cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Formation of Nitrogen-Containing Oligomers by Methylglyoxal and Amines in Simulated Evaporating Cloud Droplets

Reactions of methylglyoxal with amino acids, methylamine, and ammonium sulfate can take place in aqueous aerosol and evaporating cloud droplets. These processes are simulated by drying droplets and bulk solutions of these compounds (at low millimolar and 1 M concentrations, respectively) and analyzing the residuals by scanning mobility particle sizing, nuclear magnetic resonance, aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS), and electrospray ionization MS. The results are consistent with imine (but not diimine) formation on a time scale of seconds, followed by the formation of nitrogen-containing oligomers, methylimidazole, and dimethylimidazole products on a time scale of minutes to hours. Measured elemental ratios are consistent with imidazoles and oligomers being major reaction products, while effective aerosol densities suggest extensive reactions take place within minutes. These reactions may be a source of the light-absorbing, nitrogen-containing oligomers observed in urban and biomass-burning aerosol particles.
Temporal Flight Patterns in the Mexican Bean Beetle (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) and their Relation to Weather

The flights of adult Mexican bean beetles from experimental plots of lima beans and soybeans were monitored to determine the proximate cues to which beetles respond when initiating flight. Most beetles, including newly eclosed individuals, flew out of the plots within 1 week of their release. Two indices of activity relating to flight frequency and flight intensity varied similarly in response to weather conditions, and indicated that flight was related most strongly to temperature and wind speed. Flight intensity was then modeled as a nonlinear function of these two interacting weather variables. The model accounts for the observed bimodal pattern of daily flight activity.
Christian Marriage: Contract or Covenant?

IN AN evaluation of a series of papers dealing with "Intolerable Marriage Situations," Ladislas Orsy, S.J., observed: "If I am permitted an aside here, let me say that I think the effort of historians and theologians in investigating the indissolubility of marriage or the possibility of divorce and remarriage can be misdirected. The main effort should be in investigating positively what a Christian marriage is." More recently, under the banner headline "Time to Change Teaching on Divorce," the editors of the National Catholic Reporter gave space to the complaint of Raymond Goedert, president of the Canon Law Society of America: "We are being criticized because of poor law. But law can only follow good theology. My quarrel is that theologians have not done their homework on what constitutes a sacramental marriage." For the past thirty years I have been engaged in research and teaching in the field of marriage. I have done my share of homework, much of it from secondary and contemporary material, but enough from primary sources to conclude that what we need is an altogether new approach to the theology of marriage. The newness should respect the traditional teaching of the Church, but it should recapture and reflect a dimension of Christian marriage which has been lost or obscured in much of contemporary theological writing, a dimension that alone can justify the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of Christian marriage and shed some needed light on the way "intolerable marriage situations" can be handled best in the external as well as the internal forum. Today, and for the last six centuries, Christian marriage has been discussed almost exclusively in terms of contract. In the first millennium of the Church's history, all marriage, pagan as well as Christian, was discussed almost wholly in terms of covenant. The contextual difference is basic, since it is only in terms of covenant that we can "investigate positively what a Christian marriage is."
China in Africa: An Analysis of the Effect of Chinese Media Expansion on African Public Opinion

In 2006, Chinese officials revealed an extensive plan to increase the nation’s soft power in Africa through a number of initiatives to increase the presence and relevance of Chinese media in Africa...
Tracking lags in historical plant species’ shifts in relation to regional climate change

Can species shift their distributions fast enough to track changes in climate? We used abundance data from the 1950s and the 2000s in Wisconsin to measure shifts in the distribution and abundance of 78 forest-understory plant species over the last half-century and compare these shifts to changes in climate. We estimated temporal shifts in the geographic distribution of each species using vectors to connect abundance-weighted centroids from the 1950s and 2000s. These shifts in distribution reflect colonization, extirpation, and changes in abundance within sites, separately quantified here. We then applied climate analog analyses to compute vectors representing the climate change that each species experienced. Species shifted mostly to the northwest (mean: 49 ± 29 km) primarily reflecting processes of colonization and changes in local abundance. Analog climates for these species shifted even further to the northwest, however, exceeding species' shifts by an average of 90 ± 40 km. Most species thus failed to match recent rates of climate change. These lags decline in species that have colonized more sites and those with broader site occupancy, larger seed mass, and higher habitat fidelity. Thus, species' traits appear to affect their responses to climate change, but relationships are weak. As climate change accelerates, these lags will likely increase, potentially threatening the persistence of species lacking the capacity to disperse to new sites or locally adapt. However, species with greater lags have not yet declined more in abundance. The extent of these threats will likely depend on how other drivers of ecological change and interactions among species affect their responses to climate change.
Pilgrimage, Voodoo and Politics

