cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effect of hyaluronidase on electrolytes (sodium and potassium) of dog synovial fluid.

Conclusions(1) The action of hyaluroni-dase increases the concentrations of both sodium and potassium in the synovial fluid of the dog. (2) Inactivated hyaluronidase has no action on the sodium and potassium in dog synovial fluid.
Effects of the Local Environment on Si−H Stretching Frequencies for the Mixed Coverage X/H:Si(111) Surface (X = F, Cl, Br, and I)

The vibrational spectra of the Si(111)-(1 × 1) surface covered with a mixture of halides and hydrogen are explored using computational techniques with experimental validation. We have investigated the relationship between the Si−H stretching mode and halide coverage for fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine. Our investigation shows that the blue shift of the ν(Si−H) mode is approximately linear with respect to the halide coverage. Our predictions using density functional calculations are validated using experimental results on a ∼30% fluorinated surface. The origin of the shift is proposed to be an inductive effect along with lone pair donation from the halogen to the silicon surface. Our results indicate it is possible to use the ν(Si−H) mode as a probe to measure halide coverage. Our results agree with earlier studies on analogous systems.
Effect of P modifying on microstructures and mechanical properties of Si alloying AZ91 magnesium alloys

The microstructures and mechanical properties of AZ91 containing 0.7% Si alloys modified by Al-P master alloy were observed using XRD and TEM.The results show that addition of certain amount Al-P master al-loy into AZ91 containing 0.7% Si alloys leads to morphology change of Mg2Si phase from Chinese script to fine par-ticle with the average particle size between 6 and 10μm.The average grain size of the matrix reduces from 100μm to 45μm.The morphology ofβ-Mg17Al12phase varys from continuous nets to discontinuous nets.Consequently,the mechanical properties of AZ91 containing 0.7% Si alloys are improved dramatically.It indicates that the Al-P mas-ter alloy has excellent modifying and strengthening effects on AZ91 containing 0.7% Si alloys and is a effective grai-ning additive.
Gossiping to the Top Observed Differences in Popular Adolescents’ Gossip

Despite its omnipresence, quantitative research examining both the nature and the function of adolescent gossip has been limited. The present study aimed to address this limitation in the literature by examining the nature and function of adolescent gossip; in particular, it aimed to explore observed differences between the gossip of those popular and non-popular adolescent dyads. Using both observational lab–based and sociometric school–based methods, the present study assessed the associations between social status and gossip functionality among 130 ninth grade students (92 females). Popular adolescent dyads engaged in more instances of gossip and were more likely to use gossip to foster intimacy, establish norms, and share both information and their opinions. Results also pointed to potential mechanisms by which popular adolescent dyads may gather alliances that support their status within the social hierarchy.
Modern Urodynamic Evaluations in The Urologist’s Office

Abstract: Patients with voiding disturbances comprise 20 per cent of the yearly outpatient visits to urologists. Of this number 25 per cent have significant neurogenic bladder dysfunction. The theoretical basis and experimental demonstration of urodynamics have been established and reported by multiple investigators during the last 15 years. Recent advances in clinical applications of fast-flow gas cystometry have led to the development of complete, portable urodynamic units that can be used conveniently in the urologist’s office and are capable of simultaneously recording parameters of detrusor, urethral and skeletal muscle sphincter function. This equipment is simple, efficient, economical and can be operated by well trained paramedical personnel, with minimal immediate direction required by aphysician. With recent recognition by many third party carriers this equipment may amortize itself rapidly but, more importantly, it may serve to identify neurological diseases of the bladder that are undetected by...
Species Differences in the Metabolism and Disposition of Antiviral Nucleoside Analogues: 2. Zidovudine:

Summary Preclinical and clinical studies on the disposition of zidovudine, a thymidine analogue with potent activity against human immunodeficiency virus, identified significant species differe.nces in the metabolism and elimination of the drug. Zidovudine was extensively metabolized to the 5'-O~glucuronide in man and other primates. Rabbits and dogs were intermediate in their extent of biotransformation to the glucuronide conju­ gate, whereas rats and mice excreted the drug largely unchanged. Decreased metabolism was compen­ sated by increased renal elimination, such that plasma elimination phase half-lives for zidovudine were simi­ lar (0.6-1.1 h) in all species. Rapid and extensive absorption and considerable penetration into tissues were also observed for all species studied. Only in the brain and testes were drug levels less than in plasma, although effective antiviral concentrations of zidovu­ dine were achieved in brain and CSF. This review summarizes the variety of studies of the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination of zidovu­ dine in several species, including humans.
Synthesizing Ranking Functions from Bits and Pieces

