cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Energetics, growth, and body composition of Adélie penguin chicks, Pygoscelis adeliae.

Adelie penguins are very abundant in Antarctica and constitute a large biomass of predatory consumers in the Antarctic ecosystem. Adelies eat almost exclusively krill (Euphausia spp.), and to determine krill requirements by Adelies, information on energetics is needed, including energy intake of the chicks. I measured energy use and growth in Adelie penguin chicks, using both field and laboratory techniques. Field metabolic rate was quite variable, but mass-specific rates were not correlated with body mass. Growth followed the logistic equation: the growth constant was 0.143 d-1, and the asymptote for growth to fledging was 3,200 g. Different body organs had similar energy densities (in kilojoules per gram of dry mass), and total body energy density did not vary with chick mass. However, proportional mass of the skin increased rapidly as chicks grew, making the skin an important energy store in larger chicks. Metabolic efficiency measured in the laboratory averaged 69% and did not vary with chick mass. Total energy ingested over the 50-d development period was 162 MJ, which corresponds to approximately 33.6 kg of fresh krill. Previous studies of Adelie energetics have focused on adult energy balance and have calculated chick energy requirements indirectly on the basis of adults' stomach loads of krill and frequency of feeding chicks. Values from previous studies do not agree with those from the present study. The method used in the present study is more informative and accurate for measuring energy use by chicks, since measurements are made directly from chicks.
SiC Homoepitaxy, Etching and Graphene EpitaxialGrowth on SiC Substrates Using a Novel FluorinatedSi Precursor Gas (SiF4)

Tetrafluorosilane (SiF4 or TFS), a novel precursor gas, has been demonstrated to perform three primary operations of silicon carbide-related processing: SiC etching, SiC epitaxial growth and graphene epitaxial growth. TFS etches SiC substrate vigorously in a H2 ambient by efficient Si removal from the surface, where SiC etch rate is a function of TFS gas concentration. In this SiC etching process, Si is removed by TFS and C is removed by H2. When propane is added to a H2 and TFS gas mixture, etching is halted and high-quality SiC epitaxy takes place in a Si droplet-free condition. TFS’s ability to remove Si can also be exploited to grow epitaxial graphene in a controllable manner in an inert (Ar) ambient. Here, TFS enhances graphene growth by selective etching of Si from the SiC surface.
A Numerical Introduction to Partial Fractions

This article introduces a numerical analogue to partial fraction decomposition. The reasons explaining why the numerical process works are different from those behind the algebraic procedure. (See page 150 of [1] for a sketch of a proof of the algebraic theorem.) However, the analogue is so similar-and so much more intuitive-that most students come away from it better equipped to face partial fraction decomposition with confidence and authority. The decomposition of a rational expression N(x)/D(x) whose numerator has degree smaller than its denominator involves three primary steps [2]: (a) Express D(x) as a product of its "prime" factors, say
Using the social cognitive theory to understand physical activity among dialysis patients

Purpose/Objective:The purpose of this study was to use the social cognitive theory (SCT) constructs self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and self-regulation to better understand associations of physical activity (PA) behaviors among dialysis patients after controlling for demographic and health-rela
Influence of garden symphylan (Symphyla: Scutigerellidae) root injury on physiological processes in snap beans

Studies were conducted to determine the effects of garden symphylan, Scutigerella immaculata (Newport), root injury on physiological processes of bush snap beans, Phaseolus vulgaris L. Root injury caused by 10 or 20 symphylans significantly affected physiological processes in snap beans, but plants infested with five symphylans were not significantly different from uninfested plants. Symphylan-induced root injury significantly reduced leaf water potential and increased soluble leaf carbohydrates in plants infested with 10 or 20 symphylans. Photosynthesis, measured as assimilation of 14CO2, also was significantly reduced in plants infested with 10 or 20 symphylans. Total dry weight of shoots and roots of plants infested with 10 or 20 symphylans was significantly reduced 32 days after infestation. Fresh weight of pods was significantly lower in infested plants at harvest 38 days after infestation.
Performance degradations due to laser and optical-filter misalignments in WDM systems

Wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) techniques have been studied intensively and have been considered as an attractive technology option for utilizing the vast bandwidth offered by optical fibers in interoffice networks.1 In an interoffice WDM ring network, every optical channel uses a dedicated laser source. The optical signal passes through a number of concatenated components, such as WDM multiplexers (MUX), demultiplexers (DEMUX), EDFAs, and noise-limiting optical bandpass filters, all of which can serve as optical filters. The concatenation of optical filters makes the system susceptible to filter passband misalignments arising from device imperfections, temperature variations, and aging. The emission spectrum of the laser source may also be misaligned with the effective center frequency of the optical filters owing to manufacturing tolerances, aging, or operating conditions. Direct current modulation of a single-longitudinal-mode laser source introduces chirp, resulting in broadening of the modulation bandwidth of the optical spectrum. Performance degradations in WDM systems may arise from the combined effects of optical-filter misalignments, laser misalignments, and laser chirp.
Research and the Circle of Trust

W ith all the news sources the average patient can access today devoting coverage to seemingly frequent medical scandals, it is little wonder that patients often have difficulty with learning to trust their physicians and developing healthy patient-doctor relationships. These feelings of mistrust
Semi-Supervised Convolution Graph Kernels for Relation Extraction.

