cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Extrusion Chemistry of Wheat Flour Proteins: II. Sulfhydryl-Disulfide Content and Protein Structural Changes

ABSTRACT Effects of twin-screw extrusion conditions on wheat flour proteins were studied, using a two-level fractional factorial experimental design (11 and 14% protein content, 160 and 185°C, 16 and 20% moisture, 300 and 500 rpm screw speed, mass flow rate of 225 and 400 g/min). Total protein detectable by solid-phase bicinchoninic acid assay decreased slightly after extrusion, with greatest protein loss at 16% moisture and 160°C. Sulfhydryl content of both flours increased after extrusion at 185°C and 16% moisture with moderate specific mechanical energy (SME ≈ 400–600 kJ/kg) or 160°C and 16% moisture with high SME (SME > 1,000 kJ/kg). Disulfide bonds increased under comparable conditions but with moderate shear (SME = 510–540 kJ/kg). At 20% moisture and either temperature, sulfhydryl and total thiol contents decreased without corresponding increases in disulfides. Reversed-phase HPLC indicated gliadins were the fractions most affected by extrusion; high molecular weight glutenin subunits also were affe...
The vanguard stent-graft: practical approach

The Vanguard prosthesis (Boston Scientific Vascular, Natick, MA) has been in clinical use since 1996 for endoluminal repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm, with more than 3,500 implants worldwide. The device is a second-generation modular stent-graft consisting of a nitinol metal framework covered with polyester graft material. Proximal aneurysm neck diameters of 20 to 25 mm and lengths of greater than or equal to 15 mm are required for both the tube and bifurcated stent-graft. An infra-aneurysmal neck with the same dimensions allows placement of tube stent-graft. Neck angulation of greater than 60° and/or iliac artery angulation greater than 90° are exclusion criteria. Iliac artery attachment sites must be less than or equal to 13 mm in diameter and greater than or equal to 15 mm in length. Distal limb extensions and a proximal cuff are available. Careful preprocedural imaging and planning ensures a smooth, successful procedure. Flushing the preloaded delivery systems with iced saline before insertion in the body is an important feature of the Vanguard stent-grafts. The delivery process is simple, requiring withdrawal of an outer sheath while maintaining stability of the entire system. Intraprocedural problems such as negotiating an angled neck, proximal and distal leaks, difficult cannulation of the contralateral stump, and long or short grafts are discussed.
Combined delivery of paclitaxel and tanespimycin via micellar nanocarriers: pharmacokinetics, efficacy and metabolomic analysis.

Background Despite the promising anticancer efficacy observed in preclinical studies, paclitaxel and tanespimycin (17-AAG) combination therapy has yielded meager responses in a phase I clinical trial. One serious problem associated with paclitaxel/17-AAG combination therapy is the employment of large quantities of toxic organic surfactants and solvents for drug solubilization. The goal of this study was to evaluate a micellar formulation for the concurrent delivery of paclitaxel and 17-AAG in vivo. Methodology/Principal Findings Paclitaxel/17-AAG-loaded micelles were assessed in mice bearing human ovarian tumor xenografts. Compared with the free drugs at equivalent doses, intravenous administration of paclitaxel/17-AAG-loaded micelles led to 3.5- and 1.7-fold increase in the tumor concentrations of paclitaxel and 17-AAG, respectively, without significant altering drug levels in normal organs. The enhanced tumor accumulation of the micellar drugs was further confirmed by the whole-body near infrared imaging using indocyanine green-labeled micelles. Subsequently, the anticancer efficacy of paclitaxel/17-AAG-loaded micelles was examined in comparison with the free drugs (weekly 20 mg/kg paclitaxel, twice-weekly 37.5 mg/kg 17-AAG). We found that paclitaxel/17-AAG-loaded micelles caused near-complete arrest of tumor growth, whereas the free drug-treated tumors experienced rapid growth shortly after the 3-week treatment period ended. Furthermore, comparative metabolomic profiling by proton nuclear magnetic resonance revealed significant decrease in glucose, lactate and alanine with simultaneous increase in glutamine, glutamate, aspartate, choline, creatine and acetate levels in the tumors of mice treated with paclitaxel/17-AAG-loaded micelles. Conclusions/Significance We have demonstrated in the current wok a safe and efficacious nano-sized formulation for the combined delivery of paclitaxel and 17-AAG, and uncovered unique metabolomic signatures in the tumor that correlate with the favorable therapeutic response to paclitaxel/17-AAG combination therapy.
L4 and L5 Spondylectomy for En Bloc Resection of Giant Cell Tumor and Review of the Literature

