cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Sentinel Surveillance of AIDS in Liuzhou,2008

Objective To understand the prevalence of AIDS among high risk populations and their behavioral characteristics.Methods According to the requirement of "The implementation scheme for sentinel surveillance of HIV infection in Guangxi",the questionnaire surveys were conducted respectively among STD outpatients,drug users,pregnant women and female sex workers,and blood samples were taken from them for HIV and syphilis test.Results A total of 1 396 people were surveyed in 2008,among them 24 were detected to be HIV positive (6.8%),15 were detected to be infected with syphilis (1.6%).Conclusion The detection rate of HIV infection was high among the high risk populations,which indicated that the epidemic of HIV/AIDS was still serious in Liuzhou.
Optical Fiber Pre-warning System for Safety of Oil Pipelines Based on OTDR

A real-time monitoring technology for safety and leakage of oil pipeline based on theories of optical time domain reflectometer(ODTR)and the distributed optical fiber sensor were introduced.As the pipeline leaks,the temperature field around the optical fiber sensor changes.Using the temperature effect of the backscattered Anti-stokes the temperature was measured and the pipeline leakage was estimated.When there was an accident of factitious destruction(Oil-stealing)on the pipeline,the destruction would create vibration and pressure and thus the optical signal attenuation of the backscattered Rayleigh through the optical fiber happen.And by measuring the intensity of the Rayleigh,the disturbance and breakage of pipeline could be detected.At last,the measuring position was located by ODTR.The experiment results show the performance of the system as follows:length of single mode fiber:5km(expandable),range of temperature measurement:0~90℃(expandable),temperature error:+5℃,location error:15m.Therefore the monitoring quality of oil pipelines and anti-stealing oil level may be improved effectively.
The Planning Process

Health planning involves a series of steps that move the process from the first organizational meeting to a finalized plan (and beyond). The process for community-wide planning is different from that for organization-level planning, and each type of plan calls for variations in the planning process. Internal factors and external factors are reviewed to determine the difference between the existing situation and the desired situation (the “planning gap”). The planning process begins with planning for planning and proceeds through a systematic sequence of activities through assumption formulation and data collection and analysis. The process typically includes a comprehensive needs assessment at the community level and both internal and external audits at the organization level. A SWOT analysis may be used to generate an overview of the community or organization’s situation and highlight any gaps between health-related needs and resources. The plan generated through this process should include goals, objectives, and action steps codified in an implementation plan. As with any plan, an evaluation component should be included.
Changes in Job Satisfaction Through Time in Two Major New England Fishing Ports

Fishing communities in the U.S. have been the subject of great transformation due to changes in availability of resources and the implementation of different rules and regulations to manage the fisheries and conserve fish stocks. Job satisfaction has been widely regarded as an important component of well-being especially among fishermen because the occupation of fishing includes attributes of ‘adventure,’ ‘challenge,’ and ‘being outdoors’ infrequently found in other employment. It has been previously demonstrated that management driven changes to fishing communities can directly and indirectly affect aspects of fishermen’s job satisfaction and, consequently, their well-being. This paper presents a unique through time comparison of job satisfaction among fishermen between three time periods (1977, 2009/10, and 2013/14) in two major New England fishing ports: New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Point Judith, Rhode Island. Results show important differences between the three time-periods analyzed that can be associated with important changes in fisheries management in the last few decades. Differences found between ports also emphasize important socio-cultural aspects influencing job satisfaction and well-being in fishing communities. This study demonstrates that job satisfaction variables are valuable indicators of change in the context of fisheries and therefore provide valuable information for the development of future management plans that take into account important aspects of fishing community well-being.
No-Go Zones for Mariner Transposition

The property of transposons to randomly insert into target DNA has long been exploited for generalized mutagenesis and forward genetic screens. Newer applications that monitor the relative abundance of each transposon insertion in large libraries of mutants can be used to evaluate the roles in cellular fitness of all genes of an organism, provided that transposition is in fact random across all genes. In a recent article, Kimura and colleagues identified an important exception to the latter assumption [S. Kimura, T. P. Hubbard, B. M. Davis, M. K. Waldor, mBio 7(4):e01351-16, 2016, doi:10.1128/mBio.01351-16]. They provide evidence that the Mariner transposon exhibits locus-specific site preferences in the presence of the histone-like nucleoid structuring protein H-NS. This effect was shown to bias results for important virulence loci in Vibrio cholerae and to result in misidentification of genes involved in growth in vitro Fortunately, the bulk of this bacterium's genome was unaffected by this bias, and recognizing the H-NS effect allows filtering to improve the accuracy of the results.
Homeopathy and the Mind: From Alienists to Neuroscientists

