cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Fathers' Early Emotion Talk: Associations With Income, Ethnicity, and Family Factors

Contextual, mother-, child-, and father-level variables were examined in association with fathers' emotion talk to infants during a shared picture book activity, in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 549). Significant main effects included the rate of emotion talk from fathers' romantic partners (i.e., the infant's mother), infant attention and distress, and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions were also found. Higher income African American fathers referred to negative emotions more than non-African American higher income fathers. In addition, African American fathers who demonstrated more negative and intrusive parenting referred to positive emotions more than non-African American fathers who demonstrated negative and intrusive parenting. Our findings support family systems theory and, specifically, the interdependence of individuals' behaviors within the family unit. Interaction effects are discussed with respect to cultural variation in beliefs about parenting behaviors and the cultural experience of African Americans, including the Black cultural experience and the minority experience.
GENERALIZATION OF STUDENT QUESTION ASKING FROM SPECIAL CLASS TO REGULAR CLASS SETTINGS

This study investigated the use of videotaped exemplars taken from a regular education mathematics class to teach generalization of question asking. Three mildly handicapped fourth-grade students who asked few questions in the regular education class served as subjects. Measures of the frequency of question asking and percentage of accuracy on assignments were obtained in the regular class. Treatment included showing the videotapes to the subjects, structuring opportunities for rehearsing question asking, and providing feedback. The results showed training procedures implemented in the learning resource room were effective in increasing the level of participants' question asking and in improving their scores on assignments in the regular mathematics class.
Decoding of stochastically assembled nanoarrays

A key challenge that face nanotechnologies is controlling the uncertainty introduced by stochastic self-assembly. In this paper we explore architectural and manufacturing strategies to cope with this uncertainty when assembling nanoarrays, crossbars composed of two orthogonal sets of coded parallel nanowires. Because the encodings of nanowires that are assembled into a nanoarray cannot be predicted in advance, a discovery process is needed and specialized decoding circuitry must be employed. We have developed a probabilistic method of analysis so that various design strategies can be evaluated.
Voice following laryngeal cancer surgery

Although we have made a significant advancement in the multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of laryngeal cancer, surgery continues to be a critical therapeutic tool in the management of this challenging disease. By definition, laryngeal cancer and appropriate laryngeal cancer surgery exact a considerable price from the basic human function of voice. By strict definition, voice is not a vital function—unlike a pumping heart, a respiring lung, or a functioning liver. Yet our ability to engage in verbal communication is a distinctly human characteristic and critical to our day-to-day interactions. Therefore, all efforts to surgically treat cancer of the larynx are simultaneously paralleled by efforts to afford acceptable voice rehabilitation. This concept dates back to the first total laryngectomy performed by Billroth in the 1870s and the subsequent efforts of Gussenbauer to restore voice. This issue of the Otolaryngologic Clinics of North America provides an overview of both of these therapeutic efforts. Each section addresses specifically how particular surgical procedures for treating laryngeal cancer are completed and how speech rehabilitation efforts can be directed specifically to the effects of such surgical intervention. For this reason, this issue draws from the clinical and technical expertise of specialists within the disciplines of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery and speech and language pathology. We are fortunate to have the participation of clinicians and caregivers that have devoted a significant portion of their professional lives to improve the voice outcome in patients who have battled laryngeal cancer. I wish to express my gratitude to each of the authors for their outstanding contributions to this issue as well as the overall field of voice rehabilitation Daniel G. Deschler, MD, FACS Otolaryngol Clin N Am 37 (2004) xi–xii
Compatibility of Hydrated Sodium MetasiIicate Glasses with Inorganic and Organic Compounds

By dehydrating crystalline Na2SiO3·9H2O, a very low melting glass of the approximate composition Na2SiO3·3H2O was obtained. The compatibility of selected inorganic compounds with this molten glass was found to be related to the nature of the cation or anion present in each compound. The behavior of organic indicator dyes in the glass melt provided further information on the nature of the molten glass, whereas the infrared spectrum of the glass gave an inconclusive result.
Zintl phases for thermoelectric devices

By converting waste heat into electricity and improving the efficiency of refrigeration systems, thermoelectric devices could play a significant role in solving today’s energy problems. Increasing the thermoelectric efficiency (as measured by the thermoelectric material’s figure-of-merit, zT )i s critical to the development of this technology. Complex Zintl phases, in particular, make ideal candidates for thermoelectric materials because the necessary “electron–crystal, phonon–glass” properties can be engineered with an understanding of the Zintl chemistry. A recent example is the discovery that Yb14MnSb11, a transition metal Zintl compound, has twice the zT as the material currently in use at NASA. This perspective outlines a strategy to discover new high zT materials in Zintl phases, and presents results pointing towards the success of this approach.
Controlling the Hyperfine State of Rovibronic Ground-State Polar Molecules