Study Design Case report and review of the literature. Objective We present the case of a two-level lumbar spondylectomy at L4 and L5 for en bloc resection of a giant cell tumor (GCT) and lumbopelvic reconstruction. Methods A 58-year-old woman presented with a 7-month history of progressive intractable back and leg pain secondary to a biopsy-proven Enneking stage III GCT of the L4 and L5 vertebrae. The patient underwent a successful L4–L5 spondylectomy and lumbopelvic reconstruction using a combined posterior and anterior approach over two operative stages. Results Postoperative complications included a deep wound infection and a cerebrospinal fluid leak; however, following surgical debridement and long-term antibiotic treatment, the patient was neurologically intact with minimal pain and there was no evidence of tumor recurrence or instrumentation failure at more than 2 years of follow-up. Conclusion Spondylectomy that achieves en bloc resection is a viable and effective treatment option that can be curative for Enneking stage III GCTs involving the lower lumbar spine. The lumbosacral junction represents a challenging anatomic location for spinal reconstruction after spondylectomy with unique technical considerations.
Polymeric Metal Catalysts and Reagents

Abstract This paper reviews the author's work in polymeric metal catalysts and reagents. The discussion focuses on polymeric bipyridines and on polymer-protected A1C13.
Frequency of the Tail and Wing Molt in Turkeys

Abstract THE rate of feathering and frequency of the molt have been of interest to turkey growers for many years. The condition of the plumage, and especially the number and length of pin feathers at time of marketing, 24 to 30 weeks of age, is directly related to the market grade of the dressed birds. A knowledge of the feather development in the wings and tail enables one to estimate approximately the age of immature turkeys, provided they have had a normal growth. The literature contains very meager information on the molt in turkeys and chickens. Rice, Nixon, and Rogers (1908) reported that the chick experienced four molts, either partial or complete, from the incubator to the laying period. They probably included the shedding of the down as one molt. Marble (1934) reported that early-maturing pullets carried over one or more primary chick feathers throughout the first laying year. Warren and . . .
Early growth and mortality of the Caribbean king crab Mithrax spinosissimus reared in the laboratory

The berried females of the Caribbean king crab Mithrax spinosissimus (Lamarck) used in this study were collected from canals on Big Pine Key, Sugarloaf Key and Lower Matecumbe Key (south Florida, USA) on 9 August, 8 October and 15 November 1986. Viable spawns hatched as first zoeae and molted to second zoeae within ca. 10 to 12 h. Most of the larvae reached the megalopa stage 1 d later, and molted to first crab 4 to 8 d after hatching (water temperature: 27.2° to 28.8°C). Low water temperature and/or early lack of food had a negative effect not only on stage duration, but also on the size of the early crab stages. Successful molt to first crabs occurred, however, in the absence of food. The growth rate (carapace length) between molts in early crab stages varied between ca. 20 and 30%. When provided with good water exchange, stocking density could be very high (>22 500 individuals m-2), with no increase in mortality. The highest mortality rate was recorded when the larvae molted to first crab, and the highest rates of survival were always recorded when feeding was not initiated until after 5 to 8 d after hatching. No cannibalism was observed among larvae, and cannibalism was low in early crab stages. The study indicates that to achieve viable hatches and high larval survival in rearing M. spinosissimus, a continuous and adequate supply of high-quality seawater is a prerequisite both in larviculture and in maintaining brooding females.
Enhanced sediment flow in inclined settlers via surface modification or applied vibration for harvesting microalgae

Abstract Inclined settlers may be used to improve algal-harvesting economics by enhancing the clarification rate for a fixed sedimentation velocity and areal footprint. For a fixed plate area, smaller inclination angles from horizontal result in increased settling area and clarification rate. To ensure flow of the settled-cell sediment for continuous operation, standard designs utilize a minimum angle of 55° from horizontal. If reliable, shallow-angle flow of sedimented algae is achieved, increased clarification rates may be realized (e.g., 63% enhancement at 20° versus 55° from horizontal). To study the critical sediment-flow angle, we use an angle-of-repose model, which includes an additional normal-force term to account for adhesion. The inclusion of this term is supported by observations that the critical sliding angle decreases with the sediment mass/thickness. To reduce the critical sliding angle, we evaluated the sediment flow of settled, green alga Chlorella vulgaris on several low-adhesion surfaces described in the biofouling literature and demonstrated sediment flow at angles as low as 10° using a negatively-charged surface. This surface fouled after immersion for 24 h in spent culture medium, presumably due to the deposition of residual organic matter. Additionally, applied vibration is demonstrated to achieve sediment flow at angles as shallow as 20°.
User-profile-driven collaborative bandwidth sharing on mobile phones

The advent of smart phones, along with the paradigm shift towards cloud-based services, presents new challenges to the cellular backbone infrastructure. Cisco predicts that mobile data traffic will double every year through 2014, with a CAGR of 108% from 2009 to 2014, reaching 3.6 exabytes per month. We propose to exploit the potential of smart phones in proximity cooperatively, using their resources to reduce the demand on the cellular infrastructure, through a decision framework called RACE (Resource Aware Collaborative Execution). RACE enables the use of other mobile devices in the promixity as mobile data relays. RACE is a Markov Decision Process (MDP) optimization framework that takes user profiles and user preferences to determine the degree of collaboration. Both centralized and decentralized policies are developed and validated through simulation using real mobile usage traces. We implemented a simple prototype on a network of HTC G1 phones running the Android 1.5 operating system to demonstrate the viability of the system.
An acidic polysaccharide from the cell wall of Chlorella pyrenoidosa.

