cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A risk assessment model for software prototyping projects

Software prototyping processes have contributed to develop cheaper, faster and more reliable products. However, despite the advances in technology, little progress has been done in improving the management of software prototyping development projects. Research shows that 45 percent of all the causes for delayed software deliveries are related to organizational issues (Van Genuchten, 1991). This paper addresses the risk assessment issue, introducing metrics and a model that can be integrated with prototyping development processes.
Individual variation in immunosuppressive activity of bovine seminal plasma on concanavalin A-stimulated bovine T lymphocytes in vitro.

Abstract Individual dialyzed seminal plasma samples from 21 bulls in routine artificial breeding service were tested for their immunosuppressive activity on in vitro induced blastogenesis of bovine lymphocytes from 3 nonpregnant cows. Concanavalin A was used to induce blastogenesis and thymidine uptake was monitored. Dialyzed seminal plasma from 15 of 21 bulls inhibited deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis response to concanavalin with cow A lymphocytes, and 21 of 21 were immunosuppressive to lymphocytes from cows B and C. Degree of immunosuppression varied according to bull and cow, ranging from 0 to 100%. The lower the percentage response of the lymphocytes to concanavalin stimulation, the less their inhibition by dialyzed seminal plasma. The degree of immunosuppression produced by a bull's dialyzed seminal plasma was not highly related either to amount of protein in the seminal plasma or to the bull's 60 to 90-d nonreturn rate.
Low Temperature Specific Heat of Ni(NO3)2.6H2O; Antiferromagnetic Interactions.

Abstract : Measurements of the specific heat of nickel nitrate hexahydrate for 0.5 < T < 12K reveal a Schottky anomaly with Cp max=1.373 cal/mole-K at T(max)=2.35K. The experimental data are explained by the complete splitting of the S=1 ground state triplet, with levels separated successively by 4.80K and 3.26K. The lattice contribution is found to be 4.11 x 10 to the -4th power x (T cubed) cal/mole-K. The discrepancies between the level spacings as deduced from these measurements and from the reported powder susceptibility data are removed by taking into account a small antiferromagnetic exchange interaction (A/k = +0.6K) in a molecular field approximation. The total magnetic entropy change is found to be within 0.6% of the theoretically predicted value for a spin 1 system. (Author)
Privacy in distributed electronic commerce

In recent years there has been a movement toward deployment of distributed approaches for electronic commerce. Intelligent software agents, for instance, may be instructed to act oh behalf of human users in electronic transactions. A challenge with this approach is that the agents would be entrusted with access to sensitive personal or business information. How can this sensitive information be protected from unauthorized access? How can agents negotiate across jurisdictional boundaries; both corporate, and country? The latter question is of particular concern when one considers the potential for considerable variance between the regulations and policies of different governments and corporations. This is especially evident with the disparity of legislation for privacy in different countries. How can disparate regulations be accommodated effectively? What technologies are appropriate for maintaining user privacy and for protecting sensitive information for agent-based e-commerce? In this paper, we describe the issues that provoke privacy challenges for agent-based e-commerce due to current and impending privacy legislation as well as an approach for policy-driven privacy negotiation for use in distributed agent-based systems.
Subtleties in Robust Stability of Discrete-time Piecewise Affine Systems

In this paper we consider (inherent) robustness of discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems. We demonstrate, via examples, that globally exponentially stable discrete-time PWA systems may have no robustness. More precisely, we show that the exponential stability property cannot prevent that arbitrarily small additive disturbances keep the state trajectory far from the origin. Mathematically speaking, this means that the system is not input-to-state stable with respect to arbitrarily small disturbances. The non-robustness property is related to the absence of a continuous Lyapunov function. These results indicate that one should be careful with existing stability analysis and synthesis methods for PWA systems that rely on discontinuous Lyapunov functions, as no robustness might be present. However, as the search for Lyapunov functions for discrete-time PWA systems often employs discontinuous Lyapunov functions (e.g. piecewise quadratic ones), robustness tests based on discontinuous Lyapunov functions are needed. Such tests are proposed in this article.
Rise Time Perception in Children With Reading and Combined Reading and Language Difficulties

Using a non-speech-specific measure of prosody, rise time perception, Goswami and her colleagues have found that individuals with dyslexia perform significantly worse than nonimpaired readers. Studies have also found that children and adults with specific language impairment were impaired on these tasks. Despite the high comorbidity of these disorders, only one study has assessed rise time sensitivity in children with comorbid reading and oral language difficulties. The authors further examined rise time sensitivity in children with both reading and oral language difficulties. They compared performance on rise time perception tasks between 18 children with reading difficulties, 15 children with combined reading and oral language difficulties, and 17 chronological age-matched controls. The authors found a significant interaction between group and performance on auditory tasks. Further tests revealed that chronological age-matched controls were significantly better on the rise time measures compared to both groups of children with reading difficulties. Performance between the groups of children with reading difficulties did not significantly differ.
Liraglutide An Injectable Option for the Management of Obesity

