cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Emerging research topics in control for smart infrastructures

Abstract As we move deeper into the 21st century, critical infrastructures related to energy and transportation are becoming smart–monitor themselves, communicate, and most importantly self-govern. Various drivers have enabled this transition, including sustainability concerns, scarcity in resources, economic considerations, and rapid growth in enabling technologies of sensor networks, and computational and communication systems. Two notable examples of such infrastructures are smart grids and smart cities. The idea behind a Smart grid is the creation of a dynamic, cyber-physical infrastructure that meets the challenges of intermittency and distributed availability of renewables, and realizes reduced operational costs and emissions, via a flexible, intelligent, and networked grid that plans, controls, and balances supply and demand over an entire region. The concept of a Smart City is gaining popular attention driven by goals of sustainability and efficiency, the needs of enhancing quality of life and affordability, growing urbanization of the world’s population, and the explosion of technological advances in communication and computation. While systems and control problems abound in any complex dynamic system, two characteristics that are specific to critical infrastructures are the need to deliver reliable service and the ability to accomplish this goal amidst constrained resources. These in turn lead to new research topics in systems and control including empowered consumers, transactive control, and resilience. The focus of this paper is on these emerging topics. Their role in smart infrastructures, the opportunities they provide, and the research challenges that they bring in are all discussed. Specific illustrations of recent successes are presented that are based on coordinated adjustment of generation and consumption using concepts of multi-agents and multi-timescales in smart grids and socio-technical models of empowered drivers in smart cities.
The Topography of Actions Relevant to Criminalization

The contemporary debate about criminalization has as its origin John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. I open this chapter with an interpretation of the salient elements of that work, those portions of most relevance to the issues I examine in the remainder of this essay. In the course of relating Mill’s theses, I shall pay particular attention to Mill’s identification of various classes of actions—various sets into which actions can be sorted—and to important relationships among these classes. These sets and their relationships can be most perspicuously displayed by using a number of diagrams; various regions are marked off, and borders drawn between regions. Thus the vocabulary of maps and mapping is natural; I shall term this enterprise a “topography of actions.”
A Comparative Analysis of Tax Progressivity in the United States

The proliferating array of measures of tax progressivity is applied to the state-local tax structures in the United States in 1977. An attempt is made to classify state structures into most or least progressive and it is shown that there is a great deal of inconsistency among recently proposed alternative measures.
Long-term Room Temperature Instability in Thermal Conductivity of InGaZnO Thin Films

The cross-plane thermal conductivities of InGaZnO (IGZO) thin films in different morphologies were measured on three occasions within 19 months, using the 3ω method at room temperature 300 K. Amorphous (a-), semi-crystalline (semi-c-) and crystalline (c-) IGZO films were grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), followed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) for evaluation of film quality and crystallinity. Semi-c-IGZO shows the highest thermal conductivity, even higher than the most ordered crystal-like phase. After being stored in dry low-oxygen environment for months, a drastic decrease of semi-c-IGZO thermal conductivity was observed, while the thermal conductivity slightly reduced in c-IGZO and remained unchanged in a-IGZO. This change in thermal conductivity with storage time can be attributed to film structural relaxation and vacancy diffusion to grain boundaries.
A pilot study of sleep, work practices, visual processing speed, and 5-year motor vehicle crash risk among truck drivers

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the relationships between sleep, work practices, speed of processing, and 5-year motor vehicle crash risk among a group of older truck drivers. Anthropometric, demographic, and psychological data were recorded, along with health, sleep, and work histories from a sample of 23 truck drivers. Results from this pilot study suggest that physical fatigue may play a role in processing speed. Future studies should be designed with adequate power and include objective measures of sleep and repeated measures over time to determine 5-year MVC rates. Implications for occupational health nursing research, practice, and education are presented.
Cooperative and Uncooperative Foreign Affairs Federalism

This book review argues for reorienting how we think about federalism in relation to foreign affairs. In considering state and local engagement in foreign affairs, legal scholars often focus on the opportunities and limits provided by constitutional law. Foreign Affairs Federalism: The Myth of National Exclusivity by Michael Glennon and Robert Sloane does precisely this in a thoughtful and well-crafted way. But while the backdrop constitutional principles studied by Glennon and Sloane are important, so too are other types of law that receive far less attention. International law, administrative law, particular statutory schemes, and state law can all affect how state and local governments act in relation to foreign affairs – and can affect how they interact with each other, with the federal government, and with transnational actors. The scholarly literature on cooperative and uncooperative federalism with respect to domestic issues serves as a starting point for understanding how foreign affairs federalism operates today. This literature explores how the federal government can incentivize state and local governments to help advance federal interests, how these state and local governments can influence or resist federal policy, and how both Congress and the executive branch can use state and local action to muster power at the expense of the other branch. At a high level of generality, these insights apply to issues with transnational dimensions. But because of the added complexity of the foreign affairs context – including its ties to international law and its increased reliance on strong executive power – the specifics cannot simply be imported wholesale. The book review therefore closes by suggesting several ways in which the practice and doctrine associated with cooperative and uncooperative foreign affairs federalism should differ from the domestic context.
Response by Verma and Knight to Letter Regarding Article, "Chest Pain and T-Wave Inversions in a 56-Year-Old Man".