Hahnemann adopted unusually humane measures in treating the mentally ill, and his system gave rise to a nationwide network of homeopathic asylums in the United States. This chapter reviews the commonalities of homeopathy and psychiatry and describes homeopathically trained individuals who left their mark in psychiatry. Among these are Solomon Carter Fuller, for his research into Alzheimer’s disease; Charles Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic; Henry Klopp, an eminent and innovative child psychiatrist; and Winfred Overholser, Frank Richardson, and Selden Talcott for their accomplishments in administration. Other individuals include Clara Barrus, an early leader in the area of women and mental illness; Bayard Holmes, whose son’s illness impelled him to search for a surgical cure of schizophrenia; Emmons Paine, a respected teacher; and James Cocke, America’s first blind doctor and author of a book on hypnotism.
European capitalism and the effects of agricultural commercialization on slave labor in Tunisia, 1780s–1880s

AbstractThe paper argues that while the significance of Tunisian state economic and political reforms during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has reflected the changing patterns of the caravan slave trade in previous research, much of this research has not considered the role of slaves in the emergent Tunisian economy. Nowhere is this negligence more apparent than in the agricultural sector, which was predominantly responsible for strengthening economic growth from the late eighteenth century until its weakening as a result of encroaching European capitalism by the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on Tunisian state population data known as the Majba Census and the extant economic literature, the paper addresses this gap by exploring the implications of the Tunisian state economic reforms on enslaved labor in the agricultural sector. Exploring this research gap will enable us to ascertain the extent to which enslaved labor contributed to Tunisia’s burgeoning agricultural sector in a manner that...
Growing Grassroots Democracy: Dynamic Outcomes in Building New York City’s Participatory Budgeting Program

AbstractWithin five years of its launch, Participatory Budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) spread from four to thirty-one of New York’s fifty-one council districts, enabling city residents to directly allocate thirty-eight million dollars in public funds. During this period, PBNYC’s neighborhood-level forums remained largely unchanged, but, in order to sustain growth, administrative shifts altered the institution’s basic design. This article examines how and why this transition affected the degree of popular control afforded by PBNYC, specifically within its cross-district Steering Committee. Analysis of original interviews and organizational documents indicates that the transition brought important, if modest, gains but impeded aspects of community empowerment through bureaucratic resistance and imbalanced governmental-civil society roles. Key players responded by reforming PBNYC’s internal governance. This case sheds light on the factors that shape participatory institutions and their impacts, emphasizin...
Hidden dynamics in the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin proteins

Protein folding occurs as a set of transitions between structural states within an energy landscape. An oversimplified view of the folding process emerges when transiently populated states are undetected because of limited instrumental resolution. Using force spectroscopy optimized for 1-microsecond resolution, we reexamined the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin molecules in native lipid bilayers. The experimental data reveal the unfolding pathway in unprecedented detail. Numerous newly detected intermediates—many separated by as few as two or three amino acids—exhibited complex dynamics, including frequent refolding and state occupancies of
Inactivation of the PRDM1/BLIMP1 Gene in Non-GC-Type Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma.

PRDI-BF1/Blimp1 is a zinc finger transcriptional repressor expressed in post-germinal center (GC) B cells and required for terminal B cell differentiation. The PRDM1/BLIMP 1 locus lies on chromosomal band 6q21–q22.1, a region frequently deleted in B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas suggesting the existence of one or more tumor suppressor loci (Gaidano et al, Blood80:1781, 1992). To test whether genetic alterations affecting the BLIMP1 gene may be involved in DLBCL pathogenesis, we performed PCR amplification and direct sequencing of the BLIMP1 coding sequences in 136 cases, including 20 cell lines and 116 primary biopsies. Gene expression profiling analysis using the Affymetrix Gene Chip system was used in 93 cases to classify them as germinal center B-cell like (GCB, N=38), activated B-cell like (ABC, N=35) and type III (N=20). Nonsense mutations were found in 7 of 136 cases. Four of these mutations generated premature stop codons, predicting severely truncated proteins of 61 to 244 aminoacids; in three cases, a single bp substitution affecting the exon 2 splice donor site led to insertion of 101 nucleotides from intron 3 and a premature stop codon. One primary tumor case carried a mutation within the intron 3 splice acceptor site, and one cell line displayed a gene rearrangement in one allele with deletion of the second allele. Strikingly, 6 of the 7 nonsense mutations identified segregated with the ABC phenotype (the remaining case was not profiled), suggesting that these alterations may be common and specific in this subtype of DLBCL (6/35, 17%). In addition, missense mutations generating aminoacid substitutions were found in 8 additional cases, and complete lack of Blimp-1 protein expression was found in most ABC-type DLBCL cases. These observations suggest that inactivation of the BLIMP1 gene may occur also by other mechanisms, including the generation of dominant negative mutants, chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing, in a large fraction of DLBCL. Functional studies are currently being performed to corroborate these data. Overall, these results suggest that BLIMP1 may act as a tumor suppressor gene, whose loss or inactivation may contribute to lymphomagenesis by blocking post-GC differentiation of B cells toward plasma cells.
Stored-Value Cards at Trustworthy Bank