The study of pilgrimage as a socio-religious phenomenon can be carried out at three different levels: (1) the study of shrines as sacred places, (2) the pilgrims themselves, and (3) the goals, motivations and reasons why pilgrims journey to specific shrines in an attempt to gain material and spiritual reward (Raphael 1974: 11; Turner 1974, Turner and Turner, 1978). Pilgrimage as an individual and collective march to a sacred place can be a mechanism for social integration in the same way that Durkheim (1915) perceives the function of religion in society. But religion has also been shown sometimes to play a disruptive role in society, as in the case of nativistic and revitalisation movements (Lanternari 1963; Wallace 1956).
Bending testing and characterization of surrogate nuclear fuel rods made of Zircaloy-4 cladding and aluminum oxide pellets

Abstract Behavior of surrogate nuclear fuel rods made of Zircaloy-4 (Zry-4) cladding with alumina pellets under reversed cyclic bending was studied. Tests were performed under load or moment control at 5 Hz. The surrogate rods fractured under moment amplitudes greater than 10.16 Nm with fatigue lives between 2.4 × 103 and 2.2 × 106 cycles. Fatigue response of Zry-4 cladding was characterized by using flexural rigidity. Degradation of flexural rigidity was shown to depend on the moment and the prefatigue condition of specimens. Pellet-to-pellet interface (PPI), pellet-to-cladding interface (PCI), and pellet condition affect surrogate rod failure. Both debonding of PPI/PCI and pellet fracturing contribute to surrogate rod bending fatigue. The effect of sensor spacing on curvature measurement using three-point deflections was studied; the method based on effective gauge length is effective in sensor spacing correction. The database developed and the understanding gained in this study can serve as input to analysis of SNF (spent nuclear fuel) vibration integrity.
Dear White Teacher…Instructional Strategies to Inform Pre-service Teachers Regarding Equitable Practices in the K-12 Classroom

Academic achievement gaps by race and class continue to exist in the United States. Nationwide research, however, supports the conclusion that teacher preparation programs do not include sufficient training models regarding the needs of diverse learners, cultural conflict, and societal injustices that continue to impact k-12 classrooms. Therefore, practices learned and employed in the field do not take into consideration key issues that have a tremendous impact on student achievement. As such, this chapter provides practical instructional strategies to address social justice issues in teacher preparation programs. This chapter will provide insight on (1) connecting existing beliefs and attitudes with current social justice issues; (2) challenging practitioners with honest discourse regarding cultural conflicts; and (3) constructing a new framework to enhance cultural proficiency and employ equitable practices in the classroom. The practices and strategies provided will ultimately increase the cultural proficiency of teachers in the increasingly diverse k-12 classrooms nationwide.
Monetary planning for India

In this book, the author provides the backround for the making of a sound monetary policy by a lucid and systematic discussion of factors involved in such planning.
MIMO Detection With Imperfect Channel State Information Using Expectation Propagation

Expectation propagation (EP) has been recently proposed as a low-complexity algorithm for symbol detection in massive MIMO systems, where its performance is evaluated on the premise that perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at the receiver. However, in practical systems, exact CSI is not available due to a variety of reasons including channel estimation errors, quantization errors, and aging. In this paper, we study the performance of EP in the presence of imperfect CSI due to channel estimation errors and show that in this case, the EP detector experiences significant performance loss. Moreover, the EP detector shows a higher sensitivity to channel estimation errors in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions, where the rate of its performance improvement decreases. We investigate this behavior of the EP detector and propose a modified EP detector for colored noise, which utilizes the correlation matrix of the channel estimation error. Simulation results verify that the modified algorithm is robust against imperfect CSI and that its performance is significantly improved over the EP algorithm, particularly in the higher SNR regions and that for the modified detector, the slope of the symbol error rate (SER) versus SNR plots are similar to the case of perfect CSI.
VisFlow: A Visual Database Integration and Workflow Querying System

The adoption and availability of diverse application design and support platforms are making generic scientific application orchestration increasingly difficult. In such an evolving environment, higher level abstractions of design primitives are critically important using which end users have a chance to craft their own applications without a complete technical grasp of the lower level details. In this research, we introduce a novel scientific workflow design platform that supports high level tools for data integration, process description and analytics based on a visual language for naive users and advanced options for computing savvy programmers in one single platform, called VisFlow. We describe its salient features and advantages using a complex scientific application in natural resources and ecology. Video: https://youtu.be/ 2YSYVyOuuk.
Properties of tree rings in LSST sensors

