cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A DNA-Based Building Block for Designer Excitonic Circuits

Mimicking the ability of natural light harvesting systems to absorb and transport energy efficiently over long ranges is an important unmet challenge in bionanotechnology. Structured biomolecular scaffolds such as DNA assemblies offer exquisite control over 3D nanometer-scale chromophore organization to program custom energy transfer pathways at the nanoscale while exploiting the quantum nature of inter-molecular chromophore coupling. Here, we report a bottom-up multi-chromophore design framework that leverages quantum properties to design modular, customizable excitonic circuits using programmed DNA assemblies. To achieve this we employ sequence-specific DNA scaffolds that organize strongly interacting cyanine aggregates as building blocks to construct fast, coherent energy transfer in complex supramolecular architectures. Using this approach, we synthesized a DX-tile that consists of multiple interacting cyanine aggregate units to attain spectral tunability, superradiance and fast exciton transport. Because of the increasing number of synthetic chromophores available and the structural flexibility and control of programmable DNA nanotechnology, our bottom-up approach may enable rational design of a broad array of nanoscale excitonic circuits in large-scale one-, two-, and three-dimensional DNA-based arrays.
Survey Registration for Long-Term Natural Environment Monitoring

This paper presents a survey registration framework to assist in the recurrent inspection of a natural environment. Our framework coarsely aligns surveys at the image-level using visual simultaneous localization and mapping SLAM, and it registers images at the pixel-level using SIFT Flow, which enables rapid manual inspection. The variation in appearance of natural environments makes data association a primary challenge of this work. We discuss this and other challenges, including 1 alternative approaches for coarsely aligning surveys of a natural environment, 2 how to select which images to compare between two surveys, and 3 strategies to boost image registration accuracy. We evaluate each stage of our approach, emphasizing alignment accuracy and stability with respect to large seasonal variations. Our domain is lakeshore monitoring, in which an autonomous surface vessel surveyed a 1-km lakeshore 33 times in 14 months. Our results show that our framework precisely aligns a significant number of images between surveys captured up to roughly three months apart, often across marked variation in appearance. Using these results, a human was able to spot several changes between surveys that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Experience in War

The 23rd Infantry Division, also known as the Americal Division, had been deactivated in April 1956 after several years of service in the Panama Canal Zone. General William Westmoreland reassembled and reactivated the unit on September 25, 1967. He assigned Americal troops to I Corps in Vietnam, where the unit was to work cooperatively with the 1st Marine Division. Charlie Company, part of Americal’s 11th Infantry Brigade, was deployed to Quang Ngai province in I Corps in December 1967. For the next three months, the troops participated in search and destroy missions, trying to locate the notorious Vietcong 48th Local Force Battalion, which operated regularly in the region.
The frequency spectrum of chromatin accessibility in Yorubans points toward a significant role of random genetic drift in shaping the chromatin landscape

The function of non-coding variation in the human genome is hotly debated. While much of the genome appears to be involved in some kind of molecular activity, a relatively small portion of the genome appears to be conserved across mammalian species. To try to understand part of this seeming paradox, we examined chromatin accessibility as a model molecular phenotype. We modeled chromatin state as either open or closed as looked at the frequency of open chromatin across 70 Yoruban cell lines. We saw that most regions of chromatin accessibility occurred in only a small number of individuals, although there are a number of regions that are accessible across the entire panel. To delve further into understanding the evolutionary mechanisms, we examined nucleotide diversity in and around accessible regions. We found that in the open chromatin access, low frequency regions had decreased nucleotide diversity, however, they were situated within regions of elevated nucleotide diversity. These results point toward a role of random mutation and genetic drift shaping the distribution of accessible regions in the human genome.
Receipt of vaginal brachytherapy is associated with improved survival in women with stage I endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus: A National Cancer Data Base study.

BACKGROUND Randomized controlled trials have consistently shown that the use of postoperative radiotherapy (RT) for stage I endometrial cancer leads to a reduction in the incidence of pelvic recurrences without a corresponding reduction in overall mortality. It was hypothesized that a reduction in mortality associated with the receipt of RT could be identified in a large data set with greater statistical power. METHODS Women with surgically staged IA or IB endometrial adenocarcinoma who were treated with total hysterectomy between 2003 and 2011 were identified in the National Cancer Data Base. Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression were performed to analyze factors associated with the treatment type. A survival analysis was performed with log-rank testing, Cox proportional hazards regression, and Kaplan-Meier estimates. RESULTS A total of 44,309 eligible women were identified (33,380 at stage IA and 10,929 at stage IB): 88.4% of the women with stage IA tumors and 51.6% of the women with stage IB tumors received no RT. Older age, comorbid disease, a higher histologic grade, and a larger tumor size were independently associated with an increase in mortality. The receipt of vaginal brachytherapy (VB) was independently associated with a reduction in mortality for both stage IA disease (hazard ratio [HR], 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.67-0.97) and stage IB disease (HR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.51-0.74). CONCLUSIONS Analyses of this large database support the utility of postoperative VB for many women with stage I endometrial cancer. Unfortunately, RT appears to be underused in this population. Greater adherence to consensus guidelines may lead to improved outcomes. Cancer 2016;122:3724-31. © 2016 American Cancer Society.
H. B. Garland, Schiller: The Dramatic Writer. A Study of Style in the Plays: Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1969. Pp. 301

