cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Design and analysis of a synthetic aptamer-based oscillator

We consider a realistic experimental implementation of a negative feedback molecular oscillator built with RNA aptamers proposed in our previous work [1]. This oscillator is composed of two synthetic genes interconnected through their RNA outputs. Regulation of transcription is achieved by controlling the activity of the enzymes rather than the activity of the promoters. We investigate the properties of the system's model analytically, checking if it has the appropriate structure to be an oscillator. Our analysis reveals that it is necessary to include an additional self-activation loop in the system to obtain a model with the structure of a candidate oscillator. We finally study this candidate oscillator with numerical simulations by randomly varying its parameters.
Hypertension in Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease: A Clinical and Basic Science Perspective

Background and Aims: Cardiovascular complications are major causes of morbidity and mortality in patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). In particular, hypertension is insidious and remains a continuous problem that evolves during the course of the disease. Hypertension in ADPKD has been associated with abnormality in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS). Early vascular changes have also been reported in young ADPKD patients. In addition, the cellular functions of mechanosensory cilia within vascular system have emerged recently. The basic and clinical perspectives of RAAS, vascular remodeling and sensory cilia are
Flash-Fire Propensity and Heat-Release Rate Studies of Improved Fire Resistant Materials

Twenty-six improved fire resistant materials were tested for flash-fire propensity and heat release rate properties. The tests were conducted to obtain a descriptive index based on the production of ignitable gases during the thermal degradation process and on the response of the materials under a specific heat load.
The effects of the advanced placement examination for credit policy by the Florida state universities on the acceleration of a student's postsecundary education

OF THE DISSERTATION THE EFFECT OF THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT EXAMINATION FOR CREDIT POLICY BY THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITIES ON THE ACCELERATION OF A STUDENT'S POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION by Denise A. Cordova Florida International University, 1997 Professor Kingsley Banya, Major Professor The purpose of this research study was to determine if the Advanced Placement program as it is recognized by the universities in the Florida State University System (SUS) truly serves as an acceleration mechanism for those students who enter an SUS institution with passing AP scores. Despite mandates which attempt to control uniformity of policy, each public university in Florida determines which courses will be exempted and the number of credits they will grant for passing Advanced Placement courses. This is a descriptive study in which the AP policies of each of the SUS institutions were compared. Additionally, the college attendance and graduation data on members of a cohort of 593 Broward County high school graduates of the class of June, 1992 were compared. Approximately 28% of the cohort members entered university with passing Advanced Placement scores. The rate of early and on time graduation was significantly dependent on the Advanced Placement standing of the students in the cohort. Given the financial and human cost involved, it is recommended that all state universities bring their Advanced Placement policies into line with each other and implement a uniform Advanced Placement policy. It is also recommended that a follow-up study be conducted with a new cohort bound under the current 120 credit limitation for graduation. CHAPTER PAGE
Tales of teaching : exploring the dialectical tensions of the GTA experience

TALES OF TEACHING: EXPLORING THE DIALECTICAL TENSIONS OF THE GTA EXPERIENCE By Jennifer M. Hennings In universities across the United States, an increasing number of departments are turning to graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) to teach introductory courses. As GTAs assume a larger percentage of university teaching responsibilities, it becomes even more important to understand the tensions and challenges that GTAs face. The majority of research on GTAs focuses on the perceptions of students and GTA supervisors, and few researchers have talked directly to GTAs. This research fills that gap by studying the GTA experience from the GTA perspective. Using relational dialectics theory, this study identifies three key tensions that emerge from GTAs' narratives of role conflict and identity management: distancecloseness, perfection-reality, and structure-freedom. Further, it analyzes the strategies GTAs use to manage and negotiate these tensions. After discussing the implications that these tensions have for GTAs and supervisors, the study offers suggestions for coping with tensions constructively. Finally, since these tensions can influence GTAs' future careers as educators, this study concludes by considering the broader implications of these tensions for students and teachers.
REM-sleep timing is controlled homeostatically by accumulation of REM-sleep propensity in non-REM sleep

Sleep structure in the rat was characterized during uninterrupted full-day recordings using an analytic procedure that identifies rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episodes based on REM-sleep-onset electroencephalograph phenomena, hence independently of REM-sleep duration. The data were used to determine whether REM-sleep timing is controlled homeostatically or by an oscillatory mechanism. The findings and conclusions are that 1) non-REM (NREM) sleep episode duration is positively correlated with prior REM-sleep episode duration, suggesting that REM-sleep expression is permissive of NREM sleep; 2) mean NREM-sleep episode duration decreases after repeated brief REM-sleep episodes ( 30 s), suggesting that REM-sleep propensity increases progressively within episodes of NREM sleep; and 5) the diurnal cycle of REM-sleep expression primarily reflects modulation in the efficiency of REM-sleep maintenance. These findings support the hypothesis that REM-sleep timing is controlled by accumulation of REM-sleep propensity during NREM sleep.
Vasopressin V2 receptor antagonists.