In this work, we present a novel approach based on recent advances in software model checking to synthesize ranking functions and prove termination and non-termination of imperative programs. Our approach incrementally refines a termination argument from an under-approximation of the terminating program state. Specifically, we learn bits of information from terminating executions, and from these we extrapolate ranking functions over-approximating the number of loop iterations needed for termination. We combine these pieces into piecewise-defined, lexicographic, or multiphase ranking functions. The proposed technique has been implemented in SeaHorn --- an LLVM based verification framework --- targeting C code. Preliminary experimental evaluation demonstrated its effectiveness in synthesizing ranking functions and proving termination of C programs.
Modeling Neutron Transport and Interactions

It is essential to know the spatial and energy distributions of the neutrons in a field in a nuclear fission reactor, D–T (or D–D) fusion reactor, or other nuclear reactors populated with large numbers of neutrons. It is obvious why the spatial distribution should be known, and because neutron reactions vary widely with energy, the energy distribution is also a critical parameter. The neutron energy distribution is often called the neutron spectrum. The neutron distribution satisfies transport equation. It is usually difficult to solve this equation, and often approximated equation so-called diffusion equation is solved instead. In this chapter only overview of transport equation and diffusion equation of neutrons is presented, and methods for solving these equations are presented in the following sections.
A New Conditioning Regimen with Clofarabine for Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation in Pediatric Patients with Refractory Disease.

Abstract We report the results of a pilot study with a clofarabine containing conditioning regimen for allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Several studies have already shown the effectivity of clofarabine in adult patients and children with acute leukemias, resistant to standard treatment protocols. Thus, we replaced fludarabine in a melphalan based myeloablative regimen by clofarabine for pediatric patients with refractory disease after standard treatment (n=7) or after previous transplantation (n=3). A total of 10 pediatric patients with acute lymphatic leukemia (non-remission (NR) 1=3, NR 2=3), acute myeloic leukemia, (NR 1=2) and metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma/neuroblastoma (partial remission (PR) =2) received clofarabine 4×50mg/m2 (day -8 to -5), thiotepa 10mg/kg (day -4), melphalan 2×70mg/m2 (day -3 to -2) and OKT3 (0, 1 mg/kg day -8 to +14; n=9) or ATG (10mg/kg; n=1), followed by infusion of full haplotype mismatched peripheral stem cells (n= 9) or bone marrow from matched unrelated donors (n=1). In mismatched family donors, depletion of T and B cells was carried out with CD3/CD19 coated magnetic microbeads and the CliniMACS® device. A median number of 16×106/kg stem cells (5.6–28) with 90 000/kg residual T cells was infused. Primary engraftment was observed in 9/10 patients. One patient experienced graft rejection but was successfully retransplanted with stem cells from a second parental donor. Thus, sustained engraftment could be obtained in all patients. Median time to ANC >500/μl with G-CSF stimulation was 10 days (9–11). Independence from platelet transfusion was reached after 9 days. Median T cell count at day 100 was 138 cells/μl (n=5). 7/10 patients are disease free with a median follow up of 100 days. Single cause of death was relapse of the underlying disease (median time to relapse: 90 days). The regimen was well tolerated without severe side effects. No TRM and no toxicity grade 4 according to NCI-CTC grading system occurred apart from mucositis. The profile of toxic side effects was as follows: gastrointestinal: diarrhea grade 0–2 (n=10), stomatitis grade 3–4 (n=10); skin: none; pulmonary: hypoxia and pneumonitis grade 3 in 2 and 1 patient, respectively; cardiac: none; hepatic: GOT/GPT or bilirubin elevation grade 1–2 in 4 patients, grade 3 in 6 patients; renal: creatinine (-clearance) grade 1 in 1 patient; neurological: none; infection: grade 2 (n=8), grade 3 (n=2). Conclusions: clofarabine was well tolerated as part of a conditioning regimen for allogeneic transplantation. Compared to our standard regimen with fludarabine, thiotepa, melphalan, the introduction of clofarabine did not result in any unexpected toxicity. Immunosuppressive effects appeared to be similar to those of fludarabine, since primary engraftment was observed in 90%. Further studies are warranted to evaluate, whether clofarabine can contribute to reduce the risk of relapse in patients with refractory disease.
Heartbeat: Challenges in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease

In addition to encouraging a healthy lifestyle and treating modifiable risk factors, one of the mainstays for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the use of statin therapy in people with increased CVD risk. However, it is confusing for clinicians and patients that guidelines from different organisations make different recommendations about who to treat and how to set treatment goals.1 In my editorial in this issue of Heart, the 3 major differences between guidelines are summarised: (1) how CVD risk is calculated, (2) the risk threshold for recommending statin therapy and (3) the use of treatment with a fixed statin dose versus therapy adjusted to achieve a serum low density lipoprotein (LDL) target. The rationale for different risk scores in each guideline is because CVD risk prediction varies in different populations; ideally the risk score was derived from the population being treated. Evidence suggests that statin therapy is beneficial even for lower risk patients; thus, the threshold chosen for treatment depends on estimates of the likelihood (and acceptance) of side effects, as well as cost considerations. The decision to recommend fixed dose versus LDL level targeted therapy is primarily an economic decision given that more intensive treatment requires more monitoring and may increase risk. The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend offering fixed dose atorvastatin 20 mg to people whose 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease is ≥10% using the …
Metacognition in argument generation: the misperceived relationship between emotional investment and argument quality