We report the preparation of a rovibronic ground-state molecular quantum gas in a single hyperfine state and, in particular, the absolute lowest quantum state. This addresses the last internal degree of freedom remaining after the recent production of a near quantum degenerate gas of molecules in their rovibronic ground state, and provides a crucial step towards full control over molecular quantum gases. We demonstrate a scheme that is general for bialkali polar molecules and allows the preparation of molecules in a single hyperfine state or in an arbitrary coherent superposition of hyperfine states. The scheme relies on electric-dipole, two-photon microwave transitions through rotationally excited states and makes use of electric nuclear quadrupole interactions to transfer molecular population between different hyperfine states.
Universal distortion function for steganography in an arbitrary domain

Currently, the most successful approach to steganography in empirical objects, such as digital media, is to embed the payload while minimizing a suitably defined distortion function. The design of the distortion is essentially the only task left to the steganographer since efficient practical codes exist that embed near the payload-distortion bound. The practitioner’s goal is to design the distortion to obtain a scheme with a high empirical statistical detectability. In this paper, we propose a universal distortion design called universal wavelet relative distortion (UNIWARD) that can be applied for embedding in an arbitrary domain. The embedding distortion is computed as a sum of relative changes of coefficients in a directional filter bank decomposition of the cover image. The directionality forces the embedding changes to such parts of the cover object that are difficult to model in multiple directions, such as textures or noisy regions, while avoiding smooth regions or clean edges. We demonstrate experimentally using rich models as well as targeted attacks that steganographic methods built using UNIWARD match or outperform the current state of the art in the spatial domain, JPEG domain, and side-informed JPEG domain.
Further structural analysis of Cr(III) oligomers in weakly acidic solutions

Abstract Three chromium(III) hydrolytic oligomers (monomer, dimer, and trimer) were isolated via cation-exchange from weakly acidic solutions, and their structures were elucidated with multiple techniques including UV–Vis and infrared (IR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy. The results indicate that the monomer has an octahedral symmetry with six water molecules at its six apices. In the dimer, two Cr(III) ions, each of which has an octahedral coordination symmetry distorted by the stretching along the Cr Cr joining axis, are doubly bridged by two hydroxyl groups. Suggested by the data from EXAFS and EPR, the trimer in solution may form with an irregular triangular configuration, in which two Cr(III) ions are doubly bridged by hydroxyl groups and the third Cr(III) ion is connected to each of the two through single-hydroxyl bridging.
Laparoscopic versus open peritoneal dialysis catheter placement.

Laparoscopy revolutionized many General Surgery procedures by decreasing hospital stay, minimizing recovery time, and reducing wound infection rates. This study evaluates the potential benefits of laparoscopic approach to peritoneal dialysis catheter (PDC) placement. The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database was queried for laparoscopic and open PDC placement. We evaluated patient demographics, comorbidities, operative time, length of stay (LOS), and postoperative outcomes. Univariate comparison and multivariate logistic regression analysis (MVA) adjusting for confounding factors including age, body mass index (BMI), comorbidities, and preoperative conditions were performed. A total of 3134 patients undergoing PDC placement were recorded in the NSQIP database between 2005 and 2012, including 2412 laparoscopic cases (LPDC) (77 %) and 722 open (OPDC). Overall, the majority of cases were performed by General Surgeons (81 %) with most of the remainder completed by Vascular Surgeons (16.8 %). Patients undergoing LPDC versus OPDC demonstrated no significant difference in gender (54 vs. 56 % males, p = 0.4), smoking history (8.5 ± 18.3 vs. 7.2 ± 16.9 pack years, p = 0.06), diabetes (42 vs. 40 %, p = 0.4), COPD (4.6 vs. 5 %, p = 0.63), or preoperative dialysis requirement (72 vs. 73 %, p = 0.6), but they were younger (57.2 ± 14.8 vs. 60.5 ± 15.9 years, p = 0.05) and had a higher BMI (29.3 vs. 29 kg/m2, p = 0.04). In univariate analysis of LPDC versus OPDC, overall wound complications (1.6 vs. 2.9 %, p = 0.02), deep surgical site infections (0.12 vs. 0.83 %, p < 0.006), minor complications (3.8 vs. 6.5 %, p < 0.05), major complications (4.3 vs. 6.9 %, p < 0.05), and LOS (1.8 ± 11.9 vs. 4.4 ± 10 days, p < 0.0001) favored the LPDC approach, but only operative time (57.6 ± 4.6 vs. 71.8 ± 5.3, p < 0.001) remained significant in MVA after controlling for confounding factors. Both LPDC and OPDC had equivalently low rates of catheter failure (0.21 vs. 0.14 %, p = 0.7). Using univariate analysis, there appears to be a benefit from LPDC placement. However, after controlling for confounding variables, the techniques appear to have equal outcomes. Surgeons should perform a LPDC or OPDC according to the approach with which they are most familiar. However, continued adoption, dispersal, and refinement of the laparoscopic approach may further optimize patient outcomes.
EVALUATING THE EFFECT OF LIMITED INSTRUMENTATION ON THE UPDATING OF FINITE ELEMENT MODELS

