cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Carnivore occurrence along an urban-rural gradient : A landscape-level analysis

Abstract Human development impacts the landscape by altering the size and shape of natural habitat patches, replacing natural vegetation with other types such as lawns and row crops, or introducing environmental stressors such as increased human activity and pollutants. We investigated the effects of human alterations to the landscape on the distribution of 3 mammalian carnivores (coyote [Canis latrans], raccoon [Procyon lotor], and red fox [Vulpes vulpes]) along an urban–rural gradient in northern Illinois. Distribution of each species was assessed from occurrence at scent stations placed within or along the edges of 47 sites ≥ 4 ha, representing 7 different natural or anthropogenically altered habitats. We averaged presence or absence scores across several seasonal samples over a year, and used an outlying mean index analysis to compare them to environmental variables gathered for each site, including habitat and landscape metrics presumed to reflect varying degrees of anthropogenic influence across the...
Imitation Learning and Behavior Generation in a Robot Team

In this paper, we propose a method to apply robotic imitation learning in robot teams. In our method, behavior primitives with task-relevant information are defined as the basic units for robots to complete a task. Each behavior has its own task-relevant affordances. The learned behavior primitives format TAEM based behavior libraries and are stored in a database for robots to share. The motivation of learning, conducted by robots, is goal-oriented and strongly related to the given task. Given a task, a robot analyzes the environment and searches the behavior library to find suitable behaviors to generate a behavior sequence to complete the task. If it thinks that it cannot complete this task, this robot requests other robots for assistance or request a human teacher to demonstrate the required behaviors. The newly learned behaviors will be added into the existing behavior library. We also develop inhibiting properties for robots to evaluate the current behaviors, which enables robots to request collaborations from other robots. The experimental results show the validity our proposed method.
The Local Projective Shape of Smooth Surfaces and Their Outlines

This article examines projectively-invariant local geometric properties of smooth curves and surfaces. Oriented projective differential geometry is proposed as a general framework for establishing such invariants and characterizing the local projective shape of surfaces and their outlines. It is applied to two problems: (1) the projective generalization of Koenderink's famous characterization of convexities, concavities, and inflections of the apparent contours of solids bounded by smooth surfaces, and (2) the image-based construction of rim meshes, which provide a combinatorial description of the arrangement induced on the surface of an object by the contour generators associated with multiple cameras observing it.
Braille document recognition using Belief Propagation

There is a significant need for a system to recognize Braille documents in order to preserve them and make them available to a larger group of visually impaired people. A new system for Braille document recognition is proposed. We introduce a highly-adaptive Braille documents parameters estimation method to automatically determine the rotation angle, indentations, and spacing in both vertical and horizontal orientation. The key element in determining the rotation angle of the images is based on Radon transform. Also we introduce the method of Braille translation using Belief Propagation on the assumption that the Braille document is a Hidden Markov Model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of rotation angle correction as well as the accuracy of indentation and spacing in both orientations. We also prove that the translation algorithm is efficient and robust to errors made in the dot detection. The proposed method may be used for further applications.
Balance Forces and Environmental Effects: Factors Influencing the Cohesiveness of Adolescent Drinking Groups

This paper analyzes factors affecting the internal structure of affective relationships in triads formed by adolescent male drinkers and abstainers. It is shown that the likelihood of a given sociometric relation can be predicted from knowledge of other relational bonds in the triad and from the degree of similarity with regard to alcohol use. The relations between two individuals are affected importantly by their own behaviors and also by their affective ties and behavioral similarities to others in the system. It is suggested that balance theory may be extended to explain the strength of balance forces within one system as a function of imbalance in another. With regard to obj ects of generalized importance and social relevance, pressures toward balance are hypothesized to increase in strength to the extent that one or more actors experience imbalance in other relational sets. Consistent with this hypothesis is the observation that lack of parental support is associated with closer ties between an individual's friends.
Modeling and controlling the software test process

A novel approach for modeling and control of the software test process is presented. The approach is based on the concept of state variables and uses techniques from the well-established field of automatic control theory. An initial model of the software test phase is described and the results of a case study analysis are presented.
Ancillary Diagnostics in Gynecologic Cytology

Cytology has been the mainstay of cervical dysplasia and cancer screening in the United States. The specificity of a woman harboring a high-grade lesion when identified as high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion on Pap test is high; however, the test suffers from low sensitivity. Epidemiology studies have demonstrated that human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18 account for most cervical squamous cell carcinomas. Tests have been developed to identify high-risk HPV, some specifically to identify HPV 16 and 18. Simultaneous to the increase in HPV detection methods, interdisciplinary groups are making recommendations on the managerial use of the tests.
Defining the Problem and Problems of Definition: Legal Standards for Expanding Issues in Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment has been a difficult area of legal interpretation. Legal frameworks used in other areas of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act have not been used in the development of standards by which to judge on the job harassment. Specific difficulties analyzed are the status of group versus individual protection, the notion that harassment is a correctable violation, problems of defining a hostile environment and determining harm, adverse effects on third parties, harassment without sexuality, and same sex harassment. Disagreements between the Circuit Courts and the EEOC are highlighted and effects on individuals and organizations are discussed. Suggestions for organization policy are made.
Danger explodes, space implodes: the evolution of the environmental discourse on nuclear waste, 1945–1969

