cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Text mining-based in silico drug discovery in oral mucositis caused by high-dose cancer therapy

Oral mucositis (OM) is a major dose-limiting side effect of chemotherapy and radiation used in cancer treatment. Due to the complex nature of OM, currently available drug-based treatments are of limited efficacy. Our objectives were (i) to determine genes and molecular pathways associated with OM and wound healing using computational tools and publicly available data and (ii) to identify drugs formulated for topical use targeting the relevant OM molecular pathways. OM and wound healing-associated genes were determined by text mining, and the intersection of the two gene sets was selected for gene ontology analysis using the GeneCodis program. Protein interaction network analysis was performed using STRING-db. Enriched gene sets belonging to the identified pathways were queried against the Drug-Gene Interaction database to find drug candidates for topical use in OM. Our analysis identified 447 genes common to both the “OM” and “wound healing” text mining concepts. Gene enrichment analysis yielded 20 genes representing six pathways and targetable by a total of 32 drugs which could possibly be formulated for topical application. A manual search on ClinicalTrials.gov confirmed no relevant pathway/drug candidate had been overlooked. Twenty-five of the 32 drugs can directly affect the PTGS2 (COX-2) pathway, the pathway that has been targeted in previous clinical trials with limited success. Drug discovery using in silico text mining and pathway analysis tools can facilitate the identification of existing drugs that have the potential of topical administration to improve OM treatment.
The attributable cost of catheter-associated urinary tract infections in the United States: A systematic review.

Background Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are the most common healthcare-acquired condition. The attributable cost of CAUTIs is frequently cited to be approximately $1,000. However, there is a paucity of recent literature that confirms this estimate. The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review of the literature that estimates the attributable cost of CAUTIs in the United States. Methods A systematic review was conducted using Pubmed. Studies conducted between the years 2000 and 2017, conducted at a facility within the United States, and that used novel patient-level cost data were included. Attributable cost estimates were adjusted for inflation to 2016 U.S. dollars using the medical care component of the Consumer Price Index. Results Only 4 articles met our inclusion criteria. Adjusted to 2016 U.S. dollars, the attributable costs of a CAUTI as reported in these studies were: $876 (inpatient cost to the hospital for additional diagnostic tests and medications); $1,764 (inpatient cost to Medicare for non-intensive care unit [ICU] patients); $7,670 (inpatient and outpatient costs to Medicare); $8,398 (inpatient cost to the hospital for pediatric patients); and $10,197 (inpatient cost to Medicare for ICU patients). Conclusions The cost of a CAUTI ranges widely depending on population, patient acuity, and cost perspective. Attributable costs likely exceed $1,000. Additional research is needed to assess the full economic effect of CAUTIs.
Medical Family Therapy in Palliative and Hospice Care

Contemporary advancements in health care and medical technology are allowing patients to live longer now than they ever have before. We are seeing these trends in longer life across all age groups—from increased survival during childhood from illnesses that were heretofore rapidly fatal to combating normative age-related declines (and thereby prolonging senescence) in the elderly. With these trends come marked increases in the likelihood of being diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness during one’s lifetime (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2011). Such illnesses and their unique health trajectories are generally treated under the medical specialties of Palliative and Hospice Care (CDC, 2010; Meier, 2011). Providers engaged in these treatment teams must attend to patients’ physical functioning within a context where getting better is not presumed. Treatment teams must thereby attend to foci like quality of life, emotional suffering, loss, meaning making, and spirituality as part of everyday practice.
Towards scalable mdp algorithms

Since the emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a field, planning under uncertainty has been viewed as one of its crucial subareas. Accordingly, the current lack of scalability of probabilistic planning techniques is a major reason why the grand vision of AI has not been fulfilled yet. Besides being an obstacle to advances in AI, scalability issues also hamper the applicability of probabilistic planning to real-world problems. A powerful framework for describing probabilistic planning problems is Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Informally, an MDP specifies the objectives the agent is trying to achieve, the actions the agent can perform, and the states in which it can end up while working towards the objective. Solving an MDP means finding a policy, i.e. an assignment of actions to states, that allows the agent to achieve the objective. Optimal solution methods, those that look for the “best” policy according to some criterion, typically try to analyze all possible states or a large fraction of them. Since state space sizes of realistic scenarios can be astronomical, these algorithms quickly run out of memory. Fortunately, the mathematical structure of some classes of MDPs has allowed for inventing more efficient algorithms. This is the case for Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problems, whose mathematical properties gave rise to a family of algorithms called Find-and-Revise. When used in combination with a heuristic, the members of this family can find a near-optimal, or even optimal, policy while avoiding the analysis of many states. Nonetheless, the sheer number of states in real-world problems forces algorithms based on state-level analysis to exhaust their capabilities much too early, calling for a fundamentally different approach. Moreover, several expressive and potentially useful MDP classes are currently not known to have a mathematical structure for creating efficient approximation techniques. This dissertation advances the state of the art in probabilistic planning in three complementary ways. For SSP MDPs, it derives a novel class of approximate algorithms based on generalizing state analysis information across many states. This information is stored in the form of basis functions that are generated automatically and the number of which is much smaller than the number of states. As a result, the proposed algorithms have a very compact memory footprint and arrive at high-quality solutions faster than their state-based counterparts. In a parallel effort, the dissertation also builds up mathematical apparatus for classes of MDPs that previously had no applicable approximation algorithms. The developed theory enables the extension of the powerful Find-and-Revise paradigm to these MDP classes as well, providing the first memory-efficient algorithms for solving them. Last but not least, the dissertation will apply the proposed theoretical techniques to a large-scale real-world problem, urban traffic routing being one of the candidates.
MECHANISM OF INCREASED HEPATIC OXYGEN UPTAKE DUE TO ETHANOL

