cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Aquatic treadmill walking at three depths of water in people with traumatic brain injury

Objective The purpose of this study was to analyse kinematic and spatiotemporal gait characteristics of aquatic treadmill walking among three different depths of water in individuals with traumatic brain injury. Methods A total of 13 individuals with traumatic brain injury participated in the study and completed walking trials at three different depths as follows: waist, chest, and neck level, which was adjusted by a movable floor pool. A self-selected comfortable walking speed at the waist level was used as a matched speed for all walking trials. Participants completed three aquatic treadmill walking trials under each of the three water depths. Each participant's gait was captured by a customized underwater motion analysis system and processed by a two-dimensional motion analysis software. Results The repeated measures analysis of variance showed significant differences in spatiotemporal and joint kinematic variables across three conditions: stance swing ratio (p = .023), peak hip flexion (p = .001), hip range of motion (p = .047), and peak ankle dorsiflexion (p = .000). Various water properties in conjunction with motor impairments might have contributed to alterations in gait kinematics. Conclusion Our findings suggest that walking in neck-depth water may not be ideal for gait training as it appears to limit hip flexion and ankle dorsiflexion. It is recommended that waist to chest-depth water be used to provide an accommodating environment for aquatic gait rehabilitation.
Abstract TP428: Missed Opportunities for Secondary Stroke Prevention in Embolic Stroke of Undetermined Source Patients in a Community Stroke Unit Setting

Recent post-hoc analyses of the NAVIGATE ESUS trial suggested a reduction in stroke recurrence with anticoagulation in a subset of embolic stroke of unknown source (ESUS) patients with left atrial ...
Inside the Swarms: Personalization, Gamification, and the Networked Public Sphere

To understand the ways in which the public sphere has become “colonized” by steering media, and fundamentally mediatized, this chapter explores the aggregate effects of two defining aspects of the Social Web—personalization and gamification, as they respectively manifest in algorithmic filtering tools and common participatory features (friending, sharing, commenting, and reacting)—on our sense of the public, on the Social Imaginary, and on our shared repertoire of meaningful social action. Whereas personalization aligns our interests with others like us based on partial data and pseudoscientific proxies, reducing our sense of the world to reflect our “tribal” predilections, gamification privileges our instant, affective reactions, bypassing our more critical, cognitive faculties. When combined, personalization and gamification accelerate our pre-existing tendencies toward imitation and conformity, destabilize crucial boundaries between public and private, and institutionalize market logics within the social world.
Leadership Essentials for CHEST Medicine Professionals: Models, Attributes, and Styles

In the context that leadership matters and that leadership competencies differ from those needed to practice medicine or conduct research, developing leadership competencies for physicians is important. Indeed, effective leadership is needed ubiquitously in health care, both at the executive level and at the bedside (eg, leading clinical teams and problem-solving on the ward). Various leadership models have been proposed, most converging on common attributes, like envisioning a new and better future state, inspiring others around this shared vision, empowering others to effect the vision, modeling the expected behaviors, and engaging others by appealing to shared values. Attention to creating an organizational culture that is informed by the seven classic virtues (trust, compassion, courage, justice, wisdom, temperance, and hope) can also unleash discretionary effort in the organization to achieve high performance. Health care-specific leadership competencies include: technical expertise, not only in one's clinical/scientific arena to garner colleagues' respect but also regarding operations; strategic thinking; finance; human resources; and information technology. Also, knowledge of the regulatory and legislative environments of health care is critical, as is being a problem-solver and lifelong learner. Perhaps most important to leadership in health care, as in all sectors, is having emotional intelligence. A spectrum of leadership styles has been described, and effective leaders are facile in deploying each style in a situationally appropriate way. Overall, leadership competencies can be developed, and leadership development programs are signature features of leading health-care organizations.
Via Design Optimization for High Speed Differential Interconnects on Circuit Boards

The unprecedented demand for high bandwidth applications boosts the data rates of major high speed differential interconnect protocols such as PCIe and Thunderbolt/USB. Transmission lines and via transitions form most of the interconnect path between a transmitter and a receiver. To get maximum performance of the system at high signaling rates, the impedance of the interconnect path has to be as uniform as possible to cause minimal signal reflections. While the impedance of transmission lines can be easily controlled, the impedance of vias are much harder to control. In this paper, we use time-domain impedance waveforms in conjunction with channel simulations to optimize the impedance profiles of 3 types of differential vias: through-hole vias, blind vias and buried vias. We do this by varying the via diameter, pad diameter, antipad diameter and via pitch (center-to-center distance). We then show a quick method to optimize the vias for faster turnaround time, depending on whether the via impedance is too capacitive or too inductive. The board designer can use the quick method to try to achieve approximately the impedance profiles we show.
Extraordinarily Hot X-ray Emission from the 09 Emission Line Star HD 119682