(1971). H. B. Garland, Schiller: The Dramatic Writer. A Study of Style in the Plays. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 153-155.
A new species of Oxynetra from Mexico (Hesperiidae, Pyrginae, Pyrrhopygini)

Oxynetra aureopectasp. n. is described from the Sierra Madre Oriental of east-central Mexico. Visually similar to Mesoamerican O. hopfferi Staudinger, 1888 in having five orange bands on the abdomen above, it is diagnosed by orange forecoxae and palpi beneath, narrower forewing hyaline bands and a prominent 6% difference in the COI DNA barcode sequence. It is the northernmost representative of the hopfferi species group that also includes O. stangelandi Grishin & Burns, 2013, characterized by a single-banded abdomen and currently known only from the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica. Both O. hopfferi and O. stangelandi possess white forecoxae and ventral palpi. This new discovery brings the total number of Oxynetra C. & R. Felder, 1862 species to five.
Fission products: Retention and elimination of the parent-daughter radionuclide pair barium-140-lanthanum-140 by rats

Abstract The retention patterns of 140Ba-140La in the rat were studied by whole-body counting techniques. The animals lost 50% of the original radioactivity in about 6.5 days. In about 3–4 days, nearly 24–25% of the administered 140Ba-140La was excreted, and 75–76% of the dose was retained. The activities of 140Ba-140La in bone, muscle, and blood as a function of time are reported. The peak concentration of 140Ba-140La was found in bone at the end of the fourth day. The parent (140Ba) and the daughter (140La) isotopes are nearly in transient equilibrium in the sample of 140Ba-140La found in the bone at the end of the fourth day. The effective physical half-lives suggest that 140Ba shows more preference than 140La to accumulate in bone. The major route for the elimination of 140Ba-140La seems to be the feces. About 8% of the dose of 140Ba-140La was excreted in urine, while about 16% of the dose of 140Ba-140La was eliminated by routes other than urine in 4 days after intraperitoneal administration of 140Ba-140La. Kidney differentiates between the parent and the daughter isotopes because the ratio 140Ba:140La is higher in the urine than in the dose of 140Ba-140La. Renal tissue shows a preference to retain 140La.
Continent ileal urinary reservoir (Kock pouch).

SUMMARY The Kock pouch has three major limitations at the present time: 1. The efferent nipple valve remains by far the weakest link in the procedure. A 10 to 20 per cent failure rate is too high, and it remains to be seen whether further modifications will be successful in the long run. 2. The long-term function is unproven, and it is possible that deleterious effects may be seen as additional follow-up is obtained. Theoretically, the low-pressure system afforded by the Kock pouch may be superior in long-term safety to that provided by reservoirs made from other bowel segments. 3. A stoma is still necessary. In spite of the above, there is a need for this type of procedure. We cannot remain content with the ileal conduit and should continue to search for better functional diversions. It is a debatable issue relative to the superiority of an internal functional reservoir to the urethra, which may lead to night-time incontinence, versus a Kock pouch with a stoma, which must be intubated. Improvement in overall survival from bladder cancer may be hard to come by, unless effective systemic chemotherapy is available; one means is to perform the surgery without delay in patients with potentially lethal cancers. To do this on a large scale, we must make the surgery as safe as possible and provide the least disruption of lifestyle. In some patients an internal intestinal reservoir attached to the urethra will be possible. Other patients may elect for a Kock pouch, whereas others may even be best served by standard ileal conduit. The growth pains of the Kock pouch have been significant but not without a reward.
Abstract 236: Intrauterine Growth Restriction Programs A Reduction In Nitric Oxide Bioavailability Indicative Of Accelerated Vascular Aging In The Male Growth-restricted Rat.