Hyponatremia due to the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) and disorders of water retention such as congestive heart failure and cirrhosis is a common problem encountered in the care of the medical patient. Thus far, available treatment modalities for disorders of excess arginine vasopressin (AVP) secretion or action have been suboptimal. The development of nonpeptide AVP V2 receptor antagonists represents a promising treatment option to directly antgonize the effects of elevated plasma AVP concentrations by increasing the water permeability of renal collecting tubules, thereby promoting excretion of retained water and normalizing hypoosmolar hyponatremia. In this review, SIADH and other water retaining disorders are briefly discussed, after which the published preclinical and clinical studies in the development of several nonpeptide AVP V2 receptor antagonists are summarized. The likely therapeutic indications and potential complications of these compounds, as well as their vascular effects, are also described.
Scheduling irregular parallel computations on hierarchical caches

For nested-parallel computations with low depth (span, critical path length) analyzing the work, depth, and sequential cache complexity suffices to attain reasonably strong bounds on the parallel runtime and cache complexity on machine models with either shared or private caches. These bounds, however, do not extend to general hierarchical caches, due to limitations in (i) the cache-oblivious (CO) model used to analyze cache complexity and (ii) the schedulers used to map computation tasks to processors. This paper presents the parallel cache-oblivious (PCO) model, a relatively simple modification to the CO model that can be used to account for costs on a broad range of cache hierarchies. The first change is to avoid capturing artificial data sharing among parallel threads, and the second is to account for parallelism-memory imbalances within tasks. Despite the more restrictive nature of PCO compared to CO, many algorithms have the same asymptotic cache complexity bounds.The paper then describes a new scheduler for hierarchical caches, which extends recent work on "space-bounded schedulers" to allow for computations with arbitrary work imbalance among parallel subtasks. This scheduler attains provably good cache performance and runtime on parallel machine models with hierarchical caches, for nested-parallel computations analyzed using the PCO model. We show that under reasonable assumptions our scheduler is "work efficient" in the sense that the cost of the cache misses are evenly balanced across the processors---i.e., the runtime can be determined within a constant factor by taking the total cost of the cache misses analyzed for a computation and dividing it by the number of processors. In contrast, to further support our model, we show that no scheduler can achieve such bounds (optimizing for both cache misses and runtime) if work, depth, and sequential cache complexity are the only parameters used to analyze a computation.
Characterization of the Interactions of vMIP-II, and a Dimeric Variant of vMIP-II, with Glycosaminoglycans

Chemokines are important immune proteins, carrying out their function by binding to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) on the endothelial surface and to cell surface chemokine receptors. A unique viral chemokine analogue, viral macrophage inflammatory protein-II (vMIP-II), encoded by human herpesvirus-8, has garnered interest because of its ability to bind to multiple chemokine receptors, including both HIV coreceptors. In addition, vMIP-II binds to cell surface GAGs much more tightly than most human chemokines, which may be the key to its anti-inflammatory function in vivo. The goal of this work was to determine the mechanism of binding of GAG by vMIP-II. The interaction of vMIP-II with a heparin-derived disaccharide was characterized using NMR. Important binding sites were further analyzed by mutagenesis studies, in which corresponding vMIP-II mutants were tested for GAG binding ability using heparin chromatography and NMR. We found that despite having many more basic residues than some chemokines, vMIP-II shares a characteristic binding site similar to that of its human analogues, utilizing basic residues R18, R46, and R48. Interestingly, a particular mutation (Leu13Phe) caused vMIP-II to form a pH-dependent CC chemokine-type dimer as determined by analytical ultracentrifugation and NMR. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of engineering a naturally predominantly monomeric chemokine into a dissociable dimer by a single mutation. This dimeric vMIP-II mutant binds to heparin much more tightly than wild-type vMIP-II and provides a new model for studying the relationship between chemokine quaternary structure and various aspects of function. Structural differences between monomeric and dimeric vMIP-II upon GAG binding were characterized by NMR and molecular docking.
In search of limits: Raymond Aron on ‘secular religion’ and communism:

Beginning in the 1940s, Raymond Aron used the concept of ‘secular religion’ to condemn communism. This article traces the history of ‘secular religion’ within his writings. Aron’s earliest critique of communism, in his doctoral thesis of 1938, entitled Introduction to the Philosophy of History , was philosophically powerful yet did not rely on ‘secular religion.’ The concept first emerged in his wartime writings; it then became central in his famous book The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955). The ambiguities of the concept of ‘secular religion’ are discussed in this article. On the whole, the idea of ‘secular religion’ appears to be a weak spot within the corpus of a thinker who was usually very precise in defining his concepts. The article suggests that Aron is a case study in the failure of many Cold War intellectuals to wrestle productively with the concept of religion.
GEOGRAPHY AS EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY

Gold placers attracted initial Spanish settlement to the Antioquia highlands of northwest Colombia. Here there evolved a distinctive culture group, centering on Medellin, that in the nineteenth century fanned out to establish numerous pioneer fronts on Andean slopes. Change has been continuous. Recently Antioqueno colonization has been directed towards the northern tropical lowlands. Medellin, despite locational disadvantages, has become a major industrial center. Through example the author argues for the integrative values of area studies and the significance and rewards of field observation in geography.
Outlier Screening and a Distribution-Free Test for Vanishing Tetrads

The TETRAD search procedure has several limitations: It does not screen data for outliers; it relies on Wishart's test for vanishing tetrads that assumes a multinormal distribution for the random variables; and the significance tests do not take into account that multiple tetrad differences are being tested. I propose several ways to overcome these problems. First, I present several diagnostic statistics to help identify outliers and influential cases. Then I develop new, more general asymptotic tests for vanishing tetrads for variables with nonnormal distributions and derive a simultaneous test for multiple tetrad differences. Finally, the tests are extended to apply to tetrad differences of covariances as well as differences of correlations computed for random variables with “arbitrary” distributions.
The standardization of blood bank antisera with the Groupamatic 360 C system.

Resume Le systeme photometrique du Groupamatic 360 a ete experimente particulierement sur sa capacite de realiser des mesures quantitatives reproductibles de reactions d'agglutination. En utilisant des melanges de globules rouges, on a pu demontrer que la reponse des voltmetres des cellules photometriques etait lineaire et directement proportionnelle au degre d'hemagglutination. Une unite anticorps a ete definie pour l'etalonnage des serums-tests : « Une unite Ag 50 3 % correspond a la quantite d'anticorps contenue dans un ml de serum-test capable d'agglutiner dans les conditions Groupamatic 50 % des globules rouges contenus dans 1 ml de suspension a 3 %. Une methode a ete mise au point pour etalonner et standardiser les serums-tests des banques de sang, en utilisant des dilutions en progression geometrique et des globules selectionnes. Les courbes de resultats ont ete de bonne qualite (5 % d'erreurs standard a 50 % et reproductibles (variation de 10 % d'Ag 50 3 %). Cette methode est tres utile pour la selection et la standardisation des reactifs devant etre utilises sur cet equipement.
Mechanistic studies of light-induced charge separation at semiconductor/liquid interfaces

The energy crisis of the early 1970s stimulated numerous investigations of semiconductor/liquid junctions for the conversion and storage of solar energy. Although similar in concept to solid-state photovoltaic devices, semiconductor /liquid junctions offered the potential for inexpensive, chemically based energy-conversion devices, with the accompanying potential to effect the direct conversion of light into chemical fuels.
Polarization-independent all-fiber isolator based on asymmetric fiber tapers

Nonreciprocal intensity transmission in optical fibers can be realized by use of an asymmetric fiber taper. A few-mode fiber taper-based nonreciprocal component is designed, and its nonreciprocal transmission characteristics are demonstrated. This structure can be employed to build polarization-independent all-fiber isolators or fiber-optic sensors.
Expression of a fusion gene consisting of the mouse growth hormone-releasing hormone gene promoter linked to the SV40 T-antigen gene in transgenic mice.

Abstract Limited information is available concerning the regulation of growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) gene expression in the hypothalamus, largely because of the lack of a suitable cellular model. In an attempt to immortalize hypothalamic GHRH-producing neurons, we have generated a transgenic mouse model which expresses the simian virus 40 (SV40) T-antigen gene (Tag) under the control of the GHRH gene promoter. The transgene contains ≈5 kb of mouse GHRH gene sequences, including 3.5 kb of the 5′-flanking region, the entire hypothalamic exon 1 and 1.5 kb of intron 1, fused to the SV40 Tag gene. This construct was microinjected into fertilized oocytes. Fourteen of 96 mice born had integrated the transgene. These mice were fertile and showed no signs of central or peripheral tumors. The pattern of expression of the SV40 Tag gene was analyzed in four different transgenic lines by RT-PCR. The tissues tested include: hypothalamus, pituitary, cortex, cerebellum, spinal cord, adrenal, testis, spleen and lung. Transgene expression was consistently detected in the hypothalamus of all lines. In addition, SV40 Tag expression was also detected in the hypothalamus by Northern blot analysis in two of the transgenic lines. SV40 Tag expression was also detected in the testis of all transgenic lines by RT-PCR. This result was not expected since the GHRH gene sequences present in the transgene do not include the testis-specific transcription initiation site previously described. This suggests that GHRH gene expression in the mouse testis can be directed by regulatory sequences located downstream of the testis specific transcription start site. We conclude that the promoter region of the GHRH gene included in this construct contains the regulatory elements necessary to drive hypothalamic and testis expression in vivo. In addition, all mice from one of the transgenic lines developed cataracts in both eyes. SV40 Tag expression was detected not only in eyes with cataracts, but also, to a lesser extent, in eyes from other transgenic lines. Furthermore, the endogenous GHRH gene was found to be expressed in the eyes of normal mice.
Reversal of left ventricular dysfunction following ablation of atrial fibrillation.