Images of uniformly illuminated sensors for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope have circular periodic patterns with an appearance similar to tree rings. These patterns are caused by circularly symmetric variations of the dopant concentration in the monocrystal silicon boule induced by the manufacturing process. Non-uniform charge density results in the parasitic electric field inside the silicon sensor, which may distort shapes of astronomical sources. In this study we analyzed data from fifteen LSST sensors produced by ITL to determine the main parameters of the tree rings: amplitude and period, and also variability across the sensors tested at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Tree ring pattern has a weak dependence on the wavelength. However the ring amplitude gets smaller as wavelength gets longer, since longer wavelengths penetrate deeper into the silicon. Tree ring amplitude gets larger as it gets closer to the outer part of the wafer, from 0.1 to 1.0%, indicating that the resistivity variation is larger for larger radii.
Marriage Delayed and Equalized: Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Marital Patterns by Race

ABSTRACTIdentifying a causal relationship between education and marital status poses methodological challenges. Using regression discontinuity analyses of U.S. Census data from 1910 and 1930, I estimate effects of early U.S. compulsory schooling laws on marital patterns by gender and race. Results from 1910 suggest that compulsory laws had heterogeneous effects by race and gender, reducing the likelihood of being married only among nonwhite men. Results from 1930 suggest that compulsory schooling decreased the racial gap in likelihood of being married and in age at first marriage by at least 24 percent. Contemporary implications include potential benefits of extended compulsory schooling for racial equality.
Chapter 1 – History and Evolution of the Postdoctoral Scholar in the United States

Abstract This chapter provides a background history of postdoctoral scholars (postdocs) at United States institutions, focusing on the end of 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. During this critical time, a more urgent sense of the challenges facing the academic research enterprise at the turn of the 21st century developed, and a wide range of stakeholders joined in an effort to create and implement solutions. From grassroots postdoctoral associations to national policy leaders, these stakeholders worked to define problems, identify solutions, and system that had become unsustainably dependent on an ever-increasing number of postdoctoral trainees.
Influence of Forest Fragment Composition and Structure on Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Communities

Habitat fragmentation is the process of reducing habitat area while increasing the number and isolation of habitat patches. Although much of Indiana's land area was historically covered with contiguous forests, remaining forests are now heavily fragmented. This is especially true in northeastern Indiana where agriculture is the dominant land use cover type. Loss of functional forests in northeast Indiana could lead to a loss of biodiversity at a regional scale. Ground-dwelling arthropods have been used frequently as biological indicator taxa of forest health. We characterized 10 typical northeast Indiana forest plant communities and inventoried ground-dwelling arthropod communities within those forests. Plant community and environmental heterogeneity within forests were used to assess forest complexity, and ground-dwelling arthropod communities were compared to forest environmental characteristics. Our forest comparisons revealed plant community and structural heterogeneity differences. While overstory and understory diversity, compositional heterogeneity, and litter depth did have influence on arthropod communities' relative dissimilarities in nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination plots, those communities were similar across all forest patches. However, those same environmental variables did not have direct influence on overall arthropod abundance, richness, or diversity. Even though differences did occur in forest structure and composition, arthropod communities had high similarity values, especially in August. As the forests in the region are similar in type and structure, between-forest comparisons of arthropod communities showed corresponding similarities in composition, abundance, richness, and diversity.
Metal Oxo Complexes and Oxygen Activation

Dioxygen is at the same time both readily abundant and a powerful oxidizing agent in the thermodynamic sense. The utilization of its oxidizing equivalents in an efficient and controlled way is a matter of considerable interest in biology and in a number of technologically important issues including the oxidative activation of hydrocarbons, reactions 1 and 2, and in potential fuel cell applications.
Deep Transfer Learning for Crop Yield Prediction with Remote Sensing Data

Accurate prediction of crop yields in developing countries in advance of harvest time is central to preventing famine, improving food security, and sustainable development of agriculture. Existing techniques are expensive and difficult to scale as they require locally collected survey data. Approaches utilizing remotely sensed data, such as satellite imagery, potentially provide a cheap, equally effective alternative. Our work shows promising results in predicting soybean crop yields in Argentina using deep learning techniques. We also achieve satisfactory results with a transfer learning approach to predict Brazil soybean harvests with a smaller amount of data. The motivation for transfer learning is that the success of deep learning models is largely dependent on abundant ground truth training data. Successful crop yield prediction with deep learning in regions with little training data relies on the ability to fine-tune pre-trained models.
CoCo: coding-based covert timing channels for network flows

In this paper, we propose CoCo, a novel framework for establishing covert timing channels. The CoCo covert channel modulates the covert message in the inter-packet delays of the network flows, while a coding algorithm is used to ensure the robustness of the covert message to different perturbations. The CoCo covert channel is adjustable: by adjusting certain parameters one can trade off different features of the covert channel, i.e., robustness, rate, and undetectability. By simulating the CoCo covert channel using different coding algorithms we show that CoCo improves the covert robustness as compared to the previous research, while being practically undetectable.
Relaxed Marginal Inference and its Application to Dependency Parsing