Extracting semantic relations between entities is an important step towards automatic text understanding. In this paper, we propose a novel Semi-supervised Convolution Graph Kernel (SCGK) method for semantic Relation Extraction (RE) from natural language. By encoding English sentences as dependence graphs among words, SCGK computes kernels (similarities) between sentences using a convolution strategy, i.e., calculating similarities over all possible short single paths from two dependence graphs. Furthermore, SCGK adds three semi-supervised strategies in the kernel calculation to incorporate soft-matches between (1) words, (2) grammatical dependencies, and (3) entire sentences, respectively. From a large unannotated corpus, these semi-supervision steps learn to capture contextual semantic patterns of elements in natural sentences, which therefore alleviate the lack of annotated examples in most RE corpora. Through convolutions and multi-level semisupervisions, SCGK provides a powerful model to encode both syntactic and semantic evidence existing in natural English sentences, which effectively recovers the target relational patterns of interest. We perform extensive experiments on five RE benchmark datasets which aim to identify interaction relations from biomedical literature. Our results demonstrate that SCGK achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the task of semantic relation extraction. keywords: Relation Extraction, Graph Kernels, Semisupervised Learning, Natural Language Processing
Mitigation of Data Sparsity in Classifier-Based Translation

The concept classifier has been used as a translation unit in speech-to-speech translation systems. However, the sparsity of the training data is the bottle neck of its effectiveness. Here, a new method based on using a statistical machine translation system has been introduced to mitigate the effects of data sparsity for training classifiers. Also, the effects of the background model which is necessary to compensate the above problem, is investigated. Experimental evaluation in the context of crosslingual doctor-patient interaction application show the superiority of the proposed method.
Bio-inspired RF steganography via linear chirp radar signals

The chirp signal is one of the first bio-inspired signals commonly used in RF applications where the term chirp is a reference to the chirping sound made by birds. It has since been recognized that birds communicate through such chirping sounds to attract other birds of the same species, to transmit an alarm for specific threats, and so on. However, birds of a different species, or sometime even birds in a different social group within a species, are unable to connect a specific meaning to certain calls - they will simply hear a bird chirping. Inspired by such, this article provides a tutorial on a novel RF steganography scheme to conceal digital communication in linear chirp radar signals. We first provide a review of the linear chirp signal and existing communication systems using chirp waveforms. Next we discuss how to implement the RF steganography and hide digitally modulated communication information inside a linear chirp radar signal to prevent an enemy from detecting the existence of such hidden information. A new modulation called reduced phase shift keying is employed to make the modulated chirp waveform almost identical to the unmodulated chirp signal. Furthermore, variable symbol durations are employed to eliminate cyclostationary features that might otherwise be exploited by an enemy to detect the existence of the hidden information.
Agile Live Migration of Virtual Machines

A key attraction of virtual machines (VMs) is live migration - the ability to move their execution state across physical machines even as the VMs continue to run. Unfortunately, the traditional pre-copy and post-copy techniques are not agile in the face of resource pressures at the source host, since it takes a long time to transfer the memory state of a VM. Consequently, the performance suffers for all VMs - those being migrated as well as those being left behind. Prior works have attempted to optimize indirect measures of migration effectiveness such as downtime, total migration time, and network overhead. However, none have treated the performance of VMs impacted by migration as the primary metric of migration effectiveness. We propose an Agile live migration technique that quickly recovers the performance of all VMs under resource pressure by eliminating resource pressure faster than traditional live migration. The working set of a VM is typically much smaller than its full memory footprint. Our approach works by transparently tracking the working set of each VM and offloading the non-working set (cold pages) in advance to portable per-VM swap devices. We present a new hybrid pre/post-copy technique that reduces the performance impact on the VM's workload by transferring only the working set of the VM while enabling destination to remotely access cold pages from the per-VM swap device. We describe the challenges in the design and implementation of Agile live migration in the KVM/QEMU platform without modifying the guest OS in the VM. When live migrating under memory pressure, we demonstrate a reduction in the performance impact on VMs by a up to factor of 2, reduction in migration time by up to factor of 4 besides reduction in memory pressure on both the source and destination hosts.
In Situ Encapsulation of Hydrogen Peroxide in a Silica Matrix in the Presence of Divalent Metal Ions (Mg2+ and Ca2+)

