cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Telemedicine Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: Mixed-Methods Review

Background: Telemedicine has grown exponentially in the United States over the past few decades, and contemporary trends in the health care environment are serving to fuel this growth into the future. Therefore, medical schools are learning to incorporate telemedicine competencies into the undergraduate medical education of future physicians so that they can more effectively leverage telemedicine technologies for improving the quality of care, increasing patient access, and reducing health care expense. This review articulates the efforts of allopathic-degree-granting medical schools in the United States to characterize and systematize the learnings that have been generated thus far in the domain of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. Objective: The aim of this review was to collect and outline the current experiences and learnings that have been generated as medical schools have sought to implement telemedicine capacity-building into undergraduate medical education. Methods: We performed a mixed-methods review, starting with a literature review via Scopus, tracking with Excel, and an email outreach effort utilizing telemedicine curriculum data gathered by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. This outreach included 70 institutions and yielded 7 interviews, 4 peer-reviewed research papers, 6 online documents, and 3 completed survey responses. Results: There is an emerging, rich international body of learning being generated in the field of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. The integration of telemedicine-based lessons, ethics case-studies, clinical rotations, and even teleassessments are being found to offer great value for medical schools and their students. Most medical students find such training to be a valuable component of their preclinical and clinical education for a variety of reasons, which include fostering greater familiarity with telemedicine and increased comfort with applying telemedical approaches in their future careers. Conclusions: These competencies are increasingly important in tackling the challenges facing health care in the 21st century, and further implementation of telemedicine curricula into undergraduate medical education is highly merited.
Affinity war: forging immunoglobulin repertoires.

B cell immunoglobulin (Ig) repertoire composition shapes immune responses. The generation of Ig diversity begins with Ig variable region exon assembly from gene segments, random inter-segment junction sequence diversity, and combinations of Ig heavy and light chain. This generates vast preemptive sequence freedom in early developing B lineage cell Ig genes that can anticipate a great diversity of threats. This freedom is met with large restrictions that ultimately define the naive (i.e. preimmune) Ig repertoire. Activation-induced somatic hypermutation (SHM), which further diversifies Ig V regions, is also met with strong selection that shapes Ig affinity maturation. While individual repertoire features, such as affinity for self and competition for foreign antigen, are known to drive selection, the selection filters themselves may be subject to regulation. Large sequence freedom coupled with strong selection for each diversification process provides flexibility for demand-driven regulation to dynamically balance antigen recognition capacities and associated autoimmune risks according to host needs.
The Social Construction of Disability

This symbolic interactionist theory examines the structure of relationships between the disabled and the nondisabled through face-to-face interaction and the formation and participation in organizations which provide specialized services. Some propositions from Randall Collin's Conflict Sociology (1975) create a framework for understanding the behavior of the disabled. Goffman's concept of career is used to examine the conditions under which various adaptive strategies are employed by the disabled to negotiate favorable definitions of self from their social communication. Finally, a symbolic interactionist explanation is outlined to account for the active and interested involvement of the nonhandicapped with the handicapped in getting the handicapped to accept their situation. Persons who acquire a disability find themselves facing more than just an adjustment to a physical impairment or long-term illness which prevents them from walking as fast as other people, from riding horses, or holding a job in competitive employment. They are now regarded by others and even by themselves as being "different" and this difference is considered to be an undesirable one, affecting social interaction with others in such a way as to create a sense of awkwardness, embarrassment and confusion. This problem of maintaining easeful face-to-face interaction between disabled and conventional members of society results, first, from the uncertainty produced in such situations as to what kinds of claims the disabled and the conventional person will make upon each other. If, for example, there is a young man with a prosthetic leg at a party, will he ask one of the young women present to dance? In turn, will one of the young ladies present ask that crippled young man to dance hoping to compensate for his "natural" shyness? A second source of confusion and uncertainty remains in addition
Quantifying adoption rates and energy savings over time for advanced energy-efficient manufacturing technologies

