cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
High visible-light photochemical activity of titania decorated on single-wall carbon nanotube aerogels

Photocatalysts are being extensively investigated to convert renewable solar energy into chemical energy but suffer from high costs or low efficiencies. We report on the development of highly visible-light photoactive composites of titania (TiO2) and single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) that rapidly photodegrade methylene blue dyes under visible-light illumination in the absence of cocatalysts. We fabricated these freestanding porous composites of density ≈36 mg mL−1 (volume fraction ≈ 0.01) by an in situ sol–gel synthesis of titania nanoparticles of diameter ≈9 nm within SWCNT aerogels. The SWCNT aerogels are three-dimensional porous networks of individualized SWCNTs having a density ≈9 mg mL−1 (volume fraction ≈ 0.006), whose large surface area and high porosity enable substantial titania loading and unimpeded dye transport to titania. The TiO2/SWCNT aerogel composites had a surface area of 293 m2 g−1 and pores of diameters between 2–25 nm. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed a strong bonding interaction between titania and SWCNTs (i.e., titanium–carbon and titanium–oxygen–carbon bonds), which possibly rendered these aerogel composites photoactive in visible-light with an absorption edge ≈2.6 eV. In contrast, titania is only active in ultraviolet-light due to its large bandgap (≈3.2 eV). Further, they degraded dyes at a rate of ≈25 μmol g−1 h−1 with a rate constant of ≈0.012 min−1 under visible-light irradiation, values that are more than two times greater than those from other titania-based photocatalysts under visible or ultraviolet illumination. In comparison, titania nanoparticles alone were essentially inactive under similar test conditions. Interestingly, the rate constant for dye degradation decreased with an increase in dye concentration, but the overall rate of degradation remained nearly unchanged. Moreover, the addition of platinum cocatalysts did not improve the photocatalytic performance of the TiO2/SWCNT composites. These observations suggest that the composites efficiently separate visible-light generated electron–hole pairs and that photodegradation was limited by the availability of reactive sites on titania (the anodic reaction). We postulate that further enhancements are plausible through composite design and that our facile fabrication method can be readily adapted to create nearly any freestanding photocatalyst/SWCNT aerogel composites for use in high performance photoelectrochemical cells.
Serum IgG aggregates in systemic lupus erythematosus.

SummarySera from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus were found to contain microgram amounts of aggregated IgG to a degree not seen in control sera. These aggregates were not found in sera obtained during clinical remission and were not related to the duration of storage of the sera. They were not dissociated by conditions which normally solubilize antigen-antibody complexes.
Food preparation alternatives and food acceptability under short term Mars analogue mission conditions

Crews of the 2009-2010 season at the Mars Desert Research Station, a Mars analogue facility, lived under Mars simulation conditions for two-week "missions" during which their food supply consisted of "instant" freeze-dried/rehydratable foods, shelf-stable packaged foods, and shelf-stable staple ingredients requiring no refrigeration. Crews alternated between days of no cooking, using only "instant" and prepackaged foods, and cooking days during which the main meal and other foods were prepared by crewmembers from shelfstable ingredients. Equipment provided included a breadmaker, stove, oven, sprouting kit, and a small refrigerator/freezer. We assessed crewmembers' mood state, self-reported state of health, food preparation time, and food intake by daily surveys. Crewmembers rated their liking for the foods served at their main meal, and noted their relative intake of each food. They were also invited to comment on the “high point” and “low point” of each day’s experience at the station. Our hypothesis was that crews would prefer custom prepared meals to instant meals despite the burden of preparation time and effort. Usable 7-day datasets were obtained for 42 of the 61 crewmembers and 30 crewmembers 14-day datasets.
A Recorded Instance of Superfetation in the Golden Hamster

In our colony of golden hamsters ( Mesocricetus auratus Waterhouse), on which extensive breeding experiments are in progress, a number of instances …
Hero and Villain: Historical Narratives of Zhao Erfeng in the Early Republic

Zhao Erfeng (1845–1911), the Qing governor-general of Sichuan province in 1911, died immediately after the successful revolutionary uprising in Chengdu. This article examines three biographical narratives of Zhao produced during the 1910s. The three different portraits of Zhao in the biographies—Zhao as racial traitor, loyal martyr, and modernizer—reveal radically different ways in which the Qing–Republican transition was understood in the early Republic. Focused on the two major issues associated with Zhao, the Qing incorporation of the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the railway-protection movement in Sichuan, the following discussion utilizes Zhao's biographies as windows on the unsettled definitions of the 1911 Revolution, revealing how Chinese negotiated the issues of nation, territory, and modernity at the birth of a modern state.
La naturaleza del método socrático-platónico