The purpose of this case is to present students with the challenges of introducing a new technology, smart cards, into the retail banking market. Student must confront issues such as pricing, segmentation analysis, and consumer and merchant analysis, and consumer and merchant analysis. In the final analysis, it is possible to develop a complete marketing plan. Students must deal with factors that enhance and inhibit the introduction of smart card technology. Excerpt UVA-M-0522 STORED-VALUE CARDS AT TRUSTWORTHY BANK Early in 1994, Richard Williams, vice president of Delivery Systems for Trustworthy Bank, was considering whether or not his bank should market stored-value cards. Such an introduction would involve carefully selecting a target market of both consumers and merchants and educating both groups about the benefits of stored-value cards, not to mention adopting and making a new payment product operational. Williams recognized the difficulties that lay ahead. His experience and market knowledge told Williams that issuing stored-value cards might present a new revenue opportunity for the bank. Trustworthy Bank had a long history of being the first to implement new technologies, and their customers usually welcomed those technologies and adapted to them quickly. Several issues concerned Williams, however. The stored-value card was a new concept to consumers and merchants alike and, despite the success Trustworthy had with technology products in the past, it was still possible that both groups would either reject the cards entirely or be slow to adopt them. Therefore, choosing the right market segments to introduce the card to and correctly selling the card's benefits were crucial. Hand-in-hand with the segmentation issue came the issue of pricing. Since stored value was an entirely new concept to the market, Williams was unsure how the service would be perceived and, therefore, how much consumers and merchants would be willing to pay for it. Williams had to come to some resolution on these issues. He had the opportunity to participate in a joint venture with several other banks later in the year and, therefore, had to decide definitively whether or not stored value was right for his bank. . . .
Air bubbles and hemolysis of blood samples during transport by pneumatic tube systems.

Abstract Background Transport of blood samples through pneumatic tube systems (PTSs) generates air bubbles in transported blood samples and, with increasing duration of transport, the appearance of hemolysis. We investigated the role of air-bubble formation in PTS-induced hemolysis. Methods Air was introduced into blood samples for 0, 1, 3 or 5 min to form air bubbles. Hemolysis in the blood was assessed by (H)-index, lactate dehydrogenase (LD) and potassium in plasma. In an effort to prevent PTS-induced hemolysis, blood sample tubes were completely filled, to prevent air bubble formation, and compared with partially filled samples after PTS transport. We also compared hemolysis in anticoagulated vs clotted blood subjected to PTS transport. Results As with transport through PTSs, the duration of air bubble formation in blood by a gentle stream of air predicted the extent of hemolysis as measured by H-index (p Conclusions Prevention of air bubble formation in blood samples during PTS transport protects samples from hemolysis.
A Quantitative Fluorometric Approach for Measuring the Interaction of RhoGDI with Membranes and Rho GTPases

Tight regulation of Rho GTPase-signaling functions requires the proper localization of proteins to the membrane and cytosolic compartments, which can themselves undergo reconfiguration in response to signaling events. The importance of lipid-mediated membrane signal transduction continues to emerge as a critical event in many Rho GTPase-signaling pathways. Here we describe methods for the reconstitution of lipid-modified Rho GTPases with defined lipid vesicles and how this system can be used as a real-time assay for monitoring protein–membrane interactions.
Triangle counting via vectorized set intersection

In this paper we propose a vectorized sorted set intersection approach for the task of counting the exact number of triangles of a graph on CPU cores. The computation is factorized into reordering and counting kernels where the reordering kernel builds upon the Reverse Cuthill-McKee heuristic.
Mesenchymal stem cells and inflammatory lung diseases

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are emerging as a therapeutic modality in various inflammatory disease states. A number of ongoing randomized Phase I/II clinical trials are evaluating the effects of allogeneic MSC infusion in patients with multiple sclerosis, graft-versus-host disease, Crohn's disease, and severe chronic myocardial ischemia. MSCs are also being considered as a potential therapy in patients with inflammatory lung diseases. Several studies, including our own, have demonstrated compelling benefits from the administration of MSCs in animal models of lung injury. These studies are leading to growing interest in the therapeutic use of MSCs in inflammatory lung diseases. In this Review, we describe how the immunoregulatory effects of MSCs can confer substantial protection in the setting of lung diseases such as acute lung injury, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and pulmonary hypertension. We also address potential pitfalls related to the therapeutic use of MSCs in fibrotic lung diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. In addition, we identify emerging areas for MSC- based therapies in modulating oxidative stress and in attenuating inflammation in alcohol-related acute lung injury.
The cooperative economy of food: Implications for human life history and physiology.

