cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Distribution patterns of Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) in relation to environmental variables along the continental shelf waters of the US West Coast and southern British Columbia

Knowing how Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) distribute in relation to ocean conditions is of primary importance to halibut managers, as they are tasked with estimating stock size and designing effective monitoring programs amidst a changing climate. This research examined near-bottom environmental data alongside halibut survey catch data for the years 2006–2009 on the continental shelf of Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia. The objectives of the research were to: (1) characterize summer environmental conditions and halibut distribution; (2) explore ranges and possible tolerance thresholds for halibut in relation to temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), salinity, and pH; and (3) identify the primary environmental factors affecting distribution of halibut and model the observed relationships. Seasonal hypoxia is an annual feature of the study area and results suggest halibut exhibited an apparent DO minimum threshold of 0.9 mL L−1. Ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis indicated that depth, temperature, and DO were significant variables in predicting halibut distribution, whereas salinity and bottom type were not. Ambiguity in model results led to the use of two additional analytical methods, geographically weighted regression (GWR) and tree regression, to examine regional variation and the overarching structure of halibut distribution. The three models yielded similar results indicating the importance of DO and temperature as variables describing structure. The GWR model yielded the best fit of the three when using DO as a predictor variable, indicating that regional variation is a factor. These results suggest that low, but above-threshold, DO may be contributing to catchability differences in the survey.
CyberKnife ® enhanced conventionally fractionated chemoradiation for high grade glioma in close proximity to critical structures

With conventional radiation technique alone, it is difficult to deliver radical treatment (≥ 60 Gy) to gliomas that are close to critical structures without incurring the risk of late radiation induced complications. Temozolomide-related improvements in high-grade glioma survival have placed a higher premium on optimal radiation therapy delivery. We investigated the safety and efficacy of utilizing highly conformal and precise CyberKnife radiotherapy to enhance conventional radiotherapy in the treatment of high grade glioma. Between January 2002 and January 2009, 24 patients with good performance status and high-grade gliomas in close proximity to critical structures (i.e. eyes, optic nerves, optic chiasm and brainstem) were treated with the CyberKnife. All patients received conventional radiation therapy following tumor resection, with a median dose of 50 Gy (range: 40 - 50.4 Gy). Subsequently, an additional dose of 10 Gy was delivered in 5 successive 2 Gy daily fractions utilizing the CyberKnife® image-guided radiosurgical system. The majority of patients (88%) received concurrent and/or adjuvant Temozolmide. During CyberKnife treatments, the mean number of radiation beams utilized was 173 and the mean number of verification images was 58. Among the 24 patients, the mean clinical treatment volume was 174 cc, the mean prescription isodose line was 73% and the mean percent target coverage was 94%. At a median follow-up of 23 months for the glioblastoma multiforme cohort, the median survival was 18 months and the two-year survival rate was 37%. At a median follow-up of 63 months for the anaplastic glioma cohort, the median survival has not been reached and the 4-year survival rate was 71%. There have been no severe late complications referable to this radiation regimen in these patients. We utilized fractionated CyberKnife radiotherapy as an adjunct to conventional radiation to improve the targeting accuracy of high-grade glioma radiation treatment. This technique was safe, effective and allowed for optimal dose-delivery in our patients. The value of image-guided radiation therapy for the treatment of high-grade gliomas deserves further study.
Computational modeling of cold-formed steel: characterizing geometric imperfections and residual stresses

Abstract Thin-walled, cold-formed steel members exhibit a complicated post-buckling regime that is difficult to predict. Today, advanced computational modeling supplements experimental investigation. Accuracy of computational models relies significantly on the characterization of selected inputs. No consensus exists on distributions or magnitudes to be used for modeling geometric imperfections and for modeling residual stresses of cold-formed steel members. In order to provide additional information existing data is collected and analyzed and new experiments performed. Simple rules of thumb and probabilistic concepts are advanced for characterization of both quantities. The importance of the modeling assumptions are shown in the examples. The ideas are summarized in a preliminary set of guidelines for computational modeling of imperfections and residual stresses.
The Growing Importance of Family and Community: An Analysis of Changes in the Sibling Correlation in Earnings

This study presents evidence that the correlation in brothers' earnings has risen in recent decades. We use two distinct cohorts of young men from the National Longitudinal Surveys and estimate that the correlation in earnings between brothers rose from 0.26 to 0.45. This suggests that family and community influences shared by siblings have become increasingly important in determining economic outcomes. We find that neither the correlation in years of schooling nor the rising return to schooling accounts for this increase. We also argue that the PSID is not an appropriate dataset for analyzing changes over time because of its sampling design, small sample of siblings, and high attrition rate.
Dynamics based control of vertically articulated manipulators