We present new optical and X-ray observations to show that the X-ray source 1 WGA J1346.5--6255 previously associated with the SNR G309.2--0.6 can be unequivocally identified with the emission line star HD 119682 located in the foreground open cluster NGC 5281. Images from Chandra in the X-ray band as well as from Magellan in the narrow optical H-alpha band show a coincidence of the source positions within 0.5". The X-ray source appears extremely hot for an OB-star identified as of O9.7e type. XMM-Newton spectra show plasma temperatures of 1 keV and >8 keV with an X-ray luminosity of 6.2E32 +/-0.1E32 erg/s. The optical and X-ray properties are very reminiscent of the prototype emission line star Gamma-Cas. We discuss the ramifications of this similarity with respect to very early type emission line stars as a new class of hard X-ray sources.
E-Education in ROP

Web-based educational resources are available for providers managing patients with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). These tools include web-based tutorials and training modules, integrated software tools, online toolkits with standardized patient education, consents, and reference materials.
Early versus late tube feeding initiation after PEG tube placement: Does time to feeding matter?

Abstract Background Variation exists in the timing of tube feed initiation after percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement. The aim of our study was to review outcomes of early tube feed (ETF) versus late tube feed (LTF) initiation after PEG tube placement. Methods We performed a retrospective review of all trauma patients who underwent PEG tube placement from 1/2014 to 12/2018. ETF was defined as initiation 24 h after placement. The primary outcome measure was feeding intolerance and secondary outcomes included post-operative complications. All statistical analyses were performed using standard statistical methods (e.g. Pearson's Chi-squared, Fisher's exact and Mann Whitney-U tests). Results There were 295 patients (164 ETF and 131 LTF) that received a PEG tube at our level 1 trauma center. There was no difference with feeding intolerance at 12 h (5% vs. 4%; p = 0.88), 24 h (1% vs. 2%; p = 1.00), and 48 h (4% vs. 4%; p = 1.00). There was no difference when comparing intolerance symptoms such as nausea and vomiting (1% vs. 2%; p = 0.79), abdominal tenderness (2% vs. 3%; p = 0.76), high gastric residuals (2% vs. 2%; p = 1.00) and aspiration (0% vs. 2%; p = 0.39). There was no difference when comparing post-operative complications (4% vs. 8%; p = 0.21). Conclusions Early tube feeding after PEG placement is safe and equivalent to late tube feeding in the adult trauma population. Future prospective studies are warranted to establish the optimal timing for initiation of tube feeds after PEG tube placement.
Circadian misalignment by environmental light/dark shifting causes circadian disruption in colon.

Background Physiological circadian rhythms (CRs) are complex processes with 24-hour oscillations that regulate diverse biological functions. Chronic weekly light/dark (LD) shifting (CR disruption; CRD) in mice results in colonic hyperpermeability. However, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are incompletely understood. One potential innovative in vitro method to study colonic CRs are colon organoids. The goals of this study were to utilize circadian clock gene Per2 luciferase reporter (Per2::Luc) mice to measure the effects of chronic LD shifting on colonic tissue circadian rhythmicity ex vivo and to determine if organoids made from shifted mice colons recapitulate the in vivo phenotype. Methods Non-shifted (NS) and shifted (S) BL6 Per2::Luc mice were compared after a 22-week experiment. NS mice had a standard 12h light/12h dark LD cycle throughout. S mice alternated 12h LD patterns weekly, with light from 6am-6pm one week followed by shifting light to 6pm-6am the next week for 22 weeks. Mice were tested for intestinal permeability while colon tissue and organoids were examined for CRs of bioluminescence and proteins of barrier function and cell fate. Results There was no absolute difference in NS vs. S 24h circadian period or phase. However, chronic LD shifting caused Per2::Luc S mice colon tissue to exhibit significantly greater variability in both the period and phase of Per2::Luc rhythms than NS mice colon tissue and organoids. Chronic LD shifting also resulted in increased colonic permeability of the Per2::Luc mice as well as decreased protein markers of intestinal permeability in colonic tissue and organoids from shifted Per2:Luc mice. Conclusions Our studies support a model in which chronic central circadian disruption by LD shifting alters the circadian phenotype of the colon tissue and results in colon leakiness and loss of colonic barrier function. These CRD-related changes are stably expressed in colon stem cell derived organoids from CRD mice.
Spiritually Oriented Expressive Writing and Promoting Positive Outcomes After a Natural Disaster

Natural disasters can disrupt and challenge survivors’ core belief systems, leading to negative health consequences. People often rely on religion/spirituality to help them cope and make meaning, b...
Nonparametric inference for interventional effects with multiple mediators