Addition of ethanol causes a 5 to 10% increase in oxygen uptake in perfused livers from fed, but not fasted, rats. Previously, this phenomenon has been attributed to ethanol oxidation via extramitochondrial oxidases. However, half-maximal effect is observed with about 0.3 mM ethanol analogous to the alcohol dehydrogenase-linked NADH redox changes. These redox changes cause an inhibition of glycolysis as indicated by diminished lactate plus pyruvate production. 4-Methylpyrazole, an inhibitor of alcohol dehydrogenase, reverses the effect of ethanol on both oxygen uptake and glycolysis. A linear relationship was observed between the decrease in the glycolytic rate and the increase in oxygen uptake under a variety of experimental conditions. The stoichiometry of changes in extramitochondrial ATP-generation derived from glycolysis and changes in oxygen uptake due to ethanol was 2.7 moles ATP per g-atom oxygen. The data suggest that the increase in oxygen uptake following ethanol involves the mitochondrial respiratory chain and reflects a higher demand for oxidative phosphorylation resulting from a diminished glycolyic ATP-generation. This conclusion is supported by the following observations: the increase in oxygen uptake following ethanol (a) was atractyloside-sensitive and (b) was absent in the fasted state where glycolysis was absent, but was restored by glucose addition. These studies illustrate the tight coupling between energy producing processes in the mitochondrial and extramitochondrial spaces of the liver cell.
Directional Effects in Transitional Resonance Spectra and Group Constants

Analytical exploratory investigations indicate that transition effects such as streaming cause a considerable spatial variation in the neutron spectra across resonances; streaming leads to opposite effects in the forward and backward directions. The neglect of this coupled spatial/angular variations of the transitory resonance spectra is an approximation that is common to all current group constant generation methodologies. This paper presents a description of the spatial/angular coupling of the neutron flux across isolated resonances. It appears to be necessary to differentiate between forward-and backward-directed neutron flux components or even to consider components in narrower angular cones. The effects are illustrated for an isolated actinide resonance in a simplified fast reactor blanket problem. The resonance spectra of the directional flux components {phi}{sup + } and {phi}{sup {minus}}, and even more so the 90-deg cone components, are shown to deviate significantly from the infinite medium approximation, and the differences increase with penetration. The charges in {phi}{sup + } lead to a decreasing scattering group constant that enhances neutron transmission; the changes in {phi}{sup {minus}} lead to an increasing group constant inhibiting backward scattering. Therefore, the changes in the forward-and backward-directed spectra both lead to increased neutron transmission. Conversely, the flux ({phi} = {phi}{supmore » + }+{phi}{sup {minus}}) is shown to agree closely with the infinite medium approximation both in the analytical formulas and in the numerical solution. The directional effect cancel in the summation. The forward-and backward-directed flux components are used as weighting spectra to illustrate the group constant changes for a single resonance.« less
Visualization of Neuronal Structures in Wide-Field Microscopy Brain Images

Wide-field microscopes are commonly used in neurobiology for experimental studies of brain samples. Available visualization tools are limited to electron, two-photon, and confocal microscopy datasets, and current volume rendering techniques do not yield effective results when used with wide-field data. We present a workflow for the visualization of neuronal structures in wide-field microscopy images of brain samples. We introduce a novel gradient-based distance transform that overcomes the out-of-focus blur caused by the inherent design of wide-field microscopes. This is followed by the extraction of the 3D structure of neurites using a multi-scale curvilinear filter and cell-bodies using a Hessian-based enhancement filter. The response from these filters is then applied as an opacity map to the raw data. Based on the visualization challenges faced by domain experts, our workflow provides multiple rendering modes to enable qualitative analysis of neuronal structures, which includes separation of cell-bodies from neurites and an intensity-based classification of the structures. Additionally, we evaluate our visualization results against both a standard image processing deconvolution technique and a confocal microscopy image of the same specimen. We show that our method is significantly faster and requires less computational resources, while producing high quality visualizations. We deploy our workflow in an immersive gigapixel facility as a paradigm for the processing and visualization of large, high-resolution, wide-field microscopy brain datasets.
The Current Status of Accessibility in Mobile Apps