Abstract Energy-efficient manufacturing technologies can reduce energy consumption and lower operating costs for manufacturing facilities, but up-front costs and increased process complexity frequently lead to manufacturers being reluctant to adopt such technologies. To avoid over-estimating the benefits of advanced energy-efficient manufacturing technologies, it is necessary to account for how quickly and how widely the technology will be adopted by manufacturers. This work develops a method for estimating manufacturing technology adoption rates using quantitative technology characteristics including energetic, economic, and technical criteria that capture both incentives (such as energy and cost savings) and disincentives (such as increased process complexity) for technology adoption. This method is unique in that it can be applied before or after a technology reaches the market; other adoption rate estimation methods require sales data and can only be applied post-market. Eleven technology characteristics are considered, with each characteristic weighted to reflect its impact on the overall technology adoption rate. Technology characteristic data is used to estimate model parameters for the Bass diffusion curve, which quantifies the change in the number of new technology adopters in a population over time. Finally, energy savings at the sector level are calculated over time by multiplying the number of new technology adopters at each time step with the technology's facility-level energy savings. The proposed method is demonstrated with an application to glass industry manufacturing technologies using technology data obtained from the U.S. Department of Energy's 2017 bandwidth study. The potential energy savings for each technology and the rate at which each technology is adopted in the sector are quantified and used to identify the technologies which offer the greatest cumulative sector-level energy savings over a period of 20 years.
Iris Yellow Spot Virus Prolongs the Adult Lifespan of Its Primary Vector, Onion Thrips (Thrips tabaci) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae)

Iris yellow spot virus (IYSV) from the genus Tospovirus, family Peribunyaviridae, reduces yield in several crops, especially Allium spp. IYSV is primarily transmitted by onion thrips (Thrips tabaci), but little is known about how IYSV impacts the biology of its principal vector. In a controlled experiment, the effect of IYSV on the lifespan and fecundity of onion thrips was examined. Larvae were reared on IYSV-infected onions until pupation. Individual pupae were confined until adults eclosed, and the lifespan and total progeny produced per adult were monitored daily. Thrips were tested for the virus in reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction using specific primers to confirm the presence of IYSV. Results indicated that 114 and 35 out of 149 eclosing adults tested positive (viruliferous) and negative (nonviruliferous) for IYSV, respectively. The viruliferous adults lived 1.1-6.1 d longer (average of 3.6 d) than nonviruliferous adults. Fecundity of viruliferous and nonviruliferous onion thrips was similar with 2.0 ± 0.1 and 2.3 ± 0.3 offspring produced per female per day, respectively. Fecundity for both viruliferous and nonviruliferous thrips also was significantly positively correlated with lifespan. These findings suggest that the longer lifespan of viruliferous onion thrips adults may allow this primary vector of IYSV to infect more plants, thereby exacerbating IYSV epidemics.
A new metric to compare anomaly detection algorithms in cyber-physical systems

The performance of different anomaly detection algorithms is typically compared using metrics that depend on the true positive rate (TPR) and the false positive rate (FPR). However, to obtain the TPR it is necessary to generate attacks that will be detected, which is useless to evaluate detection strategies against more realistic adversaries that can adapt their attacks to remain undetected. On the other hand, the FPR can be misleading and hard to interpret in practical applications since the amount of time a process is observed is not fixed. In this poster, we present a novel metric that is based on the maximum impact an adversary can cause while remaining stealthy, and on the expected time between false alarms. Our metric is useful for the evaluation and comparison of anomaly detection strategies in CPS.
Management of Asymptomatic Wolff-Parkinson-White Pattern by Pediatric Electrophysiologists

Objective To determine the present-day approach of pediatric cardiac electrophysiologists to asymptomatic Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) pattern and to contrast to both published consensus statements and a similar survey. Study design A questionnaire was sent to 266 Pediatric and Congenital Electrophysiology Society physician members in 25 countries; 21 questions from the 2003 survey were repeated, with new questions added regarding risk stratification and decision making. Results We received 113 responses from 13 countries, with responders having extensive electrophysiology experience (median 15 years [IQR 8.5-25 years]). Only 12 (11%) believed that intermittent pre-excitation and 37 (33%) that sudden loss of pre-excitation on exercise test were sufficient evidence of accessory pathway safety to avoid an invasive electrophysiology study. Optimal weight for electrophysiology study was 20 kg (IQR 18-22.5 kg), and 61% and 58% would then ablate all right-sided or left-sided accessory pathways, respectively, regardless of electrophysiological properties, whereas only 23% would ablate all septal accessory pathways (P Conclusions In the context of recent literature regarding the reliability of risk-stratification tools, most operators are now performing electrophysiology study for asymptomatic Wolff-Parkinson-White regardless of noninvasive findings. Many will then proceed to default ablation of all accessory pathways distant from critical conduction structures.
Return of an Employee's Claim of Right Income

This brief article explains how the 2017 repeal of the miscellaneous itemized deduction affects the operation of section 1341 on an employee’s return of claim of right income.
Sleep staging from electrocardiography and respiration with deep learning.