Background: Evaluation of ventricular rate control in atrial fibrillation (AF) can be difficult, and the presence of an AF-induced ventricular cardiomyopathy due to intermittent poor rate control or other causes may be underestimated. The outcome with AF ablation in patients with a decreased left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) may provide insight into this important clinical issue. Objective: To determine the effect of pulmonary vein isolation on LVEF in patients with AF and decreased LVEF (≤50%). Methods: Ablation consisted of proximal isolation of arrhythmogenic pulmonary veins (PVs) and elimination of non-PV triggers. LVEF was determined within 24 hours after ablation and again at up to 6 months follow-up. Transtelephonic monitoring was performed routinely for 2–3 weeks prior to ablation, at 6 weeks, and 6 months post and with symptoms following ablation. AF control was defined as freedom from AF or marked (>90%) reduction in AF burden on or off previously ineffective antiarrhythmic medication. Results: AF ablation was performed in 366 patients and 67 (18%) patients had decreased LV function with a mean LVEF of 42 ± 9%. An average of 3.4 ± 0.9 PVs were isolated. AF control in the depressed LVEF group compared favorably with the normal EF group (86% vs. 87% P = NS), although more redo procedures were required (1.6 ± 0.8 vs 1.3 ± 0.6 procedures; P ≤ 0.05). Only 15 of 67 patients (22%) with decreased LVEF had shown tachycardia (>100 bpm) on repeated preablation ECG recordings during AF. In the decreased LVEF group, the LVEF increased from 42 ± 9% to 56 ± 8% (P < 0.001) after ablation. Conclusions: Patients with AF and decreased LVEF undergoing AF ablation have similar success to patients with normal LVEF and have improvement in LVEF after ablation. These results suggest the presence of a reversible AF-induced ventricular cardiomyopathy in many patients with AF and depressed LV function. The presence of under-recognized and reversible cardiomyopathy even when tachycardia is not persistent is important to recognize.
CONVENIENT INEXPENSIVE METHOD OF TAKING BLOOD CULTURES USING KEIDEL TUBES

T HE fermenitation apparatus illustrated in Figure I (patent applied for) was devised to provide ani inexpensive and practical one which could be readily cleaned and would occupy a small space in an incubator. The flask is approximately spherical, has a flat base, an elongated neck and side opening as shown, and contains a tube or gas receiver beveled on one side of the open end which may be calibrated or not as desired. The capacity of the flask to the side opening is approximately 70 c.c. The dimensions of the apparatus are as follows: height 4X2", diameter of bulb 21⁄44", including side neck 2 9/1¢"When introducing the tube the flask should be inverted, then gradually returned to the upright position leaving the outlet of the tube inclined to the edge of the base of the flask. Held firmly in positioin with a cotton wad, the tube is inclined to the perpendicular to facilitate emptying and filling it. The openings are closed with cotton in the usual manner and a stopper may be inserted in the neck of the flash as an additional precaution. In operation the nutrient medium (about 50 c.c.) containing the sugar is introduced through the side neck. The flask and contents are then sterilized. Before inoculating the media with the material to be examined, the inside tube should be emptied by tilting. The subject under examination is introduced through the side neck and the cotton plug reinserted. When thoroughly mixed with the media the tube is again filled by inclining the flask.
An analysis of complications in lateral retinacular release procedures

Abstract Complications were reviewed for 446 lateral retinacular release procedures performed by 21 arthroscopic surgeons in various centers. There were 32 complications among the 446 procedures. The overall complication rate for lateral retinacular release was 7.2%. Information obtained from each individual surgeon in the study allowed scrutiny of various surgical techniques as they related to complications in lateral retinacular release procedures. Higher complication rates were noted with tourniquet use (p = 0.037), in arthroscopically controlled subcutaneous technique (p = 0.057), and most significantly, in the use of a postoperative suction drain for 24 h or longer (p
On linearization points for nonlinear combination of stochastic load processes

Abstract The probability that the combination of a number of stochastic load processes will cross out of a safe domain at least once in a unit time is bounded above by the mean crossing rate out of the domain. For nonlinear domains a linearization of the failure surface is required in order to obtain an approximation to the upper bound. The best point at which to linearize the surface is defined as the point at which the error is minimized. Stationary points of the mean crossing rate out of tangent planes are shown to yield the optimum linearization point.
Optical disc technology for records management: A user perspective