ABSTRACTOverestimation of one’s ability to argue their position on socio-political issues may partially underlie the current climate of political extremism in the U.S. Yet very little is known about what factors influence overestimation in argumentation of socio-political issues. Across three experiments, emotional investment substantially increased participants’ overestimation. Potential confounding factors like topic complexity and familiarity were ruled out as alternative explanations (Experiments 1–3). Belief-based cues were established as a mechanism underlying the relationship between emotional investment and overestimation in a measurement-of-mediation (Experiment 2) and manipulation-of-mediator (Experiment 3) design. Representing a new bias blind spot, participants believed emotional investment helps them argue better than it helps others (Experiments 2 and 3); where in reality emotional investment harmed or had no effect on argument quality. These studies highlight misguided beliefs about emotion...
Fluorescence of Nd3+ in lithium yttrium fluoride

Abstract Crystals of the scheelite structure fluoride LiYF 4 have been grown doped with 0.24, 1.4 and 2.2 at. per cent Nd 3+ . The polarized fluorescence and absorption, excitation spectra, lifetime decay and linewidths have been measured at 77° and 300°K. The optical data of LiYF 4 : Nd 3+ have been compared with data on the isomorphous oxide CaWO 4 : Nd 3+ . The spectroscopic features of LiYF 4 :Nd 3+ are: a long lifetime of 500 μsec which decreases rapidly with increasing Nd-concentration; a narrow linewidth of 2 cm −1 at 77°K; and a high absorption in the near infrared. These factors have been related to its potential as a laser material.
Neoadjuvant pembrolizumab in surgically resectable, locally advanced HPV negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

6012Background: Pembrolizumab has efficacy in metastatic HNSCC. We hypothesized that treatment intensification in surgically resectable HPV-negative, Stage III/IV HNSCC with neoadjuvant plus post-o...
Effects of road salt deicers on an urban groundwater-fed kettle lake

Abstract Road salt deicers significantly influence the chemistry and physical mixing of urban lakes, even causing transition from dimixis to monomixis or meromixis. In this study, the water column geochemistry of Asylum Lake, a primarily groundwater-fed, eutrophic kettle lake in urban Kalamazoo, MI, was monitored for over a year to determine the extent of road salt deicer influence on the lake chemistry and the physical mixing of the lake. Water column samples from the surface to the deepest part of Asylum Lake were analyzed monthly for nineteen months for a suite of parameters including dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, temperature, alkalinity, Fe2+, Mn2+, orthophosphate, total NH4+, alkalinity, total sulfide, Cl−, SO42−, Ca2+, Mg2+, K+, and Na+. During the study period, spring mixing was never observed and a nearly complete fall turnover was observed only in November 2013. The hypolimnion of Asylum Lake was always hypoxic or anoxic and redox-stratified, with seasonal development of suboxic and sulfidic zones, which were disrupted in fall and winter following partial fall turnover and subsequent ice cover. This study suggests that road salt deicers have caused Asylum Lake to transition from dimixis to meromixis or periodic monomixis with significant consequences for biogeochemical cycles in the lake waters.
The Weyl Anomaly from the 6D Superconformal Index

We explore the connection between the holographic Weyl anomaly and the superconformal index in six-dimensional $(1,0)$ theories. Using earlier results from holographic computations of the $\mathcal O(1)$ contributions $\delta a$ and $\delta(c-a)$ to the corresponding six-dimensional Weyl anomaly coefficients, we derive a pair of differential operators that extracts these values from the large-$N$ single-trace index. In doing so, we also highlight the structure of these corrections in terms of group theory invariants of the superconformal representations.
Infant Feeding Practices and Maternal Dietary Intake Among Latino Immigrants in California

Mothers of 8–16-month-old infants were surveyed to examine infant feeding practices and maternal dietary intake associated with increased years of residency by Mexican immigrant families (n = 1093 mother–infant pairs). Mothers were recruited from San Diego and Contra Costa counties in California during 1992–93. Twenty-nine percent of Mexican mothers living in the United States for <6 years breastfed their infants exclusively for at least 16 weeks; only 20% of mothers living in the United States between 6 and 15 years and 17% of mothers residing in the United States for over 15 years engaged in exclusive breastfeeding. Neither breastfeeding duration nor the introduction of solids differed by years of residency. In contrast, maternal dietary intake varied markedly. Second generation mothers and those living in the United States the longest had significantly higher intakes of vegetables, low fat milk, salty snacks, animal protein, and cereals. Beyond early caregiving practices, the influence of years of residency on the diets of toddlers is less than that of the mothers.
Automated Scoring: Beyond Natural Language Processing