Objective: To review the efficacy and safety of liraglutide, marketed as Saxenda, a glucagon-like peptide-1 analog for obesity management. Data Sources: A MEDLINE search (1970 to March 2015) was conducted for English-language articles using the terms glucagon-like peptide 1, liraglutide, and obesity. Study Selection and Data Extraction: Published articles pertinent to the efficacy and safety of liraglutide for short- and long-term obesity management among overweight or obese patients and special populations were reviewed and summarized. Data Synthesis: Based on randomized placebocontrolled and active-comparator studies, liraglutide can increase weight loss among overweight and obese patients in a dose-dependent manner with once-daily doses of 1.2 to 3.0 mg. It has been shown that a higher proportion of patients experienced 5% and 10% weight loss from baseline compared with placebo and orlistat. Data support the potential benefit of liraglutide among overweight and obese patients with prediabetes, as well as women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) with an inadequate response to metformin. Larger and more robust studies are needed to determine the clinical significance of liraglutide among other agents for obesity in diverse populations. Conclusions: Liraglutide is an adjunct to lifestyle modifications to improve success rates among overweight or obese individuals without diabetes. It may have a potential role in special populations, such as in those with prediabetes and women with PCOS. Based on its clinical evidence, liraglutide can result in more weight loss from baseline compared with orlistat and placebo. Adverse events associated with liraglutide are primarily gastrointestinal and usually dose dependent.
The acute effects of the thermogenic supplement Meltdown on energy expenditure, fat oxidation, and hemodynamic responses in young, healthy males

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a thermogenic supplement, Meltdown, on energy expenditure, fat oxidation, and hemodynamics before and after maximal treadmill exercise. In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over design, 12 male participants underwent two testing sessions after consuming either the Meltdown or placebo supplement. While in a fasted state, participants rested for one hour, orally ingested either Meltdown or placebo and rested for another hour, performed a maximal treadmill exercise test, and then rested for another hour. Throughout the testing protocol, resting energy expenditure (REE) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) were assessed. In addition, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) were assessed before and after exercise. Meltdown increased REE significantly more than placebo at 45 min (1.44 ± 0.25 vs. 1.28 ± 0.23 kcal/min; p = 0.003), 60 min (1.49 ± 0.28 vs. 1.30 ± 0.22 kcal/min; p = 0.025), and 120 min (1.51 ± 0.26 vs. 1.33 ± 0.27 kcals/min; p = 0.014) post-ingestion. Meltdown significantly decreased RER at 30 min (0.84 ± 0.03 vs. 0.91 ± 0.04; p = 0.022) and 45 min post-ingestion (0.82 ± 0.04 vs. 0.89 ± 0.05; p = 0.042), and immediately post-exercise (0.83 ± 0.05 vs. 0.90 ± 0.07; p = 0.009). Furthermore, over the course of the evaluation period, area under the curve assessment demonstrated that REE was significantly increased with Meltdown compared to placebo (992.5 ± 133.1 vs. 895.1 ± 296.1 kcals; p = 0.043), while RER was significantly less than placebo (5.55 ± 0.61 vs. 5.89 ± 0.44; p = 0.002) following ingestion. HR and BP were not significantly affected prior to exercise with either supplement (p > 0.05) and the exercise-induced increases for HR and BP decreased into recovery and were not different between supplements (p > 0.05). These data suggest that Meltdown enhances REE and fat oxidation more than placebo for several hours after ingestion in fully rested and post-exercise states without any adverse hemodynamic responses associated with maximal exercise.
A semi-supervised approach to modeling web search satisfaction

Web search is an interactive process that involves actions from Web search users and responses from the search engine. Many research efforts have been made to address the problem of understanding search behavior in general. Some of this work focused on predicting whether a particular user has succeeded in achieving her search goal or not. Most of these studies have faced the problem of the lack of reliable labeled data to learn from. Unlike labeled data, unlabeled data recording behavioral signals in Web search is widely available in search logs. In this work, we study the plausibility of using labeled and unlabeled data to learn better models of user behavior that can be used to predict search success more effectively. We present a semi-supervised approach to modeling Web search satisfaction. The proposed approach can use either labeled data only or both labeled and unlabeled data. We show that the proposed model outperforms previous methods for modeling search success using labeled data. We also show that adding unlabeled data improves the effectiveness of the proposed models and that the proposed method outperforms other strong semi-supervised baselines.
Mid infrared spectroscopic absorption and whole blood cholesterol

