cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Binding and Phagocytosis of Apoptotic Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Is Mediated in Part by Exposure of Phosphatidylserine

Apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells has recently been demonstrated to occur in vitro and in vivo. Uptake of apoptotic cells into adjacent normal cells appears to be rapid and specific. We have investigated binding and phagocytosis of apoptotic vascular smooth muscle cells by normal smooth muscle cell monolayers. Vascular smooth muscle cells were infected with the proto-oncogene c-myc or the adenovirus E1A gene, induced to undergo apoptosis in low-serum conditions, and then incubated with normal smooth muscle cells. Apoptosis was accompanied by a marked increase in exposure of phosphatidylserine on the outer surface of the cell, which was recognized by binding to annexin V. Liposomes containing phosphatidylserine but not phosphatidylinositol inhibited uptake of apoptotic cells in a dose-dependent manner to a maximum of 50% inhibition; annexin V also inhibited the uptake of apoptotic cells in a dose-dependent and calcium-dependent manner. Binding of apoptotic bodies did not appear to be mediated by endogenous annexin V, as evidenced by the inability of an antibody to annexin V to inhibit uptake. Smooth muscle cells were also able to recognize exposed phosphatidylserine on other cell types, as judged by their ability to bind erythrocytes having a high degree of exposed phosphatidylserine. We conclude that smooth muscle cells express phosphatidylserine during apoptosis, and this exposure partly mediates binding and phagocytosis of dead cells. This mechanism may be important in promoting rapid cell removal in the vessel wall.
Accounting education literature review (2003–2005)

This review of accounting education literature includes 223 articles published over a three-year period, 2003–2005, in five journals: Journal of Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, and Global Perspectives on Accounting Education. The purpose of this paper is to organize and summarize these most recent additions to the accounting education literature. These reviews are categorized into five sections corresponding to traditional lines of inquiry (assessment, curriculum and instruction, educational technology, faculty issues, and students) and are further divided by section when appropriate, with empirical and descriptive articles separated in each section. At the end of each of the five major sections, suggestions for research are presented. In an Appendix, 58 additional articles presenting teaching materials and cases published in the same five journals during 2003–2005 are categorized by the courses for which they would be appropriate.
Combined Corticosteroid and Catecholamine Stimulation of Aqueous Humor Flow

Purpose: Epinephrine is known to stimulate aqueous humor flow in humans. Corticosteroids are known to augment the effect of beta-adrenergic agonists on the ciliary body. This experiment was carried out to determine whether a corticosteroid can increase the stimulatory effect of epinephrine on aqueous humor flow. Methods: Twenty human volunteers were studied for 24 hours. Hydrocortisone was given orally and epinephrine was given intravenously during sleep while aqueous flow was monitored. Flow was compared with a second 24-hour study when oral and intravenous placebos were given. The sequence of administration was randomized. Subjects and investigators were masked. The flows also were compared with a previously published study in which the same dose of epinephrine was administered without steroid. Results: Epinephrine plus hydrocortisone compared with placebos increased aqueous flow 42% in subjects during sleep. The combination of epinephrine and hydrocortisone was a more potent stimulus to aqueous flow than epinephrine alone, which increased aqueous flow by only 27% ( P = 0.045). Conclusion: The two major hormones of the adrenal gland work in concert to increase the rate of aqueous humor flow in humans.
The spectrum of the DiGeorge syndrome

Clinical and autopsy data on 25 patients with DiGeorge syndrome and its variants are presented. Congenital heart disease was the most common presenting complaint; 15 patients came to medical attention in the first 48 hours of life because of cyanosis, cardiac murmurs, or tachycardia and tachypnea. Two unusual anomalies, interrupted aortic arch or truncus arteriosus, were seen in 17 patients. Clinically documented hypocalcemia associated with seizures was seen in ten patients, with a median age at onset of eight days. Fifteen of our 25 patients died at less than one month of age. Most of the patients surviving the first month of life developed purulent rhinitis, maculopapular rashes, failure to thrive, and developmental delay. Sixteen patients had major congenital anomalies not localized to the anterior neck and thorax; these anomalies included arhinencephaly, cleft lip, palate, or uvula, diaphragmatic abnormalities, hydronephrosis, malrotation of the gut, and imperforate anus. The 24 autopsied cases constitute 0.7% of the 3,469 sequential postmortem studies done in the period 1950–1975 at The Children's Orthopedic Hospital and Medical Center.
Effect of nonaqueous‐phase liquids on the availability of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil for worm uptake and bacterial genotoxicity