The ways in which the public understands nuclear waste affect nuclear waste policy and the actual disposal of nuclear waste. This paper traces the origins and the evolution of the public understanding of nuclear waste through an analysis of a sample of the historical record of the public discourse on the topic. This paper employs sociocultural anthropology methods innovatively: rather than emphasizing the data collection aspect of participant observation, it emphasizes interpretive discourse analysis, sampling the archives of the New York Times as a de facto ethnographic repository of the U.S. discourse on nuclear waste spanning the years 1945–1969. Whereas no evidence of a public concept for nuclear waste is found in the chronologically first item of this study’s dataset, the chronologically last item implies a public conceptualization of nuclear waste that appears not too different from the one encountered today. The paper illuminates especially the evolution of two key threads of environmental consciousness in the U.S. public discourse: as waste grew ever more harmful in the public understanding, the space available for disposing of it shrank and eventually disappeared.
TREM-like transcript 2 is stored in human neutrophil primary granules and is up-regulated in response to inflammatory mediators

The triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell locus encodes a family of receptors that is emerging as an important class of molecules involved in modulating the innate immune response and inflammation. Of the 4 conserved members, including triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 1 and 2 and triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcripts 1 and 2, relatively little is known about triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 expression and function, particularly in humans. In this study, experiments were performed to determine if triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 expression is conserved between mouse and human, demonstrating that human triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 is expressed on cells of the lymphoid, as well as myeloid/granuloid lineages, similar to murine triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2. Consistent with studies in the mouse, triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 expression is up-regulated in response to inflammatory mediators on human neutrophils. Importantly, it was shown that triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2, in resting human neutrophils, is predominantly localized to intracellular vesicles, including secretory vesicles and primary granules; with the majority of triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 stored in primary granules. In contrast to other primary granule proteins, triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 is not expelled on neutrophil extracellular traps but is retained in the plasma membrane following primary granule exocytosis. In summary, these findings establish that triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-like transcript 2 expression is conserved between species and is likely to be important in regulating neutrophil antimicrobial function following primary granule exocytosis.
Spatial Variance in Resting fMRI Networks of Schizophrenia Patients: An Independent Vector Analysis

Spatial variability in resting functional MRI (fMRI) brain networks has not been well studied in schizophrenia, a disease known for both neurodevelopmental and widespread anatomic changes. Motivated by abundant evidence of neuroanatomical variability from previous studies of schizophrenia, we draw upon a relatively new approach called independent vector analysis (IVA) to assess this variability in resting fMRI networks. IVA is a blind-source separation algorithm, which segregates fMRI data into temporally coherent but spatially independent networks and has been shown to be especially good at capturing spatial variability among subjects in the extracted networks. We introduce several new ways to quantify differences in variability of IVA-derived networks between schizophrenia patients (SZs = 82) and healthy controls (HCs = 89). Voxelwise amplitude analyses showed significant group differences in the spatial maps of auditory cortex, the basal ganglia, the sensorimotor network, and visual cortex. Tests for differences (HC-SZ) in the spatial variability maps suggest, that at rest, SZs exhibit more activity within externally focused sensory and integrative network and less activity in the default mode network thought to be related to internal reflection. Additionally, tests for difference of variance between groups further emphasize that SZs exhibit greater network variability. These results, consistent with our prediction of increased spatial variability within SZs, enhance our understanding of the disease and suggest that it is not just the amplitude of connectivity that is different in schizophrenia, but also the consistency in spatial connectivity patterns across subjects.
Robot vision

A scheme is developed for classifying the types of motion perceived by a humanlike robot. It is assumed that the robot receives visual images of the scene using a perspective system model. Equations, theorems, concepts, clues, etc., relating the objects, their positions, and their motion to their images on the focal plane are presented. >
A person-centered humanistic approach to performing evidence-based school counseling research

The authors propose a process for school counseling researchers to conduct evidence-based research consistent to the person-centered humanistic perspective. Informed by three tenets for research, i...
Subtle higher order mutants