Jiang and Qiao question whether the etiology of our patient’s chest pressure1 was elevated pulmonary venous pressures attributable to preexcitation. This is particularly salient because the patient’s symptoms resolved after catheter ablation. Changes in both hemodynamics and the …
Prospective Study of Nonbeneficial Care in Neurocritical Care Unit.

Objective We sought to determine whether a set of simple criteria can identify patients in the neuroscience intensive care unit (NICU) at high risk of poor outcome and delivery of nonbeneficial care early in the course of their illness. Secondarily, factors affecting limitation of care protocols were assessed. Methods We prospectively identified patients who were admitted to the NICU with partial loss of brainstem reflexes persisting for >24 hours due to an intrinsic lesion of the brain (trauma, stroke, hemorrhage, etc.). Results The study included 102 patients. Seventy-two of them died after a mean of 16 days (median: 8 days), and 23 remained comatose, locked-in, or in a vegetative state. Four were conscious and following commands, while 3 were minimally conscious, episodically obeying simple commands. Three out of 4 conscious patients were young males with traumatic brain injuries. Patients who remained full code spent a mean of 22.2 days in the NICU, compared with 10.4 for those who had withdrawal of care (P = 0.022) and 11.9 for patients who received a do-not-resuscitate order (P = 0.045). Time to death did not differ significantly between the groups. Overall, institution of various limitations of care protocols correlated positively with older age (odds ratio [OR] = 1.07, P = 0.0008), being treated on the neurology service (OR = 4.4, P = 0.043), and having health insurance (OR = 5.4, P = 0.03). Conclusions We identified simple criteria that can be used to identify patients in the NICU setting for whom continued aggressive care is likely nonbeneficial. Our analysis revealed demographic, social, and economic factors correlating with proxies' willingness to consider limitation of care.
Electron-, Energy-, and Atom-Transfer Reactions Between Metal Complexes and Dna

Publisher Summary The reactivity of DNA towards both redox chemistry and hydrolysis is important in nucleotide biosynthesis and metabolism. Nucleic acids are excellent targets for anticancer and antiviral therapies, and nucleotide reactivity plays an important role in the design of specific nucleic acid damage agents and the understanding of natural products that cleave nucleic acid polymers. Ionizing radiation treatment leads to nucleic acid oxidation. There is a great deal of interest in using redox and hydrolytic chemistry to probe structures and manipulate sequences of complex nucleic acid polymers using targeted cleavage agents. The spectroscopic and electrochemical signatures of metal complexes can be used to understand DNA reactivity and to detect DNA structures. This chapter reviews researches that exploit the redox and photophysical properties of metal complexes to understand DNA reactivity. Metal complexes provide a special opportunity for these researches because they exhibit well-defined redox states that can be correlated with redox changes in nucleic acids and nucleotides. In metal complexes, changes in these redox states are coupled to changes in the optical spectroscopy of the metal center, which can be used to track the redox state of DNA. In addition, these spectroscopic signatures can also be used to determine DNA binding.
Interaction Patterns for Byzantine Fault Tolerance Computing

In this paper, we present a catalog of application interaction patterns with the corresponding message ordering and execution rules for Byzantine fault tolerance computing. For each pattern, a set of rules are defined to determine whether or not an inbound message should be ordered and in what particular order, and which set of messages should be delivered sequentially, concurrently, or selectively concurrently under various scenarios. This catalog could serve as the design patterns for constructing practical Byzantine fault tolerance applications that may use much more sophisticated system models than the basic client-server state machine model. The set of patterns will make it easier and less error-prone when applying the Byzantine fault tolerance techniques for practical systems, in particular, Web based applications.
CloudInsight: Utilizing a Council of Experts to Predict Future Cloud Application Workloads

Many predictive approaches have been proposed to overcome the limitations of reactive autoscaling on clouds. These approaches leverage workload predictors that are usually targeted for a particular workload pattern and can fail to handle real-world cloud workloads whose patterns may be unknown a priori, may dynamically change over time, or may be irregular. The result is that resources are frequently under-and overprovisioned. To address this problem, we create a novel cloud workload prediction framework called CloudInsight, leveraging the combined power of multiple workload predictors that collectively provide a "council of experts". The weights of the predictors in this ensemble model are determined in real-time based on their accuracy for current workload using multi-class regression. Under real workload traces, CloudInsight has 13% – 27% better accuracy than state-of-the-art predictors. It also has low overhead for predicting future workload changes (< 100 ms) and creating a new ensemble workload predictor (< 1.1 sec.).
Conformal transformations and curvature

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between conformal transformations of ℝn ∪{∞} and the curvature of curves. First, for any non-circular closed curve, there exists a length-preserving inver...
Perceptions of cervical cancer prevention on Twitter uncovered by different sampling strategies.