A study was conducted to determine the effect of nonaqueous-phase liquids (NAPLs) on the bioavailability of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) in soil. Sentry 19 oil and pristane reduced the availability of BaP for assimilation by the earthworm Eisenia fetida and for mutagenicity in a rifampicin-sensitive strain of Pseudomonas putida. As much as 80% of the compound could be rendered unavailable to the worms or for genotoxicity. Tests with five alkanes and an oil showed that the extent of reduction in genotoxicity of BaP varied with the identity, viscosity, and hydrophobicity of the NAPL. The magnitude of the decline in availability for genotoxicity differed in tests of three soils. Because little or no BaP was lost from the soil, the diminished bioavailability was not the result of a diminished total concentration of the compound. These findings show that exposure to hydrophobic toxicants can be appreciably altered in soils containing NAPLs.
Timing and Sequence in Congressional Elections: Interstate Contagion and America's Nineteenth-Century Scheduling Regime

“The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November”—by this simple rule, Americans organize 435 congressional election contests into one simultaneous collective event. Many—including not a few political scientists—treat this scheduling requirement as though it were an enduring feature of American political history, perhaps even one of the Framers' constitutional stipulations. In fact, the historical pattern is richer and more variegated. For much of the country's first hundred years, diversity, not uniformity, was a defining feature of the congressional election schedule. The non-synchronous character of this first American scheduling regime manifested itself in two especially critical ways. First, non-synchronicity within states separated congressional and presidential elections in time, creating a host of problems for political parties, from the challenges of multiple mobilization efforts, to the difficulties of ensuring a unified party vote across federal elections that could be separated by several months. Second, non-synchronicity across states in congressional elections meant that legislative races unfolded sequentially over time, exposing these predominantly local contests to distinctive interstate contagions—not unlike contemporary presidential primaries—with unexpected partisan showings in early state races helping to shape outcomes in subsequent state contests.
Habanero-Java library: a Java 8 framework for multicore programming

With the advent of the multicore era, it is clear that future growth in application performance will primarily come from increased parallelism. We believe parallelism should be introduced early into the Computer Science curriculum to educate students on the fundamentals of parallel computation. In this paper, we introduce the newly-created Habanero-Java library (HJlib), a pure Java 8 library implementation of the pedagogic parallel programming model [12]. HJlib has been used in teaching a sophomore-level course titled "Fundamentals of Parallel Programming" at Rice University.HJlib adds to the Java ecosystem a powerful and portable task parallel programming model that can be used to parallelize both regular and irregular applications. By relying on simple orthogonal parallel constructs with important safety properties, HJlib allows programmers with a basic knowledge of Java to get started with parallel programming concepts by writing or refactoring applications to harness the power of multicore architecture. The HJlib APIs make extensive use of lambda expressions and can run on any Java 8 JVM. HJlib runtime feedback capabilities, such as the abstract execution metrics and the deadlock detector, help the programmer to obtain feedback on theoretical performance as well as the presence of potential bugs in their program.Being an implementation of a pedagogic programming model, HJlib is also an attractive tool for both educators and researchers. HJlib is actively being used in multiple research projects at Rice and also by external independent collaborators. These projects include exploitation of homogeneous and heterogeneous multicore parallelism in big data applications written for the Hadoop platform [20, 43].
Thermal hysteresis analysis of MEMS pressure sensors

Thermal hysteresis reduction is usually a difficult task to tackle for micromachined pressure sensors especially when shrinking piezoresistive transducer (PRT) sensing elements. Since thermal hysteresis involves the entire thermal cycling history and complicated material properties that vary with temperatures, viscoplastic deformation makes the problem very complicated when dealing with high-precision sensor signals. The approach to simplify and quickly resolve the thermal hysteresis problem is the key methodology proposed by this paper. It is found the layout and volume of metal pads and runners have significant impact on the thermal hysteresis voltage shift. Strategically, we may move the aluminum bond pads away from the transducer and reduce the bond pad size to lower down the effect from the thermal stress hysteresis of aluminum on a silicon sensing element.
Aortitis: imaging spectrum of the infectious and inflammatory conditions of the aorta.

The pathophysiology, clinical features, and imaging findings of various inflammatory conditions that can affect the aorta are discussed, with emphasis on use of multidetector CT and MR imaging for initial diagnosis and follow-up.
HSF2 binds to the Hsp90, Hsp27, and c-Fos promoters constitutively and modulates their expression

Although the vast majority of genomic DNA is tightly compacted during mitosis, the promoter regions of a number of genes remain in a less compacted state throughout this stage of the cell cycle. The decreased compaction of these promoter regions, which is referred to as gene bookmarking, is thought to be important for the ability of cells to express these genes during the following interphase. Previously, we reported a role for the DNA-binding protein heat shock factor (HSF2) in bookmarking the stress-inducible 70 000-Da heat shock protein (hsp70) gene. In this report, we have extended those studies and found that during mitosis, HSF2 is bound to the HSE promoter elements of other heat shock genes, including hsp90 and hsp27, as well as the proto-oncogene c-fos. The presence of HSF2 is important for expression of these genes because blocking HSF2 levels by RNA interference techniques leads to decreased levels of these proteins. These results suggest that HSF2 is important for constitutive as well as stress-inducible expression of HSE-containing genes.
Thermal responses to preoptic heating and ambient temperature in unrestrained rabbits

