oscillator

The objective of this paper is to use a simple bang-bang control law to create rest-to-rest command inputs for a floating oscillator. This work is motivated by previous work on bang-bang control for systems with two integrators. The advantage of the proposed bang-bang controller is its simplicity and robustness. The bangbang control signal switches between a maximum and minimum value once over the duration of the control signal. The amplitude and duration are computed from the desired move distance and the system parameters. The robustness of the proposed controller to model uncertainty is measured by the percent overshoot in the response once the system has reached the desired move distance. For the proposed controller, numerical simulations of the floating oscillator demonstrate that the robustness improves as the duration of the bang-bang command signal increases and that, given a fixed duration, a further improvement in robustness is obtained over a limited but significant range of uncertainty by using multiple switches within the duration of the bang-bang signal.© 2009 ASME
The design and performance of a model, second-order, nonlinear servomechanism

This paper discusses the design and performance characteristics of a model, second-order, nonlinear servomechanism. The design procedure stems from principles laid down in the authors' previous paper, in which the nonlinear differential equation characterizing this servo was synthesized. The physical aspects of the various building blocks needed for nonlinear servo construction are considered. Schemes for generating nonlinear functions are described, along with methods for accomplishing the multiplication and differentiation of the control system's variables. Schematic diagrams of the nonlinear servo are presented, in addition to instructions for adjusting the parameters to obtain the proper response behavior. The results of a comparison of equivalent nonlinear and linear servo operation are given in the form of photographs illustrating the control system's error response for various magnitudes of step inputs of position. The nonlinear system's error response is shown to be superior to the linear system's error response in that the nonlinear response exhibits no overshoot and reduces the system error to zero in approximately the time required for the linear system's error response to pass through zero for the first time. The response time of the nonlinear, model servo corresponds closely to the predicted response time.
Effects of thyroid hormone on the neonatal renal cortical Na+/H+ antiporter

The neonatal proximal tubule has a lower rate of bicarbonate absorption than that of adults. This is due, in part, to a lower rate of apical membrane Na+/H+ antiporter activity. The purpose of these studies was to examine if thyroid hormone could be a factor in the maturational increase in Na+/H+ antiporter activity. Hypothyroid (0.01% propylthiouracil in drinking water starting at day 14 gestation and throughout the postnatal period), euthyroid, and hyperthyroid (intraperitoneal triiodothyronine, 10 micrograms/100 g body wt, once daily on days 17 to 20 of postnatal life) rats were all studied at 21 days of life. Renal cortical brush border Na+/H+ antiporter activity was 453 +/- 24, 527 +/- 30 and 608 +/- 25 pmol/mg protein in the hypothyroid, euthyroid and hyperthyroid groups, respectively (P < 0.001). Hyperthyroid neonates had approximately twofold greater renal cortical NHE-3 mRNA abundance than euthyroid and hypothyroid neonates (P < 0.05). Brush border membrane NHE-3 protein abundance in hypothyroid and hyperthyroid neonates was one-third and twofold that of euthyroid 21-day-old rats, respectively (P < 0.001). These data are consistent with a potential role of thyroid hormone in the postnatal increase in Na+/H+ antiporter activity.
Invasive group-A streptococcal infection in an allograft recipient. A case report.

Each year, approximately 1.5 million musculoskeletal allografts are distributed for transplantation1. Allograft tissues offer advantages over autografts, such as smaller surgical incisions, reduced operative times, and lack of donor-site morbidity2. A disadvantage of allografts is the potential, albeit low, for disease transmission. Recent investigations have implicated a variety of allografts in the transmission of several microorganisms3-7. We investigated the occurrence of invasive group-A streptococcal disease in a musculoskeletal allograft recipient. ### Investigation of the Infected Allograft Recipient Apreviously healthy seventeen-year-old boy underwent anterior cruciate ligament repair with implantation of a hemi patellar tendon allograft. The following day, pain and erythema developed at the surgical site and the patient had a fever of as much as 39°C. Six days after the procedure, he underwent surgical exploration with arthrotomy of the knee and fasciotomy of the thigh. The allograft tissue was removed. Cultures of the wound aspirate, blood, and explanted tissue demonstrated growth of group-A streptococci. The postoperative course of the patient was complicated by fluid collection in the affected thigh and knee and persistent fever. Six days after allograft explantation, needle aspiration of the knee yielded fluid which, when sent for culture, demonstrated group-A streptococci, despite a week of treatment with clindamycin and cefazolin. The patient received intravenous antibiotics in the hospital for seventeen days and was discharged with an indwelling venous catheter for continued antibiotic treatment at home. ### Investigation of the Allograft Donor We reviewed the medical records and the autopsy report of the allograft donor, which stated that he had been a healthy man in his thirties who had died three weeks after undergoing elective cervical spinal fusion for degenerative disc disease. Three days before his death, the donor had presented to an emergency department with a diffuse pruritic rash, which was diagnosed as an allergic reaction to medications. The donor then returned …
Stationary waiting time derivatives

We investigate the stability of waiting-time derivatives when inputs to a queueing system-service times and interarrival times-depend on a parameter. We give conditions under which the sequence of waiting-time derivatives admits a stationary distribution, and under which the derivatives converge to the stationary regime from all initial conditions. Further hypotheses ensure that the expectation of a stationary waiting-time derivative is, in fact, the derivative of the expected stationary waiting time. This validates the use of simulation-based infinitesimal perturbation analysis estimates with a variety of queueing processes.
Predictors of Feminist Activism Among Sexual-Minority and Heterosexual College Women

Engagement in activism is related to several aspects of social development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Therefore, it is important to examine the correlates of different forms of activism, such as feminist collective action, among all youth. However, previous research has not investigated young sexual-minority women's engagement with feminist collective action. This study examined predictors of college-aged heterosexual and sexual-minority women's commitment to and participation in feminist activism. Sexual orientation, number of years in college, social support, experiences with discrimination, and gender identity were tested as predictors of commitment to and participation in feminist activism with a sample of 280 college-aged women (173 heterosexuals and 107 sexual minorities). Similar predictors were related to both commitment to and participation in feminist activism. However, for sexual-minority women, but not heterosexual women, the number of years in college was correlated with participa...