Study objectives Sleep is reflected not only in the electroencephalogram but also in heart rhythms and breathing patterns. We hypothesized that it is possible to accurately stage sleep based on the electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiratory signals. Methods Using a dataset including 8682 polysomnograms, we develop deep neural networks to stage sleep from ECG and respiratory signals. Five deep neural networks consisting of convolutional networks and long- and short-term memory networks are trained to stage sleep using heart and breathing, including the timing of R peaks from ECG, abdominal and chest respiratory effort, and the combinations of these signals. Results ECG in combination with the abdominal respiratory effort achieved the best performance for staging all five sleep stages with a Cohen's kappa of 0.585 (95% confidence interval ±0.017); and 0.760 (±0.019) for discriminating awake vs. rapid eye movement vs. nonrapid eye movement sleep. Performance is better for younger ages, whereas it is robust for body mass index, apnea severity, and commonly used outpatient medications. Conclusions Our results validate that ECG and respiratory effort provide substantial information about sleep stages in a large heterogeneous population. This opens new possibilities in sleep research and applications where electroencephalography is not readily available or may be infeasible.
An Aging-Resistant NAND Flash Memory Physical Unclonable Function

This article demonstrates a novel technique for generating aging-resistant, physical unclonable function (PUF) using commercial off-the-shelf NAND flash memory chips. The technique utilizes a novel “program-disturb” method using a single memory page to extract the inherent process variations unique to each chip. In addition, it employs an adaptively tunable PUF generation method to reduce the aging effects on PUF accuracy. The experimental evaluation utilizing several commercial flash memory chips shows that the proposed technique ensures accuracy, uniqueness, and randomness of PUFs generated from a single memory page for at least 1000 PUF-generating operations. Unlike prior flash PUF techniques, the proposed technique does not involve complex memory characterization or lengthy postprocessing steps, making it suitable for a wide range of resource constraint systems.
Bioactive‐Tissue‐Derived Nanocomposite Hydrogel for Permanent Arterial Embolization and Enhanced Vascular Healing

Transcatheter embolization is a minimally invasive procedure that uses embolic agents to intentionally block diseased or injured blood vessels for therapeutic purposes. Embolic agents in clinical practice are limited by recanalization, risk of non-target embolization, failure in coagulopathic patients, high cost, and toxicity. Here, a decellularized cardiac extracellular matrix (ECM)-based nanocomposite hydrogel is developed to provide superior mechanical stability, catheter injectability, retrievability, antibacterial properties, and biological activity to prevent recanalization. The embolic efficacy of the shear-thinning ECM-based hydrogel is shown in a porcine survival model of embolization in the iliac artery and the renal artery. The ECM-based hydrogel promotes arterial vessel wall remodeling and a fibroinflammatory response while undergoing significant biodegradation such that only 25% of the embolic material remains at 14 days. With its unprecedented proregenerative, antibacterial properties coupled with favorable mechanical properties, and its superior performance in anticoagulated blood, the ECM-based hydrogel has the potential to be a next-generation biofunctional embolic agent that can successfully treat a wide range of vascular diseases.
Individual Differences in Interpersonal Touch: On the Development, Validation, and Use of the 'Comfort with Interpersonal Touch' (CIT) Scale

This research details the development of the "Comfort with Interpersonal Touch" (CIT) scale designed to measure individual differences in interpersonal touch tendencies and preferences. The CIT construct is defined as the degree to which an individual is comfortable with intentional interpersonal touch from or to another person. The scale incorporates the distinction between initiating touch, which is the act of touching someone else, and receiving touch, which is the act of being touched by someone else. Investigation of this construct includes scale development, measure purification, and validation. We situate CIT-initiating and CIT-receiving within an approach-avoidance framework and demonstrate that comfort with initiating touch is more related to approach tendencies such as assertiveness while comfort with receiving touch is more related to avoidant tendencies such as avoiding crowded spaces. While previous research generally finds positive effects of interpersonal touch, we find that these effects, at least in part, depend on an individual's comfort with interpersonal touch. We discuss theoretical implications as well as future research opportunities using the CIT scale.
Anxiety Sensitivity and Emotion Dysregulation in Dual and Exclusive E-Cigarette Users.

Background: E-cigarette use has increased exponentially over the past decade, particularly among current combustible cigarette users. Preliminary evidence has demonstrated differences across exclus...
Ownership vs access: consumers' digital ownership perceptions and preferences

This study investigated the interrelations of US consumers' perceptions of their ownership of digital media content, their perceived importance of various digital rights and ownership rights and their preferences for owning vs accessing media content.,This study used an online questionnaire survey and analyzed data from 437 participants recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk mechanism.,Participants' perceived importance of digital rights correlates with consumers' ownership perceptions, and people who value certain digital rights tend to have narrower ownership perceptions. Users' ownership and access preferences vary with their perceived importance of ownership rights, especially concerning music and movies. Notably, people who prefer the access model were less concerned about ownership rights to possess, use and resell content.,The study provides empirical evidence of consumers' ownership perceptions in the digital age and warns consumers of the dangers of the erosion of their digital ownership rights.,Legal ownership and psychological ownership are usually considered separate constructs and seldom examined together. By showing the correlation between consumers' ownership perceptions and their perceived importance of digital rights, this study demonstrates the connection between legal ownership and psychological ownership.
Computer–based analysis of the on– and off–road performance of floating bridge transport systems