Abstract Thermal responses to preoptic heating and ambient temperature in unrestrained rabbits. The preoptic area of two male and two female New Zealand White rabbits was heated by a water perfused thermode, while the animals were exposed to ambient temperatures of −8, 0, 10 and 20°C. Postural changes for heat dissipation were observed immediately following the onset of heating. Metabolism, heart rate, and rectal temperature decreased in response to preoptic heating, while breathing rate and ear pinnae temperature increased. A regular sequence of thermoregulatory responses was observed following the onset of heating. This sequence was determined by the set point for each thermoregulatory response. In 25% of the experiments, a reversal of order within the sequence was observed, implying a relative shift in set point for responses. These changes in sequence may depend on the psychological state of the animal. This leads us to hypothesize a non-temperature sensitive integrative process in the CNS which modifies thermoregulatory responses.
Near-infrared spectroscopy cerebral and somatic (renal) oxygen saturation correlation to continuous venous oxygen saturation via intravenous oximetry catheter

Abstract Purpose Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and continuous central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO2) via oximetry catheter are 2 modalities available to estimate adequacy of oxygen delivery in postoperative pediatric cardiac patients. Near-infrared spectroscopy measures regional tissue oxygenation and is routinely used in pediatric cardiac surgery patients. By not requiring an invasive catheter, NIRS has the advantage over mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2) monitoring. An alternative marker of global tissue oxygenation is central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO2). A recently developed pediatric-sized oximetric catheter (PediaSat; Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, CA, USA) functions as a central venous catheter and provides a continuous ScvO2 reading, an accepted surrogate to SvO2. To date, the correlation between NIRS and ScvO2 has not been quantified. The aim of this study was to examine the strength of the bivariate correlation between NIRS and ScvO2 measurements. Design/methods Twenty pediatric patients undergoing cardiac surgery had the PediaSat catheter placed with the tip in the superior vena cava and NIRS sensors (cerebral and renal) placed in the operating room per routine protocol. Hourly measurements of NIRS-cerebral (NIRS-C), NIRS-renal, and ScvO2 readings were recorded for each patient for up to 48 hours postoperatively. Results A cumulative total of 630 hours of data were collected. Spearman correlation coefficients for NIRS-renal vs ScvO2 and NIRS-C vs ScvO2 measurements were r = 0.38 (P = .09) and r = 0.58 (P Conclusions In this small cohort of pediatric patients undergoing heart surgery, there was a moderate but statistically significant correlation between the ScvO2-catheter and the NIRS-C values. Further studies are required to determine which oxymetric modality of monitoring cardiac output most aids in the postoperative management of these patients.
Interactive intrinsic video editing

Separating a photograph into its reflectance and illumination intrinsic images is a fundamentally ambiguous problem, and state-of-the-art algorithms combine sophisticated reflectance and illumination priors with user annotations to create plausible results. However, these algorithms cannot be easily extended to videos for two reasons: first, naively applying algorithms designed for single images to videos produce results that are temporally incoherent; second, effectively specifying user annotations for a video requires interactive feedback, and current approaches are orders of magnitudes too slow to support this. We introduce a fast and temporally consistent algorithm to decompose video sequences into their reflectance and illumination components. Our algorithm uses a hybrid e2ep formulation that separates image gradients into smooth illumination and sparse reflectance gradients using look-up tables. We use a multi-scale parallelized solver to reconstruct the reflectance and illumination from these gradients while enforcing spatial and temporal reflectance constraints and user annotations. We demonstrate that our algorithm automatically produces reasonable results, that can be interactively refined by users, at rates that are two orders of magnitude faster than existing tools, to produce high-quality decompositions for challenging real-world video sequences. We also show how these decompositions can be used for a number of video editing applications including recoloring, retexturing, illumination editing, and lighting-aware compositing.
Everyday exposures and breast cancer.

Thank you for focusing this year on environmental factors in cancer, a key arena for efforts to significantly change the cancer burden in this country through primary prevention of disease. I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this dialogue. My remarks are grounded in my research about environmental factors and breast cancer and have particular relevance for other hormonal cancers as well—for example, prostate, testicular, ovarian, and endometrial cancers. I begin with a thought experiment about the process of discovery in cancer etiology. This perspective underlies my recommendations for fundamental change in the evidence we use to find and attack the environmental causes of a disease like breast cancer. Then I will address what we know now about three biological mechanisms that may link environmental pollutants and breast cancer and about human exposures to suspect chemicals. Finally, I discuss the critical next steps to act on and expand our knowledge.
Major disruptions, inverse cascades and the Strauss equations