This study evaluated the status of accessibility in mobile apps by investigating the graphical user interface (GUI) structures and conformance to accessibility guidelines of 479 Android apps in 23 business categories from Google Play. An automated tool, IBM Mobile Accessibility Checker (MAC), was used to identify the accessibility issues, which were categorized as a violation (V), potential violation (PV), or warning (W). The results showed 94.8%, 97.5%, and 66.4% of apps studied contained issues related to V, PV, or W, respectively. Five widget categories (TextView, ImageView, View, Button, and ImageButton) were used to create 92% of the total number of the GUI elements and caused 89%, 78%, and 86% of V, PV, and W, respectively. These accessibility issues were mainly caused by lack of element focus, missing element description, low text color contrast, lack of sufficient spacing between elements, and less than minimum sizes of text fonts and elements. Together, these accessibility issues accounted for 97.0%, 77.8%, and 94.5% of V, PV, and W, respectively.This study proposed coverage measures to estimate the percentage of accessibility issues identified by an automated tool. The result showed that MAC, on average, identified about 67% of accessibility issues in mobile apps.Two new accessibility conformance measures were proposed in this study: inaccessible element rate (IAER) and accessibility issue rate (AIR). IAER estimates the percentage of GUI elements that are inaccessible. AIR calculates the percentage of the actual number of accessibility issues relative to the maximum number of accessibility issues. Average IAER and AIR scores were 27.3%, 19.9%, 6.3% and 20.7%, 15.0%, 5.4% for V, PV, and W, respectively, for the studied apps. The IAER score showed approximately 30% of the GUI elements had accessibility issues, and the AIR score indicated that 15% of the accessibility issues remained and need to be fixed to make the apps accessible.
Strategic Group Formation in the El Farol Bar Problem

The El Farol bar problem sprung from one patron’s wish to avoid the bar’s busy nights in the 1990s. The problem became of interest to economists because of its potential application to other consumer choice behavior problems, e.g., route selection on a congested roadway. The El Farol bar problem involves multiple decision-making agents trying to outwit each other and only attend the bar when it is not overcrowded. Each agent makes their decision based on historical data and draws their attendance strategy from a limited pool. We adapt the model of the problem developed, by Rand and Wilensky, to include group decision-making behavior and strategic group formation. In our version, agents can use the best strategy from the whole group, not just their own set. However, the larger the group, the more it adds to the overcrowding issue. Thus, an agent must balance access to a large attendance strategy pool with group size. We had hypothesized that including strategic group formation will increase overall social welfare, but our analysis shows that allowing agent groups results in a undesirable scenario for all agents; this is due to the limited rationality of the agents.
Corner Occluder Computational Periscopy: Estimating a Hidden Scene from a Single Photograph

The ability to image scenery outside a camera’s line-of-sight would be useful in a variety of applications, including autonomous vehicle collision avoidance, or for first responders to anticipate danger around a corner. When a wall obstructs the camera, light cast onto the floor from behind the wall may be used to recover angular variation of light intensity reflected by the hidden scene, forming a 1D scene projection. Recent work has demonstrated that temporal variation in a video, or sequence of floor images, may be used to image moving components of the hidden scene. However, in many applications, it would be useful to be able to image stationary components as well. This earlier approach was also designed for, and tested on, floors that have approximately uniform albedo, while many real floors have spatially varying albedo patterns such as checkered tiles and patterned carpets. In this work, we propose a method to reconstruct a 1D projection of all components in a hidden scene from a single photograph of the floor without assuming uniform floor albedo. Specifically, we derive a forward model that describes the measured photograph as a nonlinear combination of the unknown floor albedo and the light from behind the wall. The inverse problem, which is the joint estimation of floor albedo and a 1D reconstruction of the hidden scene, is then solved via optimization, where we introduce regularizers that help separate light variations in the measured photograph due to floor pattern and hidden scene, respectively. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our formulation and algorithm using synthetic and experimentally measured data.
Parental action and neoliberal education reform: Crafting a research agenda

Neoliberal reforms of public education have promoted a role for parents as individual consumers trying to maximize gains for their own children by choosing from a marketplace of schools. A diverse ...
The Long Rise and Quick Fall of Appraisal Arbitrage