Understanding the pathways whereby an intervention has an effect on an outcome is a common scientific goal. A rich body of literature provides various decompositions of the total intervention effect into pathway-specific effects. Interventional direct and indirect effects provide one such decomposition. Existing estimators of these effects are based on parametric models with confidence interval estimation facilitated via the nonparametric bootstrap. We provide theory that allows for more flexible, possibly machine learning-based, estimation techniques to be considered. In particular, we establish weak convergence results that facilitate the construction of closed-form confidence intervals and hypothesis tests and prove multiple robustness properties of the proposed estimators. Simulations show that inference based on large-sample theory has adequate small-sample performance. Our work thus provides a means of leveraging modern statistical learning techniques in estimation of interventional mediation effects.
Manual Annotation Studio (MAS): a collaborative platform for manual functional annotation of viral and microbial genomes.

Background Functional genome annotation is the process of labelling functional genomic regions with descriptive information. Manual curation can produce higher quality genome annotations than fully automated methods. Manual annotation efforts are time-consuming and complex; however, software can help reduce these drawbacks. Results We created Manual Annotation Studio (MAS) to improve the efficiency of the process of manual functional annotation prokaryotic and viral genomes. MAS allows users to upload unannotated genomes, provides an interface to edit and upload annotations, tracks annotation history and progress, and saves data to a relational database. MAS provides users with pertinent information through a simple point and click interface to execute and visualize results for multiple homology search tools (blastp, rpsblast, and HHsearch) against multiple databases (Swiss-Prot, nr, CDD, PDB, and an internally generated database). MAS was designed to accept connections over the local area network (LAN) of a lab or organization so multiple users can access it simultaneously. MAS can take advantage of high-performance computing (HPC) clusters by interfacing with SGE or SLURM and data can be exported from MAS in a variety of formats (FASTA, GenBank, GFF, and excel). Conclusions MAS streamlines and provides structure to manual functional annotation projects. MAS enhances the ability of users to generate, interpret, and compare results from multiple tools. The structure that MAS provides can improve project organization and reduce annotation errors. MAS is ideal for team-based annotation projects because it facilitates collaboration.
Longitudinal Association Between Angina Pectoris and Quality of Life.

Angina is a common symptom in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD); however, its impact on patients’ quality of life over time is not well understood. We sought to determine the longitudinal association of angina frequency with quality of life and functional status over a 5-year period. We used data from the Heart and Soul Study, a prospective cohort study of 1,023 outpatients with stable CAD. Participants completed the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at baseline and annually for 5 years. We evaluated the population effect of angina frequency on disease-specific quality of life (SAQ Disease Perception), physical function (SAQ Physical Limitation), perceived overall health, and overall quality of life, with adjusted models. We evaluated these associations within the same year and with a time-lagged association between angina and quality of life reported 1 year later. Generalized estimating equation models were used to account for repeated measures and within-subject correlation of responses. Over 5 years of follow-up, patients with daily or weekly angina symptoms had lower quality of life scores (52 vs 89, p
Problems of Mental Health Counseling in the Criminal Justice System

The Eskimos have a word, Kulangeta, which means “his mind knows what to do but he doesn’t do it.” It is used to describe a man who repeatedly lies, cheats, or steals. Kulangeta is not a behavior that the shamans or healers are believed to be able to cure or change. When asked what would have happened traditionally to such a person, an Eskimo replies that someone would have pushed him off the ice when no one was looking (Murphy, 1976).
Property-Based testing and verification: a catalog of classroom examples

For the past a decade, John Hughes of Chalmers University and Quviq has pioneered property-based testing in debugging industrial software. Three undergraduate courses at the University of Oklahoma have paralleled this work, but on the pedagogical side and with the additional goal of verification of properties by mathematical proof, using both paper-and-pencil methods and mechanized logic. An essential part of both efforts, and probably the most important part, is the formalization in predicate logic of the expectations of software developers. This is central to engineering software quality in the defect dimension. This report discusses property-based testing in course work and provides some examples from the classroom. Hughes has observed that software properties useful for testing functional software often (1) compare the results of different ways of computing the same thing or (2) check that forward and inverse transformations restore the original data. What percentage of useful software properties fall into these categories? Our collection of examples from course records may help shed some light on how closely pedagogy on property-based testing matches observations of relative frequencies of various categories of properties in industry and may also serve as an educational aid in learning to use property-based testing effectively in software development.
Measuring Legal Change