The application of mid-infrared spectroscopy to whole, unheparinized blood is discussed. The observed spectra are characteristic and reproducible. Furthermore, a direct correlation was observed between blood cholesterol levels and absorbance curves. Research is underway to precisely determine the cause and theory behind this effect. Near-IR, however, was found to be of no significance in single beam transmission studies. >
Performance-based network service selection in software-defined inter-cloud environments

Inter-Cloud federation is expected to form the next wave of technical development that may greatly enhance Cloud service provisioning. Networking plays a crucial role in an Inter-Cloud environment and has a significant impact on Cloud service performance. Software-defined networking is an indispensable ingredient in a Software-Defined Inter-Cloud Environment (SDICE). Selecting the appropriate network services for meeting performance requirements of Cloud applications is a key to realizing a high-performance SDICE. However, network resource abstraction and inter-domain networking in a SDICE bring in new challenges to performance-based network service selection. In order to tackle this challenging problem, we propose a novel network service selection approach in this paper. The key elements of this approach include a profile that abstracts network service capabilities, a general profile for Cloud applications to specify networking demands, and an analysis technique developed based on the capability and demand profiles for evaluating network service performance guarantee. Application of network calculus in this paper makes the developed approach agnostic to network implementations; therefore supports network abstraction enabled by the software-defined control plane in a SDICE.
Fatigue performance of an injection-molded short e-glass fiber-reinforced polyamide 6,6. I. Effects of orientation, holes, and weld line

This article presents the experimental results of stresscontrolled fatigue tests of an injection-molded 33 wt% short E-glass fiber-reinforced polyamide 6,6. The effects of specimen orientation with respect to the flow direction, hole stress concentration, and weld line on the fatigue life have been considered. In addition, the effect of cyclic frequency has been examined. In addition to the modulus and tensile strength, the fatigue strength of the material was significantly higher in the flow direction than normal to the flow direction, indicating inherent anisotropy of the material caused by flow-induced orientation of fibers. The presence of weld line reduced the modulus, tensile strength, failure strain, and fatigue strength. The fatigue strength of specimens with a hole was lower than that of un-notched specimens, but was insensitive to the hole diameter. At cyclic frequencies ≤ 2 Hz, failure was due to fatigue, and fatigue life increased with frequency. However, at cyclic frequencies > 2 Hz, the failure mode was a mixture of fatigue and thermal failures, and fatigue life decreased with increasing frequency. POLYM. COMPOS., 27:230 –237, 2006. © 2006 Society of Plastics Engineers
Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism: A Century of Income Security Politics. By Alexander Hicks. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. 256p. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Alexander Hicks has written one of the most important works in the past thirty years on the development of income security policies in democratic capitalist states. (Hicks equates income security policies with “welfare states”—a point I will revisit later.) If this were not sufficient, the book also is the most significant comparative public policy study I have read. Based on years of reflection, scholarship and teaching, it covers, not merely cites, a wide range of literatures. It is extremely sensitive to particular historical experiences. It is theoretically informed. Most impressively, it is methodologically sophisticated and imaginative. And the book is concise and well–written. In short, it is a model of what exciting comparative research can be.
Prediction of abortion from vaginal wall cytologic smears

Abstract 1. In a prospective study of 1,000 patients in the first half of pregnancy, serial cytologic smears from the lateral vaginal wall were analyzed for various features conceivably significant in predicting pregnancy outcome. 2. The single most significant feature was the karyopyknotic index (KI). 3. The incidence of abortion increased with rising KI levels from 5 per cent when the KI was less than 10, to 24 per cent in patients with KI values above 25. The overall incidence of abortion was 8.6 per cent, and 42 per cent of those who had abortions did so despite a satisfactory of “good” smear (by our standards, KI below 10). 4. {ce:italic}Trichomonas vaginalis{/ce:italic} was found in the smears of 15 per cent and {ce:italic}Candida albicans{/ce:italic} in smears from 8 per cent of the patients. While patients with trichomonads had an abortion rate twice that of the uninfected group, the values for KI showed similar correlation with incidence of abortion in the two groups of patients. {ce:italic}Candida albicans{/ce:italic} was most frequently encountered in patients with “good” pregnancy smears (KI below 10). 5. Basal cells and eosinophilia were of no value prognostically; navicular cells and cytolysis are components of favorable pregnancy smears, but cellular clumping is difficult to correlate with pregnancy outcome in patients with KI above 10. 6. Single initial smears, as well as smears taken during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, were reliable prognostically in an overwhelming majority of the patients.
Reproduction and Nesting of the Endangered Ringed Map Turtle, Graptemys oculifera, in Mississippi

