cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Management of Primary and Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma by Transcatheter Embolization With Iodine 125

The long-term results of the management of metastatic renal cell carcinoma by a radioactive interstitial implant seated by a transcatheter embolization technique were evaluated in 85 patients at risk at 2 years and 37 at 5 years. The 2-year survival rate was 33% and the 5-year survival rate was 32%. Patients with isolated skeletal metastases showed the best survival rate (2-year survival rate, 69%; 5-year survival rate, 60%). Isolated pulmonary, other parenchymal, and central nervous system (CNS) metastases showed a lower 2-year survival rate of 15%. Regardless of the site of metastases and the size of the primary, histologic grade appeared to have a substantial impact on the survival of our patients. The beneficial results of interstitial radiation therapy are attributed to reduction of tumor burden and possibly the stimulation of the host immune response that may initiate remission. The noticeably better results in patients with osseous metastases are attributed to the resolute treatment of all osseous metastases by additional interstitial iodine 125 (125I) infarct implants. Conversely, the poor results in patients with CNS and other parenchymal metastases may be based on the inability to treat such metastases with 125I interstitial infarct implants. In addition to clinical observations of weight gain and the cessation of pain and hematuria if present, remissions are heralded by normalization of the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, disappearance of tumor markers if present, and rise of beta interferon levels. The technique is advocated for the management of inoperable renal cell carcinoma with distant metastases.
Complications After Pediatric ACL Reconstruction: A Meta-analysis:

Objectives:There are a variety of surgical techniques used for pediatric ACL reconstruction. With a majority of studies being small case series, there is limited data on the outcomes of surgery, fr...
What Makes a Political Theory Political? A Comment on Waldron:

This article considers Jeremy Waldron’s recent contribution to a growing conversation about how to make political theory and philosophy more responsive to real politics—Political Political Theory—i...
Excluded generation: the growing challenges of labor market insertion for Egyptian youth

Youth in Egypt hold rising aspirations for their adult lives, yet face an increasingly uncertain and protracted transition from school to work and thus into adulthood. This paper investigates how l...
Members of the Candidate Phyla Radiation are functionally differentiated by carbon- and nitrogen-cycling capabilities

The Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR) is a recently described expansion of the tree of life that represents more than 15% of all bacterial diversity and potentially contains over 70 different phyla. Despite this broad phylogenetic variation, these microorganisms appear to feature little functional diversity, with members generally characterized as obligate fermenters. Additionally, much of the data describing CPR phyla has been generated from a limited number of environments, constraining our knowledge of their functional roles and biogeographical distribution. To expand our understanding of subsurface CPR microorganisms, we sampled four separate groundwater wells over 2 years across three Ohio counties. Samples were analyzed using 16S rRNA gene amplicon and shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Amplicon results indicated that CPR members comprised between 2 and 20% of the microbial communities with relative abundances stable through time in Athens and Greene samples but dynamic in Licking groundwater. Shotgun metagenomic analyses generated 71 putative CPR genomes, representing roughly 32 known phyla and 2 putative new phyla, Candidatus Brownbacteria and Candidatus Hugbacteria. While these genomes largely mirrored metabolic characteristics of known CPR members, some features were previously uncharacterized. For instance, nitrite reductase, encoded by nirK, was found in four of our Parcubacteria genomes and multiple CPR genomes from other studies, indicating a potentially undescribed role for these microorganisms in denitrification. Additionally, glycoside hydrolase (GH) family profiles for our 71 genomes and over 2000 other CPR genomes were analyzed to characterize their carbon-processing potential. Although common trends were present throughout the radiation, differences highlighted potential mechanisms that could allow microorganisms across the CPR to occupy various subsurface niches. For example, members of the Microgenomates superphylum appear to potentially degrade a wider range of carbon substrates than other CPR phyla. CPR members are present across a range of environments and often constitute a significant fraction of the microbial population in groundwater systems, particularly. Further sampling of such environments will resolve this portion of the tree of life at finer taxonomic levels, which is essential to solidify functional differences between members that populate this phylogenetically broad region of the tree of life.
Preferential trade agreements and global value chains : theory, evidence, and open questions

Preferential trade agreements today are more numerous and deeper than they were a quarter century ago. Do deep agreements promote countries' integration into global value chains? What are the economic mechanisms? How do countries choose their trade agreement partners? Would the undoing of deep agreements disrupt global value chains? What is the outlook for trade agreements and global value chains going forward? This paper reviews the small but growing literature on the role of deep agreements as the institutional underpinnings of global value chains. It discusses the available evidence and theoretical arguments, providing directions for future research in this area.
Natural resource ownership, financial gains, and governance: The case of unconventional gas development in the UK and the US

