cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Optimization of Slow-Release Tablet Formulations Containing Montmorillonite II. Factors Affecting Drug Release

AbstractThe influence of electrolytes, surfactants in the dissolution medium, and particle size of drug and montmorillonite on the in vitro release of the soluble model drug sodium sulfathiazole from directly compressed slow-release tablets containing 20% drug and 30% magnesium aluminum silicate was investigated. The presence of electrolytes in the dissolution media decreased the release from the tablets. A decrease in release was also observed in deionized water when sodium chloride was included in the tablet formulation. The surface tension of the media appeared to have little influence on the dissolution rate of the drug. Varying the particle size of the drug had a greater effect on release rates than varying the particle size of the montmorillonite clay.
An Intelligent Controller for the Smart Grid

Abstract The Smart Grid is a relatively new effort for the way we distribute energy within the country. While it is best known for its capability to allow end users to sell energy generated from renewable sources such as wind and sun back to the power company, it also has another component that deals with the capability to react automatically to disturbances that can cause large scale power outages. As part of our work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, intelligent control of flexible manufacturing systems research was applied to controlling an electric power grid model using the sensors and technology that is expected to be available with the introduction of the Smart Grid. The goal is to use the automated equipment that will eventually be in place for the implementation of the Smart Grid and build a controller that can avoid such catastrophic power outages such as the 2003 outage over the north east part of the country. The power system of the City of Los Alamos was modeled and used as a test system. The states of the models were initialized with data collected from their SCADA system. Then artificial disturbances were induced to test the system. The controller was able to react to the disturbances in real time with no human command. The controller was able to consider the financial consequences to its actions by optimizing for the least overall loss of revenue. This work is conceptual in nature with the goal of introducing research from the manufacturing control community to applications in the control of the electric power grid now possible with the introduction of the technology associated with the Smart Grid.
Numerical analysis for statisticians

Numerical analysis is the study of computation and its accuracy, stability and often its implementation on a computer. This book focuses on the principles of numerical analysis and is intended to equip those readers who use statistics to craft their own software and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different numerical methods.
Sensitivity of x-ray fluorescence for trace element determinations in biological tissues.

Abstract X-ray fluorescence was evaluated as a simplified method for trace element determinations in biological tissues, using whole blood as a representative sample. Lower limits of detectability in blood were determined for a number of elements using a system which employed X-ray tube excitation and a high-resolution semiconductor detector. Sensitivities of X-ray fluorescence for elemental determinations are often quoted as the absolute mass of an element which can be detected. (1) These sensitivities are useful if appropriate corrections can be made for matrix effects. On the other hand, sensitivities quoted as parts per million (ppm) of a low Z matrix (2) often neglect interference from elements characteristic of the biological tissue which are not represented in the low Z matrix. This research was undertaken to determine the lower limit of detectability, expressed as parts per million of dry weight, for a number of trace elements in whole blood. To do this, blood was doped with the elements of interest and measurements were performed on lyophilized samples.
Linear Segment Confidence Bands for Simple Linear Models

Abstract In this paper confidence bands are given for the entire line for simple linear regressions. The conventional bands that have been given in the past are curvilinear. In this paper we consider confidence bands that are straight lines. It is shown that under certain conditions the “width” of these straight line bands is less than the width of the conventional curvilinear bands.
Thrombus precursor protein and clinical outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndromes.

Thrombus Precursor Protein and Clinical Outcomes in Patients With Acute Coronary SyndromesJessica L. Mega, David A. Morrow, James A. de Lemos, Satishkumar Mohanavelu, Christopher P. Cannon, Marc S....
Forecasting Real Inventories and the Anomaly of Money Illusion

While the transmission mechanism of inventory behavior in the business cycle has been studied, less effort has been devoted to applied forecasting of inventory change. Inventory fluctuations have accounted for a sizable portion of the changes in U.S. GDP during recessions over the past fifty years. In this paper, we report on out-of-sample forecasts of manufacturing and trade inventories generated by regression and neural network methodology. Our forecasting model is Metzlerian in approach, in that the divergence between actual and targeted sales is hypothesized as the primary cause of inventory imbalance. Our forecasts also rely on the slow adjustment of inventory investment to sales surprises. However, the likely presence of money illusion is a caveat to users, and we address several distortions it introduces to inventory management measures.
Rotating Combined Queueing (RCQ): Bandwidth and Latency Guarantees in Low-Cost, High-Performance Networks

Network service guarantees not only provide significant performance benefits to distributed computing systems (more balanced resource utilization, fast fault recovery, and fair network access), but they are also essential for many new applications requiring real-time communications with continuous data types (audio/video). Most existing algorithms which provide network service guarantees are too complicated to be feasible in high-speed, low-cost switches for multicomputer networks. The simpler algorithms proposed provide only limited service guarantees or waste significant network resources.We present a novel, cost-effective queueing and scheduling algorithm, called Rotating Combined Queueing (RCQ), which can efficient]y support a range of service guarantees including deterministic delay bounds and bandwidth guarantees in multicomputer networks. By allowing bursty traffic to utilize unused network resources efficiently, RCQ also can provide competitive performance to best-effort data communications. Such cost-effective service guarantees not only provide substantial benefits to the overall system performance, but can also further expand the domain of multicomputer applications to encompass distributed multimedia applications requiring isochronous communications.
Bone lead as a risk factor for hypertension in men.