The relationship between tracking accuracy and the model used in dynamics-based control of a vertically articulated manipulator has been experimentally evaluated. High gear ratios reduce the payload sensitivity and computational complexity of the system dynamics but do not eliminate the performance enhancement from accurate compensation of dominant dynamics. Robot controllers must compensate for changes in dominant drive system, link, and payload dynamics to achieve high speed trajectory tracking accuracy. Feedforward dynamic compensation reduced the peak trajectory tracking errors of an independent-joint PD (proportional differential) controller by a factor of three. Knowledge of payload mass and centroid allowed feedforward dynamic compensation to overcome the disturbances produced by unmodeled payload dynamics. The combination of high sample rates, constant PD gains, and adaptive feedforward dynamic compensation produces a control algorithm with excellent payload independent, peak, and final error. >
How Pediatric Educators Know What to Teach: The Use of Teaching Scripts

Objective. Expert clinical teachers in medicine use teaching scripts. The aim of this study was to determine whether pediatricians also use common components of teaching scripts. Methods. Seventy-three pediatric clerkship directors identified anticipated errors and teaching points in response to two short vignettes. The content analysis of responses, which we completed, was analyzed by rank and receipt of teaching awards. Results. Greater than 87% of respondents identified at least one of three anticipated learner errors and greater than 80% of respondents identified at least one of three to four teaching points. Teaching points related directly to anticipated errors in 60% of responses. Level of experience and receipt of teaching awards had no impact on response content. Conclusions. Consistent with findings on the use of teaching scripts, pediatrics9 educators achieved high congruence on anticipated errors and teaching points on two teaching vignettes. These findings support the hypothesis that developing teaching expertise is associated with other script components. medical education, teaching scripts, clinical teaching, pediatrics.
A new dimension to nonparametric tests

It is demonstrated that a statistician can take a preliminary peek- at the data in a special vay in order to select an appropriate nonparametric test statistic without spoiling the distribution-free property. This process (adaptive selection and then testing) generally improves zhe paver over a vide range of underlying distributions and is the nev -dimension to nonparametric tests. Several illustrations are given using standard nonparametric techniques involving the usual one-sample, tvo-sample, k-sample, and independence testing situations. More recent (and not standard) applications to regression and classification problems are then considered. Finally one 'difficulty concerning this adapting process is noted, but a corrective action is suggested.
Spontaneous Spinal Epidural Abscess Presenting in a Previously Healthy Young Adult Man

We report a case of spontaneous spinal epidural abscess (SEA) with initial chief complaint of shoulder pain and no appreciable neurologic symptoms. Since outcomes of SEA appear to be related to the degree of neurologic deficit at the time of intervention, we explore opportunities for earlier diagnosis.
Bleeding and serum d-norgestrel, estradiol and progesterone patterns in women using d-norgestrel subdermal polysiloxane capsules for contraception.

Abstract Six dimethyl polysiloxane (Silastic R ) 2 2Silastic (R) is the Registered Trademark for Dow Corning Corporations brand of polydimethylsiloxane. capsules, each containing 33.9 mg d-norgestrel, were implanted subcutaneously into the forearm of 12 women with regular menstrual cycles. The capsules remained in situ for one year except in 5 women who discontinued prematurely, 3 because of frequent and unpredictable bleeding. Calculated d-norgestrel release rates were markedly variable and could not be related with the bleeding patterns. After the first month serum levels of d-norgestrel fell from a level of 0.65 ng/ml to a level of 0.19 ng/ml at one year (linear regression, r=0.41, p
Energy recovery clocked dynamic logic

Energy recovery clocking results in significant energy savings in clock distribution networks as compared to conventional square-wave clocking. However, since energy recovery clocks are sinusoidal in nature, standard dynamic logic styles do not work efficiently when used with energy recovery clocks. We propose novel dynamic logic styles that operate more efficiently with sinusoidal clocks, enabling energy recovery from their clock networks, and resulting in significant energy savings. Based on the simulation results using TSMC 0.25 μm CMOS process technology, at iso-performance, the proposed dynamic logic styles exhibit up to 53% power reduction.
Sound localization in the frontal horizontal plane by post-lingually deafened adults fitted with bilateral cochlear implants

Multi-channel cochlear implants have enabled many patients with severe-toprofound hearing loss to achieve near-normal levels of communication in some quiet listening situations (Helms, Muller, and Schon 1997). Bilateral implantation, which has been increasingly performed in recent years, affords the additional potential advantage of an increased awareness of auditory space. Initial studies of persons with bilateral implants have reported that localization of sources in the horizontal plane is superior when both implants are active than when either implant is turned off (Tyler, Gantz and Rubinstein 2002; van Hoesel, Ramsden, and O’Driscoll 2002; Nopp, Schleich, and D'Haese 2003). The superior performance under bilateral-implant conditions suggests that subjects are able to take advantage of interaural differences produced by their cochlear implant devices. The present study extends previous work by testing horizontal-plane localization performance in a large number of bilaterally-implanted persons (eventually 24), employing a large number of sound sources spanning the frontal horizontal plane. In addition, in order to determine if a speech stimulus may be more readily localizable than a noise burst, the current investigation measured localization performance with both types of signals.
Species Differentiation and Ecological Relations of Planarians