Abstract Who owns an area's natural resources affects the local financial gains from extraction and participation in resource governance. We develop a typology of ownership regimes using two dimensions of ownership, private versus public and local versus absentee, and apply it to unconventional natural gas development in the United Kingdom (UK) and the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. We find that local residents in Pennsylvania own 53% of the acreage leased for development and capture an estimated 8.5% of the value of production of the typical well, more than double what is expected from a well in the UK's public-absentee regime despite revenue-sharing policies. The dollar amount of local payments is also larger in Pennsylvania, with the difference reflecting policies and institutions, not differences in the value of production. The Pennsylvania case provides a benchmark for public-absentee owners considering policies to direct payments to communities hosting extraction: it gives the local payments corresponding to the case where subsurface owners voluntarily negotiate lease terms with energy firms and roughly half of ownership revenues accrue locally.
When analogies harm: The effects of analogies on metacomprehension

Abstract The main goal of the present research was to test whether the presence of analogies would affect the relative accuracy of metacognitive judgments about learning from expository science texts, and whether any effect would depend on the type of cues that readers used as the basis for their judgments of comprehension. In a series of experiments, students read texts that either contained or did not contain analogies; were asked to judge how well they understood each text; took comprehension tests for each topic; and were asked to self-report the basis for their judgments. Relative metacomprehension accuracy was computed as the intra-individual correlation between judgments and test performance. Results showed that the presence of analogies can lead to poor relative metacomprehension accuracy for students who fail to use situation-model-based cues to judge their understanding of text.
DeepPhe: A Natural Language Processing System for Extracting Cancer Phenotypes from Clinical Records

Precise phenotype information is needed to understand the effects of genetic and epigenetic changes on tumor behavior and responsiveness. Extraction and representation of cancer phenotypes is currently mostly performed manually, making it difficult to correlate phenotypic data to genomic data. In addition, genomic data are being produced at an increasingly faster pace, exacerbating the problem. The DeepPhe software enables automated extraction of detailed phenotype information from electronic medical records of cancer patients. The system implements advanced Natural Language Processing and knowledge engineering methods within a flexible modular architecture, and was evaluated using a manually annotated dataset of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center breast cancer patients. The resulting platform provides critical and missing computational methods for computational phenotyping. Working in tandem with advanced analysis of high-throughput sequencing, these approaches will further accelerate the transition to precision cancer treatment. Cancer Res; 77(21); e115–8. ©2017 AACR.
Asymptotically Efficient Lattice-Based Digital Signatures

We present a general framework that converts certain types of linear collision-resistant hash functions into one-time signatures. Our generic construction can be instantiated based on both general and ideal (e.g., cyclic) lattices, and the resulting signature schemes are provably secure based on the worst-case hardness of approximating the shortest vector (and other standard lattice problems) in the corresponding class of lattices to within a polynomial factor. When instantiated with ideal lattices, the time complexity of the signing and verification algorithms, as well as key and signature size, is almost linear (up to poly-logarithmic factors) in the dimension n of the underlying lattice. Since no sub-exponential (in n) time algorithm is known to solve lattice problems in the worst case, even when restricted to ideal lattices, our construction gives a digital signature scheme with an essentially optimal performance/security trade-off.
Increasing return response to changes in risk

Risk aversion theory is based on individuals’ choice among risky assets with expected utility in its foundation. It is about investor behavior (i.e. investor choice), under normal circumstances, towards assets with various levels of risk. A positive and marginally diminishing relationship between risk and return exists. This study is about investor behavior as it relates to their response (not choice) to risk. We present an argument and supporting evidence that investors’ return response to risk is increasing in level of risk. Thus, investor behavior is subject to change and level of risk is a determinant of such change. We also explain the negative time-series correlation between risk and return.
Measuring the World Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance

Indicators are rapidly multiplying as tools for assessing and promoting a variety of social justice and reform strategies around the world. There are rule of law indicators, indicators of violence against women, and indicators of economic development, among many others. Indicators are widely used at the national level and are increasingly important in global governance. There are increasing demands for “evidence-based” funding for non-governmental organizations and that the results of civil society organizations to be quantifiable and measurable. The reliance on simplified numerical representations of complex phenomena began in strategies of national governance and economic analysis and has recently migrated to the regulation of non-governmental organizations and human rights. The turn to indicators in the field of global governance introduces a new form of knowledge production with implications for relations of power between rich and poor nations and governments and civil society. The deployment of statistical measures tends to replace political debate with technical expertise. The growing reliance on indicators provides an example of the dissemination of the corporate form of thinking and governance into broader social spheres.
Estimation of the level of blood alcohol from analysis of breath. II. Use of rebreathed air.