While some have observed a positive relationship between blood lead levels and blood pressure, this relationship has been controversial. A recent study examined the hypothesis that bone lead levels, used as a measure of long-term lead accumulation, are associated with an increased risk of hypertension in men. Using a backward elimination logistic regression model, the researchers found that tibia lead, body mass index, and family history of hypertension contributed to the development of hypertension. An increase in tibia lead from 8 to 37 μg per gram of bone mineral was associated with an increased odds ratio of hypertension of 1.5. This is an interesting preliminary finding that requires support from additional experimentation.
Complemented ideals in the disk algebra

The complemented ideals in the disk algebra are characterized. The projection operators onto the ideals and the complements of the ideals are identified.
Case Report: Reversible Hyperkalemia Associated With Trimethoprim-Sulfamethoxazole

Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) is a fixed-dose antimicrobial agent used in a variety of infections. Adverse reactions are more common in patients with AIDS, but occasionally occur in immunocompetent patients. Renal toxicity is usually a hypersensitivity reaction to the sulfa component, and manifests as interstitial nephritis or sulfa crystallization in the renal tubules. Reversible hyperkalemia is a rarely reported side effect of TMP-SMX therapy attributed to TMP inhibition of potassium secretion in the distal renal tubule in a manner similar to the potassium sparing diuretic, amiloride. In this article, the author reports a case of hyperkalemia associated with TMP-SMX occurring in an elderly man with no other risk factors for hyperkalemia, which resolved upon discontinuation of the drug.
Money, income, and exchange rate regimes: Evidence from the U.K.

This study examines the money-income correlation in the U.K. using monthly data over both fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. Most previous studies find unidirectional causality running from income to money. The results presented here indicate that money and income are independent over the fixed rate period, while unidirectional causality runs from money to income over the flexible rate period. There are two major reasons for the difference between the results reported here and those provided by other studies. First, unlike the current study, previous studies employing U.K. data have tested for Granger causality using bivariate or trivariate tests which suffer from an omitted variables bias. Second, unlike many previous studies, the current study does not mix data from different exchange rate regimes.
Representations of the Galilei group

While the transition to a moving coordinate system (x→ x + vt, t → t) commutes in classical mechanics with displacements (x → x + a, t → t), the corresponding operations in Schrodinger’s non-relativistic wave mechanics do not commute. In fact, the two operations, taken in different orders, differ by a factor exp [imv·a/h]. The present article considers the possibility of a nonrelativistic wave mechanics in which the transformations of the wave functions obey the same commutation relations as the transformations themselves. It shows that in such a mechanics position and momentum operators can exist only if it is reducible, i.e. only if the set of all states can be decomposed into subsets which are themselves invariant with respect to all permissible transformations of classical mechanics (rotations, displacements, proper Galilei transformations).
Influence of hyperthermia on myocardial contractility.

On a etudie la tension isometrique des fibres trabeculaires isolees du myocarde du rat, en fonction d'une temperature de 38–44°C. On a trouve que la contractilite etait nettement affaiblie aux temperatures superieures a 38°C. Apres une courte duree, l'effet est en partie reversible.
Link between diet and cardiovascular disease in Latin America and the Caribbean using geographic information systems.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the visual, spatial, and/or statistical relationships between food availability/dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). METHODS: CVD mortality rates and diet information (the number of kilocalories and amount of alcohol, fats, fish, fruits, meats, sugars, and vegetables available per person daily) were obtained from internationally available databases. The analyses included 32 LAC countries with sufficient data (15 of 47 had been excluded for incomplete data). Pearson's correlations (r) were used to determine relationships between diet and CVD mortality, and multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to identify predictors of mortality. ArcGIS version 9.2 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, California, United States) was used to construct maps to explore visual relationships between CVD and diet. RESULTS: No relationships were found between CVD and alcohol, fruit, meat, sugar, or vegetable intake. Statistically significant, positive correlations were found between oil-crops (r = 0.680, P = 0.000) and fish and seafood (r = 0.411, P = 0.019) and CVD mortality. Regression analysis revealed that high kilocalorie availability was a predictor of low CVD mortality (P = 0.020). High oil-crop availability was a predictor of high CVD mortality (P = 0.000). Maps constructed show visual relationships between availability of fish and seafood, kilocalories, and oil-crops, and CVD mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Fish and seafood, kilocalorie, and oil-crop availability appear to be related to CVD mortality, but further investigation is needed. Associations between diet and CVD mortality create the opportunity to target specific countries for nutrition education and CVD prevention programs.
Inactivation mechanism of the membrane protein diacylglycerol kinase in detergent solution.