Context: Research has shown the majority of real faults are complex and cannot be simulated with traditional First Order Mutants (FOMs). Higher Order Mutants (HOMs), which are created by making multiple syntactic changes to the source code (i.e, combining multiple FOMs), can potentially be used to simulate realistic faults.Objective: Our goal is to find subtle HOMs, which we define to be HOMs that are not killed by a reference test suite that kills all the FOMs. Subtle HOMs represent cases where single faults interact by masking each other to produce complex faulty behavior. The fault-detection effectiveness of a test suite can be improved by adding test cases that detect subtle HOMs.Method: We developed six search-based techniques to find subtle HOMs: Genetic Algorithm, Local Search, Data-Interaction Guided Local Search, Test-Case Guided Local Search, Restricted Random Search and Restricted Enumeration. We then performed empirical studies to evaluate the ability of the search techniques to find subtle HOMs and investigated factors that impact the characteristics of the subtle HOMs.Results: Local Search and both the Guided Local Search techniques were more effective than the other techniques at finding subtle HOMs. The majority of subtle HOMs that were found resulted from combining mutated Java primitive operators.Conclusions: The proposed techniques are able to find subtle HOMs. Composing subtle HOMs of lower degrees is an effective way for finding new subtle HOMs of higher degrees.
Tubular function in glycerol-induced acute renal failure in rats: effect of saline loading and prior acute renal failure

1. Chronic saline loading and prior induction of acute renal failure are manoeuvres which have been reported to protect against the development of acute renal failure. The underlying mechanisms are unclear. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of these protective manoeuvres on glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and proximal and distal tubular function in the glycerol-induced model of acute renal failure. 2. Acute renal failure was induced (50% glycerol, 10 ml/kg body wt. intramuscularly) in three groups of rats: group 1, water drinking; group 2, saline loaded (1% NaCl as drinking fluid for 5 weeks); group 3, rechallenged 7–15 days after a first dose of glycerol, when blood urea nitrogen levels had returned to normal. Control animals in group 3 received only the first glycerol injection, then, like the controls in groups 1 and 2, they were given 0.9% NaCl solution (10 ml/kg body wt. intramuscularly). All animals were then studied 24 h after glycerol or saline injection. 3. Glycerol caused a significant fall in GFR in all three groups (78% group 1; 64% group 2; 59% group 3); blood urea nitrogen levels rose significantly. Saline-loaded animals with acute renal failure (group 2) exhibited glycosuria with normal blood-sugar levels and a striking depression in maximal tubular glucose reabsorption. The capacity to reabsorb HCO − 3 was depressed both before and during HCO − 3 loading. Distal acidification as assessed by the urine to blood gradient of P co 2 (U—B P co 2 ) was normal during HCO − 3 loading (urine pH 7.8). The presence of hyperchloraemic metabolic acidosis demonstrated that these animals developed proximal renal tubular acidosis. Glycerol-reinjected rats with acute renal failure (group 3) reabsorbed glucose and HCO − 3 normally and exhibited normal distal tubule acidification. 4. We conclude from these data that a prior episode of acute renal failure protects proximal tubules against a second glycerol challenge, whereas chronic saline loading is without this protective effect. Both the underlying mechanism for this tubular cell resistance (against a second glycerol challenge) and the role of proximal tubular function in the pathogenesis of acute renal failure remain unclear.
Restrained Adenyl Cyclase in Human Neutrophils: Stimulation of Cyclic Adenosine 3':5'-Monophosphate Formation and Adenyl Cyclase Activity by Phagocytosis and Prostaglandins

We observed that prostaglandins (PG) E1, E2, A1, A2, B1, and F2 alpha increase cAMP concentration in resting neutrophils. In phagocytosing cells, an additional enhancement was seen with PG E1 and PG A2. Such a stimulatory effect of Pg E1 was noted any time during phagocytosis of latex microparticles (3-18 min). Adrenergic inhibitors, phentolamine and propranolol, did not interfere with the stimulatory action of PG E1 on cAMP level in resting and phagocytosing leukocytes. Both aforementioned inhibitors enhanced cAMP level in resting and phagocytosing neutrophils at 1 mM concentration, and an additional increase was seen in PG E1-stimulated leukocytes. Although phosphodiesterase activity was unchanged by phagocytosis and PG E1 action, adenylate cyclase (AC) activity was significantly higher in neutrophil homogenates after phagocytosis of latex particles. In contrary, contact of human lymphocytes with latex particles revealed a decrease in AC activity. These data indicate that AC-cAMP system is partly in a restrained state in resting neutrophils and can be relieved by phagocytosis.
Fermentation, Beer, and Biofuels

Fermentation is a chemical process that has been used in biotechnological applications for thousands of years. It is used by cells that break down sugars for energy when there is no oxygen around. This chapter will begin by introducing two molecular pathways that are used by cells to gain energy from sugars. After the normal metabolic pathways have been established, alternative pathways will be addressed as fermentation itself is defined and discussed.
Ectopic Thyroid Tissue in the Mediastinum Characterized by Histology and Functional Imaging with I-123 SPECT/CT