Recently, relaxation approaches have been successfully used for MAP inference on NLP problems. In this work we show how to extend the relaxation approach to marginal inference used in conditional likelihood training, posterior decoding, confidence estimation, and other tasks. We evaluate our approach for the case of second-order dependency parsing and observe a tenfold increase in parsing speed, with no loss in accuracy, by performing inference over a small subset of the full factor graph. We also contribute a bound on the error of the marginal probabilities by a sub-graph with respect to the full graph. Finally, while only evaluated with BP in this paper, our approach is general enough to be applied with any marginal inference method in the inner loop.
Spatial variability of turbulent fluxes and roughness lengths in HAPEX-MOBILHY

Surface-based and aircraft measured fluxes over the heterogeneous surface in HAPEX-MOBILHY are analyzed for the ten flight days when cloud cover above the boundary layer was minimal. The fair-weather climatology of the spatial variation of surface fluxes is estimated to provide an assessment of the generality of previous case studies appearing in the literature. For the 10-day averages, greater heating over the forest generates a forest breeze which leads to rising motion and a modest increase of boundary-layer cloud cover at the forest edge. The exchange coefficients and effective roughness lengths are computed for local averages (15 km scale) and for regional averages (100 km scale) intended to represent a range of grid sizes in numerical models of the atmosphere. The effective roughness length for momentum over the mixed agricultural region for both scales is on the order of 1 m, apparently due to bluff roughness effects associated with scattered trees, edges of small woods and other obstacles. This roughness length value is an order of magnitude larger than values used in numerical models for the same region, which are based on the dominant vegetation type. The spatially varying effective roughness length for heat is computed for use in those models which use surface radiation temperature to estimate surface heat flux. The effective roughness lengths for heat are found to be smaller than those typically used in numerical models of the atmosphere.
Ordinary Differential Equations

An nth-order differential equation has the form $$ {y^{\left( n \right)}}\left( x \right) = F\left[ {x,y\left( x \right),y'\left( x \right), \ldots ,{y^{\left( {n - 1} \right)}}\left( x \right)} \right], $$ where y (k)= d k y/dx k . Equation (1.1.1) is a linear differential equation if F is a linear function of y and its derivatives (the explicit x dependence of F is still arbitrary). If (1.1.1) is linear, then the general solution y(x) depends on n independent parameters called constants of integration; all solutions of a linear differential equation may be obtained by proper choice of these constants. If (1.1.1) is a nonlinear differential equation, then it also has a general solution which contains n constants of integration. However, there sometimes exist special additional solutions of nonlinear differential equations that cannot be obtained from the general solution for any choice of the integration constants. We omit a rigorous discussion of these fundamental properties of differential equations but illustrate them in the next three examples.
Solitons and Geometry

The biggest advance in the theory of nonlinear equations in recent years has been the invention of the so-called inverse scattering method by Gardner et al. [1] in 1967, who used it to solve the initial value problem for the Korteweg-de Vries [2] equation. The method was systematized by Lax [3] in 1968 and it was given definitive respectability by Zacharov and Shabat [4] in 1971 when they solved the Schroding er equation with a cubic nonlinearity. By now, a large number of equations can be solved this way [5]. This method, in the language of Lax [3], is the following: Given an evolution equation, say, of the form $$\frac{{\partial u}}{{\partial u}} = K\left( u \right),$$ (1.1) one finds firstly operators L and B such that Equation (1.1) is equivalent to the relation $$\frac{{\partial L}}{{\partial t}} = i\left[ {L,B} \right],$$ (1.2) In this case the spectrum of L does not depend on time and one says that the flow of L is isospectral. Secondly, one tries to associate a scattering problem with the operator L (which acts, for instance, on a Hilbert space). This typically restricts the type of asymptotic behavior allowed on u. Finally, the direct and inverse scattering problems associated with L must be solved.
Prevalence of Low-Attenuation Homogeneous Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma Mimicking Renal Cysts on CT.

OBJECTIVE. The objective of our study was to determine the attenuation range of homogeneous papillary renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) on contrast-enhanced CT. MATERIALS AND METHODS. This retrospective...
Integrated Visible-Light Liquid-Crystal Phase Modulator

An integrated liquid-crystal phase modulator for applications within the visible wavelength range is demonstrated. A threshold voltage of ±1.2V is shown and 24π phase shift is achieved within ±2.5V in a 500-μm-long modulator.
The impact of time after radiation treatment on dysphagia in patients with head and neck cancer enrolled in a swallowing therapy program.