Alcohol analyses were conducted with rebreathed air, finger-tip capillary blood, and cubital-vein blood from 31 human subjects, with the three samples taken almost simultaneously 1, 2, and 3 hours after ingestion of whisky. Details of the study are described and the results are discussed. It was found that during the first 70 minutes after drinking, the alcohol level of capillary blood averaged 7.5 % above that of venous blood, and was 15 to 22 % higher in 7 of the 34 pairs of samples. Later samples showed no significant difference between blood from these two sources. It is noted that for estimating blood alcohol level, the rebreathed air method is definitely an improvement over Drunkometer methods. With the rebreathed air procedure, a determination of breath carbon dioxide is unnecessary.
Suspensions Suspended: Do Changes to High School Suspension Policies Change Suspension Rates?

ABSTRACTIn recent years, the frequent use of suspensions and the racial disparities in their application, particularly for nonviolent behaviors, has created a maelstrom of public pressure for schools to adjust their suspension practices. In an era of increasing institutional accountability for schools, there is evidence that schools may be responsive to policy shifts when they are under institutional pressure to do so. Several school districts have recently revised their out-of-school suspension policies, but researchers know little about (a) if these changes in policy actually change students’ odds of suspension and (b) if so, how these changes might shift racial disproportionality in suspensions. This analysis examines the recent removal of suspensions for low-level infractions from the formal school discipline policy of a large, urban district. I use student-level data to compare the frequency and disproportionality of suspensions before and after the discipline code change. Findings suggest that altho...
SmartWater synergy with chemical EOR: Effects on polymer injectivity, retention and acceleration

Abstract The synergy between various enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes has always been raised as a potential optimization route for achieving a more economic and effective EOR application. In previous work, beside the established positive impact of SmartWater on polymer rheology, we have demonstrated polymer positive impact on SmartWater effects through measurements of surface potential and contact angles. The results were also supported by forced oil-displacement experiments. In this work, we further investigate this SmartWater/Polymer synergy focusing on the possible impact of SmartWater on polymer floods specifically polymer injectivity, retention and acceleration. For this purpose, a set of thoroughly designed single-phase displacement experiments were performed at reservoir conditions. Many of the observed effects of SmartWater on polymer injectivity and transport can be attributed to polymer coil expansion in the lower-salinity SmartWater. The results mainly demonstrate that SmartWater has: (1) a slight negative impact on both polymer and chase water injectivity, (2) a positive impact on polymer retention, and (3) a negligible impact on polymer, hence oil bank, acceleration. Given the minor negative impact on injectivity, we conclude that SmartWater/Polymer flooding exhibits an overall favorable synergy that reduces chemical consumption, improves sweep, and enhance recovery.
Nuclear receptor agonist-driven modification of inflammation and amyloid pathology enhances and sustains cognitive improvements in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a highly prevalent neurodegenerative disorder characterized by pathological hallmarks of beta-amyloid plaque deposits, tau pathology, inflammation, and cognitive decline. Treatment remains a clinical obstacle due to lack of effective therapeutics. Agonists targeting nuclear receptors, such as bexarotene, reversed cognitive deficits regardless of treatment duration and age in murine models of AD. While bexarotene demonstrated marked efficacy in decreasing plaque levels following short-term treatment, prolonged treatment did not modulate plaque burden. This suggested that plaques might reform in mice treated chronically with bexarotene and that cessation of bexarotene treatment before plaques reform might alter amyloid pathology, inflammation, and cognition in AD mice. We utilized one-year-old APP/PS1 mice that were divided into two groups. We treated one group of mice for 2 weeks with bexarotene. The other group of mice was treated for 2 weeks with bexarotene followed by withdrawal of drug treatment for an additional 2 weeks. Cognition was evaluated using the novel-object recognition test either at the end of bexarotene treatment or the end of the withdrawal period. We then analyzed amyloid pathology and microgliosis at the conclusion of the study in both groups. Bexarotene treatment enhanced cognition in APP/PS1 mice similar to previous findings. Strikingly, we observed sustained cognitive improvements in mice in which bexarotene treatment was discontinued for 2 weeks. We observed a sustained reduction in microgliosis and plaque burden following drug withdrawal exclusively in the hippocampus. Our findings demonstrate that bexarotene selectively modifies aspects of neuroinflammation in a region-specific manner to reverse hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits in AD mice and may provide insight to inform future studies with nuclear receptor agonists.
Do special economic zones induce developmental spillovers? Evidence from India’s states