ABSTRACT Reproduction and nesting in the ringed map turtle (Graptemys oculifera) were investigated in the Pearl River of west-central Mississippi in 1995 and 1996. Nesting occurred from mid-May until mid-July but peaked in mid-June. Minimum carapace length of females at sexual maturity was 130 mm, but mean size at maturity was between 130 and 140 mm. Mean and modal CSs were 3.7 and 3. Larger females were gravid earlier than smaller ones and both egg and CS declined as the nesting season progressed. CS was positively correlated with both female carapace length and body mass. Mean egg length, width, and mass were 38.8 mm, 22.7 mm, and 11.8 g, respectively. Hatchlings averaged 35.5 mm carapace length and 8.9 g in mass. Annual clutch frequency may range from 0.96 to 1.42, and a minimum of ca. 60% of females reproduced on an annual basis. Predators destroyed an average of 86% of nests each year. Major vertebrate nest predators were armadillos, raccoons, and fish crows. Invertebrate egg predators destroyed an a...
Controversy and Conflicts in Childhood Depression

Abstract Childhood depression has had in the past, and still has many controversies, the first being whether it existed at all. Even now, child psychiatrists feel uncomfortable with the concept of depression in childhood and with this, the implication of misdiag-nosis. Pediatricians who have always used a medical model of illness have less difficulty with the existence of depression in children. Pediatricians in the recent past faced a similar predicament with the acknowledgment of the existence of child abuse. This diagnosis, like childhood depression, was missed for decades. Parents, much more than doctors, often have trouble handling the thought that their child may be depressed, let alone suicidal. But then, parents have always had difficulty accepting any serious illness with their offspring, especially psychiatric illness. Clinically, the group who are the most honest, and most accurate in recognizing depressive behavior in themselves and others have been children. Children, rather than their parent...
Crystal Nucleation in Submicron Droplets of Pure Elements

Liquid-to-crystal nucleation has been studied extensively through droplet experiments to locate examples of homogeneous nucleation. However, prior to this work very few examples have been found, which implies that the experiments have not been able to isolate heterogeneous nucleants in a small percentage of the droplets as is required. In this research, electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHD) is used to produce sub-micron droplets of pure elements that are largely free of heterogeneous nucleants. Diffraction patterns of individual EHD-produced droplets are viewed to determine the fraction of crystalline droplets produced as a function of droplet radius. These results are compared to theories for surface and volume heterogeneous nucleation and for homophase nucleation. It is found that Si and Ge nucleate through either homogeneous nucleation or nucleation by homophase impurities. Nucleation results for vanadium and iron were not conclusive.
Optimal space-time attacks on system state estimation under a sparsity constraint

System state estimation in the presence of an adversary that injects false information into sensor readings has attracted much attention in wide application areas, such as target tracking with compromised sensors, secure monitoring of dynamic electric power systems, secure driverless cars, and radar tracking and detection in the presence of jammers. From a malicious adversary’s perspective, the optimal strategy for attacking a multi-sensor dynamic system over sensors and over time is investigated. It is assumed that the system defender can perfectly detect the attacks and identify and remove sensor data once they are corrupted by false information injected by the adversary. With this in mind, the adversary’s goal is to maximize the covariance matrix of the system state estimate by the end of attack period under a sparse attack constraint such that the adversary can only attack the system a few times over time and over sensors. The sparsity assumption is due to the adversary’s limited resources and his/her intention to reduce the chance of being detected by the system defender. This becomes an integer programming problem and its optimal solution, the exhaustive search, is intractable with a prohibitive complexity, especially for a system with a large number of sensors and over a large number of time steps. Several suboptimal solutions, such as those based on greedy search and dynamic programming are proposed to ﬁnd the attack strategies. Examples and numerical results are provided in order to illustrate the eﬀectiveness and the reduced computational complexities of the proposed attack strategies.
The Application of City Emergency Response System in Flood Control and Drought Relief

The paper describles the basic principles of CERS,and it analyzes the technology of GIS and GPS in CERS.Meanwhile it explores the role of enhancing flood control and drought relief.It raises the technical support in flood control and drought relief.So it can enhance the capacity of flood control and drought relief.
Simplified Testing of Hydrologic Regression Regions

The Wilsoxon Signed Ranks Test is suggested to test the statistical significance of homogenous hydrologic regions defined by subjectively drawing regional boundaries around regression residuals plotted on a map. Such a test provides the regression analyst and user with helpful insight into what extent the definition of hydrologic region boundaries are supported by the regression data, and to what extent the boundaries are the subjective judgment of the data analyst.
Bacillus Calmette-Guerin Abrogates in Vitro Invasion and Motility of Human Bladder Tumor Cells via Fibronectin Interaction

AbstractIntravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) has been shown to be an effective treatment for superficial transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder (TCC). The mechanisms by which BCG limits tumor cell activity have thus far been unclear.We investigated the interaction between BCG and invasive human TCC cell line EJ in an in vitro invasion assay. We observed that BCG inhibited the invasion of EJ cells through an artificial basement membrane. In terms of the steps involved in tumor cell invasion, i.e. attachment, proteolysis, and motility, BCG was found to limit tumor cell motility. Attachment and proliferation of tumor cells were not affected by BCG.The effects of BCG on tumor cell migration were mediated by fibronectin (FN), a basement membrane glycoprotein component. Abrogation of BCG-FN-tumor cell interactions with anti-FN antibodies eliminated the ability of BCG to block tumor cell invasion. Fibronectin appears to link BCG and tumor cells via independent FN binding receptors to separate domains ...
Using SPDY to improve Web 2.0 over satellite links