Encapsulating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in silica hydrogels is a simple, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective method that is easy to scale up. Sodium silicate is the most commonly used aqueous silicate in sol–gel chemistry. Previously, we studied the effects of Na+ and K+ ions in the starting silicate precursor on the structure of hydrogels and the stability of entrapped H2O2. In the present study, we present the results obtained when divalent ions, Mg2+ and Ca2+, were introduced in the sol. The use of divalent metal ions resulted in hydrogel structures that are different from those previously obtained. H2O2 stability increased with the addition of Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions and with decreasing pH. At low pH values, 93% of the peroxide was retained at the end of 10 days with Mg2+-containing hydrogels, compared to 91% retention with Ca2+-containing hydrogels, 87% retention with K+-containing hydrogels, and 68% retention with a unmodified sodium silicate precursor. The results show that the structure of the ...
The use of radiographic imaging studies in the evaluation of patients who have degenerative disorders of the lumbar spine.

The previous two decades have resulted in substantial technological advancements in neuroradiological imaging. New non-invasive imaging modalities have been developed and existing modalities have been refined, rendering exploratory operations on the spine obsolete. The ubiquitous availability of modalities for improved anatomical visualization of the spine, however, may lead to overutilization and inappropriate application in an area such as lumbar degenerative disorders, which may affect 60 to 80 per cent of the population. Errors in clinical decision-making after radiographic investigation of the lumbar spine may arise in one of three general areas: (1) the timing of the application of the study during the patient's clinical course, (2) the matching of the clinical indications to the choice of the optimum imaging study, and (3) the precise correlation of the abnormalities seen on imaging with the clinical symptoms. The goals of this article are to review the general principles of imaging of the spine and to discuss each within the context of the most common clinical presentations of degenerative spinal disorders: low-back pain, pain in the lower limb, and pain after spinal procedures. As with any diagnostic test, the ideal time to perform an imaging study of the lumbar spine is when the information that is obtained will affect the treatment plan. The appropriate timing may vary according to the diagnosis and patient-related factors. Because of the continuously changing anatomy (such as the shrinking of disc herniations and degenerative changes in the marrow), imaging studies should not be performed prematurely. Major resorption of a herniated lumbar disc can occur in just a few months, rendering the imaging study outdated as a guide for operative planning16,34. I believe that diagnostic imaging studies should be used to confirm the information gathered from a thorough history and physical examination. As a rule, …
Time spent with HIV viral load above 1500 copies/ml among patients in HIV care, 2000-2014.

OBJECTIVE Sexual HIV transmission is more likely to occur when plasma HIV RNA level (viral load) exceeds 1500 copies/ml. We assessed the percentage of person-time spent with viral load above 1500 copies/ml (pPT >1500) among adults with HIV in care. DESIGN Observational cohort in eight United States HIV clinics. METHODS Participants had at least one HIV Outpatient Study (HOPS) clinic visit and at least two viral loads during 2000-2014. We assessed pPT above 1500 in time intervals between consecutive viral load pairs, overall and by ART status. Trends in pPT above 1500 and associations between pPT above 1500 and chosen baseline demographics and clinical characteristics were analyzed using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS There were 5873 patients contributing 37 794 person-years; 86.0% person-years had prescribed ART, with increasing coverage over time. Over 2000-2014 pPT above 1500 was 24.2%, decreasing from 38.3% in 2000-2002 to 11.3% in 2012-2014. During observation time with ART prescribed, pPT above 1500 was 16.4% overall, decreasing from 29.9% in 2000-2002 to 8.0% in 2012-2014. pPT above 1500 was higher in patients less than 35 vs. at least 50 years old (31.5 vs. 15.6%), women vs. men (30.8 vs. 22.3%), and black vs. white and Latino/Hispanic patients (32.7 vs. 19.9 and 23.7%, respectively). Multivariable correlates of higher pPT above 1500 included no prescribed ART, being younger, non-Hispanic black vs. white, baseline viral load above 1500 copies/ml or lower CD4 count, and baseline public vs. private insurance. CONCLUSION pPT above 1500 declined during 2000-2014. Results support decreasing HIV transmission risk from persons in HIV care over the last decade, and the need to focus interventions on patient groups more consistently viremic.
The effect of intravenous fluid replacement on the response to mannitol in experimental cerebral edema: an analysis of intracranial pressure, serum osmolality, serum electrolytes, and brain water content.