The planarians, or freshwater triclads, belong, in the zoological classification, to the class Turbellaria (free-living flatworms) of the phylum Platyhelminthes. Thus they are among the lowest, or most primitive, Metazoa with bilateral symmetry and a centralized nervous system. This primitiveness in their structure and, presumably, physiology makes them eminently suitable for the study of many fundamental biological phenomena of a general nature, applicable in many ways to higher animals as well. They have long been favored experimental animals in laboratories. The classical studies of the principles of regeneration (T. H. Morgan, C. M. Child, and many other investigators, see Brondsted, 1955) were made on planarians. Other investigations in which planarians played a prominent role were studies of the differential action of radiations on various types of cells and tissues (C. R. Bardeen, W. C. Curtis, F. Stephan-Dubois, etc.), effects of pharmacological and carcinogenic agents (many investigations widely scattered in the literature), the morphogenetic interrelations of various organs during their development (E. Wolff and his collaborators), and relations of cytogenetics to speciation (M. Benazzi and his school). During the last decade we have seen a very intensive upswing in behavioral studies performed on planarians, centering on the mechanisms and possible biochemical correlates of learning and memory, which are the topics of the present symposium.
Fast and processor efficient parallel matrix multiplication algorithms on a linear array with a reconfigurable pipelined bus system

We present efficient parallel matrix multiplication algorithms for linear arrays with reconfigurable pipelined bus systems (LARPBS). Such systems are able to support a large volume of parallel communication of various patterns in constant time. An LARPBS can also be reconfigured into many independent subsystems and, thus, is able to support parallel implementations of divide-and-conquer computations like Strassen's algorithm. The main contributions of the paper are as follows. We develop five matrix multiplication algorithms with varying degrees of parallelism on the LARPBS computing model; namely, MM/sub 1/, MM/sub 2/, MM/sub 3/, and compound algorithms C/sub 1/(/spl epsiv/)and C/sub 2/(/spl delta/). Algorithm C/sub 1/(/spl epsiv/) has adjustable time complexity in sublinear level. Algorithm C/sub 2/(/spl delta/) implies that it is feasible to achieve sublogarithmic time using /spl sigma/(N/sup 3/) processors for matrix multiplication on a realistic system. Algorithms MM/sub 3/, C/sub 1/(/spl epsiv/), and C/sub 2/(/spl delta/) all have o(/spl Nscr//sup 3/) cost and, hence, are very processor efficient. Algorithms MM/sub 1/, MM/sub 3/, and C/sub 1/(/spl epsiv/) are general-purpose matrix multiplication algorithms, where the array elements are in any ring. Algorithms MM/sub 2/ and C/sub 2/(/spl delta/) are applicable to array elements that are integers of bounded magnitude, or floating-point values of bounded precision and magnitude, or Boolean values. Extension of algorithms MM/sub 2/ and C/sub 2/(/spl delta/) to unbounded integers and reals are also discussed.
Spectral band selection for visible-near infrared remote sensing: spectral-spatial resolution tradeoffs

Recent technological developments permit improved instrumentation for surveillance and resource monitoring, but tradeoffs of spectral resolution and number of spectral bands versus spatial resolution and measurement precision must be considered. A band selection procedure is applied to high spectral resolution (0.01 /spl mu//m) aircraft sensor imagery representing the visible and near-infrared wavelengths (0.4-2.5 /spl mu/m). Approximately 30-40 spectral bands characterize virtually all the information (variability) in the data, with the precise number depending on issues of data interpretation. This suggests that lower spectral resolution and higher spatial resolution are preferable to the reverse. Further study is needed to evaluate the significance of spectral bands having very low amplitude variability.
Transcriptional repressor germ cell-less (GCL) and barrier to autointegration factor (BAF) compete for binding to emerin in vitro.

