cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Estimating Biomass of Mosquito Populations

The slope of the line relating dry weight to stage of development does not vary among five species of mosquitoes belonging to all three subfamilies of Culicidae and both tribes within the subfamily Culicinae. Population or community biomass may then be estimated from a general mosquito equation adjusted for the mean weight of a given species' 4th instar.
Simultaneous detection of circulating oncomiRs from body fluids for prostate cancer staging using nanographene oxide.

Circulating oncomiRs are highly stable diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic tumor biomarkers, which can reflect the status of the disease and response to cancer therapy. miR-141 is an oncomiR, which is overexpressed in advanced prostate cancer patients, whereas its expression is at the normal levels in the early stages of the disease. On the other hand, miR-21 is significantly elevated in the early stage, but not in the advanced prostate cancer. Here, we have demonstrated simultaneous detection of exogenous miR-21 and miR-141 from human body fluids including blood, urine and saliva using nanographene oxide. Our system enables us to specifically and reliably detect each oncomiR at different fluorescence emission channels from a large population of RNAs extracted from body fluids. We were also able to determine the content and the ratio of the miR-21 and miR-141 in 10 different miRNA cocktails composed of various, but unknown, concentrations of both oncomiRs. A strong agreement (around 90%) between the e...
Scan-Rate-Dependent Current Rectification of Cone-Shaped Silica Nanopores in Quartz Nanopipettes

Here we report the voltammetric behavior of cone-shaped silica nanopores in quartz nanopipettes in aqueous solutions as a function of the scan rate, v. Current rectification behavior for silica nanopores with diameters in the range 4-25 nm was studied. The rectification behavior was found to be strongly dependent on the scan rate. At low scan rates (e.g., v 200 V/s), a nearly linear current-voltage response was obtained. In addition, the initial voltage was shown to play a critical role in the current-voltage response of cone-shaped nanopores at high scan rates. We explain this v-dependent current-voltage response by ionic redistribution in the vicinity of the nanopore mouth.
National Trends in ADHD Diagnosis and Treatment: Comparison of Youth and Adult Office-Based Visits

Objectives:The study objective was to assess national trends in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in outpatient visits by comparing adults and youths. Also examined w...
Serum carotene levels in female long-distance runners.

Hypercarotenemia has been associated with anorexia nervosa and hypothalamic amenorrhea. With the emergence of a spectrum of menstrual dysfunction, including anovulation in women runners, the hypothesis of hypothalamic amenorrhea in these patients has been formulated. Other authors have proposed exercise-associated amenorrhea to be distinct from hypothalamic amenorrhea based on endocrine profiles. Using carotene as an index test of hypothalamic amenorrhea, we have studied female long-distance runners (>25 miles/week) and have found no difference in the carotene levels between ovulatory (midfollicular) and anovulatory runners. These data support other evidence that exercise-associated amenorrhea is distinct from hypothalamic amenorrhea.
Advancing a Comprehensive Approach to the Study of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms

Purpose: Lower urinary tract symptoms are common in the United States population, leading to significant economic, quality of life and public health issues. The burden will increase as the population ages, and risk factors for lower urinary tract symptoms, including diabetes and obesity, remain highly prevalent. Improving clinical management and establishing the knowledge base to prevent lower urinary tract symptoms will require a comprehensive research approach that examines factors beyond the lower urinary tract. While the study of extra-lower urinary tract factors has increased recently, current urological research does not systematically account for the broad set of potential contributing factors spanning biological, behavioral, psychological/executive function and sociocultural factors. A comprehensive assessment of potential contributors to risk, treatment response and progression is necessary to reduce the burden of this condition in the United States.Materials and Methods: We considered challenges...
Sickness and Death in the Twentieth Century