Author(s): Le, Gem M; Radcliffe, Kate; Lyles, Courtney; Lyson, Helena C; Wallace, Byron; Sawaya, George; Pasick, Rena; Centola, Damon; Sarkar, Urmimala | Abstract: INTRODUCTION:Cervical cancer prevention is possible through use of the HPV vaccine and Pap tests, yet the vaccine remains underutilized. METHODS:We obtained publicly-available Twitter data from 2014 using three sampling strategies (top-ranked, simple random sample, and topic model) based on key words related to cervical cancer prevention. We conducted a content analysis of 100 tweets from each of the three samples and examined the extent to which the narratives and frequency of themes differed across samples. RESULTS:Advocacy-related tweets constituted the most prevalent theme to emerge across all three sample types, and were most frequently found in the top-ranked sample. A random sample detected the same themes as topic modeling, but the relative frequency of themes identified from topic modeling fell in-between top-ranked and random samples. DISCUSSION:Variations in themes uncovered by different sampling methods suggest it is useful to qualitatively assess the relative frequency of themes to better understand the breadth and depth of social media conversations about health. CONCLUSIONS:Future studies using social media data should consider sampling methods to uncover a wider breadth of conversations about health on social media.
A framework for researcher participation in Research Information Management Systems

Abstract Ensuring the quality of information is a critical ethical issue for any information system. Research Information Management Systems (RIMSs) need to engage researchers in sharing research information and knowledge, and ensuring its quality. This paper introduces a theoretical framework for researcher participation in RIMSs. The framework is grounded in empirical research and can guide the design of RIMSs by defining typologies of researcher activities in RIMSs, related motivations, levels of participation, and metadata profiles. In addition, the framework defines discipline- and seniority-specific priorities for the researcher's activities and motivations. RIMS managers and scholarly communications librarians can use the framework to assemble RIMS service and metadata profiles that are tailored to the researcher's context. Likewise, the framework can guide the construction of communication messages personalized to the researcher's priorities and her or his motivations for engaging in a specific activity, which will enhance the researcher's engagement with the RIMS.
Evaluation of the impact of the Hyflex learning model

The HyFlex learning model adopted by Texas AM 2) synchronously; or 3) asynchronously via the adobe connect online-based meeting platform. This study focuses on evaluating the impact that HyFlex has regarding student achievements by assessing their performances from one quantitative course section offered in the program. Quantitative data was collected to examine multiple perspectives in regards to relationships between students' performance and their decision on attendance options in the same course. Findings include clarification on the preconception of quality assurance and efficacy on the HyFlex learning model, distance learning in general, as well as for quantitative courses deployed in a non-traditional online format. Future implications for research are discussed.
Emotion Regulation Moderates the Association Between Proximal Negative Affect and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration

Negative affect is a central component of many theories of aggressive behavior. Though understudied, it is likely that proximal negative affect increases the odds of aggression perpetration when individuals have poor emotion regulation, but not when individuals have more adaptive emotion regulation. Thus, the current study examined (1) the proximal effect of various indicators of negative affect (e.g., anger, hostility, depression) on intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration and (2) whether poor emotion regulation moderated these associations. For up to 90 consecutive days, male college students (N = 67) in a current dating relationship completed daily surveys on their negative affect and IPV perpetration. Results demonstrated that emotion regulation moderated many of the associations between proximal negative affect and physical aggression perpetration, such that negative affect was associated with increased odds of violence when poor emotion regulation was high but not low. This is the first study to demonstrate the moderating role of emotion regulation in the link between proximal negative affect and IPV perpetration. As such, these findings have important implications for existing theories of IPV and emotion regulation and suggest that interventions may effectively reduce IPV by targeting emotion regulation.
Treatment of Dupuytren Disease With Injectable Collagenase in a Veteran Population: A Case Series at the Department of Veterans Affairs New Jersey Health Care System

Introduction: Clinical trials seeking to establish long-term efficacy of injectable collagenase clostridium histolyticum for treatment of Dupuytren disease are ongoing. In this quality improvement study, the efficacy, recurrence rate, and complications of collagenase injection for Dupuytren disease are reviewed in a population of Veteran patients. Materials and Methods: A retrospective chart review was performed for patients who underwent treatment with injectable collagenase for Dupuytren disease from 2010 to 2013 at our regional Department of Veterans Affairs medical center. Data points of interest included the degree of joint contracture preoperatively, immediately after treatment, and at follow-up, complications, and patient satisfaction. Results: Sixteen patients received 27 injections (18 metacarpophalangeal and 9 proximal interphalangeal injections). The mean time of follow-up was 12.3 months. There was a 50% or greater reduction of the original extension deficit in 74.1% (n = 27) of the joints treated. Metacarpophalangeal joint recurrence was “high” (≥50°) in 0% (n = 18) of joints, and “low” (5°-50°) in 33.3% (n = 18) of joints with a mean follow-up of 12 months. Proximal interphalangeal joint recurrence was “high” (≥40°) in 18.5% (n = 9) of joints and “low” (5°-40°) in 7.4% (n = 9) of joints with a mean follow-up of 12.9 months. Minor complications were experienced in 93.8% (n = 16) of patients who underwent collagenase injection and included ecchymosis, skin laceration, injection-site swelling, injection-site hemorrhage, tenderness, and pruritus. Seventy-five percent (n = 12) of patients in our study reported they would undergo treatment with collagenase again. Conclusions: The case series presented demonstrates that injectable collagenase clostridium histolyticum produced a clinical success rate of 74.1% and is a safe method to treat Dupuytren disease.
Why Accounting Matters: Evidence from Accounting's “Big Bang”