This paper discusses the effect of limited instrumentation used in experimental measurement upon the updating of finite element models utilizing experimentally measured frequencies and mode shapes. The behavior of an updating algorithm is affected by the number of sensor locations as compared to the number of degrees of freedom of the finite element model. A mathematical theorem is presented linking the number of measured degrees of freedom to the improvement of frequency errors between the experimental data and the finite element model. Results are presented showing the effect of the number of sensors for the updating of a 990 degree of freedom shell model and for an actual finite element model taken from the automotive industry. 1. Nomenclature
PRIMATE SKELETAL ALLOMETRY AND HOMINOID EVOLUTION

Since the time of Darwin and Huxley, it has been a common opinion that extant hominoids (apes and man) are unified by a manner of locomotion and posture, and associated derived functional morphology, indicating a closely related and distinct group. Haeckel (1868), Keith (1923) and Gregory (1928) early documented the body proportion synapomorphies supporting the monophyly of hominoids. Schultz (e.g., 1950; 1963) provided large amounts of confirmatory data. Simons (1972), Simons and Pilbeam (1965), Simons and Fleagle (1973), Pilbeam (1969), Conroy and Fleagle (1972) and Zwell and Conroy (1973) have spread the idea that long-term parallelism is the cause of hominoid similarities. More recently, the hypothesis of hominoid parallel evolution has been proposed more rigorously in terms of allometry-the differential growth of body segments. Thus, hominoid morphology and proportions are seen as having developed from parallel increase in body size and necessarily associated allometry, suggesting that more than one kind of locomotor pattern could have given rise to their distinctive shape. Three specific hypotheses have been proposed in this regard. Biegert and Maurer (1972) show that arm length, and less markedly leg length, is positively allometric among cercopithecoid (Old World) monkeys and that some hominoids lie on the regression line extrapolated from the monkey sample indicating "generalized proportions" in a larger size range. Their regressions are of skeletal segment length ratios versus a vertebral measure of trunk
Comment on "Tuning the magnetic dimensionality by charge ordering in the molecular TMTTF salts"

A Comment on the Letter by K. Yoshimi, H. Seo, S. Ishibashi, and S. E. Brown, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 096402 (2012). The authors of the Letter offer a Reply.
Can measurement of mixed venous oxygen saturation replace measurement of cardiac output in patients with advanced heart failure

BACKGROUND Nursing care of patients with advanced heart failure with low ejection fraction requires strict management of IV fluids. Measurement of mixed venous oxygen saturation offers advantages over measurement of cardiac output because no administration of fluid is required and data are obtained continuously. OBJECTIVES To determine the relationship between mixed venous oxygen saturation and cardiac output in patients with advanced heart failure who have low ejection fraction and to determine if use of vasoactive medications alters the relationship between mixed venous oxygen saturation and cardiac output. METHODS Simultaneously obtained measurements of mixed venous oxygen saturation and cardiac output were compared in 42 patients with advanced heart failure with ejection fractions of 30% or less (mean, 19.5%). RESULTS Correlation between mixed venous oxygen saturation and cardiac output was r = 0.54 (P < .001). For subjects not receiving vasoactive medications (n = 28), r = 0.52 (P = .004); for those receiving vasoactive medications (n = 14), r = 0.57 (P = .03). CONCLUSIONS Similar correlations in the groups receiving and not receiving vasoactive medications suggest that even with pharmacological support, changes in mixed venous oxygen saturation may not be reflected by concomitant changes in cardiac output. Measurement of mixed venous oxygen saturation should not replace measurement of cardiac output for clinical decision making in patients with advanced heart failure with low ejection fraction.
Prevalence of Tick-Borne Pathogens in Host-Seeking Amblyomma americanum (Acari: Ixodidae) and Odocoileus virginianus (Artiodactyla: Cervidae) in Florida

Amblyomma americanum (L.), the lone star tick, is an aggressive tick that is expanding its geographic range within the United States. This tick is the vector for the human and veterinary pathogens Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Ehrlichia ewingii and is associated with other microbes of unspecified pathogenicity including Rickettsia amblyommii , Panola Mountain Ehrlichia , and Borrelia lonestari . In Florida, there has been sparse contemporary data on the prevalence of these organisms in host-seeking lone star ticks. To determine the prevalence of this tick and associated microbes in North Central Florida state parks, ∼1,500 lone star tick specimens were collected between 2010 and 2012 analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) sequencing. Additionally, 393 white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmerman), samples were analyzed for pathogen prevalence using molecular methods and serology. In lone star ticks, 14.6, 15.6, and 57.1% were positive for E. chaffeensis , E. ewingii , and Rickettsia spp. DNA, respectively. Panola Mountain Ehrlichia or B. lonestari DNA were each detected in nearly 2% of tick specimens. In white-tailed deer, 7.3% were PCR positive for E. chaffeensis , 6.0% for E. ewingii , and 3.2% for rickettsial species . Approximately 45% of white-tailed deer specimens had antibodies to Ehrlichia spp., and <1% had antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi . In summary, E. chaffeensis , E. ewingii , and spotted fever group rickettsia are highly prevalent in host-seeking lone star ticks and in white-tailed deer in Florida. The molecular and serological evidence of these microbes underscore their zoonotic potential in this region.
The Overdraw Profits of Credit Cards