Twentieth-century observers sometimes express puzzlement about what seems to be a paradox in health demography: as the death rate shrinks toward the minimum consistent with the human life span, ill-health rates and health spending rise rather than decline. But there is no paradox. Even if we set aside other reasons why health spending might increase in real terms — such as greater access to physicians and health facilities, a shift from less to more costly health problems, the earlier or more comprehensive discovery of health problems, and greater awareness of health problems — reasons why ill-health rates and health spending should be expected to increase are apparent. They follow from increased numbers of the aged in the population, the prevalence and duration of ill health among the aged, and the intractability of many sicknesses of the aged. They follow also from changes in the composition of the population that occur because of the decline in the death rate. And they follow because the decline of death rates is a sign that health conditions are improving, but not that health itself is improving. Focusing on the mortality and morbidity experience of males in the United States since about 1880, this chapter will show that it is possible to take away from and add to factors determining health. Following male experience makes it easier to compare this part of the record with earlier periods, in which male experience is better known than female.
Energy-Efficient Adaptive Classifier Design for Mobile Systems

With the continuous increase in the amount of data that needs to be processed by digital mobile systems, energy-efficient computation has become a critical design constraint for mobile systems. In this paper, we propose an adaptive classifier that leverages the wide variability in data complexity to enable energy-efficient data classification operations for mobile systems. Our approach takes advantage of varying classification "hardness" across data to dynamically allocate resources and improve energy efficiency. On average, our adaptive classifier is ≈ 100× more energy efficient but has ≈ 1% higher error rate than a complex radial basis function classifier and is ≈ 10× less energy efficient but has ≈ 40% lower error rate than a simple linear classifier across a wide range of classification data sets.
Information-theoretic limitations on approximate quantum cloning and broadcasting

We prove quantitative limitations on any approximate simultaneous cloning or broadcasting of mixed states. The results are based on information-theoretic (entropic) considerations and generalize the well-known no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems. We also observe and exploit the fact that the universal cloning machine on the symmetric subspace of n qudits and symmetrized partial trace channels are dual to each other. This duality manifests itself both in the algebraic sense of adjointness of quantum channels and in the operational sense that a universal cloning machine can be used as an approximate recovery channel for a symmetrized partial trace channel and vice versa. The duality extends to give control of the performance of generalized universal quantum cloning machines (UQCMs) on subspaces more general than the symmetric subspace. This gives a way to quantify the usefulness of a priori information in the context of cloning. For example, we can control the performance of an antisymmetric analog of the UQCM in recovering from the loss of n−k fermionic particles.
Utilization of iron (III)-doped nanoshells for in vivo marking of nonpalpable tumors using a VX2 rabbit model.

Abstract Background We aimed to evaluate the potential for ultrasound (US) visible biodegradable nanoshells (NS) as an alternative to wire-guided localization for nonpalpable tumors in vivo. Methods VX2 tumor was injected in bilateral thighs of 22 New Zealand rabbits and after 5 to 10 days, 1 tumor was marked with a wire as a control and the contralateral tumor was injected with 1 mL of 500 nm gas-filled silica NS under Doppler US. Tumors were excised after 24 hours. Chi-square was used for significance, P = .05. Results One rabbit was excluded on postoperative day 1 due to equipment failure, no ill effects were observed from the NS. The NS were used to localize and resect 100% of marked tissue, 4/21 wires were displaced (P Conclusions We have shown that preoperatively injected US visible silica NS can be successfully used to mark nonpalpable tumors in vivo more consistently than WL.
High-throughput nuclear delivery and rapid expression of DNA via mechanical and electrical cell-membrane disruption

Nuclear transfection of DNA into mammalian cells is challenging yet critical for many biological and medical studies. Here, by combining cell squeezing and electric-field-driven transport in a device that integrates microfluidic channels with constrictions and microelectrodes, we demonstrate nuclear delivery of plasmid DNA within 1 hour after treatment, the most rapid DNA expression in a high-throughput setting (up to millions of cells per minute per device). Passing cells at high speed through microfluidic constrictions smaller than the cell diameter mechanically disrupts the cell membrane, allowing a subsequent electric field to further disrupt the nuclear envelope and drive DNA molecules into the cytoplasm and nucleus. By tracking the localization of the ESCRT-III (endosomal sorting complexes required for transport) protein CHMP4B, we show that the integrity of the nuclear envelope is recovered within 15 minutes of treatment. We also provide insight into subcellular delivery by comparing the performance of the disruption-and-field-enhanced method with those of conventional chemical, electroporation, and manual-injection systems.
Empowering Requirements Elicitation for Populations with Special Needs by Using Virtual Reality