This report describes a computer–based modelling, simulation and graphical animation effort that addresses the dynamic performance, compatibility and comparison of two truck/trailer combinations being considered for use as floating bridge (FB) transport systems. The US Army Belvoir Research, Development and Engineering Center (BRDEC), Bridge Division, was tasked by the US Army Troop Support Command to acquire an FB capable of supporting payloads of up to 64 metric tons. To aid BRDEC in evaluating candidate truck/trailer systems, a series of stability, handling and inter–vehicle interference evaluations were conducted. This study investigated truck/trailer/payload compatibility, upper bounds of system performance under adverse operating conditions and various system configurations which were capable of effectively transporting the FB. The Dynamic Analysis and Design System methodology was used to predict vehicle and system performance. This report summarises the models, the simulations and design excursions, the graphical animation analysis and the comparisons that were made between two truck/trailer systems.
The Promise and Limits of Private Power: The Promise and Perils of Private Compliance Programs

This chapter analyzes efforts by private firms – and at times, entire industries – to enforce labor standards in global supply chains through corporate self-regulation. In the wake of several well-publicized scandals involving child labor, hazardous working conditions, excessive working hours, and poor wages in the factories that supply major global brands, numerous multinational corporations developed their own “codes of conduct” and “monitoring” schemes aimed at promoting “compliance” with these codes. In fact, given the limited ability (perhaps even willingness) of many developing country governments to enforce their own laws, private compliance is currently the principal way both labor rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global corporations address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories. The underlying assumption of this model of “private voluntary regulation” is that information collected through factory audits will be used both by labor rights NGOs and consumer groups to exert pressure on global brands to reform their sourcing practices as well as by the brands themselves, who rely on this information to police and pressure their suppliers into improving standards in their factories. Should the factories fail to remedy various workplace problems, brands are expected to switch their orders to supposedly more “ethical” producers. Given their widespread use, we might expect these private compliance programs to be highly effective, but do these initiatives actually lead to better working conditions and enforced labor rights in global supply chains? If so, under what conditions? This chapter addresses these questions by first reviewing the various debates and controversies surrounding private compliance programs, then assessing the underlying assumptions and key features of this model of corporate self-regulation, and finally illustrating how these programs work in practice by analyzing the compliance efforts of two major global corporations – ABC and Hewlett-Packard – both seen as leaders in corporate social responsibility and pioneers in developing corporate codes of conduct and private monitoring schemes.
The General Cyclic Stress-Strain Response of Aluminum Alloys

The cyclic stress-strain response of a wide range of binary, ternary, and complex commercial and experimental-commercial aluminum alloys has been investigated. In addition to constant-amplitude tests, incremental, block, random loading tests, and other specialized tests have been used in assessing cyclic response. The conditions under which cyclic hardening or softening occur have been elucidated, and general conclusions have been drawn about cyclic response in aluminum alloys.
Using in-home displays to provide smart meter feedback about household electricity consumption: A randomized control trial comparing kilowatts, cost, and social norms

Abstract A randomized control field experiment is reported using in-home displays to reduce household electricity consumption. Custom-coded in-home displays (IHDs) were created to provide real-time household electricity consumption feedback, and were framed as either (a) simple kW consumption, or (b) kW consumption and the corresponding cost, or (c) kW consumption and a dynamically-derived social normative frame. Analyses focused on household electricity consumption in the first week following deployment, and again over a 3-month time span. Findings showed that households receiving simple feedback, and feedback framed as cost did not differ significantly from the randomized control at either the 1-week or the 3-month time points. Similarly, results showed that educational materials alone did not reduce electricity consumption. However, significant effects were found for households receiving the normative frame, which consumed 9% less than control households during the initial 1-week evaluation period, and 7% less during the full 3-month evaluation period. Yet despite these findings, residents reported more positive experiences and more obligations to conserve electricity with the cost and feedback IHDs. The results suggest that in-home displays offer promise for encouraging energy conservation, but careful consideration should be given to the way that the feedback is framed.
Hebrew Philosophy or Jewish Theology? A False Dichotomy