Background Swallowing dysfunction after radiotherapy (RT) for head and neck cancer can be devastating. A randomized control trial compared swallow exercises versus exercise plus neuromuscular electrical stimulation therapy and found no overall difference in outcomes. Methods Quality of life (QOL), diet, and swallowing variables collected at discrete intervals on 117 patients were reanalyzed to test the hypothesis that shorter time between the completion of radiotherapy and beginning of the swallowing therapy program yielded improved outcomes. Results At baseline, subjects 2 years post RT in several measures. Over the therapy program, the early group showed significant improvement in diet and QOL. Swallowing physiologic variables showed no difference between groups. Conclusion Beginning a swallowing therapy program within 1 year of completion of radiotherapy demonstrates more consistent improvement in QOL and diet performance compared to later periods.
The Intersection of Student Engagement and Families: A Critical Connection for Achievement and Life Outcomes

Abstract There is a rich and extensive literature on family contextual variables and a range of developmental and school-related outcomes. The family context may also enhance or thwart students’ engagement at school and with learning. In this chapter, we reviewed the literature on students’ engagement and related motivational constructs according to the five family support for learning dimensions identified by Christenson and colleagues: home expectations and attributions, discipline orientation, home-affective environment, parent participation, and structure for learning. The value of student engagement for educators’ efforts to involve and partner with families is described. The chapter closes with implications for school-based practice.
The Productivity Vampires

The four decade old Productivity Puzzler (sometimes called the Productivity Paradox) asks why the massive investment in information technology (IT) is not accompanied by equally massive productivity improvements. The belief that IT does improve productivity is foiled by faulty measurement, but improved measurement will, at some point, demonstrate conclusively that IT improves productivity. Another view is that “Productivity Vampires” use IT to suck productivity out of organizations through mechanisms such as moving the goalposts, making things not forbidden required, and increasing cognitive load on workers.
GRAPE: Geometric Risk-Aware Pursuit-Evasion

Abstract We present a method for a collaborative team of pursuing robots to contain and capture a single evading robot. We address the practical case in which the pursuers do not know the exact location of the evader but rather must localize the evader with noisy on-board sensors. Under our policy, the pursuers move to maximally reduce the area of space reachable by the evader despite the uncertainty in the evader’s position estimate. Our pursuit policy is distributed in the sense that each pursuer only needs to broadcast its position and estimate to its closest neighbors. The policy guarantees that the evader’s reachable area is non-increasing between measurement updates regardless of the evader’s policy. Furthermore, we show in simulations and hardware that the pursuers capture the evader in spite of the position uncertainty provided that the pursuer’s measurement noise decreases with the distance to the evader.
Mapping physical functions of the shoulder to American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System scores

Background We sought to correlate physical functions of the shoulder to American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) scores. Methods We reviewed 3300 patient encounters with completed ASES scores, representing 2447 patients. Patients were seen for shoulder-related complaints. The most common diagnoses were rotator cuff disease (56%) and arthritis (9%); 54% and 46% of encounters were in operatively and nonoperatively treated patients, respectively. A total of 2632 PROMIS Physical Function (PF), 2574 PROMIS Pain Interference (PI), and 959 PROMIS Upper Extremity (UE) scores were simultaneously collected with the ASES form. The ASES form specifically asks about the ability to perform 8 physical functions. Receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated to determine 90% positive predictive value (PPV) and 90% negative predictive value (NPV) cutoffs for the ability to perform at high function for the ASES and PROMIS-PF, -UE, and -PI scores for the entire shoulder cohort and for rotator cuff disease and arthritis subgroups. Results ASES scores had consistently excellent ability, PROMIS-UE scores had reasonable to excellent ability, and PROMIS-PF and PROMIS-PI scores had overall reasonable ability to determine high- and low-function states. For reaching a high shelf in the rotator cuff disease subgroup, the 90% NPV and PPV cutoff scores were 41 and 66, respectively, for the ASES instrument. For reaching a high shelf in the arthritis subgroup, the cutoff scores were 50 and 78, respectively, for the ASES instrument. The 90% NPV and PPV cutoffs for each score, physical function, and diagnosis group were depicted by visual representations (“maps”) for easier interpretation. Conclusion Shoulder physical functions were mapped to outcome scores. Physical function mapping adds clinical meaning to the orthopedic literature, facilitating improved, more-informed decision making between physicians and patients.
Tunable spin-orbit coupling and magnetic superstripe phase in a Bose-Einstein condensate