Albino rabbits that had undergone a cryogenic insult over the left parieto-occipital cortex were analyzed for serum osmolality, serum electrolytes, brain water content, and intracranial pressure (ICP) following either a baseline infusion of intravenous (IV) fluid (45 mL total) for 3 hours or above-maintenance isotonic saline (73.5 ± 12 mL or 90.5 ± 1.5 mL) and mannitol therapy. The subgroups were compared amongst themselves and to sham-operated controls. Serum osmolality was elevated in the higher-dose mannitol subgroup compared with maintenance IV fluids subgroup (1 g/kg/h vs 1 g/kg/3 h; p < 0.05), accompanied by an insignificant reduction of serum sodium. A significant reduction in brain water in the injured left hemisphere was seen following high-dose mannitol in the subgroup that received less IV (maintenance) fluids than the group that received above-maintenance IV fluids (p < 0.025). No reduction in brain water was seen in the subgroup that received above-maintenance IV fluids (non-treated groups). Reduction of ICP was not found in the lower mannitol dose group. We conclude that the ability of mannitol to reduce cerebral edema is related to the total amount of IV fluid replacement. This implies that the amount of IV crystalloid fluid that is administered to patients with cerebral edema and raised ICP requiring mannitol for control needs to be carefully monitored.
Therapeutic nanoplatforms and delivery strategies for neurological disorders

The major neurological disorders found in a central nervous system (CNS), such as brain tumors, Alzheimer’s diseases, Parkinson’s diseases, and Huntington’s disease, have led to devastating outcomes on the human public health. Of these disorders, early diagnostics remains poor, and no treatment has been successfully discovered; therefore, they become the most life-threatening medical burdens worldwide compared to other major diseases. The major obstacles for the drug discovery are the presence of a restrictive blood–brain barrier (BBB), limiting drug entry into brains and undesired neuroimmune activities caused by untargeted drugs, leading to irreversible neuronal damages. Recent advances in nanotechnology have contributed to the development of novel nanoplatforms and effective delivering strategies to improve the CNS disorder treatment while less disturbing brain systems. The nanoscale drug carriers, including liposomes, dendrimers, viral capsids, polymeric nanoparticles, silicon nanoparticles, and magnetic/metallic nanoparticles, enable the effective drug delivery penetrating across the BBB, the aforementioned challenges in the CNS. Moreover, drugs encapsulated by the nanocarriers can reach further deeper into targeting regions while preventing the degradation. In this review, we classify novel disease hallmarks incorporated with emerging nanoplatforms, describe promising approaches for improving drug delivery to the disordered CNS, and discuss their implications for clinical practice.
Mapping the literature of clinical laboratory science

This paper describes a citation analysis of the literature of clinical laboratory science (medical technology), conducted as part of a project of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association. Three source journals widely read by those in the field were identified, from which cited references were collected for a three-year period. Analysis of the references showed that journals were the predominant format of literature cited and the majority of the references were from the last eleven years. Applying Bradford's Law of Scattering to the list of journals cited, three zones were created, each producing approximately one third of the cited references. Thirteen journals were in the first zone, eighty-one in the second, and 849 in the third. A similar list of journals cited was created for four specialty areas in the field: chemistry, hematology, immunohematology, and microbiology. In comparing the indexing coverage of the Zone 1 and 2 journals by four major databases, MEDLINE provided the most comprehensive coverage, while the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature was the only database that provided complete coverage of the three source journals. However, to obtain complete coverage of the field, it is essential to search multiple databases.
High Levels of Syndemics and Their Association with Adherence, Viral Non-suppression, and Biobehavioral Transmission Risk in Miami, a U.S. City with an HIV/AIDS Epidemic

Miami is a Southeastern United States (U.S.) city with high health, mental health, and economic disparities, high ethnic/racial diversity, low resources, and the highest HIV incidence and prevalence in the country. Syndemic theory proposes that multiple, psychosocial comorbidities synergistically fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic. People living with HIV/AIDS in Miami may be particularly affected by this due to the unique socioeconomic context. From April 2017 to October 2018, 800 persons living with HIV/AIDS in a public HIV clinic in Miami completed an interviewer-administered behavioral and chart-review cross-sectional assessment to examine the prevalence and association of number of syndemics (unstable housing, low education, depression, anxiety, binge drinking, drug use, violence, HIV-related stigma) with poor ART adherence, unsuppressed HIV viral load (≥ 200 copies/mL), and biobehavioral transmission risk (condomless sex in the context of unsuppressed viral load). Overall, the sample had high prevalence of syndemics (M = 3.8), with almost everyone (99%) endorsing at least one. Each syndemic endorsed was associated with greater odds of: less than 80% ART adherence (aOR 1.64, 95% CI 1.38, 1.98); having unsuppressed viral load (aOR 1.16, 95% CI 1.01, 1.33); and engaging in condomless sex in the context of unsuppressed viral load (1.78, 95% CI 1.30, 2.46). The complex syndemic of HIV threatens to undermine the benefits of HIV care and are important to consider in comprehensive efforts to address the disproportionate burden of HIV/AIDS in the Southern U.S. Achieving the 90-90-90 UNAIDS and the recent U.S. “ending the epidemic” targets will require efforts addressing the structural, social, and other syndemic determinants of HIV treatment and prevention.
The Interplay Between Emotional Intelligence, Trust, and Gender in Human–Robot Interaction