Requirements elicitation is the process of discovering requirements for a system by accessing available knowledge sources and communicating with stakeholders who have a direct or indirect influence on such requirements. Although requirements elicitation is by no means a new concept and many techniques are available for this activity (e.g., interviews, observations, focus groups, questionnaires), there is no silver bullet which guarantees collecting a set of complete and correct requirements. When software is being developed for a special needs population, individuals with mental or physical impairments, the task becomes even tougher. In this scenario, techniques other than the traditional ones must be used to support the elicitation process. To ease the task of collecting requirements from special needs populations, we propose the use of Virtual Reality (VR) environments as elicitation technique. Our research is not to propose that VR is the silver bullet for collection of requirements; however, VR can definitely complement other elicitation techniques to develop a complete set of requirements specification. The following proposal explains the benefits of VR, why it can be useful with elicitation activities, how it can benefit special needs population, and what it can contribute towards the requirements process.
The chemotherapeutic agent paclitaxel selectively impairs reversal learning while sparing prior learning, new learning and episodic memory

Chemotherapy is widely used to treat patients with systemic cancer. The efficacy of cancer therapies is frequently undermined by adverse side effects that have a negative impact on the quality of life of cancer survivors. Cancer patients who receive chemotherapy often experience chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment across a variety of domains including memory, learning, and attention. In the current study, the impact of paclitaxel, a taxane derived chemotherapeutic agent, on episodic memory, prior learning, new learning, and reversal learning were evaluated in rats. Neurogenesis was quantified post-treatment in the dentate gyrus of the same rats using immunostaining for 5-Bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU) and Ki67. Paclitaxel treatment selectively impaired reversal learning while sparing episodic memory, prior learning, and new learning. Furthermore, paclitaxel-treated rats showed decreases in markers of hippocampal cell proliferation, as measured by markers of cell proliferation assessed using immunostaining for Ki67 and BrdU. This work highlights the importance of using multiple measures of learning and memory to identify the pattern of impaired and spared aspects of chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment.
General rank-based estimation for regression single index models

This study considers rank estimation of the regression coefficients of the single index regression model. Conditions needed for the consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator are established. Monte Carlo simulation experiments demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed estimator compared to the semiparametric least squares estimator. A real-life example illustrates that the rank regression procedure effectively corrects model nonlinearity even in the presence of outliers in the response space.
Professional Accountability in the Treatment and Release of Dangerous Persons

Before I began writing this chapter, I was physically threatened by a group of teen-agers while walking to my car in an economically depressed area of an East Coast city. A few days later, I witnessed an attack upon a person in a different city. I did what I could to help him, but it was clearly not enough. I held his hand as he died on the sidewalk of the city waiting for an ambulance that arrived 20 minutes too late. As far as I could tell, he was a fairly typical, and none the less important, inhabitant of skid row. His world came to an abrupt and unnecessary end because of the casual cruelty of a few youths.
BASELINE COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING IN LVAD PATIENTS AND ANTICOAGULATION TIME IN RANGE

Left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) are accepted therapy for end stage heart failure, but optimal patient selection remains challenging. Our group and others have shown that baseline cognitive impairment is associated with worse outcomes post LVAD, particularly an increased risk of
PennZzz - an algorithm for estimating behavioral states from wrist-worn accelerometery

Sleep is a heterogeneous behavioral state comprised of different stages and interspersed with episodes of wakefulness. Sleep/wake states can be monitored in the sleep laboratory by polysomnography (PSG). However, sleep studies are intrusive, laborious and expensive, and are usually performed over a single night. In contrast, wrist-worn activity-tracking devices (actimeters) are inexpensive, unobtrusive, and can be used to estimate sleep and wake patterns over multiple nights. We designed the PennZzz algorithm to estimate sleep and wake from actimetry data. Results obtained by actimetry-based monitoring in 26 subjects were compared to stages of sleep and wakefulness detected by simultaneous polysomnography. We found that our algorithm identifies PSG-defined wake episodes with a high accuracy (336/431; 76% of algorithm wake events correspond to true wakefulness). Furthermore, we find that the algorithm is sensitive enough to detect the majority (258/431 ; 59%) of true wake episodes occurring after the first NREM1 to NREM2 transition. With correction, algorithm outputs can be used to estimate the total amount of time awake after sleep onset. We further refined this program for application in a high-throughput manner to assess the total amount of sleep, wake, and non-wear during longer recording periods.
ON THE EXISTENCE OF 6(9)-OXY-11,15- DIHYDROXYPROSTA-7,13-DIENOIC ACID