The business of credit card is a kind of innovation financial business with "high risk and high profit" as characteristic.The overdraw business with the characteristic is its major profit source.Based on the analysis of profit and cost of overdraw of credit card,this paper has put forward that,if we want to improve the profit lever of credit card overdraw,we should reduce capital cost of overdraw profit,establish credit evaluation of individual,guaranty overdraw safety and rate of recovery,and establish a system of credit accumulation and a motivation model of overdraw rate to spur the overdraw base to be enlarged.
Neoliberal Education Reform and the Perpetuation of Inequality

New York has some of the most segregated high schools in the country, and schools serving low-income and minority students have the lowest graduation rates. This paper discusses changes in inequali...
Dual Consciousness, Social Mobility, and the Experiences of Middle-Income African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era

This article examines how African Americans who grew up in middle-income households during the modern post-Civil Rights Era conceptualize their opportunities to get ahead and how they explain downward mobility. Drawing upon 70 in-depth interviews with African American men and women, it identifies a dual consciousness that shapes respondents’ understandings of who gets ahead and why. While the majority of respondents believe that African Americans face persistent structural inequality, they also believe that members of their group are responsible for their own outcomes. They emphasize the importance of employing individualistic mobility strategies for advancement. They also draw upon broad definitions of success to support an understanding that everyone can achieve some level of success if they work hard enough. When assessing their own mobility trajectories and the mobility trajectories of others they know, respondents tend to attribute individual-level factors to movement up and down the socioeconomic ladder.
Overriding Patient Autonomy to Enhance It: Not the Role of a Consultation Team.

The target article “The Curious Case of the De-ICD” is a disturbing apologia pro vita sua, one that seemingly violates the long history of Anglo-Saxon legal norms on the rights of a competent patie...
Psychometric Properties of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7 (GAD-7) in Outpatients with Anxiety and Mood Disorders.

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7 (GAD-7) in a sample of 536 outpatients presenting at a specialty clinic for anxiety and mood disorders. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the unidimensionality of the GAD-7. This model did not fit the data well. The CFA solution was respecified correlating residuals among items assessing somatic symptoms. This respecified model fit the data well. A series of multiple-groups CFAs determined that the measurement properties of the GAD-7 were invariant between sexes. Scale reliability estimates of the GAD-7 were favorable for the full sample, and for males and females. Sensitivity and specificity could not be balanced at any cut-point. Findings attest to the value of this instrument as a dimensional indicator of GAD severity rather than a screening tool for the presence or absence of the disorder in outpatients with anxiety and mood disorders.
Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition for plasmonic TiN

This work presents the low temperature plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) of TiN, a promising plasmonic synthetic metal. The plasmonics community has immediate needs for alternatives to traditional plasmonic materials (e.g. Ag and Au), which lack chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability. Plasmonic alloys and synthetic metals have significantly improved stability, but their growth can require high-temperatures (>400 °C), and it is difficult to control the thickness and directionality of the resulting film, especially on technologically important substrates. Such issues prevent the application of alternative plasmonic materials for both fundamental studies and large-scale industrial applications. Alternatively, PE-ALD allows for conformal deposition on a variety of substrates with consistent material properties. This conformal coating will allow the creation of exotic three-dimensional structures, and low-temperature deposition techniques will provide unrestricted usage across a variety of platforms. The characterization of this new plasmonic material was performed with in-situ spectroscopic ellipsometry as well as Auger electron spectroscopy for analysis of TiN film sensitivity to oxide cross-contamination. Plasmonic TiN films were fabricated, and a chlorine plasma etch was found to pattern two dimensional gratings as a test structure. Optical measurements of 900 nm period gratings showed reasonable agreement with theoretical modeling of the fabricated structures, indicating that ellipsometry models of the TiN were indeed accurate.
An Iterative Parameter-Free MAP Algorithm With an Application to Forward Looking GPR Imaging