ABSTRACT This article is based on my keynote speech presented at the 2018 Journal of International Accounting Research Conference held at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. The worldwide adop...
Whispering Hypnosis: Phylogenetically Programmed Behavior and a Pluralistic Understanding of Hypnosis

Hypnosis is founded on a legacy of debate and zero-sum thinking as competing schools have argued for the value of one theoretical explanation at the expense of another. More recently, the discussion has turned to pluralistic modeling, with many researchers accepting four central constructs: imagination, suggestion, expectation, and trance experience. The aim of this paper is to introduce a fifth domain, instinct. Discoveries in comparative psychology, such as autoshaping and instinctual drift are used to highlight the importance of using suggestions that incorporate or are in service of phylogenetically programmed behavior. While it is not uncommon for hypnotic operators to intentionally trigger a single reflex for induction purposes, this paper shows the value of strategically incorporating constellations of reflexive behaviors and emotions that can be identified in terms of universal instincts found in humans and non-human animals; such as attachment, dominance-submission, catatonic immobility, competition, ownership, reciprocity, maternal instincts, and fraternal protectiveness. Highly complex interpersonal dynamics, which can occur during hypnosis, are simplified using the phylogenetic construct, as illustrated in clinical vignettes.
Integriertes Master Planning

Die mittelfristige Planung von standortubergreifenden Produktions- und Distributionsmengen in einer Supply Chain wird im Rahmen eines Advanced-Planning-Ansatzes als Master Planning bezeichnet. Die Durchfuhrung dieser Planungsaufgabe wird softwaretechnisch durch die Komponente Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) aus dem Softwarepaket SCM (Supply Chain Management) der Firma SAP unterstutzt. In dem untersuchten Unternehmen — einem Hersteller von Blumenerden mit mehreren Produktionsund Distributionsstandorten in Deutschland — wird zur Durchfuhrung des Master Planning das APO-Modul Supply Network Planning (SNP) verwendet. Das Unternehmen verfolgt dabei das Ziel, die Summe der Beschaffungs-, Produktions-, Lagerhaltungs- und Transportkosten zu minimieren. Besonderer Fokus liegt auf der Integration mit dem bereits vorhandenen SAP-ERP-System (Enterprise Resource Planning).
Guided linking: dynamic linking without the costs

Dynamic linking is extremely common in modern software systems, thanks to the flexibility and space savings it offers. However, this flexibility comes at a cost: it’s impossible to perform interprocedural optimizations that involve calls to a dynamic library. The basic problem is that the run-time behavior of the dynamic linker can’t be predicted at compile time, so the compiler can make no assumptions about how such calls will behave. This paper introduces guided linking, a technique for optimizing dynamically linked software when some information about the dynamic linker’s behavior is known in advance. The developer provides an arbitrary set of programs, libraries, and plugins to our tool, along with constraints that limit the possible dynamic linking behavior of the software. By taking advantage of the constraints, our tool enables any existing optimization to be applied across dynamic linking boundaries. For example, the NoOverride constraint can be applied to a function when the developer knows it will never be overridden with a different definition at run time; guided linking then enables the function to be inlined into its callers in other libraries. We also introduce a novel code size optimization that deduplicates identical functions even across different parts of the software set. By applying guided linking to the Python interpreter and its dynamically loaded modules, supplying the constraint that no other programs or modules will be used, we increase speed by an average of 9%. By applying guided linking to a dynamically linked distribution of Clang and LLVM, and using the constraint that no other software will use the LLVM libraries, we can increase speed by 5% and reduce file size by 13%. If we relax the constraint to allow other software to use the LLVM libraries, we can still increase speed by 5% and reduce file size by 5%. If we use guided linking to combine 11 different versions of the Boost library, using minimal constraints, we can reduce the total library size by 57%.
The Preparing Residents for International Medical Experiences (PRIME) Simulation Workshop: Equipping Surgery and Anesthesia Trainees for International Rotations.

