cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Release of substance P by low oxygen in the rabbit carotid body: evidence for the involvement of calcium channels.

Abstract Carotid bodies from diverse species contain substance P (SP), an 11-residue peptide that belongs to the tachykinin peptide family. Previous studies indicated that SP is excitatory to the carotid body and is associated with sensory response to hypoxia. However, release of SP from the carotid body during hypoxia has not been documented. In the present study, we determined whether hypoxia releases SP from the carotid body and further characterized the mechanism(s) associated with SP release by low oxygen. The release of SP from superfused rabbit carotid body was determined by an enzyme immunoassay (EIA). SP-like immunoreactivity was localized to many glomus cells and nerve fibers and the concentration of SP in the rabbit carotid body was 1.5±0.1 ng/mg protein. For release studies, carotid bodies ( n =56) were superfused with a modified Tyrode medium containing Hepes buffer, pH 7.4, saturated with either room air (normoxia) or hypoxic gas mixtures. The basal release of SP during normoxia was 51.0±1.5 fmol/min per mg protein. Hypoxia increased SP release from the carotid body and the magnitude of release is dependent on the severity of hypoxic stimulus. Moderate hypoxia (pO 2 , 79±4 mmHg) stimulated SP release by ∼50%, whereas SP release during severe hypoxia (pO 2 , 11±6 mmHg) was 2-fold higher than the normoxic control. A similar pattern of SP release was also observed when superfusion medium containing CO 2 –HCO 3 buffer, pH 7.4, was used for release studies. To examine the mechanism(s) associated with hypoxia-induced SP release from the carotid body, moderate level of hypoxia (12% O 2 +N 2 ) was used. Omission of calcium in the superfusion medium markedly attenuated hypoxia-induced SP release (>95%), whereas the basal release of SP was unaffected. Cd 2+ (100 μM), a voltage-dependent Ca 2+ -channel blocker, abolished hypoxia-induced SP release. About 85% of SP release by hypoxia was inhibited by ω-conotoxin GVIA (1 μM), an N-type Ca 2+ channel blocker, whereas nitrendipine (1.5 μM), an inhibitor of L-type Ca 2+ channel partially attenuated (∼65%) hypoxia-induced SP release. By contrast, ω-agatoxin TK (50 nM), a P/Q-type Ca 2+ -channel inhibitor, had no significant effect ( P >0.05, n =6). These results suggest that SP is released from the rabbit carotid body by hypoxia that depends on the severity of the hypoxic stimulus. Further, SP release by hypoxia is a calcium-dependent process and is primarily mediated by N- and L-type Ca 2+ channels.
Measures of complexity: a nonexhaustive list

The world has grown more complex recently, and the number of ways of measuring complexity has grown even faster. This multiplication of measures has been taken by some to indicate confusion in the field of complex systems. In fact, the many measures of complexity represent variations on a few underlying themes. This column presents an (incomplete) categorization and tabulation of measures of complexity. An historical analog to the problem of measuring complexity is the problem of describing electromagnetism before Maxwell’s equations. In the case of electromagnetism, quantities such as electric and magnetic forces that arose in different experimental contexts were originally regarded as fundamentally different. Eventually it became clear that electricity and magnetism were in fact closely related aspects of the same fundamental quantity, the electromagnetic field. Similarly, contemporary researchers in architecture, biology, computer science, dynamical systems, engineering, finance, game theory, etc., have defined different measures of complexity for each field. Because these researchers were asking the same questions about the complexity of their different subjects of research, however, their answers have much in common. Three questions that are frequently posed when attempting to quantify the complexity of the thing (house, bacterium, problem, process, investment scheme) under study are 1) How hard is it to describe? 2) How hard is it to create? 3) What is its degree of organization? I use these questions to group measures of complexity. Measures within a group are typically closely related quantities.
Electronic states in a magnetic quantum-dot molecule: Instabilities and spontaneous symmetry breaking

We show that a double quantum-dot system made of diluted magnetic semiconductor behaves unlike the usual molecules. In a semiconductor double quantum dot or in a diatomic molecule, the ground state of a single carrier is described by a symmetric orbital. In a magnetic material molecule, new ground states with broken symmetry can appear due the competition between the tunneling and magnetic polaron energy. With decreasing temperature, the ground state changes from the normal symmetric state to a state with spontaneously broken symmetry. Interestingly, the symmetry of a magnetic molecule is recovered at very low temperatures. A magnetic double quantum dot with broken-symmetry phases can be used as a voltage-controlled nanoscale memory cell.
HSAS: a heuristic development tool

The authors present HSAS (heuristic search animation system), a tool which uses algorithm animation to aid the development of heuristics. HSAS has been used to analyze A* and study another search algorithm which uses islands or subgoals. It has been demonstrated that algorithm animation can be a useful tool when developing heuristics. The tool presented, HSAS, is a stepping stone into the arena of full-blown algorithm animation systems. When completed, HSAS will provide a complete environment for creating, debugging, and comparing heuristics. >
Social learning versus traditional teaching in an elementary school cardiovascular health promotion program.