Current-carrying plasmas in a strong d.c. magnetic field are subject to violent disruptions above certain thresholds. At present difficult to verify, explanations are typically sought in terms of "tearing modes". An alternative explanation is in terms of inverse magnetic helicity cascades, generated from a variety of possible sources of small-scale MHD turbulence. Strongly anisotropic MHD plasmas may be described by the Strauss equations. Indications of turbulent inverse cascade behavior for the Strauss equations are sought, in parallel with earlier examples from MHD and fluid mechanics.
N-Acetylglucosamine Functions in Cell Signaling

The amino sugar N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) is well known for the important structural roles that it plays at the cell surface. It is a key component of bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan, fungal cell wall chitin, and the extracellular matrix of animal cells. Interestingly, recent studies have also identified new roles for GlcNAc in cell signaling. For example, GlcNAc stimulates the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans to undergo changes in morphogenesis and expression of virulence genes. Pathogenic E. coli responds to GlcNAc by altering the expression of fimbriae and CURLI fibers that promote biofilm formation and GlcNAc stimulates soil bacteria to undergo changes in morphogenesis and production of antibiotics. Studies with animal cells have revealed that GlcNAc influences cell signaling through the posttranslational modification of proteins by glycosylation. O-linked attachment of GlcNAc to Ser and Thr residues regulates a variety of intracellular proteins, including transcription factors such as NFκB, c-myc, and p53. In addition, the specificity of Notch family receptors for different ligands is altered by GlcNAc attachment to fucose residues in the extracellular domain. GlcNAc also impacts signal transduction by altering the degree of branching of N-linked glycans, which influences cell surface signaling proteins. These emerging roles of GlcNAc as an activator and mediator of cellular signaling in fungi, animals, and bacteria will be the focus of this paper.
Carbon nanotube formation in situ during carbonization in shaped bulk solid cobalt nanoparticle compositions

Carbon nanotubes are formed in bulk compositions from thermal decomposition of a cobalt-containing organometallic compound in the presence of an excess amount of a multi(ethynyl)aromatic compound. The novel method described here permits the large-scale production of carbon nanotubes in a shaped, solid configuration. 1,2,4,5-Tetrakis(phenylethynyl)benzene was reacted with varying amounts of cobalt octacarbonyl to produce the cobalt carbonyl complex. Heat treatment of various compositions, formulated from the cobalt complex and an excess amount of 1,2,4,5-tetrakis(phenylethynyl)benzene, to temperatures up to 1400 °C resulted in the decomposition of the complex and the formation of cobalt nanoparticles in the polymeric-to-carbon nanoparticle-to-carbon nanotube compositions. The cobalt nanoparticles are the key to the formation of the carbon nanotubes. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, high resolution scanning electron microscopy (HRSEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies show the formation of carbon nanotubes in the developing carbon composition above 600 °C.
A randomized controlled trial of monetary incentives vs. outreach to enhance adherence to the hepatitis B vaccine series among injection drug users

Abstract Background: Injection drug users (IDUs) are at high-risk for hepatitis B virus (HBV) and HIV. Due to concerns about non-adherence to multi-dose vaccine regimens however, IDUs are severely under-immunized against HBV and have been excluded from phase III trials of multi-dose candidate HIV vaccines in the United States. Methods: Through a randomized controlled trial, we compared the effectiveness of monetary incentives versus outreach to improve IDUs’ adherence to the 3-dose hepatitis B vaccine. In 1998–1999, HBV-susceptible IDUs were recruited from San Francisco streets. Eligible participants received their first dose of vaccine and were randomized to either receive monthly monetary incentives ( n =48) or maintain weekly contact with an outreach worker ( n =48) during the 6-month vaccine series. Results: All 3 doses of vaccine were received by 33 (69%) of IDUs in the monetary incentive arm and 11 (23%) in the outreach arm (odds ratio=13.8; 95% confidence interval, 2.9, 128; P Conclusions: Among IDUs, monetary incentives are superior to outreach in achieving adherence to the multi-dose hepatitis B vaccine series. Monetary incentives may be adapted to future multi-dose candidate HIV vaccine trials in IDUs.
On the Geometry and Extremal Properties of the Edge-Degeneracy Model

The edge-degeneracy model is an exponential random graph model that uses the graph degeneracy, a measure of the graph's connection density, and number of edges in a graph as its sufficient statistics. We show this model is relatively well-behaved by studying the statistical degeneracy of this model through the geometry of the associated polytope.
Melatonin attenuates photic disruption of circadian rhythms in Siberian hamsters

Body temperature (Tb) was recorded via a biotelemetry system from 28 adult male Siberian hamsters maintained in a light-dark (LD) cycle of 16 h light/day for several months. After Tb was recorded f...
Transformations in embryonic motility in chick: kinematic correlates of type I and II motility at E9 and E12.