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) programs hypertension and endothelial dysfunction at 4 months of age in male IUGR rat offspring compared to male control. Male IUGR offspring at 4 months of a...
Ecotaxis, Ecotaxopathy, and Lymphoid Malignancy: Terms, Facts, and Predictions

The term ecotaxis was designed originally to define the capacity of mature cells within the lymphomyeloid system to migrate and arrange themselves in clear-cut microenvironments of the peripheral lymphoid organs (de Sousa, 1971, 1973). Each of the mammalian peripheral lymphoid organs—the spleen, the lymph node, and the Peyer’s patch—can be divided into a number of clearly defined areas that can be represented diagramatically as in Figure 1. The spleen, in addition to containing the lymphoid component originally described by Malpighi (1686) as the follicular white pulp, contains a mixed white- and red-cell component, the red pulp; in the mouse, the red pulp is also a site of hemopoiesis (see Section 1.2.1). The splenic red pulp consists of cords and sinuses that are features of importance for the subsequent fate of circulating cells (see Sections 1.2.2 and 1.2.3). The white pulp, the lymph nodes, and the cortical areas of Peyer’s patches can be divided into thymus-dependent (T) and thymus-independent (B) zones, which contain a predominance of thymus-derived (T) and thymus-independent (B) cells, respectively (Parrott and de Sousa, 1971; de Sousa, 1973; de Sousa and Anderson, 1969). Ultrastructural studies (Veldman, 1970; Hoefschmit, 1974) and studies of the reticulum framework of the spleen and lymph nodes (Veerman, 1974; de Sousa, 1969) have revealed cellular.
Self-Transfecting Micellar RNA: Modulating Nanoparticle Cell Interactions via High Density Display of Small Molecule Ligands on Micelle Coronas.

The intracellular delivery of synthetic nucleic acids represents a major challenge in biotechnology and in biomedicine. Methods to deliver short, double-stranded RNA to living cells are of particular interest because of the potential to engage the RNA interference machinery and to regulate mRNA expression. In this work, we describe novel RNA-polymer amphiphiles that assemble into spherical micellar nanoparticles with diameters of ca. 15–30 nm and efficiently enter live cells without transfection reagents. Each micelle consists of approximately 100 RNA strands forming a densely packed corona around a polymeric core. Importantly, the surface-displayed RNA remains accessible for hybridization with complementary RNA. Chemical modification of the termini of hybridized RNA strands enabled the display of small organic moieties on the outer surface of the micelle corona. We found that some of these modifications can have a tremendous impact on cellular internalization efficiencies. The display of hydrophobic dabc...
IN VIVO DEXAMETHASONE EFFECTS ON NEUTROPHIL EFFECTOR FUNCTIONS IN A RAT MODEL OF ACUTE LUNG INJURY

Glucocorticoids, while potent antiinflammatory agents, have not been proven to be efficacious in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, ARDS. Previous studies from this laboratory have reported that dexamethasone pretreatment of rats resulted in a 40–60% reduction in neutrophil influx into the airways following intratracheal administration of lipopolysaccharide, LPS. In the present study, the in vivo effects of dexamethasone on BAL neutrophil effector functions were evaluated by flow cytometry. BAL neutrophils from rats pretreated with dexamethasone (20 mg/kg, i.p. at 2 h before and 8 h after LPS) and harvested 20 h after LPS challenge demonstrated a 35% reduction in their ability to undergo an ex vivo oxidative burst with phorbol myristate acetate. This modest reduction in the oxidative burst was not related to a more general suppression of neutrophil effector functions as neither phagocytosis of opsonized bacteria nor expression of the beta-2 integrins CD11a and CD11b were similarly inhibited. Therefore, the neutrophil population which has migrated into the airways in dexamethasone pretreated rats retains the capacity to mediate host defense but also to exacerbate inflammation associated tissue damage.
Randomized dose-escalation trial of elamipretide in adults with primary mitochondrial myopathy

Objective To assess the safety and efficacy of elamipretide, an aromatic-cationic tetrapeptide that readily penetrates cell membranes and transiently localizes to the inner mitochondrial membrane where it associates with cardiolipin, in adults with primary mitochondrial myopathy (PMM). Methods A Study Investigating the Safety, Tolerability, and Efficacy of MTP-131 for the Treatment of Mitochondrial Myopathy (MMPOWER) was a phase I/II multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of elamipretide in 36 participants with genetically confirmed PMM. Participants were randomized to intravenous elamipretide (0.01, 0.1, and 0.25 mg/kg/h or placebo for 2 hours in a dose-escalating sequence). The primary efficacy measure was the change in distance walked in the 6-minute walk test (6MWT) after 5 days of treatment. Other efficacy measures included changes in cardiopulmonary exercise testing parameters, in participant-reported symptoms, and in serum and urinary biomarkers. Safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics were also measured. Results Participants who received the highest dose of elamipretide walked a mean of 64.5 m farther at day 5 compared to a change of 20.4 m in the placebo group ( p = 0.053). In addition, there was a dose-dependent increase in distance walked on the 6MWT with elamipretide treatment ( p = 0.014). In a model that adjusted for additional covariates possibly affecting response, the adjusted change for the highest dose of elamipretide was 51.2 vs 3.0 m in the placebo group ( p = 0.0297). No significant differences were observed in other efficacy and safety endpoints. Conclusions Elamipretide increased exercise performance after 5 days of treatment in patients with PMM without increased safety concerns. These findings, as well as additional functional and patient-reported measures, remain to be tested in larger trials with longer treatment periods to detect other potential therapeutic benefits in individuals affected by this condition. Classification of evidence This trial provides Class I evidence that for patients with PMM, elamipretide improved the distance walked on the 6MWT.
The ecology of social support in relation to academic and behavioral self-perceptions among African American boys and girls