Introduction Although global health training expands clinical and sociocultural expertise for graduate medical trainees and is increasingly in demand, evidence-based courses are limited. To improve...
Microstructure Quantification and Multiresolution Mechanical Characterization of Ti-Based Bulk Metallic Glass-Matrix Composites

This study explores the benefits of utilizing recently developed protocols for microstructure quantification and the multiresolution mechanical characterization of Ti-based bulk metallic glass matrix composites. Four alloys with different compositions and amorphous (glass) fractions were studied. Microstructure quantification of the amorphous and crystalline phase in these alloys was performed using rotationally invariant 2-point spatial statistics and principal component analysis on approximately 1300 micrographs. Mechanical properties of the constituent phases as well as the bulk mechanical properties of the composites were measured using recently established high-throughput multiresolution spherical indentation stress–strain protocols. The results showed that decreasing amorphous volume fraction results in a decrease in both bulk Young’s modulus and the bulk yield strength of the samples, without significant changes in the mechanical properties of the constituent phases.
Multiclass Anomaly Detection in Flight Data Using Semi-Supervised Explainable Deep Learning Model

The identification of precursors to safety incidents in aviation data is a crucial task, yet extremely challenging. The main approach in practice leverages domain expertise to define expected toler...
The Internet- Disability or Distraction? An Analysis of Whether "Internet Addiction" Can Qualify as a Disability Under the Americans with Disabilities Act

As the Internet emerged in the 1990s, the possibility for progress seemed boundless. However, it was merely a matter of time before certain adverse consequences of the Internet began to surface. Among these was an abnormal affinity for the Internet that many have since characterized as an addiction to the Internet. While different terms have been employed to describe this problem, a body of research has developed over the last decade that recognizes the legitimacy of a condition or disorder grounded in excessive Internet use. The emergence and growth of Internet addiction has significant legal consequences for employers. While employers typically have Internet usage policies that allow them to regulate the manner in which their employees use the Internet at work, certain legal implications may be triggered when employees, who have been subject to adverse employment actions for their improper Internet use, claim that they are disabled on the basis of their Internet addiction. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits an employer from “discriminat[ing] against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual.” Certain addictions, such as drug addictions, have been recognized as disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Research and case studies are presenting considerable evidence that Internet addiction, like drug or other addictions, can have a similar debilitating impact on its subjects. This Comment explores the viability of a plaintiff’s claim that he or
Line depletion electromigration characteristics of Cu interconnects

Specific details of fabrication process and geometry of Cu interconnects result in different electromigration (EM) fail modes. This paper discusses EM characteristics of line depletion mode stress, i.e. for the case of electrons flowing into a Cu line through a Cu diffusion barrier to cause voiding in the line. For electrons flowing from a W via, for example to a Cu line above, redundancy exists due to the overlap of line bottom liner over the top of the via. When electrons flow from a via above down to a Cu line, the redundancy characteristics can be very different for different via/line layouts and result in different EM fail distributions. The solid contact between via and the liner of the line below can result in tight fail distributions, while weak contact or lack of contact between the via and the liner of the line below can cause broad (high sigma), or even multi-mode fail distributions. A few examples and their implications on robust interconnect design are presented. The relation between void size and liner redundancy characteristics is also discussed.
Mass Loss during the Evolution of Massive Stars

Mass loss during various phases in the evolution of massive stars (M* > 30 Mo) has been discussed recently in various reviews.
Perturbative and Nonperturbative Em Lepton Pair Production in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

In this talk, I will focus on electromagnetic dilepton production from the QED-vacuum in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Heavy ions in relativistic motion generate strong time-dependent EM fields with large Fourier components which give rise to sizable pair production. There are several motivations for our studies: Lepton pair production by hadronic (Drell-Yan) processes has been widely discussed as a possible signature of the quark-gluon plasma formation1. The dominant background will come from electromagnetic sources and could even mask the signals from the plasma phase2.
Effects of Instructor Attractiveness on Classroom Learning

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW 1 Attractiveness Stereotypes 1 Development of Attractiveness Stereotypes 4 Effects of Physical Appearance on Treatment 6 Job-related outcomes 7 Legal outcomes 8 Physical Appearance and Learning 8 Student attractiveness and learning 9 Instructor attractiveness and learning 9 Beauty Is Better 11 Social Learning Explanation 13 Attention 13 Motivation 15 CHAPTER 2: CURRENT STUDY AND METHODS 17 Methods 17 Participants 17 Materials 18 Procedure 19 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS 23
Proteolytic cleavage of atrial natriuretic factor receptor in bovine adrenal membranes by endogenous metalloendopeptidase

Atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) is a peptide hormone from the heart atrium with potent natriuretic and vasorelaxant activities. The natriuretic activity of ANF is, in part, mediated through the adrenal gland, where binding of ANF to the 130-kDa ANF receptor causes suppression of aldosterone secretion. Incubation of bovine adrenal membranes at pH <5.6 caused a rapid and spontaneous cleavage of the 130-kDa ANF receptor, yielding a 65-kDa polypeptide that could be detected by photoaffinity labeling by 125I-labeled Nα4-azidobenzoyl-ANF(4–28) followed by SDS/PAGE under reducing conditions. Within 20 min of incubation at pH 4.0, essentially all the 130-kDa receptor was converted to a 65-kDa ANF binding protein. This cleavage reaction was completely inhibited by inclusion of 5 mM EDTA. When SDS/PAGE was carried out under non-reducing conditions, the apparent size of the ANF receptor remained unchanged at 130 kDa, indicating that the 65-kDa ANF-binding fragment was still linked to the remaining part(s) of the receptor polypeptide through a disulfide bond(s). The disappearance of the 130-kDa receptor was accompanied by a parallel decrease in guanylate cyclase activity in the membranes. Inclusion of EDTA in the incubation not only prevented cleavage of the 130-kDa receptor, but also protected guanylate cyclase activity, indicating that proteolysis, but not the physical effects of the acidic pH, causes inactivation of guanylate cyclase. The 130-kDa ANF receptor in adrenal membranes was competitively protected from photoaffinity labeling by ANF(1–28) or ANF(4–28), but not by atriopeptin I [ANF(5–25)] or C-ANF [des-(18–22)-ANF(4–23)-NH2]. On the contrary, the 65-kDa ANF-binding fragment generated after incubation at pH 4.0 was protected from labeling by any of the above peptides, indicating broader binding specificity. After incubation in the presence of EDTA, the 130-kDa ANF receptor, which was protected from proteolysis, retained binding specificity identical to that of the 130-kDa receptor in untreated membranes. The results indicate that the broadening of selectivity is caused by cleavage, but not by the physical effect of acidic pH. Spontaneous proteolysis of ANF receptor by an endogenous metalloendopeptidase, occurring with concomitant inactivation of guanylate cyclase activity and broadening of ligand-binding selectivity, may be responsible for the generation of low-molecular-mass receptors found in the adrenal gland and other target organs of ANF. The proteolytic process may play a role in desensitization or down-regulation of the ANF receptor.
Carex y Uncinia (Cyperaceae, Cariceae) del Archipiélago Juan Fernández, Chile

En el Archipielago Juan Fernandez se encuentran diez miembros de la tribu Cariceae (Cyperaceae): cuatro especies de Carex y seis de Uncinia . Ocho de las especies se hallan en la Isla Alejandro Selkirk (= Masafuera; 50 km2), y cuatro en la Isla Robinson Crusoe (= Masatierra; 48 km2). Se describen cuatro nuevos taxones endemicos para el Archipielago: Carex fernandezensis, C. stuessyi, Uncinia aspericaulis , y U. macloviformis . Solo dos especies endemicas, Carex berteroniana y Uncinia douglasii , son frecuentes en ambas islas. Otro endemismo, Uncinia costata , es conocido solo en la localidad de coleccion del tipo en Alejandro Selkirk. Las tres especies restantes, Uncinia phleoides , U. tenuis , y Carex phalaroides , se encuentran tambien en el continente Sudamericano, y se cita aqui por primera vez C. phalaroides para el archipielago. Se lectotipifican los nombres Uncinia costata y U. tenuis f. firmula , y se describe una nueva seccion de Carex , sect. Pellucidae, para ubicar a C. stuessyi y taxones afines.
Sleep Quality and Blood Pressure Dipping in Normal Adults

OBJECTIVES To investigate the relationship between sleep quality and nocturnal blood pressure dipping in normal subjects. We hypothesized that sleep quality correlates with dipping. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Unattended polysomnography in the home followed by a 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure measurement. PATIENTS Eighty-eight self-described normal subjects were evaluated; 26 were excluded due to an apnea-hypopnea index > or = 10. None were taking antihypertensive medications. INTERVENTIONS N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Subjects were divided into dippers and nondippers based on > or = 10% drop in nocturnal mean arterial pressure (MAP). Sleep-quality variables included total sleep time; sleep latency; percentage of stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and rapid-eye-movement sleep; percentage of wake time after sleep onset (WASO); total arousal index; and sleep efficiency. Of the remaining 62 subjects, 17.7% were nondippers, and 7 were hypertensive. There was no difference in age, body mass index, apnea-hypopnea index, blood pressure, or sleep quality between groups. Stage 4 sleep correlated significantly with dipping of diastolic blood pressure and MAP (r = 0.410 and 0.378, respectively, P < or = .002), and percentage of WASO was negatively correlated with dipping of diastolic blood pressure (r = -0.360, P = .004), suggesting that greater dipping was associated with better sleep quality. On multivariate analyses, Stage 4 sleep was independently associated with dipping of diastolic blood pressure (P = .034) after adjusting for screening MAP, percentage of WASO, total arousal index, and Stage 1 sleep. The same link was found between Stage 4 sleep and dipping of MAP (P = .05) after adjusting for screening MAP, age, sex, and body mass index. Repeat analyses excluding hypertensives yielded similar findings. CONCLUSION Our data suggest that deeper and less-fragmented sleep is associated with more blood pressure dipping in normal subjects.
Spatial Regulation of Histidine Kinases Governing Biofilm Formation in Bacillus subtilis