The Socratic method has been frequently characterized as a method of refutation. In this paper I intend to demonstrate that the elenchus is more than that: dialogical examination leads to final conclusions on the question addressed; it sheds reasons that generate trust in the thesis defended; it exhibits the ignorance on the matter in hand and, in consequence, awakes encourages awakens astonishment and curiosity, which are key elements to philosophize. Moreover, elenchus contains an ethical mission: to know oneself is an arduous task that can only happen if one's life is daily examined and, starting from self-knowledge, it is possible to determine what is necessary in order to improve as human beings.
The Sound of Phantasia in Motion: Musical Imagination from Aristotle to Zarlino

Ambiguously poised between composition and improvisation, works designated as fantasia in the sixteenth century thrived on the imaginative power of virtuoso performers. Or so the term would seem to suggest: it is not immediately clear in what sense this music should be understood and singled out as the product of the imagination. Isn’t music, any kind of music, the product of the imagination? What idea of imagination was this particular kind of music meant to represent? Drawing on the Aristotelian doctrine of the internal senses, this essay explores the relationship between fantasia as a musical process and sixteenth-century notions of fantasia as a mental process. From our vantage point in history, fantasia offers a rare opportunity to observe a cultural and musical practice aimed at translating the workings of the mind into a sensible object, which the perceiving subject can then (re)experience as a representation of his own inner life, in the way he himself imagines it.
Impact of variability on power

This article consists of a collection of slides from the author's conference presentation. It is concluded that: Power grid noise and its variability depends on both: Technology factors and Design specifics. Recent design trends result in a need to: (a) Perform early power delivery design; (b) Packaging technology and package selection;(c) Density and Distribution of routing resources; and (d)Decoupling capacitance allocation.
Waste Conversion into n-Caprylate and n-Caproate: Resource Recovery from Wine Lees Using Anaerobic Reactor Microbiomes and In-line Extraction.

To convert wastes into sustainable liquid fuels and chemicals, new resource recovery technologies are required. Chain elongation is a carboxylate-platform bioprocess that converts short-chain carboxylates (SCCs) (e.g., acetate [C2] and n-butyrate [C4]) into medium-chain carboxylates (MCCs) (e.g., n-caprylate [C8] and n-caproate [C6]) with hydrogen gas as a side product. Ethanol or another electron donor (e.g., lactate, carbohydrate) is required. Competitive MCC productivities, yields (product vs. substrate fed), and specificities (product vs. all products) were only achieved previously from an organic waste material when exogenous ethanol had been added. Here, we converted a real organic waste, which inherently comprised of ethanol, into MCCs with n-caprylate as the target product. We used wine lees, which consisted primarily of settled yeast cells and ethanol from wine fermentation, and produced MCCs with a reactor microbiome. We operated the bioreactor at a pH of 5.2 and with continuous in-line extraction and achieved a MCC productivity of 3.9 g COD/L-d at an organic loading rate of 5.8 g COD/L-d, resulting in a promising MCC yield of 67% and specificities of 36% for each n-caprylate and n-caproate (72% for both). Compared to all other studies that used complex organic substrates, we achieved the highest n-caprylate-to-n-caproate product ratio of 1.0 (COD basis), because we used increased broth-recycle rates through the forward membrane contactor, which improved in-line extraction rates. Increased recycle rates also allowed us to achieve the highest reported MCC production flux per membrane surface area thus far (20.1 g COD/m2-d). Through microbial community analyses, we determined that an operational taxonomic unit (OTU) for Bacteroides spp. was dominant and was positively correlated with increased MCC productivities. Our data also suggested that the microbiome may have been shaped for improved MCC production by the high broth-recycle rates. Comparable abiotic studies suggest that further increases in the broth-recycle rates could improve the overall mass transfer coefficient and its corresponding MCC production flux by almost 30 times beyond the maximum that we achieved. With improved in-line extraction, the chain-elongation biotechnology production platform offers new opportunities for resource recovery and sustainable production of liquid fuels and chemicals.
The Role of Practicum in Undergraduate Family Life Education

Behrendt discusses the incorporation of high-impact elements in the Undergraduate Human Development and Family Studies practicum experience at Indiana State University. Students must take a required practicum prior to the internship. Students spend 60 hours each at two sites and gain life span experience and professional skills through high-impact elements of diversity, authentic connections with faculty/peers/community, frequent performance feedback, and seeing the application to other settings on and off campus. During this experience, students must reflect on the experience through journaling and conduct an investigative interview of the agency as well as a professional in the field to help the student make an informed career decision.
Fabrication of PEDOT Nanocone Arrays with Electrochemically Modulated Broadband Antireflective Properties.