In this research, the ecology of perceived social support was examined across multiple contexts (i.e., parents, teachers, classmates, and close friends) in relation to self-perception indices among...
Goal conflict when making decisions for others

Abstract Some of life's most important and difficult decisions are made on behalf of others. However, little is known about how goal conflict influences high-stakes decisions made on behalf of others. A nationally representative sample of U.S. healthcare providers (n = 502) read a statement presenting curative and palliative care goals as conflicting or complementary. We predicted and found that providers who received a goal conflict (vs. complementary) message perceived greater conflict, and rated palliative goals as less important. Providers who received a goal conflict (vs. complementarity) message also rated curative goals as less important. Moreover, there was an indirect link from goal conflict condition to willingness to provide palliative care, mediated by perceived goal conflict. A self-affirmation manipulation reduced providers' willingness to provide palliative care, but did not influence the effect of goal conflict on decision-making. Findings suggest that goal conflict is consequential for high-stakes decisions made for others, and that goal conflict (vs. complementarity) lowers importance of, and increases disengagement from, conflicting goals.
CD16+ monocytes in patients with cancer: spontaneous elevation and pharmacologic induction by recombinant human macrophage colony- stimulating factor

The small subset of circulating monocytes that express the maturation-associated CD16 antigen has recently been reported to be elevated in patients with bacterial sepsis. We now show that this novel CD16+ monocyte population is also spontaneously expanded in patients with cancer. We studied 14 patients with metastatic gastrointestinal carcinoma enrolled ina clinical trial of recombinant human macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhMCSF) plus monoclonal antibody D612. We found that before any cytokine treatment, 12 of 14 patients constitutively displayed significant elevations in both the percentage and the absolute number of CD16+ monocytes, as compared with both normal subjects and ill patients with elevated monocyte counts but without malignancy. CD16+ monocytes accounted for 46% +/- 22% of total monocytes in the patients with cancer versus 5% +/- 3% for controls (P < .01). The increase was not attributable to infection or intercurrent illness and appeared to be associated with the underlying malignancy itself. A similar spontaneous elevation of CD16+ monocytes was observed in 35 of 44 additional patients diagnosed with a variety of other solid tumors. When patients with gastrointestinal carcinoma were treated with rhMCSF, there was a marked further increase in the percentage of CD16+ monocytes (to 83% +/- 11%), as well as in the absolute number of CD16+ cells and the level of CD16 antigen expression. In every case, the patients with cancer showed a greater CD16+ monocyte response than the maximal response obtained in normal volunteer subjects treated witha similar regimen of rhMCSF (n = 5, P < .001), suggesting that the presence of malignancy primed patients for enhanced responsiveness to rhMCSF. We hypothesize that spontaneous expansion of the CD16+ monocyte population may represent a novel biologic marker for a widespread and previously unsuspected host immune response to malignancy.
Envisioning a Future Framework for Managing Land and Water Resources

Effective land and water resources management has become an increasingly difficult and challenging task. There are more and more demands and a shrinking resource base. Land and water resource managers face many new legislative requirements, demands from increasingly sophisticated and often conflicting interest groups, and pressure to accurately project and evaluate the costs, benefits, options, and potential short term, long term, and cumulative consequences of any proposed management actions. In particular, the civil works and military land management challenges facing the U.S. Army include the need to: · integrate multiple uses of lands and water resources, · sustain mission use of training and testing ranges, · restore contaminated sites, · restore aquatic and upland ecosystems, · manage noise propagation, · partner with stakeholders in ecosystem and watershed planning, restoration, and management, · evaluate proposed activities on wetlands (permitting), · manage coastal zone, watershed, and riverine resources, · maintain navigable waterways and conduct dredging operations, · maintain effective flood control measures, · assess chemical and biological threats and risk pathways, and · evaluate the use of military lands within larger urban landscapes.
Lack of Tolerance Development to the Hemodynamic Effects of Nitrates in Patients with Chronic Congestive Heart Failure