Coronary heart disease in adults can be traced to lifestyle behaviors such as obesity and a diet high in fat, cholesterol, and calories. Children with poor health habits are likely to be at greatest risk for adult heart disease, because behavioral and physiologic risk factors are carried into adulthood? One strategy for preventing cardiac problems is school-based nutrition education, which can be guided by a variety of theoretical models of education. A traditional teaching strategy emphasizes knowledge acquisition. The assumption is that changing knowledge about food can change eating behavior and attitudes. However, knowledge alone is often inadequate to modify children’s eating habits, z Alternatively, social learning theory~’4 explains how individuals acquire and maintain behaviors in their environment. The teaching approach emphasizes skill building, role modeling, and goal setting to change behavior, rather than relying on knowledge acquisition. The purpose of this study was to compare a program of nutrition education guided by social learning theory with a more traditional teaching approach. It was hypothesized that students receiving the social learning approach would realize greater improvements in cognitive and behavioral responses, leading to favorable physiologic changes.
Virus Multiplicity of Infection Affects Type I Interferon Subtype Induction Profiles and Interferon-Stimulated Genes

ABSTRACT Type I interferons (IFNs) are induced upon viral infection and important mediators of innate immunity. While there is 1 beta interferon (IFN-β) protein, there are 12 different IFN-α subtypes. It has been reported extensively that different viruses induce distinct patterns of IFN subtypes, but it has not been previously shown how the viral multiplicity of infection (MOI) can affect IFN induction. In this study, we discovered the novel finding that human U937 cells infected with 2 different concentrations of Sendai virus (SeV) induce 2 distinct type I IFN subtype profiles. Cells infected at the lower MOI induced more subtypes than cells infected at the higher MOI. We found that this was due to the extent of signaling through the IFN receptor (IFNAR). The cells infected at the lower viral MOI induced the IFNAR2-dependent IFN-α subtypes 4, 6, 7, 10, and 17, which were not induced in cells infected at higher virus concentrations. IFN-β and IFN-α1, -2, and -8 were induced in an IFNAR-independent manner in cells infected at both virus concentrations. IFN-α5, -14, -16, and -21 were induced in an IFNAR-dependent manner in cells infected at lower virus concentrations and in an IFNAR-independent manner in cells infected at higher virus concentrations. These differences in IFN subtype profiles in the 2 virus concentrations also resulted in distinct interferon-stimulated gene induction. These results present the novel finding that different viral MOIs differentially activate JAK/STAT signaling through the IFNAR, which greatly affects the profile of IFN subtypes that are induced. IMPORTANCE Type I IFNs are pleiotropic cytokines that are instrumental in combating viral diseases. Understanding how the individual subtypes are induced is important in developing strategies to block viral replication. Many studies have reported that different viruses induce distinct type I IFN subtype profiles due to differences in the way viruses are sensed in different cell types. However, we report in our study the novel finding that the amount of virus used to infect a system can also affect which type I IFN subtypes are induced due to the extent of activation of certain signaling pathways. These distinct IFN subtype profiles in cells infected at different MOIs are correlated with differences in interferon-stimulated gene induction, indicating that the same virus can induce distinct antiviral responses depending on the MOI. Because type I IFNs are used as therapeutic agents to treat viral diseases, understanding their antiviral mechanisms can enhance clinical treatments.
Evidence of Regulatory Noncompliance with SEC Disclosure Rules on Auditor Changes

This paper identifies widespread noncompliance with SEC regulations requiring prompt disclosure of auditor changes and investigates whether late filers and their auditors simply lack SEC expertise or have other reasons to delay reporting the auditor change. Some direct evidence in support of a specific Big-6 "quality" differential is provided. Most notably, the time to file the Form 8-K and the frequency of late filings increase significantly when non-Big 6 auditors are involved. Additionally, shorter filing delays and gradually higher compliance rates are detected after 1989 when the SEC reduced the Form 8-K filing time and the AICPA instituted a requirement for auditors to notify the Commission independently when a change occurs. We also find that late filers are more likely to be smaller and financially distressed, and less likely to issue securities following the auditor change, suggesting that compliance is affected by factors other than competency.
Judicial Stratification and the Reputations of the United States Courts of Appeals