Abstract Do special economic zones induce local development? Research drawing on the case of China’s special economic zones suggests that subnational polities can target the location of export zones in order to catalyze local and regional socioeconomic development. Since 2006, a number of Indian states have pushed forward similar zones in the face of accusations of land grabbing, arguing that the zones will be engines for improvement in exports, employment, and infrastructure. I argue that local development spillovers are an important, albeit previously understudied, dimension by which to evaluate the effects of special economic zones. I then present the first systematic analysis of the developmental effects of India’s SEZs, leveraging an original dataset on their locations, together with 2001 and 2011 census data containing a host of social and economic developmental variables. The findings show these SEZs have failed to bring about local socioeconomic development. To explain this absence of developmental spillovers, I provide a theoretical framework based on the crucial role of political economy incentive structures facing local politicians. I outline the mechanism through which Indian state politicians use state-owned development corporations for rent capture, undermining the potential effectiveness of SEZs and leading to their developmental failures. The combination of available means for extracting rents and the limited political constraints on such rent extraction leads to a lack of developmental spillovers. This framework can also help to explain the difference in the effects of SEZs in India and in China. These findings have theoretical importance for understanding the conditions under which subnational polities can use export zones and other export policies to catalyze development, and practical implications for understanding the mixed pattern of SEZ success across the world.
Statistical evidence and the problem of robust litigation

We propose a new model of disclosure, interpretation, and management of hard evidence in the context of litigation and similar applications. A litigant has private information and may also possess hard evidence that can be disclosed to a fact‐finder, who interprets the evidence and decides a finding in the case. We identify conditions under which hard evidence generates value that is robust to the scope of rational reasoning and behavior. These fail if the litigant's private information is sufficiently strong relative to the “face‐value signal” of evidence, and then hard evidence may be misleading. Rules that exclude some relevant hard evidence can be justified.
A Review of Community Smoke Exposure from Wildfire Compared to Prescribed Fire in the United States

Prescribed fire, intentionally ignited low-intensity fires, and managed wildfires—wildfires that are allowed to burn for land management benefit—could be used as a land management tool to create forests that are resilient to wildland fire. This could lead to fewer large catastrophic wildfires in the future. However, we must consider the public health impacts of the smoke that is emitted from wildland and prescribed fire. The objective of this synthesis is to examine the differences in ambient community-level exposures to particulate matter (PM2.5) from smoke in the United States in relation to two smoke exposure scenarios—wildfire fire and prescribed fire. A systematic search was conducted to identify scientific papers to be included in this review. The Web of Science Core Collection and PubMed, for scientific papers, and Google Scholar were used to identify any grey literature or reports to be included in this review. Sixteen studies that examined particulate matter exposure from smoke were identified for this synthesis—nine wildland fire studies and seven prescribed fire studies. PM2.5 concentrations from wildfire smoke were found to be significantly lower than reported PM2.5 concentrations from prescribed fire smoke. Wildfire studies focused on assessing air quality impacts to communities that were nearby fires and urban centers that were far from wildfires. However, the prescribed fire studies used air monitoring methods that focused on characterizing exposures and emissions directly from, and next to, the burns. This review highlights a need for a better understanding of wildfire smoke impact over the landscape. It is essential for properly assessing population exposure to smoke from different fire types.
Cyclic locking and memristor-based obfuscation against CycSAT and inside foundry attacks

The high cost of IC design has made chip protection one of the first priorities of the semiconductor industry. Although there is a common impression that combinational circuits must be designed without any cycles, circuits with cycles can be combinational as well. Such cyclic circuits can be used to reliably lock ICs. Moreover, since memristor is compatible with CMOS structure, it is possible to efficiently obfuscate cyclic circuits using polymorphic memristor-CMOS gates. In this case, the layouts of the circuits with different functionalities look exactly identical, making it impossible even for an inside foundry attacker to distinguish the defined functionality of an IC by looking at its layout. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive chip protection method based on cyclic locking and polymorphic memristor-CMOS obfuscation. The robustness against state-of-the-art key-pruning attacks is demonstrated and the overhead of the polymorphic gates is investigated.
Multimode interference dynamic light scattering

We present a robust implementation of a fiber-based, single-mode, common-path interferometer assisted by multimode interference effects in which light is efficiently collected from larger coherent regions while maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio.
Unions and Inequality over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data