Abstract The human diet has undergone substantial modifications since the emergence of modern humans and varies considerably in today's traditional societies. Despite these changes and cross-cultural differences, the human diet can be characterized by several common elements. These include diverse, high quality foods, technological complexity to acquire and process food, and the establishment of home bases for storage, processing and consumption. Together these aspects of the human diet challenge any one individual to independently meet all of his or her daily caloric needs. Humans solve this challenge through food sharing, labor exchange and the division of labor. The cooperative nature of the human diet is associated with many downstream effects on our life history and physiology. This paper overviews the constellation of traits that likely led to a cooperative economy of food, and draws on ethnographic examples to illustrate its effects on human life history and physiology. Two detailed examples using body composition, time allocation and food acquisition data show how cooperation among Savanna Pume hunter-gatherers affects activity levels, sexual dimorphism in body fat, maturational pace and age at first birth.
Radiotherapy for Temporal Bone Cancers

Temporal bone cancer is an extremely rare head and neck cancer, accounting for only 0.2% of all head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Although there has been no consensus of optimal treatment strategies for temporal bone cancers, it is generally accepted that postoperative radiation therapy improves locoregional control in high-risk cases. There have been reports on the role of definitive radiotherapy with/without concurrent chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced disease with comparable outcomes to surgery. Although the number of patients in these studies is small and the significance of results remained debatable, it indicated that radiation therapy remained a viable option for patients with non-operable disease. Delivering radiation therapy in this delicate area of the head and neck remains a challenge due to the proximity of critical neural and bony structures to the tumor. Radiation therapy can lead to significant late effects. Therefore, it is imperative to monitor patients for years after radiotherapy for tumor recurrence and possible late effects. In this chapter, we will present several cases to highlight treatment planning challenges and different radiation modalities that can be utilized in patients with tumors involving the temporal bone.
Plasmonic Enhancement of Epsilon-Near-Zero Modes

Integrating an epsilon-near-zero nanofilm into a plasmonic patch antenna, various light-matter interaction affects are explored: strong coupling with 27% normal mode splitting, wideband flattop perfect light absorption, and ~50,000× enhancement in second harmonic generation.
Renal Tumor With Overlapping Distal Nephron Morphology and Karyotype

Although most renal epithelial tumors are derived from the proximal nephron, approximately 10% are believed to originate in the distal nephron. This latter group encompasses oncocytoma, chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, and several rare types, including collecting duct carcinoma and renal medullary carcinoma. Despite progress in the classification of renal tumors, a small subset of renal carcinomas remains unclassified (ie, renal cell carcinoma, not otherwise specified). We describe a metastatic tumor consisting of cells with overlapping distal nephron morphologies, including foci of oncocytoma, chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, and collecting duct carcinoma, as well as sarcomatoid dedifferentiation. Special stains were inconclusive, and ultrastructural study demonstrated abundant mitochondria and no microvesicles. The karyotype was hypodiploid with 41 chromosomes and abnormalities reported in all 3 phenotypes present. Rearrangements of 1p and of 11q13 previously seen in divergent subsets of oncocytomas were concomitantly present in the current tumor. Thus, this malignancy has features consistent with distal nephron derivation and demonstrates the convergence of the varied tumor morphologies arising within this site. Furthermore, this case exemplifies the value of cytogenetic analysis in the characterization of renal cell carcinoma, not otherwise specified. In view of recent advances in treatment approach, especially for collecting duct carcinoma, further categorization of this nondescript and heterogeneous group of renal cell carcinomas, not otherwise specified, at least by its derivation in relationship to the renal nephron (distal vs proximal), may be of value in the choice of treatment modality.
Waste Disposal from the Body

Each person ingests a large number of molecules per day with meals and snacks. A similarly large number of molecules enter the body through the respiration. Body processes – such as building proteins, producing energy and replenishing lost nutritional stores – use many of these molecules. However, there is a substantial number of molecules that are neither usable nor needed to organism and therefore, have to be eliminated from the body. Waste products are also generated during metabolic processes in organism and since they might be toxic if accumulate within the body, they should be eliminated, as well. The diversity of molecules that can be ingested is numerous and therefore, the processes of elimination, very complex.
The Role of Posters in Teacher Education Programs

Posters abound in education libraries as decorative objects yet few libraries realize the educational potential of the poster. Posters are colorful, attractive learning media which can enhance the learning environment. This paper describes the value of posters in the educational setting, offers suggestions on selecting posters for learning, and includes examples of various types of learning posters. The competence of teachers is contingent to a large extent on the quality of the teacher education program that prepared them. The quality of the resources that support the teacher education program has been recognized as a crucial determinant of the quality of the knowledge and skills which the prospective teachers store in their repertoire. 1 The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), a body charged with ensuring the quality of teachers, suggests in an article “What to Look for in a Teacher Preparation Program” that one of the questions to ask in choosing a good teacher education program is “Does the institution have the resources necessary to support each of the programs it offers?” 2
Amazing! Two Graduate Students Wrote About Stupid Internet Stuff and Got Away with It! (Page 10 Will Blow Your Mind!)