Yoram Hazony’s book, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (2012)1, is a clarion call to engage with the philosophical content of the Hebrew Bible. The book’s champions rank among my most cherished religious and academic heroes (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Eleonore Stump). Having spent a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Yoram’s research institute, I have long been impressed by his razor sharp intellect and his passion for bringing Jewish philosophy into a new and more vibrant age. But, in my opinion, the book is host to a number of serious flaws. So, in the collegial spirit with which Yoram closes his book, putting down his pen to ‘hear what others have to say and especially to see what others can contribute to this, our joint project’ (pg. 259), I will concentrate in these few pages upon some of my concerns, which culminate with the false dichotomy I fear he presents us between approaching the Hebrew Bible as a work of Hebrew philosophy or as a work of Jewish theology.
The Dual Active Set Algorithm and Its Application to Linear Programming

The Dual Active Set Algorithm (DASA), presented in Hager, Advances in Optimization and Parallel Computing, P.M. Pardalos (Ed.), North Holland: Amsterdam, 1992, pp. 137–142, for strictly convex optimization problems, is extended to handle linear programming problems. Line search versions of both the DASA and the LPDASA are given.
RNA secondary structure prediction with simple pseudoknots

Pseudoknots are widely occurring structural motifs in RNA. Pseudoknots have been shown to be functionally important in different RNAs which play regulatory, catalytic, or structural roles in cells. Current biophysical methods to identify the presence of pseudoknots are extremely time consuming and expensive. Therefore, bioinformatics approaches to accurately predict such structures are highly desirable.Most methods for RNA folding with pseudoknots adopt different heuristics such as quasi-Monte Carlo search, genetic algorithms, stochastic context-free grammars, and the Hopfield networks, and techniques like dynamic programming (DP). These approaches, however, have limitations. The DP algorithm has worst case time and space complexities of O(n6.8) and O(n4), respectively. The algorithm is not practical for sequences longer than 100 nucleotides.In this paper, we present a dynamic programming algorithm for prediction of simple pseudoknots in optimal secondary structure of a single RNA sequence using standard thermodynamic parameters for RNA folding. Our approach is based on a pseudoknot technique for maximizing the number of base pairs proposed by Akutsu (Akutsu 2000). The algorithm has worst case time and space complexities of O(n4) and O(n3), respectively.We validate the accuracy of our algorithm by experimental results on the entire set of simple pseudoknot collection in the PseudoBase database. Our program folds 163 pseudoknots out of 169 total in the Pseudobase database predicting the structure of 131 pseudoknots correctly or almost correctly. The algorithm is quite efficient. For example, a sequence of 75 nucleotides takes 55 seconds (compared to 20 minutes with the existing software) and a sequence of 114 nucleotides takes 8 minutes (4 hours 30 min). To our knowledge, this is most accurate and efficient algorithm for predicting simple pseudoknots in optimal secondary structure of a single RNA sequence.
A genome-wide search for susceptibility genes linked to alcohol dependence

We performed two-point linkage analysis during a genome-wide search for susceptibility genes that predispose to alcohol dependence with the Collaborative Study on the Genetics on Alcoholism (COGA) data made available for the Genetic Analysis Workshop 11 (GAW11). For chromosomes 1 and 4 our findings supported results reported by Reich et al. [1998] based on the same data. We found similarity between our findings in regions on chromosomes 8 and 10 and reported results for schizophrenia linkage studies. Differences between our results with COGA data and those obtained by Reich et al. [1998] are due to our use of a lod score method versus their use of the affected relative pair (sib pair) method.
Paradise Insolvent? From Pension Scandal to Fiscal Crisis in San Diego

In the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, public pension systems across the country have found themselves in one of the worst financial positions in recent history. In this paper, we consider the likely political and economic effects of public pension underfunding through a case study of the City of San Diego, until recently the poster child for pension mismanagement. As state and local governments across America prepare for the inevitable political and budgetary aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, San Diego, where the pension tsunami hit during the last recession in 2001, presents an important cautionary tale. In addition to surveying the root and proximate causes of the city’s exploding pension liability, we explain how pension underfunding has given rise to a citywide fiscal and political crisis that has paralyzed local government. We also recount how strategic conservative leaders have capitalized on the city’s financial problems to dramatically transform the local public debate and policies pursued.
Funerary Iconography on an Infant Burial Jar from Ashkelon