It is well-documented that, since at least the early twentieth century, U.S. income inequality has varied inversely with union density. But moving beyond this aggregate relationship has proven difficult, in part because of the absence of micro-level data on union membership prior to 1973. We develop a new source of micro-data on union membership, opinion polls primarily from Gallup (N â 980,000), to look at the effects of unions on inequality from 1936 to the present. First, we present a new time series of household union membership from this period. Second, we use these data to show that, throughout this period, union density is inversely correlated with the relative skill of union members. When density was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, union members were relatively less-skilled, whereas today and in the pre-World War II period, union members are equally skilled as non-members. Third, we estimate union household income premiums over this same period, finding that despite large changes in union density and selection, the premium holds steady, at roughly 15-20 log points, over the past eighty years. Finally, we present a number of direct results that, across a variety of identifying assumptions, suggest unions have had a significant, equalizing effect on the income distribution over our long sample period.
Proof engineering in the large: formal verification of Pentium®4 floating-point divider

We examine the challenges presented by large-scale formal verification of industrial-size circuits, based on our experiences in verifying the class of all micro-operations executing on the floating-point division and square root unit of the Intel IA-32 Pentium®4 microprocessor. The verification methodology is based on combining human-guided mechanised theorem-proving with low-level steps verified by fully automated model-checking. A key observation in the work is the need to explicitly address the issues of proof design and proof engineering, i.e., the process of creating proofs and the craft of structuring and formulating them, as concerns on their own right.
A Deep Generative Model of Vowel Formant Typology

What makes some types of languages more probable than others? For instance, we know that almost all spoken languages contain the vowel phoneme /i/; why should that be? The field of linguistic typology seeks to answer these questions and, thereby, divine the mechanisms that underlie human language. In our work, we tackle the problem of vowel system typology, i.e., we propose a generative probability model of which vowels a language contains. In contrast to previous work, we work directly with the acoustic information—the first two formant values—rather than modeling discrete sets of symbols from the international phonetic alphabet. We develop a novel generative probability model and report results on over 200 languages.
Economic calculation and the organization of markets

Austrian economists have had mostly mixed feelings about transaction costs-based theories of the organization of economic activities. We argue that the two approaches, the Austrian and the Transaction costs, would gain from integrating their most important insights. In particular, we argue that both transaction costs and economic calculation are necessary analytical tools for a complete theory of the organization of markets. In a world without transaction cost, there would be no calculation problem because there would be no problem of the organization of markets. Only when transaction costs are positive will the scope of economic calculation be limited. At the same time, the optimal response to given transaction costs is itself the result of what we refer to as “secondary calculation.”
Calcium binding to a remote site can replace magnesium as cofactor for mitochondrial Hsp90 (TRAP1) ATPase activity

The Hsp90 molecular chaperones are ATP-dependent enzymes that maintain protein homeostasis and regulate many essential cellular processes. Higher eukaryotes have organelle-specific Hsp90 paralogs that are adapted to each subcellular environment. The mitochondrial Hsp90, TNF receptor–associated protein 1 (TRAP1), supports the folding and activity of electron transport components and is increasingly appreciated as a critical player in mitochondrial signaling. Calcium plays a well-known and important regulatory role in mitochondria where it can accumulate to much higher concentrations than in the cytoplasm. Surprisingly, we found here that calcium can replace magnesium, the essential enzymatic cofactor, to support TRAP1 ATPase activity. Anomalous X-ray diffraction experiments revealed a calcium-binding site within the TRAP1 nucleotide-binding pocket located near the ATP α-phosphate and completely distinct from the magnesium-binding site adjacent to the β- and γ-phosphates. In the presence of magnesium, ATP hydrolysis by TRAP1, as with other Hsp90s, was noncooperative, whereas calcium binding resulted in cooperative hydrolysis by the two protomers within the Hsp90 dimer. The structural data suggested a mechanism for this cooperative behavior. Because of the cooperativity, at high ATP concentrations, ATPase activity was higher with calcium, whereas the converse was observed at low ATP concentrations. Integrating these observations, we propose a model in which the divalent cation choice can control switching between noncooperative and cooperative TRAP1 ATPase mechanisms in response to varying ATP concentrations. This switching may facilitate coordination between cellular energetics, mitochondrial signaling, and protein homeostasis via alterations in the TRAP1 ATP-driven cycle and its consequent effects on different mitochondrial clients.
Condom Availability Programs in Schools: A Review of the Literature:

Objective:This review synthesizes findings from the peer-reviewed evaluation literature on condom availability programs (CAPs) in secondary schools.Data Source:Peer-reviewed evaluation literature i...
Coronary Sinus Lead Positioning

Although cardiac resynchronization therapy improves morbidity and mortality in patients with cardiomyopathy, heart failure, and electrical dyssynchrony, the rate of nonresponders using standard indications and implant techniques is still high. Optimal coronary sinus lead positioning is important to increase the chance of successful resynchronization. Patient factors such as cause of heart failure, type of dyssynchrony, scar burden, coronary sinus anatomy, and phrenic nerve capture may affect the efficacy of the therapy. Several modalities are under investigation. Alternative left ventricular lead implantation strategies are occasionally required when the transvenous route is not feasible or would result in a suboptimal lead position.
A Fixed-Point Model for Semi-Persistent Scheduling of Vehicular Safety Messages