Appraisal is a legislatively created right for shareholders to seek a judicial determination of the fair value of their stock in certain transactions. For many decades, appraisal was a little used, frequently maligned, corporate law remedy. Beginning at the turn of the 21st century, this all changed when a group of financial investors, including several hedge funds, began filing appraisal cases. Appraisal arbitrage, as it became known, grew rapidly in popularity.
Differential Diagnosis of the Organic Mental Disorders in Elderly Patients

Differential diagnosis of the behavioral disorders of the elderly must be made in the traditional pattern and with the traditional logic of medical diagnosis. It must not be solely or predominantly intuitive. It must not be prejudiced by a preconception that too much life lies behind and too little ahead. It must not be concerned exclusively with morbid anatomy.
The Crowd-Emotion-Amplification Effect:

How do people go about reading a room or taking the temperature of a crowd? When people catch a brief glimpse of an array of faces, they can focus their attention on only some of the faces. We prop...
Computation of Posterior Cramer-Rao Bounds for Deep Learning Networks

One of the key advantages of deep learning over traditional automatic target recognition (ATR) is its features can be directly selected by the network and do not necessary need, like the ATR, the designer input parametric constraints to carry out its operation. However, this advantage has its pitfall; because the network considers too many features the possibility to develop Cramer-Rao lower bounds that take into account size of an input image, its key scattering centers and its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and also the depth, width, weight and bias matrices from different layers of the network, is limited. In this paper, state space matrices that capture the features of an input image, the state vector and output observation matrix that allow computation of the noise covariance matrices together with the network parameters and weight matrices are used to develop Cramer-Rao bounds from an input image that is fed to a multiple-layer deep learning network. The proposed bounds are computed from a 5-layer deep learning network that is trained and tested on MSTAR data collected at HH polarization by a 0.596 GHz radar bandwidth at fifteen- and seventeen-degree depression angles, respectively.
Tomato Rootstocks Mediate Plant-Water Relations and Leaf Nutrient Profiles of a Common Scion Under Suboptimal Soil Temperatures

Environments with short growing seasons and variable climates can have soil temperatures that are suboptimal for chilling-sensitive crops. These conditions can adversely affect root growth and physiological performance thus impairing water and nutrient uptake. Four greenhouse trials and a field study were conducted to investigate if rootstocks can enhance tomato performance under suboptimal soil temperatures (SST). In a controlled greenhouse environment, we exposed four commercial rootstocks (Estamino, Maxifort, RST-04-106-T, and Supernatural) grafted with a common scion (cv. BHN-589) to optimal (mean: 24°C) and SST (mean: 13.5°C) and compared their performance with the non-grafted BHN-589 cultivar. Several root and shoot physiological traits were evaluated: root hydraulic conductivity and conductance, root anatomy, leaf gas exchange, leaf δ13C, shoot C and N, and biomass. Under field conditions, the same five phenotypes were evaluated for canopy growth, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), leaf nutrients, biomass, and yield. Under SST, root hydraulic conductivity (Lp) and conductance (K R), stomatal conductance (g s), and plant biomass decreased. Hydrostatic Lp decreased more than osmotic Lp (Lp ∗ hyd: 39-65%; Lp ∗ os: 14-40%) and some of the reduced conductivity was explained by the increased cortex area of primary roots observed under SST (67-140%). Under optimal soil temperatures, all rootstocks conferred higher g s than the non-grafted cultivar, but only two rootstocks maintained higher g s under SST. All phenotypes showed greater reductions in shoot biomass than root biomass resulting in greater (∼20%) root-to-shoot ratios. In the field, most grafted phenotypes increased early canopy cover, NDVI, shoot biomass, and fruit yield. Greenhouse results showed that Lp ∗ os may be less affected by SST than Lp ∗ hyd and that reductions in Lp may be offset by enhanced root-to-shoot ratios. We show that some commercial rootstocks possess traits that maintained better rates of stomatal conductance and shoot N content, which can contribute toward better plant establishment and improved performance under SST.
How do people decide political news credibility

In this paper, we share preliminary results from our research work focused on understanding how people assess news items as fake or real and improve their ability to identify fake news. Using existing real/fake news samples and best practices in qualitative, inductive data analysis, we identify factors that appear to impede ability of individuals to identify fake news. Based on this work we suggest one approach to improve human ability to identify fake news, and sketch a process for systematic development of means for supporting people in identifying fake news.
Intra-process Caching and Reuse of Threads.

Creating and destroying threads on modern Linux systems incurs high latency, absent concurrency, and fails to scale as we increase concurrency. To address this concern we introduce a process-local cache of idle threads. Specifically, instead of destroying a thread when it terminates, we cache and then recycle that thread in the context of subsequent thread creation requests. This approach shows significant promise in various applications and benchmarks that create and destroy threads rapidly and illustrates the need for and potential benefits of improved concurrency infrastructure. With caching, the cost of creating a new thread drops by almost an order of magnitude. As our experiments demonstrate, this results in significant performance improvements for multiple applications that aggressively create and destroy numerous threads.
Aspiration of conjugated bile acids predicts adverse lung transplant outcomes and correlates with airway lipid and cytokine dysregulation.