Abstract An acidic polysaccharide was solubilized from the cell wall of Chlorella pyrenoidosa with 4 M KOH in the presence of NaBH 4 . It was purified by ion-exchange chromatography and gel filtration. Ultracentrifugal analysis of the preparation indicated that it was homogeneous with an approximate molecular weight of 88000. Upon complete acid hydrolysis the following monosaccharides were released: rhamnose, arabinose, xylose, mannose, galactose and glucuronic acid in molar ratios of 11.5:2.7:2.2:1:2.9:1.9. By use of specific enzymes it was demonstrated that rhamnose is present as the L -enantiomorph and galactose as a mixture of the D - and L -enantiomorphs in a ratio of 73:27. An aldobiuronic acid, glucuronosyl rhamnose, was isolated after partial acid hydrolysis of the purified polysaccharide.
Metric Properties of the Neighborhood Inventory for Environmental Typology (NIfETy): An Environmental Assessment Tool for Measuring Indicators of Violence, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Exposures

Objectives: Establish metric properties of the Neighborhood Inventory for Environmental Typology (NIfETy). Method: A total of 919 residential block faces were assessed by paired raters using the NIfETy. Reliability was evaluated via interrater and internal consistency reliability; validity by comparing NIfETy data with youth self-reported violence, alcohol, and other drug exposure and crime statistics. Results: Validity and reliability metrics were moderate to exemplary for the total scale and subscales. NIfETy data correlated strongly with crime data and youth self-reported exposure. Conclusions: The NIfETy is valid and reliable. Future investigations will explore its use in other urban centers and association to other health outcomes. Language: en
Phase transformation and hysteresis behavior in Cs1 - xRbxH2PO4

A new theory on the origin of hysteresis in first order phase transformations was evaluated for its applicability to the phase transformation behavior in the Cs_(1 − x)Rb_xH_2PO_4 solid solution system. Specifically, the correlation between λ_2, the middle eigenvalue of the transformation matrix describing the cubic-to-monoclinic superprotonic transition, and the transformation hysteresis was examined. The value of λ_2 was estimated from a combination of room temperature diffraction data obtained for compositions in the solid solution system and high temperature diffraction data obtained for the CsH_2PO_4 end-member. The transformation hysteresis was determined for Cs_(1 − x)Rb_xH_2PO_4 compositions (x = 0, 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75) by single-frequency electrical impedance measurements. It was found that the transition temperature increases monotonically with increasing Rb content, from 227.6 ± 0.4 °C for the end-member CsH_2PO_4 to 256.1 ± 0.3 °C for Cs_(25)Rb_(75)H_2PO_4, as does the hysteresis in the phase transition, from 13.4 °C to 17.4 °C. Analysis of the transformation matrix reveals that, for this system, λ_2 depends only on the b lattice parameter of the paraelectric phase and the α_0 lattice parameter of the cubic phase. The computed values of λ_2, based on extrapolations accounting for chemical contraction with increasing Rb substitution and thermal expansion on heating, were far from 1, ranging from 0.9318 to 0.9354. The observation of λ_2 increasing with Rb content is attributed to the relatively large thermal expansion in the b-axis of the low temperature monoclinic phase in combination with an increase in transition temperature with increasing x. That the hysteresis does not decrease as λ_2 approaches 1, counter to the theoretical expectations, may reflect uncertainties in the method of estimating λ_2 for Rb substituted compositions, or the discovery of a system in which hysteresis is not dominated by considerations of crystallographic compatibility.
Use of the Spontaneous Tsc2 Knockout (Eker) Rat Model of Hereditary Renal Cell Carcinoma for the Study of Renal Carcinogens

The kidney is a frequent site for chemically induced cancers in rodents and among the 10 most frequent sites for cancer in human patients. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most frequent upper urinary tract cancer in humans and accounts for 80-85% of malignant renal tumors. Hereditary RCC occurs in Eker rats that are heterozygous for an insertion mutation in the Tsc2 tumor suppressor gene. The germline mutation renders heterozygous mutants highly susceptible to renal carcinogens. The utility of this model in studying potential renal carcinogens is due to an ordered progression of proliferative renal lesions that can be identified and counted microscopically. The quantitative nature of the model allows for the production of statistically powerful data to understand the relative degree and potency of chemical effects and allow analysis of genetic alterations that may be chemical specific.
Directed functional connectivity matures with motor learning in a cortical pattern generator

Sequential motor skills may be encoded by feedforward networks that consist of groups of neurons that fire in sequence (Abeles 1991; Long et al. 2010). However, there has been no evidence of an ana...
Fear in the Neighborhoods: an Investigation of the Impact of Crime