During the last decade, the Web has grown in terms of complexity, while the evolution of the HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol has not experienced the same trend. Even if HTTP 1.1 adds improvements like persistent connections and request pipelining, they are not decisive, especially in modern mixed wireless/wired networks, often including satellites. The latter play a key role for accessing the Internet everywhere, and they are one of the preferred methods to provide connectivity in rural areas or for disaster relief operations. However, they suffer of high-latency and packet losses, which degrade the browsing experience. Consequently, the investigation of protocols mitigating the limitations of HTTP, also in challenging scenarios, is crucial both for the industry and the academia. In this perspective, SPDY, which is a protocol optimized for the access to Web 2.0 contents over fixed and mobile devices, could be suitable also for satellite links. Therefore, this paper evaluates its performance when used both in real and emulated satellite scenarios. Results indicate the effectiveness of SPDY if compared with HTTP, but at the price of a more fragile behavior when in the presence of errors. Besides, SPDY can also reduce the transport overhead experienced by middleboxes typically deployed by service providers using satellite links. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Personalized Advertising, Invasiveness, and Consumers’ Attitudes: A Structured Abstract

Personalized advertising represents a new and emerging trend in the field of online advertising. Through the use of enhanced online data collection techniques, marketers can now craft seemingly made to order advertisements tailored to a specific individual. Numerous websites and services are hosting personalized banner and/or text ads, such as YouTube, Facebook, Hotmail, and Gmail. In addition, the technique is being used by more and more firms such as Amazon, MetLife, Dollar-Thrifty, Staples, Joseph A. Bank, Orbitz, Zappos, and T-Mobile.
Chapter 3 – Helmholtz’s theorem

Publisher Summary The existence and variability of energetic particle populations in the Earth's magnetosphere has dominated investigations since early satellite observations. These particles are the key to understanding substorms and plasmoid structures. However, the mechanisms by which these charged particles can obtain such high energies are not well-understood. Helmholtz's theorem states that a vector field is uniquely defined in three dimensions if the source density (s) (a scalar) and circulation density (c) (a vector) are given functions of the coordinates at all points in space, and if the totality of sources, as well as the source density, is zero at infinity. An irrotational source is conservative and easy to comprehend because one has an excellent example with gravity. A force is conservative if the work done on a particle that moves between two points is the same for all paths connecting those points. A relevant example for plasma physics is the electrostatic field and equipotential surfaces. Maxwell's equations are linear differential equations in E and B. This linearity is often taken for granted; for example, hundreds of different telephone calls on a single microwave link. Plasma is an assembly of charged particles that interact with each other through polarization and induction effects. The main objective here is to calculate the electric and magnetic fields of charges moving at velocities that may be large. The characteristic energy of charged particles is determined in the nonrelativistic and ultrarelativistic limits. It is found that the energetic spectra have an exponential form in the high-energy range.
Modal Activity of Ureteral Peristalsis

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the modal activity of ureteral peristalsis in dogs. In a study described in the chapter, the ureteral pressure tracings were analyzed with respect to frequency of pressure events in dogs with exteriorized bladders and constant intravenous infusions. Ureteral peristaltic activity was found to be very irregular. The average rate rarely agreed with the mean rate for the same study. Thus, different answers can be obtained for the same study depending on the method used for calculations. The calculated mean occurred at rates not recorded during the study. On occasions, 1 SD was greater than the mean, thus implying that there could be a negative frequency.
ANALISIS EFISIENSI SALURAN PEMASARAN BAHAN OLAHAN KARET RAKYAT (BOKAR) LUMP MANGKOK DARI DESA KOMPAS RAYA KECAMATAN PINOH UTARA KABUPATEN MELAWI

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui saluran pemasaran yang paling efisien yang digunakan oleh petani karet lump mangkok di Desa Kompas Raya dan untuk mengetahui besarnya nilai keuntungan masing-masing lembaga pemasaran pada setiap saluran pemasaran. Metode penelitian untuk melihat efisiensi pemasaran digunakan analisis margin pemasaran, farmer’s share , dan Profitability Index. Penentuan responden dilakukan dengan acak sederhana dengan jumlah responden sebanyak 44 orang, yaitu petani karet 37 orang dan pedagang perantara 7 orang . Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa saluran pemasaran bokar lump mangkok paling efisien berdasarkan nilai marjin pemasaran, farmer’s share dan tingkat keuntungan ( profitability index ) yang diperoleh terdapat pada saluran pemasaran II dengan nilai marjin pemasaran, farmer’s share dan tingkat keuntungan masing-masing sebesar Rp. 2.331/kg, 68,92 dan 2,37 dengan keuntungan pemasaran Rp. 1.639.
A Multi-View Digital Image Correlation for Extracting Mode Shapes of a Tire