This article examines new forms of narrative in the internet age through examining the website ClickHole. Through parodying and satirizing sites like BuzzFeed, ClickHole (an offshoot of the famous parody entity The Onion) thrives on the creation and dissemination of absurd headlines and accompanying stories. These not only commenting widely on cultural obsessions with things like pop culture figures and social causes, but also point to an innovative take on the place and form of narrative in the age of the internet.
Evaluating the USDA's Net Farm Income Forecast

The USDA produces four forecasts of net farm income for each year; these forecasts are closely monitored by decision makers across the agricultural sector. However, little is known about the performance of these forecasts. Traditional forecast evaluation tests suggest that between 1975 and 2016, the long-horizon forecasts systematically under-predicted realized values. In addition, the shorter-horizon forecast revisions overreact to new information. The findings suggest that forecast users should adjust their expectations and that the USDA may want to consider other forecast approaches to supplement current procedures.
Event-triggered robust cooperative stabilization in nonlinearly interconnected multiagent systems

Abstract By way of the graph theoretic tools, we model closed-loop large-scale systems as two-layer multiagent systems with the agent layer describing nonlinearly interconnected dynamics and the control layer designed to stabilize the system by communications in agents’ neighborhoods. We consider a scenario in which the effect of dynamical interactions over the agent layer appears through some nonlinear functions which are in the range space of the control input matrix, yet the underlying agent layer interconnection topology and the associated nonlinearities are not known to the control layer designer. We develop a static linear cooperative algorithm and, having endowed each local controller with several buffers, we schedule the control layer information exchange events in a non-periodic non-synchronous manner. We combine graph theoretic and event triggering ideas with an optimal control formulation, and propose a design procedure to obtain the required robust control gain. We prove that all trajectories of the closed-loop multiagent system will exponentially converge to the origin in the presence of time-varying nonlinearly interconnected modeling uncertainties over agent layer. For the same cooperative stabilization algorithm, trading off with the exponential convergence to a neighborhood around the origin, we further show that a practical event triggering mechanism can be developed to better deal with the effect of modeling mismatch on the number of triggering events. We also prove the proposed event triggering mechanisms do not exhibit Zeno behavior to ensure the feasibility of the proposed ideas in the sense of reduced communication load and, thereby, energy consumption.
Polygyny is linked to accelerated birdsong evolution but not to larger song repertoires.

Non-monogamous mating behaviors including polygyny or extra-pair paternity are theorized to amplify sexual selection, since some males attract multiple mates or copulate with paired females. In several well-studied songbird species, females prefer more complex songs and larger repertoires; thus, non-monogamous mating behaviors are predicted to accelerate song evolution, particularly toward increased complexity. However, studies within songbird clades have yielded mixed results, and the effect of non-monogamy on song evolution remains unclear. Here, we construct a large-scale database synthesizing mating system, extra-pair paternity, and song information and perform comparative analyses alongside songbird genetic phylogenies. Our results suggest that polygyny drives faster evolution of syllable repertoire size (measured as average number of unique syllables), but this rapid evolution does not produce larger repertoires in polygynous species. Instead, both large and small syllable repertoires quickly evolve toward moderate sizes in polygynous lineages. Contrary to expectation, high rates of extra-pair paternity coincide with smaller repertoires. Sexual selection is expected to be intensified in non-monogamous mating systems; in birds this might accelerate song evolution. Here, the authors show that across songbirds, polygyny and extra-pair paternity are associated with faster syllable repertoire size evolution and smaller repertoire size, respectively.
Theoretical Investigations of Spin Splittings and Optimization of the Rashba Coefficient in Asymmetric AlSb/InAs/GaSb Heterostructures

We use the Effective Bond Orbital Model (EBOM) method to examine the spin splitting due to the Rashba effect in AlSb/InAs/GaSb asymmetric heterostructures. We have explored different thicknesses of the constituent materials and we have found for the resulting two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in the optimized structure a theoretical value of the Rashba constant α R = 51 × 10−10 eV·cm. This is, to our knowledge, the largest predicted value for this parameter. We provide an intuitive explanation for the behavior of the spins in the 2DEG. Finally, we study the effect of wide layers on the Rashba coefficient.
Effects of reformed fuel on dual-fuel combustion particulate morphology:

Advancements in catalytic reforming have demonstrated the ability to generate syngas (a mixture of CO and hydrogen) from a single hydrocarbon stream. This syngas mixture can then be used to replace...
Linear–quadratic optimal steady state controllers for engineering students and practicing engineers:

This paper is an overview of fundamental linear–quadratic optimal control techniques used for linear dynamic systems. The presentation is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students and practi...
Keratoconus and corneal morphology in patients with Down syndrome at a pediatric hospital.