Bacillus subtilis is able to form architecturally complex biofilms on solid medium due to the production of an extracellular matrix. A master regulator that controls the expression of the genes involved in matrix synthesis is Spo0A, which is activated by phosphorylation via a phosphorelay involving multiple histidine kinases. Here we report that four kinases, KinA, KinB, KinC, and KinD, help govern biofilm formation but that their contributions are partially masked by redundancy. We show that the kinases fall into two categories and that the members of each pair (one pair comprising KinA and KinB and the other comprising KinC and KinD) are partially redundant with each other. We also show that the kinases are spatially regulated: KinA and KinB are active principally in the older, inner regions of the colony, and KinC and KinD function chiefly in the younger, outer regions. These conclusions are based on the morphology of kinase mutants, real-time measurements of gene expression using luciferase as a reporter, and confocal microscopy using a fluorescent protein as a reporter. Our findings suggest that multiple signals from the older and younger regions of the colony are integrated by the kinases to determine the overall architecture of the biofilm community.
Neural plasticity and addiction: PI3-kinase and cocaine behavioral sensitization.

Drug addiction has been linked to protracted functional changes in neural circuits involved in motivation that can lead to drug dependence, craving and relapse1. Here we investigated the role of the phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K) signal transduction pathway in long-lasting behavioral sensitization to cocaine in rats, an animal model of the long-lasting functional changes induced by repeated drug use2. Our results show that PI3K is required for the expression, but not the induction, of behavioral sensitization to cocaine.
Gene expression patterns following unilateral traumatic brain injury reveals a local pro-inflammatory and remote anti-inflammatory response.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in irreversible damage at the site of impact and initiates cellular and molecular processes that lead to secondary neural injury in the surrounding tissue. We used microarray analysis to determine which genes, pathways and networks were significantly altered using a rat model of TBI. Adult rats received a unilateral controlled cortical impact (CCI) and were sacrificed 24 h post-injury. The ipsilateral hemi-brain tissue at the site of the injury, the corresponding contralateral hemi-brain tissue, and naive (control) brain tissue were used for microarray analysis. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software was used to identify molecular pathways and networks that were associated with the altered gene expression in brain tissues following TBI. Inspection of the top fifteen biological functions in IPA associated with TBI in the ipsilateral tissues revealed that all had an inflammatory component. IPA analysis also indicated that inflammatory genes were altered on the contralateral side, but many of the genes were inversely expressed compared to the ipsilateral side. The contralateral gene expression pattern suggests a remote anti-inflammatory molecular response. We created a network of the inversely expressed common (i.e., same gene changed on both sides of the brain) inflammatory response (IR) genes and those IR genes included in pathways and networks identified by IPA that changed on only one side. We ranked the genes by the number of direct connections each had in the network, creating a gene interaction hierarchy (GIH). Two well characterized signaling pathways, toll-like receptor/NF-kappaB signaling and JAK/STAT signaling, were prominent in our GIH. Bioinformatic analysis of microarray data following TBI identified key molecular pathways and networks associated with neural injury following TBI. The GIH created here provides a starting point for investigating therapeutic targets in a ranked order that is somewhat different than what has been presented previously. In addition to being a vehicle for identifying potential targets for post-TBI therapeutic strategies, our findings can also provide a context for evaluating the potential of therapeutic agents currently in development.
Fine structure and function of the osmotin gene promoter

The gene encoding osmotin, a tobacco pathogenesis-related protein, has been shown to be regulated by an array of hormonal and environmental signals. The osmotin promoter fragment −248 to −108 upstream of the transcription start site (fragment A), was sufficient to direct reporter gene expression when fused to a minimal CaMV 35S promoter in transient assays using microprojectile bombardment. This was consistent with previous 5′-deletion analyses of the osmotin promoter which showed that the promoter sequence from −248 to −108 is absolutely required for reporter gene activity. Nuclear protein factors from salt-adapted tobacco cells, ABA-treated unadapted cells, and young cultured tobacco leaves were shown to interact with fragment A by gel mobility-shift assays. DNase I footprinting revealed that three conserved promoter elements in fragment A interact specifically with nuclear factors. These elements are: (1) a cluster of G-box-like sequences (G sequence); (2) an AT-1 box-like sequence, 5′-AATTATTT-TATG-3′ (AT sequence); (3) a sequence highly conserved in ethylene-induced PR gene promoters, 5′-TAAGA/CGCCGCC-3′ (PR sequence). Transient expression assays performed with fragment A deletions fused to GUS indicated that osmotin promoter activity correlated with the presence of these elements. UV cross-linking analysis showed that the protein complex bound to fragment A consisted of at least four individual proteins with approximate molecular masses of 28, 29, 40 and 42 kDa. One component of this protein complex, which was associated with the G sequence, was a 14-3-3 like protein.
Snake scent application in ground squirrels, Spermophilus spp.: a novel form of antipredator behaviour?