Modal analysis is used to extract dynamic characteristics of structures for correlation and validation purposes. These characteristics are usually extracted using conventional measurement tools. A known force is imparted to the structure using impact hammers or mechanical shakers and the response is measured using accelerometers. However, accelerometers may induce mass loading effects; thus, the results may not show the true dynamics of the structure. On the other hand, conventional measurement tools can only measure at few discrete locations. Digital Image Correlation and photogrammetry has provided test engineers with a new tool for measuring dynamics of structures. These techniques are non-contacting so they do not induce mass loading and they can provide full-field results. For a DIC measurement to extract mode shapes, operating data of a structure is measured while the cameras are in fixed positions. A stereo camera system has line of sight only on a section of the structure. If the entire dynamics of a structure is desirable, several stereo cameras needs to be used. Another approach is to move a single stereo camera measure dynamics of the structure from multiple field of views; however, the time domain results can only be stitched together if the entire structure is fixed or if the applied force is constant during the entire time of measurement. This assumption is not valid for many dynamic measurements. On the other hand if the DIC system is moved from a view to another view, because the response is measured at different instants of time, operating shapes from each camera view may have a different scaling factor. In the current work, we propose an approach to identify a uniform scaling factor that enables us to stitch these operating shapes extracted from different views of cameras. The new approach is proposed based on conventional modal analysis theory. In the proposed technique, a known force is applied to a structure using a mechanical shaker or an impact hammer. The measured response of the structure in the time domain is transferred to the frequency domain to extract the mode shapes of a section of the structure. A similar procedure is repeated for other sections of the structure to capture the entire area of interest. Mode shapes for all views of the structure are stitched together to extract the mode shape for the entire structure. The proposed technique suggests stitching the views in the frequency domain after being scaled rather than stitching them in the time domain. The proposed method was applied to measure mode shapes of a tire using measured time series from different sections of the tire.
Women and Neurological Disability: End-of-Life Care and Mortality in Women with MS

Most women living with multiple sclerosis (MS) survive for decades following their diagnosis. While MS itself carries many long-term implications for disability and quality of life, other comorbidities as well as aging itself also affect an individual’s functional status and longevity. Over time, aging may affect the overall MS disease course, and likewise MS may contribute to the types of medical conditions experienced late in life. The following chapter describes the late effects of MS in women, including mortality, causes of death, and frequency of comorbid conditions. The chapter also discusses how MS-associated disability affects medical care, both for neurological and non-neurological problems, and makes suggestions to clinicians on the clinical approach to the woman with advanced MS. Finally, recommendations for approaching palliative and end-of-life situations are made.
Development of the Ureteroscope

Ureteroscopy has grown from single incidental episodes to its present role as the major interventional approach to the upper urinary tract. The first endoscopes used as ureteroscopes were capable solely for visualization. Only as endoscopes were developed with channels for irrigation and mechanisms for deflection as well as appropriate working instruments did ureteroscopy become a practical and useful procedure. The process has been dependent on the materials and the instrument designs available.
Classified Staff Perceptions of Behavior and Discipline: Implications for Schoolwide Positive Behavior Supports:

Classified staff are important stakeholders in schools and commonly interact with students across grade levels, subject matter areas, and physical locations—making their involvement in the implemen...
Abnormally reduced primary motor cortex output is related to impaired hand function in chronic stroke

Hand function often remains impaired after stroke. While the critical role of the primary motor cortex (M1) and its corticospinal output (CST) for hand function has been described in the nonhuman p...
SimISpace2: A Simulation Platform for Exploring Strategic Knowledge Management Processes

SimISpace2 is an agent-based simulation environment designed to simulate strategic knowledge management processes, in particular knowledge flows and knowledge-based agent interactions. It serves as a general knowledge management engine that, through a user-friendly graphical interface, can be adapted to a wide range of knowledge-related applications. Its purpose is to improve our understanding of how knowledge is generated, diffused, internalized and managed by individuals and organizations, under both collaborative and competitive learning conditions.
Statistical Methods for Cross-Language Information Retrieval

Multi-lingual information retrieval (IR) has largely been limited to the development of multiple systems for use with a specific foreign language. The explosion in the availability of electronic media in languages other than English makes the development of IR systems that can cross language boundaries increasingly important. We are currently developing tools and techniques for Cross Language Information Retrieval. In this chapter, we present experiments that analyze the factors that affect dictionary based methods for cross-language retrieval and present methods that dramatically reduce the errors such an approach usually makes.
Strategies to Attain Faculty Work-Life Balance