Ordered nanocone arrays of the electroactive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) were fabricated by the simultaneous oxygen plasma etching of an electrodeposited PEDOT thin film coated with a hexagonally closed packed polystyrene bead monolayer. PEDOT nanocone arrays with an intercone spacing of 200 nm and an average nanocone height of 350 nm exhibited a low broadband reflectivity of <1.5% from 550 to 800 nm. Electrochemical modulation of the oxidation state of the PEDOT nanocone array film was used to change both its ex situ absorption spectrum (electrochromism) and reflection spectrum (electroreflectivity). The sign of the PEDOT nanocone array electroreflectivity was opposite to that observed from unmodified PEDOT thin films; this significant difference is attributed to the unique optical behavior of nanostructured surfaces with an interfacial layer that contains a graded mix of air and highly absorptive nanocones. The combined electrochromic and electroreflective behavior of the antireflec...
Changing US extreme temperature statistics

The rise in global mean temperature is an incomplete description of warming. For many purposes, including agriculture and human life, temperature extremes may be more important than temperature means and changes in local extremes may be more important than mean global changes. We define a non-parametric statistic to describe extreme temperature behaviour by quantifying the frequency of local daily all-time highs and lows, normalized by their frequency in the null hypothesis of no climate change. We average this metric over 1218 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States. In the period 1893–2014 there were statistically significantly fewer all-time record lows than would be found in the null hypothesis of unchanging climate. Record highs, by contrast, do not statistically significantly differ from the null hypothesis. The metric is evaluated by Monte Carlo simulation for stationary and warming temperature distributions, permitting description of the statistics of historic temperature records by equivalent warming rates.
Moving beyond the plane: measuring 3D home ranges of juvenile salamanders with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags

An individual’s home range, or how much space it requires to obtain resources and meet its needs for survival and reproduction, affects the scale of many fundamental processes in ecology and can inform the management of species. Although home range size has been described for many taxa in two dimensions (2D), for species that also have a strong vertical component to their movement, such representations can miss core components of their ecology, including the size of their home ranges and the amount of overlap, and thus competition, between individuals. Measuring three-dimensional (3D) home ranges for small-bodied life history stages and species can be particularly difficult, as they cannot tolerate high resolution tracking technologies like GPS collars. In this study, we used Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags to measure the 2D and 3D home ranges of two species of fossorial juvenile salamander: the ringed salamander (Ambystoma annulatum) and the spotted salamander (A. maculatum). We also tested whether individuals modified their habitat selection or movement behavior in response to environmental variation. Salamanders in our study frequently used subterranean habitats. However, we rarely detected them more than 5 cm below ground. Additionally, the overlap among 2D and 3D home ranges, respectively, were similar. These findings indicate that these salamanders may move vertically through their habitat less than previously thought. Alternatively, salamanders may have moved into soil strata beyond the detection range of PIT telemetry. We conclude that PIT telemetry can be a suitable technique for determining the 3D home range of fossorial life-stages or species for which other tracking technologies are unsuitable. When animal behavior includes movements with a vertical component, simplifying assumptions of 2D home ranges can affect ecological inferences by overestimating competition between individuals and underestimating home range size. We used Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags to describe the home range of fossorial juvenile salamanders in 3D. The juvenile salamanders in this study modulated their habitat selection in response to weather, but in general remained close to the soil surface. As a result, juveniles may be more susceptible than previously thought to habitat management practices that alter the local microclimate. Because individuals moved vertically less than predicted, 2D and 3D home ranges had similar patterns. We demonstrate that PIT telemetry can facilitate subterranean tracking of a cryptic life stage. However, this technology is limited in its subterranean detection depth, and until antenna strength is improved, the resolution of 3D home ranges may be limited.
Immigration and the tech industry: As a labour shortage remedy, for innovation, or for cost savings?

The two main reasons cited by the U.S. tech industry for hiring foreign workers--remedying labour shortages and hiring "the best and the brightest"--are investigated, using data on wages, patents, and R&D work, as well as previous research and industry statements. The analysis shows that the claims of shortage and outstanding talent are not supported by the data, even after excluding the Indian IT service firms. Instead, it is shown that the primary goals of employers in hiring foreign workers are to reduce labour costs and to obtain "indentured" employees. Current immigration policy is causing an ‘Internal Brain Drain’ in STEM.
Abstract 311: Single-Dose Isoproterenol does not Depress Cardiac Function in Mice

Rationale: Myocardial injury after repeated or continuous administration of isoproterenol (ISO) in preclinical models has been widely described in the literature by our lab and others. Recent contr...
Studying Stimulated Raman Activity in Surface-Enhanced Femtosecond Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy by Varying the Excitation Wavelength

We present the first multiwavelength surface-enhanced femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SE-FSRS) study, as well as the first observation of anti-Stokes vibrational features in SE-FSRS spectra. We compare stimulated Raman loss (SRL) and stimulated Raman gain (SRG) signals at three pump wavelengths chosen to sample different portions of nanoparticle aggregate localized surface plasmon resonances. The SE-FSRS signals exhibit similar signal magnitudes in the SRL or SRG regions of the spectra regardless of Raman pump or probe wavelength. The spectral lineshapes, however, differ dramatically with excitation wavelengths. The observed trends in spectral line shape show a strong dependence on the relative position of the excitation fields with respect to the plasmon resonance but do not match predictions from any existing SE-FSRS theory. These results suggest the need for further theoretical efforts with complementary experimental studies of individual aggregates to remove the effects of inherent ensemble...
Data integration from pathology slides for quantitative imaging of multiple cell types within the tumor immune cell infiltrate.