ABSTRACT The presumed structure, 6(9)-oxy-11,15-dihydroxyprosta-7,13-dienoic acid ( 1 ) had been erroneously assigned. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest its existence. Our experimental data are completely consistent with the contention that PGI2 was not isolated by Pace-Asciak and Wolfe (ref. 1) in 1971, and that their fraction A consisted of 6-keto-PGF1α as a mixture of keto and hemiketal forms.
The Quality of Life of Older Adults with Urinary Incontinence: Determining Generic and Condition-Specific Predictors

Urinary incontinence (UI) is an unpleasant problem for many adults. This study determined the importance of demographic, health and incontinence variables for the generic and incontinence-specific quality of life (QoL) of older adults (age ≥ 60 years). Telephone surveys of adults reporting at least weekly episodes of UI (n = 435) were conducted as part of a randomized, controlled trial. Logistic regression analyses showed that the predictors of generic and incontinence-specific QoL differed. Life satisfaction, a generic outcome, was predicted by education, the number of days in bed due to health problems, the number of days not feeling well and the amount of urine lost. Generic health was related to education, the number of days sick in the previous 30 days and the number of days health issues restricted activities. The incontinence-specific QoL outcomes were predicted by age, mobility difficulties, the amount of urine lost, the frequency of UI, and the number of daytime and night-time voids. The specific QoL measures provide a different profile of those most affected in this sample than that obtained by the generic measures. The most affected are younger persons with severe urine loss. Older persons may have other conditions impinging on QoL and may have adapted behaviourally and psychologically to urine loss.
Asthma, Public Health, and Policy

Asthma is one of America’s most perplexing public health problems. It is a ubiquitous and costly disease of society, as well as individuals. This chapter examines asthma in the larger context of public health by discussing different but related aspects of disease management and control. We will consider the way the characteristics of the society affect the extent and severity of the disease, and how asthma affects important public health indicators of well-being. We will review examples of interventions, some that have focused on clinical settings and some that have ventured into the community to relieve the burden of asthma more broadly. We will suggest how these efforts can be directed to generate a wider change. We will discuss ways to modify the impact of the condition through policy. Finally, we will consider the problems in our current approaches to asthma control and suggest alternative directions.
Ventilator Surveillance — Routine Application and Quality Control

A ventilator surveillance system has been designed to allow better monitoring of the care of ventilator patients outside intensive care areas. The main reasons for administration of artificial ventilation outside intensive care units have been the fear of superinfection in lymphoma patients, the prolonged artificial ventilation needed for some in neurosurgical patients, and the problem acute overload of intensive care areas.
Peroxiredoxins in Cancer and Response to Radiation Therapies

Peroxiredoxins have a long-established cellular function as regulators of redox metabolism by catalyzing the reduction of peroxides (e.g., H2O2, lipid peroxides) with high catalytic efficiency. This activity is also critical to the initiation and relay of both phosphorylation and redox signaling in a broad range of pathophysiological contexts. Under normal physiological conditions, peroxiredoxins protect normal cells from oxidative damage that could promote oncogenesis (e.g., environmental stressors). In cancer, higher expression level of peroxiredoxins has been associated with both tumor growth and resistance to radiation therapies. However, this relationship between the expression of peroxiredoxins and the response to radiation is not evident from an analysis of data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) or NCI60 panel of cancer cell lines. The focus of this review is to summarize the current experimental knowledge implicating this class of proteins in cancer, and to provide a perspective on the value of targeting peroxiredoxins in the management of cancer. Potential biases in the analysis of the TCGA data with respect to radiation resistance are also highlighted.
Surface treatments of dielectric laser accelerators for increased laser-induced damage threshold