We have examined the irreversible inactivation mechanism of the membrane protein diacylglycerol kinase in the detergents n-octyl-β-D-glucopyranoside (OG) at 55°C and n-decyl-maltopyranoside (DM) at 80°C. Under no inactivation conditions did we find any direct evidence for the chemical modifications that are commonly found in soluble proteins. Moreover, protein inactivated at 55°C in OG could be reactivated by an unfolding and refolding protocol, suggesting that the protein is inactivated by a stable conformational change, not a covalent modification. We also found that the inactivation rate decreased with both increasing protein concentration and increasing thermodynamic stability, consistent with an inactivation pathway involving transient dissociation and/or unfolding of the protein. Our results suggest that the primary cause of diacylglycerol kinase inactivation is not low solubility, but poor intrinsic stability in the detergent environment.
Identification of an essential site for transcriptional activation within the human T-cell receptor delta enhancer.

Abstract A T-cell-specific transcriptional enhancer was previously identified within the J delta 3-C delta intron of the human T-cell receptor (TCR) delta gene, and seven distinct binding sites for nuclear factors (delta E1 to delta E7) were defined by DNase I footprinting. In this study, we conducted a detailed functional analysis of the various cis-acting DNA sequence elements of the enhancer and show that a 60-bp fragment encompassing delta E3 and delta E4 displays potent enhancer activity, as judged by its ability to activate transcription from the V delta 1 promoter. We show that the interaction of nuclear factors with the delta E3 site is essential for enhancer activity. This element displays significant activity in the absence of additional segments of the enhancer. Further, methylation interference and in vitro mutagenesis identify a site within delta E3 that mediates the binding of two nuclear factors (NF-delta E3A and NF-delta E3C) and that is required for significant transcriptional activation by the enhancer. NF-delta E3C is ubiquitous and may be identical to a previously characterized microE3-binding factor. NF-delta E3A is preferentially expressed in T lymphocytes, and we suggest that this factor may play the dominant role in transcriptional activation through the delta E3 site. This factor interacts with the sequence TGTGGTTT, a motif that is also found within the enhancers of additional TCR and CD3 genes. Nuclear factor binding to delta E4 is also analyzed. One of three specific complexes formed with a delta E4 probe appears to be T-cell specific.
A micro laser Doppler flowmeter

A diode laser and fiber optics have been successfully incorporated in a compact, low-cost micro laser Doppler velocimeter. Preliminary experiments show good results for measuring velocity and provide a promising future for measuring blood flow. The micro laser Doppler flowmeter will provide a low-cost, more compact alternative to existing laser Doppler flowmeters. >
Palmar dermatoglyphics of dyslexia

Palmar dermatoglyphic prints were taken of 261 dyslexics (173 males and 88 females) and compared against those of 707 controls (372 males and 335 females). Dyslexics of both sexes were found to exhibit greater complexity in terms of ridge count and pattern location than controls, particularly on the left hand. Specifically, both male and female dyslexics exhibited higher left a-b counts, wider atd angles on both palms, and higher frequencies of pattern in left interdigital area IV. Additionally, male dyslexics also had higher right a-b counts and greater frequency of pattern in the left hypothenar area. Dyslexics of both sexes were also found to have more distally located axial triradii, and investigation of bilateral asymmetry found dyslexics to exhibit more directional asymmetry than controls in the variable of a-b count, with the left value for both groups being greater than the right. It was concluded that the study evidenced strong support for the hypothesis that some causative factor relating to the development of dyslexia is operating during the time period in which dermatoglyphic features are formed. The relevance of these findings in terms of the Geschwind hypothesis and the possible importance of prenatal testosterone are discussed.
Outside the Box: Surviving Survival

The full experience of cancer, from diagnosis onward, was first codified as "survival" in 1985. While this terminology has prompted an important attention to the long term care and quality of life of those of us who have been diagnosed with some form of cancer, it has also linked us indelibly to disease and eclipsed the possibility that we might, in fact, be cancer free. Within cancer stories (such as Jerri Nielsen's Icebound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole ), surviving heroes have replaced cancer victims. But connection to disease shadows articulations of hope, and emphasis on the extraordinary nature of surviving threatens to underplay the value of ordinary living. This essay argues that we need, then, to open space within the discourse of survival for the assumption of health.
Convoy protection using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles: organization and coordination