Immune cell infiltrates (ICI) of tumors are scored by pathologists around tumor glands. To obtain a better understanding of the immune infiltrate, individual immune cell types, their activation states and location relative to tumor cells need to be determined. This process requires precise identification of the tumor area and enumeration of immune cell subtypes separately in the stroma and inside tumor nests. Such measurements can be accomplished by a multiplex format using immunohistochemistry (IHC). We developed a pipeline that combines immunohistochemistry (IHC) and digital image analysis. One slide was stained with pan-cytokeratin and CD45 and the other slide with CD8, CD4 and CD68. The tumor mask generated through pan-cytokeratin staining was transferred from one slide to the other using affine image co-registration. Bland-Altman plots and Pearson correlation were used to investigate differences between densities and counts of immune cell underneath the transferred versus manually annotated tumor masks. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the mask transfer error for tissues with solid and glandular tumor architecture. The overlap between manual and transferred tumor masks ranged from 20%–90% across all cases. The error of transferring the mask was 2- to 4-fold greater in tumor regions with glandular compared to solid growth pattern (p < 10−6). Analyzing data from a single slide, the Pearson correlation coefficients of cell type densities outside and inside tumor regions were highest for CD4 + T-cells (r = 0.8), CD8 + T-cells (r = 0.68) or CD68+ macrophages (r = 0.79). The correlation coefficient for CD45+ T- and B-cells was only 0.45. The transfer of the mask generated an error in the measurement of intra- and extra- tumoral CD68+, CD8+ or CD4+ counts (p < 10−10). In summary, we developed a general method to integrate data from IHC stained slides into a single dataset. Because of the transfer error between slides, we recommend applying the antibody for demarcation of the tumor on the same slide as the ICI antibodies.
New York City’s window guard policy: four decades of success

Background Preventing child falls from windows is easily accomplished by installing inexpensive window-limiting devices but window falls remain a common cause of child injuries. This article describes the history and evolution of the New York City (NYC) window guard rule,which requires building owners to install window guards in apartments housing children aged ≤10 years. The NYC window guard rule was the first directive of its kind in the USA when it was adopted in 1976, and it has led to a dramatic and long-lasting reduction in child window fall-related injuries and deaths. Methods Data about the history of the window guard rule were obtained by reviewing programmatic records, correspondence, legal decisions and the published literature. In addition, key informant interviews were conducted with programme staff. Results and Discussion This article describes each stage of policy development, starting with epidemiological studies defining the scope of the problem in the 1960s and pilot-testing of the window guard intervention. We describe the adoption, implementation and enforcement of the rule. In addition, we show how the rule was modified over time and document the rule’s impact on window fall incidence in NYC. We describe litigation that challenged the rule’s constitutionality and discuss the legal arguments used by opponents of the rule. Finally, we discuss criminal and tort liability as drivers of compliance and summarise lessons learnt.
Antiplatelet Agents in Secondary Stroke Prevention: Selection, Timing, and Dose

This narrative review critically evaluated the published studies regarding the systematic use of antiplatelet agents for secondary stroke prevention. Stroke is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. Multimodal prevention is the most viable strategy for reducing the societal burden of stroke recurrence. For secondary stroke prevention, antiplatelet therapy is at the core of effective long-term vascular risk reduction among survivors of an ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA). In addition to aspirin, there are several antiplatelet agents proven to be efficacious in averting recurrent vascular events after an index ischemic stroke or TIA. However, beyond the challenges of keeping up with recent advances in antiplatelet drug options for secondary stroke prevention, questions linger about the most appropriate selection, timing, and dosing of antiplatelet treatment for a given patient. We narratively summarized the pharmacological properties of key antiplatelet drugs; discussed the evidence regarding efficacy, selection, timing, and dosing of various antiplatelet treatment regimens; and highlighted ongoing clinical trials identifying novel therapies with more favorable risk-benefit profiles than currently available antiplatelet agents for patients with a recent history of ischemic or TIA stroke. Finally, we reviewed published data on antiplatelet therapies that could potentially be applied in the management of commonly encountered challenging clinical scenarios.
Economics and the Economy

It would not be easy to avoid all discussion of economics in twenty-first century America. You would have to keep your distance from television, radio and newspapers, not to mention casual conversations on the job, over a beer, or at a family gathering. In fact, our society is saturated with economics, reflecting the great power that economic events have over our lives, even though the forces that produce them are often mysterious. Economics is like the weather, only more so: all around us, obviously important, subject to prediction but only slightly to control.
Abstract 1501: Do Low Dose Statins Affect Cognition? Results of the UCSD Statin Study