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been used in a number of applications including the detection of landmines and improvised explosive devices. Most existing algorithms for forward looking GPR image reconstruction require that a hyperparameter or regularization parameter be chosen by the user. Selecting these parameters in an optimal fashion is a challenging problem that, in theory, can be addressed using cross validation and the L-curve method. Unfortunately, these hyperparameter selection methods are time consuming and not well suited for real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a hyperparameter-free algorithm that follows from a maximum a posteriori (MAP) formulation where the prior probability density function is obtained by the so-called “integrate-out” approach. First, we model the reflection coefficients as statistically independent random variables that are identically distributed and Laplacian with parameter, $\lambda $ . Then, we analytically integrate out the parameter, $\lambda $ , and optimize the resulting MAP objective function using the majorize–minimize optimization technique and soft-thresholding operator. We tested the algorithm using synthetic and real experimental data, and compared the results subjectively and objectively with the results obtained from well-known algorithms. Although the evaluation is not an exhaustive study, it demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.
The role of early life nutrition in the establishment of gastrointestinal microbial composition and function

The development of the human infant intestinal microbiota is a sequential process that begins in utero and continues during the first 2 to 3 years of life. Microbial composition and diversity are shaped by host genetics and multiple environmental factors, of which diet is a principal contributor. An understanding of this process is of clinical importance as the microbiota acquired in early life influence gastrointestinal, immune and neural development, and reduced microbial diversity or dysbiosis during infancy is associated with disorders in infancy and later childhood. The goal of this article was to review the published literature that used culture-independent methods to describe the development of the gastrointestinal microbiota in breast- and formula-fed human infants as well as the impact of prebiotic and probiotic addition to infant formula, and the addition of solid foods.
GIS for Paleo-limnological Studies

Endorheic lakes, which are closed to hydrologic outflows, are extensively distributed in arid and semi-arid regions and are also vulnerable to climate change and human activities. Knowledge about paleo-environmental conditions is essential to our understanding of these current and ongoing changes. While contemporary lake dynamics are actively being monitored using various remote sensing data, paleo-lake changes are much more difficult to ascertain. Many lakes in endorheic basins are often found surrounded by paleo-shore relicts, attesting to a substantially different high water stand in the past. Paleo-lake inundation area retrieval and the subsequent lake volume change estimation are critical for us to understand the paleo-climatic and paleo-hydrologic environmental conditions. Geographic information systems (GISs) provide a powerful tool for analyzing these paleo-environmental conditions for lakes. This article summarizes GIS applications in paleo-limnological studies, introduces a semi-automated toolbox for regional-scale paleo-lake extent retrieval using geospatial information technologies, and models the lithospheric rebound caused by hydrologic unloading due to paleo-lake shrinkage. Paleo-shore relicts are first identified in high-resolution imagery, and their elevations are determined from digital elevation data. The paleo-lake extent automatically recovered by tracing the contour at the determined paleo-shore elevation and the water volume changes derived from the differences between the modern-day lake extent and the paleo-lake extent are then computed. We consider the recovered estimated lake volume changes to be conservative due to the effect of isostatic lithospheric rebound owing to the water mass loss. The lithospheric rebound as caused by the paleo-lake water unloading and the subsequent estimated lake volume losses acquired from the recovered paleo-lake extents is quantified by utilizing a spherically symmetric, non-rotating, elastic, and isotropic Earth model. The paleo-lake extent recovery toolbox is capable of reconstructing hundreds of paleo-lakes across the Tibetan Plateau at the regional scale, and this technique is broadly applicable toward the mapping of paleo-lake extents for endorheic basins in other arid and semi-arid regions around the world.
The Futures of Biofiction Studies

That biofiction has become a dominant literary form over the last thirty years is clear. Margaret Atwood (Grace Marks), Michael Cunningham (Virginia Woolf), J. M. Coetzee (Fyodor Dostoevsky), Gabri...
No condition is permanent: the social dynamics of agrarian change in Subsaharan Africa, by Sara Berry; University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

No Condition is Permanent: the Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Subsaharan Africa , by Sara Berry; University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. xiv, 258 pp. Reviewed by Miriam S. Chaiken , Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
OVIPOSITION SITE SELECTION BY TETRANYCHUS URTICAE KOCH (ACARI: TETRANYCHIDAE) IN RESPONSE TO FENVALERATE AND PERMETHRIN RESIDUES ON SOYBEAN

The oviposition site selection of Tetranychus urticae Koch in response to fenvalerate and permethrin residues on soybeans was examined in the laboratory. Five leaf treatment regimes were evaluated ...
Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution with Leisure Margin

This paper investigates whether leisure time definitions matter in the estimation of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution of consumption (IES) by using a utility specification that allows interaction between consumption and leisure time. We find that the IES estimated using a narrowly defined leisure measure that excludes quasi-leisure activities is larger than that estimated using nonmarket time. The discrepancy is largely driven by the substitution of consumption and several leisure components over the lifecycle. This finding is robust in alternative specifications and holds well for subsamples of higher socioeconomic status. Our results demonstrate the inseparable nature of consumption and time allocation.
Minimally invasive liver resection for primary and metastatic liver tumors: influence of age on perioperative complications and mortality