In this position paper, we argue that building operational automated scoring systems is a task that has disciplinary complexity above and beyond standard competitive shared tasks which usually involve applying the latest machine learning techniques to publicly available data in order to obtain the best accuracy. Automated scoring systems warrant significant cross-discipline collaboration of which natural language processing and machine learning are just two of many important components. Such systems have multiple stakeholders with different but valid perspectives that can often times be at odds with each other. Our position is that it is essential for us as NLP researchers to understand and incorporate these perspectives in our research and work towards a mutually satisfactory solution in order to build automated scoring systems that are accurate, fair, unbiased, and useful.
Gastric nonabsorbable indicators for studies in man.

We compared absorption of chromium-51, polyethylene glycol, and phenol red by the human stomach. Solutions at pH 1 containing all three indicators were instilled into the stomach and aspirated after 15 min. Since total recovery could not be measured, we compared initial and final concentrations of the three indicators. There was no statistically significant difference between the ratios of initial and final concentrations of them. Correlation coefficients for indicator pairs ranged from 0.96 to 0.98. When considered in conjunction with previous total recovery studies from gastric pouches in the dog, these data are consistent with minimal absorption and equal validity of the three indicators under these conditions.
Wound healing with botanicals: A review and future perspectives.

Botanicals have long played a crucial role in the management of chronic and infected wounds, yet the mechanistic basis of these therapies remains largely poorly understood by modern science. Studies have begun to unveil the mechanistic bases of botanical therapies for wound healing, but more work is necessary. Most notably, investigation into the growing conditions, post-harvest treatment, and pharmacological preparation of these botanicals has demonstrated their importance in terms of the chemical makeup and pharmacological activity of the final product used in pre-clinical and clinical studies. This work evaluates the potential safety, efficacy, and mechanistic basis of some key botanical ingredients used in traditional medicine for wound care: aloe, marigold, and St. John’s Wort. Furthermore, perspectives on the future role that botanical natural products may play in anti-infective and wound care, innovations are explored.
Assertive Community Treatment with People with Combined Mental Illness and Criminal Justice Involvement

Assertive community treatment (ACT) is a well-established, intensive community treatment for individuals diagnosed with severe mental illness living in the community. Given its track record of successfully engaging clients who are difficult to engage in mental health services, ACT has the potential to improve outcomes for persons with combined mental illness and criminal justice involvement. In the current chapter, the authors first provide an introductory discussion of ACT’s history and origins, fidelity principles, and research support. They further discuss efforts to adapt ACT for work with forensically involved clients and “forensic ACT” (FACT) in specific. The authors then review research evidence supporting FACT and provide a case example of the application of ACT to the treatment of a justice-involved client. The chapter concludes with a discussion of questions for future research and treatment adaptations for the application of ACT to clients with severe mental illness and criminal justice involvement.
Optimal Control of Modular MultiLevel Converters (MMCs) for Minimum Storage Requirement

With the push towards Medium Voltage DC (MVDC) based electrical distribution systems, the power converter(s) between Medium Voltage AC generators and common MVDC buses must handle more power than any other electrical power conversion component in the distribution system. The Modular Multi-Level Converter (MMC) is a compelling topology for this function because of its modular structure and the potential for achieving economies of scale and, hence, lower cost power conversion equipment. It is vital to consider the optimal sizing of all capacitive and magnetic storage elements within the MMC in order to achieve the highest power density and determine its feasibility in the shipboard context. This paper compares different control methods for an MMC rectifier from the aspect of storage requirements.
Iterative Discriminant Tensor Factorization for Behavior Comparison in Massive Open Online Courses

The increasing utilization of massive open online courses has significantly expanded global access to formal education. Despite the technology's promising future, student interaction on MOOCs is still a relatively under-explored and poorly understood topic. This work proposes a multi-level pattern discovery through hierarchical discriminative tensor factorization. We formulate the problem as a hierarchical discriminant subspace learning problem, where the goal is to discover the shared and discriminative patterns with a hierarchical structure. The discovered patterns enable a more effective exploration of the contrasting behaviors of two performance groups. We conduct extensive experiments on several real-world MOOC datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach. Our study advances the current predictive modeling in MOOCs by providing more interpretable behavioral patterns and linking their relationships with the performance outcome.
The use of mobile devices with students with disabilities: a literature review

The purpose of this literature review is to examine new research evidence on the use of mobile devices with students with disabilities across education settings. After a search of the literature, 6...
An empirical analysis for the US of the impact of federal budget deficits and the average effective personal income tax rate on the ex post real interest rate yield on ten-year Treasuries