This paper addresses the problem of how to use a given set of possibly heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide protection to a moving convoy of ground vehicles. By protection, we mean providing video or sensor coverage of a moving region around the convoy. A hierarchical system design is described that addresses how convoy protection missions may be organized and how those missions might fit into a larger context. The system encompasses task generation and allocation, flight path generation and tracking, and synchronization between cooperative tasks. Task allocation is posed as a constraint satisfaction problem. The design of two classes of orbital flight paths, lateral and longitudinal, is discussed. A coordination algorithm is described that allows the aircraft to synchronize their motions to provide improved sensor coverage. Results of a hardware-in-the-loop simulation are shown.
Volume rendering for curvilinear and unstructured grids

We discuss two volume rendering methods developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The first, cell projection, renders the polygons in the projection of each cell. It requires a global visibility sort in order to composite the cells in back to front order, and we discuss several different algorithms for this sort. The second method uses regularly spaced slice planes perpendicular to the X, Y, or Z axes, which slice the cells into polygons. Both methods are supplemented with antialiasing techniques to deal with small cells that might fall between pixel samples or slice planes, and both have been parallelized.
Problem formulation as a purposive activity

This paper presents a framework for understanding the multiple purposes that problem statements can serve during the formulation phase of strategic planning. Both functional and dysfunctional purposes exist. Variables that can help to identify dysfunctional purposes are discussed.
Amino Acid Activation in Subcellular Fractions of Tetrahymena pyriformis

SYNOPSIS. The presence of amino acid activating enzymes was demonstrated in the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena pyriformis. By employing a sensitive hydroxamate assay procedure, the activation of L-valine was assayed in various subcellular fractions of the ciliate, and some characteristics of the enzyme activity in the most active fraction were determined. Most of the activity resided in pH 5 fractions isolated from high speed supernatants of ciliates disrupted by various physical and chemical methods. No activity could be demonstrated in isolated cilia, in pellicles with attached kinetosomes, in microsomes or in macronuclei, providing these organelles were thoroughly washed. A washed mitochondrial preparation isolated by the Mager and Lipmann procedure activated L-valine; mitochondria isolated by the procedure of Hogg and Kornberg did not. The pH 5 fraction isolated from the 102,000 X g supernatant of digitonin-lysed ciliates was stable for several weeks when stored in 0.1 M Tris buffer, pH 7.6 at – 25 C. The activity of this fraction with respect to L-valine activation was dependent on the presence of ATP1 and magnesium in the reaction mixture. The optimal concentrations of these components and of L-valine and hydroxylamine were determined, and the linearity of activity with time and enzyme concentration was demonstrated. Valine activation was not modified by dialysis of the pH 5 fraction, or treatment with RNase, or the addition of boiled pH 5 fraction.
A power controlled interference aware routing protocol for dense multi-hop wireless networks

A key issue impacting the performance of multi-hop wireless networks is the interference among neighboring nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel and practical interference aware metric, termed as Network Allocation Vector Count (NAVC), to estimate the effects of the interference on the average delay and the available bandwidth. This metric can be easily applied to routing protocols designed for 802.11 based multi-hop networks with no modification to the current 802.11 protocol. The design of NAVC as a metric for the AODV [32] routing protocol, as well as a metric for transmit power control, are described in detail. Our simulation results reveal that the NAVC-driven AODV can greatly improve its performance compared to those protocols based on hop-count. For scenarios of densely deployed nodes, the throughput improvement is often a factor near two, indicating that NAVC is more useful as networks grow denser. Moreover, the network lifetime can be notably prolonged when the NAVC is employed to conduct transmit power control. Our approach is essential for emerging applications such as wireless sensor networks where the interference is heavy and the energy is severely constrained.
Systematically variable planktonic carbon metabolism along a land-to-lake gradient in a Great Lakes coastal zone.

During the summers of 2002–2013, we measured rates of carbon metabolism in surface waters of six sites across a land-to-lake gradient from the upstream end of drowned river-mouth Muskegon Lake (ML) (freshwater estuary) to 19 km offshore in Lake Michigan (LM) (a Great Lake). Despite considerable inter-year variability, the average rates of gross production (GP), respiration (R) and net production (NP) across ML (604 ± 58, 222 ± 22 and 381 ± 52 µg C L−1 day−1, respectively) decreased steeply in the furthest offshore LM site (22 ± 3, 55 ± 17 and −33 ± 15 µg C L−1day−1, respectively). Along this land-to-lake gradient, GP decreased by 96 ± 1%, whereas R only decreased by 75 ± 9%, variably influencing the carbon balance along this coastal zone. All ML sites were consistently net autotrophic (mean GP:R = 2.7), while the furthest offshore LM site was net heterotrophic (mean GP:R = 0.4). Our study suggests that pelagic waters of this Great Lakes coastal estuary are net carbon sinks that transition into net carbon sources offshore. Reactive and dynamic estuarine coastal zones everywhere may contribute similarly to regional and global carbon cycles.
High uric acid: A metabolic marker of coronary heart disease among alcohol abstainers?