Superstripe phases in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), possessing both crystalline structure and superfluidity, open a new avenue for exploring exotic quantum matters---supersolids. However, conclusive detection and further exploration of a superstripe is still challenging in experiments because of its short period, low visibility, fragility against magnetic-field fluctuation, or short lifetime. Here we propose a scheme in a spin-orbit coupled BEC which overcomes these obstacles and generates a robust magnetic superstripe phase, with only spin-density (no total density) modulation due to the magnetic translational symmetry, ready for direct real-space observation. In the scheme, two hyperfine spin states are individually Raman coupled with a largely detuned third state, which induce a momentum-space separation between two lower band dispersions, yielding an effective spin-1/2 system with tunable spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman fields. Without effective Zeeman fields, spin-dependent interaction dominates, yielding a magnetic superstripe phase with a long tunable period and high visibility. Our scheme provides a platform for observing and exploring exotic properties of superstripe phases as well as novel physics with tunable spin-orbit coupling.
Four Ironies of Self-quantification: Wearable Technologies and the Quantified Self

Bainbridge’s well known “Ironies of Automation” (in: Johannsen, Rijnsdorp (eds) Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 129–135, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9) laid out a set of fundamental criticisms surrounding the promises of automation that, even 30 years later, remain both relevant and, in many cases, intractable. Similarly, a set of ironies in technologies for sensor driven self-quantification (often referred to broadly as wearables) is laid out here, spanning from instrumental problems in human factors design (such as disagreement over physiological norms) to much broader social problems (such as loss of freedom). As with automation, these ironies stand in the way of many of the promised benefits of these wearable technologies. It is argued here that without addressing these ironies now, the promises of wearables may not come to fruition, and instead users may experience outcomes that are opposite to those which the designers seek to afford, or, at the very least, those which consumers believe they are being offered. This paper describes four key ironies of sensor driven self-quantification: (1) know more, know better versus no more, no better; (2) greater self-control versus greater social control; (3) well-being versus never being well enough; (4) more choice versus erosion of choice.
A Rare Complication of Myocardial Infarction: Ventricular Septal Defect

Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is a rare but lethal complication of myocardial infarction. We present a case of a 65-year-old male who presented with a history of progressive shortness of breath associated with productive cough. Physical examination was significant for crepitation in both lower lung fields and bilateral lower extremity edema. Chest X-ray revealed bilateral reticular opacities with small bilateral pleural effusions. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for COVID was positive. Echo showed a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of 30-35%, ischemic cardiomyopathy, and muscular ventricular septal defects with left to right shunting and severely elevated pulmonary artery systolic pressure. Overtime during the hospital course, he developed respiratory and fulminant hepatic failure. Our patient had VSD due to an undiagnosed old myocardial infarction (MI). Initially heart failure was compensated and treated with medical management. Later on, he developed respiratory complications related to COVID-19 infection as well as hepatic failure in addition to a cardiomyopathy which made him a poor surgical candidate leading to death.
Narendra Modi’s social media election campaign and India’s delegative democracy

This paper qualitatively analyzes tweets sent by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and responses to the tweets in the month leading up to his May 2019 electoral win. Several dominant rhetorical ...
The Metasemantics of Indefinite Extensibility

Generality relativism is the view that any domain of quantification can always be expanded. The view promises to resolve a broad range of paradoxes, but, without an explanation of how domains expan...
Voice and Respiratory Characteristics of Men and Women Seeking Treatment for Presbyphonia.

Summary Background and Objectives Impaired respiratory function could potentially explain why some older speakers experience voice-related handicap whereas others do not, despite presenting with similar age-related laryngeal characteristics. The objectives of this study were therefore to (1) describe voice and respiratory function across men and women in a sample of treatment-seeking patients with presbyphonia; (2) assess how respiratory function differed from the general elderly population, based on normative data; and 3) discuss how respiratory function may play a role in the development of voice symptoms across men and women. Methods Twenty one participants with presbyphonia underwent respiratory assessments (spirometry and respiratory muscle strength testing) in addition to standard of care voice assessments. Respiratory variables included forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), FEV1/FVC, maximum inspiratory pressure (MIP), and maximum expiratory pressure (MEP). Results Voice features were consistent with the diagnosis of presbyphonia and values did not different significantly between males and females, although some trends were noted. Regarding respiratory variables, one-third of the participants (n = 7) presented with FVC and FEV1 less than 80% of predicted, and 57% (n = 12) were Conclusion Our sample of participants with presbyphonia included a non-negligible proportion of patients with decreased percent predicted values of FVC and FEV1, and with respiratory muscle strength (MEP) below the LLN. Standardized values of pulmonary function were not different across sexes, indicative of a similar respiratory health. However, a lower raw pulmonary function and respiratory muscle strength in women may compound laryngeal changes and have an impact on perceived voice-related handicap. Together, findings warrant further studies to explore the impact of decreased respiratory function on voice and, ultimately, on the response to voice therapy in patients with presbyphonia.
AN EXAMINATION OF FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS, WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT, AND ORGANIZATIONAL OUTCOMES