Transformations in embryonic motility in chick: kinematic correlates of type I and II motility at E9 and E12. Soon after hatching, chicks exhibit an array of adaptive, coordinated behaviors. Chick ...
Gold prices as material-social actors: The case of the London Gold Fix

Abstract This opinion piece, drawn from a larger research project on market perceptions of physical gold and gold derivatives, argues that scholars of extractive resources have paid little attention to the pragmatics of prices or looked at prices as material-social actors in their own right. Drawing on literature from the Social Studies of Finance, this essay looks at the global benchmark gold price (formerly the London Gold Fix, now the LBMA London Gold Price) to see how its material and semiotic embeddedness affects its connections to other aspects of gold investment and gold mining.
Fracture Toughness of Samarium Cobalt Magnets

Samarium Cobalt (SmCo) magnets have been the magnet of choice for a variety of industries for many years due to their favorable magnetic properties. Their high coercivity, combined with a low temperature coefficient, make them the ideal permanent magnet for demanding high temperature applications. One of the biggest concerns with rare earth magnets is their brittleness. Samarium Cobalt magnets in particular are prone to fracturing during machining and assembly. In manufacturing, great care must be taken to avoid chipping or fracturing these magnets due to their brittle nature.There are two main grades of Samarium Cobalt magnets, 1:5 and 2:17. These ratios define the nominal ratio of rare earth to transition metal content.In this paper, an investigation is performed on the fracture toughness of permanent magnets based on the Samarium Cobalt 2:17 composition. Various techniques are used to characterize the microstructure of the material, and quantify the material properties.Optical microscopy is used to characterize the grain structure of the material and quantify the porosity of the material after sintering. By comparing the average grain size and fracture toughness of several samples, grain size was shown to not affect fracture toughness in standard material. Latent cracks in defective material showed no preference to follow grain boundaries, oxides inclusions or voids.River marks in fracture surfaces are seen through scanning electron microscopy, confirming the transgranular cracking pattern seen by Li et al [1]This suggests that the toughness of the material is an inherent property of the main phase, not of grain boundaries or contaminants.Samarium Cobalt magnets exhibit both mechanical and magnetic anisotropy due to the alignment of their crystal structure in the manufacturing process.Using Palmqvist indentation crack techniques, the magnetic orientation of the grains was seen to greatly influence the direction of crack propagation from the tip of the indenter. Measurements of fracture toughness using this technique produce highly scattered data due to this anisotropic nature of the material. Specimens loaded with the indenter axis parallel to the direction of orientation show normal Palmqvist cracks, while specimens loaded perpendicular to the direction of magnetization exhibit crack propagation initiating from the faces of the indenter.To better quantify the material’s brittleness, fracture testing is performed on specially prepared samples to obtain an absolute measure of fracture toughness (K1c). Results show that SmCo is measurably weaker than other magnetic materials such as neodymium iron boron magnets[2]. Furthermore, neither relative concentration of Samarium nor source of raw material show notable effect on the fracture toughness of the material.Copyright © 2015 by ASME
The Choice of China out of Dumping Harm and Anti-Dumping Trouble

Dumping or ainti-dumping does a lot of damage to China from imports and exports frequently. Throngh strengthening the economy diplomacy and exports fnequently. Through strengthening the economy diplomacy and perfecting law skkletm, China candecrease "the non-market economy status" negative Influeuce. By increasing the industrial core competitive ability, China can iealize foreign trade intensive growth. Through establing benign imdustry coordintion mechanism and flexible legal framework, China can promote its trade continuable developmant.
Erosion of Inflatable Penile Prosthesis Reservoir Into Bladder

We report a case of erosion of an inflatable penile prosthesis reservoir into the bladder, which evidently occurred during a revision procedure for replacement of a defective pump. There was a significant delay between the time of failure of the prosthesis and the time of revision. Inflatable penile prostheses should be repaired as soon as possible after discovery of leakage.
Multiscale time abstractions for long-range planning under uncertainty

Planning in CPSs requires temporal reasoning to handle the dynamics of the environment, including human behavior, as well as temporal constraints on system goals and durations of actions that systems and human actors may take. The discrete abstraction of time in a state space planning should have a time sampling parameter value that satisfies some relation to achieve a certain precision. In particular, the sampling period should be small enough to allow the dynamics of the problem domain to be modeled with sufficient precision. Meanwhile, in many cases, events in the far future (relative to the sampling period) may be relevant to the decision making earlier in the planning timeline; therefore, a longer planning look-ahead horizon can yield a closer-to-optimal plan. Unfortunately, planning with a uniform fine-grained discrete abstraction of time and a long look-ahead horizon is typically computationally infeasible. In this paper, we propose a multiscale temporal planning approach -- formulated as MDP planning -- to preserve the required time fidelity of the problem domain and at the same time approximate a globally optimal plan. We illustrate our approach in a middleware used to monitor large sensor networks.
Physical signs of cirrhosis.