Ectopic thyroid tissue is a rare entity and when discovered it is typically along the pathway of embryologic migration of the thyroid. We present a case of incidental finding of ectopic thyroid tissue within mediastinum in a 61-year-old female patient with a history of total thyroidectomy for thyroiditis and nodules. The patient presented to emergency room with cough and right chest pain and underwent a chest computed tomographic angiogram (CTA) to exclude pulmonary embolism as part of chest pain workup. One right paratracheal mediastinal soft tissue nodule was visualized on the images of CTA. This right paratracheal soft tissue mass was found to be ectopic benign thyroid tissue by histological analysis of the biopsied tissue samples. The function of this ectopic thyroid tissue was characterized by I-123 radioiodine uptake and single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) imaging. This case illustrates that ectopic thyroid tissue should be included for differential diagnosis of a hyperdense soft tissue mass located within mediastinum. I-123 SPECT/CT is useful for guiding tissue biopsy of ectopic thyroid tissue distant from orthotopic thyroid gland and functional and anatomic characterization of mediastinal ectopic thyroid tissue for surgical resection when it is medically necessary.
Evaluation of Intel Omni-Path on the Intel Knights Landing Processor

When a new technology is introduced into the HPC community, it is necessary to understand its performance and how it can affect the way applications interact with the hardware. Intel has recently introduced two new elements into the HPC ecosystem that are being widely adopted by many centers: Intel Omni-Path high performance network and Intel Knights Landing processor. While it is possible to find different studies that analyze the efficiency of the Knights Landing processor, it is not the same situation for Omni-Path, the new 100 Gb/s fabric from Intel. This paper presents a set of studies that investigate the effectiveness of system comprised of this processor and network. The outcomes of this work can be used as guidelines for a better exploitation of these resources on production systems. Also, the methodology employed during our tests can be replicated on a variety of systems and centers to find the ideal configurations of their hardware resources and provide users with recommendations that can improve the performance of their codes and the overall throughput of the clusters.
Way Beyond the Lifeboat: An Indigenous Allegory of Climate Justice

In my experiences, most Indigenous peoples have complicated stories to tell about anthropogenic climate change that often start with their being harmed by fossil fuel industries. The stories continue on to discuss how current laws and policies render them more vulnerable to climate change impacts. Climate injustice against Indigenous peoples is insidious, as it involves years of coupled colonial and capitalist domination. Is there a succinct way to convey an Indigenous perspective on climate justice that makes the connections between capitalism and industrialization and colonialism? This short essay uses a story of vessels, in allegorical form, to describe the complexity of Indigenous climate justice. The allegory seeks to convey how in the absence of a concern for addressing colonialism, climate justice advocates do not really propose solutions to climate change that are that much better for Indigenous well-being than the proposed inaction of even the most strident climate change deniers. Decolonization and anti-colonialism, understood in senses appropriate to the allegory, cannot be disaggregated from climate justice for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous climate justice movements are distinct in their putting the nexus of colonialism, capitalism and industrialization at the vanguard of their aspirations.
Reflections and Boundaries

Coastal boundaries reflect ocean waves and in so doing generate new waves, jets and transient currents. The first third is a comprehensive discussion of the reflection of equatorial waves from straight boundaries aligned with a meridian. Although the equatorial oceans are effectively unbounded north and south, normal modes and quasi-normal modes do exist and are analyzed in the middle of the chapter. The final part is reflection from irregular boundaries and scattering from islands.
STORM DRAINAGE PRACTICES OF THIRTY-TWO CITIES

Wisconsin cities with populations of 7,500 to over 60,000 are rapidly developing comprehensive plans independent of community size with all storm sewer designs done by registered professional engineers. Storms with 5 to 10 year frequency are used in design. Two-foot inlets depressed one in., 12-in. minimum pipe size and pipe velocities of 2 to 15 fps are common. Storm water pollution is recognized but only 1/3 of cities have ideas on its alleviation. Urban drainage designers who provided current practice, policy, procedure, and cost information for a typical 15-acre, 6-block area indicated wide diversity in results when using the Rational Method to compute flows. Only six of twenty-three cities which contributed sample designs used variable intensities correctly in the Rational Method. Errors in the use of the runoff coefficient C was common. The resulting designs gave flows of 68 to 100 cfs at outlet; total project costs which varied from $8,000 to $65,000 for this sample area. The need for narrower guide lines for design is suggested.
Primary normocephalic pancraniosynostosis detected incidentally after an accidental head injury: a case report and review of the literature