In this paper, we focus on the performance analysis of a semi-persistent scheduling scheme for vehicular safety communications, motivated by the Mode 4 medium access control protocol in 3GPP Release 14 for Cellular-V2X. An analytical model is built and a fixed point method is used to calculate the collision probability and average delay in both fully connected and partially connected cases under the assumption of perfect PHY performance. We use Monte Carlo simulation to verify the results obtained in the analytical model. The simulation results show that our analytical model can give a good estimation of the collision probability and average delay. We verify that a trade-off between delay and collision probability can be achieved with a flexible resource block selection. Monte Carlo simulation results show that with the flexible resource selection scheme average delay can be shortened significantly with only a small compromise in collision probability.
Assessing outpatient follow-up care compliance, complications, and sequelae in children hospitalized for isolated traumatic abdominal injuries.

Abstract Background Currently there is limited knowledge on compliance with follow-up care in pediatric patients after abdominal trauma. The Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC) is a large regional health information exchange with both structured clinical data (e.g., diagnosis codes) and unstructured data (e.g., provider notes). The objective of this study is to determine if regional health information exchanges can be used to evaluate whether patients receive all follow-up care recommended by providers. Methods We identified 61 patients treated at a Pediatric Level I Trauma Center who were admitted for isolated abdominal injuries. We analyzed medical records for two years following initial hospital discharge for injury using the INPC. The encounters were classified by the type of encounter: outpatient, emergency department, unplanned readmission, surgery, imaging studies, and inpatient admission; then further categorized into injury- and non-injury-related care, based on provider notes. We determined compliance with follow-up care instructions given at discharge and subsequent outpatient visits, as well as the prevalence of complications and sequelae. Results After reviewing patient records, we found that 78.7% of patients received all recommended follow-up care, 6.6% received partial follow-up care, and 11.5% did not receive follow-up care. We found that 4.9% of patients developed complications after abdominal trauma and 9.8% developed sequelae in the two years following their initial hospitalization. Conclusions Our findings suggest that health information exchanges such as the INPC are useful in evaluation of follow-up care compliance and prevalence of complications/sequelae after abdominal trauma in pediatric patients. Level of evidence Level IV.
Policy regret in repeated games

The notion of ``policy regret'' in online learning is supposed to capture the reactions of the adversary to the actions taken by the learner, which more traditional notions such as external regret do not take into account. We revisit this notion of policy regret, and first show that there are online learning settings in which policy regret and external regret are incompatible: any sequence of play which does well with respect to one must do poorly with respect to the other. We then focus on the game theoretic setting, when the adversary is a self-interested agent. In this setting we show that the external regret and policy regret are not in conflict, and in fact that a wide class of algorithms can ensure both as long as the adversary is also using such an algorithm. We also define a new notion of equilibrium which we call a ``policy equilibrium'', and show that no-policy regret algorithms will have play which converges to such an equilibrium. Relating this back to external regret, we show that coarse correlated equilibria (which no-external regret players will converge to) are a strict subset of policy equilibria. So in game-theoretic settings every sequence of play with no external regret also has no policy regret, but the converse is not true.
Interactive roles of social identity and evaluative attitudes in sports events participation

The impacts of sense of place and place-based social identity have been widely discussed in tourism literature. Both identity theorists and planned behavior researchers suggested that identity and ...
Moment-Sum-of-Squares Approach for Fast Risk Estimation in Uncertain Environments

In this paper, we address the risk estimation problem where one aims at estimating the probability of violation of safety constraints for a robot in the presence of bounded uncertainties with arbitrary probability distributions. In this problem, an unsafe set is described by level sets of polynomials that is, in general, a nonconvex set. Uncertainty arises due to the probabilistic parameters of the unsafe set and probabilistic states of the robot. To solve this problem, we use a moment-based representation of probability distributions. We describe upper and lower bounds of the risk in terms of a linear weighted sum of the moments. Weights are coefficients of a univariate Chebyshev polynomial obtained by solving a sum-of-squares optimization problem in the offline step. Hence, given a finite number of moments of probability distributions, risk can be estimated in real-time. We demonstrate the performance of the provided approach by solving probabilistic collision checking problems where we aim to find the probability of collision of a robot with a non-convex obstacle in the presence of probabilistic uncertainties in the location of the robot and size, location, and geometry of the obstacle.
Flow Battery Electroanalysis. 2. Influence of Surface Pretreatment on Fe(III/II) Redox Chemistry at Carbon Electrodes