The 2007 season of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon unearthed ar emarkable intramural infant jar burial, bearing roughly incised images on both sides. While a number of intramural infant burials have been recovered from late twelfth-eleventh century levels at the site, this jar is the first burial to reveal anything about the funerary beliefs and rituals that might be associated with such practices. The iconography itself is unique within the Philistine milieu, as well as within the broader context of Syro-Palestinian funerary imagery, instead echoing Egyptian funerary motifs. After a brief discussion of the jar and its archaeological context we offer an interpretation of the burial jar's iconography and explore its possible relationship to Egyptian funerary ritual. THIRTY years of excavations within the Philistine Pentapolis have allowed us tremendous insight into the material culture, history and religious practices of the immigrant Sea Peoples. Nevertheless, we have little understanding of how the Philistines approached death and the ritual of burial. Iron I-II burials connected with Sea Peoples have been so attributed on the basis of essentially circumstantial evidence, their ethnicity assigned according to small amounts of Philistine-style pottery, presumed 'regional'connections with Sea Peoples, or limited evidence of potential Aegean influence. 1 No cemeteries have been excavated which can conclusively be associated with either the Philistine Pentapolis sites or any other Sea Peoples'settlement. 2
Simulation-based production scheduling with optimization of electricity consumption and cost in smart manufacturing systems

Due to the increasing awareness of environmental protection, the industrial sector is facing mounting pressure to reduce its energy consumption and carbon footprints. The application of energy management system for industrial plants is of high interests by industrial practitioners in their pursuit of high performance smart manufacturing systems. Many system integrators and solution providers have developed their own packages for energy management system for industrial plants. In this paper, we conduct a brief survey on the existing commercial packages of industrial energy management systems by different vendors. A future development direction regarding the functionality of decision-making of industrial energy management system is discussed and a method focusing on the decision-making of energy-integrated production scheduling is proposed. The performance metrics of energy consumption and cost as well as production throughput are modeled for operational performance optimization. A numerical case study of a real auto part manufacturing plant is presented to illustrate the benefits brought by the proposed method.
Melanoma induces, and adenosine suppresses, CXCR3-cognate chemokine production and T cell infiltration of lungs bearing metastatic-like disease.

Despite immunogenicity, melanoma-specific vaccines have demonstrated minimal clinical efficacy in patients with established disease but enhanced survival when administered in the adjuvant setting. Therefore, we hypothesized that organs bearing metastatic-like melanoma may differentially produce T-cell chemotactic proteins over the course of tumor development. Using an established model of metastatic-like melanoma in lungs, we assessed the production of specific cytokines and chemokines over a time course of tumor growth, and we correlated chemokine production with chemokine receptor-specific T-cell infiltration. We observed that the interferon (IFN)-inducible CXCR3-cognate chemokines (CXCL9 and CXCL10) were significantly increased in lungs bearing minimal metastatic lesions, but chemokine production was at or below basal levels in lungs with substantial disease. Chemokine production was correlated with infiltration of the organ compartment by adoptively transferred CD8(+) tumor antigen-specific T cells in a CXCR3- and host IFNγ-dependent manner. Adenosine signaling in the tumor microenvironment (TME) suppressed chemokine production and T-cell infiltration in the advanced metastatic lesions, and this suppression could be partially reversed by administration of the adenosine receptor antagonist aminophylline. Collectively, our data demonstrate that CXCR3-cognate ligand expression is required for efficient T-cell access of tumor-infiltrated lungs, and these ligands are expressed in a temporally restricted pattern that is governed, in part, by adenosine. Therefore, pharmacologic modulation of adenosine activity in the TME could impart therapeutic efficacy to immunogenic but clinically ineffective vaccine platforms.
Enacting Feminist Alliance Principles in a Doctoral Writing Support Group.

This study utilizes a multivocal narrative approach to analyze the dynamics, accomplishments, and challenges of an interdisciplinary doctoral support group consisting primarily of female members. The authors raise issues of power, alliance, troubling expert-novice models of mentoring, and the role of social justice pedagogy in the group.
Development of a Fish-Based Index of Biotic Integrity for Small Inland Lakes in Central Minnesota

Abstract We developed a fish-based index of biotic integrity (IBI) for a set of Minnesota lakes having similar geophysical and chemical features. Fish data were collected by means of trap nets, gill nets, shoreline seines, and backpack electrofishing. Of 30 evaluated metrics, we identified 16 metrics of three types: species richness, community assemblage, and trophic composition. In contrast to lotic IBIs, where a single sampling gear is usually used, data from all four sampling gears were necessary for IBI development. We selected metrics based on responses to measures of human-induced stress based on watershed land use patterns and human population density. Species richness and community composition metrics describing intolerant or habitat specialist species were most sensitive to differences in human-induced stress. Because these species were found in the nearshore zone of lakes, effective sampling of the nearshore fish community was essential to the development and performance of the IBI. Trap-net- an...
New self-dualities and duality cascades

New self-dualities involving two index tensors are derived. These new self-dualities are used to build various duality cascades. Both vectorlike and chiral cascades are presented. Aside from ending in confinement, these duality cascades can also end in interacting conformal field theories, free field theories, and metastable supersymmetry breaking. Higgsing effects are built into the self-duality so that when the gauge groups are small enough, supersymmetry is broken through the rank condition. Dynamical supersymmetry restoration occurs far from the SUSY breaking vacuum resulting in a long-lived metastable vacuum. It is found that Coulomb branches are critical in the stabilization of runaways and dynamical supersymmetry restoration.
Effects of repeated administration of oxytetracycline on kidney, liver, and liver mixed-function oxidases in the rat