The beneficial acute hemodynamic effects of vasodilators in patients with congestive heart failure are well established (1, 2). The use of vasodilators in long-term management of chronic heart failure is being intensively evaluated, and nitrates are among the earliest and most extensively studied agents employed for chronic afterload reduction (3–7). Loss of hemodynamic efficacy of some vasodilators has been demonstrated in patients with heart failure, while tolerance to nitrates as antianginal agents has been suggested (8–10). Furthermore, the venodilating effect of nitrates may become blunted with time (11). It is therefore extremely important to establish long-term hemodynamic efficacy of nitrates if they are to be important in the treatment of chronic congestive heart failure.
Two Models of Procedural Justice

In this volume we have seen that procedural justice phenomena are reliable and robust and that they are ubiquitous features of social life. Chapter 9 summarizes the effects and processes that are observed regularly in procedural justice studies and offers hypotheses about how procedural justice might work in as yet untested contexts. Our goal in this chapter is to move beyond the generalization of research findings to a more analytic examination of the psychology of procedural justice. In particular, we consider here the implications of two models of procedural justice for our image of the person. It is through consideration of this issue that we believe we can say the most about how procedural justice works to produce the effects we have described throughout this book. Further, it is through consideration of this issue that we can see most clearly the importance of the psychology of procedural justice for fundamental concerns in social psychology and the other behavioral and social sciences.
Combined performance of screening and variable selection methods in ultra-high dimensional data in predicting time-to-event outcomes

Building prognostic models of clinical outcomes is an increasingly important research task and will remain a vital area in genomic medicine. Prognostic models of clinical outcomes are usually built and validated utilizing variable selection methods and machine learning tools. The challenges, however, in ultra-high dimensional space are not only to reduce the dimensionality of the data, but also to retain the important variables which predict the outcome. Screening approaches, such as the sure independence screening (SIS), iterative SIS (ISIS), and principled SIS (PSIS), have been developed to overcome the challenge of high dimensionality. We are interested in identifying important single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and integrating them into a validated prognostic model of overall survival in patients with metastatic prostate cancer. While the abovementioned variable selection approaches have theoretical justification in selecting SNPs, the comparison and the performance of these combined methods in predicting time-to-event outcomes have not been previously studied in ultra-high dimensional space with hundreds of thousands of variables. We conducted a series of simulations to compare the performance of different combinations of variable selection approaches and classification trees, such as the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (ALASSO), and random survival forest (RSF), in ultra-high dimensional setting data for the purpose of developing prognostic models for a time-to-event outcome that is subject to censoring. The variable selection methods were evaluated for discrimination (Harrell’s concordance statistic), calibration, and overall performance. In addition, we applied these approaches to 498,081 SNPs from 623 Caucasian patients with prostate cancer. When n = 300, ISIS-LASSO and ISIS-ALASSO chose all the informative variables which resulted in the highest Harrell’s c-index (> 0.80). On the other hand, with a small sample size (n = 150), ALASSO performed better than any other combinations as demonstrated by the highest c-index and/or overall performance, although there was evidence of overfitting. In analyzing the prostate cancer data, ISIS-ALASSO, SIS-LASSO, and SIS-ALASSO combinations achieved the highest discrimination with c-index of 0.67. Choosing the appropriate variable selection method for training a model is a critical step in developing a robust prognostic model. Based on the simulation studies, the effective use of ALASSO or a combination of methods, such as ISIS-LASSO and ISIS-ALASSO, allows both for the development of prognostic models with high predictive accuracy and a low risk of overfitting assuming moderate sample sizes.
Estimating Local Consumer Market Size for Marketing Decision‑Making

Marketing theory provides a lot of tools and methods for planning and analysis, but their practical use typically requires data that are not easily available, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating on smaller local markets. In this study, we present a method that allows SMEs to simply estimate the size and growth trend of a local market in the Czech Republic defined by selected municipalities. The data about total consumer spending in 2011-2016 period were drawn from publicly available sources. We have created maps using the QGIS software with estimates of total consumer spending in all municipalities of the Czech Republic in 2016, total consumer spending in specific local market in 2016 and the average annual growth rate in consumer spending in 2011-2016 as well. It may serve as a guidance for SMEs about where the biggest opportunities and threats in the market size and growth are. The same method has been applied to part of South Bohemia region as a case study whose results could be used for estimation of the same figures about consumer spending.
Looking for a quantum spin liquid in the BaNi2(V1−xPx)2O8 spin 1 honeycomb system

ABSTRACTThe general magnetic characterisation of a series of materials in the BaNi2V2O8-BaNi2P2O8 layered honeycomb spin-1 system is reported. A change from dominantly 2-dimensional (2D) to dominan...
Symptom Clusters in Patients With Gastrointestinal Cancers Using Different Dimensions of the Symptom Experience.