In the past decade there has been a boomlet of studies, using citation analysis, to gauge the reputation or influence of particular judges. Until recently, however, there has been little systematic study of the reputation or influence of multimember courts as such. My goal in this article is to fill some of that gap by exploring the reputations - both historically and at the present time - of the individual U.S. Courts of Appeals. That is, I will compare and contrast the reputation of the thirteen (as the number stands now) Courts of Appeals: the First through Eleventh Circuits, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and the Federal Circuit. The article proceeds as follows. Part II addresses and disentangles the concepts of reputation, prestige, and influence, particularly as they are used in the legal community. It considers various measures of those concepts, principally though not only through citation analysis. I address the pros and cons of that, and other, measures, and problems associated in attributing reputation to collective entities, like multi-judge courts. In Part III, I address efforts, both historical and contemporary, to measure the reputations of the Courts of Appeals. Initially, I consider various accounts from the popular press and other non-scholarly sources which attempt to rank the circuits. Then I turn to somewhat more objective measures, such as surveys of attorneys and federal judges, of the reputations of circuits. Finally, I consider how various studies of citation analysis of the influence of particular federal appellate judges can be brought to bear on the reputation of the circuits on which they sit. To anticipate the conclusion: as Part III outlines, historically and to some extent to the present day, the Second and D.C. Circuits have been regarded as enjoying the most reputation and influence. Yet some, though not all, of the putatively objective measures of influence place the Seventh Circuit far above those two. In Part IV, I explore this apparent disconnect. In that Part, I conclude that a variety of factors have led, in general, to the overall homogenization of reputation among the circuits, with the notable apparent exceptions of the D.C., Second, and especially the Seventh Circuits. In the Conclusion to the Article, I briefly address whether reputation in this context remains a meaningful concept, offer suggestions for future research, and link measures of circuit reputation to the measurement of judicial performance in general.
The elephant in the room: constraints and consequences of a four-year undergraduate engineering degree

Engineering is the only profession for which candidates can be licensed with only an undergraduate degree. This attracts students seeking training for occupation more than education, encourages heavy non-discretionary course requirements, and relegates engineering to lower status that other professions requiring training following an undergraduate liberal education. This focus on instrumental reasoning further isolates engineering from other more self-reflexive professions.
Raising a racket: invasive species compete acoustically with native treefrogs

Environmental noise is increasing worldwide, limiting the space available for species to send and receive important acoustic information. Many invasive species produce acoustic signals that alter the spectrotemporal characteristics of available signalling space. This provides an opportunity to test ideas about competitive exclusion by quantifying whether species with shared requirements for acoustic resources will become excluded or partition resource use to permit coexistence. We conducted a field playback experiment to test whether native treefrogs (green treefrogs, Hyla cinerea; pine woods treefrogs, Hyla femoralis) modify their acoustic behaviour to minimize acoustic competition from chorus noise of the invasive Cuban treefrog, Osteopilus septentrionalis. We demonstrate that noise from an invasive species differentially affects the vocal behaviour of native species. Those with similar calls (H. cinerea) shortened calls, called louder and persisted calling in response to masking stimuli while those with different calls (H. femoralis) did not modify behaviour. This evidence suggests that acoustic competition by invasive O. septentrionalis has altered the acoustic community structure, identifying acoustic competition as a mechanism by which invasive species can impact communities. Furthermore, these results broaden the concept of noise pollution, demonstrating fitness-relevant consequences of noise produced by invasive species.
ATYPICAL PRESENTATION OF TYPE A AORTIC DISSECTION

Aortic Dissection (AD) has high mortality with delayed diagnosis. 1/3 of the patients got missed by initial evaluation. Diagnosis could be challenging as the symptoms simulate other common diseases. Very few cases presented with headache or neck pain. 44 years old female known to have hypertension
Embedded Narratives of Subversion in Luciano Bianciardi's La Vita Agra:

Building on Bakhtin's “plurality of voices” and on an anti-Hegelian exclusion of the subject from historical process, the essay explores how the unconventional plot of the novel symbolically resists and parodies the capitalist principles of contemporary 1960's Italian consumer society. The novel achieves this resistance by a calculated embedding of narrative spaces of transgression and rule-breaking actions within the main frame narrative, thereby positing an unproductive and non-conformist clash between the narrator-protagonist's hallucinatory and doxastic worlds (embedded texts) and the objective world of consumer society — represented by the frame narrative.
Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation Of Taste

Herbert Gans offers a critique of the universality of high cultural standards. While conceding that popular and high culture have converged to some extent, he still holds that the division exists.
Effects of Interim Assessments Across the Achievement Distribution: Evidence From an Experiment