INTRODUCTION Duodeno-gastroesophageal reflux aspiration is associated with chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD). Reflux aspirate can contain bile acids (BA), functional molecules in the gastro-intestinal tract with emulsifying properties. We sought to determine and quantify the various BA species in airways of the lung transplant recipients to better understand the various effects of aspirated BA that contribute to post-transplantation outcomes. METHODS Bronchial washings (BW) were prospectively collected from lung transplant recipients and subsequently assayed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for 13 BA and 25 lipid families. Patients were monitored for CLAD, rejection, inflammation and airway infections. RESULTS Detectable BA were present in 45/50 patients (90%) at 3 months after transplant. Elevated BA and predominance of conjugated species were independent predictors of CLAD (hazard ratio 7.9; 95% confidence interval 2.7-23.6; p < 0.001 and 7.3; 2.4-22; p < 0.001, respectively) and mortality (hazard ratio 4.4; 1.5-12.7; p = 0.007 and 4.8; 1.4-15.8; p = 0.01, respectively). High BA associated with increased positive bacterial cultures (60% vs 25%, p = 0.02). Primary conjugated species independently correlated with the rate of bacterial cultures during the first-year post-transplant (Beta coefficient: 0.77; 0.28-1.26; p = 0.003) and changes in airway lipidome and cytokines. CONCLUSIONS Higher BA levels and predominance of conjugated BA are independent predictors of chronic lung allograft dysfunction, mortality and bacterial infections. Primary conjugated BA are related to distinct changes in airway lipidome and inflammatory cytokines. This elucidates novel evidence into the mechanism following BA aspiration and proposes novel markers for prediction of adverse post-transplant outcomes.
Predicting fetal karyotype in fetuses with omphalocele: The current role of ultrasound

OBJECTIVE: To assess the ability of ultrasound in predicting abnormal karyotype in pregnancies with prenatally diagnosed omphaloceles and to compare its test characteristics to previously published studies. METHODS: A retrospective case-control study of omphaloceles diagnosed at one center was performed from 1995–2007. Cases were those with an abnormal karyotype and controls were those with a normal karyotype. Data collection included demographics, karyotype results, and ultrasound findings. The number and type of associated anomalies were compared between the cases and controls. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for predicting an abnormal karyotype were calculated from previously published studies. RESULTS: Of the 73 subjects, there were 12 cases and 61 controls. The majority of women were Caucasian and primigravida. The cases were less likely to have an isolated omphalocele [1 (8.3%) vs. 27 (42.6%), OR = 0.122; 95% CI: 0.02–0.08] but were more likely to have two or more major anomalies [8 (66.7%) vs. 17 (27.9%), OR = 5.18; 95% CI: 1.19–24.04)] compared to the controls. Cardiac anomalies and only one additional major anomaly were not different between the two groups, P > 0.05. The test characteristics for this study were similar to previously published studies. CONCLUSIONS: Isolated omphaloceles were more likely to have a normal karyotype; however fetuses with multiple anomalies were more likely to have an abnormal karyotype. Despite advances in ultrasound technology, its ability for predicting an abnormal karyotype in these fetuses has not improved.
Self-Reported Cancer Screening Among Elderly Medicare Beneficiaries: A Rural-Urban Comparison

Purpose: We examined the rural-urban disparity of screening for breast cancer and colorectal cancer (CRC) among the elder Medicare beneficiaries and assessed rurality's independent impact on receipt of screening. Methods: Using 2005 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we applied weighted logistic regression to estimate the overall rural-urban disparity and rurality's independent impact on cancer screening, controlling for patient, and area factors. Results: From urban, large rural, small rural, and isolated rural areas, the rates for mammogram last year were 53%, 52%, 45%, and 44%, respectively. They were 56%, 50%, 48%, and 43% for CRC screening, respectively. After controlling for patient and area level characteristics, rurality is significantly associated with CRC screening, but not mammogram. Conclusions: We found rural-urban disparities for both mammogram and CRC screenings. Patient and area factors totally eliminated the rural-urban disparity for mammogram but not CRC screening. Health promotions to improve cancer screening should focus more on small and isolated rural areas.
Earnings Management and Mispricing of Allowance for Funds During Construction in the Electric Utility Industry

The deregulation experienced by the electric utility industry in recent years has dramatically increased the competition from new suppliers of electric power. This changing environment puts managers in the electric utility industry under increasing pressure to improve financial performance. We hypothesize and find that there is an indication of earnings management in a discretionary income account, Allowance for Funds Used During Construction (AFUDC). The level of AFUDC increases with the magnitude of discretionary accruals. In addition, the stock market overestimates the impact of AFUDC in predicting one-year-ahead earnings. A subsequent hedge-portfolio test based on the mispricing insight earns significant abnormal returns, and these abnormal returns cannot be fully explained by either the three Fama-French (1992) risk factors, or the earnings-price anomaly (Basu, 1977). The results stay robust through various sensitivity tests.
Women receiving news of a family BRCA1/2 mutation: messages of fear and empowerment.