Purpose To evaluate patients with Down syndrome for keratoconus and corneal abnormalities using Scheimpflug imaging (Pentacam HR) in a pediatric setting. Methods The Pentacam scans of patients with Down syndrome seen at Children's Hospital Colorado Ophthalmology Department were reviewed retrospectively, and the following data were collected: keratometry values, pachymetry values, components of the Belin ABCD Grading System, the Belin/Ambrosio enhanced ectasia display D value, and topometric indices, including ISV, IVA, and KI. Subjective interpretation was used to classify scans as normal, abnormal, keratoconus suspect, and definite keratoconus. Results A total of 56 eyes of 31 patients aged 4-24 years (mean, 12.4) were included. The average value for K1 was 44.95 ± 1.73 D (range, 40.90-49.3 D); for K2, 46.87 ± 2.16 D (range, 42.50-51.80 D); for Kmax, 48.20 ± 3.11 D (range, 43-61.7 D); and for Kmean, 45.81 ± 1.85 D (range, 41.7-50.35 D). Mean pachymetry at the thinnest point was 509 ± 44.24 μm (range, 410-612 μm) and at the apex was 519 ± 44.24 μm (range, 412-646 μm). The mean D value was 2.08 ± 1.57 (range, 0.08-9.71). There were 10 patients (32%) with either keratoconus suspect or definite keratoconus in at least one eye. Conclusions We found a high frequency of keratoconus and keratoconus suspect in pediatric and young adult patients with Down syndrome. The corneas in this population had steeper K values and thinner pachymetry values compared to previously reported controls.
The growth of veterinary forensics: Investigation of deceased animals in the community

Veterinary forensics is a rapidly growing field, and it is recognized that there is a connection between animal abuse and other types of interpersonal violence (Lockwood and Arkow 2016). While all states have misdemeanor and felony statues for animal abuse, unfortunately, not all cases of animal abuse are reported to the authorities or investigated for a multitude of reasons. Some of these reasons include the lack of mandatory reporting laws in all states, an inability to perform a forensic postmortem examination in all suspicious death cases, lack of training on the identification and documentation of suspected animal abuse, and financial constraints. While it is possible to mitigate some limitations on the local level in some communities, much improvement is needed on the state and national scale.
Overcoming biological barriers to improve solid tumor immunotherapy.

Cancer immunotherapy has been at the forefront of therapeutic interventions for many different tumor types over the last decade. While the discovery of immunotherapeutics continues to occur at an accelerated rate, their translation is often hindered by a lack of strategies to deliver them specifically into solid tumors. Accordingly, significant scientific efforts have been dedicated to understanding the underlying mechanisms that govern their delivery into tumors and the subsequent immune modulation. In this review, we aim to summarize the efforts focused on overcoming tumor-associated biological barriers and enhancing the potency of immunotherapy. We summarize the current understanding of biological barriers that limit the entry of intravascularly administered immunotherapies into the tumors, in vitro techniques developed to investigate the underlying transport processes, and delivery strategies developed to overcome the barriers. Overall, we aim to provide the reader with a framework that guides the rational development of technologies for improved solid tumor immunotherapy.
Percutaneous endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair with monitored anesthesia care decreases operative time but not pulmonary complications.

ObjectivesTo report our experience and compare the results of percutaneous endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (PEVAR) performed under monitored anesthesia care (MAC) to PEVAR under general anesthe...
Paris Bakery: Implementing Omnichannel Strategy in the Consumer Value Chain:

Paris Bakery, established in 2013, was one of the leading bakery food chains in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. In January 2019, the founder of the Paris Bakery, Mr. Jaynarayan Pujapanda, decided to use techn...
Cyber Racism Toward Black Athletes: A Critical Race Analysis of TexAgs.com Online Brand Community

While athletes in the 21st century have strategically leveraged technology and social media to disseminate their powerful truths (e.g., narratives) and to use as tools for organization, empowerment...
An Asymptotic Cost Model for Autoscheduling Sparse Tensor Programs.

While loop reordering and fusion can make big impacts on the constant-factor performance of dense tensor programs, the effects on sparse tensor programs are asymptotic, often leading to orders of magnitude performance differences in practice. Sparse tensors also introduce a choice of compressed storage formats that can have asymptotic effects. Research into sparse tensor compilers has led to simplified languages that express these tradeoffs, but the user is expected to provide a schedule that makes the decisions. This is challenging because schedulers must anticipate the interaction between sparse formats, loop structure, potential sparsity patterns, and the compiler itself. Automating this decision making process stands to finally make sparse tensor compilers accessible to end users. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first automatic asymptotic scheduler for sparse tensor programs. We provide an approach to abstractly represent the asymptotic cost of schedules and to choose between them. We narrow down the search space to a manageably small "Pareto frontier" of asymptotically undominated kernels. We test our approach by compiling these kernels with the TACO sparse tensor compiler and comparing them with those generated with the default TACO schedules. Our results show that our approach reduces the scheduling space by orders of magnitude and that the generated kernels perform asymptotically better than those generated using the default schedules.
Organization and Access to the Chinese Books/CDs/DVDs Donated by Hanban to the Confucius Institutes in the United States