Emerin belongs to the "LEM domain" family of nuclear proteins, which contain a characteristic ∼40-residue LEM motif. The LEM domain mediates direct binding to barrier to autointegration factor (BAF), a conserved 10-kDa chromatin protein essential for embryogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans. In mammalian cells, BAF recruits emerin to chromatin during nuclear assembly. BAF also mediates chromatin decondensation during nuclear assembly. The LEM domain and central region of emerin are essential for binding to BAF and lamin A, respectively. However, two other conserved regions of emerin lacked ascribed functions, suggesting that emerin could have additional partners. We discovered that these "unascribed" domains of emerin mediate direct binding to a transcriptional repressor, germ cell-less (GCL). GCL co-immunoprecipitates with emerin from HeLa cells. We determined the binding affinities of emerin for GCL, BAF, and lamin A and analyzed their oligomeric interactions. We showed that emerin forms stable complexes with either lamin A plus GCL or lamin A plus BAF. Importantly, BAF competed with GCL for binding to emerin in vitro, predicting that emerin can form at least two distinct types of complexes in vivo. Loss of emerin causes Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy, a tissue-specific inherited disease that affects skeletal muscles, major tendons, and the cardiac conduction system. Although GCL alone cannot explain the disease mechanism, our results strongly support gene expression models for Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy by showing that emerin binds directly to a transcriptional repressor, GCL, and by suggesting that emerin-repressor complexes might be regulated by BAF. Biochemical roles for emerin in gene expression are discussed.
A Powerful Approach for Identification of Differentially Transcribed mRNA Isoforms

Next generation sequencing is being increasingly used for transcriptome-wide analysis of differential gene expression. The primary goal in profiling expression is to identify genes or RNA isoforms differentially expressed between specific conditions. Yet, the next generation sequence-based count data are essentially different from the microarray data that are continuous type, therefore, the statistical methods developed well over the last decades cannot be applicable. For this reason, a variety of new statistical methods based on count data of transcript reads has been correspondingly developed. But currently the transcriptomic count data coming only from a few replicate libraries have high technical noise and small sample size bias, performances of these new methods are not desirable. We here developed a new statistical method specifically applicable to small sample count data called mBeta t-test for identifying differentially expressed gene or isoforms on the basis of the Beta t-test. The results obtained from simulated and real data showed that the mBeta t-test method significantly outperformed the existing statistical methods in all given scenarios. Findings of our method were validated by qRT-PCR experiments. The mBeta t-test method significantly reduced true false discoveries in differentially expressed genes or isoforms so that it had high work efficiencies in all given scenarios. In addition, the mBeta t-test method showed high stability in performance of statistical analysis and in estimation of FDR. These strongly suggests that our mBeta t-test method would offer us a creditable and reliable result of statistical analysis in practice.
An Operational Method for Separating Wind Sea and Swell from Ocean Wave Spectra

Abstract Coexistence of wind sea generated locally and swell radiated from distant storms often results in double-peaked or multiple-peaked spectra. Identification and separation of the wave energies of wind sea and swell provide a more realistic description of the sea state, which is of great importance to scientific and engineering applications. This paper describes a method based on the peak frequency of a newly defined steepness function to separate the wave energies of wind sea and swell from the omnidirectional wave spectra. This steepness method does not rely on the availability of the information of wind velocities and wave directions and can be easily implemented for operational uses. Verification results using directional wave data collected from buoys in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore California are presented.
“¡Chalinas a 20 Pesos!”: Children’s Economic Ideas Developed Through Selling

This article explores the economic ideas of indigenous Triqui children who sold artisanal goods in Oaxaca, Mexico. I approached the investigation of economic ideas by focusing on the ways in which children interacted with customers while trying to sell their goods. Using observations and interviews, I found that as children tried to convince customers to buy goods, they generated spontaneous economic ideas about the value of goods. This study provides an exploratory first step to understanding children’s development of economic ideas through everyday activity and reveals nuances in economic ideas that would otherwise remain hidden.
Dedicated to Play

(1940). Dedicated to Play. The Journal of Health and Physical Education: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 235-235.
Value averaging

It makes sense to retain some broad exposure to stocks during a secular bear market, providing one is willing to take medium-term profits. This article presents a strategy called value averaging, which harvests medium-term profits. Value averaging is a modified form of dollar cost averaging. Both strategies are examples of "formula investing.".
3D Controlled-Source Electromagnetic Edge-Based Finite Element Modeling of Conductive And Permeable Structures

A new 3D controlled–source electromagnetic finite element modeling algorithm is introduced that is capable of handling local inhomogeneities in the permeability and conductivity of geologic structures. An ungauged coupled potential formulation of the electromagnetic diffusion equation is employed. Reluctivity, the inverse of permeability, is introduced to facilitate separation of the secondary and primary potentials. The equations are solved using a tetrahedral edge–based finite element (FE) method. The post processing steps required in an edge–based FE are outlined. The code is validated for non–magnetic and permeable structures against known analytic and numerical solutions. The limitations of the code are explored and directions for its further development are proposed.
Toxicity of l-(3,4-Dihydroxyphenyl)-2-Isopropylaminoethanol Hydrochloride (Isuprel)