Subjects: 1016 subjects (692 men over age 20 and 324 postmenopausal women), without cardiovascular disease or diabetes, with LDL 115–190mg/dl. Design: Six month double blind RCT with equal allocation to simvastatin 20mg, pravastatin 40mg or placebo; statins chosen for similar lipid reduction at the extremes of lipophilicity. Primary endpoints: Change from baseline for four primary cognitive indices (see Table). Analysis: Primary analysis: T-test of difference in mean comparing statin vs placebo; or regression to adjust for baseline characteristics if baseline disparities between statin and placebo. Secondary analyses stratified effects by sex and statin; and assessed a prespecified hypothesis that mitochondrial vulnerability (using proxies of age and blood pressure) would identify a vulnerable subset. Result: Baseline characteristics were comparable across treatment arms. Mean cholesterol reductions (mg/dl) were −2.1±26 placebo; −57±29 simvastatin; and −47±29 pravastatin. Cognitive variances were high, compatible with broad inclusion criteria. Cognitive endpoints (total sample) showed no significant effect with statins. However stratified analyses suggested possible effect modification, with trends toward harm significant on one-sided analysis for six groups. Additionally, the hypothesis of vulnerable subsets was provisionally supported, with consistent trends toward harm in the mitochondrial subgroup, despite the smaller sample (N=97). Conclusion: Findings provide reassurance that low dose statins confer little average cognitive impact with short term use in a generally healthy population, regardless of lipophilicity. However possible effect modification was provisionally supported. Future studies should evaluate subgroups with potential for differential statin effects; and should assess the higher doses of statins increasingly used in lipid therapy.
Glucocorticoid Induced Osteoporosis: New insights into the Pathophysiology and Treatments

The goal of the review is to provide an updated understanding of the pathophysiology of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis and treatment recommendations. Glucocorticoids reduce osteoblast and osteocyte lifespan and activity and reduce the vascularity of the bone that together may explain the greater reductions in bone strength than those of bone mass. Treatments with parathyroid hormone fragments appear to reverse glucocorticoid-induced bone loss and fracture risk partially through maintaining bone vascularity and bone strength. This review identifies how glucocorticoid anti-osteogenic and vascular effects together may reduce bone strength. It also provides guidance to clinicians on rationale treatment for glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis.
Statin use improves limb salvage after intervention for peripheral arterial disease.

Abstract Background Statin use is recommended in all patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) owing to its morbidity and mortality benefits. However, the effect of statin use on limb salvage in patients with PAD after intervention is unclear. We examined the effect of statin use on limb salvage and survival among patients with PAD undergoing surgical or endovascular intervention. Methods A total of 488 patients with PAD were identified who underwent surgical (n = 297) or endovascular (n = 191) intervention between 2009 and 2010. Information was collected from electronic medical records and the Social Security Death Index. Predictors of ongoing statin use were identified first by univariate analysis and then via multivariable logistic regression. Survival and freedom from amputation were identified using Kaplan-Meier plots and adjusted hazard ratios by Cox regression. Results Of the 488 patients with PAD with intervention, 39% were non-whites, 44% were females, 41% received statins, 56% received antiplatelets, 26% received oral anticoagulants, 9% required a major amputation, and 11% died during follow-up of up to 88 months. Statin users were more often male (P = .03), white (P = .03), smokers (P Conclusions Statin use in patients with PAD with interventions was associated with improved limb salvage and survival. Despite existing guidelines, statin therapy was low in our PAD population, and efforts are ongoing to increase their use across the health care system.
Evaluating an Intergenerational Model to Explain the Path From Violence Against Mothers to Child Behavior and Academic Outcomes.

An intergenerational model to explain the long-term effect of partner violence against mothers on child behavior was evaluated 48 months after 278 mothers first sought safe shelter or justice servi...
Performance Evaluation of Feature Descriptors for Aerial Imagery Mosaicking

Mosaicking enables efficient summary of geospatial content in an aerial video with applications in surveillance, activity detection, tracking, etc. Scene clutter, presence of distractors, parallax, illumination artifacts i.e. shadows, glare, and other complexities of aerial imaging such as large camera motion makes the registration process challenging. Robust feature detection and description is needed to overcome these challenges before registration. This study investigates the computational complexity versus performance of selected feature detectors such as Structure Tensor with NCC (ST+NCC), SURF, ASIFT within our Video Mosaicking and Summarization (VMZ) framework on VIRAT benchmark aerial video. ST+NCC and SURF is very fast but fails for few complex imagery (with occlusion) from VIRAT. ASIFT is more robust compared to ST+NCC or SURF, though extremely time consuming. We also propose an Adaptive Descriptor (combining ST+NCC and ASIFT) that is 9x faster than ASIFT with comparable robustness.
An Argument for Objective Possibilism