Confucius Institutes in the United States and in the world have been established since 2004. There are over 96 Confucius Institutes in the US and over 480 in 6 continents in the world as of 2015. One of the programs for each Confucius Institute is the donation of books/CDs/DVDs from Hanban, i.e., the Confucius Institute Headquarters. Organization and access to these donated resources in each Confucius Institute has become either a natural addition to the institutional library or presented a professional challenge. This research explores the practices of organization and access to these resources in each Confucius Institute and its relationship with the institutional library in the United Stated.
Lumped, inductorless oscillators: how far can they go? [phase noise reduction limit]

The fundamental question of how much we can ultimately reduce the phase noise of a lumped, inductorless oscillator through careful design is addressed and it is shown that the fluctuation dissipation theorem of thermodynamics imposes a lower limit on the phase noise. An analytical formulation of this limit is presented and it is shown that the phase noise of ring oscillators with long-channel MOS devices is closer to this limit compared to that of the relaxation oscillators or ring oscillators with short channel MOS devices.
Beams Columns and Rods of Composite Materials

A beam, column or rod is a long thin structural component of width b, height h and length L, where b/L ≪ and h/L ≪ 1, as shown in Figure 4.1
Waveguide Fabrication Techniques

In Chap. 3, the theoretical considerations relevant to various types of waveguides were discussed. In every case, waveguiding depended on the difference in the index of refraction between the waveguiding region and the surrounding media. A great many techniques have been devised for producing that required index difference. Each method has particular advantages and disadvantages, and no single method can be said to be clearly superior. The choice of a specific technique of waveguide fabrication depends on the desired application, and on the facilities available. In this Chapter, various methods of waveguide fabrication are reviewed, and their inherent features are discussed.
Review of "the Twelfth West Coast Retrovirus Meeting" and "the Twenty-third Annual Symposium on Nonhuman Primate Models for AIDS".

Two recent meetings held on the west coast of the USA highlighted current work being done in the field of retrovirology and AIDS. The meetings, "The Twelfth West Coast Retrovirus Meeting" (Palm Springs CA; October 6–8, 2005), and the "Twenty-third Annual Symposium on Nonhuman Primate Models for AIDS" (Portland OR; September 21–24) covered a broad range of topics. The highlights covered here are not meant to be inclusive but reflect presentations of interest in the identification and development of new HIV therapies and the role played by animal models in their development.
Review of Wheat: Chemistry and Technology

It has been over 20 years since the 3rd edition of Wheat: Chemistry and Technology was published. The first edition was edited by Isadore Hlynka in 1964, the second by Yeshajahu Pomeranz and Hlynka...
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo: Student of Galileo, Teacher of Spinoza

The surviving works of Spinoza1 make no mention of Galileo, a somewhat surprising fact on several accounts. First, Spinoza was a lens grinder – that is, not an ordinary maker of spectacles, but of ...
EU Implementation of Basel III in the Shadow of Euro Crisis

This article examines the implementation path of Basel III reforms within the European Union (“EU”). Basel III is the most recent version of the Basel global standards for bank regulation, adopted in response to the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Several EU Member States, as well as the EU Commission and the European Central Bank, participated in the design of the Basel III reforms. The greater part of these reforms is packaged in the so-called Fourth Capital Requirements Directive and Regulation, or CRD IV. It is the European sovereign debt crisis, and not the 2007/2008 financial meltdown, which dominated the mind of the EU legislator — and as a result European faithfulness to Basel III has attenuated. This article identifies two species of EU departures from Basel III: (1) treating a Basel III norm as a fixed obligation and not as a minimum standard; and (2) selective adoption of Basel III norms (Basel a la carte). It then discusses the future of Basel III in the EU as the Eurozone approaches a banking union.
Towards a High-Performance Implementation of MPI-IO on Top of GPFS

MPI-IO/GPFS is a prototype implementation of the I/O chapter of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) 2 standard. It uses the IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) as the underlying file system. This paper describes the features of this prototype which support its high performance. The use of hints allows tailoring the use of the file system to the application needs.
Electrophoretic Heterogeneity of Bacterial Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate-Specific Isocitrate Dehydrogenases

The specific activities of the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-dependent isocitrate dehydrogenase in crude cell-free extracts of 15 different microorganisms, grown aerobically in simple mineral salts media containing glucose as the sole carbon source, ranged from a maximum of 0.820 in Pseudomonas aeruginosa to a minimum of 0.145 in Thiobacillus novellus. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis indicated that the bacterial species studied contained electrophoretically distinct proteins exhibiting isocitrate dehydrogenase activity. The electrophoretic mobilities, as well as the differences in stability of the enzyme observed in this study, indicate that the physical and chemical properties of isocitrate dehydrogenase may differ widely between bacterial species.
Narrow sea crossings present major obstacles to migrating Griffon Vultures Gyps fulvus