This paper describes two surface treatments for silicon dual-pillar dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs), which increase the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) and therefore the maximum achievable acceleration gradient. Hydrogen annealing reduces the surface roughness of the silicon pillars and mesa, making the LIDT less dependent on surface perturbations incurred during fabrication, as well as causing damage to occur at predictable locations. Hydrogen annealing decreases the range of the measured LIDT from $ 5.3 - 10\;{\rm mJ/cm^2} $5.3−10mJ/cm2 to $ 9.5 - 10.2\;{\rm mJ/cm^2} $9.5−10.2mJ/cm2 with 1960 nm 300 fs pulses. Additionally, 90 nm of low-stress silicon nitride film coating on the annealed DLA improves the damage fluence by 27%. Smoother interfaces, possibly combined with charge transfer from the pillars to the nitride coating, decrease the range of the LIDT and increase the damage fluence. The surface-treated DLAs accelerate 97 keV electrons with an acceleration gradient of $ 178 \pm 1.8\;{\rm MeV/m} $178±1.8MeV/m, an increase of 11% over the previous maximal gradient achieved with dual-pillar DLAs.
Simultaneous Alcohol and Marijuana Use: A Brief Measure of Motives

Objective:Increasing numbers of substance users report simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use such that their effects overlap. More research is needed to understand what motivates this behavi...
Structuring the Public Defender

The public defender may be critical to protecting individual rights in the U.S. criminal process, but state governments take remarkably different approaches to distributing the services. Some organize indigent defense as a function of the executive branch of state governance. Others administer the services through the judicial branch. The remaining state governments do not place it within any branch of state government, they delegate its management to local counties. This administrative choice has important implications for the public defender’s efficiency and effectiveness. It influences how the public defender will be funded and also the extent to which the public defender, as an institution, will respond to the particular interests of local communities. So, which branch of government should oversee the public defender? Should the public defender exist under the same branch of government that oversees the prosecutor and the police – two entities that the public defender seeks to hold accountable in the criminal process? Should the provision of services be housed under the judicial branch which is ordinarily tasked with being a neutral arbiter in criminal proceedings? Perhaps a public defender who is independent of statewide governance is ideal even if that might render it a lesser player among the many government agencies battling at the state level for limited financial resources. This article answers this question about state assignment by engaging in an original examination of each state’s architectural choices for the public defender. Its primary contribution is to enrich our current understanding of how each state manages the public defender function and how that decision influences the institution’s funding and ability to adhere to ethical and professional mandates. It goes further by concluding that the public defender should be an important executive function in this modern era of mass criminalization and articulating modifications that would improve such a state design by insulating it from pressure by other system actors.
The Antitrust Revolution: Charting the Course of Antitrust Enforcement:

The seven volumes of The Antitrust Revolution published between 1989 and 2019 include dozens of excellent articles that describe topical antitrust cases and the circumstances that motivated them. T...
Beef Cattle Markets and COVID-19

Abstract Cattle producers and markets faced massive disruptions due to COVID-19 in both supply and demand for cattle and beef Restaurant and foodservice shutdowns affected beef demand Closures and slowdowns of beef processors caused a logjam of live cattle in the supply chain The resulting impacts on cattle producers at all levels were lower prices and abnormal cattle flows, but the magnitudes of those impacts were not homogenous across size and type of cattle In this article, we detail how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected cattle markets and cattle producers across the different sectors We also discuss policy responses and considerations
Modeling RF Noise in Urban Environments with Spatially Distributed Point Sources

In previous work, we have observed significant variability in radio-frequency (RF) noise within neighborhoods of Boston, MA, USA [1]. Furthermore, the sources of this man-made RF noise appear to be point-like in nature [2]. However, there are no descriptions in the literature describing the relationship between the spatial pattern of sources within a neighborhood and the distribution of measured noise powers in the same area. Therefore, we developed a simple model with completely spatially random (CSR) point sources and compared the modeled results with our measurements from Boston. Our results show that, at the frequency studied, a simple CSR model effectively captures the heavy-tailed behavior present in our measurements. A source density of 280 sources per km2, a mean source power of 1 μW and a standard deviation of 7 dB are a reasonable match to the observed distribution in Boston, MA, USA.
A 10MHz 40V V IN Slope-Reconfigurable Gaussian Gate Driven GaN DC-DC Converter with 49.1dB Conducted EMI Noise Reduction at 100MHz