SummaryIsuprel has a low acute toxicity in mice. Epinephrine is about 24 (intravenous) to 107 (intraperitoneal) times more toxic than this substance. Intravenous injection of Isuprel in rabbits was usually characterized by delayed deaths (30-90 minutes), the onset of terminal symptoms being rapid and unpredictable. Some deaths were observed at all doses tried (35-60 mg/kg). Subcutaneous injection into rats of 100 mg/kg once daily for 5 days caused no deaths.Isuprel orally administered to dogs in doses of 10 mg/kg caused tachycardia, nervousness followed by depression and, with larger doses, salivation and vomiting. Death was observed with a dose as small as 15 mg/kg although some animals survived oral doses of 50 mg/kg. Rats tolerated oral doses of 100 mg/kg daily for 15 days. Oral administration to dogs of 5 mg/kg daily for 6 to 17 weeks was well tolerated. Gross and histopathological examination of the vital organs of the medicated rats and dogs revealed no significant abnormalities. Isuprel did not int...
Linkage Effect and Community Structure of CITIC Industry Indices before and after the Financial Crisis

This paper aims to study the linkage effect and community structure of CITIC industry indices network before,during and after the financial crisis through PMFG and Info Map algorithm. This paper shows that,small world network character exists in all three periods; the linkage effect has been enhanced during the crisis; community structure has a tendency to merge during the crisis,i. e.,more compact; in the community core nodes have local influence advantage,and some marginal nodes show local strong linkage effect.
Emerging Genomic and Proteomic Evidence on Relationships Among the Animal, Plant and Fungal Kingdoms

Sequence-based molecular phylogenies have provided new models of early eukaryotic evolution. This includes the widely accepted hypothesis that animals are related most closely to fungi, and that the two should be grouped together as the Opisthokonta. Although most published phylogenies have supported an opisthokont relationship, a number of genes contain a tree-building signal that clusters animal and green plant sequences, to the exclusion of fungi. The alternative tree-building signal is especially intriguing in light of emerging data from genomic and proteomic studies that indicate striking and potentially synapomorphic similarities between plants and animals. This paper reviews these new lines of evidence, which have yet to be incorporated into models of broad scale eukaryotic evolution.
Research-based practice in libraries summit 2016

"By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
Fluorous Photoaffinity Labeling to Probe Protein-Small Molecule Interactions

Identifying cellular targets of bioactive small molecules is essential for their applications as chemical probes or drug candidates. Of equal importance is to determine their "off-target" interactions, which usually account for unwanted properties including toxicity. Among strategies to profile small molecule-interacting proteins, photoaffinity labeling has been widely used because of its distinct advantages such as sensitivity. When combined with mass spectrometry, this approach can provide additional structural and mechanistic information, such as drug-target stoichiometry and exact interacting amino acid residues. We have described a novel fluorous photoaffinity labeling approach, in which a fluorous tag is incorporated into the photoaffinity labeling reagent to enable the enrichment of the labeled species from complex mixtures for analysis. This new feature likely makes the fluorous photoaffinity labeling approach suitable to identify transient interactions, and low-abundant, low-affinity interacting proteins in a cellular environment.
LANGUAGE AND PHYLOGENY: the SOV mystery and the evolution of discourse

This chapter discusses language and phylogeny the subject–object–verb (SOV) mystery and the evolution of discourse. Some of the reasons SOV seems to have been the earliest attested word-order type in human language are: (1) prior to the evolutionary stage of the pragmatic mode, the evolution of word-order in human language was object/goal, agent-object/goal, and agent-object-verb, (2) in the evolution of the pragmatic mode of discourse, the agent was reinterpreted as topic-agent, and word-order then became topic/agent-object-verb, and (3) in the evolution of the syntactic mode, the topic-agent was syntacticized into subject, and word-order then became SOV. SOV did not rise as a pragmatic word order in the context of multi-propositional discourse of the type currently evident in human language. Rather, it reflects the agent-object/goal lexicalization of an earlier stage or the agent-object-verb of a rather early stage in the rise of multi-propositional discourse. The agent-object-verb may have been the most suitable word-order at the stage of monopropositional discourse, but somehow it seems that either SVO or V-first are more compatible with topic-oriented, multipropositional discourse.
Epilogue: The Future

What can we say, from the point of view of our pluralistic hypothesis, about the future development of the religious traditions? We cannot do more than take note of existing trends and try to plot their continuation into the future. In fact we see contrary trends at work around us. On the one hand there is a marked growth of the pluralistic outlook, particularly among educated younger people. But on the other hand there is a powerful opposite trend, a wide resurgence of the ‘us against them’ attitude in the forms of both religious fundamentalism and political nationalism. Thus two different trajectories are in motion, affecting different people: one moving towards a world outlook, open to the variety of human ways of thinking and feeling; and the other retrenching into intensified allegiance to one’s own group, reaffirming its traditional values and modes of thought, and opposing a world-wide or species-wide loyalty.
The Orderly Decay of Order in the Regulation of Aging Processes