Majority of multi-suture craniosynostosis are related to single-gene disorders or chromosomal abnormalities. Children with craniosynostosis usually present at an early age due to the presence of an abnormal head shape, with the exception of a unique entity termed primary normocephalic pancraniosynostosis. The objective of this article is to describe an unusual case of primary normocephalic pancraniosynostosis, detected incidentally following an accidental head injury. A comprehensive review of the literature will also be included. To the best of our knowledge, only eight cases of primary normocephalic pancraniosynostosis have been reported thus far. A 3-year 2-month-old child presented to the emergency department after a fall with severe scalp swelling. The child was noted to have mild frontal bossing and bilateral exophthalmos. Head size was normal but bilateral mild papilloedema was noted. CT scan was performed and demonstrated pancraniosynostosis and diffuse subgaleal hematoma. Patient underwent fronto-orbital advancement and total cranial vault reconstruction with favorable outcome. Our reported case adds to the current limited knowledge of this rare entity and emphasized the importance of a high index of suspicion in children with apparently normal head size and shape but show subtle evidence of raised intracranial pressure.
Concepts of Liver Protein Metabolism in Sepsis

Altered concentrations of various plasma proteins is a characteristic response to a number of inflammatory stimuli, including surgical trauma, bacterial infection, and sepsis. The term “acute phase” was introduced by Abernethy and Avery (1941) when describing the properties of sera from patients with febrile infectious diseases; the sera from these patients contained the acute phase C-reactive protein. Increased sedimentation rate of erythrocytes is one of the consequences of the changes in plasma protein composition described approximately 70 years ago (Fahraeus 1921). Although synthesis of acute phase proteins has been demonstrated in extrahepatic cells (Colten 1982; Perlmutter et al 1985; Ramadori et al 1985; Kuta and Baum 1986), it is well established that the liver is the major organ for acute phase protein synthesis (Miller et al 1951; Macintyre et al 1982). A number of studies have reported increased hepatic protein synthesis following trauma and sepsis, both in patients and experimental animals (Rosenblatt et al 1983; Loda et al 1984; Hasselgren et al 1984; Pomposelli et al 1985; Pedersen et al 1986, 1987; Sax et al 1988; von Allmen et al 1990).
Prognostic value of positron emission tomography and preoperative CA19-9 in patients treated on a prospective phase II trial of neoadjuvant therapy and surgery.

e15766Background: The role of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) in the staging of pancreatic cancer (PC) has not been well defined. We evaluated the prognostic value of ...
A phase II clinical trial of metformin as a cancer stem cell targeting agent in stage IIc/III/IV ovarian, fallopian tube, and primary peritoneal cancer.

5556Background: Epidemiologic and preclinical studies suggest that Metformin has antitumor effects which may be due to an impact on cancer stem-like cells (CSC). We present a phase II trial of metf...
Variability of urinary concentrations of phthalate metabolites during pregnancy in first morning voids and pooled samples.

Abstract Background Because phthalates are quickly metabolized and excreted in urine, and human exposures tend to be episodic, phthalate metabolite concentrations measured in a maternal spot urine sample are only indicative of recent exposure. Objective To examine temporal variability of pregnant women's phthalate exposure using multiple first morning voids (FMV) and pooled samples. Methods We quantified 14 metabolites of eight phthalates in 577 urine samples collected from 188 pregnancies in the MARBLES ( M arkers of A utism R isk in B abies – L earning E arly S igns) study. We calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) using two samples of the same urine type (i.e., two FMVs or two pools) collected across the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. We also calculated ICCs and FMV/pool concentration ratios using two samples (i.e., two FMVs or one FMV and one pool) collected within the same trimester. Results Overall, ICCs were higher in pooled samples (0.24–0.87) than in FMVs (0.08–0.69). Regardless of the sample type, ICCs tended to be higher for metabolites for which exposure sources are personal care products or indoor residential materials than those for which diet is an important exposure source. ICCs tended to increase and FMV/pool ratios tended to decrease with an increasing number of composite samples in the pools. Conclusions Our study helped determine the number of samples needed to capture moderate to high reproducibility of individual's average exposure to phthalates and the average exposure can be differently characterized depending on the number of samples in the pools.
FARE: Diagnostics for Fair Ranking using Pairwise Error Metrics

Ranking, used extensively online and as a critical tool for decision making across many domains, may embed unfair bias. Tools to measure and correct for discriminatory bias are required to ensure that ranking models do not perpetuate unfair practices. Recently, a number of error-based criteria have been proposed to assess fairness with regard to the treatment of protected groups (as determined by sensitive data attributes, e.g., race, gender, or age). However this has largely been limited to classification tasks, and error metrics used in these approaches are not applicable for ranking. Therefore, in this work we propose to broaden the scope of fairness assessment to include error-based fairness criteria for rankings. Our approach supports three criteria: Rank Equality, Rank Calibration, and Rank Parity, which cover a broad spectrum of fairness considerations from proportional group representation to error rate similarity. The underlying error metrics are formulated to be rank-appropriate, using pairwise discordance to measure prediction error in a model-agnostic fashion. Based on this foundation, we then design a fair auditing mechanism which captures group treatment throughout the entire ranking, generating in-depth yet nuanced diagnostics. We demonstrate the efficacy of our error metrics using real-world scenarios, exposing trade-offs among fairness criteria and providing guidance in the selection of fair-ranking algorithms.
OLIGOPOLY GAMES AND THE COURNOT–BERTRAND MODEL: A SURVEY