Purpose: Communication of genetic test results to healthy at-risk family members is complicated considering family dynamics and the complexity of cancer genetics. The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of family communication of BRCA1/2 results from the perspective of young and middle-aged women receiving the news. Theoretical Rationale: Individuals are self-interpretive beings influenced by family culture, history, and communication patterns. Humans express meaning through language and stories. Methods: Heideggerian hermeneutics guided in-depth interviews and team interpretation of data. Using purposive and network sampling, 19 women 18 to 50 years of age who received news of a family BRCA1/2 mutation from a biologic relative were recruited from support groups and two health facilities in upstate New York. Findings: Five themes emerged: (a) situating the story, (b) receiving the message from family, (c) responding to receipt of the message, (d) impacting family communication, and (e) advice for communicating risk. Two constitutive patterns were identified: (a) communicating risk as a message of fear and empowerment and (b) integrating the message by taking one step at a time. Conclusions/Implications: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) have an important role in provision of anticipatory guidance for communication of genetic test results, including the potential behavioral and emotional responses to family risk communication. Future research is indicated to understand the role of HCPs in family risk communication. Clinical Relevance: Presentation of comprehensive and balanced information and the use of patient-centered communication is essential. HCPs need to view women as whole rather than as a person at risk. Continued support is needed for women who subsequently test positive or negative for the family BRCA1/2 mutation from HCPs and others, often outside the family network.
A critical look at microprocessor architecture

Computer applications have been dramatically extended by the emergence of the microprocessor. LSI has brought both new constraints and new degrees of freedom. The resultant system architecture, to be assessed, is expected to develop along radically different lines.
The Attachment System and Physiology in Adulthood: Normative Processes, Individual Differences, and Implications for Health

Attachment theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding intersections between personality and close relationships in adulthood. Moreover, attachment has implications for stress-related physiology and physical health. We review work on normative processes and individual differences in the attachment behavioral system, as well as their associations with biological mechanisms related to health outcomes. We highlight the need for more basic research on normative processes and physiology and discuss our own research on individual differences in attachment and links with physiology. We then describe a novel perspective on attachment and physiology, wherein stress-related physiological changes may also be viewed as supporting the social-cognitive and emotion regulatory functions of the attachment system through providing additional energy to the brain, which has implications for eating behavior and health. We close by discussing our work on individual differences in attachment and restorative processes, including sleep and skin repair, and by stressing the importance of developing biologically plausible models for describing how attachment may impact chronic illness.
Anisotropic analysis of multi-component T2 and T1ρ relaxations in achilles tendon by NMR spectroscopy and microscopic MRI.

Purpose: To study the anisotropic characteristics of both multi-component T2 and T1ρ relaxation times in tendon. Materials and Methods: T2 and T1ρ were measured in tendon by NMR spectroscopy at different orientations and by microscopic MRI at the magic angle. Several experimental issues in the multi-component relaxation measurements were investigated, including the effects of echo spacing, the resolution of MRI experiments, the influence of the specimen orientations, and the strengths of different spin-lock frequencies in T1ρ experiments. Results: Both the values and fractions of T2 in tendon showed significant orientational dependence. The values and fractions of T1ρ strongly depended on both the specimen orientation and the spin-lock strength. The imaging resolution (35–280 μm) had little influence in the T2 experiments. Both the echo spacings (0.6–3.0 ms) in the T2 experiment and the spin-lock strengths (0.5–5 kHz) in the T1ρ experiment affected the quantification of the multi-component relaxation. Up to three T2 and T1ρ components were resolved in tendon. Conclusion: Multi-component relaxations could be attributed to different populations of water in the tissue. The transitions between a mono-component and multi-component result call for the caution in interpreting the relaxation results. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2013;38:625–633. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
On the effects of the training sample density in passive learning control

This paper investigates function approximator selection for nonlinear system identification under passive learning conditions. Passive learning refers to the normal situation in which the system inputs cannot be selected freely by the learning system; instead, function approximation must occur while the plant is in useful operation. Under these conditions, the experimental sample density is not expected to be uniform over the learning domain. The effect of the nonuniform sample density on the resulting parameter estimate is analyzed. It is shown that approximators that have orthonormal basis elements with local support can effectively accommodate nonuniform training sample distributions. Although such approximators require large amounts of memory, this paper shows that parameter estimation algorithms can be computed efficiently (i.e., on the order of the time required for a linear adaptive controller for a problem of the same state dimension) in real-time.
A new pathway in the control of the initiation of puberty: the MKRN3 gene