Residents in four Chicago neighborhoods were surveyed to determine the rela tionship between fear of crime and official crime rates. Several anomalies were found. Citizens' perceptions of dangerous areas in their neighborhoods match, for the most part, official records of crimes committed there. However, assessments of neighborhoods' specific crime problems and personal risks do not consistently cor respond with official statistics. The authors argue that citizens' perceptions of crime are shaped not so much by the neighborhood conditions reflected in the crime statistics, but rather by the level of incivility in their communities. Indicators of incivility are conditions, more frequently confronted, indicating that community social control is weak. These include abandoned buildings, vandalism, drug use, and loitering teenagers. The authors demonstrate the correspondence between levels of fear and concern about incivility. They suggest that fear of crime is trig gered by a broad range of neighborhood condi...
Folding of a plastic fibre under combined shear and compression

Abstract Large deflection of an elastic–plastic, nonlinear strain-hardening clamped-sliding beam subjected to a combined compression and shear load is solved analytically. The solution requires only numerical evaluation of integrals. Analytical expressions for applied force, deflection, bending moment, and strain energy are obtained. Numerical examples are given for a single stainless steel fibre of the hybrid stainless steel assembly (HSSA). The contact condition of the beam with end platens is determined. It is shown that the normalized effective crush distance ranges from 0.85 to 1.00, and depends only on loading angles and material hardening exponents. The crushing load has a maximum for the case with a small material hardening exponent and a small loading angle. It is found that no plastic unloading will occur before the beam contacts with the end platens. Finite element simulations are performed to verify the accuracy of the analytical solution, and a rather good agreement is obtained.
Transnational and Transformational: Mixtec Immigration and Health Beliefs

This study was designed to investigate the transforming impacts of transnational immigration of the Mixtec (an indigenous community from the Mexican State of Oaxaca) on their personal health belief systems. Specific interest was focused on beliefs in omens (presagios) and health beliefs as measured by the Locus of Illness Control (LIC) instrument. Two convenience samples, a Mexican Mixtec (or National) sample in Mexico and a Transnational sample residing in rural California, were interviewed and responded to the Locus of Illness Control instrument. Analyses of results, including statistical procedures, revealed significant differences between the two samples in relation to the number and type of omen beliefs, and especially in relation to the dimensions of externality and internality and prevention and cure as measured by the LIC. The phenomenon of migration was clearly the primary factor associated with the change in the belief systems. Migrants to California revealed a much more pronounced external cont...
AN INTERFERENCE MEASURE OF CATEGORY-ACCESS TIME IN LONG-TERM MEMORY

An interference method was used to measure category-entry time, stage one in the process of retrieval of words from long-term memory, where the second stage involves retrieval of a word from a given category. Time delay was varied between presentation of the name of a category and an initial letter cueing word-recall. The range of delay was varied between 0 and .45 sec. A steep increase in retrieval response time occurred when interstimulus delay was reduced to .27 sec., suggesting that mean category-access time lies close to this value. A subtractive measure yielded a similar estimate. These interference measures and the interference-subtractive estimates of category-access time approximated those found by Freedman and Loftus (1971) using a different subtractive measure, thus providing support for their findings and for a two-stage retrieval model.
Is it in the interest of the consumer to pay taxes? Transatlantic differences in postwar approaches to public consumption

This article is a comparative analysis of American and West German consumer policy and its underlying definition of the consumer interest during the decades following the Second World War. It traces diverging government responses to a transatlantic debate among economists, policy makers and a wider public over the proper balance between private and public consumption. Whereas postwar America put an emphasis on unrestrained private purchasing power and limited public spending, West German policy makers were more likely to include the provision of publicly supported and tax-funded goods and services as part of their definition of the consumer's interest. This contributed, the article proposes, to a fundamentally different perspective on government spending and taxation by middle-class consumers in both countries. Drawing on media sources, contemporary scholarly literature and government documents, I want to elaborate on our understanding of what counted as ‘consumption’ and ‘consumer goods’ and thereby enco...
Bridging the Ethernet-Ethernot Performance Gap

Ethernet seeks to reach the system-area-network performance of Ethernot networks by introducing 10-gigabit Ethernet and adding the hardware-offloaded protocol stacks that give Ethernots their performance edge. As this study shows, such moves might indeed be closing the gap. Recent developments could also empower Ethernet to penetrate the SAN arena, where it has struggled against the Ethernots' serious performance advantage. Despite that, network providers have been reluctant to view it as a serious SAN interconnect because of Ethernets formidable performance lag relative to mainstream SAN technologies
HIV Cure: Knocking on the Door