Abstract The association between serum uric acid level and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) over 21 years was investigated among 6411 middle-aged Japanese-American men who were participants in the Honolulu Heart Program. In an age-stratified Cox regression model, high serum uric acid (quartile 4 [>6.7 mg/dl], relative to quartile 1 [ p = 0.006). However, when adjustment for confounders (body mass index, heavy alcohol consumption, triglycerides, diastolic blood pressure, blood glucose, and the ratio of animal to vegetable protein) was made, the association of high uric acid with coronary events was substantially reduced and became nonsignificant (RR = 1.14; 95% confidence interval=0.92–1.42; p = 0.21). There was a significant interaction between serum uric acid and drinking status ( p = 0.03). Thus, the risk of definite CHD associated with high urate levels (quartile 4), relative to low levels (quartile 1), was elevated in the abstainers (RR = 1.40; 95% confidence interval=1.01–1.93; p = 0.02), but not in light and moderate drinkers (RR = 1.11; 95% confidence interval=0.79–1.55; p = 0.58) or among the heavy drinkers (>40 ml of ethanol/day; RR=0.57; 95% confidence interval=0.27–1.21; p = 0.08). It is concluded that elevated uric acid may be associated with higher CHD among alcohol abstainers. Whether raised urate is an etiological factor for CHD or a manifestation of existing arterial disease in nondrinkers deserves further investigation.
Dental School Patients’ Understanding of Informed Consent

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory study is to describe and analyze adult patients’ understanding of informed consent, using the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine’s consent form. Randomly sampled, anonymous patients at the school’s clinic were asked to read the form and highlight any statements they found to be confusing, while also rating the form as “easy,” “needing minor changes,” or “needing major changes.” This survey tested the hypothesis that the reading level of the form exceeds that of the average patient and thus, as education level increased, so would comprehensibility while the number of confusing statements would decrease. The results were analyzed for trends in gender and education level, and the statements proving most problematic to the largest number of patients were identified and analyzed. Contrary to the hypothesis, the most highly educated patients highlighted more statements, inspiring a new hypothesis that this occurred because of highly educated patients’ ability to distinguish between the literal meaning of the words and their implications. Revisions were made to the identified aspects of the form, and new surveys were completed, with the result that the modifications were successful and the new hypothesis was supported.
Ubiquitous Geographic Information

In this chapter, ubiquitous geographic information (UBGI), which is a relatively new set of concepts, practices, and standards, is introduced and described, and its possible ramifications are analyzed in detail. The chapter begins with the definition of UBGI – geographic information that exists anywhere and anytime. However, the chapter attempts to convince readers that the true goal of UBGI is to make the use of geographic information easy and transparent. The emergence of UBGI needs to be understood within a broader context of both paradigm changes in computing technologies (i.e., centralized, distributed, mobile, and ubiquitous computing) and the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs), which make UBGI services feasible. Thus, the chapter reviews how computing technologies have evolved, and introduces the technological breakthroughs of each computing technology, which overcome place and time constraints and enable the realization of UBGI services in everyday life. A few enabling ICTs are then described, and existing UBGI initiatives are introduced. Issues on the technical developments of UBGI services are addressed, and recent standardization efforts on UBGI are introduced. Lastly, the ramifications of UBGI for future lifestyles, particularly in future cities, are discussed.
Dual-Source Multi-Energy CT with Triple or Quadruple X-ray Beams

Energy-resolved photon-counting CT (PCCT) is promising for material decomposition with multi-contrast agents. However, corrections for non-idealities of PCCT detectors are required, which are still active research areas. In addition, PCCT is associated with very high cost due to lack of mass production. In this work, we proposed an alternative approach to performing multi-energy CT, which was achieved by acquiring triple or quadruple x-ray beam measurements on a dual-source CT scanner. This strategy was based on a “Twin Beam” design on a single-source scanner for dual-energy CT. Examples of beam filters and spectra for triple and quadruple x-ray beam were provided. Computer simulation studies were performed to evaluate the accuracy of material decomposition for multi-contrast mixtures using both tri-beam and quadruple-beam configurations. The proposed strategy can be readily implemented on a dual-source scanner, which may allow material decomposition of multi-contrast agents to be performed on clinical CT scanners with energy-integrating detector.
Performance Analysis of the Current Icing Product (CIP) Algorithm under Variations in Icing Relevant Observational Datasets

The Current Icing Product (CIP) uses five observational datasets in addition to numerical weather prediction (NWP) model data to diagnose a three-dimensional icing probability and severity. By default, there are thresholds that limit the age of the observational data that CIP uses. If the data time does not meet the threshold and it is a required dataset (surface observations, satellite), then CIP will not run. By utilizing the probability of detection (POD) value of only the positive icing pilot reports (PODy) for both of the required input datasets, it was found that the current thresholds are adequate. Satellite data that are 30 minutes old produce a PODy of 0.82, but that drops to 0.78 when the age of the satellite data reaches 120 minutes. Similar results were found using surface observation data ranging from 60 to 180 minutes old. Understanding the behavior and performance of CIP when it is required to use less than optimal input data is crucial for making improvements to the algorithm and testing additional datasets. A methodology is presented to assist with these tasks in the future, as well as a more in depth look at the effect of varying input dataset age has on PODy of both CIP icing probability and severity.
School Segregation in the Era of Accountability