There are many physical signs or “cirrhosis clues” which can help physicians recognize cirrhosis of the liver early, when there is the best chance for satisfactory management, A larger group of signs appear later and often represent secondary manifestations of the cirrhotic process, but nevertheless are of some value in anticipating and managing complications.
I, We, and God: Ingredients of Husserl’s Theory of Community

The following essay attempts to outline some features of Husserl’s theory of community and to propose incidentally that it is a central consideration of his social theory, ethics, and theology. Most of the topics treated here find a more complete discussion in a MS which I hope to finish soon. I begin by connecting Husserl’s philosophical theology to the theme of community.
Sounds of the QCD phase transition

The hydrodynamic description of a fireball produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions has been recently supplemented by a very successful study of acoustic perturbation created by the initial-state perturbations. We discuss sound produced at later stages of the collision, as the temperature drops below critical, $Tl{T}_{c}$, and originated from the Rayleigh-type collapse of the quark-gluon plasma clusters. In a certain analytic approximation we study distorted sound spheres and calculate modifications of the particle spectra and two-particle correlators induced by them. Unlike for initial-state perturbations studied previously, we propose to look for those late-time sounds using rapidity correlations, rather than the azimuthal angles of the particles. We then summarize known data on rapidity correlations from RHIC and LHC, suggesting that the widening of those can be the first signature of the late-time sounds.
Taming Wild Big Data

Wild Big Data is data that is hard to extract, understand, and use due to its heterogeneous nature and volume. It typically comes without a schema, is obtained from multiple sources and provides a challenge for information extraction and integration. We describe a way to subduing Wild Big Data that uses techniques and resources that are popular for processing natural language text. The approach is applicable to data that is presented as a graph of objects and relations between them and to tabular data that can be transformed into such a graph. We start by applying topic models to contextualize the data and then use the results to identify the potential types of the graph’s nodes by mapping them to known types found in large open ontologies such as Freebase, and DBpedia. The results allow us to assemble coarse clusters of objects that can then be used to interpret the link and perform entity disambiguation and record linking.
The promise and pitfalls of β-diversity in ecology and conservation

A key challenge in ecology and conservation is to determine how processes at different scales create variation in community composition (β-diversity). In this issue, Olden & Halme show that grazers increase β-diversity through multiple processes at different scales. We discuss how β-diversity can elucidate fundamental processes of community assembly, challenges in linking processes to patterns, and unresolved questions across scales. Understanding the processes determining variation in community composition through space and time (β-diversity) is a fundamental pursuit in ecology, evolution and conservation. Studies of β-diversity examine many different levels of biological organization, spanning variation in species, functional-trait, and phylogenetic composition both within and across trophic levels. As a scalar that links patterns of diversity across local and regional scales, β-diversity can inform conservation and provide insights into fundamental processes underlying the assembly, diversity and dynamics of communities. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Scramble or not, that is the question a study of the security and usability of scramble keypad for PIN unlock on smartphones

PIN unlock is a popular screen locking mechanism used for protecting the sensitive private information on smart-phones. However, it is susceptible to a number of attacks such as guessing attacks, shoulder surfing attacks, smudge attacks, and side-channel attacks. Scramble keypad changes the keypad layout in each PIN-entry process to improve the security of PIN unlock. In this paper, the security and usability of scramble keypad for PIN unlock are studied. Our security analysis shows that scramble keypad can defend smudge attacks perfectly and greatly reduce the threats of side-channel attacks. A user study is conducted to demonstrate that scramble keypad has a better chance to defend shoulder surfing attacks than standard keypad. We also investigate how the usability of scramble keypad is compromised for improved security through a user study.
Total Exchange Flow, Entrainment, and Diffusive Salt Flux in Estuaries

AbstractThe linkage among total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux in estuaries is derived analytically using salinity coordinates, revealing the simple but important relationship between total exchange flow and mixing. Mixing is defined and quantified in this paper as the dissipation of salinity variance. The method uses the conservation of volume and salt to quantify and distinguish the diahaline transport of volume (i.e., entrainment) and diahaline diffusive salt flux. A numerical model of the Hudson estuary is used as an example of the application of the method in a realistic estuary with a persistent but temporally variable exchange flow. A notable finding of this analysis is that the total exchange flow and diahaline salt flux are out of phase with respect to the spring–neap cycle. Total exchange flow reaches its maximum near minimum neap tide, but diahaline salt transport reaches its maximum during the maximum spring tide. This phase shift explains the strong temporal variation of ...
Strategies for Managing Cultural Conflict: Models Review and Their Applications in Business and Technical Communication:

In the field of business and technical communication, scholars have called for research on dealing with cultural conflict for a long time. But the limited study on dealing with cultural conflicts, along with the current political context in the United States, calls for efforts to systematically address diversity issues and cultural conflict in our research and teaching practices. One obstacle to advance effective communication strategies on cultural conflict in business and technical communication is the lack of communication with other disciplines. Through an interdisciplinary perspective, the current article introduces the concept of cultural conflict, examines strategy models to address cultural conflict in different fields, and provides an example on how to identify a strategy model to resolve cultural conflict in business and technical communication practices. This article concludes by emphasizing that there is not a best model that can be applied to handle cultural conflict in all circumstances and ...
Frequency translational RF receiver with time varying transmission lines (TVTL)