Although major advances in drug development and public health are helping to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there is a strong rationale for pursuing a more definitive cure. Several bold but unproven strategies for HIV eradication are reviewed in this issue of CPT, including novel drugs, gene therapy, and bone marrow transplantation (BMT). Early results, including one probable case of HIV eradication in a leukemia patient, are intriguing but raise many questions. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2013); 93 5, 382–384. doi:10.1038/clpt.2013.22
Master decollement root zone beneath the southern Appalachians and crystal balance

A root zone of the southern Appalachian master decollement is postulated to exist beneath Kings Mountain belt, on the basis of an alternative interpretation of COCORP seismic profiles, palin-spastic restoration of the entire crust, and earlier geological and geophysical interpretations. Mildly deformed Cambrian metased-imentary rocks beneath the decollement end beneath the Piedmont in the vicinity of Danielsville, Georgia. Reflections farther southeast are probably from ultramylonites. Weak subhorizontal reflections continue southeasterly to the Kings Mountain belt, where a series of east-dipping (30°) reflections dominate the section to a depth of 20 km beneath the Charlotte belt. Reflections southeast of the root zone are possibly all related to the structure in an accreted island arc.
Managing Cash in Turbulent Times

How much cash does your business have? “Some days there is too much. Some days there is not enough. And then some days there is barely enough,” lamented one business owner. And he's not the only one with this problem, reveals the author of this article. Many business owners have trouble coping in this roller coaster era of prevailing crisis. But is there a solution? © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Motion planning using transient pixel representations

A method for finding optimal paths is investigated for a time-varying domain. The environment contains a set of time-varying obstacles whose motions are known. In a time-varying environment, paths are time-dependent, i.e., a path needs to be specified as a function of time, since connectivity in the environment changes over time. Given a time-varying environment, a start time, and a start location, a method is presented for finding a collision-free path from start to goal points for a robot subject to a speed bound. This method generates a path with minimum-length and a path with minimum-delay for each time interval in which the goal location is reachable. The problem is formulated by using a transient pixel representation to model an arbitrary time-varying environment and a concept of fast-to-short path lists. >
Suppression of T‐Lymphocyte Blastogenesis by Ovine Trophoblast Protein‐1 and Human Interferon‐α May Be Independent of Interleukin‐2 Production

Cells derived from the trophoblast tissue of a day 15 sheep conceptus released substances that inhibit incorporation of [3H]thymidine into phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated ovine lymphocytes. This effect was partially reversed by addition of antiserum to ovine trophoblast protein-1 (oTP-1), a major secretory product of day 13-21 sheep conceptuses and a protein structurally and functionally related to alpha-interferons (IFN-alpha). Human IFN-alpha, unlike dexamethasone, inhibits phytohemagglutinin-induced lymphocyte blastogenesis without reducing interleukin-2 (IL-2) production by the cultures, and conditioned medium containing IL-2 does not promote [3H]thymidine incorporation into ovine lymphocytes when oTP-1 is present. Thus, oTP-1, by virtue of being an IFN, may have a local immunomodulatory role by selectively inhibiting the proliferative responses of certain maternal immune cells to IL-2.
Central flattening of the fast-ion profile in reversed-shear DIII-D discharges

Neutral beam injection into a plasma with negative central shear produces a rich spectrum of toroidicity-induced and reversed-shear Alfven eigenmodes in the DIII-D tokamak. The application of fast-ion Dα (FIDA) spectroscopy shows that the central fast-ion profile is flattened in the inner half of the discharge. Neutron and equilibrium measurements corroborate the FIDA data. The temporal evolution of the current profile is also strongly modified. Studies in similar discharges show that flattening of the profile correlates with the mode amplitude and that both types of Alfven modes correlate with fast-ion transport. Calculations by the ORBIT code do not explain the observed fast-ion transport for the measured mode amplitudes, however. Possible explanations for the discrepancy are considered.
Photocrosslinkable biodegradable elastomers based on cinnamate-functionalized polyesters.

Synthetic biodegradable elastomers are an emerging class of materials that play a critical role in supporting innovations in bioabsorbable medical implants. This paper describes the synthesis and characterization of poly(glycerol-co-sebacate)-cinnamate (PGS-CinA), a biodegradable elastomer based on hyperbranched polyesters derivatized with pendant cinnamate groups. PGS-CinA can be prepared via photodimerization in the absence of photoinitiators using monomers that are found in common foods. The resulting network exhibits a Young’s modulus of 50.5–152.1 kPa and a projected in vitro degradation half-life time between 90 and 140 days. PGS-CinA elastomers are intrinsically cell-adherent and support rapid proliferation of fibroblasts. Spreading and proliferation of fibroblasts are loosely governed by the substrate stiffness within the range of Young’s moduli in PGS-CinA networks that were prepared. The thermo-mechanical properties, biodegradability and intrinsic support of cell attachment and proliferation suggest that PGS-CinA networks are broadly applicable for use in next generation bioabsorable materials including temporary medical devices and scaffolds for soft tissue engineering.
Hydrolytic stability of polybenzobisoxazole and polyterephthalamide body armor