Processes of aging are discussed in a comparative context, with emphasis on reproductive neuroendocrine functions of mammals. Two general hypotheses of aging are discussed. The first proposes that aging results from processes intrinsic to each cell, which may involve mutations and other types of random macromolecular damage. The second proposes that aging in the organism is regulated by factors extrinsic to most cells, such as hormones. The present evidence is interpreted to argue against random damage as a major factor in mammalian aging, since some aging changes can be manipulated by hormones or diet. The dissociability of chronological and physiological age by experimental manipulations suggests that biological senescence in some organisms mainly involves changes that are “event-dependent” rather that “age-dependent.” Then, the temporal plasticity of some developmental and aging processes is compared to heterochronic changes during evolution, in which changes in the timing of developmental events are viewed as major substrates for evolutionary change. Knowledge of the genetic loci that control developmental timing may give insights into controls on the timing of age changes. —The Editor
Quantification of ciliary beat frequency in sinonasal epithelial cells using differential interference contrast microscopy and high-speed digital video imaging

BackgroundMucociliary clearance is a critical upper airway host defense mechanism. Ciliated epithelium in the mammalian airway continually beat at a baseline frequency. Importantly, during times of...
Conical log spiral antenna development for the UWBRAD ice sheet internal temperature sensing

The Ultra-wideband Software Defined Radiometer (UWBRAD) for ice sheet internal temperature sensing is designed to provide observations of ice sheet brightness temperatures from 500–2000 MHz. This paper reports antenna design considerations for the UWBRAD radiometer. A prototype 4 channel radiometer and antenna were deployed in Antarctica, and the full 12 channel radiometer has been planned for airborne deployment over Greenland in September 2016. Deployment in Antarctica requires careful material considerations which will function at very low temperatures. Airborne deployment requires the antenna pass aircraft certifications and be able to withstand the drag forces without failure. The conical logarithmic spiral antenna design was selected, fabricated, and tested for the radiometry applications discussed.
Trade-off Studies

Trade-off studies are a part of decision analysis and resolution (DAR). When the decision is one of selecting the preferred alternatives from amongst many alternatives, and the alternatives are to be examined in parallel, then the problem is amenable to a trade-off study. Trade-off studies address a range of problems from selecting high-level system architecture to selecting commercial off-the-shelf hardware or software. Trade-off studies are typical outputs of formal evaluation processes, such as DAR. Nevertheless, even if the mathematics and utility curves are done correctly, care still needs to be exercised in doing a trade-off study, because it is difficult to overcome mental mistakes. This chapter will discuss mental mistakes in trade-off studies and offer suggestions for ameliorating their occurrence.
Riboswitch-Based Reversible Dual Color Sensor.

Riboswitches are RNA-based “sensors” that utilize chemically induced structural changes in the 5′-untranslated region of mRNA to regulate expression of downstream genes. Coupling a specific riboswitch with a reporter gene system translates chemical detection by the cell into a quantifiable reporter protein signal. For the majority of reporter gene systems, the readout signal is only expressed in the presence of the target analyte. This makes it difficult to determine the viability and localization of the uninduced biosensor when it is used for “real-word” applications. To address this problem, we developed a dual-color reporter comprising elements of the E. coli fimbriae phase variation system: recombinase FimE controlled by a synthetic riboswitch and an invertible DNA segment (fimS) containing a constitutively active promoter placed between two fluorescent protein genes. Without an analyte, the fluorescent reporter constitutively expressed green fluorescent protein (GFPa1). Addition of the analyte initia...
Inventor mobility and Firm Strategy in the U.S. Laser Industry

A growing body of work finds that inventor mobility is linked to the flow of knowledge across firms. Building off these studies, I argue that when an inventor’s background fits the technological st...
Case 50: An Impossible Situation?

You are stationed in a cottage/mission hospital in Africa as the anesthesiologist. You are called to anesthetize a 35-year-old healthy male who has been stabbed in the neck with a wooden knife. You run to the emergency room and find the patient in a stable condition. He is awake and cooperative. The wooden knife’s handle is visible sticking out of his neck with the wooden blade disappearing under the clavicle directed toward the heart. He is otherwise healthy with no previous surgeries or allergies to drugs. The surgeon wants to remove the knife under general anesthesia. You send off blood for crossmatch and place two large bore IVs. The patient is taken to the operating room. After 4 units of blood are made available in the operating room, you anesthetize him with a rapid sequence technique. He tolerates the anesthetic induction well and his vital signs remain unchanged. The surgeon cleans the neck and pulls out the wooden knife. There is sudden tachycardia with a dramatic drop in blood pressure. Severe bleeding is seen from the neck wound. The surgeon now does a sternotomy and discovers to everyone’s dismay that there is a 0.5–1 cm hole in the aortic arch between the innominate and the left common carotid arteries. Your training dictates that the patient be placed immediately on cardiopulmonary bypass, but you know there is no such thing available. What do you think the surgeon can do to save this patient’s life?
Firearm Violence across the Lifespan: Relevance and Theoretical Impact on Child and Adolescent Educational Prospects