Everyone knows that the law changes over time. The Langdellians may have believed that one couldl discover-like Newton-a small ntumber of immutal)le principles that controlled the vast structure of the law, but to maintain such a position today would )be proof of dementia. Since the collapse of the Langdellian construct, virtually every article al)out the law that examines nmore than one case has ma(de some characterization of the rate and direction of legal change. And the most aml)itious of theoretical and historical studies make legal change the central sublject of inquiry. Holmes's The Commonii Law, for examlple, is essentially a long essay presenting a theory of the determilnants of legal change.. Althougil more precise implications were available firoml his theory, Holmes-writing in a pre-empirical age-su)pports the theory chiefly by showing q(ualitative differences between ancient rules and their nod(ern counterparts. The qualitative comparison of legal standards, of course, has remained a staple of legal scholarship. Scholars following tHolmes, however, have devoted much
Can Credit Market Signalling Improve Labor Market Outcomes

According to a Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management [6], 25% of human resource representatives interviewed in 1998 indicated that the companies they worked for ran credit checks on potential employees while the fraction increased to 43% in 2004. In this paper, we explore how such credit checks (information on observable credit market actions) might help separate workers with heterogeneous unobservable productivity. Ever since Spence [7], we’ve known that observable actions which are correlated with unobservable productivities can be used to separate workers. We show by means of example that if the number of observable actions in the education market is smaller than the number of unobservable types, then it might be ecient for employers to include observable credit market actions in their Bayesian assessment of worker type. We then assess the welfare consequences of a law (the Equal Employment for All Act (H.R. 3149)) prohibiting the use of credit information in employment decisions which currently sits before Congress.
FDI Policies in China and India: Evidence from Firm Surveys

This paper builds on the idea that economic reforms in China were designed to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), while the opposite happened in India. We empirically examine how these different reform approaches affect foreign-invested enterprises’ (FIE) and domestic firms’ perceptions about the host country’s business environment. Using World Bank survey data, we find that FIEs in India perceive more obstacles to business operations and development relative to domestic firms, especially on issues related to government regulations and legal institutions. On the contrary, FIEs in China find government officials more helpful in promoting business development and perceive legal and financial constraints similar to their domestic counterparts. These differences in perceptions between firm ownership types are consistent with the underlying diverging approaches of FDI policies adopted by the two largest developing nations.
Agar-Gel Precipitin-Inhibition Technique for C-Reactive Protein Determinations

An application of the agargel precipitin-inhibition technique of Ray and Kadull detects the C-reactive protein present in the acute-phase human sera. The sensitivity of this procedure is compared with the capillary tube-precipitin method of Selman and Halpern. Images
Reliability profiles for steel girder bridges with regard to corrosion and fatigue

Reliability-based models are developed for time-varying changes in structural performance due to corrosion and fatigue. The fatigue limit state is one of the important considerations in the design of bridges. Accumulated load cycles can cause cracking or even failure. Reliability analysis is performed for the fatigue limit state function of flexure. Prediction of the remaining fatigue life for steel and concrete beams is illustrated on examples of existing bridge girders. Corrosion causes a loss of the section and reduction of the load carrying capacity. The rate of corrosion is a random variable. Three levels of corrosion are considered. Changes in the reliability are evaluated as a function of time, covering the life-time of the bridge.
Using Expert Tutor Knowledge to Design a Self-Improving Intelligent Tutoring System

What knowledge does an intelligent tutoring system need to learn from its experiences with students and improve its tutoring, and what are the necessary learning mechanisms? I address these in discussing (1) SIFT, a Self-Improving Fractions Tutor and (2) my study of an expert tutor on whose knowledge SIFT is based. SIFT is a production system with a tutor and a learning module which learns from its interactions with the students who use it. The students who use it are models of problem solvers, and the input transcripts are simulations of interactions. After augmenting its knowledge, SIFT evaluates its modifications and updates its rule probabilities using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence—a domain-independent modification. Thus its choice of which rule to fire is determined by the empirical effects of the changes it makes to its tutorial knowledge.
Law, Food, and Culture: Mexican Corn's National Identity Cooked in 'Tortilla Discourses' Post-TLC/NAFTA

This essay offers a brief inquiry concerning food and national identity as expressed in the law. It examines how in 2008 the Tratado de Libre Comercio de America de Norte/North American Free Trade Agreement (TLC/NAFTA) eliminates Mexican tariffs for corn imports from the U.S. or Canada. Corn is examined as a product steeped in centuries of cultural significance for Mexico. This essay prepares a three-course argument. Section I incorporates insights from the food studies discipline to argue that beyond serving for nourishment food possesses enormous cultural and commercial value. This creates a ripe and abundant subject for legal analysis, focusing on how the law frames these tastes. Section II analytically serves up the cultural importance of food in Mexico's political economy. It shows how food is stewed within a discourse of national identity on a global table. This identity is imagined as a community with competing menu options of nationalistic and domestic and foreign and neo-liberal. Current tariff elimination resembles a historic and cultural tortilla discourse, which poses corn and its use by popular sectors against modern interests. Section III describes a re-imagination of food and national identity within the confines of Mexican law and the recent tortilla price crisis.
Magical Realism and the Child Reader: The Case of David Almond's Skellig