Previous work conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to investigate the field failures of soft body armor containing the material poly(p -phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole), or PBO, revealed that this material was susceptible to hydrolysis, and a mechanism of this hydrolysis was proposed. In this work, viscometric estimations of the molar mass of environmentally conditioned PBO are used to support a previously proposed mechanism of PBO hydrolysis. Results with PBO were compared with poly(p-phenylene terephthalamide), or PPTA, which has been used in body armor applications for more than 30 years. Losses in tensile strength were found to correspond to a reduction in molar mass for PBO. This indicates that chain scission due to complete hydrolysis is occurring in this material. Similar trends were observed for PPTA, but the relationship between molar mass reduction and losses in tensile strength was not as evident for this material. Confocal microscopy, mechanical properties measurements, and molecular spectroscopy are used to further investigate the degradation of both PBO and PPTA.
Simulation of open quantum dynamics in Markovian environment

Although conditions for controllability of quantum systems are well studied, most of them consider the infinite time horizon, i.e., whether certain operations are possible given enough time. In this article, I propose a framework studying all the possible operations one can generate at given finite time on a quantum system in Markovian environment. I give a complete characterization of the operations one can simulate at any given time on a qubit in unital Markovian environment and discuss possible extensions.
Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis in Cells Infected with Influenza Virus

Virus-specific ribonucleic acid(RNA),synthesized ininfluenza virus-infected cells from3.5to7.5hrafter infection, was studied. Aftervelocity centrifugation in sucrose,three peaks ofvirus-specific RNA couldbeidentified: 34S,18S, andllS. TheseRNA species arepredominantly single-stranded andconsist of90%viral (plus) and10%complementary (minus) RNA strands. Most(75%)ofthecomplementaryRNA issingle-stranded, i.e.,notpartofRNA duplexes orreplicative intermediates. The345RNA species isan aggregate of18Sand14SRNA species. Both18Sand1lSRNA species arerelatively heterogenous compared to18SribosomalRNA,andthese species probably contain different RNA molecules having closely related sedimentation coefficients.
A boundary element method for molecular electrostatics with electrolyte effects

A boundary element method is developed to compute the electrostatic potential inside and around molecules in an electrolyte solution. A set of boundary integral equations are derived based on the integral formulations of the Poisson equation and the linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equation. The boundary integral equations are then solved numerically after discretizing the molecular surface into a number of flat triangular elements. The method is applied to a spherical molecule for which analytical solutions are available. Use is made of both constant and linearly varying unknowns over the boundary elements, and the method is tested for various values of parameters such as the dielectric constant of the molecule, ionic strength, and the location of the interior point charge. The use of the boundary integral method incorporating the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation is also briefly discussed.
ENHANCED FULL-STATE ESTIMATION AND DYNAMIC-MODEL-BASED PREDICTION FOR ROAD-VEHICLES

In this paper, we address the enhanced state estimation and prediction system for automobile applications by fusing relatively low-cost and noisy Inertial Navigation System (INS) sensing with Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements. An unscented Kalman filter is used to merge multi-rate measurements from GPS and INS sensors together with a highfidelity vehicle-dynamics model for state-predictions. The highfidelity motion model (including suspension-effects) for the vehicle motion trajectory on uneven terrain is captured by a 20state system of nonlinear differential equations. Computer simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of sensor-fusion (building upon the merger of an inexpensive INS sensing with GPS based measurements) to accurately estimate the full system-state. The relative ease of implementation, accuracy and predictive performance with low-cost sensing will facilitate its use in various electronic control and safety-systems, such as Electronic Stability Program, Anti-lock Brake Systems, and the Lateral Dynamic Stability Control.
A Social Constructionist Approach to Theorizing Child Welfare

Abstract In this article the author describes a course that she developed to theorize social work practice in child welfare using a social constructionist approach. The author tells how she defined social constructionism, introduced it to the class, and encouraged a deconstruction of theories and models used to make meaning of situations typically brought to the attention of social workers in child welfare settings. The author provides an example by deconstructing attachment theory, showing the relationship between language shifts in the theory over time and the work history of white middle-class women. From this consideration, the author suggests ways to approach accepted theories and reconstruct practice to better serve those subject to their use.
Background from the Theory of Differentiable Manifolds

Before discussing the general theory of invariant manifolds, we need to give some background material from differential geometry. More specifically, we will need to understand the definition of a differentiable manifold, the tangent space at a point, the tangent bundle, and the derivatives of maps defined on differentiable manifolds. These notions will be crucial for discussing the dynamics near an invariant manifold. We will not develop these concepts in the most abstract or mathematically crisp manner, but rather along the lines where they occur frequently in applications. In applications involving the modeling of the dynamics of some physical system, we typically choose certain quantities describing various aspects of the system and write down equations describing the time evolution of these quantities. These quantities constitute the phase space of the system with invariant manifolds often arising as surfaces in the phase space. Consequently, we choose to develop the concept of a differentiable manifold as a surface embedded in ℝ n (loosely following the exposition of Milnor [1965] and Guillemin and Pollack [1974]) and refer the reader to any differential geometry textbook for the abstract development of the theory of differentiable manifolds (e.g., a standard and very thorough textbook is Spivak [1979]). Our approach will allow us to bypass certain set-theoretic and topological technicalities since our manifolds will inherit much structure from ℝ n , whose topology is relatively familiar. Additionally, it is hoped that this approach will appeal to the intuition of the reader who has little or no experience with the subject of differential geometry.
Recognizing Human Actions in the Motion Trajectories of Shapes