Abstract Context Patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers undergoing chemotherapy (CTX) experience multiple cooccurring symptoms. Objectives The aim of this study was to describe the occurrence, severity, and distress of 38 symptoms and to identify symptom clusters based on three symptom dimensions (i.e., occurrence, severity, and distress) in patients with GI cancers receiving CTX (n = 399). We compared whether the numbers and types of symptom clusters differed based on the dimension of the symptom experience used to create the clusters. Methods A modified version of the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale was used to assess the occurrence, severity, and distress of 38 symptoms before the initiation of the patient's next dose of CTX. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the symptom clusters. Results These patients experienced 13.0 (±7.1) symptoms before their second or third dose of CTX. For all three symptom dimensions, four symptom clusters were identified, namely psychological distress, CTX-related, GI, and weight change. The number and types of symptom clusters were relatively similar using all three symptom dimensions. However, some variability was found in the specific symptoms within each of the clusters. Conclusion Our findings suggest that patients with GI cancers experience multiple cooccurring symptoms. Consistent with previous studies of patients with a variety of cancer diagnoses, psychological and GI clusters are common. Clinicians need to assess for and tailor interventions for these symptom clusters.
Nursing assistants' perceptions of their role in the resident experience

The aim of this study was to examine nursing assistants' perspectives of their role in the nursing home resident experience. Recent efforts to improve nursing home quality are focused on providing person-centered care and improving the resident experience. However, the literature on nursing home quality lacks the perspective and experiences of nursing assistants themselves, despite their crucial role in the resident experience. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 nursing assistants from 17 organizations and seven states. Data were analyzed using an interpretive approach that identified relevant codes and themes. Respondents perceived that they play a pivotal role in the resident experience by providing choices, communicating important information, comforting, and living within the daily reality of cognitively impaired residents. Nursing assistants' challenges included using non-verbal communication, balancing personal care while maintaining boundaries, and dealing with a perceived lack of trust. Nursing assistants are integral to interpersonal engagement with residents and relationship-based activities, such as communication, caring, and protecting. Increased nursing assistant input into programs and policies to improve the resident experience is warranted. Quality assessment should incorporate direct input from residents and nursing assistants regarding person-centered care.
Effect of Heterogeneity in Time Headway on Error Propagation in Vehicular Strings

Recent ACC and CACC systems provide a consumer with a discrete and finite set of choices of time headway settings. Heterogeneity of traffic results from consumers’ preference for different time headways even if the vehicles are of the same make and model. In this paper, we study string stability associated with this type of heterogeneity. We show that if time headways are in a decreasing order in a vehicle string for CACC and in increasing order for ACC, string stability can be guaranteed. We provide a method to choose the associated control gains so that the same set of gains can be used for all headway settings. We also investigate how errors propagate if one were to rearrange the vehicles in a random order. By doing so, it is found that for a finite, discrete choice of time headways, the maximum spacing error of a vehicle for any rearrangement of vehicles can be bounded irrespective of the size of the platoon implying that heterogeneity will not contribute significantly to string instability for nominal maneuvers of the leading vehicle in the string. We provide numerical results to corroborate the results in this paper.
Historic drought influences outmigration dynamics of juvenile fall and spring-run Chinook Salmon

Riverine ecosystems around the world have undergone extensive anthropogenic alterations, often to the detriment of native aquatic biodiversity. Migratory fishes are particularly vulnerable to habitat fragmentation and degradation. For example, Chinook Salmon populations in the Sacramento River, CA have been declining for nearly a century. Its Mediterranean climate, position in a landscape dominated by urban and agricultural land use, and the presence of an inland delta that serves as the hub of California’s vast water conveyance system, makes this a particularly perilous region for migrating juvenile salmon. This study used acoustic telemetry to investigate survival and routing of juvenile fall and spring-run Chinook Salmon through their riverine and estuarine migratory phases during the historic California drought of 2012–2016. Survival to the ocean in this river system is already lower relative to Chinook Salmon populations in North American. Survival to the Pacific Ocean ranged from 0.0–9.1% over the course of this three-year study. Use of four migratory routes through the Delta was variable, both within and between years. We documented extensive use and relatively high survival in Steamboat Slough (up to 41.5% routing through and up to 39.8% survival), part of the Sacramento River’s distributary network. Migration through this pathway precludes juvenile salmon from encountering junctions leading to low survival routes. Results from this modeling effort provide valuable information and highlight opportunities for directing management actions to benefit these ecologically and economically valuable runs of Chinook Salmon.
More Accurate Dynamic Slicing for Better Supporting Software Debugging