Traditional oligopoly models hold that firms compete in the same strategic variable, output (Cournot) or price (Bertrand). Alternatively, a hybrid model allows some firms to compete in output and other firms to compete in price, also known as the Cournot–Bertrand model. When the choice of strategic variable is endogenous, the established dominant strategy is output competition. A growing body of work demonstrates, however, that the Cournot–Bertrand outcome can be a subgame‐perfect Nash equilibrium in the presence of market asymmetries. Observations of real‐world markets consistent with Cournot–Bertrand behavior bolster justification for the model and have stimulated an impressive and evolving literature on advances and applications. We lay out the roots of the Cournot–Bertrand model and explore a number of model developments. We categorize 12 primary models in the literature based on alternative assumptions. In particular, some authors consider when the timing of play as well as the choice of strategic variable are endogenous. Altogether, this research identifies when Cournot–Bertrand behavior can emerge in a dynamic setting and under alternative market conditions. We also review the Cournot–Bertrand model applications in the fields of international economics, industrial organization, labor, and public economics. We expect the literature to continue to expand in the future.
Cloning and characterization of aSchizophyllum gene withAβ6 mating-type activity

The A-pathway of development in the basidiomycete fungusSchizophyllum commune may be activated by either of two mating-type loci,Aξ andAβAα consists of two multiallelic genes,Y andZ. Y contains a putative homeodomain; Z contains a homeodomain-related region. Non- self combinations of Y and Z form heteromultimers which are thought to be transcription factors of developmental genes. To more completely understand A-regulated development it is necessary to address the issue of functional redundancy, i.e., how do two different mating loci,Aα andAβ, both manage to regulate the same pathway. Here we report the structure of a gene withAβ6 activity. This gene, denotedAβV6, encodes a deduced polypeptide of 640 amino-acids with a homeodomain motif. V6 also contains a 20-amino acid sequence that is conserved in Aα Y1, Y3 and Y4. Except for the homeodomain and the conserved sequence, the deduced V6 polypeptide shows no significant identity to AαY, AαZ, or other known proteins. The presence of a homeodomain suggests that V, like Y and Z, may be a regulatory protein for genes in the A-pathway. Thus whileAα andAβ encode different proteins, the general mechanism by which Aα and Aβ components signal A-regulated development may be similar.
An Economic Analysis of the TCJA's Larger Standard Deduction

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act dramatically increased the standard deduction while eliminating the personal exemption and making other changes that left tax-free thresholds (the amount of income that households can earn before owing income tax) largely unchanged. The primary effect of those policy changes was to increase the floor on itemized deductions and dramatically reduce the number of taxpayers claiming those deductions. Although the reduction in the number of itemizers lowered administrative and compliance costs, the cost savings are too modest to justify the increase in the standard deduction. If itemized deductions are otherwise good policy, the administrative and compliance costs associated with claiming them are too small to justify denying deductions to taxpayers with tens of thousands of dollars of qualifying expenditures. Instead, the TCJA’s increase in the standard deduction appears to have been intended to indirectly curtail itemized deductions that were seen as unjustified but were too popular to directly limit. Unfortunately, increasing the standard deduction is a problematic way to curb tax preferences. That strategy curtails all tax preferences that are provided through itemized deductions, no matter how beneficial they may be, while sparing all tax preferences that are provided through exclusions, preferential rates, above-the-line deductions, and credits, no matter how pernicious they may be. Further, the strategy curbs the affected tax preferences for only some taxpayers, generally making the preferences more poorly targeted.
“Powerful Lessons” in Women’s Sport: ESPN’s Nine for IX Series

In 2013, ESPN launched a series of documentaries to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title IX. The Nine for IX documentaries tell stories of successful women in sport and tackle pertinent gender- ...
A cohort study of quality of life in partners of young breast cancer survivors compared to partners of healthy controls.