As robots begin to enter roles in which they work closely with human teammates or peers, it is critical to understand how people trust them based on how they interpret the robot’s behavior. In this paper we investigated the interplay between trust in a robot and people’s perceptions of the robot’s emotional intelligence. We used a vignette-based method to explore the following questions: (1) Do subjects perceive differences in robot EI, and is their trust in the robot influenced by differences in the robot’s reliability and capability? (2) Does a robot’s EI influence how much it is trusted and conversely does a robot’s capability and reliability influence how emotionally intelligent it is perceived to be? (3) Do people trust male and female robots differently when the robots exhibit different levels of EI or different levels of capability and reliability, and do gender stereotypical expectations related to EI transfer to trust?; (4) Does focusing on the robot’s EI increase one’s trust in the robot? (5) Is the interplay between trust, EI and gender the same for different levels of evoked social presence and human-likeness (i.e., when the interaction is presented in different modalities, text or spoken dialogue when the robot’s voice is actually heard)? We found that trust in the robot was influenced by the level of the robot’s EI (p < .001) and that gender stereotypical expectations related to EI were transferred to trust (p $$=$$ .006), but gender effects on trust disappeared when only capability and reliability (robot’s trustworthiness) were manipulated but not the robot’s EI (p = .103). Surprisingly, we found that people trusted the robot more when the interaction was presented in text format (p $$=$$ .024), going against our hypothesis that spoken dialogue would evoke more social presence and thus bolster EI perception and instill more trust. We suggest that this effect might be due to people’s expectations of a more expressive and human-like voice. Finally, we also found that people’s trust ratings in the robot were higher when they were made to notice and think about the robot’s EI, by answering EI questionnaires prior to trust questionnaires (p = .022). We discuss the implications of our findings for robot design and HRI research.
Complete fusion of N 15 + Al 27

The total fusion cross section for the system $^{15}\mathrm{N}$ + $^{27}\mathrm{Al}$ has been measured over an energy range $27 \mathrm{MeV}\ensuremath{\le}{E}_{\mathrm{lab}}\ensuremath{\le}70 \mathrm{MeV}$ by detection of the fusion-evaporation residues. In addition elastic scattering was measured at six energies and fitted by optical model calculations. The fusion cross section for the system saturates at 1150\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}50 mb. The data can be well described by the model of Glas and Mosel, using a reasonable set of parameters. The model of Horn and Ferguson also describes the data well if an appropriate charge radius is used. Comparison is made between these results and the fusion cross sections for $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ + $^{26}\mathrm{Mg}$ and $^{18}\mathrm{O}$ + $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$, which lead to the same compound nucleus. The results for $^{15}\mathrm{N}$ + $^{27}\mathrm{Al}$ are quite similar to those for $^{18}\mathrm{O}$ + $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$, and the differences between the fusion cross sections for these two systems and those for $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ + $^{26}\mathrm{Mg}$ may be evidence for an entrance channel effect.NUCLEAR REACTIONS $^{15}\mathrm{N}$+$^{27}\mathrm{Al}$, ${E}_{\mathrm{lab}}=27\ensuremath{-}70$ MeV; measured ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{\mathrm{fusion}}(E)$; measured $\frac{d\ensuremath{\sigma}}{d\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ elastic scattering; data fitted with Glas and Mosel model, Horn and Ferguson model.
Pandemic Teaching: Creating and teaching cell biology labs online during COVID-19.

The year 2020 will forever be remembered as a season of pandemic teaching due to rising COVID-19 infections. Institutions of higher learning abruptly changed from in-person to online in attempts to minimize COVID-19 spread. Due to this, we created and taught online cell biology labs in response to the COVID-19 campus shutdown. Our virtual cell biology lab course emphasized molecular and cellular biology methods that can be used to study cells. Our report includes cell biology lab descriptions, learning outcomes, skills learned, lab set up and format, virtual tools used, lab sources, and lessons learned. We show how creative online lab alternatives can provide students valuable scientific learning experiences when in-person learning is not possible.
The Chow Test with Time Series-Cross Section Data

The Chow test is the standard method to test for differences in regression response across groups. In some cases, the groups being tested are composed of a time series of cross sections. For example, when testing for differences across industries, each industry may be composed of several observations on several individual firms. If the individuals themselves have systematic differences, the Chow test will be compromised: the individual and group effects become confounded. This can cause rejections in the absence of the group effect of interest. We illustrate the problem with a Monte Carlo analysis, and show that the effects cannot be separated. We propose a bootstrap-like testing procedure that can eliminate excessive Type I errors, and when used with the standard Chow test can help to arrive at an appropriate conclusion when both effects are present.
Vortex-induced vibrations of a one-degree-of-freedom cylinder transitioning from the inline to the crossflow degree of freedom

Vortex-Induced Vibration (VIV) is studied extensively for cases where the oscillations are possible in the direction of flow (IL VIV) or perpendicular to it (CF VIV). In this work, we study VIV for the angles in between and show how the cylinder's response transitions from a purely IL VIV to a purely CF VIV.
Hepatic Gene Therapy