Two debates in normative ethics are the Subjectivism/Objectivism debate and the Actualism/Possibilism debate. Both have settled into rather intractable stalemates. My goal is to break through these stalemates and establish that the correct moral theory must be an Objective Possibilist one. I first argue that no Subjective Possibilism is plausible. I then argue that Actualism cannot adequately accommodate the intuitive moral data in cases of permissible beneficial sacrifice—cases in which it is permissible to harm some in order to prevent harm from befalling others. Insofar as Actualism and Subjective Possibilism are both false, some version of Objective Possibilism must be true.
Opportunity and Responsibility for Health

Wealth and income are highly predictive of health and longevity. Egalitarians who maintain that this “socioeconomic-status gradient” in health is unjust are challenged by the fact that a significant component of it is owed to the higher prevalence of certain kinds of voluntary risk-taking among members of lower socioeconomic groups. Some egalitarians have argued that these apparently free personal choices are not genuinely free, and that those who make them should not be held morally responsible for the resulting harms to their health. I argue to the contrary that such choices usually are fully free, and that those who make them are responsible for their consequences. This does not imply, however, that society cannot also be responsible for those consequences. It is responsible for them if they are statistically foreseeable and avoidable outcomes of unjust public institutions and policies. I show that many of the harms to health that contribute to the voluntary behavioral component of the SES health gradient satisfy that description. Society can therefore be morally responsible for those harms, even though the individuals who suffer them are also fully responsible for them.
High-throughput dynamical analysis of dielectrophoretic frequency dispersion of single cells based on deflected flow streamlines.

Phenotypic quantification of cells based on their plasma membrane capacitance and cytoplasmic conductivity, as determined by their dielectrophoretic frequency dispersion, is often used as a marker for their biological function. However, due to the prevalence of phenotypic heterogeneity in many biological systems of interest, there is a need for methods capable of determining the dielectrophoretic dispersion of single cells at high throughput and without the need for sample dilution. We present a microfluidic device methodology wherein localized constrictions in the microchannel are used to enhance the field delivered by adjoining planar electrodes, so that the dielectrophoresis level and direction on flow-focused cells can be determined on each traversing cell in a high-throughput manner based on their deflected flow streamlines. Using a sample of human red blood cells diluted to 2.25 × 108 cells/mL, the dielectrophoretic translation of single cells traversing at a flow rate of 1.68 μL/min is measured at a throughput of 1.1 × 105 cells/min, to distinguish positive versus negative dielectrophoresis and determine their crossover frequency in media of differing conductivity for validation of the computed membrane capacitance to that from prior methods. We envision application of this dynamic dielectrophoresis (Dy-DEP) method towards high-throughput measurement of the dielectric dispersion of single cells to stratify phenotypic heterogeneity of a particular sample based on their DEP crossover frequency, without the need for significant sample dilution.
Thomas H. Ford’s Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air

Considering one of William Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” it might seem like there could be nothing new to say about clouds, or rather Wordsworth’s clouds in partic...
Online couples mindfulness-based intervention for young breast cancer survivors and their partners: A randomized-control trial.

Purpose: Young breast cancer survivors (YBCS) face unique challenges in coping with disease, distress, and relationship concerns. The purposes of this study were to understand the acceptability and...
Optimizing Scan Times of BLE Scanning Systems

In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of Blue-tooth Low Energy-based scanning systems wherein the objective is to successfully scan all items of a group of a prescribed size within a prescribed scanning period at a prescribed probability of success, for example, less than one failure in one million. We show that a design based upon independence among collision events fails to achieve the target reliability objectives by roughly an order of magnitude. Our analysis, which is verified through extensive simulation, shows that correlation among the collision events has a major impact upon the scanning time required to successfully scan all the members of a group.
City Reduced Probability of Infection (CityRPI) for Indoor Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and Urban Building Energy Impacts

ABSTRACT Airborne transmission of aerosols produced by asymptomatic individuals is a large portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spread indoors. Outdoor air ventilation rate, air filtration, room occupancy, exposure time, and mask-wearing are among the key parameters that affect its airborne transmission in indoor spaces. In this work, we developed a new web-based platform, City Reduced Probability of Infection - CityRPI, to calculate the indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19 in various buildings of a city scale. An archetype library of twenty-nine building types is developed based on several standards and references. Among the mitigation strategies recommended to reduce infection risk, some could result in significant energy impacts on buildings. To study the combined effects of energy consumption and reduced infection probability, we integrated CityRPI with City Building Energy Model. We applied the integrated model to Montreal City and studied the impact of six mitigation measures on the infection risk and peak energy demand in winter. It shows that the same strategy could perform quite differently, depending on building types and properties. In the winter season, increasing the outdoor air ventilation rate may cause massive building energy consumption. All strategies are shown to reduce the infection risk but wearing a mask and reducing exposure time are the most effective strategies in many buildings, with around 60% reduction. Doubling the outdoor air ventilation rate is not as effective as other strategies to reduce the risk with less than 35% reduction. It also significantly increases building peak heating demand with 10-60%.
Model-based Attack Tree Generation for Cybersecurity Risk-Assessments in Automotive