Background: Achieving work-life balance can be a challenge for academic faculty members. The multifaceted demands and expectations of the role can affect faculty satisfaction and the ability to attain work-life balance. The ever-changing trends in higher education, including technology and online education modalities provide additional factors that can inhibit faculty satisfaction and work-life balance. Aims: This paper explores barriers to achieving work-life balance such as cognitive dissonance, emotional dissonance and burnout. Understanding barriers is essential to developing strategies to promote work-life balance. Methods: An integrated review of the literature on life balance of academic faculty in all disciplines using multiple online databases. Conclusion: Strategies, organized around mentoring and self-care, include promoting physical health, connecting socially, and practicing mindfulness as a cognitive approach can help counteract work-place stressors and help in achieving work-life balance.
Scheduling Elective Surgeries with Emergency Patients at Shared Operating Rooms

Operating rooms (ORs) are the greatest source of revenues for hospitals and also their largest cost centers. When scheduling surgeries, hospitals face a trade‐off between the need to conduct planned elective surgeries and the need to be responsive to emergency cases. However, scheduling ORs, especially at Level‐1 trauma hospitals, is challenging due to significant uncertainties in the arrivals of patients requiring emergent surgery. The issue of allocating limited capacity to emergent surgery cases while scheduling elective patients has major policy implications. We develop a model for allocating the OR capacity to elective patients in such a way that the emergency patients who arrive randomly can be accommodated without incurring excessive delays. The objective is to develop a framework for aggregate weekly schedules and generate detailed daily schedules that minimize the total cost of the ORs’ expected operating time, idle time, and overtime. We present optimization procedures for generating effective schedules and rescheduling procedures that adjust the schedules of elective patients affected by emergency arrivals. Initially, the procedures assume deterministic surgery times for elective patients; the procedures are then extended to include stochastic surgery times. We show that for a given arrival rate of emergency patients, the total expected cost is convex in the weekly load of elective surgeries being scheduled. Numerical experiments are devised to obtain total expected cost curves for various emergency arrival rates. Using these curves, the optimal capacity allocation of ORs to elective patients can be determined as a function of the emergency arrival rate.
Deliberative Democracy, Diversity, and Restraint

Public reason liberals disagree about the relationship between public justification and deliberative democracy. My goal is to argue against the recent suggestion that public reason liberals seek a ‘divorce’ from deliberative democracy. Defending this thesis will involve discussing the benefits of deliberation for public justification as well as revisiting public reason’s standard Rawlisan restraint requirement. I criticize Kevin Vallier’s alternative convergence-based principle of restraint and respond to the worry that the standard Rawlsian restraint requirement reduces the likelihood of public justification by limiting the diversity of inputs into the justificatory process.
Further Mechanisms and Locations in Which Antisporozoite Antibodies Neutralize Malaria Sporozoites.

Having worked in this area for many years, I read with much interest the recent article “Antibody-Mediated Protection against Plasmodium Sporozoites Begins at the Dermal Inoculation Site” by Flores-Garcia et al. (1). It is now universally recognized, as described by the authors, that mosquitoes inject most of their sporozoites into extravascular skin tissue rather than directly into blood vessels (2, 3). From there, they migrate through the dermis to …
The Sonic Art of Film and the Sonic Arts in Film

My goal in this chapter is threefold. First, I argue that film is, at least partly, an art of sound. Most films are not made merely to be seen; they are also made to be heard. This offers an alternative to traditional accounts of film, which take film to be an essentially visual artform, and it suggests new directions for research in philosophy of film. Second, I argue that there are several distinct arts of sound in film. Some of these arts, like film music, are “aesthetic” arts; others, like sound effects, are “functional” arts. Still others, like sound design, are both functional and aesthetic. Third, I consider and reply to the objection that the arts of sound in film cannot be arts at all, because they are all functional.
Prognostic implications of RAS alterations in diverse malignancies and impact of targeted therapies.