Repeated intraperitoneal administration of oxytetracycline to male rats had minor effects at doses of 20 and 40 mg/kg for 14 days. The 100-mg/kg doses resulted in changes in microsomal O-dealkylation and epoxidation, animal growth and kidney histology. Rats showed a dose-related depression of O-dealkylating activity early in the dosing schedule followed by a return to control values, while the activity of the epoxidation reaction was depressed late in the dosing schedule at the high dose only. Animals on the high dose also showed evidence of renal disease and a loss of weight as compared to controls.
What is vividness

The vividness of verbal stimuli is highly related to the semantic differential rating of active (and, in decreasing order of magnitude, to ratings of fast, aggressive, new, hard, and beautiful). Studies manipulating vividness may thus involve demonstration of the effects of the activity dimension on verbal learning.
XAFS studies of the formation of cobalt silicide on (31/2 by 31/2) SiC(0001)

Thin Co films (1-8 nm) were directly, sequentially, and co-deposited with Si (3.6-29.2 nm) on the (square root of 3 x square root of 3)-R30 degrees reconstruction of 6H-SiC(0001). The films were annealed over a temperature range of 823-1373K and investigated with XAFS, XPS, AES and AFM. After annealing up to 1373K directly deposited Co films do not transform entirely to cobalt disilicide and C segregation is observed on the surface of the films. On the other hand, sequentially and co-deposited films do form cobalt disilicide after annealing at 823K, but also show islanding after annealing at 923K.
Metabolic response to temperature acclimation and T4 in the water snake

Abstract The metabolic responses of isolated liver tissue from thyroideetomized and hyperthyroid diamondback water snakes, Natrix rhombifera rhombifera , indicates that the temperature at which the animal is maintained governs the response of the target tissue to the hormone. There were no significant differences in the Q o 2 values and cytochrome oxidase activities of the thyroidectomized and hypothyroid animals acclimated to 15°C for 2 weeks; however, these values were significantly higher in the hyperthyroid and control individuals when acclimated to 32°C for the same time period. There was also found to be evidence of a compensatory mechanism for maintaining a high liver tissue oxygen consumption rate at a low acclimation temperature. This mechanism involves in part an induced increase in cytochrome oxidase activity.
Bovine renal glomerular basement membrane. Assessment of proteolysis during isolation

Summary Existing methodology was modified to permit the rapid isolation of glomerular basement membrane at 0–3° with the use of specific inhibitors to continuously bathe the tissue during homogenization and fractionations. Membrane was prepared at 0–3° with inhibitors and at 0–3° and 27° without inhibitors. Analysis of these preparations by sodium dodecyl sulfate electrophoresis revealed identical polypeptide compositions except that the relative amount of the 55,000 dalton component observed at 0–3° increased with the inclusion of diisopropylfluorophosphate and decreased at 27° without inhibitors. These results show that some enzymatic degradation occurs during isolation in the absence of proteolytic inhibitors but suggest that the multiple polypeptide components are not produced during isolation.
The effects of an instructional audiotape on breast self-examination proficiency.

This study evaluated the effects of a refresher instructional audiotape on breast self-examination (BSE) proficiency 6 months after BSE had been trained to criteria. Subjects (n=54), who were undergraduate women, were trained in group sessions to perform BSE competently. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two “maintenance” groups: tape or no tape. Tape-group subjects received a BSE tape at the end of their training session. Subjects in both groups received monthly mailed prompts. At 6 months posttraining, subjects were videotaped in a clinic environment while performing BSE and 10 components of the exam subsequently were evaluated. The results indicated that tape-group subjects showed significantly better performance than controls on four components, including amount of breast area examined. The tape had no effect on BSE frequency. The tape strategy may be valuable in maintaining proficiency once BSE is trained.
A chemorheological model for the cure of unsaturated polyester resin

A chemorheological model is developed, using the free volume concept, for the prediction of viscosity during the cure of unsaturated polyester resin. We have incorporated into the development of the chemorheological model a mechanistic kinetic model of curing kinetics that predicts the degree of cure as a function of cure time. The mechanistic kinetic model uses an approach of free-radical polymerization that takes into account diffusion-controlled curing reactions, In order to test the usefulness of the chemorheological model developed, we have conducted cure experiments and measured viscosities of partially cured resin samples, using a general-purpose unsaturated polyester resin. Specifically, the following measurements were taken: (1) the quantity of ethylenic double bonds in the resin system before and after the cure reaction by infrared spectroscopy, (2) the glass transition temperature by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and (3) the viscosity as a function of shear rate, at several temperatures, using a cone-and-plate rheometer. It is concluded that the chemorheological model developed is very useful for predicting the variation of viscosity during the cure of unsaturated polyester resin.
Steady nonlinear harmonic oscillations of discrete elastic structures