In this article Don Latham uses Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" to illustrate how Skellig is an example of magic realism and how it is uniquely suited as such within children's literature. Although this article doesn't directly explore the theoretical aspects of magic realism within children's literature, Latham's method of applying Wendy B. Faris' criteria for magic realism to Almond's novel and then contrasting Skellig with "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" implicitly states that magic realism is possible in children's literature and lays solid groundwork for future theoretical explorations of how magic realism in children's literature is unique from its other, perhaps more common, manifestations.
Bufferless and Minimally-Buffered Deflection Routing

A conventional Network-on-Chip (NoC) router uses input buffers to store in-flight packets. These buffers improve performance, but consume significant power. It is possible to bypass these buffers when they are empty, reducing dynamic power, but static buffer power remains, and when buffers are utilized, dynamic buffer power remains as well. To improve energy efficiency, bufferless deflection routing removes input buffers, and instead uses deflection (misrouting) to resolve contention. Bufferless deflection routing is able to provide similar network performance to conventional buffered routing when the network carries light to moderate traffic, because deflections are relatively rare. However, at high network load, deflections cause unnecessary network hops, wasting power and reducing performance. In order to avoid some deflections and recover some performance, recent work has proposed to add a small buffer which holds only flits that contend with others and would have been deflected. This minimally-buffered deflection (MinBD) router improves performance relative to bufferless deflection routing without incurring the cost of a large buffer, because it can make more efficient use of a small buffer. The result is a router design which is more energy-efficient than prior buffered, bufferless, and hybrid router designs.
Integrin Engagement Mediates the Human Polymorphonuclear Leukocyte Response to a Fungal Pathogen-Associated Molecular Pattern

Extravasation of leukocytes from peripheral blood is required for an effective inflammatory response at sites of tissue infection. Integrins help mediate extravasation and navigate the leukocyte to the infectious source. A novel role for integrins in regulating the effector response to a cell wall component of fungal pathogens is the subject of the current study. Although phagocytosis is useful for clearance of unicellular fungi, the immune response against large, noningestible hyphae is not well-understood. Fungal beta-glucan, a pathogen-associated molecular pattern, activates production of superoxide anion in leukocytes without the need for phagocytosis. To model polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) recognition of fungi under conditions in which phagocytosis cannot occur, beta-glucan was covalently immobilized onto tissue culture plastic. Plasma membrane-associated respiratory burst was measured by reduction of ferricytochrome C. Results show that the human PMN oxidative burst response to immobilized beta-glucan is suppressed by addition of beta(1) integrin ligands to the beta-glucan matrix. Suppression was dose dependent and steric hindrance was ruled out. beta(1) integrin ligands did not affect respiratory burst to ingestible beta-glucan-containing particles, phorbol esters or live yeast hyphae. Furthermore, in the absence of matrix, Ab activation of VLA3 or VLA5, but not other beta(1) integrins, also prevented beta-glucan-induced respiratory burst. beta(1)-induced suppression was blocked and burst response restored by treating neutrophils with either the cell-binding fragment of soluble human Fn, cyclic RGD peptide, or Ab specific to VLA3 or VLA5. Together these findings extend the functional role of beta(1) integrins to include modulating PMN respiratory burst to a pathogen-associated molecular pattern.
Mutational spectrometry: means and ends.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the ways to measure mutational spectra in whole human cell populations and in human tissue samples. Different mutagens give different spectra of point-mutations in the rII region of bacteriophage lambda . Most researchers, who have used mutational spectra, have been interested in the molecular mechanisms of spontaneous and chemically induced mutation. A few have been interested in finding the primary causes of mutation in various organs of humans. Statistical analysis (χ 2 ) showed the spectra of the two chemicals to be different at 99% confidence limit. However, if the data sets were simply divided in half, the two spectra were not significantly different even at 95% confidence limit. This is a lot of work (>750 clones) to conclude that two spectra are not significantly different. It is especially difficult in this case, in which the spectra are, in fact, different. But one could not be sure of this, with fewer than the 1500 colonies studied.
The Collapse of Communism in the USSR: Cold War Victory or Cold War Illusions?