We investigate the impact of federal government budget deficits and federal personal income tax rates on the ex post real interest rate yield on ten-year US Treasury notes. Using autoregressive two-stage least squares estimations for the post-Bretton Woods era, we find that the yield on these Treasury issues has been an increasing function of the federal budget deficit as a percent of GDP, both in the form of the total/unified deficit and the primary deficit, and also an increasing function of the average effective federal personal income tax rate. The estimation reveals that growth in the M2 money supply (relative to GDP) acts to reduce the real interest rate yield on ten-year Treasuries. Consequently, while a growing money supply can help to keep real interest rates on Treasury notes (and hence federal debt service costs) down, policymakers should be sensitive to the fact that both budget deficit increases and tax rate increases can elevate the real interest rate. JEL codes : E43, E62, H62
DSP Linearization for Millimeter-Wave All-Digital Receiver Array with Low-Resolution ADCs

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications and cell densification are the key techniques for the future evolution of cellular systems beyond 5G. Although the current mmWave radio designs are focused on hybrid digital and analog receiver array architectures, the fully digital architecture is an appealing option due to its flexibility and support for multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). In order to achieve reasonable power consumption and hardware cost, the specifications of analog circuits are expected to be compromised, including the resolution of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and the linearity of radio-frequency (RF) front end. Although the state-of-the-art studies focus on the ADC, the nonlinearity can also lead to severe system performance degradation when strong input signals introduce inter-modulation distortion (IMD). The impact of RF nonlinearity becomes more severe with densely deployed mmWave cells since signal sources closer to the receiver array are more likely to occur. In this work, we design and analyze the digital IMD compensation algorithm, and study the relaxation of the required linearity in the RF-chain. We propose novel algorithms that jointly process digitized samples to recover amplifier saturation, and relies on beam space operation which reduces the computational complexity as compared to per-antenna IMD compensation.
Antibody-dependent enhancement of influenza disease promoted by increase in hemagglutinin stem flexibility and virus fusion kinetics

Several next-generation (universal) influenza vaccines and broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) are in clinical development. Some of these mediate inhibitions of virus replication at the postentry stage or use Fc-dependent mechanisms. Nonneutralizing antibodies have the potential to mediate enhancement of viral infection or disease. In the current study, two monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) 72/8 and 69/1, enhanced respiratory disease (ERD) in mice following H3N2 virus challenge by demonstrating increased lung pathology and changes in lung cytokine/chemokine levels. MAb 78/2 caused changes in the lung viral loads in a dose-dependent manner. Both MAbs increased HA sensitivity to trypsin cleavage at a higher pH range, suggesting MAb-induced conformational changes. pHrodo-labeled virus particles’ entry and residence time in the endocytic compartment were tracked during infection of Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells. Both MAbs reduced H3N2 virus residence time in the endocytic pathway, suggesting faster virus fusion kinetics. Structurally, 78/2 and 69/1 Fabs bound the globular head or base of the head domain of influenza hemagglutinin (HA), respectively, and induced destabilization of the HA stem domain. Together, this study describes Mab-induced destabilization of the influenza HA stem domain, faster kinetics of influenza virus fusion, and ERD in vivo. The in vivo animal model and in vitro assays described could augment preclinical safety evaluation of antibodies and next-generation influenza vaccines that generate antibodies which do not block influenza virus–receptor interaction.
Cost-Effective, Time-Efficient Passenger Rail System for the Eastern United States

A program was developed using a genetic algorithm and automated lookup features to design an efficient passenger rail system for the eastern-half of the United States connecting large cities, metropolitan populations greater than two million, with overnight rail service. The results of the program predicted a passenger starting at the farthest point of the system boards the train at 16:02 on average and arrives at a different point of the system at 07:57 on average the following day, assuming the train travels an average speed of 70 mph. The design used actual distances by train track where possible. The system was modeled with six trains that meet at a hub and exchange passengers and continue on to their destination. The optimal solution had a total one-way minimum distance of 4334 km (2693 miles). Assuming the same ridership that currently exists on a popular train route, ticket prices would average $62 (USD) for a one-way ticket. For this system to be feasible, the government would need to own or lease one set of tracks for all the routes determined, build a hub for passengers to transfer trains near Charleston, WV, and ensure the trains are unimpeded by other trains. Installing tracks that go around cities that the trains do not stop at would be a great benefit also. With advances in communication, GPS, and train control technology, this article points out the benefits of publically available tracks to form a transportation network similar to that found in road, air, and water traffic.
Diversity and abundance of natural enemies of Drosophila suzukii in Wisconsin, USA fruit farms