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether or not a relationship existed between employees’ use of flexible working arrangements (such as flexible work schedules and telecommuting) and organizational outcomes (such as turnover intentions and job satisfaction outcome variables) holding work-family conflict and family-work conflict as covariate variables. The ANCOVA and Kruskal-Wallis technique was utilized in a survey data of 237 employees who utilized flexible work arrangements in the state of Texas. The ANCOVA and Kruskal-Wallis results revealed non-statistically significant results employees use flexible work options (such as flexible work schedules and telecommuting) to reduce work-family conflict and family-work conflict (P > 0.05). The investigation found no statistical relations for the use of flexible work arrangements and outcome variables (such as work-family conflict, job performance, and turnover intentions). This issue would benefit researchers and organizational management together with human resources to recognize employees’ challenges (work-family conflict and family-work conflict) and further investigate circumstances to reduce employees’ negative feelings of job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Effective policies would likely improve and support employees’ morale and boost organizational competitiveness in a global economy. Also, a study is needed to investigate employees’ perceptions regarding the outcome variable if the flexible work arrangement options were reversed/rescinded in their organization.
Representational similarity analysis in neuroimaging: proxy vehicles and provisional representations

Functional neuroimaging is sometimes criticized as showing only where in the brain things happen, not how they happen, and thus being unable to inform us about questions of mental and neural representation. Novel analytical methods increasingly make clear that imaging can give us access to constructs of interest to psychology. In this paper I argue that neuroimaging can give us an important, if limited, window into the large-scale structure of neural representation. I describe Representational Similarity Analysis, increasingly used in neuroimaging studies, and lay out desiderata for representations in general. In that context I discuss what RSA can and cannot tell us about neural representation. I compare RSA with fMRI to a different experimental paradigm which has been embraced as being indicative of representation in psychology, and argue that it compares favorably.
In search of America’s old covered bridges

America’s first documented wooden covered bridge was erected at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1805. Hundreds were constructed within two decades and at least 10,000 by the later 1800s. As settlers moved West, broad rivers were crossed with inventive structures incorporating timber trusses ingeniously developed by carpenters. Called covered bridges because of the roof and siding needed to protect the timber trusses, they became ubiquitous features on the American landscape. Over the past two centuries, most covered bridges were lost to flood, ice, arson, lightening, decay, as well as “progress,” replaced by “modern” iron, concrete, and steel spans. Of some 700 covered bridges remaining, many are mere replicas of their original forms no longer supported by timber trusses. Genuine historic bridges remain largely from the last half of the 1800s while civic boosterism has led to claims of earlier dates with often questionable authenticity. This essay presents three wooden covered bridges constructed in the 1820s along a 10-mile stretch of the Wallkill River in New Paltz, New York. Of the three, only Perrine’s Bridge, constructed first in 1821 and covered in 1822, is still standing with intact Burr timber trusses. Perrine’s is an iconic structure with exceptional heritage value because of authentic re-building and restoration in 1834, 1846, 1917, and 1968. Using documentary records, this essay establishes an accurate intertwined chronology for the three bridges, detailing nineteenth century building practices and contentious mid-twentieth century struggles pitting preservationists wanting authentic restoration against those wanting removal.
Disparity in Gender Representation of Speakers at National Emergency Medical Services Conferences: A Current Assessment and Proposed Path Forward.

Introduction: Gender disparities between Emergency Medicine physicians with regards to salary, promotion, and scholarly recognition as national conference speakers have been well-documented. However, little is known if similar gender disparities impact their out-of-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) colleagues. Although there have been improvements in the ratio of women entering the EMS workforce, gender representation has improved at a slower rate for paramedics compared to emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Since recruitment, retention, and advancement of females within a specialty have been associated with the visibility of prominent, respected female leaders, gender disparity of these leaders as national conference speakers may contribute to the “leaky pipeline effect” seen within the EMS profession. Gender representation of these speakers has yet to be described objectively. Study Objective: The primary objective of this study was to determine if disparity exists in gender representation of speakers at well-known national EMS conferences and trade shows in the United States (US) from 2016-2020. The secondary objective was to determine if males were more likely than females to return to a conference as a speaker in subsequent years. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of programs from well-known national conferences, specifically for EMS providers, which were held in the US from 2016-2020 was performed. Programs were abstracted for type of conference session (pre-conference, keynote, main conference) and speakers’ names. Speaker gender (male, female) was confirmed via internet search. Results: Seventeen conference programs were obtained with 1,709 conference sessions that had a total of 2,731 listed speaker names, of whom 537 (20%) were female. A total of 30 keynote addresses had 39 listed speaker names of whom six (15%) were female. No significant difference was observed in the number of years males returned to present at the same conference as compared to females. Conclusion: Gender representation of speakers at national EMS conferences in the US is not reflective of the current best estimate of the US EMS workforce. This disparity exists not only in the overall percent of female names listed as speakers, but also in the percent of individual female speakers, and is most pronounced within keynote speakers. Online lecture platforms, as an unintentional consequent of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with intentional speaker development and mentorship initiatives, may reduce barriers to facilitating a new pipeline for more females to become speakers at national EMS conferences.
Summer and winter precipitation in East Asia scale with global warming at different rates