The collapse of communism signalled the glorious victory for the West in the Cold War. Just because the collapse of communism occurred after the Reagan build-up, it does not necessarily follow that the build-up caused the collapse. The Soviet system was structurally weak since its founding and doomed to collapse. Unfortunately, past choices made under Cold War illusions have structurally distorted the United States economy and weakened its long term viability. If the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union tells something about the structural failings of the political economy of socialism, then the collapse of state capitalism in the United States should tell something about the structural shortcomings of the political economy of leviathan and "imperial overstretch." The statistics justified large military expenditures to fight the advent of global communism. If the Soviet economy was structurally weak, then the threat of communism would have been rather shallow and would not have justified the military strategy of the Cold War.
State space conditions for robust H/sub 2/ analysis

This paper studies state-space methods to compute the frequency domain conditions for robust H/sub 2/ performance under structured uncertainty, recently obtained by the author (1995, 1996). For uncertainty scalings which are constant or spanned by fixed basis functions, the problem is reduced to a finite dimensional convex condition of the linear matrix inequality type.
Technique for painting light integration boxes

Abstract We describe a method for the application of a highly reflectant, diffuse coating to the interior of light integration boxes. Simple box design considerations are presented in addition to techniques for dealing with a variety of problems which we have experienced. An analysis of the performance of a light integration box of m 2 surface area is given. The overall box reflectivity is found to be 96.7% and that of the paint is found to be 97.3% at a wavelength of 425 nm.
Moral Education in a Pluralistic World

Pluralism is in high vogue today, but the ease and enthusiasm with which pluralism is embraced suggests a widespread misunderstanding or naivete about its meaning. Such blithe pluralists often simply equate pluralism with the diversity of interest groups and the toleration of religious differences in modem democratic societies. But such political and ecclesiastical pluraformity is not pluralism. The dispersion of political power and the freedom of religious assembly within non-hierarchical societies usually represent differences and disagreements within a shared commitment to one nation under one God. Pluralism by contrast assumes no such overarching unity or loyalty. Pluralism is the existence of multiple frames of reference, each with its own scheme of understanding and criteria of rationality. Pluralism is the co-existence of comparable and competing positions which are not to be reconciled. Pluralism is the recognition that different persons and different groups quite literally indwell irreducibly different worlds. Little wonder that virtually every study of higher education in the last five years has drawn attention to the lack of serious moral education in the undergraduate curriculum. Allan Bloom's celebrated jeremiad on The Closing of the American Mind and E.D. Hirsch's reader's digest of Cultural Literacy scold the academy for failing to deal with questions of moral value and civic virtue. The Association of American College's 1985 report on redefining the meaning and purpose of baccalaureate degrees identifies values as a necessary element in every student's under-
Density Functional Theory Study of the Isomers of C6N

Using large-scale basis sets and the B3LYP hybrid functional, the structures of linear and cyclic isomers of C6N have been studied. The lowest energy conformer is the linear, nitrogen-terminated st...
The Relation Between the Degree of Solidification of Fat in Cream and its Churning Time. I. Measurement of the Degree of Solidification

Summary A calorimetric method is described for measuring the specific heat and heat of melting of milk fat in cream. The specific heat of skim milk was found when measured to range from 0.943 at 0° C. and 0.963 at 60° C. Milk fat in cream was found to have a specific heat of 0.5. The heat of melting one gram of milk fat between −10° C. and 60° C. was measured at 19.5 calories. Typical values for the percentage of solid fat in cream at various temperatures are given. These vary according to the temperature of the cream and the length of time it was held at that temperature.
A homologous naturally occurring mutation in Duffy and CCR5 leading to reduced receptor expression

Genetic variations in the CC chemokine receptor (CCR5) leading to reduced or absent expression are associated with resistance to human immunodeficiency virus infection and delayed onset of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Similarly, lack of the red-cell chemokine receptor Duffy confers protection against malarial infection by Plasmodium vivax. Investigators have previously described a missense mutation (R89C) in the first intracellular loop of Duffy that results in reduced protein expression. The present study shows that the lower Duffy expression is due to loss of the positive charge at this position, resulting in protein instability. Moreover, R60S, a mutation in the first intracellular loop of CCR5 noted in a recent cohort study, likewise results in reduced surface expression and function of CCR5. The presence of a homologous, naturally occurring mutation that may be protective against disease thus defines a novel mechanism accounting for the decreased expression of these receptors in some individuals. (Blood. 2001;97:3651-3654)
Can the Attributes of Venture Teamwork be Taught in Tertiary Level Entrepreneurship Programs

Drawing from the entrepreneurship and business education literature, this article reviews the extent to which group work in entrepreneurship courses reflects the processes involved in real world venture teamwork. Limitations in the classroom processes of group work are discussed and recommendations suggested for making the classroom experiences of more use to later venture creation.
Food Prices, Politics, and Policy in the Progressive Era