The invasive vinegar fly, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae), is a major economic pest of soft-skinned fruit in the USA. In order to identify suitable biological control agents in Wisconsin, we assessed the presence and impact of potential natural enemies of D. suzukii in tart cherry and raspberry farms with documented D. suzukii populations. Yellow sticky cards and sentinel traps baited with D. suzukii or D. melanogaster larvae and pupae were deployed in these agricultural areas in the foliage and near the soil surface. Four families of parasitoids with known species that successfully parasitize D. suzukii (Pteromalidae, Braconidae, Figitidae, and Diapriidae) were found on sticky traps at all sampling sites. However, no parasitoids emerged from D. suzukii or D. melanogaster sentinel larvae or pupae throughout the duration of the field assessment. Predation was documented on sentinel D. suzukii pupae (1–4%) and sentinel D. melanogaster pupae (5–8%). The majority of sentinel pupae never emerged upon their return from the field and showed no evidence of field predation. Between 70 and 92% of recovered D. suzukii pupae were dead, and 46–72% of D. melanogaster pupae were dead. The absence of parasitoids found emerging from the sentinel drosophilid larvae and pupae and overall low levels of predation suggests that native biological control may provide limited potential as a management option against D. suzukii in Wisconsin at this time.
AMC: An Asynchronous Memory Compiler

The lack of electronic design automation (EDA) tools for asynchronous circuits makes it challenging to design asynchronous systems that have high complexity. This restriction also makes it almost impossible to prototype and compare new asynchronous designs with their clocked counterparts. The availability of high quality EDA tools would significantly bolster research in asynchronous design, and potentially lead to their adoption in certain application domains. This paper presents AMC: an open-source asynchronous pipelined memory compiler. AMC generates SRAM modules with a bundled-data datapath and quasi-delay-insensitive control. AMC is a flexible, user-modifiable and technology-independent memory compiler that generates fabricable SRAM blocks in a broad range of sizes, configurations and process nodes. AMC also produces memory designs that are competitive with both asynchronous and synchronous memories in the literature. AMC aims to reduce design turn-around time and amplify the research in the asynchronous design community.
Prenatal exposure to a phthalate mixture leads to multigenerational and transgenerational effects on uterine morphology and function in mice

Phthalates are commonly used plasticizers and additives that are found in plastic containers, children's toys and medical equipment. Phthalates are classified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and exposure to phthalates has been associated with several human health risks including reproductive defects. Most studies focus on a single phthalate; however, humans are exposed to a mixture of phthalates daily. We hypothesized that prenatal exposure to an environmentally relevant phthalate mixture would lead to changes in uterine morphology and function in mice in a multi-generational manner. To test this hypothesis, pregnant CD-1 dams were orally dosed with vehicle or a phthalate mixture (20 μg/kg/day, 200 μg/kg/day, 200 mg/kg/day, and 500 mg/kg/day) from gestational day 10.5 to parturition. The mixture contained 35 % diethyl phthalate, 21 % di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, 15 % dibutyl phthalate, 15 % diisononyl phthalate, 8% diisobutyl phthalate, and 5% benzylbutyl phthalate. The F1 pups were maintained and mated to produce two more generations (F2 and F3). At the age of 13 months, all females were euthanized and tissue samples were collected in diestrus. Our results showed that exposure to a phthalate mixture caused a decrease in progesterone levels in the treated groups in the F2 generation. The 200 mg/kg/day treatment group showed a decreased and increased luminal epithelial cell proliferation in the F1 and F2 generations respectively. In addition, these mice in the F2 generation had reduced Hand2 expression in the sub-epithelial stroma compared to the controls. A higher incidence of multilayered luminal epithelium and large dilated endometrial glands were observed in the phthalate mixture exposed groups in all generations. The mixture also caused a higher incidence of smooth muscle actin expression and collagen deposition in the endometrium compared to controls. Collectively, our results demonstrate that prenatal exposure to an environmentally relevant phthalate mixture can have adverse effects on female reproductive functions.
Ancient Roots of Microblading-A Permanent Makeup Art

: This piece is aimed at creating academic based overview for microblading, its historical origin and current uses.
Comparison of the patient's skin dose for flat and curved surfaces as a function of x-ray beam angle of incidence

It is important to determine the patient’s skin dose accurately for fluoroscopic interventional procedures in order to estimate the risk of deterministic injury. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the patient’s skin dose changes as a function of x-ray beam incident angle for flat and curved surfaces. The primary and scatter dose was calculated averaged over a 2.0 mm depth at the surfaces of both cubic and cylindrical water phantoms to simulate different patient curvature. The total skin dose was calculated using EGSnrc Monte-Carlo (MC) software with 1010 photons incident and the primary dose was calculated at the central axis using the mass energy absorption coefficients published by NIST and integrated over the beam-energy spectrum. Simulations were done for incident angles from 90 to 10 degrees, beam field sizes from 5 to 15 cm, cylinder diameters from 20 to 30 cm, and beam energies from 60 to 120 kVp. The results show the scatter-plus-primary to incident-primary dose ratio decreases with decreasing incident angle due to increased primary attenuation and decreases from cubic to cylindrical phantom and with decreasing cylinder diameter at all angles due to reduced backscatter. These results can be used to determine angular correction factors needed to accurately estimate patient skin dose when the beam is not normal to the entrance surface during fluoroscopic procedures.
An analysis of the mission drift in microfinance

With the expansion in the microfinance industry and an increase in the number of microfinance institutions (MFIs), there is some apprehension that MFIs may be deviating from their mission of cateri...
Computers in Patient Care: The Promise and the Challenge: Information technology has the potential to radically transform health care. Why has progress been so slow?