We use data from a large-scale experiment conducted in Indiana in 2009-2010 to examine the impact of two interim assessment programs (mCLASS and Acuity) across the mathematics and reading achievement distributions. Specifically, we focus on whether the use of interim assessments has a particularly strong effect on improving outcomes for low achievers. Quantile regression is used to estimate treatment effects across the entire achievement distribution (i.e., provide estimates in the lower, middle, or upper tails). Results indicate that in Grades 3 to 8 (particularly third, fifth, and sixth) lower achievers seem to benefit more from interim assessments than higher achieving students.
A Slap of the Tail: Reading Medical Humanities

(1988). A Slap of the Tail: Reading Medical Humanities. Hospital Practice: Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 67-79.
Conjugal rights: marriage, sexuality, and urban life in colonial Libreville

Gabon is not the most common setting for Africanist research in North America. In fact, the former colonies of French Equatorial Africa remain among the least studied countries on the African conti...
Post-surgical neuropathy after total hip arthroplasty: Causality and avoidance

Abstract Nerve palsy is an uncommon but distressing complication after total hip arthroplasty. Because motor function can be affected, weakness of the lower limb is a common manifestation, causing difficulty with walking and the planned rehabilitation for the hip. As such, significant disability is imparted to the affected patient. The proposed etiologies of nerve palsy include compression and tension during the course of the operation, or a collection of blood postoperatively. In the literature, hip dysplasia, lengthening of the leg, use of an uncemented femoral component, and female sex are associated with a greater risk of nerve palsy. If a compressive hematoma is found, surgical evacuation may be beneficial. As palsies are slow to recover, supportive care such as bracing, therapy, and reassurance are the mainstays of treatment.
Abstract 4992: Development of a novel radiation-induced targeted immunotherapy strategy through oligonucleotide aptamer conjugation

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produce dramatic anti-tumor responses in multiple solid tumors. Unfortunately, systemic administration can result in end organ retention and dose-limiting toxicities. Radiotherapy (RT) is a standard-of-care treatment modality that induces direct tumor cell kill through DNA damage. While studies assessing the synergy of RT-induced tumor cell kill with mAbs are ongoing, an additional unexploited effect of RT is the induction of stress response products in the tumor microenvironment, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Oligonucleotide aptamers are short pieces of nucleic acid that exhibit little to no immunogenicity compared to mAbs, making them ideal delivery vehicles for therapeutic mAbs. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of a novel strategy for targeted tumor delivery of existing immunotherapeutic mAbs through conjugation to ligands that bind to radiation induced products. An antibody recognizing the costimulatory molecule 41BB was covalently modified with a 21-mer ssDNA oligonucleotide linker sequence that serves as an anchor site for the VEGF aptamer synthesized with a 3’ extension. Annealing of complementary strands formed a 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer conjugate. First, VEGF aptamer conjugation to modified 41BB mAb was verified by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis which revealed the expected size shift of the 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer conjugate versus the unannealed controls. Conjugation was then verified using flow cytometry. Recombinant mouse 41BB-Fc was immobilized on Protein A Dynabeads and 41BB mAb conjugated with 5’ biotinylated VEGF aptamer. 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer conjugate retention on Dynabeads was confirmed by using streptavidin-PE 5’ biotin of aptamer attached to mAb in conjugate binding epitope target. Functionality of 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer conjugate was confirmed in vitro using a CD8+ T cell costimulation assay. CD8+ T cells were isolated from 8 week old female C57BL6/J splenocytes, and exposed to sub-optimal levels of CD3 mAb. 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer conjugate, unconjugated 41BB mAb and isotype control were added to activated cells. Elevated levels of interferon gamma were observed and equivalent in conjugated and unconjugated 41BB mAbs. These results indicate that conjugation of 41BB mAb-VEGF aptamer is feasible and that conjugation does not affect 41BB mAb functionality. Use of this novel targeting approach to improve the therapeutic index of immunotherapeutic mAbs requires validation in murine tumor models. Citation Format: Ana Paula Benaduce, Randall Brenneman, Diana Cardero, Brett Schrand, Eli Gilboa, Adrian Ishkanian. Development of a novel radiation-induced targeted immunotherapy strategy through oligonucleotide aptamer conjugation. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 4992.
Influence of hydrogen bonding on the melt rheology of polypropylene

Abstract The rheological behavior of hydroxyl-functionalized polypropylene (PPOH) copolymers modified with up to 3.9 mol% hydroxyl groups was compared with unmodified polypropylene (PP) in the melt state. The hydroxyl groups interacted via hydrogen (H-) bonding, the strength of which increased with increasing hydroxyl concentration. The hydrogen bonds persisted at temperatures as high as 250 °C, even though the H-bonding strength decreased with increasing temperature. A direct consequence of H-bonding was an increase in the elasticity, viscosity and relaxation time of the PPOH copolymers compared to PP, and also an increase in these properties with increasing hydroxyl concentration. The zero-shear viscosity exhibited a power-law relationship with the hydroxyl concentration, η0 ∝ [Mv]3.6 [OH]2, which was found to be consistent with the predictions from Leibler-Rubinstein-Colby (LRC) theory for associating polymers. The PPOH copolymers exhibited apparent molecular weights 2–8 times higher than the actual molecular weights. The PPOH copolymer with 3.9 mol% hydroxyl groups displayed a gel-like behavior that suggested the formation of an elastic network in the melt presumably due to the phase separation of H-bonded OH groups into nanoclusters. The network, however, was weak since non-Newtonian viscous flow occurred under non-linear deformations.
Towards social-aware interesting place finding in social sensing applications