U.S.food prices surged abruptly higher in 1910–1913, alarming urban consumers, who equated them with the high cost of living, but delighting farmers. Progressive reformers tackled detailed aspects of the food-price problem but had no overarching solution and no effective programs t o please both consumers and farmers. A volatile pattern of economic voting resulted, but unlike conventional models, it had countervailing tendencies, setting consumers against food producers. Food prices cost the Republicans heavily in the 1910 election and helped disrupt the party by 1912, ending the Republican “system of 1896.” In power, Democrats pursued primarily a southern-tinged agrarian agenda and narrowly preserved power through 1914 and 1916 but fell victim to interest-group conflicts in 1918 and economic disasters in 1920.
The Utility of Pharmacokinetics to the Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmacokinetic studies done early in the course of drug development can favorably influence the course of research by suggesting optimum dosage regimens, drug delivery methods, and fixed-ratio combinations and by alerting the clinical pharmacologist to potential problems. Pharmacokinetic data can be useful in the design of rational clinical drug research and thereby expedite clinical trials and save research costs. Thus, in addition to their value in the area of comparative bio-availability, pharmacokinetic studies carried out by the pharmaceutical industry are useful economically as well as scientifically.
Relationship between the amino acid compositions of α1- and α2-chains of collagens

Abstract Although there is a great variation in the relative abundance of the individual amino acids in the α 1 - and α 2 -chains of collagens, the contents of amino acids that are similarly coded in the genetic code are approximately the same in the α 1 - and α 2 - chains. These results suggest a related genetic origin for the two chains.
The rewards of restraint in the collective regulation of foraging by harvester ant colonies

Desert harvester ant colonies regulate their foraging activity and this collective behaviour appears to be under selection; colonies that forage less when conditions are poor have greater reproductive success, and the regulation of foraging behaviour appears to be inherited from parent to offspring colonies. Ant colonies are sometimes thought of as superorganisms, implying that they are subject to natural selection at a colony level. In a long-term (27-year) study of the association between collective behaviour and reproductive success in colonies of the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus, Deborah Gordon has found that, yes, they can show this superorganism characteristic. In times of drought, harvester ants tend not to forage as much as they do in times of plenty; they seem to bide their time until circumstances improve. This trait of restraint is passed on to daughter colonies, showing that it can indeed be regarded as a colony-level trait. Collective behaviour, arising from local interactions1, allows groups to respond to changing conditions. Long-term studies have shown that the traits of individual mammals and birds are associated with their reproductive success2,3,4,5,6, but little is known about the evolutionary ecology of collective behaviour in natural populations. An ant colony operates without central control, regulating its activity through a network of local interactions7. This work shows that variation among harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) colonies in collective response to changing conditions8 is related to variation in colony lifetime reproductive success in the production of offspring colonies. Desiccation costs are high for harvester ants foraging in the desert9,10. More successful colonies tend to forage less when conditions are dry, and show relatively stable foraging activity when conditions are more humid. Restraint from foraging does not compromise a colony’s long-term survival; colonies that fail to forage at all on many days survive as long, over the colony’s 20–30-year lifespan, as those that forage more regularly. Sensitivity to conditions in which to reduce foraging activity may be transmissible from parent to offspring colony. These results indicate that natural selection is shaping the collective behaviour that regulates foraging activity, and that the selection pressure, related to climate, may grow stronger if the current drought in their habitat persists.
Terminal structures of West Nile virus genomic RNA and their interactions with viral NS5 protein

Genome cyclization is essential for flavivirus replication. We used RNases to probe the structures formed by the 5'-terminal 190 nucleotides and the 3'-terminal 111 nucleotides of the West Nile virus (WNV) genomic RNA. When analyzed individually, the two RNAs adopt stem-loop structures as predicted by the thermodynamic-folding program. However, when mixed together, the two RNAs form a duplex that is mediated through base-pairings of two sets of RNA elements (5'CS/3'CSI and 5'UAR/3'UAR). Formation of the RNA duplex facilitates a conformational change that leaves the 3'-terminal nucleotides of the genome (position -8 to -16) to be single-stranded. Viral NS5 binds specifically to the 5'-terminal stem-loop (SL1) of the genomic RNA. The 5'SL1 RNA structure is essential for WNV replication. The study has provided further evidence to suggest that flavivirus genome cyclization and NS5/5'SL1 RNA interaction facilitate NS5 binding to the 3' end of the genome for the initiation of viral minus-strand RNA synthesis.
Catadioptric Telescope For Extreme Spectral And Temperature Ranges