Partners of young breast cancer survivors (BCS) are at increased risk for deficits in quality of life (QoL). To intervene effectively, it is important to understand how the breast cancer experience impacts partners. The purpose of this study was to compare QoL between partners of young BCS and partners of healthy acquaintance controls. Partners of young BCS (3–8 years post treatment and ≤ 45 years old at diagnosis) and partners of age-matched healthy acquaintance controls completed questionnaires on overall, physical (physical function, sexual difficulty), social (personal resources, sexual enjoyment, marital satisfaction, partner social support, social constraints, parenting satisfaction), psychological (depressive symptoms), and spiritual (behaviors, beliefs, and activities) QoL. Analyses included descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA to compare partner groups on all study variables. Although partners of young BCS (n = 227) reported fewer social constraints (p < .001), they reported lower overall QoL (p < .001), fewer personal resources (p < .001), more sexual difficulty (p = .019), less sexual enjoyment (p = .002), less marital satisfaction (p = .019), more depressive symptoms (p = .024), and fewer spiritual behaviors (p < .001), beliefs (p = .001) and activities (p = .003) compared to partners of healthy acquaintance controls (n = 170). Additional analysis showed that perceptions that the relationship changed for the better since cancer, social constraints, partner social support, and depression predicted marital satisfaction among partners of young BCS. Partners of young BCS are at risk for poorer overall, physical, social, psychological, and spiritual QoL compared to partners of healthy women. Interventions targeting QoL domains may enable partners to effectively support their partner and improve their QoL.
Individual differences in the influence of taste and health impact successful dietary self-control: A mouse tracking food choice study in children.

Abstract In order to improve dietary quality among children, there is a need to understand how they make decisions about what foods to eat. This study used a mouse tracking food choice task to better understand how attributes such as health and taste contribute to food decisions among 70 children aged 7-to-11 years old. Children rated health, taste, and desire to eat for 76 common foods that varied in energy density and then used a computer mouse to select which of two presented foods they would like to eat. The presented food pairs were based on children's own ratings of taste and health so that some trials required self-control to choose the healthier option (i.e., healthy/not tasty paired with unhealthy/tasty). Children's body mass index (BMI) percentile was not associated with number of healthy choices. To examine mouse trajectories, we replicated previous analytic techniques and applied a novel technique, time-varying effects modeling (TVEM). Results showed that desire to eat impacted food decision-making sooner than taste and health during trials that required self-control, with TVEM showing that early discounting of desire to eat enabled healthier choices. However, these temporal dynamics varied by age, BMI percentile, and overall self-control performance in the task. When the less healthy food was chosen (i.e., self-control failure), older children and children with better overall self-control were more influenced by taste and desire to eat. However, children with higher BMI percentiles showed stronger discounting (i.e., negative influence) of taste when choosing the healthier food. Together this highlights how the influence of hedonic food attributes on food decision-making varies by individual child-level characteristics. Understanding individual differences in the cognitive processes that support healthy food choices in children may help identify targets for interventions aimed at improving child nutrition
Developmental Programming: Prenatal Testosterone Induced Changes in Epigenetic Modulators and Gene Expression in Metabolic Tissues of Female Sheep

Prenatal testosterone (T)-treated female sheep manifest peripheral insulin resistance and tissue-specific changes in insulin sensitivity with liver and muscle manifesting insulin resistance accompanied by inflammatory, oxidative and lipotoxic state. In contrast, visceral (VAT) and subcutaneous (SAT) adipose tissues are insulin sensitive in spite of VAT manifesting changes in inflammatory and oxidative state. We hypothesized that prenatal T-induced changes in tissue-specific insulin resistance arise from disrupted lipid storage and metabolism gene expression driven by changes in DNA and histone modifying enzymes. Changes in gene expression were assessed in liver, muscle and 4 adipose (VAT, SAT, epicardiac [ECAT] and perirenal [PRAT]) depots collected from control and prenatal T-treated female sheep. Prenatal T-treatment increased lipid droplet and metabolism genes PPARA and PLIN1 in liver, SREBF and PLIN1 in muscle and showed a trend for decrease in PLIN2 in PRAT. Among epigenetic modifying enzymes, prenatal T-treatment increased expression of 1) DNMT1 in liver and DNMT3A in VAT, PRAT, muscle and liver; 2) HDAC1 in ECAT, HDAC2 in muscle with decrease in HDAC3 in VAT; 3) EP300 in VAT and ECAT; and 4) KDM1A in VAT with increases in liver histone acetylation. Increased lipid storage and metabolism genes in liver and muscle are consistent with lipotoxicity in these tissues with increased histone acetylation likely contributing to increased liver PPARA. These findings are suggestive that metabolic defects in prenatal T-treated sheep may arise from changes in key genes mediated, in part, by tissue-specific changes in epigenetic-modifying enzymes.
Sparse Representations for Object- and Ego-Motion Estimations in Dynamic Scenes