A novel receiver architecture based on frequency translation is proposed in this paper. The receiver treats a mono-lithically integrated time-varying transmission line (TVTL) as a capacitive mixer with minimum insertion loss and noise penalty, placing it in the first stage before a fixed, narrow bandpass filter. By varying the LO/carrier frequency of the TVTL mixer, the complete received frequency band is shifted so that the desired band can be selected with a fixed bandpass filter, without suffering signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation that usually occurs in a conventional heterodyne receiver with a mixer at its first stage. Measured results of both the TVTL MMIC and the testbed of the frequency translational receiver validate the proposed concept and confirm its potential for applications in software defined radios.
Intersections of girl child marriage and family planning beliefs and use: qualitative findings from Ethiopia and India

Child marriage and subsequent early first birth is a considerable social, economic and health concern, and a pervasive practice in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This study explores barriers and facilitators to family planning among women and girls, and their marital decision-makers subsequent to receipt of child marriage prevention programmes in Ethiopia and India. In-depth interviews with 128 women and girls who were married as minors or who cancelled or postponed marriage as minors and their marital decision-makers were analysed using content analysis. Respondents identified social norms, including child marriage and pressure to have children, and lack of information as barriers to family planning. Benefits included delayed first birth and increased birth spacing, improved maternal and child health and girls' educational attainment. Respondents associated family planning use with delayed pregnancy and increased educational attainment, particularly in Ethiopia. Child marriage prevention programmes were identified as important sources of family planning information. Ethiopia's school-based programme strengthened access to health workers and contraception more so than India's community-based programme. Findings highlight young wives' vulnerability with regard to reproductive control, and support the need for multi-sector approaches across communities, schools and community health workers to improve family planning among young wives.
Spectrum Allocation Policy in Elastic Optical Networks

The considered problem covers routing and spectrum allocation problem (RSA problem) in Elastic Optical Networks while maintaining the spectrum continuity constraints, non-overlapping spectra constraints for adjacent connections on individual links of the network and spectrum contiguity constraints of the connection. In this article the modified version of the First Fit spectrum slot allocation policy for Fixed Alternate Routing in flexible optical networks has been proposed. The Fixed Alternate Routing with proposed spectrum allocation policy rejects fewer requests, provides less bandwidth blocking probability and less spectrum fragmentation than Fixed Alternate Routing with well-known First Fit and Exact Fit spectrum allocation policies. However, the cost of improving these parameters is a higher computational complexity of the proposed allocation policy.
Survey A survey of routing protocols for smart grid communications

With the recent initiatives to upgrade the existing power grid to the Smart Grid (SG), there has been a significant interest in the design and development of an efficient communications infrastructure for connecting different components of the SG. In addition to the currently used underlying networks and protocols, new wired/wireless approaches are being planned for deployment for different components/applications of the SG. Based on the data requirements of the applications, new challenges have arisen at the network layer of the protocol stack with respect to routing and data forwarding. In this paper, we focus on the routing issues in the SG communications infrastructure which consists of different network components, such as Home Area Networks (HANs), Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). We provide a comprehensive survey of the existing routing research and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed protocols with respect different applications areas. We also identify the future research issues that are yet to be addressed with respect to the applications and network components. This survey is the first to identify routing design issues for the SG and categorize the proposed routing protocols from the SG applications perspective. We believe that this work will be valuable for the utilities and other energy companies whose target is to develop and deploy a specific SG application that may span different network components. In addition, this work will provide valuable insights for the newcomers who would like to pursue routing related research in the SG domain.
The Self-Calibrating Multivariate Precipitation Retrieval (SCaMPR) for High-Resolution, Low-Latency Satellite-Based Rainfall Estimates

The Self-Calibrating Multivariate Precipitation Retrieval (SCaMPR) is an algorithm for retrieving rainfall rates using visible (VIS)/infrared (IR) and microwave-frequency data from Earth-orbiting satellites. Rainfall rates derived from microwave-frequency data are used as a calibration target for an algorithm framework that both selects the optimal VIS/IR predictors and determines their optimal calibration coefficients in real time. This algorithm is highly flexible and its short data latency makes it well-suited for rapidly-changing heavy rainfall situations that trigger flash flooding.
Mitigating the Effect of Runtime-Failures in MBC Frameworks

In nanoscale technologies, memories are vulnerable to both parametric failures, as well as, runtime failures induced by “soft errors” such as voltage, or thermal noise and aging effects. This chapter addresses the runtime failures in on-chip memories induced by “soft errors”. Conventionally such runtime errors are addressed using single error correction double error detection (SECDED) codes. However, these codes have very limited correction capability, making them inefficient to protect memory in scaled technologies (sub-45 nm), which are particularly vulnerable to multiple-bit failures (Hareland et al. Characterization of Multi-bit Soft Error events in advanced SRAMs, Intl. Electron Devices Meeting, 2003; Osada et al. IEEE J Solid State Circ 39(5), 2004). The requirement to tolerate multi-bit failures is accentuated by inter-die and intra-die variation in memory blocks which increases the vulnerability towards runtime failures. This chapter explores architectural modifications and a novel reconfigurable error-control coding (ECC) technique which together can be extremely effective in protecting on-chip memories against runtime failures.
Fibroblasts lacking nuclear lamins do not have nuclear blebs or protrusions but nevertheless have frequent nuclear membrane ruptures