RAS alterations are often found in difficult-to-treat malignancies and are considered "undruggable." To better understand the clinical correlates and coaltered genes of RAS alterations, we used targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) to analyze 1,937 patients with diverse cancers. Overall, 20.9% of cancers (405/1,937) harbored RAS alterations. Most RAS-altered cases had genomic coalterations (95.3%, median: 3, range: 0-51), often involving genes implicated in oncogenic signals: PI3K pathway (31.4% of 405 cases), cell cycle (31.1%), tyrosine kinase families (21.5%) and MAPK signaling (18.3%). Patients with RAS-altered versus wild-type RAS malignancies had significantly worse overall survival (OS; p = 0.02 [multivariate]), with KRAS alterations, in particular, showing shorter survival. Moreover, coalterations in both RAS and PI3K signaling or cell-cycle-associated genes correlated with worse OS (p = 0.004 and p < 0.0001, respectively [multivariate]). Among RAS-altered patients, MEK inhibitors alone did not impact progression-free survival (PFS), while matched targeted therapy against non-MAPK pathway coalterations alone showed a trend toward longer PFS (vs. patients who received unmatched therapy) (HR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.61-1.03, p = 0.07). Three of nine patients (33%) given tailored combination therapies targeting both MAPK and non-MAPK pathways achieved objective responses. In conclusion, RAS alterations correlated with poor survival across cancers. The majority of RAS alterations were accompanied by coalterations impacting other oncogenic pathways. MEK inhibitors alone were ineffective against RAS-altered cancers while matched targeted therapy against coalterations alone correlated with a trend toward improved PFS. A subset of the small number of patients given MEK inhibitors plus tailored non-MAPK-targeting agents showed responses, suggesting that customized combinations warrant further investigation.
Detailed Analysis of Margin Positivity and the Site of Local Recurrence After Pancreaticoduodenectomy.

The association between a positive surgical margin and local recurrence after resection of pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has been reported. Assessment of the location of the a positive margin and the specific site of local recurrence has not been well described. A prospectively maintained database was queried for patients who underwent R0/R1 pancreaticoduodenectomy for PDAC between 2000 and 2015. The pancreatic, posterior, gastric/duodenal, anterior peritoneal, and bile duct margins were routinely assessed. Postoperative imaging was reviewed for the site of first recurrence, and local recurrence was defined as recurrence located in the remnant pancreas, surgical bed, or retroperitoneal site outside the surgical bed. During the study period, 891 patients underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy, and 390 patients had an initial local recurrence with or without distant metastases. The 5-year cumulative incidence of local recurrence by site included the remnant pancreas (4%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3–5%), the surgical bed (35%; 95% CI, 32–39%), and other regional retroperitoneal site (4%; 95% CI, 3–6%). In the univariate analysis, positive posterior margin (hazard ratio [HR], 1.50; 95% CI, 1.17–1.91; p = 0.001) and positive lymph nodes (HR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.06–1.75; p = 0.017) were associated with surgical bed recurrence, and in the multivariate analysis, positive posterior margin remained significant (HR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.09–1.81; p = 0.009). An isolated local recurrence was found in 197 patients, and a positive posterior margin was associated with surgical bed recurrence in this subgroup (HR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.08–2.10; p = 0.016). In this study, the primary association between site of margin positivity and site of local recurrence was between the posterior margin and surgical bed recurrence. Given this association and the limited ability to modify this margin intraoperatively, preoperative assessment should be emphasized.
From Greetings to Corruption: Politicians, Political Parties, and Tweeting in India

We present an in-depth, language-centric, large-scale study of topical discussions on Twitter by 1,711 Indian politicians from 20 competing political parties in a 4-year timespan. We first show that politicians of all parties collectively indulge more in establishing personal branding through low-substance, personality-focused messaging as opposed to broadcasting policy stances. Additionally, compared to the party-in-power, opposition politicians collectively post more complex tweets and demonstrate higher negativity (e.g., using person-based attack hashtags) especially regarding the issue of corruption. Finally, through a contextual examination of the most retweeted messages from two key leaders---the prime minister and the leader of the largest opposition party, we find that there are qualitatively important distinctions between their styles---while the former focuses on positive-themed messaging, the latter employs confrontation and aggressive language with direct attacks on individuals and issues.
Food Acquisition Behaviors and Perceptions of Food Pantry Use among Food Pantry Clients in Rural Appalachia.

Rates of food insecurity vary highly across and within regions in the U.S., with rural Appalachia having higher rates compared to the rest of the country, leading parts of the population to rely on...
\(\mathtt {MOTIF}\): (Almost) Free Branching in GMW

MPC functionalities are increasingly specified in high-level languages, where control-flow constructions such as conditional statements are extensively used. Today, concretely efficient MPC protocols are circuit-based and must evaluate all conditional branches at high cost to hide the taken branch.
Comment on ‘If it's pinched it's a memristor’

In his paper 'If it's pinched it's a memristor' (Chua 2014 Semicond. Sci. Technol. 29 104001) L Chua claims to extend the notion of memristor to all two-terminal resistive devices that show a hysteresis loop pinched at the origin. He also states that memcapacitors and meminductors can be defined by a trivial replacement of symbols in the memristor relations, and, therefore, there should be a correspondence between the hysteresis curves of different types of memory elements. This leads the author to the erroneous conclusion that charge-voltage curves of any memcapacitive devices should be pinched at the origin. The purpose of this comment is to correct the wrong statements in Chua's paper, as well as to highlight some other inconsistencies in his reasoning. We also provide experimental evidence of a memcapacitive device showing non-pinched hysteresis.