Around the turn of the new millennium, after its 20-year history, gene therapy experienced both an exciting success [1] and an unexpected failure [2, 3], which significantly changed our perspectives on gene therapy from “versatile therapy” that we expected would soon become available to cure difficult-to-treat diseases to “potentially effective therapy” that would surely be superior over conventional therapies, but still needs further refinement towards clinical applications. Since then, within less than a decade, exciting discoveries and the development of emerging technologies pertinent to gene therapy have occurred, re-inspiring a greater-than-ever interest to gene delivery approaches. As for hepatic gene transfer, we have already become able to deliver genes of interest to target cells in the liver at extremely high efficiency and with minimum toxicity, at least in mice. With the contemporary hepatic gene delivery methods in our hands, any disease can be effectively treated or even cured in animal models, as long as the right therapeutic targets have been identified in the liver. At the current stage of the development of new molecular therapeutics, in addition to seeking new breakthroughs, it is critical to further refine the technologies, to understand the underlying mechanisms of action, to explore the methods to minimize undesired reactions and side effects, and importantly to further the knowledge of disease pathogenesis. With this introduction, this chapter provides an overview of contemporary methods and applications of hepatic gene transfer with an emphasis on the underlying mechanisms of action of each gene delivery approach.
Time-reversal-invariant topological superconductors and superfluids in two and three dimensions.

We construct time-reversal invariant topological superconductors and superfluids in two and three dimensions. These states have a full pairing gap in the bulk, gapless counterpropagating Majorana states at the boundary, and a pair of Majorana zero modes associated with each vortex. The superfluid $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ $B$ phase provides a physical realization of the topological superfluidity, with experimentally measurable surface states protected by the time-reversal symmetry. We show that the time-reversal symmetry naturally emerges as a supersymmetry, which changes the parity of the fermion number associated with each time-reversal invariant vortex and connects each vortex with its superpartner.
Using Private Contracts to Create Adoptions from Foster Care

Creating adoptions for children waiting in foster care is a good investment, but the number of adoptions created each year meets only a fraction of the need. This paper explores how the organization of the delivery of social services to waiting children and prospective adoptive families influences adoption creation. Cross-section time-series estimates are supplemented with a new augmented fixed effects procedure to demonstrate that the use of contracts with private agencies bolsters adoption creation. Contracts for recruitment and orientation of prospective adoptive parents are particularly effective.
Forest harvest patterns and landscape disturbance processes

A physically-based model of the topographic influence on debris flow initiation and a rule-based model for wind damage were used to assess the influence of forest clearcutting patterns (i.e., location, size, shape and distribution of cut units) on the potential for landscape disturbance by these processes in Charley Creek watershed, Washington State, USA. Simulated clearcutting patterns consisted of 7, 9 or 26 ha square or rectangular harvest units distributed in either an aggregated or dispersed pattern under three stream-buffering scenarios. The slope-stability model predicted that potentially unstable ground is concentrated along steep headwater streams and inner-gorge side-slopes. Areas susceptible to wind damage were determined from the combination of slope, aspect, elevation, soil drainage and primary tree species. Among the variables examined here, the location of harvest units constitutes the most important factor influencing the potential for shallow landsliding. In contrast, the location, size, and shape of clear cuts and the interactions among these three factors significantly influenced the potential for wind damage. Minimal correspondence between areas predicted to be potentially unstable and areas susceptible to wind damage implies that harvest patterns designed to mitigate the potential for shallow landsliding may not necessarily reduce the potential for wind damage. Our results demonstrate that: (1) the location of timber harvesting is more important than the geometry of harvest activity in influencing shallow landsliding; (2) forest harvest patterns strongly influence the potential for disturbance processes; and (3) a single cutting pattern will often fail to meet all landscape management goals.
A Low-Protein Diet Blocks Development of Hyperphagia and Obesity in Rats with Hypothalamic Knife Cuts

The objective of this study was to examine the influence of dietary protein levels on development of hyperphagia and obesity in rats that had been given surgical knife cuts between the ventromedial and lateral areas of the hypothalamus. Under normal conditions, rats with this type of surgery exhibit hyperphagia and become obese when given unlimited access to dietary energy. Earlier studies indicated impaired adaptive diet-induced thermogenesis in response to excess energy intake in this animal model of obesity. Because low protein diets can also stimulate diet-induced thermogenesis, we conducted four experiments which examined how diets containing different levels of protein affect development of hyperphagia and obesity in female rats given bilateral, parasagittal wire knife cuts between the ventromedial and lateral areas of the hypothalamus. For 28 d, knife-cut and sham-operated rats were given unlimited or restricted (1 79 or 1 80 kJ/d) access to diets containing protein at 5, 10 or 20% of total metabolizable energy. Knife-cut rats with unlimited access to 10 or 20% protein diets became obese, gaining 2-3 times more weight and 3-6 times more carcass energy while consuming 55-89% more energy than sham-operated rats. In contrast, energy consumed and gained by knife-cut rats with unlimited access to a 5% protein diet was similar to that of rats given sham surgery. Results indicate that a low protein diet effectively blocks development of hyperphagia and obesity in rats with surgical knife cuts between the ventromedial and lateral regions of the hypothalamus.
Plant Cell Walls: Basics of Structure, Chemistry, Accessibility and the Influence on Conversion