This paper develops a principled approach to accurately identify interesting places in a city through social sensing applications. Social sensing has emerged as a new application paradigm, where a crowd of social sources (humans or devices on their behalf) collectively contribute a large amount of observations about the physical world. This paper studies an interesting place finding problem, in which the goal is to correctly identify the interesting places in a city. Important challenges exist in solving this problem: (i) the interestingness of a place is not only related to the number of users who visit it, but also depends upon the travel experience of the visiting users; (ii) the users social connections could directly affect their visiting behavior and the interestingness judgment of a given place. In this paper, we develop a new Social-aware Interesting Place Finding Plus (SIPF+) approach that addresses the above challenges by explicitly incorporating both the users travel experience and social relationship into a rigorous analytical framework. The SIPF+ scheme can find interesting places not typically identified by traditional travel websites (e.g., TripAdvisor, Expedia). We compare our solution with state-of-the-art baselines using two real-world datasets collected from location-based social network services and verified the effectiveness of our approach.
The Keys to Successful Knowledge-Sharing:

A key source of competitive advantage stems from the possession and use of specialised knowledge. But to use such knowledge, firms must learn to share it both within and across appropriate departme...
Evolution of force networks in dense particulate matter

We discuss sets of measures with the goal of describing dynamical properties of force networks in dense particulate systems. The presented approach is based on persistent homology and allows for extracting precise, quantitative measures that describe the evolution of geometric features of the interparticle forces, without necessarily considering the details related to individual contacts between particles. The networks considered emerge from discrete element simulations of two-dimensional particulate systems consisting of compressible frictional circular disks. We quantify the evolution of the networks for slowly compressed systems undergoing jamming transition. The main findings include uncovering significant but localized changes of force networks for unjammed systems, global (systemwide) changes as the systems evolve through jamming, to be followed by significantly less dramatic evolution for the jammed states. We consider both connected components, related in a loose sense to force chains, and loops and find that both measures provide a significant insight into the evolution of force networks. In addition to normal, we consider also tangential forces between the particles and find that they evolve in the consistent manner. Consideration of both frictional and frictionless systems leads us to the conclusion that friction plays a significant role in determining the dynamical properties of the considered networks. We find that the proposed approach describes the considered networks in a precise yet tractable manner, making it possible to identify features which could be difficult or impossible to describe using other approaches.
Most Antibiotics Similar in Efficacy for Lower UTI

This network meta-analysis found that the antibiotics commonly used to treat lower UTI are similar in efficacy, with one exception: amoxicillin/clavulanate (Augmentin) is significantly less effective than the others.
Assessing Student Answers to Balanced Tree Problems

Problems in the domain of balanced binary tree operations usually involve the students constructing a sequence of transformations to insert or delete a value. An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) in this area must be able to perform.
Understanding rating behavior based on moral foundations: The case of Yelp reviews

Moral inclinations expressed in user-generated content such as online reviews can provide useful insight to understand and predict people's rating behavior. In this work, we extracted a corpus of over 7,000 online reviews on Yelp that express moral concerns, and associated them to five moral factors defined in Moral Foundations Theory using the Doc2Vec natural language processing technique. We compared the rating distributions between the regular reviewers and the moral-concerned reviewers, and found that their rating patterns significantly differ from each other. Our findings also indicate that people with moral concerns tend to rate lower if a moral foundation is violated. Moreover, among the five moral factors, purity is the most distinctive moral foundation.
Personalizing acute therapies for ischemic stroke: Thrombolysis or thrombectomy?