People naturally anthropomorphize the movement of nonliving objects, as social psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel demonstrated in their influential 1944 research study. When they asked participants to narrate an animated film of two triangles and a circle moving in and around a box, participants described the shapes' movement in terms of human actions. Using a framework for authoring and annotating animations in the style of Heider and Simmel, we established new crowdsourced datasets where the motion trajectories of animated shapes are labeled according to the actions they depict. We applied two machine learning approaches, a spatial-temporal bag-of-words model and a recurrent neural network, to the task of automatically recognizing actions in these datasets. Our best results outperformed a majority baseline and showed similarity to human performance, which encourages further use of these datasets for modeling perception from motion trajectories. Future progress on simulating human-like motion perception will require models that integrate motion information with top-down contextual knowledge.
Behavioral thermoregulation in mammals and birds

Thermoregulation in homoiotherms is achieved by physiological and behavioural adjustments which involve the musculature, skin, sensory capacities, hypothalamus and endocrine glands. Under thermal stress animals exhibit anorexia, body extension, gasping, languor, lethargy, excessive drinking, bathing, decreased locomotor activities, group dispersion, and shade seeking. When exposed to cold, animals show body flexure, huddling, hyperphagia, extra locomotor activities, depressed respiration and nest building. Species and breed differences in the behavioural adjustments to unfavourable climates are related to habitat, morphological characteristics of body covering, degree of physiological adaptability, degree of physiological immaturity at birth or hatching, and the number of young.
Window-dressers and Closet Conformists: Organizational decoupling revisited

Organizational sociologists have developed nuanced accounts to explain when organizations decouple implementation from formal adoption. Prior research sees decoupling as a form of window-dressing, ...
Exercise and BMI z-score in overweight and obese children and adolescents: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised trials

Introduction While overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is a major global health problem, the effects of exercise on overweight and obesity in children and adolescents are not well established despite numerous studies on this topic. The purpose of this study is to use the network meta-analytic approach to determine the effects of exercise (aerobic, strength training or both) on body mass index (BMI) z-score in overweight and obese children and adolescents. Methods and analysis Randomised exercise intervention trials >4 weeks, published in any language between 1 January 1990 and 31 September 2015, and which include direct and/or indirect evidence, will be included. Studies will be retrieved by searching 6 electronic databases, cross-referencing and expert review. Dual abstraction of data will occur. The primary outcome will be changes in BMI z-score while the secondary outcome will be changes in body weight in kilograms (kg). Risk of bias will be assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment instrument while confidence in the cumulative evidence will be assessed using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) instrument for network meta-analysis. Network meta-analysis will be performed using multivariate random-effects meta-regression models. The surface under the cumulative ranking curve will be used to provide a hierarchy of exercise treatments (aerobic, strength training or both). Dissemination The results of this study will be presented at a professional conference and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Trial registration number CRD42015026377.
Treating allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis: the way forward

Allergic bronchopulmonary mycoses are an endotype of allergic lung disease, similar to but more severe than uncomplicated asthma, caused by a Th2-dominated immune response and a bronchocentric granulocytic inflammation provoked by endobronchial growth of filamentous fungi in individuals with innate host defence defects (primarily people with severe allergic asthma or cystic fibrosis); untreated, it leads to progressive structural damage [1–3]. The scope of this problem, however, has only been recognised recently [4, 5]. ABPA remains a difficult disease to control and entails troubling steroid toxicity
Study on Nurses' Stress in ICU and Countermeasures

Objectives: To investigate the origin of psychological stress to nurses working in intensive care unit(ICU) and their regular response to stress,in order to help them in alleviating and eliminating psychological pressure.Method: Questionnaire survey to 96 nurses working in ICU was performed;the data were analyzed by using SPSS software.Results: The origins of psychological stress include: working character,labour intensity,social class,salary,bonus,human relationship and family burden.Among these factors,working character,labour intensity,human relationship and family burden showed major effects.Conclusion: Various origins of stress exist in nurses' working in ICU which would lead to tiredness,low spirit,and indifference to patients.This would directly lower the quality of nursing work.Supervisor of nurses should pay enough attention to this problem.Measures such as regular training of psychological health,establishment of support system for nurses,would be helpful in improving the adapting ability of nurses,as well as alleviating and eliminating their psychological pressure.
Mechanical circulatory assist devices: a primer for critical care and emergency physicians