Networked and highly automated driver assistance systems require interfaces to the outside world and within the vehicle. These can potentially be used for cybersecurity attacks. Therefore, cybersecurity risk analyses are essential to adequately counter cybersecurity threats. Through UNECE Regulations No. 155, cybersecurity risk assessments, are mandatory for all new cars from 2024. The ISO/SAE 21434 standard “Road vehicles Cybersecurity engineering”, defines requirements for cybersecurity risk management with regard to electrical/electronic systems and components. In this context, it is imperative that possible attack paths are investigated. The creation of these attack paths is labor-intensive and should relate to the preliminary system architecture. Automatic attack tree generation could help to reduce the effort to create attack paths manually. This paper presents a new approach to generate relevant attack paths in a semi-automated way, taking the attack motivation and functional dependencies into account. This can shift the effort of creating attack trees in the concept phase to the preliminary system description and allows cybersecurity experts to focus more on aspects that require their creativity and expertise.
Catalyst deactivation: Opportunity amidst woe

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the situation facing anyone wanting to use the deactivation technology. For most chemical reactions, one will have at best only incomplete rate information available to be interpreted in terms of a theoretical framework that is overly flexible and under sensitive diagnostically. Superimposed upon this one usually have insufficient deactivation data to be interpreted in terms of a theoretical framework having the same shortcomings as the kinetic rates of the main chemical reactions. The chapter explores the use of deactivation information to learn more about the kinetics of the main reaction. This idea is not new. Noteworthy is the pioneering paper of Herrington and Rideal who demonstrated theoretically that a main reaction requiting more than one surface site loses activity faster than proportional to the number of unpoisoned sites, i.e., poisoning one quarter of the surface sites reduces the number of multiple site ensembles by more than twenty-five per cent. The number of six-site ensembles falls off very rapidly with the extent of poisoning.
Graphic user interfaces for pedotransfer functions

Publisher Summary Several pedotransfer function (PTF) implementations have emerged in recent years. This chapter discusses four codes that can be easily obtained through the World Wide Web: soil-water characteristics from texture (SWCT), soilpar, Rosetta, and Neuropack. SWCT is part of the Soil Plant Atmosphere Water Field and Pond Hydrology (SPAW) package. The windows-based SPAW package is targeted at farmers and resource managers interested in water and nutrient budgeting in soil and ponds. SPAW uses SWCT to estimate soil hydraulic data, such as wilting point, field capacity, and available water content. The Soilpar program implements 10-point PTFs and 4 parametric PTFs and provides a wide range of output data. Required input data and estimated output data depend on the model used and include soil texture, organic carbon, soil pH, and cation-exchange (CEC) capacity. The program also allows fitting retention data to four types of retention equations. Rosetta is a windows-based program that implements artificial neural network results. The program implements five PTFs in a hierarchical approach. This approach maximizes the accuracy of the PTF estimates, given a particular data availability. The Neuropack software package is primarily intended to develop PTFs using neural network-based techniques using the data that are supplied by the user. The Neuropack package comes with a complete technical guide and user manual. The technical guide describes the scientific background of both programs and includes an ANN primer, an explanation of the Bootstrap Method, and a description of optimization and error criteria. The package consists of two separate programs: NeuroPath and NeuroMan.
A Class of Error Estimators Based on Interpolating the Finite Element Solutions for Reaction-Diffusion Equations

The swift, improvement of computational capabilities enables us to apply finite element methods to simulate more and more problems arising from various applications. A fundamental question associated with finite element simulations is their accuracy. In other words, before we can make any decisions based on the numerical solutions, we must be sure that they are acceptable in the sense that their errors are within the given tolerances. Various estimators have been developed to assess the accuracy of finite element solutions, and they can be classified basically into two types: a priori error estimates and a posteriori error estimates. While a priori error estimates can give us asymptotic convergence rates of numerical solutions in terms of the grid size before the computations, they depend on certain Sobolev norms of the true solutions which are not known, in general. Therefore, it is difficult, if not impossible, to use a priori estimates directly to decide whether a numerical solution is acceptable or a finer partition (and so a new numerical solution) is needed. In contrast, a posteriori error estimates depends only on the numerical solutions, and they usually give computable quantities about the accuracy of the numerical solutions.
Providing inbuilt economic resilience options an obligation of comprehensive cancer care