The nuclear lamina, an intermediate filament meshwork lining the inner nuclear membrane, is formed by the nuclear lamins (lamins A, C, B1, and B2). Defects or deficiencies in individual nuclear lamin proteins have been reported to elicit nuclear blebs (protrusions or outpouchings of the nuclear envelope) and increase susceptibility for nuclear membrane ruptures. It is unclear, however, how a complete absence of nuclear lamins would affect nuclear envelope morphology and nuclear membrane integrity (i.e., whether nuclear membrane blebs or protrusions would occur and, if not, whether cells would be susceptible to nuclear membrane ruptures). To address these issues, we generated mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) lacking all nuclear lamins. The nuclear lamin-deficient MEFs had irregular nuclear shapes but no nuclear blebs or protrusions. Despite a virtual absence of nuclear blebs, MEFs lacking nuclear lamins had frequent, prolonged, and occasionally nonhealing nuclear membrane ruptures. By transmission electron microscopy, the inner nuclear membrane in nuclear lamin-deficient MEFs have a "wavy" appearance, and there were discrete discontinuities in the inner and outer nuclear membranes. Nuclear membrane ruptures were accompanied by a large increase in DNA damage, as judged by γ-H2AX foci. Mechanical stress increased both nuclear membrane ruptures and DNA damage, whereas minimizing transmission of cytoskeletal forces to the nucleus had the opposite effects.
Electrical and optical characterization of AlxNy thin films

We report the deposition and characterization of 𝐴𝑙 𝑥 𝑁 𝑦 thin films to use them as pyroelectric detector. 𝐴𝑙 𝑥 𝑁 𝑦 thin films were deposited using a direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering from an Al target with varying concentrations of Ar:N2 at constant pressure and substrate temperature. The film thickness' were varied between 100-200 nm with varying atomic composition based on Ar:N 2 during deposition. The nitrogen content in the films varied from 39.0% to 44.7% as found by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). Each of the thin films was annealed at a different temperature between 400 to 800 °C with 100 °C increment in N 2 environment and X-ray diffraction (XRD) was performed to analyze the annealed films crystallinity. From the XRD data and by using Scherrer equation, we found that for samples annealed at 600 °C for fifteen minutes has the grain size of 12.28 nm. Optical properties of the films were measured with varying wavelengths which include transmission, reflection, absorption, refraction coefficient, extinction coefficient and the optical bandgap. We also determined the electrical properties of thin films’ which include the pyroelectric coefficient, pyroelectric current, dielectric constant, and film permittivity between the temperature range 270 K to 310 K. As the temperature is increased, the pyroelectric coefficient also increased almost linearly. The pyroelectric coefficient of annealed 𝐴𝑙 𝑥 𝑁 𝑦 films found to be varied between 4.86 × 10 -5 C/m 2 K to 1.32 × 10 -4 C/m 2 K. The optical transmittance through the as grown non-annealed thin films was found to be varied between 35 to 78%, while the reflectance was found to be below 25%. Because of low absorption in the thin films the extinction coefficient was found to be near zero. The refractive index was varied between 1.7 and 2.2 for the 𝐴𝑙 𝑥 𝑁 𝑦 thin films. The optical bandgap was found to be 1.40 eV for non-annealed 𝐴𝑙 𝑥 𝑁 𝑦 thin film which was deposited on cover glass. The dielectric constant was varied between 30-1200000 depending on the annealing temperature of the film, while the film permittivity ranges between 0-1.25×10 -5 F/m.
Pediatric Emergency Medicine Simulation Curriculum: Cardiac Tamponade.

Introduction Cardiac tamponade is an uncommon presentation to the pediatric emergency department and requires early recognition and emergent intervention. Methods We developed this patient simulati...
Content-Based Image Retrieval using Generated Textual Meta-Data

Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) aims to locate the specific image in a large collection of images without any meta-data. Current techniques focus on manipulating image pixel spaces (such as shape, color, and texture) but face two challenges: limitation of representation and inaccuracy of image similarity measurement. We address these two problems by using image captioning model to generate rich textual meta-data, which translates the pixel space into text space where many textual similarity measurements and ranking methods can be applied. Our preliminary result shows this approach has great promise.
Aging in Place: The Role of Geriatric Social Work:

Aging in place refers to the phenomenon of elderly persons remaining in their communities despite increasing frailty. Although housing specialists initially resisted this development, many housing ...