Chemical substances produced by one species are sometimes found on the body of another species. Animals often ingest such foreign substances and sequester them into their integument, but here we report a case of direct application of heterospecific substances to the body. California ground squirrels, Spermophilus beecheyi, and rock squirrels, Spermophilus variegatus, apply scent derived from their major predator, rattlesnakes, Crotalus spp., by chewing shed rattlesnake skins and licking their fur. We found that the sequence of body areas licked during application was essentially the same for the two species. We consider three hypotheses regarding the function of this ‘snake scent application’ (SSA): antipredator defence, ectoparasite defence, and conspecific deterrence. To test these hypotheses, we assessed patterns of species and sex/age class differences in application quantity and compared them with patterns reflecting differences in the importance of predation, flea loads and conspecific aggression as sources of selection. We found no species differences in application quantity; however, juveniles and adult females of both species engaged in longer bouts of application than adult males. This pattern of sex/age class differences in SSA supports only the antipredator hypothesis because juveniles are most vulnerable to predation and adult females actively protect their young. We found no evidence to support either the ectoparasite defence or conspecific deterrence hypotheses. Thus, SSA behaviour may be a novel form of chemical defence against predation.
Nocturnal Omissions: Steps Toward a Sociology of Dreams

The examination of dreams should properly be a legitimate topic of sociological investigation. We argue that there are four basic principles of dream-life that suggest that dreams are external to the individual mind and are collective enterprises: 1) dreams are not willed by the individual self; 2) dreams reflect social reality: 3) dreams are public rhetoric; and 4) dreams are collectively interpretable. With the development of sociological approaches that examine topics previously defined as psychological, such as the sociology of emotion and cognition, the seemingly idiosyncratic components of these nocturnal productions should not exclude them from social analysis.
Effects of local and repeated systemic administration of (-)nicotine on extracellular levels of acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin in rat cortex.

Systemically administered (-)nicotine (0.2-1.2 mg/kg, s.c.) significantly increased the release of acetylcholine (ACh), norepinephrine (NE) and dopamine (DA) in rat cortex. The lowest dose of (-)nicotine examined (0.2 mg/kg, s.c.) also significantly elevated extracellular serotonin (5-HT) levels, and the maximal increases of extracellular ACh (122% at 90 min post injection) and DA levels (249% at 120 min post-injection) were observed following this dose. In contrast, the maximal increase of NE release (157% at 30 min post-injection) was observed following the highest dose of (-)nicotine injected (1.2 mg/kg, s.c.). This higher dose consistently produced generalized seizures. Repeating the (-)nicotine (0.58 mg/kg, s.c.) injection four hours after the first administration significantly elevated extracellular NE levels and also appeared to increase DA and ACh release. In addition, extracellular ACh and DA levels increased significantly in the dialysate after (-)nicotine was administered directly to the neocortex through the microdialysis probe membrane. Norepinephrine levels appeared to be elevated in the cortex following local administration as well.
Computer assisted navigation in total knee arthroplasty: improved coronal alignment.

Abstract The use of a computer navigation system is intended to optimize implant positioning. This study compares prospectively followed total knee arthroplasty (TKA) done with imageless computer-assisted navigation with a cohort of TKA done with manual instruments. Primary TKAs were performed on 147 knees, with 78 in the manual group and 69 in the navigated group. Coronal alignment was determined by postoperative full-length standing radiographs. The 2 groups had similar mean values for radiographic mechanical axis at 0.4°. There was a larger variation in alignment in the manual group, with 58% of the manual group within 2° of neutral compared with 78% of the navigated group ( P = .008). The navigation system reproducibly resulted in a more reliable reproduction of the mechanical axis.
Model For Rainfall Excess Patterns on Randomly Heterogeneous Areas

A model is presented that can simulate infiltration from rainstorms on areas exhibiting random variation in saturated hydraulic conductivity KS. Heterogeneity in the capillary drive (or length scale) parameter G can be treated as well. The method is based on a point infiltration model that includes the Green-Ampt or Smith-Parlange infiltration functions. The runoff area is characterized as an ensemble of infiltrating points or flow path strips that provides runoff to a receiving channel. The model is developed by simulation of a large ensemble using Latin hypercube sampling. The infiltration expression is responsive to a changing rainfall rate r and is easily characterized using the basic infiltration parameters KS and G, plus a third parameter based only on the coefficient of variation of KS or G. Areal heterogeneity causes a rainfall-dependent change in the areal effective value for KS, called Ke(r). The infiltration expression contains rainfall rate as a variable, and observed storms with temporal rain...
Juan Luis Vives: Tradition and innovation in renaissance rhetoric

Juan Luis Vives, like many sixteenth‐century humanists, sought to reform the arts of rhetoric and dialectic. This essay argues that Vives' efforts to rehabilitate the disciplines of discourse may well have been the most original of his century. Vives' discussion of elecutio—the essence of rhetoric—is considerably more distinguished than that presented by the better known Peter Ramus.