Redox flow batteries are attractive for large-scale electrochemical energy storage, but sluggish electron-transfer kinetics can limit their overall energy conversion efficiencies. In an effort to improve our understanding of these kinetic limitations in transition metal-based flow batteries, we used rotating-disk electrode voltammetry to characterize the electron-transfer rates of the Fe3+/2+ redox couple at glassy carbon electrodes whose surfaces were modified using several pretreatment protocols. We found that surface activation by electrochemical cycling in H2SO4 (aq) resulted in the fastest electron-transfer kinetics: j0 = 0.90 ± 0.07 mA/cm2 in an electrolyte containing 10 mM total Fe. By contrast, electrodes that were chemically treated to either remove or promote surface oxidation yielded rates that were at least an order of magnitude slower: j0 = 0.07 ± 0.01 and 0.08 ± 0.04 mA/cm2, respectively. Correlating these results with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data suggests that surface carbonyl grou...
Who Loses When a Team Wins? Better Performance Increases Racial Bias

Although it is well known that team performance influences strategic decision making, little is known about its impact on ascriptive inequality. This study proposes a performance effect on racial b...
Time-Resolved Planar Velocimetry of the Supersonic Wake of a Wall-Mounted Hemisphere

Time-resolved particle image velocimetry was conducted at 40 kHz using a pulse-burst laser in the supersonic wake of a wall-mounted hemisphere. Velocity fields suggest a recirculation region with t...
A Multivariate Genome-Wide Association Study of Wing Shape in Drosophila melanogaster

Due to the complexity of genotype–phenotype relationships, simultaneous analyses of genomic associations with multiple traits will be more powerful and informative than a series of univariate analyses. However, in most cases, studies of genotype–phenotype relationships have been analyzed only one trait at a time. Here, we report the results of a fully integrated multivariate genome-wide association analysis of the shape of the Drosophila melanogaster wing in the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel. Genotypic effects on wing shape were highly correlated between two different laboratories. We found 2396 significant SNPs using a 5% false discovery rate cutoff in the multivariate analyses, but just four significant SNPs in univariate analyses of scores on the first 20 principal component axes. One quarter of these initially significant SNPs retain their effects in regularized models that take into account population structure and linkage disequilibrium. A key advantage of multivariate analysis is that the direction of the estimated phenotypic effect is much more informative than a univariate one. We exploit this fact to show that the effects of knockdowns of genes implicated in the initial screen were on average more similar than expected under a null model. A subset of SNP effects were replicable in an unrelated panel of inbred lines. Association studies that take a phenomic approach, considering many traits simultaneously, are an important complement to the power of genomics.
Stringy Effects and the Role of the Singularity in Holographic Complexity

There has been considerable recent interest in holographic complexity. The two leading conjectures on this subject hold that the quantum complexity of the boundary thermofield double state should be dual to either the volume of the Einstein-Rosen bridge connecting the two sides (CV conjecture) or to the action of the Wheeler-de-Witt patch of the bulk spacetime (CA conjecture). Although these conjectures are frequently studied in the context of pure Einstein gravity, from the perspective of string theory it is also natural to consider models of gravity in which general relativity is perturbed by higher powers of the Riemann tensor, suppressed by powers of the string length; in a holographic context, these corrections are dual to corrections in inverse powers of the ’t Hooft coupling. In this paper, we investigate the CV and CA conjectures in two stringy models of higher-curvature gravity. We find that the CV complexification rate remains well-behaved, but conversely that these corrections induce new divergences in the CA complexification rate that are absent in pure Einstein gravity. These divergences are intrinsically linked to the singularity, and appear to be generic in higher curvature theories. To the best of our knowledge, infinities originating at the singularity have not yet been observed elsewhere in the literature. We argue that these divergences imply that, in the CA picture, the complexification rate of the boundary theory is a nonanalytic function of the ’t Hooft coupling.
Behavioral biases of informed traders: Evidence from insider trading on the 52-week high

Abstract We provide evidence on anchoring biases in insider trading using a stock’s 52-week high. When stock prices are close to their 52-week highs, insiders are reluctant to purchase stocks and willing to sell them. Similarly, when stock prices are far from the 52-week highs, they are willing to buy stocks instead of selling them. This anchoring behavior is robust to controlling for insiders’ contrarian strategy, firm characteristics, and trading ranges. We find that these biased insider trades are not able to predict future returns or may lead to losses to investors who follow such insider trading. Our findings suggest that insiders are prone to behavioral biases, notwithstanding their access to private information.
Functional generative design of mechanisms with recurrent neural networks and novelty search