This book is focused on the pretreatment of plant biomass, a necessary step for efficient conversion of plant cell-wall materials to liquid transportation fuels and other products. Pretreatment is required because it is difficult to access, separate, and hydrolyze monomeric sugars from biopolymers within biomass. Accessible sugars can be further upgraded to products through chemical processes such as aqueous phase reforming or biological routes such as fermentation of the sugars to ethanol. This resistance to degradation or difficulty to release the monomers (mostly sugars) is commonly referred to as recalcitrance [1]. Many methods can be employed to overcome recalcitrance, but the underlying cause of recalcitrance lies in the complex combination and diversity of chemical and structural features of the plant cell walls. Recent studies by Perlack et al. [2,3] estimated that there is approximately 1.4 billion tons of biomass available annually in the United States, which could replace up to one-third of the petroleum-derived fuels currently used. This study determined that 1 billion tons from agricultural lands and an additional 368 million dry tons from forest lands could be sustainably harvested annually. The types and amounts of biomass available for conversion to biomass-derived fuels, whether agricultural residues, forest residues, or purposegrown energy crops such as switchgrass, willow or poplar, is dependent on geography and climate, as shown in Figure 3.1.
Automating academic literature searches with RSS Feeds and Google Reader(

Behavior analytic practitioners have an ethical obligation to stay abreast of the most recent research developments in their areas of expertise. Although conducting frequent and comprehensive literature searches is one way to meet this mandate, doing so can be a time intensive process. One way to reduce the effort involved in this process is setting up automated literature and news searches using RSS feeds via programs like Google Reader™. This paper outlines the steps necessary for setting up a Google Reader™ account and creating customized RSS feeds based on searches of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed database and the World Wide Web.
Organizational Climate of Staff Working Conditions and Safety-An Integrative Model

Objectives: This project sought to compare measures of organizational climate in ongoing patient safety studies, identify similarities and setting-specific dimensions, develop a model of climate domains that are hypothesized to affect outcomes across settings, and test aspects of the model. Methods: Investigators who had surveyed health care workers' perceptions of organizational climate in six studies funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) were invited to participate. Survey items from each study were classified using four climate domains found in a prior literature review. The authors discussed subconstructs, proposed additional constructs, developed an integrative model, and independently tested selected aspects of the model. Results: The investigators who participated had studied acute care, home health care, long-term care, and multiple settings; two investigators had studied primary care. More than 80,000 workers were surveyed. The model's core climate domains included leadership (e.g., values) and organizational structural characteristics (e.g., communication processes and information technology), the impact of which was mediated by four process variables: supervision, group behavior (e.g., collaboration), quality emphasis (e.g., patient centeredness), and work design (e.g., staffing). These factors affect health care worker outcomes (e.g., satisfaction and intention to leave) and patient outcomes. Overall, the full model explained 24 to 65 percent of the variance in employee satisfaction, but was not as effective at predicting intention to leave. Conclusions: While some of these domains appeared in prior models, new domains—quality emphasis, new subconstructs, information technology, and patient centeredness—are emerging. Our model invites dialogue among researchers and informs agenda-setting for future research into organizational climate and the safety of patients and health care employees. This integrative model will facilitate cross-study quantification of associations among variables in these important domains.
Language features for parallel processing and resource control

Languages for parallel programming should meet four goals: expressiveness, reliability, security, and verifiability. This paper presents a set of language features for describing processes and process interaction, gives examples of their use, and briefly discusses their relation to the goals. Two constructs, resources and protected variables, are introduced as the mechanisms for describing interaction. Resources are extensions of the monitor concept of Hoare; protected variables are global variables which can only be accessed by one process at a time. Two types of access control are introduced: restrictions on scope rules for static access, and capabilities for dynamic access. Examples include the interface to machine devices, files and virtual devices, device scheduling, device reservation, and buffer allocation.
Socio-economic constraints on Jamaica's stabilization efforts: the importance of supply-side programs

Abstract Recently, there has been considerable interest in alternative stabilization programs in developing countries. This paper examines the possibility of implementing this type of program in a country that traditionally has had considerable difficulty in complying with International Monetary Fund programs. The macro-economic simulations of Jamaica's economy clearly show that successful supply-side policies could have mitigated the adverse income effects of stabilization associated with the standard IMF approach to stabilization.
Extraction of single-particle energies from experiment