A 29-year-old female from New York City comes in at 3 a.m. to an ED (emergency department) in California, complaining of severe acute abdominal pain that woke her up. She reports that she is in California attending a wedding and that she has suffered from similar abdominal pain in the recent past, most recently resulting in an appendectomy. The emergency physician performs an abdominal CAT scan and sees what he believes to be an artifact from the appendectomy in her abdominal cavity. He has no information about the patient’s past history other than what she is able to tell him; he has no access to any images taken before or after the appendectomy, nor does he have any other vital information about the surgical operative note or follow-up. The physician is left with nothing more than what he can see in front of him. The woman is held overnight for observation and released the following morning symptomatically improved, but essentially undiagnosed.
Resilience for the Rocky Road: Lessons Learned from an Educational Program for First Year Collegiate Student-Athletes

Student-athletes in the United States encounter a myriad of academic, athletic, and social challenges as they transition into their first year of college sport and life. During this transition, str...
Form-finding and fabrication of BeTA pavilion: a bending-active biotensegrity textile assembly

Born in art, the tensegrity logics have been advanced in disciplines from architecture and human anatomy. Biotensegrity principles introduce an adaptive, ‘living’ structural model characterized by networks of interconnected components and tendons with a shape adaptive capacity. Bending-active is an approach to form-force equilibria that adopts actively curving beams and surfaces within their elastic ranges. BeTA Pavilion explores the formal opportunities of biotensegrity logics using elastically bent glass fiber reinforced plastic rods and CNC knitted textiles. Its bending-active system (inspired by animal vertebrae typologies) is composed of prestressed and self-stabilized tetrahedron modules that are arrayed and sequenced to produce structural equilibrium with a bandwidth of dynamic motion. The paper details the iterative design process employing physical and computational modeling and testing for the new adaptive and dynamic structural assembly coupling bending-active textile hybrid with biotensegrity logics.
Activity Monitoring Using Smart Glasses: Exploring the Feasibility of Pedometry on Head Mounted Displays

Fitness tracking, fall detection, indoor navigation, and visual aid applications for smart glasses are rapidly emerging. The performance of these applications heavily relies on the accuracy of step detection, which has rarely been studied for smart glasses. In this paper, we develop an accelerometer-based algorithm for step calculation on smart glasses. Designed based on a salience-analysis approach, the algorithm provides a highly accurate step calculation. An activity monitoring application for a commercial Android-based smart glasses (Vuzix M100) is designed and realized for algorithm evaluation. Experimental results from 10 participants wearing the smart glasses running our application achieved average step detection error of 2.6% demonstrating the feasibility of our salience-based algorithm for performing pedometry on smart glasses.
Assessing Glaucoma Progression Using Machine Learning Trained on Longitudinal Visual Field and Clinical Data.

Purpose Rule-based approaches to determining glaucoma progression from visual fields (VFs) alone are discordant and have tradeoffs. To detect better when glaucoma progression is occurring, we used a longitudinal data set of merged VF and clinical data to assess the performance of a convolutional long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network. Design Retrospective analysis of longitudinal clinical and VF data. Participants From 2 initial datasets of 672 123 VF results from 213 254 eyes and 350 437 samples of clinical data, persons at the intersection of both datasets with 4 or more VF results and corresponding baseline clinical data (cup-to-disc ratio, central corneal thickness, and intraocular pressure) were included. After exclusion criteria—specifically the removal of VFs with high false-positive and false-negative rates and entries with missing data—were applied to ensure reliable data, 11 242 eyes remained. Methods Three commonly used glaucoma progression algorithms (VF index slope, mean deviation slope, and pointwise linear regression) were used to define eyes as stable or progressing. Two machine learning models, one exclusively trained on VF data and another trained on both VF and clinical data, were tested. Main Outcome Measures Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) calculated on a held-out test set and mean accuracies from threefold cross-validation were used to compare the performance of the machine learning models. Results The convolutional LSTM network demonstrated 91% to 93% accuracy with respect to the different conventional glaucoma progression algorithms given 4 consecutive VF results for each participant. The model that was trained on both VF and clinical data (AUC, 0.89–0.93) showed better diagnostic ability than a model exclusively trained on VF results (AUC, 0.79–0.82; P Conclusions A convolutional LSTM architecture can capture local and global trends in VFs over time. It is well suited to assessing glaucoma progression because of its ability to extract spatiotemporal features that other algorithms cannot. Supplementing VF results with clinical data improves the model’s ability to assess glaucoma progression and better reflects the way clinicians manage data when managing glaucoma.
Explaining Hydrocarbon Nationalization in Latin America: Economics and Political Ideology