Abstract An algorithm is derived which can be used for the calculation of coefficients in the amplitude frequency equations for nonlinear harmonic oscillations of elastic structures using, e.g. the finite element method.
Ex vivo expansion of cord blood mononuclear cells on mesenchymal stem cells

Background Cord blood (CB) cells are being used increasingly as a source of hematopoietic cells to support high dose chemotherapy. However, CB units contain low numbers of cells, including CD34 cells, and thus their use is associated with significant delays in engraftment of neutrophils and platelets. Ex vivo expansion of CB has been proposed to increase the numbers of cells available. We and others have reported the requirement of CD34 selection for optimal expansion of CB products'; however, the selection of frozen CB products in clinical trials results in significant loss of CD34 + cells, with a median recovery of 50, but less than 40% recovery in more than one-third of products. In the present studies we evaluated the potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) to support ex vivo expansion of unselected CB products. Methods Mononuclear cells (MNC) from CB products were isolated and cultured on preformed MSC layers in T1 50 flasks containing 50mL Stemline II media plus hematopoietic growth factors. Various culture conditions were compared for optimal expansion of the CB MNC. Results Ex vivo expansion of CB MNC on MSC resulted in 10- to 20-fold expansion of total nucleated cells, seven- to 18-fold expansion of committed progenitor cells, two- to five-fold expansion of primitive progenitor cells and 16- to 37-fold expansion of CD34 cells. Discussion These studies demonstrated significant expansion of CB products without CD34 cell selection using culture conditions that are clinically applicable. Our current focus is to initiate clinical trials to evaluate the in vivo potential of CB cells expanded with these conditions.
Evaluation of an agro-ecosystem of Campania Plain: The tourist coastal Lakes District of Castelvolturno (Southern Campania, Italy)

The present paper describes the investigation activities on the ground areas of a territory falling within the SIN Domitian Phlegrean and Agro Aversano Coast. It summarizes the general characteristics of the study area and the history of the human activities undertaken over time that may have caused a hazard to the environmental matrices. The results of sampling and analysis activities are shown with the evaluation of non-compliance with law requirements (acceptable limit values of concentration in the soil, subsoil and groundwaters).
Angioplasty for cerebral vasospasm from eclampsia

BACKGROUND Neurological deterioration in eclampsia is considered to be secondary to cerebral vasospasm. Magnesium sulfate therapy improves symptoms and controls seizures, possibly related to its vasorelaxive effects in spastic arteries. Some cases, however, are refractory to magnesium therapy. To our knowledge, there is no report of angioplasty for vasospasm from eclampsia in the literature. METHODS A 27-year-old woman presented 10 days postpartum with severe mental status changes and left arm and bilateral leg weakness that were refractory to magnesium therapy. Cerebral angiography demonstrated diffuse, severe vasospasm. We treated her with angioplasty of the bilateral middle and posterior cerebral arteries, basilar artery, and bilateral internal carotid arteries. RESULTS Angioplasty resulted in excellent angiographic improvement. The patient immediately became responsive and appropriate with improved strength in all extremities. She continued to improve throughout her hospital stay and was discharged 10 days postangioplasty. CONCLUSIONS Cerebral angioplasty is an effective treatment for vasospasm from eclampsia refractory to magnesium therapy. Angiography should be considered early in the course of neurological deterioration, but delayed therapy may also be effective.
Injury patterns at a large Western United States ski resort with and without snowboarders: the Taos experience

Background:Differences in injury patterns among alpine skiers and snowboarders have previously been recognized, and controversy remains about the safety implications that snowboarding may pose to a ski resort. A change of policy at Taos Ski Valley provides a unique and modern perspective on the effect that snowboarders have on ski resort injuries.Hypothesis:The addition of snowboarders to a large ski resort may result in a significant change in both the rate and pattern of injuries treated.Study Design:Descriptive epidemiology study.Methods:Patient records from the Mogul Medical Clinic at Taos Ski Valley were reviewed from the 2006-2007 ski season through the 2009-2010 season (approximately 2 years before and after snowboarding was allowed) and recorded for age, sex, diagnosis, body region, anatomic location, injury type, and sport (skiing, snowboarding). The total numbers of mountain visits for the time periods with and without snowboarding were used to determine injury rates.Results:The overall rate of ...