We examine the prescription for obtaining single-particle splittings at a closed minor shell, i.e., epsilon/sup -/epsilon' = E(N + 1, Z) + E(N-1, Z) -2E(N, Z). We find that to understand the value obtained, especially if the minor shell nucleus is deformed, e.g., /sup 12/C, we have to introduce many-particle--many-hole correlations. These correlations are less important, although not negligible, in the vicinity of a good closed shell, like /sup 48/Ca. (AIP)
Frequency Weighted H2 Control Design for the Glovebox Integrated Microgravity Isolation Technology (g-LIMIT)

The acceleration environment on the International Space Station (ISS) exceeds the requirements of many microgravity experiments. The Glovebox Integrated Microgravity Isolation Technology (g-LIMIT) has been built by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center to attenuate the nominal acceleration environment and provide some isolation for microgravity science experiments. The g-LIMIT uses Lorentz (voice-coil) magnetic actuators to isolate a platform, for mounting science payloads, from the nominal acceleration environment. The system utilizes payload-acceleration, relative-position, and relative-orientation measurements in a feedback controller to accomplish the vibration isolation task. The controller provides current commands to six magnetic actuators, producing the required experiment isolation from the ISS acceleration environment. The present work documents the development of a candidate control law to meet the acceleration attenuation requirements for the g-LIMIT experiment platform. The controller design is developed using linear optimal control techniques for frequency-weighted H2 norms. Comparison of performance and robustness to plant uncertainty for this control design approach is included in the discussion. System performance is demonstrated in the presence of plant modeling error.
Static dielectric properties of stockmayer fluids

Abstract Dielectric constants for the Stockmayer fluid are computed both from the equilibrium fluctuations of the polarization and from the polarization response to an applied field in a molecular dynamics simulation with periodic boundary conditions and with the dipole interactions treated by the Ewald method. The dielectric constant at finite wavelength is obtained from a Kirkwood-like expression, while for uniform polarization fluctuations a different expression applies due to the absence of surface effects in the Ewald calculation. The results are nearly independent of the number (up to 500) of particles investigated, even at large values of the dipole moment. The dielectric constants obtained from the approximate solution of the hypernetted chain integral equation are considerably larger than the molecular dynamics results except at low dielectric constants. The external field simulation permits study of the non-linear dependence of the dielectric constant on the magnitude of the applied electric field.
Effects of free-air CO2 enrichment on microbial populations in the rhizosphere and phyllosphere of cotton

Abstract Cotton ( Gossypium hirsutum L.) plants were exposed to free-air CO 2 enriched (FACE = 550 μmol mol −1 ) or ambient (CONTROL = 370 μmol mol −1 ) levels of atmospheric CO 2 and to wet (100% of evapotranspiration replaced) or dry (67% of ET replaced) soil water content treatments. Foliar, soil and root samples were collected in June and August 1991 to determine the effects of elevated CO 2 on selected groups of phyllosphere and rhizosphere microorganisms. Foliage and rhizosphere soil were analyzed for bacteria and/or fungi using dilution plating. Mycorrhizal colonization of cotton roots was assessed. Root-zone soil was analyzed for populations of nematodes, microarthropods and Rhizoctonia using various extraction methods. A dehydrogenase assay for total microbial respiration and a bioassay for cotton root infecting organisms were also conducted using root-zone soil. Populations of fungi on cotton leaves varied, by genera, in response to CO 2 enrichment, but none was affected by soil water content treatments; populations of foliar bacteria were not affected by either CO 2 or soil water content treatments. In August, higher total numbers of rhizosphere fungi were found under the wet compared with the dry soil water treatment, but differences related to CO 2 were not detected. There was a trend for infestation by Rhizoctonia solani to be higher under FACE in the August sample, but the soil bioassay demonstrated no increase in damping-off potential. There was a significant interaction between CO 2 concentration and soil water content for populations of saprophagous nematodes; populations were different between the CO 2 levels in the dry soil treatment only, with higher numbers under FACE. Microarthropod numbers were low; however, there was a trend for Collembola populations to be higher under FACE in the August sample and more fungi were isolated from Collembola in June. Total microbial activity was higher under FACE at both sample dates. Effects of elevated atmospheric CO 2 on plant microbe interactions could have profound influence on the productivity of agro-ecosystems, and deserve further research.
Critical Approaches to Media in Urban English Language Arts Teacher Development

Why is it essential that English teachers acknowledge youth literacy practices in out-of-school contexts? How will an engagement of youth as media producers lead to academic literacy development? And why should the popular cultural practices of young people be incorporated into secondary English classrooms? This article asks these questions and more as it considers the applications of a critical pedagogy of urban English education that acknowledges and honors nonschool literacy practices and promotes literacy as a tool for academic development, cultural production, and social change. The article begins by articulating a critical new literacy studies approach to English education that fosters increased engagement and achievement for historically underserved youth. It then discusses several projects from English methods courses including a microethnography of literacy project and a multimedia theme-based unit, as examples of ways to link theory to practice in English education. The article next offers sever...