As minimally invasive technique becomes more popular, an increasing number of elderly patients were considered for minimally invasive liver resection (MILR). Limited physiologic reserve remains a major concern, which frequently leads surgeons to recommend nonresectional alternatives. We sought to evaluate complications and outcomes of elderly patients undergoing MILR. Eight hundred and thirty-one patients who underwent MILR were classified into groups A, B, and C based on age [(< 70, n = 629), (70–79, n = 148), (≥ 80, n = 54) years old, respectively]. Gender distribution, BMI, and cirrhotic status were comparable among all groups. Groups B and C had higher MELD (p = 0.047) and ASA (p = 0.001) scores. Operative time (170, 157, 152 min; p = 0.64) and estimated blood loss (145, 130, 145 ml; p = 0.95) were statistically equal. Overall postoperative complications were greater in groups B and C (12.9 and 9.3 vs. 6.5%, respectively). Complications in group C were all minor. Clavien–Dindo grade III–IV complications were higher in group B when compared to group A (6.8 vs. 2.7%, p = 0.43). There was no significant difference in cardiopulmonary complications, thromboembolic events, ICU admissions, and transfusion rates seen in groups B and C when compared to group A. Duration of hospital stay was statistically longer in groups B and C (3.6, 3.5 vs. 2.5 days, p = 0.0012). 30- and 90-day mortality rates were comparable among the groups, irrespective of age. In spite of greater preoperative comorbidities and ASA score, there was no significant increase in postoperative morbidity after minimally invasive liver resection in patients ≥ 70 years of age.
Comparison of GaN based switched-tank converter and cascaded voltage divider

This paper presents comparison of GaN based switched-tank converter (STC) and traditional cascaded voltage divider (CVD) dc-dc converter for data center applications. The operation principle of two kinds of converters are presented. And simulations with Saber are both conducted to verify the proposed comparison, respectively. The system volume and efficiency are fully compared via GaN based device under the same current stress condition. It is shown that under the same condition, STC can achieve 1% higher efficiency at full load and over 2% higher efficiency at light load when compared with CVD. Furthermore, STC can achieve ∼37% power-density improvement when compared with CVD. Finally, GaN based STC prototype is built and experimental results verify the proposed idea very well.
Seeing the Light: The Roles of Red- and Blue-Light Sensing in Plant Microbes.

Plants collect, concentrate, and conduct light throughout their tissues, thus enhancing light availability to their resident microbes. This review explores the role of photosensing in the biology of plant-associated bacteria and fungi, including the molecular mechanisms of red-light sensing by phytochromes and blue-light sensing by LOV (light-oxygen-voltage)-domain proteins in these microbes. Bacteriophytochromes function as major drivers of the bacterial transcriptome and mediate light-regulated suppression of virulence, motility, and conjugation in some phytopathogens and light-regulated induction of the photosynthetic apparatus in a stem-nodulating symbiont. Bacterial LOV proteins also influence light-mediated changes in both symbiotic and pathogenic phenotypes. Although red-light sensing by fungal phytopathogens is poorly understood, fungal LOV proteins contribute to blue-light regulation of traits, including asexual development and virulence. Collectively, these studies highlight that plant microbes ...
Role of Microvascular Shunts in the Loss of Cerebral Blood Flow Autoregulation

Historically, determination of the critical cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) was done in animals by a progressive lowering of arterial pressure yielding a nominal critical CPP of 60 mmHg. Subsequently, it was shown that if the CPP was decreased by increasing intracranial pressure (ICP), critical CPP fell to 30 mmHg. This discrepancy was unexplained. We recently provided evidence that the decrease in critical CPP was due to microvascular shunting resulting in maintained cerebral blood flow (CBF) at a lower CPP. We demonstrated by a progressive increase in ICP in rats using two-photon laser scanning microscopy (2PLSM) that the transition from capillary to microvascular shunt flow is a pathological process. We surmise that the loss of CBF autoregulation revealed by decreasing arterial pressure occurs by dilation of normal cerebral blood vessels whereas that which occurs by increasing ICP is due to microvascular shunting. Our observations indicate that the loss of CBF autoregulation we observed in brain injured patients that changes on an hourly or daily basis reflects an important pathophysiological process impacting on outcome that remains to be determined.
Middle Paleolithic Large-Mammal Hunting in the Southern Levant