Abstract An optical system is described which is corrected for spherical aberration, coma, astiq- matism, Petzval curvature, longitudinal and lateral color, secondary color, spherochromatism and chromatic variation of all the field aberrations. It has very good performance on a flat image over an extremely broad spectral range, from the ultraviolet to the infrared. It has also been designed to cover a very broad temperature range. All spherical surfaces are used, and only one glass type. With BK-7 glass, the Catadioptric design has a spot size of four arc-seconds over a 3 degree diameter field of view flat image at f/2.5, over the whole^ ^^ ^f is essentially ^changed over ?Introduction^i-' ^oughton1 found a waY to replace the Schmidt corrector plate of the Schmidt telescope with a triplet lens located at the center of curvature of the spherical primary mirror Figure 1 shows how this looks. It has two big advantages over the conventional o°h 4- telesc°Pe:4_ .^he absence of aspheric surfaces and the possibility of correcting spher­ ochromatism. It still has a curved image and is equally as long as the Schmidt. By sep­ arating the components of the triplet so that there are appreciable airspaces between the elements, Houghton was also able to control oblique spherical aberration ^tween theStopSpherical Mirror
Increased cure rate of glioblastoma using concurrent therapy with radiotherapy and arsenic trioxide

Abstract Purpose Patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) do extremely poorly despite aggressive therapy with surgery, radiotherapy (RT), and chemotherapy. In an effort to increase the efficacy of therapy for GBM, we studied the efficacy of arsenic trioxide (ATO) combined with high-dose RT in GBM cells in vitro and GBM xenograft tumors in nude mice. Methods and materials Human glioblastoma cell line SNB75 cells were irradiated in vitro with doses of 0–15 Gy with or without ATO. Clonogenic assays were used to generate radiation survival curves. Intracellular reactive oxygen species and apoptosis induced by ATO and RT were measured. The therapeutic efficacy of ATO alone, local tumor RT alone, and the combined therapy was tested in nude mice bearing established s.c. SNB75 tumors. A single RT dose of 20 Gy was administered locally to tumors. ATO at 10 mg/kg was injected i.p. 10 min after RT for the in vivo experiments. Results Radiation survival curves of GBM SNB75 cells demonstrated that a dose of 0.2 μM ATO increased radiation-induced cell killing by 2 logs at 10 Gy. ATO at 1 μM decreased survival from 4 × 10 −2 after 7 Gy of RT alone to 4 × 10 −5 . A time-course experiment demonstrated that the greatest level of cell killing occurred when ATO was administered immediately before or within 2 hours after RT. To test the therapeutic efficacy of this combined treatment regimen in vivo, nude mice with established SNB75 GBM tumors were treated with a single local tumor dose of 20 Gy of RT with or without ATO (10 mg/kg × two doses) administered weekly. Appropriate control groups were included as well. ATO alone did not inhibit tumor growth. RT at 20 Gy alone inhibited tumor growth by 45 days, with regrowth of tumors thereafter. The combination of RT and ATO resulted in complete regression of the tumors in 4 of 5 mice without tumor regrowth for up to 4 months. The fifth mouse in the combined treatment group had a 90% reduction in tumor size without progression during the 4-month follow-up period. Furthermore, ATO alone and in combination with RT did not produce any obvious signs of toxicity. Conclusion These results have demonstrated that ATO increases intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species, induces apoptosis, and enhances the radiation cell killing of GBM cells. RT combined with ATO was an effective treatment for GBM tumors in this preclinical model. These preclinical results are encouraging and provide a rationale for further study of ATO combined with RT for the treatment of GBM and other histologic types of brain cancer using a variety of RT schemes.
Exact inequality and test of chiral sw(3) theory in k-l-3 decay problem

Assuming the chiral SW(3) model, exact inequalities for the ${K}_{l3}$ scalar form factor $D(t)$ and its derivatives have been studied. We can sharpen our inequalities considerably if we take into account the soft-pion theorem. These inequalities are stringent enough to test the validity of the chiral SW(3) theory.
A moving screw dislocation interacting with an imperfect piezoelectric bimaterial interface

Closed-form solutions in terms of exponential integrals are derived for a constantly moving screw dislocation in a piezoelectric bimaterial with an imperfect interface. The imperfect interface discussed here is mechanically compliant and dielectrically weakly (or highly) conducting. The electroelastic fields due to the moving dislocation, such as stresses, strains, electric displacements and electric fields, are obtained for this bimaterial. The solutions derived here are valid when the moving velocity of the screw dislocation is below the Bleustein–Gulyaev wave speeds of the two piezoelectric half-planes. This restriction is different from that in a perfectly bonded bimaterial where the moving velocity of the screw dislocation is below the piezoelectrically stiffened bulk shear wave speeds of the two piezoelectric half-planes. Numerical results are also presented to demonstrate the influence of the interface imperfection and the velocity of the moving dislocation on the electroelastic fields in the piezoelectric bimaterial. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)