Mechanical circulatory assist devices are now commonly used in the treatment of severe heart failure as bridges to cardiac transplant, as destination therapy for patients who are not transplant candidates, and as bridges to recovery and “decision-making”. These devices, which can be used to support the left or right ventricles or both, restore circulation to the tissues, thereby improving organ function. Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are the most common support devices. To care for patients with these devices, health care providers in emergency departments (EDs) and intensive care units (ICUs) need to understand the physiology of the devices, the vocabulary of mechanical support, the types of complications patients may have, diagnostic techniques, and decision-making regarding treatment. Patients with LVADs who come to the ED or are admitted to the ICU usually have nonspecific clinical symptoms, most commonly shortness of breath, hypotension, anemia, chest pain, syncope, hemoptysis, gastrointestinal bleeding, jaundice, fever, oliguria and hematuria, altered mental status, headache, seizure, and back pain. Other patients are seen for cardiac arrest, psychiatric issues, sequelae of noncardiac surgery, and trauma. Although most patients have LVADs, some may have biventricular support devices or total artificial hearts. Involving a team of cardiac surgeons, perfusion experts, and heart-failure physicians, as well as ED and ICU physicians and nurses, is critical for managing treatment for these patients and for successful outcomes. This review is designed for critical care providers who may be the first to see these patients in the ED or ICU.
The Use of Cooling Crystallization in an Ionic Liquid System for the Purification of Pharmaceuticals

The application of ionic liquids (ILs) as solvents is frequently discussed in the context of their tunability, with the potential to tailor the solvent system uniquely to the process being investigated. Instead, here we study the potential for a single IL, 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide ([C2C1Im][NTf2]), to be used for the cooling crystallization of a wide range of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). [C2C1Im][NTf2] was selected on the basis of its thermal stability, low reactivity, and miscibility with solvents of moderate polarity, which suggests that it is miscible with liquids that possess polarities comparable to those of many API molecules. The overwhelming majority of APIs tested were soluble at >50 wt % within [C2C1Im][NTf2] at elevated temperatures despite their relatively poor solubility at room temperature. This dramatic effect was ascribed to the miscibility of most of the molten APIs with the IL. The solubility curves for nine APIs were measured, which est...
Standards for Determining and Alternatives for Reducing Executor Liability for an Estate's Federal Tax Obligations

Personal representatives of decedent estates generally have personal liability for the payment of all estate taxes, both income tax and estate tax. In fact, the research indicates that this liability is almost absolute if the executor distributes estate assets to heirs so as to leave insufficient funds to pay the tax. Consequently, executors have a natural reluctance to distribute any funds to heirs before all statutes of limitation expire for the IRS to assess tax deficiencies. In addition to examining the extent of executor liability of estate taxes, the paper offers several statutory alternatives available to estate administrators to reduce their liability and thereby facilitate the efficient and prompt closing of estates. All executors and their tax advisors should be cognizant of the tax liability issues discussed in the paper, and in appropriate circumstances, elect an alternative that will relieve the executor of liability without reducing the ability of the IRS to collect tax revenue.
CREDAL: Towards Locating a Memory Corruption Vulnerability with Your Core Dump

After a program has crashed and terminated abnormally, it typically leaves behind a snapshot of its crashing state in the form of a core dump. While a core dump carries a large amount of information, which has long been used for software debugging, it barely serves as informative debugging aids in locating software faults, particularly memory corruption vulnerabilities. A memory corruption vulnerability is a special type of software faults that an attacker can exploit to manipulate the content at a certain memory. As such, a core dump may contain a certain amount of corrupted data, which increases the difficulty in identifying useful debugging information (e.g. , a crash point and stack traces). Without a proper mechanism to deal with this problem, a core dump can be practically useless for software failure diagnosis. In this work, we develop CREDAL, an automatic tool that employs the source code of a crashing program to enhance core dump analysis and turns a core dump to an informative aid in tracking down memory corruption vulnerabilities. Specifically, CREDAL systematically analyzes a core dump potentially corrupted and identifies the crash point and stack frames. For a core dump carrying corrupted data, it goes beyond the crash point and stack trace. In particular, CREDAL further pinpoints the variables holding corrupted data using the source code of the crashing program along with the stack frames. To assist software developers (or security analysts) in tracking down a memory corruption vulnerability, CREDAL also performs analysis and highlights the code fragments corresponding to data corruption. To demonstrate the utility of CREDAL, we use it to analyze 80 crashes corresponding to 73 memory corruption vulnerabilities archived in Offensive Security Exploit Database. We show that, CREDAL can accurately pinpoint the crash point and (fully or partially) restore a stack trace even though a crashing program stack carries corrupted data. In addition, we demonstrate CREDAL can potentially reduce the manual effort of finding the code fragment that is likely to contain memory corruption vulnerabilities.