For many, a cancer death in the family is the immediately obvious part of what is actually a double devastation. Overwhelming financial damage also results for many families, from the cost of medical care and from the loss of earning power by the patient and family. For some families, the consequences may be multigenerational and can affect the health of the survivors. Although this situation is not limited to cancer, the authors argue that oncology can take a lead in attending to these consequences of cancer as an integral part of its commitment to comprehensive cancer care. They make this case for both the national and the international settings. They also articulate and illustrate the notion of inbuilt options for economic resilience (IERs), which the authors suggest the medical industry, and its cancer care sectors in particular, should be providing to all patients and their families if they are at risk for damaging financial losses. After describing key features to IER, the authors illustrate it with 1 type of approach for households of the terminally ill: hospice care with provision of supplementary training and certification to the family caregiver. Such programming could generate a low-technology, semiskilled healthcare service economy as trained family caregivers provide support to other households in need, thereby both providing a recovery option for themselves and reduced economic devastation to the households which, by receiving the services, can stay in the workforce. Finally, the authors call for invigorated research on the economic impact of cancer on families and for the modeling, demonstration, and study of options for economic resilience, including IER programs. Cancer 2008;113(12 suppl):3548–55. © 2008 American Cancer Society.
The Debt Crisis, Structural Adjustment and Women's Education

The debt crisis and structural adjustment policies have created severe hardship in many countries and may be especially harmful for women. This paper discusses the possible deleterious effects of these macroeconomic conditions on women's quality of life in general and their status in terms of education, employment and health. Then it provides a quantitative cross-national analysis to assess the impact of the debt crisis and structural adjustment on women's status. It finds evidence that structural adjustment policies have a negative effect on female educational enrollments. Education is found to be an important determinant of women's economic activity and health status. Based on these findings, the article maintains that the macroeconomic crisis does not augur well for continued social development and the improved status of women in indebted countries.
Cross-linked fibrin degradation products (D-dimer), plasma cytokines, and cognitive decline in community-dwelling elderly persons.

Objectives: To investigate the effect of coagulation and inflammatory pathway activation on future cognitive decline in older persons. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: Rural and urban communities in North Carolina. Participants: Community-dwelling older people enrolled in the Duke Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly in 1986. Measurements: In 1992, blood was drawn for assay of D-dimer (1,723 subjects), Interleukin-6 (1,726 subjects), and other cytokines (1,551 subjects). Cognitive and functional assessments were performed in 1986, 1989, 1992, and 1996. Cognition was measured using the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire. Results: Cognitive decline over a 4-year period was significantly correlated (P<.001) with D-dimer, age, race, and physical performance status as measured using the Rosow-Breslau and Nagi instruments. After controlling for demographics, functional status, and comorbidities, D-dimer remained predictive of cognitive decline. Proinflammatory cytokines were not associated with current cognitive status in cross-sectional analyses or with incident cognitive decline in prospective analyses. Conclusion: In a large sample of community-dwelling elders, higher levels of D-dimer were predictive of cognitive decline over a 4-year period. No clinically significant associations were found between age-related peripheral cytokine dysregulation and cognition.
Fermi Level Effects on Dislocation Formation in InAs1−xSbx Grown by MOCVD.

Dislocation formation in InAs1−xSbx buffer layers grown on InSb substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition is shown to be reproducibly enhanced by p-type doping at levels exceeding the intrinsic carrier concentration at the growth temperature. To achieve a carrier concentration greater than 2 x 1018 cm−3, the intrinsic carrier concentration of InSb at 475 C, p-type doping with diethylzinc was used. Carrier concentrations up to 6 x 1018 cm−3 were obtained. The zinc doped buffer layers have proven to be reproducibly crack free for InAs1−xSbx step graded buffer layers with a final composition of x = 0.12 lattice matched to a strained layer superlattice (SLS) with an average composition of x = 0.09. These structures have been used to prepare infrared photodiodes. Details of the buffer layer growth, an explanation for the observed Fermi level effect and the growth and characterization of an infrared photodiode are discussed.
Isoprenoid quinones of Campylobacter cryaerophila, C. cinaedi, C. fennelliae, C. hyointestinalis, C. pylori, and "C. upsaliensis".

Abstract The isoprenoid quinone contents of Campylobacter cryaerophila, C. cinaedi, C. fennelliae, C. hyointestinalis, C. pylori, and "C. upsaliensis" were determined by reverse-phase thin-layer and high-performance liquid chromatography. All six of these recently named Campylobacter species contained menaquinone-6 (MK-6), but only C. hyointestinalis and "C. upsaliensis" contained 2,[5 or 8]-dimethyl-3-farnesyl-farnesyl-1,4-naphthoquinone (*MK-6), a previously described novel menaquinone of the Campylobacter genus. C. cryaerophila, C. cinaedi, C. fennelliae, and C. pylori contained an unidentified quinone (Un-MK-6) with a molecular weight of 580 and a base peak ion of m/e = 225 by mass spectrometry but with chromatographic properties different from those of MK-6. *MK-6 and Un-MK-6 are important chemotaxonomic markers of Campylobacter and Campylobacter-like organisms.