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission is completing a pilot project which demonstrates a unique application of Worm‐based optical disc technology for the storage and retrieval of government records. Information which is captured at the source or from an optical character reader is stored on the disc in the form of the ASCII text and the original image of the complete document. The full text search software and indexes to the images are all stored on the optical disc. In this way a user can perform a full text search on the records and retrieve either the ASCII or the original document. By combining full text search and image retrieval, significant improvement in recall and precision are achieved when compared to traditional simple indexing techniques.
The compressive behavior of advanced double hull structure—A review of current research at David Taylor

Abstract It has long been recognized that the compressive behavior of primary ship structural components plays a vital role in the design of surface ship hulls. This is equally as true for the new advanced double hull concept as it is for the more conventional surface ship configurations. What is different, however, is the nature of the structural mechanics phenomena which must be addressed due to the double hull's more radical departure from conventional design and construction practices. With increasing interest and attention being shown in this new concept, the David Taylor Model Basin has over the past few years initiated a number of research efforts which have and are continuing to address various aspects of the behavior of double hulls and their components to primary compressive loadings. These studies have as their ultimate goal the development of practical, user oriented design methods for double hull structure and as such currently focus on more approximate, rather than mathematically rigorous, approaches to the various structural phenomena being considered. This paper is in essence a progress report on a selected number of these efforts and describes the results achieved to date as well as the ongoing efforts and those planned for the future. This report focuses primarily on three recent studies: (1) a preliminary look at the relative significance of local versus general instability failure of double hull structure; (2) small scale experimental analysis of double hull sections using rigid vinyl modelling; and (3) the application of beam-on-elastic-foundation analysis methods for high aspect stiffened plates as it relates to double hull structure. In addition to these major topics, the report also includes a brief discussion of other ongoing and planned efforts relevant to the advanced double hull.
Nanoscale gradient index media fabrication for extreme control and tunability of optical wave propagation

Gradient Index Media have multiple applications for controlling the wave propagation and harvesting its received energy or processing its embedded data. A nanofabrication process was developed to produce a Luneburg lens on silicon, to operate in the optical regime, with feature sizes smaller than 100nm. The focused energy of the Luneburg lens is compared with lenses of non-spatially-varying index as well as a linear spatial variation, and its enhanced focusing is clearly demonstrated. In addition, a mechanism of thermal tunability of such devices is proposed and is supported by our results.
Classification of molten pool modes in variable polarity plasma arc welding based on acoustic signature

Abstract The relationships between the acoustic signal and the modes of the welding pool such as no-keyhole (melt-in), keyhole and cutting in variable polarity plasma arc welding (VPPAW) are investigated. Welch power spectral density (PSD) estimate is used for preprocessing the sound data. A neural network (NN) is used to distinguish the keyhole mode from the cutting mode. The results show that the keyhole mode can be distinguished from the cutting mode under the experiment conditions in this paper.
Automated detection and quantitative assessment of pulmonary airways depicted on CT images

We developed and tested a fully automated computerized scheme that identifies pulmonary airway sections depicted on computed tomography (CT) images and computes their sizes including the lumen and airway wall areas. The scheme includes four processing modules that (1) segment left and right lung areas, (2) identify airway locations, (3) segment airway walls from neighboring pixels, and (4) compute airway sizes. The scheme uses both a raster scanning and a labeling algorithm complemented by simple classification rules for region size and circularity to automatically search for and identify airway sections of interest. A profile tracking method is used to segment airway walls from neighboring pixels including those associated with dense tissue (i.e., pulmonary arteries) along scanning radial rays. A partial pixel membership method is used to compute airway size. The scheme was tested on ten randomly selected CT studies that included 26 sets of CT images acquired using both low and conventional dose CT examinations with one of four reconstruction algorithms (namely, 'bone', 'lung', 'soft', and 'standard' convolution kernels). Three image section thicknesses (1.25, 2.5, and 5 mm) were evaluated. The scheme detected a large number of quantifiable airway sections when the CT images were reconstructed using high spatial frequencymore » convolution kernels. The detection results demonstrated a consistent trend for all test image sets in that as airway lumen size increases, on average the airway wall area increases as well and the wall area percentage decreases. The study suggested that CT images reconstructed using high spatial frequency convolution kernels and thin-section thickness were most amenable to automated detection, reasonable segmentation, and quantified assessment when the airways are close to being perpendicular to the CT image plane.« less
GABAergic neurons in rat hippocampal culture