The last 2 years has seen unprecedented advances in acute stroke care. In 2015, multiple independent clinical trials demonstrated that endovascular thrombectomy early after acute ischemic stroke (AIS) onset is highly effective for reducing long-term disability.1–5 More recently, the DAWN trial demonstrated the efficacy of thrombectomy in select patients up to 24 hours after stroke onset.6 Critical to the success of these trials has been the use of rapid and robust neuroimaging methods that helped select appropriate patients based on clot location or core/penumbral signatures. Neuroimaging has become the precision medicine equivalent in AIS, personalizing care based on advanced imaging measures.7
Urinary bladder cancer T-staging from T2-weighted MR images using an optimal biomarker approach

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often used in clinical practice to stage patients with bladder cancer to help plan treatment. However, qualitative assessment of MR images is prone to inaccuracies, adversely affecting patient outcomes. In this paper, T2-weighted MR image-based quantitative features were extracted from the bladder wall in 65 patients with bladder cancer to classify them into two primary tumor (T) stage groups: group 1 – T stage < T2, with primary tumor locally confined to the bladder, and group 2 – T stage < T2, with primary tumor locally extending beyond the bladder. The bladder was divided into 8 sectors in the axial plane, where each sector has a corresponding reference standard T stage that is based on expert radiology qualitative MR image review and histopathologic results. The performance of the classification for correct assignment of T stage grouping was then evaluated at both the patient level and the sector level. Each bladder sector was divided into 3 shells (inner, middle, and outer), and 15,834 features including intensity features and texture features from local binary pattern and gray-level co-occurrence matrix were extracted from the 3 shells of each sector. An optimal feature set was selected from all features using an optimal biomarker approach. Nine optimal biomarker features were derived based on texture properties from the middle shell, with an area under the ROC curve of AUC value at the sector and patient level of 0.813 and 0.806, respectively.
Palliative Care Training and Decision-Making for Patients with Advanced Cancer: A Comparison of Surgeons and Medical Physicians

Abstract Background Surgical decision-making in patients with advanced cancer requires careful thought and deliberation to balance the high risks with the potential palliative benefits. We sought to compare surgical decision-making and palliative care training among surgeons and medical physicians who commonly treat advanced cancer patients. We hypothesized that surgeons will report less palliative care training compared with medical physicians, and deficits in palliative care training will be associated with more aggressive treatment recommendations in clinical scenarios of advanced cancer patients with symptomatic surgical conditions. Study Design Practicing surgeons, medical oncologists, intensivists, and palliative care physicians from a large urban city and its surrounding areas were surveyed with a 32-item questionnaire consisting of a survey addressing palliative care training and 4 clinical vignettes depicting patients with advanced cancer and symptomatic surgical conditions. Results Of the 299 physicians surveyed, 102 responded (response rate 34.1%). Surgeons reported fewer hours of palliative care training during residency, fellowship, and continuing medical education combined (median 10, IQR 2-15) compared with medical oncologists (median 30, IQR 20-80) and medical intensivists (median 50 IQR 30-100), P Conclusion Substantial deficiencies in palliative care training persist among surgeons and are associated with more aggressive recommendations for treatment for the selected scenarios presented in patients with advanced cancer. These findings highlight the need for greater efforts systemwide in palliative care education among surgeons, including incorporation of a structured palliative care training curriculum in graduate and continuing surgical education.
Robust Multidimensional Scaling

Modern technology enables the collection of vast quantities of data. Smart automatic data selection algorithms are needed to discover important data structures that are obscured by other structure or random noise. We suggest an efficient and flexible algorithm that chooses the “best ” subsample from a given dataset. We avoid the combinatorial search over all possible subsamples and efficiently find the datapoints that describe the primary structure of the data. Although the algorithm can be used in many analysis scenarios, this paper explores the application of the method to problems in multidimensional scaling.
CHAPTER 6 – Grizzly Bear

Grizzly bear habitat use reflects attempts by bears to obtain food, select suitable denning locations, avoid other predators, and avoid areas of human activity. The size of a bear's home range in a region provides an approximate index of the relative ability of the region to provide for these necessities, that is, the home range defines the essential habitat. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the oil industry have implemented a number of management actions to reduce impacts on bears on the oil fields. These include closing the developed area to big game hunting, prohibiting firearms within the oil fields, properly educating oil-field personnel about bear safety, and training oil-field security personnel in proper hazing techniques to reduce bear/human encounters. Plans are now under way to eliminate bear access to the landfill and to install bear-proof lids on garbage bins. It is anticipated that as bears in the oil fields are excluded from these anthropogenic food sources, there may be a short-term increase in mortality of the food-conditioned bears. Nevertheless, it is also believed that the long-term trend will be a reduction in postweaning mortality and an increase in cub mortality, consistent with the patterns of bears in the oil-field region that use only natural foods.
Measurement of sexual health in the U.S.: an inventory of nationally representative surveys and surveillance systems.