Pubertal timing is influenced by complex interactions among genetic, nutritional, environmental, and socioeconomic factors. The role of MKRN3, an imprinted gene located in the Prader-Willi syndrome critical region (chromosome 15q11-13), in pubertal initiation was first described in 2013 after the identification of deleterious MKRN3 mutations in five families with central precocious puberty (CPP) using whole-exome sequencing analysis. Since then, additional loss-of-function mutations of MKRN3 have been associated with the inherited premature sexual development phenotype in girls and boys from different ethnic groups. In all of these families, segregation analysis clearly demonstrated autosomal dominant inheritance with complete penetrance, but with exclusive paternal transmission, consistent with the monoallelic expression of MKRN3 (a maternally imprinted gene). Interestingly, the hypothalamic Mkrn3 mRNA expression pattern in mice correlated with a putative inhibitory input on puberty initiation. Indeed, the initiation of puberty depends on a decrease in factors that inhibit the release of GnRH combined with an increase in stimulatory factors. These recent human and animal findings suggest that MKRN3 plays an inhibitory role in the reproductive axis to represent a new pathway in pubertal regulation.
Pericardial effusion following drain removal after percutaneous epicardial access for an electrophysiology procedure.

Objectives To determine the frequency and predictors of pericardial effusion following epicardial sheath removal. Background Pericardial effusion can occur following cardiac surgical or interventional procedures including percutaneous epicardial access (EpiAcc), which is increasingly used as part of electrophysiology ablation procedures. Methods A retrospective analysis of the Mayo Clinic comprehensive electronic medical record was performed from all patients who underwent planned EpiAcc as part of an electrophysiology ablation procedure between January 1, 2004 and June 30, 2013. Results Of 144 patients (mean age 51.3 ± 15.5 years, 68% male) who underwent planned EpiAcc as part of an electrophysiology ablation (95.8% pericardial access success rate), seven (4.9%) developed a postoperative pericardial effusion requiring repeat EpiAcc. Inferior access was utilized in 74 (51.4%) patients. Patients with pericardial effusion tended to be younger (41.1 years vs 51.8 years, P = 0.08) and were more likely to have undergone inferior approach access (85.7% vs 49.6%, P = 0.06) than those who did not develop postoperative pericardial effusion. Seventy-one percent of patients with postoperative pericardial effusion versus 32.1% of patients without postoperative pericardial effusion had a preprocedure ejection fraction ≥55% (P = 0.03). There were no procedural-related deaths, and no difference in mortality between groups. Conclusions Postoperative pericardial effusion requiring repeat access/drainage was relatively infrequent, occurring in 4.9% of patients shortly after epicardial procedures. While the majority occur early and therefore require close observation, some patients may present in a delayed manner.
Pleistocene incision rates in the western United States calibrated using Lava Creek B tephra

The Lava Creek B ash bed, erupted from the Yellowstone caldera ca. 0.64 Ma, provides a datum for measuring long-term fluvial incision west of the Mississippi River. The ash is widely preserved due to its substantial volume, broad initial dispersal, and the aggrading environment into which the ash fell. Drainages incised soon after Lava Creek B deposition, isolating the ash from fluvial erosion and preserving it in fill terraces. Calculated rates of incision since ca. 0.60 Ma range from ≤2 to ∼30 cm k.y. −1 . Rates are high in most areas near the Rocky Mountains and downstream along rivers draining mountainous terrain, and are lowest east of the High Plains and along the Snake River. Incision rates along many rivers decrease downstream. Rates of downcutting increased in the late Pleistocene along several major rivers, indicating that climate change altered sediment budgets. Regional and temporal data suggest that fluvial incision records increased middle and late Pleistocene runoff from the southern Rocky Mountains, rather than epeirogenic uplift, but regional rock uplift cannot be excluded as a significant factor.
ESR lineshapes and saturation in the slow motional region: ELDOR

Abstract It is shown how the stochastic Liouville approach of Freed, Bruno, and Polnaszek for describing ESR lineshapes in the slow motional region may be applied to the ELDOR experiment. It is possible, in the slow motional region, to pump with a saturating microwave field at one resonant frequency corresponding to a particular orientation and observe effects from the rotational motion in transmitting the saturation to another resonant position. Some effects are illustrated by simulation of ELDOR spectra for a simple ESR line in the slow motional region.
One-Way Coupled Fluid Structure Simulations of Stores in Weapons Bays