Although a great deal of research has examined the impact of accountability on a number of different outcomes, particularly achievement, little research to date has assessed the impact of school ac...
Considerations and application opportunities for integrated microwave photonics

Integrated microwave photonics has become a topic of considerable research, due in part to the breakthroughs in photonic integrated circuits for industrial telecommunications. A critical assessment of this trend is presented, including important considerations that are lacking in the emerging integrated microwave photonics community. The design space for microwave photonics is reviewed in the context of the “link on a chip” concept. Niche application areas for integrated microwave photonics based on optically coherent techniques are highlighted.
The mapping of olfactory functions in the Drosophila brain with calcium imaging

We have developed an imaging system that couples two-photon microscopy with the specific expression of the calcium-sensitive fluorescent protein, G-CaMP. This technique affords an opportunity to monitor activity in defined neurons throughout the fly brain. Article not available.
Advantages and limitations of animal models in the evaluation of antiviral substances.

Since many antiviral substances with potential for use in humans are in various phases of evaluation, criteria must be developed for selection of those compounds with the greatest probability of efficacy and least toxicity. We lack background experience in evaluation of antivirals to permit extrapolation from in vitro tests to use in humans; it is of critical importance, therefore, to develop animal models for evaluation of antiviral substances before trials in humans and to establish guidelines for the relative predictive reliability of in vitro screening and evaluation in animal models. The complexity of drug-host and virus-host interaction and other factors may limit the predictive value of some or all experimental systems. Although the use of animal models is an important phase in the evaluation of antiviral chemotherapeutic agents, the models must be carefully studied and the interaction of drug and virus in the experimental animal specifically defined if optimal guidelines for the predictive value of model systems are to be developed. These guidelines must then be modified as experience is gained with antiviral substances that reach human trials. An increasing number of antiviral substances with potential for human use are in various stages of conceptual design, development, or
Comparison of odor-active compounds in grapes and wines from vitis vinifera and non-foxy American grape species.

Native American grape (Vitis) species have many desirable properties for winegrape breeding, but hybrids of these non-vinifera wild grapes with Vitis vinifera often have undesirable aromas. Other t...
Comparative Corporate Governance: Old and New

The most fundamental comparative corporate governance debates have often focused on two issues. The first one concerns ownership structure: Why are large corporations in some corporate governance system owned by a multitude of disempowered shareholders, thus effectively giving management free rein? Why are corporations typically governed by a controlling shareholder or a coalition of controlling shareholders in other systems? The second issue is the role of other ‘constituencies’ of the corporation besides shareholders, of which labor is most central to the debate. Some jurisdictions explicitly give labor an influential voice in corporate affairs, whereas in others its influence is developed through factual power or unintended consequences of legislation. This chapter explores the interactions between firm ownership and labor, focusing on the United States on the one hand and Continental Europe, particularly Germany, on the other. It distinguishes between ‘old’ and ‘new’ comparative corporate governance, the former referring to the dichotomy studied by scholars of comparative corporate law up to the early 2000s. Recent changes, heralded by intermediated, but widespread share ownership are leading us to a new equilibrium whose contours have only begun to emerge. Over the past decades, outside investors have gained power both in the United States and in Continental Europe. However, neither in the US nor in Continental Europe has the traditional corporate governance system been completely superseded by a new one. The US remains to a large extent manager-centric. Continental Europe retains powerful large shareholders, and labor as an independent force has remained more important than in the United States. Outside institutional investors – sometimes from the US – have become a player to be reckoned with, thus adding an additional layer of complexity to the system.
Degradation of Formaldehyde in Indoor Air by Nanometer TiO_2

[Objective]To research the degradation of formaldehyde by air spray decontaminant, which using nanometer TiO2 as main precursor.[Methods]20 pairs of rooms randomly divided into two groups, one group was treated by nanometer TiO2 spray decontaminant, another as the control group. 24 hours later, the concentrations of formaldehyde in indoor air of two groups were determined at the same time.[Results]The concentration of formaldehyde in the treated group was significantly lower than that in the control group (t=7.417,v=9, P=0.000).[Conclusion]The nanometer TiO2 spray decontaminant is effective in degradation of formaldehyde.
Properties of coal and bio-oil slurry