Recent hydrocarbon nationalizations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have renewed debates about the dangers of radicals, populists, or leftists. But, while some of these presidents have acted aggressively towards multinational owners, as a group their policies have not differed greatly from non-leftists facing similar circumstances. To test our hypothesis, we provide a detailed three-variable coding of every Mexican and South American president (for all countries with oil resources), as well as a coding of their policies towards the hydrocarbons industry. The historical review shows that political leaders from all sides of the ideological spectrum have advocated, pursued, or sustained nationalizations, and thus there is no clear relation between these political labels and nationalization policies. An examination of two alternative hypotheses – timing and starting point – finds that while nationalizations and privatizations do come in bunches, the hydrocarbon policy and economic circumstances that presidents inherit are more likely to determine the policy that they pursue.
Strengths-Based and Mutual Aid Approaches in Social Work and Psychodrama

Social work and psychodrama are both inherently strengths-based approaches with person-centered philosophies that affirm the inherent goodness of individuals. The chapter outlines social work’s strengths-based perspective while connecting it to mutual aid, positive psychology, humanistic psychology, and Morenean philosophy. Social group work’s emphasis on mutual aid and group-as-a-whole processes is outlined with similarities to the theory and practice of psychodrama. The importance of a strengths-based approach in trauma work is affirmed and depicted through resilience theory and post-traumatic growth. Modern adaptations of classical psychodrama which emphasize strengths work are depicted, including positive psychodrama, the Therapeutic Spiral Model, and Souldrama.
Unsettling reflexivity and critical race pedagogy in social work education: narratives from social work students

Recognizing and dismantling structural racism is at the core of the National Association of Social Work’s (NASW) Code of Ethics and is also one of the Social Work Grand Challenges to tackle. Althou...
Electronic Health Records; Delievering the Right Information to the Right Health Care Providers at the Right Time.

In 1993 I wrote "Communication and information management consume as much as 40 percent of all inpatient costs, yet errors still occur at an unacceptable rate. The Institute of medicine has suggested that electronic medical records (EMRs) will help lower health care costs, maintain quality of care, and provide physicians with better information" (Tierney et al. 1993, 379). Nearly 20 years later I'm here to tell you how far we've come toward implementing EHRs nationwide, and what we've learned from our experience at the Regenstrief Institute in Indiana University. Most of us consider health care to be a service business, because we think in terms of a patient who goes to the doctor to get some thing: advice, medication, devices, surgery, or physical therapy. I'm going to argue that what patients really get, and health care practitioners really provide, is information. Ninety-eight percent of what we who practice medicine do is not the end result, the end service, but the overall process of getting there.
Christian Jewish Relations

The Christian polemic against Judaism that scars the history of western civilization runs so deep that it is hard to imagine that the people known as the first “Christians” knew themselves only as Jews. The disciples of Jesus Christ were, in fact, one of many different groups within 1st century Judaism. The success of Paul's mission to the Gentiles, the dispensation from circumcision and observance of dietary law accorded Gentile converts, the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 ce, and the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 ce all contributed to the development of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism as two distinct communities emergent from the complex matrix of 1st century Palestinian Judaism. The dominant approach in contemporary scholarship posits a dual “parting of the ways” of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, but no single interpretive paradigm can account for all the complexities of the actual historical record, and the parting took place at different times in different locales, and boundaries were sometimes quite ambiguous. Keywords: christian–jewish relations; christian polemic against judaism; success of Paul's mission to the gentiles; schism, followers of Jesus christ and jewish community; the jews, portrayed as a carnal people of the law; christian people of the spirit; jews, targets of christian violence; God's covenant love for the jewish people, being eternal
Analytic potential functions for weakly bound molecules: Bonding in the alkaline earth diatomics

Abstract The well regions of the weakly bound ground states of Be 2 , Mg 2 , Ca 2 , and Sr 2 , were analyzed in terms of the parameters of analytic potential functions. From this analysis it is shown that bonding in these molecules is qualitatively different from that found in other molecules of similar binding energy.
Characterizing Web Document Change

The World Wide Web is growing and changing at an astonishing rate. For the information in the web to be useful, web information systems such as search engines have to keep up with the growth and change of the web. In this paper we study how web documents change. In particular, we study two important characteristics of web document change that are directly related to keeping web information systems upto-date: the degree of the change and the clusteredness of the change. We analyze the evolution of web documents with respect to these two measures and discuss the implications for web information systems update.