Dynamic slicing and its underlying dynamic dependence analysis have been extensively studied and used as the foundation for numerous automated-debugging techniques. One limitation of dynamic slicing, when used for debugging, is that it only considers program dependences that are actually observed during the execution(s) of interest. Some faults, however, involve potential, rather than actual dependences—dependences that would be observed if the correct program was executed but are missing when the faulty program is executed. In particular, traditional dynamic slicing may fail to locate faults that involve assignments that should have occurred in a correct execution and did not occur in the failing execution being debugged. Relevant slicing techniques partially address this problem by identifying missing assignments due to incorrect control-flow. However, they do not consider the case of assignments that do occur but modify the wrong memory location (e.g., the wrong element of an array). Debugging techniques based on existing dynamic slicing approaches may therefore miss faults in the presence of this kind of incorrect assignments. To address this problem, we introduce the concept of potential memory-address dependence (PMD). Intuitively, PMDs represent the dependence relationship between an instruction s that affects the computation of a memory-address ma (e.g., by defining an array index or a pointer offset) and memory read instructions that are not observed to be dependent on s but could be affected by s (i.e., access the memory at ma) in a counterfactual execution of s. We also present a technique that computes PMDs and represents them on standard dynamic dependence graphs. To assess the effectiveness of our technique for debugging, we implemented PMD-Slicer, a dynamic slicer that accounts for PMDs, and performed an empirical evaluation on a benchmark of 364 real faults and 880 fault-revealing test cases. Our results are promising, in that almost 10% of the failing tests contained cases in which PMD-Slicer generated slices that included the corresponding fault, while a traditional dynamic slicer did not. Furthermore, considering PMDs only moderately increased slice sizes.
The iron-dependent repressor YtgR regulates the tryptophan salvage pathway through a bipartite mechanism of transcriptional control inChlamydia trachomatis

Abstract During infection, pathogens are starved of essential nutrients such as iron and tryptophan by host immune effectors. Without conserved global stress response regulators, how the obligate intracellular bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis arrives at a physiologically similar “persistent” state in response to starvation of either nutrient remains unclear. Here, we report on the iron-dependent regulation of the trpRBA tryptophan salvage pathway in C. trachomatis. Iron starvation specifically induces trpBA expression from a novel promoter element within an intergenic region flanked by trpR and trpB. YtgR, the only known iron-dependent regulator in Chlamydia, can bind to the trpRBA intergenic region upstream of the alternative trpBA promoter to repress transcription. Simultaneously, YtgR binding promotes the termination of transcripts from the primary promoter upstream of trpR. This is the first description of an iron-dependent mechanism regulating prokaryotic tryptophan biosynthesis that may indicate the existence of novel approaches to gene regulation and stress response in Chlamydia.
Exploring Excitotoxicity and Regulation of a Constitutively Active TRP Ca2+ Channel in Drosophila

Unregulated Ca2+ influx affects intracellular Ca2+ homoeostasis, which may lead to neuronal death. In Drosophila, following the activation of rhodopsin the TRP Ca2+ channel is open to mediate the l...
Long-term deep-supercooling of large-volume water and red cell suspensions via surface sealing with immiscible liquids.

Supercooling of aqueous solutions is a fundamentally and practically important physical phenomenon with numerous applications in biopreservation and beyond. Under normal conditions, heterogeneous nucleation mechanisms critically prohibit the simultaneous long-term (> 1 week), large volume (> 1 ml), and low temperatures (< −10 °C) supercooling of aqueous solutions. Here, we report on the use of surface sealing of water by an oil phase to significantly diminish the primary heterogeneous nucleation at the water/air interface. We achieve deep supercooling (down to −20 °C) of large volumes of water (up to 100 ml) for long periods (up to 100 days) simultaneously via this approach. Since oils are mixtures of various hydrocarbons we also report on the use of pure alkanes and primary alcohols of various lengths to achieve the same. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of deep supercooling via preliminary studies on extended (100 days) preservation of human red blood cells. Supercooled water is susceptible to spontaneous freezing, and preventing this process is a challenge. Here, the authors use surface sealing with immiscible liquids to eliminate primary ice nucleation at the water/air interface, enabling deep supercooling of large volumes of water and red cell suspensions for long time periods.
Incorporating domain knowledge into Memetic Algorithms for solving Spatial Optimization problems