Coal bio-oil slurries(CBS) with different coal concentrations were prepared by mixing different type of coal and bio-oil.The apparent viscosity,rheological properties,maximum solid concentration and static stability of the prepared CBS were examined.The result shows that CBS are non-Newtonian fluid with a certain yield stress,and the rheological behavior of CBS can be described by the Bingham plastic fluid model.Both the apparent viscosity and the yield stress of CBS increase with increasing of solid concentrations.The apparent viscosity decreases with increasing of shear rates.The solid concentration of stable CBS prepared by Yangquan anthracite can reach as high as 42% without any additives,followed by bituminous coal and lignite.The flocculation network structure formed by coal particles in the bio-oil can keep good static stability of CBS for 4.0~5.0 days without formation of soft sediment,and for months without hard sediment.
Genetic Factors Impacting Therapy in Acute Lung Injury/Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Acute lung injury (ALI) and its most severe form the acute respiratory distress syndrome occur in patients who have a predisposing severe inflammatory insult to the lung. Most often ALI is due to sepsis from bacterial infection, but ALI can occur with any infection and with noninfectious insults such as severe trauma, acute pancreatitis, aspiration, and near-drowning. After any of these insults, the interindividual risk of progression to ALI and the risk of death remain difficult to predict. Our inability to predict an individual's susceptibility to acute lung injury has long suggested that genetic factors influence ALI risk. There is substantial evidence for heritable predispositions to severe infections and an emerging body of literature implicating genetic factors in ALI pathogenesis. A paradigm is emerging that the genetic risk for ALI can be best understood in terms of factors that control 3 overlapping stages of ALI pathogenesis: risk for the acquisition of a predisposing condition (such as a severe pneumonia), risk for progression to lung injury during systemic inflammatory states (such as severe sepsis), and risk for failure of endogenous mechanisms to resolve the lung injury. The evidence supporting this paradigm is herein reviewed, along with potential treatment strategies that could be directed by knowledge of specific genetic factors in an individual patient.
Developing Handheld Video Intervention for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Video-based intervention (VBI) has strong evidence supporting efficiency in teaching social, communication, functional, behavior, play, and self-help skills and emerging evidence for teaching acade...
Mitral regurgitation with conduction defects.

A 43-year-old woman experienced exertional dyspnea, orthopnea, and paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea; symptoms had developed within a three-week period. She was diagnosed with mitral regurgitation and left-sided congestive heart failure. Treatment with furosemide, fosinopril, and digoxin improved all symptoms except exertional dyspnea.She appeared to be healthy, with a pulse of 90; blood pressure, 132/78; respirations, 22; and temperature, 37.2°C. The only notable physical finding was an apical holosystolic murmur (grade 4) that radiated to the axilla. A chest x-ray showed only slight cardiac enlargement; however, an echocardiogram revealed some enlargement of right and left ventricles, moderate hypokinesis of the left ventricle, a localized aneurysm-like area of a kinesis in the high lateral area of the left ventricle, and severe mitral regurgitation without apparent anatomic abnormality of the valve. The ECG is shown.
SU‐F‐T‐685: Evaluation of Tumor Hypoxic Fraction Using Serial Volumetric Imaging During Radiation Therapy

Purpose: To develop a tumor response model which could be uses to compute tumor hypoxic fraction using serial volumetric tumor imaging. This algorithm may be used for treatment response assessment and also for guidance of more expensive PET imaging of hypoxia. Methods: Previously developed two-level cell population tumor response model was modified to include a third cell level describing hypoxic and necrotic cells. This third level was considered constant value during radiotherapy treatment; therefore, inclusion additional parameter did not compromise stability of model fitting to imaging data. Fitting the model to serial volumetric imaging data was performed using a least squares objective function and simulated annealing algorithm. The problem of reconstruction of radiobiological parameters from serial imaging data was considered as inverse ill-posed problem described by the Fredholm integral equation of the first kind. Variational regularization was used to stabilize solutions. Results: To evaluate performance of the algorithm, we used a set of serial CT imaging data on tumor-volume for 14 head and neck cancer patients. The hypoxic fractions were reconstructed for each patient and the distribution of hypoxic fractions was compared to the distribution of initial hypoxic fractions previously measured using histograph. The measured and reconstructed from imaging data distributions of hypoxic fractions are in good agreement. The reconstructed distribution of cell surviving fraction was also in better agreement with in vitro data than previously obtained using the two-level cell population model. Conclusion: Our results indicate that it is possible to evaluate the initial hypoxic tumor fraction using serial volumetric imaging and a tumor response model. This algorithm can be used for treatment response assessment and guidance of more expensive PET imaging.
Nitrite Therapy for Ischemic Syndromes