Consumer-grade 3D printers have made the fabrication of aesthetic objects and static assemblies easier, opening the door to automate the design of such objects. However, while static designs are easily produced with 3D printing, functional designs, with moving parts, are more difficult to generate: The search space is high-dimensional, the resolution of the 3D-printed parts is not adequate, and it is difficult to predict the physical behavior of imperfect, 3D-printed mechanisms. An example challenge for automating the design of functional, 3D-printed mechanisms is producing a diverse set of reliable and effective gear mechanisms that could be used after production without extensive post-processing. To meet this challenge, an indirect encoding based on a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is proposed and evolved using Novelty Search. The elite solutions of each generation are 3D printed to evaluate their functional performance in a physical test platform. The proposed RNN model successfully discovers sequential design rules that are difficult to discover with other methods. Compared to a direct encoding of gear mechanisms evolved with Genetic Algorithms (GAs), the designs produced by the RNN are geometrically more diverse and functionally more effective, thus forming a promising foundation for the generative design of 3D-printed, functional mechanisms.
Disclosure Overload? A Professional User Perspective on the Usefulness of General Purpose Financial Statements

We survey a broad group of professionals who use financial statements as part of their job to assess the extent to which they believe financial reports suffer from disclosure overload. Consistent with the claims made by regulators, auditors, and preparers, we find that a significant portion of professional financial statement users believe disclosure overload is a problem. However, this group is in the minority, with about twice as many professional users believing that overload is not a problem and that more information should be disclosed in financial statements. This dichotomy presents a difficult challenge to standard setters aiming to improve financial reporting by altering the amount of information provided in financial reports. To that end, we complement existing research on the informativeness of accounting information by measuring perceptions of the usefulness of the various financial statements and their footnotes across a variety of tasks. Finally, we develop a framework that could be useful in developing a theory of disclosure overload. Surcharge d'information? Point de vue des professionnels utilisateurs sur l'utilite des etats financiers a usage general Les auteurs font enquete aupres d'un vaste groupe de professionnels utilisant les etats financiers dans le cadre de leur travail, afin d’evaluer dans quelle mesure ces derniers estiment que les rapports financiers presentent une surcharge d'information. Conformement aux affirmations des autorites de reglementation, des auditeurs et des preparateurs, ils constatent qu'une part importante des professionnels utilisateurs d’etats financiers jugent que la surcharge d'information est problematique. Ce groupe d'utilisateurs est cependant minoritaire, puisque environ deux fois plus de professionnels utilisateurs croient qu'il n'y a pas de surcharge d'information problematique et que davantage de renseignements devraient etre communiques dans les etats financiers. Cette dichotomie complique sensiblement la tâche des normalisateurs qui entendent ameliorer l'information financiere en modifiant la quantite des renseignements fournis dans les rapports financiers. Les auteurs apportent donc un complement aux etudes existantes sur la valeur informative de l'information comptable en mesurant les perceptions quant a l'utilite des divers etats financiers et des notes afferentes dans le contexte d'une variete de tâches. Enfin, les auteurs elaborent un cadre de reference pouvant etre utile dans la construction d'une theorie de la surcharge d'information.
Data-Driven Design for Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy

Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy (FPM) is a computational imaging method that is able to super-resolve features beyond the diffraction-limit set by the objective lens of a traditional microscope. This is accomplished by using synthetic aperture and phase retrieval algorithms to combine many measurements captured by an LED array microscope with programmable source patterns. FPM provides simultaneous large field-of-view and high resolution imaging, but at the cost of reduced temporal resolution, thereby limiting live cell applications. In this work, we learn LED source pattern designs that compress the many required measurements into only a few, with negligible loss in reconstruction quality or resolution. This is accomplished by recasting the super-resolution reconstruction as a Physics-based Neural Network and learning the experimental design to optimize the network’s overall performance. Specifically, we learn LED patterns for different applications (e.g. amplitude contrast and quantitative phase imaging) and show that the designs we learn through simulation generalize well in the experimental setting. Further, we discuss a context-specific loss function, practical memory limitations, and interpretability of our learned designs.
What causes severe malaria and its complications in children? Lessons learned over the past 15 years

Over the past 15 years, malaria mortality has reduced by approximately 50%. However, malaria still causes more than 400,000 deaths annually, most of which occur in African children under 5 years of age. Significant advances in understanding the pathogenesis of the disease provide a basis for future work to prevent severe malaria and its complications. Herein, we provide an overview of advances in our understanding of severe malaria in African children over the past 15 years, highlighting key complications and identifying priorities to further reduce malaria-associated mortality.