Abstract The experiments described here were designed to study biochemical and histological measures of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) uptake and glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) in primary dissociated cell cultures prepared from 17–21-day fetal rat hippocampus. Preparations from all ages of animals, except 21-day fetuses, were enriched in GABAergic neurons, when compared to the adult hippocampus in situ. These cells comprise 30–50% of the large, phase-bright, process-bearing cells in hippocampal cultures as estimated by autoradiography of GABA uptake and GAD immunocytochemistry. Neurons concentrate GABA by a relatively slow but high-affinity process ( K m = 2.6 μ M) that has considerably higher maximum velocity than glial uptake (V max = 479 pmol/mg protein/min for neurons and 31 pmol/mg protein/min for glia). No low-affinity uptake process was noted in neurons or glia. GABA uptake into neurons was competitively inhibited by cis -4-OH-nipecotic acid ( K i = 39 ± 11 μ M). These cultures also possess considerable GAD activity, up to 6 nmol/mg protein/min in one-month-old cultures, which approximates that of the adult hippocampus. Both GABA uptake and GAD activity increased with time in culture. The enrichment of GABAergic markers indicates that this preparation may be useful for the detailed study of hippocampal GABAergic neurons.
Optimal Control of a Photovoltaic Solar Energy System with Adaptive Critics

This paper presents an optimal energy control scheme for a grid independent photovoltaic (PV) solar system consisting of a PV array, battery energy storage, and time varying loads (a small critical load and a larger variable non-critical load). The optimal controller design is based on a class of adaptive critic designs (ACDs) called the action dependant heuristic dynamic programming (ADHDP). The ADHDP class of ACDs uses two neural networks, an "action" network (which actually dispenses the control signals) and a "critic" network (which critics the action network performance). An optimal control policy is evolved by the action network over a period of time using the feedback signals provided by the critic network. The objectives of the optimal controller in order of decreasing importance is to first fully dispatch the required energy to the critical loads at all times; secondly to dispatch energy to the battery whenever necessary so as to be able to dispatch energy to the critical loads in any absence of energy from the PV array; and lastly to dispatch energy to the non-critical loads while not interfering with the first two objectives. Results on three different US cities show that the ADHDP based optimal control scheme outperforms the conventional PV-priority control scheme in maintaining the stated objectives almost all the time.
Magnetoelectronic Phenomena at a Ferromagnet-Semiconductor Interface

A Comment on the Letter by P. R. Hammar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 203 (1999). The authors of the Letter offer a Reply.
First-Order Reliability Analysis of Vehicle Safety in Highway Horizontal Curves

This study presents a reliability analysis of vehicle sideslip and rollover in highway horizontal curves, mainly focusing on exit ramps and interchanges. To accurately describe failure modes of a ground vehicle, analytic models for sideslip and rollover are derived considering nonlinear characteristics of vehicle behavior using the commercial software, TruckSim®, with high fidelity. Then, the probability of accident is evaluated using the First-Order Reliability Method (FORM). Furthermore, sensitivity functions of each failure mode are analytically derived to apply FORM.Numerical studies are conducted using a single-unit truck model. The results show that a truck is more likely to rollover than to slip at dry load. To propose practical application of the study, the reliability analysis for the minimum radius recommended by American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) at various speeds and bank angles is conducted. The reliability analysis of current design method shows that the method cannot provide the sufficient margin of safety against both of rollover and sideslip when there are deviations from assumed conditions, especially at low speed of vehicles.Copyright © 2013 by ASME
Falcon, Inc.: Performance Evaluation of Foreign Subsidiaries

This multifaceted, decision‐oriented case requires you to address several issues in performance evaluation in an international context. In the process of reviewing the annual performance of its foreign subsidiaries, Falcon's CEO raises concerns about the performance evaluation metric and the effect of exchange rate changes on the competitive positions of foreign subsidiary managers in Denmark and Japan. The case requires you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Falcon's performance evaluation system, examine the appropriateness of country managers' responses to exchange rate changes, understand the difference between evaluation of business units and their respective managers, and recommend improvements in the performance evaluation system.
Field competitiveness of double translocation heterozygote males of Aedes aegypti (L).

Equal numbers of 2 types of translocation heterozygote males, normal males, and normal females were released on 5 consecutive days at simulated breeding sites to assess the mating competitiveness of the translocation double heterozygotes. One of the double heterozygotes, Tl:2:3-45, was a complex involving all 3 chromosomes. The other was obtained by crossing males of an M -linked heterozygote strain to females heterozygous for 2 similar autosomal translocations. Fertility of field-collected eggs and eggs collected from females captured at each release site was used to evaluate competitiveness. For both types of double heterozygote release, the observed and expected fertility values were in close agreement, indicating full competitiveness of the translocation heterozygotes.
What kind of democracy is emerging in Eastern Europe

An expert on political institutions analyzes the patterns of democracy emerging in Eastern Europe by extending Lijphart's study of democratic patterns to 10 new democracies. Analyzing established democracies, Lijphart found that 10 variables capturing the type and functioning of institutions cluster on two clearly separate dimensions. Distribution of these variables is used to characterize the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The causes of institutional choice and the reasons institutions produce divergent effects are examined in the context of these Eastern European patterns. The results also challenge the use of certain measures of institutions without consideration of the party system.
Impact/Debonding Tolerant Sandwich Panel With Aluminum Tube Reinforced Foam Core