Objectives.To identify opportunities within nationally representative surveys and surveillance systems to measure indicators of sexual health, we reviewed and inventoried existing data systems that include variables relevant to sexual health.Methods.We searched for U.S. nationally representative surveys and surveillance systems that provided individual-level sexual health data. We assessed the methods of each data system and catalogued them by their measurement of the following domains of sexual health: knowledge, communication, attitudes, service access and utilization, sexual behaviors, relationships, and adverse health outcomes.Results.We identified 18 U.S.-focused, nationally representative data systems: six assessing the general population, seven focused on special populations, and five addressing health outcomes. While these data systems provide a rich repository of information from which to assess national measures of sexual health, they present several limitations. Most importantly, apart from dat...
Use of Variational Methods for the Analysis of Contact Problems in Solid Mechanics

We describe several variational formulations of the problem of contact of an incompressible elastic body with a lubricated rigid foundation. These include variational inequalities, Lagrange multiplier methods, and penalty methods. Existence theorems are presented as well as results of finite element approximations.
Louisiana Nonmigratory Whooping Crane Reintroduction

Abstract It is speculated that Louisiana once supported more Whooping Cranes (Grus americana) during winter than anywhere in North America. The coastal tallgrass prairie and coastal marshes of the Chenier Plain of Louisiana supported both a resident and migratory population. The migratory population was extirpated around 1918 but the last resident bird remained in the marshes at present day White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area until 1950. In 2011, the first of several annual releases of Whooping Cranes occurred at White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area in an attempt to reestablish a resident population of Whooping Cranes in the region. Since the extirpation of Whooping Cranes in 1950, the habitats in both the coastal prairie and the coastal marshes of the Chenier Plain have changed to some degree. Rice and crawfish aquaculture are now dominant land uses on the coastal prairie and hydrologic changes are common in the coastal marshes of the Chenier Plain. These changes present major challenges to reintroduction efforts, although the sheer abundance, diversity, and productivity of these habitats are encouraging. In this chapter, we discuss the history of Whooping Cranes in Louisiana, the historic and current conditions of the ecological systems that they historically used, and identify several potential challenges to success of this reintroduction project.
Using reservoir computers to distinguish chaotic signals

Several recent papers have shown that reservoir computers are useful for analyzing and predicting dynamical systems. Reservoir computers have also been shown to be useful for various classification problems. In this work, a reservoir computer is used to identify one out of the 19 different Sprott systems. An advantage of reservoir computers for this problem is that no embedding is necessary. Some guidance on choosing the reservoir computer parameters is given. The dependance on number of points, number of reservoir nodes, and noise in identifying the Sprott systems is explored.
Quantitative coronary flow capacity for risk stratification and clinical decision making: Is it ready for prime time?

> See the associated article on page [410][1]. Semiquantitative evaluation of regional myocardial perfusion has been standard practice in nuclear cardiology for more than 3 decades. This approach has proven to be accurate and reproducible. Most importantly, semiquantitative measures of total
Longitudinal Trend of Tricuspid Regurgitation Following Left Ventricular Assist Device Implantation

Purpose Although tricuspid regurgitation (TR) following left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation is known to be related to unfavorable outcomes, the longitudinal trend of TR during LVAD course remains unknown. The aim of this study is to clarify the longitudinal trend of TR prior to and following LVAD implantation. Methods We retrospectively reviewed patients who received LVAD implantation between 4/2014-8/2018. We evaluated the grade of TR by echocardiography prior to and following LVAD implantation. TR grade was determined based on the color flow jet area. Moderate or severe TR was defined as significant. We compared clinical outcomes of patients with concomitant tricuspid valve (TV) procedure (TVP+) and those without (TVP-). Results Among 199 consecutive patients, 194 patients had at least 2 echocardiographic TR grade assessments. All patients had a test prior to LVAD implantation, and had an average of 6±4 tests after LVAD implantation during a median of 389 (range 8-1540) days of follow-up. Mean age was 57±13 years and 132 patients (68%) were male. 107 (55%) patients were included in TVP+. Prior to LVAD implantation the prevalence of significant TR was higher in TVP+ (51% in TVP+ vs 20% in TVP-, P All-cause mortality and heart failure (HF) readmission-free survival were similar between the groups. In contrast, patients with significant TR in the early period (within 6 months) had lower HF readmission-free survival (at 1 year, 60% in significant TR vs 74% in non-significant TR, P=0.015, Figure 1B). Conclusion Long-term trend of TR and clinical outcomes throughout LVAD course were similar between TVP+ and TVP-. Patients with significant TR had decreased HF-free survival.
Subwavelength antimonide infrared detector coupled with dielectric resonator antenna