Firearm violence in United States has been a persistent concern for decades particularly in light of mass shootings. Firearm violence is increasingly viewed as a public health crisis, and results in a heavy financial burden to society. In light of the continuous challenges associated with firearm violence, limited research in the area, it is necessary to examine current trends regarding firearm deaths and injuries. Extant data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-based Inquiry Statistics Query and Reporting System fatal and nonfatal injury reports were used for this study. Available data were examined in light of age groups across the life span, region, gender, and minority status for both fatalities and injuries related to firearms. Strategies for reducing firearm fatalities, particularly among children and youth, are also discussed.
A Finite Element Formulation for Ultrasonic NDT Modeling

Numerical analysis techniques have been successfully applied to the modeling of electromagnetic field/defect interactions1 Studies of magnetostatic leakage field and eddy current NDT phenomena have clearly shown that finite element codes can be used effectively for probe design2 and the simulation of test geometries difficult to replicate in the laboratory3. In extending these codes to three dimensional geometries4 and pulsed eddy current phenomena5, it was realized that the required computing capability should also be sufficient to model ultrasound/defect interactions directly in the time domain. Increasing availability of powerful vector computers6 bodes well for the ultimate solution of the generic NDT problem in which it is desired to predict the probe response to any arbitrarily shaped defect. As a first step in this direction, the NDT research group at Colorado State University, following the pioneering numerical efforts of Bond7 and Dewey8, has developed a finite element code for direct time domain solution of the elastic wave equation (Figure 1 shows the relationship between numerical and analytical approaches). The following sections describe the finite element formulation and the application of the code to the prediction of 2-D displacements in a rectangular bar excited at one end by a step input of force.
A Progressive Scheme for Stereo Matching

Brute-force dense matching is usually not satisfactory because the same search range is used for the entire image, yielding potentially many false matches. In this paper, we propose a progressive scheme for stereo matching which uses two fundamental concepts: the disparity gradient limit principle and the least commitment strategy. The first states that the disparity should vary smoothly almost everywhere, and the disparity gradient should not exceed a certain limit. The second states that we should first select only the most reliable matches and therefore postpone unreliable decisions until enough confidence is accumulated. Our technique starts with a few reliable point matches obtained automatically via feature correspondence or through user input. New matches are progressively added during an iterative matching process. At each stage, the current reliable matches constrain the search range for their neighbors according to the disparity gradient limit, thereby reducing potential matching ambiguities of those neighbors. Only unambiguous matches are selected and added to the set of reliable matches in accordance with the least commitment strategy. In addition, a correlation match measure that allows rotation of the match template is used to provide a more robust estimate. The entire process is cast within a Bayesian inference framework. Experimental results illustrate the robustness of our proposed dense stereo matching approach.
Qualities of Desired Spouse: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between French and American College Students*

Through factor analyses, the nine most potent dimensions of marital expectation for an American and a French college sample were obtained. A comparison of the factorial structure of American and Fr...
A cloud-based energy data mining information agent system based on big data analysis technology

Abstract 2019 is the first year of 5G and the information flow is growing even more; therefore, data mining technology is one of the key technologies regarding how to find useful information from the vast information flow. This paper aims to develop the cloud-based energy data mining information agent system OntoDMA, as based on the WIAS cloud environment and Big Data analysis technology, which is embedded in a cloud-based active multi-agent system to proactively provide appropriate, real-time, and fast domain information prediction. On one hand, the related technologies for constructing web service platforms are shared; on the other hand, how to widely and seamlessly integrate and support the cloud interaction paradigm handled by the data mining agent system through these technologies is explored. In order to outline the feasibility of the proposed system architecture, a case study is conducted on the energy saving information system, and the relevant R&D results are presented in detail. Then, both the preliminary system R&D interface and experimental verification are illustrated. Finally, the cache performance of the Solutions Pool is increased by 19.82%, the query workload of the Prediction Rules is reduced by 66.51%, and the overall operating time is decreased by 5.21%, which effectively and efficiently relieves the workload on the back-end servo system.
Clinical predictors of chronic kidney disease in congenital lower urinary tract obstruction