Sandwich construction has been extensively used in various fields. However, sandwich panels have not been fully exploited in critical structural applications due to damage tolerance and safety concern. A major problem of sandwich panels is the debonding at or near the core/face sheet interface, especially under impact loading, which can lead to a sudden loss of structural integrity and cause catastrophic consequences. In order to improve the debonding resistance and energy absorption of sandwich panel under impact loadings, a new foam core is proposed which is a hybrid core consisting of hollow metallic microtubes reinforced polymer matrix. The objective of this study was to characterize its static and dynamic performances. Two types of new hybrid cores were investigated in this work. One consisted of polymer resin reinforced by transversely aligned continuous metallic militubes, denoted as type-I sandwich panel. The other was made of polymer resin reinforced by aligned continuous in-plane metallic militubes, denoted as type-II sandwich panel. Additionally, the traditional sandwich panels with polymeric syntactic foam core were also prepared for comparisons. Static and impact tests demonstrated that interface debonding and subsequent shear failure in the core could be largely excluded from the type-II panel. Meanwhile, a significant transition to ductile failure was observed in type-II sandwich panel with dramatically enhanced load capacity and impact energy dissipation. The results indicated that type-II panel may be considered a promising option for critical structural applications featured by debonding and impact tolerance.Copyright © 2011 by ASME
Subsurface flow and transport process model for time dependent mine ventilation simulations

Time dependent transports of heat, humidity and gas liberations from the fractured and porous strata to the ventilating air are of great interest to the design and operation of an underground mine. It is a challenge to improve the heat stress or comfort index and meet the exposure limits for the workers underground with increasing depth, mechanisation, work intensity and cost savings pressure. The key to optimise simultaneously safety, health and cost reduction is better, leaner and meaner design requiring time dependent control of ventilation and air cooling. For this, new modelling and simulation tools are needed together with education of the workforce how to use it. The paper will discuss a new software tool, MULTIFLUX, applicable for modelling and simulation of subsurface flow and transport problems in true time dependent applications. Examples will demonstrate solutions to challenging tasks in mine ventilation, climate and contaminant transport.
Design and validation of a performance and power simulator for PowerPC systems

This paper describes the design and validation of a performance and power simulator that is part of the Mambo simulation environment for PowerPCÂ® systems. One of the most notable features of the simulator, designated as Tempo, is the incorporation of an event-driven power model. Tempo satisfies an important need for fast and accurate performance and power simulation tools at the system level. The power and performance predictions from the simulated model of a PowerPC 405GP (or simply 405GP) were validated against a 405GP-based evaluation board instrumented for power measurements using 42 application/dataset combinations from the EEMBC benchmark suite. The average performance and energy-prediction errors were 0.6% and -4.1%, respectively. In addition to describing Tempo, we show examples of how well it can predict the runtime power consumption of a 405GP microprocessor during application execution.
Pilot factory – a Condor-based system for scalable Pilot Job generation in the Panda WMS framework

The Panda Workload Management System is designed around the concept of the Pilot Job – a "smart wrapper" for the payload executable that can probe the environment on the remote worker node before pulling down the payload from the server and executing it. Such design allows for improved logging and monitoring capabilities as well as flexibility in Workload Management. In the Grid environment (such as the Open Science Grid), Panda Pilot Jobs are submitted to remote sites via mechanisms that ultimately rely on Condor-G. As our experience has shown, in cases where a large number of Panda jobs are simultaneously routed to a particular remote site, the increased load on the head node of the cluster, which is caused by the Pilot Job submission, may lead to overall lack of scalability. We have developed a Condor-inspired solution to this problem, which is using the schedd-based glidein, whose mission is to redirect pilots to the native batch system. Once a glidein schedd is installed and running, it can be utilized exactly the same way as local schedds and therefore, from the user's perspective, Pilots thus submitted are quite similar to jobs submitted to the local Condor pool.
An equilibrium theory of nominal and real exchange rate comovement

Abstract This study develops a quantitative equilibrium theory to offer an explanation of one of the most puzzling aspects of empirical exchange rate behavior – the high degree of nominal and real exchange rate comovement. Technology shocks coupled with the accomodative response of monetary policy to output fluctuations are primarily responsible for the covariation between nominal and real exchange rates. Shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment also play an important role.
Comparative toxicity of two oil dispersants to the early life stages of two marine species