I examine the ungulate remains from late Middle Paleolithic (MP) Kebara Cave (Israel) and offer evidence pointing to overhunting by Levantine Neanderthals toward the close of the MP: (1) the frequency of red deer and aurochs declined over the course of the sequence, largely independent of major fluctuations in the Levantine speleothem climate record; (2) the proportion of juvenile gazelles and fallow deer increased in the younger levels, as did the proportion of young adults; (3) upward in the sequence, hunters brought back fewer gazelle and fallow deer heads, suggesting that they either had to travel farther to hunt, or that they took many more animals per trip, perhaps in cooperative kills. Taken together, these observations, in conjunction with evidence from other sites in the region, suggest that the resource intensification characteristic of the “Broad Spectrum Revolution” (BSR), may already have begun in the latter part of the MP.
Biological Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Since the demonstration of the visibility of single heavy atoms (CREWE et al., 1971) and unstained biological molecules (CREWE and WALL, 1970) using the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), biologists have been excited by the potential of the STEM for biological structure determination. Although heavy atom selective staining will probably become the most important future application of the STEM, several other applications are already well established and will be essential to development of selective staining. These applications derive from the incoherence (not to be confused with the common usage of this term) of the signal measured by the STEM annular detector, particularly if large angle scattering (40–200 mRadian) is recorded (FERTIG and ROSE, 1977). Coherence length is a measure of the distance between two scattering centers at which it is possible for the presence of the second center to influence scattering detected from the first. FERTIG and ROSE calculate that this coherence length for the conditions normally used in the STEM (.015 radian illumination half angle,.04–.20 radian annular detector acceptance, see Fig. 12.1) in the plane of the specimen is ~0.9 A and in the direction of the beam, ~30 A. Thus, it is unlikely that more than two atoms could give rise to coherent scattering, except in a crystalline specimen. This means that the STEM large angle annular detector signal is proportional to the number of atoms in the beam at any instant, the proportionality constant being the atomic scattering cross-section, σA(A2). It can be shown that if the specimen is scanned with a focused or defocused beam to give a uniform dose D(el/A2), the number of scattered electrons from a given atom will be D·σ, independent of the focal setting. This linearity between STEM large angle detector signal and specimen mass thickness makes quantitative interpretation of STEM images straightforward, even at high resolution. The major limitation to interpretability then becomes radiation damage.
Old MacDonald’s Cow: Procedural Programming

Old MacDonald has a farm, and on that farm he has a fenced, circular pasture with a radius of 10 meters. He would like to let his cow graze inside the fence, but wants to limit her range so that she can eat only half of the grass. To do this, he plans to tie the cow to one of the fence posts with a rope. How long should the rope be so that the cow can range over only half of the pasture?
Structural basis for activation of voltage sensor domains in an ion channel TPC1

Voltage-sensing domains (VSDs) couple changes in transmembrane electrical potential to conformational changes that regulate ion conductance through a central channel. Positively charged amino acids inside each sensor cooperatively respond to changes in voltage. Our previous structure of a TPC1 channel captured an example of a resting-state VSD in an intact ion channel. To generate an activated-state VSD in the same channel we removed the luminal inhibitory Ca2+-binding site (Cai2+), which shifts voltage-dependent opening to more negative voltage and activation at 0 mV. Cryo-EM reveals two coexisting structures of the VSD, an intermediate state 1 that partially closes access to the cytoplasmic side but remains occluded on the luminal side and an intermediate activated state 2 in which the cytoplasmic solvent access to the gating charges closes, while luminal access partially opens. Activation can be thought of as moving a hydrophobic insulating region of the VSD from the external side to an alternate grouping on the internal side. This effectively moves the gating charges from the inside potential to that of the outside. Activation also requires binding of Ca2+ to a cytoplasmic site (Caa2+). An X-ray structure with Caa2+ removed and a near-atomic resolution cryo-EM structure with Cai2+ removed define how dramatic conformational changes in the cytoplasmic domains may communicate with the VSD during activation. Together four structures provide a basis for understanding the voltage-dependent transition from resting to activated state, the tuning of VSD by thermodynamic stability, and this channel’s requirement of cytoplasmic Ca2+ ions for activation.
Experimental Evaluation of Sketching Techniques for Big Spatial Data