Congenital lower urinary tract obstruction is associated with oligohydramnios and significant perinatal mortality and long-term chronic kidney disease. The counseling of families facing this diagnosis, especially when prenatal intervention is proposed, is fraught with ambiguity. This review aims to equip the provider with the current evidence behind the conventional and novel biomarkers predictive of chronic kidney disease. The relevant clinical predictors are categorized by when they are identified, antenatally or postnatally, and as either anatomic or chemical. They are considered for their prognostic value and the challenges in obtaining them, specifically the risk to the fetus in the case of prenatal biomarkers. Serum creatinine in infancy is the traditional chemical biomarker of kidney function and continues to be a consistent predictor of future serum creatinine. β-2 microglobulin may provide earlier information regarding fetal glomerular and tubular function and is also predictive of long-term serum creatinine. Renal parenchymal area is an anatomic surrogate of nephron mass that is used in both prenatal and postnatal settings. Understanding the anatomic and chemical biomarkers is essential for future refinement of the staging algorithm used to distinguish which patients may benefit from early in utero intervention.
Allergenic pollen production across a large city for common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

Abstract Predictions of airborne allergenic pollen concentrations at fine spatial scales require information on source plant location and pollen production. Such data are lacking at the urban scale, largely because manually mapping allergenic pollen producing plants across large areas is infeasible. However, modest-sized field surveys paired with allometric equations, remote sensing, and habitat distribution models can predict where these plants occur and how much pollen they produce. In this study, common ragweed ( Ambrosia artemisiifolia ) was mapped in a field survey in Detroit, MI, USA. The relationship between ragweed presence and habitat-related variables derived from aerial imagery, LiDAR, and municipal data were used to create a habitat distribution model, which was then used to predict ragweed presence across the study area (392 km 2 ). The relationship between inflorescence length and pollen production was used to predict pollen production in the city. Ragweed occurs in 1.7% of Detroit and total pollen production is 312 × 10 12 pollen grains annually, but ragweed presence was highly heterogeneous across the city. Ragweed was predominantly found in in vacant lots (75%) and near demolished structures (48%), and had varying associations with land cover types (e.g., sparse vegetation, trees, pavement) detected by remote sensing. These findings also suggest several management strategies that could help reduce levels of allergenic pollen, including appropriate post-demolition management practices. Spatially-resolved predictions for pollen production will allow mechanistic modeling of airborne allergenic pollen and improved exposure estimates for use in epidemiological and other applications.
Sequence-Dependent Self-Coacervation in High Charge-Density Polyampholytes

Polyampholytes, which contain both positive and negative charges along the backbone, represent a classical model system for certain types of ‘intrinsically-disordered proteins’ (IDPs). IDPs can possess biological functionality, even in an unfolded state, including the formation of phase-separated regions within a cell; while driven by a number of interactions, electrostatic attractions are thought to be key to forming these structures. This process of electrostatically-driven liquid–liquid phase separation, known as ‘complex coacervation’, can also be observed in simpler polymer or biopolymer systems. In this paper, we use a series of model polyampholytic polypeptides of increasing blockiness, that undergo ‘self-coacervation’ due to charge attraction between polycation and polyanion blocks along the same polymer chain. We show that these polypeptides undergo complex coacervation when sequences have at least 8–12 adjacent like-charges, with increasing blockiness leading to a larger two-phase region. We simultaneously develop a theory built on the transfer-matrix formalism developed by the authors, to show how blockiness increases the strength of electrostatic interactions and subsequently promote phase separation. We explore a tradeoff that emerges due to the presence of ‘charge-pattern interfaces’ where the sequence of polyampholyte charges switches sign, and how these contrast with chain-ends in equivalent homopolyelectrolyte coacervates.
A Quantum Model of Non-illusory Free Will

Contemporary science and philosophy are dominated by a mechanistic materialist metaphysic that treats consciousness as a derivative aspect of the brain’s physical state, with no independent causal efficacy ascribed to consciousness. Studies suggest there may be negative social consequences to widespread popular belief that our thoughts are passive spectators to our behavior. Dissenting from the commonly held view, the psychologist William James argued that consciousness must serve some evolutionary purpose, and therefore must be efficacious. But how might something as insubstantial as a thought cause something to happen in the physical world? According to mechanistic materialism, it cannot. However, there is an alternative to mechanistic materialism. The physicist Stapp argues that a realistic interpretation of quantum theory can form the basis for a scientifically well-founded theory of efficacious conscious choice. The resulting theory of agency fills complementary explanatory gaps in physics and psychology, allowing consciousness to become efficacious in a manner entirely consistent with empirically validated physical theory. The profound implications of a scientifically well-founded theory of non-illusory free will argue for working out a detailed model of its operation in human brains and devising empirical tests of the model’s predictions.
Healthy mahjong, little mahjong: social gambling among older Chinese immigrants in the U.S

Mahjong is considered a popular form of gambling in the Chinese culture, especially among older Chinese populations. However, there is a lack of research on mahjong playing among older Chinese immi...