Acute, flow-through, spiked-exposure toxicity tests were performed on the early life stages of two marine species using two oil dispersants. The species represent two common near-shore marine taxa: molluscs (red abalone, Haliotis rufescens) and crustaceans (kelp forest mysid, Holmesimysis costata). The dispersants were composed of complex mixtures of anionic and nonionic surfactants and solvents. The toxicity data showed that one dispersant, Slik-A-Way, was more toxic than the other, Nokomis[reg sign] 3, to both species. Median-effect concentration estimates for the two dispersants were significantly different between species. Slik-A-Way median-effect concentrations ranged from 16.8 to 23.9 initial ppm for Haliotis and 25.9 to 34.6 initial ppm for Holmesimysis, whereas Nokomis[reg sign] 3 median-effect concentrations ranged from 21.0 to 24.0 initial ppm for Haliotis and from 118.0 to 123.2 initial ppm for Holmesimysis. Differences in toxicity seen in the two dispersants may be due to differences in surfactant formulations.
Effects of puromycin aminonucleoside on growth and chloroplast development of Euglena gracilis

Abstract Dark-adapted or light-grown cells of Euglena gracilis show a marked inhibition in growth rate when grown in the light in the presence of the aminonucleoside of puromycin (AN) at concentrations of 50 μg/ml or more. Inhibition of cell division is not immediate, but occurs after several cell doublings. Chlorophyll accumulation in dark-adapted cells placed in the light under growing or non-growing conditions is not markedly affected by AN at doses sufficient to strongly inhibit growth rate (100 μg/ml). Electron micrographs of cells treated at this level indicate that normal chloroplast structures are formed. Abnormal chloroplast structures were seen only in cells treated with 500 μg/ml AN, a dose level at which normal chlorophyll/cell amounts accumulate. Several hypotheses are presented to explain the relative insensitivity of the chloroplast or proplastid to AN in the intact Euglena cell.
The missing piece of software development

Software product planning is the activity of selecting which product you should build. The subsequent activities of requirements specification, design and coding are primarily technical activities; software product planning requires the highest levels of understanding of both technology and business. Marketing and development typically take adversarial roles during product planning. Both parties lose if the product cannot be sold, and both parties lose when the product is delivered a year late. Complex relationships drive product planning such as customer demand, development cost, development risk, market size, competition, the time need to market the product, and price. Key to being successful at software product planning is having at our disposal the concept of a level playing field. Each side needs to understand its own factors as well as the other side's factors, and will thus be able to understand the myriad implications of every decision.
Role of C-factor in water uptake and extrusion by mitochondria and interference by various drugs.

WATER movements through mitochondrial membranes are of some interest because they involve the enzymes of cxidative phosphorylation and they are strikingly affected by certain hormones and other chemical agents. Mitochondria isolated from rat liver or kidney can take up significant amounts of water from an in vitro incubation medium, leading to doubling or tripling of mitochondrial volume. This process of spontaneous swelling can be markedly enhanced by adding any one of a number of so-called swelling agents, which include thyroxine, phosphate, calcium, inorganic and organic mercurials, thiols, and disulfides, phlorizin and others. Such a change in mitochondrial volume is not a passive process but is geared to the action of the respiratory chains in the mitochondrial membrane since swelling (does not occur when respiration is blocked or under anaerobic conditionsly2. Mitochondrial swelling produced in this manner in vitro can be reversed again by the addition of ATP -IMgS-+, with easily measured extrusion of water. It is of interest that ATP-dependent water extrusion from thyroxine-swollen mitochondria takes place independently of the nature of the ionic environment and does not require or depend on movements of potassium or sodium ions.3. “Contraction” is specifically linked to ATP and is inhibited by uncoupling agents like azide or sucrose, but not by 2,4-dinitrophenol 4. However mitochondrial water uptake induced by reduced glutathione (GSH) is an exception, since it is not reversed on addition of ATP + Mg+-‘:. More recently Lehninger and Gotterers have demonstrated that mitochondrial swelling induced
Two particles' repelling random walks on the complete graph

We consider two particles' repelling random walks on complete graphs. In this model, each particle has higher probability to visit the vertices which have been seldom visited by the other one. By a dynamical approach we prove that the two particles' occupation measure asymptotically has small joint support almost surely if the repulsion is strong enough.
Theoretically-inspired nanoengineering of complex photonic media

The macroscopic electro-optic activity of organic materials is linearly related to molecular first hyperpolarizability of individual chromophores, chromophore number density, and the acentric order parameter describing chromophore order. When strong chromophore-chromophore intermolecular electrostatic interactions (e.g., dipole-dipole interactions) are present, the latter two quantities are not independent. In previous publications, we have demonstrated how electro-optic activity can be systematically improved by control of chromophore shape in chromophore/polymer composite materials and by the nanoscopic engineering of single- and multi-chromophore-containing dendrimer materials, where steric interactions and covalent bond potentials are used to inhibit centrosymmetric ordering of chromophores. In this communication, we demonstrate how doping a second chromophore into a chromophore-containing material can lead to dramatically improved electro-optic activity. This work also provides insight into the affect of surrounding lattice on solvatochromic shifts and line broadening that can lead to increased optical loss.