A one-way coupled fluid-structure interaction framework for the simulations of stores in weapons bays is described. The coupling as used here can be described as loose and one-way. The term loose coupling refers to the fact that the fluid and structural equation systems are only coupled through the boundary conditions and solved as separate systems. This is done primarily for efficiency and software maintainability reasons. The term one-way refers to the fact that the fluid loads are transferred to the structural solver, but the structural deflections are not coupled back to the fluid solver. The deflections of the structures are assumed to be small (even though the accelerations may be large), so that this assumption is valid. The framework is used to compute the flow field over a model rectangular weapons bay with a model store in it. examined the effects of these loads on the structural response of the stores carried in the weapons bays. Studies of the effects of the loads on stores have largely been restricted to separation trajectories. In these studies, experiments and simulations have been carried out to examine the effects of the unsteady flow field on the store trajectory once ejected. However, if the loads are large enough and contain energy in the right frequency ranges, it is possible that the store and its components can be dramatically affected. This effect can be an important consideration that must be included in the store design and qualification process. In this paper, we present a method to couple a fluid dynamics solver with a structural dynamics solver in order to be able to study the effects of the unsteady loads on the store structure and its components. The fluid dynamics solver used in this work is SIGMA CFD - an in-house block structured implicit code that solves the compressible flow governing equations. The structural solver used is Salinas - a massively parallel implementation of structural dynamics finite element analysis that uses a variant of the Newmark-Beta time integrator called the generalized alpha method for linear and nonlinear transient dynamics. As will be described in detail below, the coupling between the two codes is done through boundary conditions only - the two equation systems are still solved separately. In addition to this, the deflections computed by the structural dynamics solver are not passed back to the CFD code - the CFD code assumes rigid structures in its computations. These assumptions and their implications are discussed in greater detail below. This paper is organized as follows. Sections II and III describe the CFD and structural dynamics codes, respectively. The coupling approach is detailed in Section IV. Section V discusses the model problem the framework is applied to. Accuracy of the load transfers are evaluated in Section VI, mesh refinement results are presented in Section VII and finally, a model application is presented in Section VIII.
DNA immunization induces protective immunity against B–cell lymphoma

Idiotypic determinants of the immunoglobulin expressed on the surface of B-cell lymphomas are tumor-specific antigens (TSAs), which can be targeted by immunotherapy. Immunization with DNA constructs encoding the idiotype (ld) of a murine B-cell lymphoma induced specific anti-ld antibody responses and protected mice against tumor challenge. Use of DNA encoding an ld/GM-CSF (idiotype/granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor) fusion protein improved vaccine efficacy, and xenogeneic immunoglobulin constant region determinants were required for immunogenicity. These results indicate that DNA may be a simple and efficacious means of inducing immune responses against a weak, otherwise unrecognized tumor antigen, provided that additional stimuli are included with the DNA.
A fixed-detachable implant-supported prosthesis retained with precision attachments

The implant-supported, maxillary anterior, fixed-detachable prosthesis is often fabricated with a gingival flange to enhance esthetics and phonetics. However, only the dentist can remove the prosthesis, and the esthetic labial flange invariably impedes patient access for cleaning. A two-piece, fixed-detachable prosthesis that incorporates a substructure retained with conventional set screws and a superstructure retained with precision attachments has been developed. The substructure is contoured to facilitate patient access for oral hygiene because it will be covered by the superstructure and neither esthetics nor phonetics is a concern. The superstructure is easily removed by the patient for routine cleaning and can be designed for favorable esthetics and phonetics. This article reviews and describes the procedures for fabrication of this precision attachment-retained, implant-supported prosthesis.
Serum chemistry of diseased English sole, Parophrys vetulus Girard, from polluted areas of Puget Sound, Washington

Relationships between selected serum components and microscopically detected idiopathic liver and kidney lesions were evaluated for English sole, Parophrys vetulus, sampled from urban and non-urban areas of Puget Sound, Washington. The normal range for each serum chemistry parameter was based on English sole with no lesions, or sole with minor parasitic conditions or with lesions in tissues other than liver and kidney which did not significantly affect serum chemistry values. Generally, sole with idiopathic liver lesions had significantly different haematocrit values and levels of serum albumin, calcium, and bilirubin when compared to sole which were free of idiopathic liver and/or kidney lesions. Serum aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase activity and serum levels of glucose, total protein, phosphates and magnesium were also abnormal, but appeared to be associated only with certain types of liver lesions. No association between kidney lesions and abnormal serum chemistry values was identified. In addition, English sole sampled from some urban areas of Puget Sound had particular serum chemistry values and liver lesion prevalences which were significantly different from those of sole sampled from non-urban areas. These findings support the hypothesis that sole near highly urbanized environments may display other signs of impaired health in addition to high prevalences of tissue lesions. Thus, measurements of serum chemistry parameters, in conjunction with histopathological examination, appear to be useful techniques for evaluating the health of English sole.