Spatial optimization problems (SOPs) are characterized by spatial relationships governing the decision variables, objectives and/or constraint functions. These are mostly combinatorial problems (NP-hard) due to the presence of discrete spatial units. Hence, exact optimization methods cannot solve them optimally under practical time constraints, especially for large-sized instances. Motivated by this challenge, we explore the use of population-based metaheuristics for solving SOPs. To this end, we observe that the search moves employed by these methods are suited to real-parameter continuous search space rather. To adapt them to the SOPs, we explore the role of domain knowledge in designing spatially-aware search operators that can efficiently search for an optimal solution in discrete search space while respecting the spatial constraints. These modifications result in a simple yet highly effective spatial hybrid metaheuristic called SPATIAL, which is applied to the problem of school boundary formation (also called school redistricting). Experimental findings on real-world datasets reveal the efficacy of our algorithm in obtaining superior quality solutions in comparison to traditional baseline methods. Additionally, we perform an in-depth study of the individual components of our framework and highlight the flexibility of our method in assimilating other search operators as well as in adapting it to related SOPs.
How we Think About Human Nature: Cognitive Errors and Concrete Remedies

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties.
Choroidal Neovascularization and Macular Hemorrhage: Real-World Experience During the New York City COVID-19 Lockdown

Purpose:This work reviews ocular, systemic, and demographic factors contributing to presentation of choroidal neovascular membrane (CNVM)–associated macular hemorrhage after the New York City coron...
Qualitative Analysis on Large Scale Social Media Data for Adolescent Online Safety

We aim to understand adolescent online risks to develop systems to provide safer online experiences for teens. Thus, we are doing qualitative data analysis on social media datasets to develop risk models qualitatively, then to create rich labeled datasets for training machine learning algorithms. Qualitative analysis of these large datasets is challenging in terms of scoping the dataset, qualitative approach, and utilizing qualitative analysis to create ground truth for training machine learning algorithms. Qualitative Research Methods for the CSCW workshop provides us a good opportunity to discuss these challenges and provide practices to tackle them.
MBIST and statistical hypothesis test for time dependent dielectric breakdowns due to GOBD vs. BTDDB in an SRAM array

In this paper we present Memory Built-In Self-Test (MBIST) diagnosis methodologies for failure analysis of time-dependent breakdown due to gate oxide breakdown (GOBD) and backend time-dependent dielectric breakdown (BTDDB) in an SRAM array. First, a Built-In Self-Test (BIST) system and algorithm detect the breakdown mechanisms and identify the locations of the faulty sites in SRAM cells. Then, probabilities of failure are estimated for BTDDB and GOBD by matching the observed failure rate from BIST and the expected failure distribution functions from system simulations under realistic use scenarios, with different simulated failure rates for BTDDB and GOBD.
The Effect of Graph Layout on Inference from Social Network Data

Social network analysis uses techniques from graph theory to analyze the structure of relationships among social actors such as individuals or groups. We investigate the effect of the layout of a social network on the inferences drawn by observers about the number of social groupings evident and the centrality of various actors in the network. We conducted an experiment in which eighty subjects provided answers about three drawings. The subjects were not told that the drawings were chosen from five different layouts of the same graph. We found that the layout has a significant effect on their inferences and present some initial results about the way certain Euclidean features will affect perceptions of structural features of the network. There is no “best” layout for a social network; when layouts are designed one must take into account the most important features of the network to be presented as well as the network itself.
Microarray and EST database estimates of mRNA expression levels differ: The protein length versus expression curve for C. elegans

Various methods for estimating protein expression levels are known. The level of correlation between these methods is only fair, and systematic biases in each of the methods cannot be ruled out. We here investigate systematic biases in the estimation of gene expression rates from microarray data and from abundance within the Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) database. We suggest that length is a significant factor in biases to measured gene expression rates. As a specific example of the importance of the bias of expression rate with length, we address the following evolutionary question: Does the average C. elegans protein length increase or decrease with expression level? Two different answers to this question have been reported in the literature, one method using expression levels estimated by abundance within the EST database and another using microarrays. We have investigated this issue by constructing the full protein length versus expression curve for C. elegans, using both methods for estimating expression levels. The microarray data show a monotonic decrease of length with expression level, whereas the abundance within the EST database data show a non-monotonic behavior. Furthermore, the ratio of the expression level estimated by the EST database to that measured by microarrays is not constant, but rather systematically biased with gene length. It is suggested that the length bias may lie primarily in the abundance within the EST database method, being not ameliorated by internal standards as it is in the microarray data, and that this bias should be removed before data interpretation. When this is done, both the microarray and the abundance within the EST database give a monotonic decrease of spliced length with expression level, and the correlation between the EST and microarray data becomes larger. We suggest that standard RNA controls be used to normalize for length bias in any method that measures expression.