Ubiquitously connected devices, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), space telescopes, social networks, and GPS-enabled gadgets, are contributing to the perpetual and swift growth of the data. 2.5 exabytes of daily-produced data, of which 60-80% is geo-referenced. Space telescopes broadcast about 140 GB of data weekly. Availability of such large amount of data calls for new scalable query processing techniques. One of the techniques that is getting attention is sketching which summarizes the data and computes an approximate answer on the sketch. This general technique is used in partitioning [3], clustering [1], selectivity estimation [2], and visualization [4], among others. This paper introduces a sketching-based framework for big spatial data which provides four sketching methods and uses them to implement three common operations, namely, partitioning, clustering, and selectivity estimation. The framework is executed in three phases, sketching, local operation, and generalization, which can apply to a wide range of operations on big spatial data. Sampling is a widely used sketching technique, but there exist other techniques such as uniform and non-uniform histograms which are not well-studied due to two challenges. First, each sketching method has a different representation and creation parameters, e.g., sampling ratio or number of histogram cells, which make it hard to compare their performance. Second, while existing algorithms can be used as-is with samples, other sketching methods might require some tweaks to the algorithms to work. This work provides a comprehensive evaluation to understand the trade-offs in the different sketching techniques for big spatial data. In this paper, we present a three-phase sketching-based framework for big data processing. The first phase uses Spark to efficiently compute four types of data sketches, namely, sampling, uniform, non-uniform, and enhanced histograms. To make the sketching methods comparable, we define a parameter B which indicates the memory budget. Regardless of their representation, all sketching methods are designed to use up-to that memory budget. The second phase uses a single-machine to process the sketch and provide a partial answer to three popular and diverse operations, namely, partitioning, clustering, and selectivity estimation. Previous work mostly applied these techniques with sample-based sketches except for selectivity estimation which also used histograms. In this paper, we propose histogram-based spatial partitioning and K-means clustering and show that they can outperform sampling-based methods. The third phase takes the partial answer and scans all the data in parallel to generalize the answer to the entire dataset. In our experiments, we use both real and synthetic datasets of up-to 2.7 billion records and 100 GB of data. We vary the memory budget that we use for sketching and study its effect in both the execution time and quality of the results.
An Introduction to Celestial Mechanics

This accessible text on classical celestial mechanics, the principles governing the motions of bodies in the Solar System, provides a clear and concise treatment of virtually all of the major features of solar system dynamics. Building on advanced topics in classical mechanics such as rigid body rotation, Langrangian mechanics and orbital perturbation theory, this text has been written for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in astronomy, physics, mathematics and related fields. Specific topics covered include Keplerian orbits, the perihelion precession of the planets, tidal interactions between the Earth, Moon and Sun, the Roche radius, the stability of Lagrange points in the three-body problem and lunar motion. More than 100 exercises allow students to gauge their understanding and a solutions manual is available to instructors. Suitable for a first course in celestial mechanics, this text is the ideal bridge to higher level treatments.
The effect of adoptive transfer of ex vivo activated T cells on the efficacy and tumor penetrance of intravenously-administered CD3-engaging bispecific antibody.

30Background: Activated T cells are known to traffic throughout the body including past the blood-brain barrier where they perform routine immune surveillance. Whether activated T cells can be used...
Effect of Light Flashes vs Sham Therapy During Sleep With Adjunct Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Sleep Quality Among Adolescents: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance Owing to biological, behavioral, and societal factors, sleep duration in teenagers is often severely truncated, leading to pervasive sleep deprivation. Objective To determine whether a novel intervention, using both light exposure during sleep and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), would increase total sleep time in teenagers by enabling them to go to sleep earlier than usual. Design, Setting, and Participants This double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, conducted between November 1, 2013, and May 31, 2016, among 102 adolescents enrolled full-time in grades 9 to 12, who expressed difficulty going to bed earlier and waking up early enough, was composed of 2 phases. In phase 1, participants were assigned to receive either 3 weeks of light or sham therapy and were asked to try to go to sleep earlier. In phase 2, participants received 4 brief CBT sessions in addition to a modified light or sham therapy. All analyses were performed on an intent-to-treat basis. Interventions Light therapy consisted of receiving a 3-millisecond light flash every 20 seconds during the final 3 hours of sleep (phase 1) or final 2 hours of sleep (phase 2). Sham therapy used an identical device, but delivered 1 minute of light pulses (appearing in 20-second intervals, for a total of 3 pulses) per hour during the final 3 hours of sleep (phase 1) or 2 hours of sleep (phase 2). Light therapy occurred every night during the 4-week intervention. Cognitive behavioral therapy consisted of four 50-minute in-person sessions once per week. Main Outcomes and Measures Primary outcome measures included diary-based sleep times, momentary ratings of evening sleepiness, and subjective measures of sleepiness and sleep quality. Results Among the 102 participants (54 female [52.9%]; mean [SD] age, 15.6 [1.1] years), 72 were enrolled in phase 1 and 30 were enrolled in phase 2. Mixed-effects models revealed that light therapy alone was inadequate in changing the timing of sleep. However, compared with sham therapy plus CBT alone, light therapy plus CBT significantly moved sleep onset a mean (SD) of 50.1 (27.5) minutes earlier and increased nightly total sleep time by a mean (SD) of 43.3 (35.0) minutes. Light therapy plus CBT also resulted in a 7-fold greater increase in bedtime compliance than that observed among participants receiving sham plus CBT (mean [SD], 2.21 [3.91] vs 0.29 [0.76]), as well as a mean 0.55-point increase in subjective evening sleepiness as compared with a mean 0.48-point decrease in participants receiving sham plus CBT as measured on a 7-point sleepiness scale. Conclusions and Relevance This study found that light exposure during sleep, in combination with a brief, motivation-focused CBT intervention, was able to consistently move bedtimes earlier and increase total sleep time in teenagers. This type of passive light intervention in teenagers may lead to novel therapeutic applications. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier:NCT01406691