Antenna coupled detectors break the intrinsic tradeoff between signal and noise by “collecting over a large area” and “detecting over a small area”. Most antenna coupled detectors in the infrared rely on a metal resonator structure. However, there are losses associated with metallic structures. We have demonstrated a novel long-wave infrared (LWIR) detector that combines a dielectric resonator antenna with an antimonide-based absorber. The detector consists of a 3D, subwavelength InAsSb absorber embedded in a resonant, cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna made of amorphous silicon. This architecture enables the antimonide detection element to shrink to deep subwavelength dimensions, thereby reducing its thermal noise. It is important to note that this concept only applies when (a) the detector noise is limited by bulk noise mechanisms with negligible surface leakage currents and (b) the dominant source of current in the device is due to dark current (such as diffusion) that scales with the volume of the detector. The dielectric resonator enhances the collection of photons with its resonant structure that couples incident radiation to the detector. We will present results on the absorption in structures with and without the dielectric resonator antenna. The signal to noise enhancement in the LWIR photodiodes integrated with the dielectric resonator antenna using radiometric characterization will be discussed.
A deep-level region-based visual representation architecture for detecting strawberry flowers in an outdoor field

An accurate and robust strawberry flower representation and detection scheme is a key step to enable the reliable forecasting of fruit yield for use in precision agricultural applications. A state-of-the-art deep-level object detection framework which processes images through several layers using a region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) was developed to visually represent the instances of strawberry flowers in outdoor fields and improve the detection accuracy. A modified version of the visual geometry group 19 (VGG19) architecture, which had 47 layers, was used to represent the multiple scales of strawberry flower image features. The networks were trained entirely on 400 strawberry flower images and tested on another 100 images. Different region-based object detection methods, including the R-CNN, Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN, were used to represent the strawberry flower instances. The Faster R-CNN model achieved a better performance than the R-CNN and Fast R-CNN in detecting the instances and had a lower execution time. The detection accuracy of the Faster R-CNN model was 86.1%, which was higher than those of the R-CNN and Fast R-CNN models (63.4% and 76.7%, respectively). The experimental results showed the effectiveness of the deep-level Faster R-CNN framework for representing the strawberry flower instances under various camera view-points, different distances to flowers, overlaps, complex background illumination, blur, etc. The system developed for automatic and accurate strawberry flower detection provides an important and significant solution that enables subsequent applications to estimate the strawberry yield in outdoor fields.
MECHANISM OF ENZYMIC DECARBOXYLATION OF BETA KETOACIDS

The decarboxylation of acetoacetic acid occurs via a Schiff base pathway under catalysis by an enzyme from Clostridium acetobutylicum. The reaction illustrates a ketimine mechanism, similar to that for several aldolases. The Schiff base mechanism for decarboxylation requires that the unprotonated amino group of a specific lysine residue react with the ketoacid; in order for this to be an efficient process at neutral pH, the pK of the conjugate acid of this lysine residue must be several units lower than that of an ordinary e amino group. New kinetic studies and studies of acetoacetate decarboxylase marked with a “reporter group” show that the pK of the essential lysine residue in this enzyme is around 6, and offer evidence that the large decrease in pK, relative to that of the e-amino group of lysine, is electrostatic in origin. Model studies show that the decarboxylation step is accelerated about a million-fold by Schiff base formation and that the condensation of ketone and amine can be fast. The mechanism therefore explains the major part of the enzymic catalysis.
Longitudinal associations between minority stressors and substance use among sexual and gender minority individuals.

Abstract Background Sexual and gender minority individuals (SGM) are at increased risk for substance use and substance use problems compared to heterosexual individuals. A growing cross-sectional literature has demonstrated that minority stressors are associated with higher risk for substance use among SGM individuals. However, longitudinal research in this area is limited and existing longitudinal studies have focused almost exclusively on one type of substance use (alcohol) and one minority stressor (SGM victimization). Methods To extend the longitudinal body of research on associations between minority stressors and substance use, we utilized seven waves of data from a longitudinal cohort study of 1091 SGM individuals assigned male at birth to examine associations between three minority stressors, general stress, and marijuana and alcohol use. Results At the within-person level, results indicated that when individuals experienced more internalized stigma, microaggressions, victimization, or general stress than usual, they reported more concurrent alcohol problems. Further, when individuals experienced more microaggressions or general stress than usual, they also experienced more concurrent marijuana use problems. However, stressors were not prospectively associated with higher rates of alcohol or marijuana problems six months later. Conclusions Findings indicate that minority stressors are consistently associated with more concurrent alcohol problems, while these associations may be less consistent for marijuana problems. The lack of prospective effects of minority stress on substance use points to the need for innovative methods for examining these effects, such as daily or weekly diary studies.
Space of Ricci Flows I

Based on the compactness of the moduli of non-collapsed Calabi-Yau spaces with mild singularities, we set up a structure theory for polarized Kahler Ricci flows with proper geo- metric bounds. Our theory is a generalization of the structure theory of non-collapsed Kahler Einstein manifolds. As applications, we prove the Hamilton-Tian conjecture and the partial- C 0 -conjecture of Tian.
Books: The Communication Revolution Reveals Problems

(1978). Books: The Communication Revolution Reveals Problems. Journalism History: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 22-29.