Future changes of regional precipitation are of great scientific and societal interests. Large uncertainties still exist in their projections by models. Mechanistic understanding is therefore necessary. Here we demonstrate robust features of the percentage change of precipitation normalized to surface temperature change (%/K) under global warming, referred to as scaling of precipitation with temperature in East Asia. We find that land precipitation in the summer scales at ~3%/K, well below the scaling rate of the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship for atmospheric water vapor content, but the scaling in winter is comparable to the Clausius-Clapeyron scaling at ~7%/K. By using moisture budget analysis of model simulations, we show that this scaling and the seasonal contrast can be clearly attributed to the robust climate changes of steeping moisture gradient, weakening westerly jets, and increasing hydrological amplitude of atmospheric eddies. Precipitation responses to climate warming in East Asia differ between summer and winter as a result of steepening atmospheric moisture gradients, weakening westerlies and a higher hydrological amplitude in atmospheric eddies, according to climate model simulations.
Special Repo Rates and the Cross-Section of Bond Prices

We estimate a dynamic no-arbitrage term structure model that jointly prices the cross-section of Treasury bonds and special repo rates. We show that special repo rates on on-the-run Treasuries can explain almost 80% of the on-the-run premium, but only after incorporating a time-varying risk premium on the special spreads of both on- and off-the-run bonds. We show that the repo risk premium is priced in the cross-section of off-the-run bonds with very low special spreads.
HF-Explain: a natural language generation system for explaining a medical expert system.

Abstract Causal models have been used, with considerable success, to reason in the medical domain. While these systems typically have a robust reasoning mechanism and knowledge base about their specific area of expertise, their ability to satisfactorily explain their results in a meaningful, coherent and concise manner has been less impressive then their diagnostic capabilities. This paper describes a program, HF-Explain, that generates natural language explanations of one such system--the Heart Failure Program. HF-Explain, is loosely based on work done by McKeown in the Text system, using augmented transition networks (ATN) as a formalism to guide the explanation process. The result is a coherent, concise, accurate and rich explanation of Heart Failure Programs' diagnostic hypotheses.
Comparison of MODTRAN5 atmospheric extinction predictions with narrowband astronomical flux observations

Improving the precision of ground-based astronomical observations is an objective of both current (e.g. PanSTARRS1) and future (e.g. Dark Energy Survey and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) sky surveys. An important element of this effort is to determine the optical attenuation imposed by the atmosphere. We have obtained atmospheric extinction observations from narrowband photometry (typically 10 nm bandwidth) at central wavelengths of 380 nm, 488 nm, 500 nm, 585 nm, 656 nm, 675 nm and 840 nm. The passbands were selected to measure the continuum component (predominantly from Rayleigh and aerosol scattering) of atmospheric attenuation, and to avoid molecular absorption features in the atmosphere. We compare these atmospheric extinction observations with predictions from MODTRAN5, a commonly used computer model of atmospheric optical transmission. The MODTRAN5 calculations were informed by a satellite-based determination of atmospheric ozone on the night of observations. We also adjusted the MODTRAN5 predictions of Rayleigh scattering to account for the difference between the default pressure and that measured at the observatory on the night of observations. We find excellent agreement across all passbands between the pressureadjusted MODTRAN5 extinction model and the observations, within our typical extinction uncertainty of 0.013 mag/airmass, but only if we exclude any aerosol scattering component in the MODTRAN5 model. Even though this is a very limited test, with observations of a single star for a single night, the fact that we obtain excellent agreement between extinction measurements and the MODTRAN5 model, with no adjustable fit parameters, bodes well for exploiting MODTRAN5 to increase the precision of ground-based flux measurements.
A Fingerprint Method for Scientific Data Verification

This article discusses an algorithm (called "UNF") for verifying digital data matrices. This algorithm is now used in a number of software packages and digital library projects. We discuss the details of the algorithm, and offer an extension for normalization of time and duration data.