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a summary of the key findings that have led to the re-evaluation of the biochemical and physiological role of nitrite and highlights the most recent evidence supporting the cardioprotective and vasculoprotective actions of nitrite. It focuses on the research experiments required to significantly advance the nitrite field in terms of ischemic tissue injury and provides insights into the potential for clinical translation of sodium nitrite therapy for the treatment of ischemic disorders. Nitrite therapy is very cost effective, appears to be safe, and is potentially highly effective for the treatment of both acute and chronic ischemic disorders. Nitrite is readily available from a wide variety of sources. Nitrite is also stable, easy to store, and can be administered by multiple routes. Combined with the fact that nitrite is currently an FDA-approved drug, these properties are advantageous in the potential development of sodium nitrite as a drug for ischemic disorders such as acute myocardial infarction, peripheral arterial disease, and wound healing. The nitrite field is at a crossroads in terms of clinical translation, given the clear preclinical and clinical data demonstrating the safety and efficacy of sodium nitrite in cardiovascular diseases as well as the ground swell in excitement that currently surrounds nitrite. The notion that nitrite is an inactive NO metabolite that serves as a “footprint” for NO derived from eNOS is no longer accepted. Nitrite has moved to the forefront of the NO field, and the number of experimental and clinical studies demonstrating the importance of nitrite for tissue preservation is increasing on a daily basis.
Introduction and Historical Background

The electron is a negatively charged subatomic particle with elemental charge e = 1.60218 × 10−19 C and mass m e = 9.10938 × 10−31 kg. The electron was discovered by British physicist J.J. Thomson in 1897. At the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, J.J. Thomson was experimenting with a cathode ray tube (CRT), investigating a long-standing puzzle known as “cathode rays.”
Unilateral and equitransitive tilings by equilateral triangles

Abstract A tiling of the plane by polygons is unilateral if each edge of the tiling is a side of at most one polygon of the tiling. A tiling is equitransitive if for any two congruent tiles in the tiling, there exists a symmetry of the tiling mapping one to the other. It is known that a unilateral and equitransitive (UE) tiling can be made with any finite number of congruence classes of squares. This article addresses the related question, raised in the book Tilings and Patterns by Grunbaum and Shephard, of finding all UE tilings by equilateral triangles. In particular, we show that there are only two classes of UE tilings admitted by a finite number of congruence classes of equilateral triangles: one with two sizes of triangles and one with three sizes of triangles.
Long term renal survival in patients undergoing T-Cell depleted versus conventional hematopoietic stem cell transplants

Calcineurin inhibitor (CNI)-sparing T-cell depleted (TCD) hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCTs) are presumed to be less nephrotoxic than conventional HSCTs. We evaluated incidence and risk factors for kidney failure and chronic kidney disease (CKD) in 231 TCD and 212 conventional HSCT recipients. Kidney failure required a median glomerular filtration rate (GFR) 60 ml/min/1.73 m2, only exposure to nephrotoxic medications was associated with CKD (P=0.033). In the myeloablative-conditioning subgroup only total body irradiation was associated with CKD (P=0.013). Of all patients, five (1.13%) required dialysis. These results confirm an impact of TCD on kidney failure but not CKD for which other risk factors such as radiation or nephrotoxic drug exposure may have a role.
Discovering spatiotemporal event sequences

Spatiotemporal event sequences represent the sequences of event types whose spatiotemporal instances frequently follow each other in spatiotemporal context. In this work, we present spatiotemporal event sequence mining from spatio-temporal event datasets that contains evolving region trajectories. We propose two algorithms for discovering spatio-temporal event sequences. We formally define a flexible spatiotemporal follow relationship, introduce various data models for capturing the sequence forming behavior. Lastly, we present an extended experimental evaluation that demonstrates the computational efficiency of our algorithms.
RecJ 5' Exonuclease Digestion of Oligonucleotide Failure Strands: A "Green" Method of Trityl-On Purification

Methods of error filtration and correction post-gene assembly are a major bottleneck in the synthetic biology pipeline. Current oligonucleotide purification strategies, including polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and high-performance liquid chromatography, are often expensive and labor-intensive, give low mass recovery, and contain hazardous chemicals. To circumvent these limitations, we explored an enzymatic means of oligonucleotide purification using RecJ, which is the only known exonuclease to digest single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) in the 5′ to 3′ direction. As a potential application to remove failure strands generated in oligonucleotide synthesis, we found RecJ does not recognize the 5′ dimethoxytrityl blocking group and could therefore be used to specifically target and digest unblocked failure strands. In combination with ssDNA binding protein (SSBP), which acts to recruit RecJ via C-terminal recognition, secondary structure formation is precluded, allowing for enhanced RecJ processivity. Using this m...
Dendrimers for ocular drug delivery

Existing methods of administering ocular drugs are limited in either their safety or efficiency. Nanomedicine therapies have the potential to address this deficiency by creating vehicles that can control drug biodistribution. Dendrimers are synthetic polymeric nanoparticles with a unique highly organized branching structure. In recent years, promising results using dendrimer vehicles to deliver ocular drugs through different routes of administration have been reported. In this review, we briefly summarize these results with emphasis on the dendrimer modifications used to target different ocular structures.