The flight behaviour of Griffon Vultures Gyps fulvus was studied at a major migration bottleneck, the Strait of Gibraltar in southernmost Spain, during the autumns of 2004 to 2007. The 14-km-wide sea channel significantly impeded the southern migration of the species into Africa, with many birds attempting repeated passage for weeks before crossing, and others not crossing at all and overwintering in Southern Spain. Water-crossing attempts were restricted to times between 11:00 and 14:00 h on days with light or variable winds, or on days with strong winds from the north or west. No crossing attempts were made on days with strong winds from the south or east. Vultures attempted to cross the Strait in large flocks and never attempted to do so alone. Although 29% of the birds soared during crossing attempts, at least until they flew beyond visible range of approximately 4 km, most engaged in considerable flapping flight when attempting to cross. Overall, birds flying over water flapped more than 10 times as frequently as those flying over land prior to crossing attempts. Vultures did not flap continuously, but intermittently in brief bouts of flapping interspersed with periods of gliding or soaring flight. The number of flaps per bout over water was significantly greater than the number of flaps per bout over land. Vultures flying over water that flapped at rates of 20 flaps or more per minute typically aborted attempted crossings and returned to Spain in intermittent flapping and gliding flight. There are numerous reports of Vultures falling into the Strait and drowning while attempting to cross, as well as reports of returning Vultures collapsing on the beach having reached Spain in spring (Barrios Partida 2006). Our observations indicate that passage of Griffon Vultures at the Strait of Gibraltar is limited by the species’ over-water flapping-flight abilities, including its inability to flap continuously for even short periods of time. We suggest that even relatively short sea crossings represent significant obstacles to migrating Vultures and discuss the implications of this limitation on the distribution and abundance of the species.
Changes in the lung microbiome following lung transplantation include the emergence of two distinct Pseudomonas species with distinct clinical associations.

Abstract Background:Multiple independent culture-based studies have identified the presence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa inrespiratory samples as a positive risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS). Yet, culture-independentmicrobiological techniques have identified a negative association between Pseudomonas species and BOS. Our objectivewas to investigate whether there may be a unifying explanation for these apparently dichotomous results.Methods:We performed bronchoscopies with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) on lung transplant recipients (46 procedures in33 patients) and 26 non-transplant control subjects. We analyzed bacterial communities in the BAL fluid using qPCR andpyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons and compared the culture-independent data with the clinical metadata andculture results from these subjects.Findings:Route of bronchoscopy (via nose or via mouth) was not associated with changes in BAL microbiota (p=0.90).Among the subjects with positive Pseudomonas bacterial culture, P. aeruginosa was also identified by culture-independentmethods. In contrast, a distinct Pseudomonas species, P. fluorescens, was often identified in asymptomatic transplantsubjects by pyrosequencing but not detected via standard bacterial culture. The subject populations harboring these twodistinct pseudomonads differed significantly with respect to associated symptoms, BAL neutrophilia, bacterial DNA burdenand microbial diversity. Despite notable differences in culturability, a global database search of UM Hospital ClinicalMicrobiology Laboratory records indicated that P. fluorescens is commonly isolated from respiratory specimens.Interpretation:We have reported for the first time that two prominent and distinct Pseudomonas species (P. fluorescens andP. aeruginosa) exist within the post-transplant lung microbiome, each with unique genomic and microbiologic features andwidely divergent clinical associations, including presence during acute infection.
The effect of flavor preexposure upon the acquisition and retention of poison-based taste aversions in deer mice: latent inhibition or partial reinforcement?

An investigation was made of the effects of prior familiarization with sucrose on the acquisition and extinction of LiCl-induced aversions to sucrose by mice of the genus Peromyscus. As in previous studies on other species, it was found that flavor familiarization inhibits the formation of learned taste aversions. However, in contrast to some reports on other species, it was demonstrated that for Peromyscus familiarization does not accelerate, but instead retards, the extinction of taste aversions. It was noted that (a) the contrasting extinction results reported for other species may be confounded with masked acquisition effects, (b) the latent inhibition effect is often not obtained with fewer than 20 preexposures, yet the flavor-preexposure effect has been demonstrated with as few as one preexposure, (c) the flavor-preexposure schedule is logically and operationally equivalent to a short partial-reinforcement schedule, and (d) both the acquisition and extinction effects shown by Peromyscus are consistent with a partial-reinforcement interpretation. Therefore, it was suggested that future analysis of the phenomenon might profitably consider the possibility that the flavor-preexposure effect upon taste-aversion learning may be a case of partial reinforcement.