Disentangling the sources of visual motion in a dynamic scene during self-movement or ego motion is important for autonomous navigation and tracking. In the dynamic image segments of a video frame containing independently moving objects, optic flow relative to the next frame is the sum of the motion fields generated due to camera and object motion. The traditional ego-motion estimation methods assume the scene to be static, and the recent deep learning-based methods do not separate pixel velocities into object- and ego-motion components. We propose a learning-based approach to predict both ego-motion parameters and object-motion field (OMF) from image sequences using a convolutional autoencoder while being robust to variations due to the unconstrained scene depth. This is achieved by: 1) training with continuous ego-motion constraints that allow solving for ego-motion parameters independently of depth and 2) learning a sparsely activated overcomplete ego-motion field (EMF) basis set, which eliminates the irrelevant components in both static and dynamic segments for the task of ego-motion estimation. In order to learn the EMF basis set, we propose a new differentiable sparsity penalty function that approximates the number of nonzero activations in the bottleneck layer of the autoencoder and enforces sparsity more effectively than L1- and L2-norm-based penalties. Unlike the existing direct ego-motion estimation methods, the predicted global EMF can be used to extract OMF directly by comparing it against the optic flow. Compared with the state-of-the-art baselines, the proposed model performs favorably on pixelwise object- and ego-motion estimation tasks when evaluated on real and synthetic data sets of dynamic scenes.
“A Life Lived”: Collective Memory and White Racial Framing in Digital Opioid Overdose Obituaries:

With a rise in overdose deaths in the United States, opioid awareness has come in a variety of ways. One of these, as reporters suggest, is obituary writing. Obituaries are considered in news media...
Optimising deployment time of remote cameras to estimate abundance of female bighorn sheep

Abstract Context Wildlife biologists accumulate large quantities of images from remote cameras, which can be time- and cost-prohibitive to archive and analyse. Remote-camera projects would benefit from not setting cameras longer than needed and not analysing more images than needed; however, there is a lack of information about optimal deployment time required for remote-camera surveys to estimate ungulate abundance. Aims The objective was to estimate abundance of adult females in a population of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis) in Utah, USA, from 2012 to 2014, and determine whether this type of study can be conducted more efficiently. Because females are the most important cohort for population growth, remote cameras were set at three water sources and mark–resight models in Program MARK were used. Methods We compared estimated abundance of collared and uncollared females by number of days cameras were set using 31 replicated abundance estimates from each year starting 1 July. Each replicated estimate used a different number of days and photographs from a 62-day sampling period (1 July to 31 August). Key results Abundance estimates ranged from 44 to 98 animals. Precise estimates of abundance, however, were obtained with only 12 days of sampling in each year. By analysing only 12 days of images rather than 62 days in all years, the estimated mean of 58 adult females would have changed by only 7 individuals (±4 individuals, range = 3–10 animals), the s.e. would have increased by a mean of only 4 individuals (±1.6, range = 2.0–5.2 individuals) and a mean of only 18% (±10.5%, range = 8–29%) of images would have been analysed. Across the study, analysis of >23 000 (>80%) images could have been avoided, saving time and money. Conclusions The results indicate that an asymptotic relationship exists between estimated abundance of female bighorn sheep and remote-camera deployment time. Implications The mark–resight methods used in the present study would work for other ungulates in which individuals are radio collared or marked using remote cameras set at water sources, trail crossings or mineral licks. These findings can help researchers reduce cost of setting, servicing, archiving and analysing photographs from remote cameras for ungulate population monitoring.
Association of Hypertension and Hyperthyroidism in a Subspecialty Clinic and a National Database.

Objective Hypertension can cause significant morbidity and reduced life expectancy. Most patients with hypertension have primary hypertension; however, 10% to 15% have secondary hypertension. Endocrine disorders as a secondary cause occur in approximately 10% of patients with secondary hypertension, and thyroid disorders account for approximately 1% of all patients with hypertension. The identification of patients with hyperthyroidism has important benefits for these particular patients. The objective of this study was to examine the occurrence of high blood pressure in patients with hyperthyroidism. Methods We reviewed the clinical information available from 414 new patients referred to an endocrinology clinic in west Texas for evaluation of hyperthyroidism. The final cohort included 96 patients who had both thyroid laboratory tests and blood pressure measurements at the time of their clinic visit. We also examined this relationship in a nationally representative sample of US adults (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2012), which included thyroid test results and at least one blood pressure measurement (N = 8837). Results Sixty-five of these clinic patients had elevated blood pressure based on criteria suggested by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association. These patients had similar thyroid hormone levels as patients who did not have hypertension but tended to be older. Ordinary least squares regression analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2012 data demonstrated a significant positive association between free T3 levels and systolic blood pressure, adjusting for age, sex, and the use of levothyroxine. Conclusions These findings from a specialty clinic and a national sample suggest that clinicians should consider the possibility of hyperthyroidism in patients with hypertension, even in older patients.