This paper demonstrates a 10MHz 4V-to-40V V IN , GaN-based buck converter with reconfigurable electromagnetic interferences (EMI) reduction techniques. A Gaussian switching scheme is first time realized on chip at the switching node to effectively reduce EMI while maintaining high power efficiency. Combined with frequency dithering scheme, the proposed method reduces EMI noise by 36.9dB and 49.1dB at 10MHz and 100MHz respectively. From 250MHz to 400MHz and from 400MHz to 500MHz, the measured peak EMI noise is reduced by 22dB and 16dB, respectively. The maximum power efficiency is 85.2%, comparable to that of the conventional gate driving schemes.
Drug Resistant Melanoma May Be Vulnerable to Inhibitors of Serine Synthesis.

NRAS-driven melanomas frequently develop resistance to MAPK/extracellular signal–regulated kinase kinase inhibitors (MEKis), which limits their therapeutic utility. Nguyen et al. (2020) show that MEKi-resistant cells upregulate phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PHGDH), the rate-limiting enzyme in serine synthesis. Suppression of PHGDH rendered cells sensitive to MEKis, suggesting that PHGDH may be a therapeutic target for melanoma.
Comparison Is Not a Zero-Sum Game: Exploring Advanced Measures of Healthcare Ethics Consultation.

Studies across the healthcare spectrum consistently show that sharing and comparing data across institutions improves the quality of patient care. Whether comparing data about healthcare ethics con...
The Impact of Small Regional Economic Development Commissions: Is There Any Bang After Just a Few Bucks?:

Despite substantial funding going to regional economic development programs, little is known about the benefits of some of the smaller, place-based programs. The authors extend the literature on re...
Investigating the reaction and substrate preference of indole-3-acetaldehyde dehydrogenase from the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae PtoDC3000

Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) catalyze the conversion of various aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes into corresponding carboxylic acids. Traditionally considered as housekeeping enzymes, new biochemical roles are being identified for members of ALDH family. Recent work showed that AldA from the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae strain PtoDC3000 (PtoDC3000) functions as an indole-3-acetaldehyde dehydrogenase for the synthesis of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). IAA produced by AldA allows the pathogen to suppress salicylic acid-mediated defenses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Here we present a biochemical and structural analysis of the AldA indole-3-acetaldehyde dehydrogenase from PtoDC3000. Site-directed mutants targeting the catalytic residues Cys302 and Glu267 resulted in a loss of enzymatic activity. The X-ray crystal structure of the catalytically inactive AldA C302A mutant in complex with IAA and NAD+ showed the cofactor adopting a conformation that differs from the previously reported structure of AldA. These structures suggest that NAD+ undergoes a conformational change during the AldA reaction mechanism similar to that reported for human ALDH. Site-directed mutagenesis of the IAA binding site indicates that changes in the active site surface reduces AldA activity; however, substitution of Phe169 with a tryptophan altered the substrate selectivity of the mutant to prefer octanal. The present study highlights the inherent biochemical versatility of members of the ALDH enzyme superfamily in P. syringae.
Walking the talk on multi-level interventions: The power of parsimony

There is strong consensus regarding the need for multi-level interventions (MLIs) to address today's complex health problems. Several longstanding social ecological frameworks are commonly referred to in guiding MLI development. The specificity and comprehensiveness of these frameworks unwittingly suggest that the totality of included influences are important in all health contexts. Not surprisingly, when viewed as requiring intervention at all levels of influence, MLIs are often considered to be infeasible due to sizeable cost and logistical barriers. Thus, efforts to develop and evaluate MLIs have been extremely limited, and comparatively few examples are found in the health literature. We argue that operational frameworks to identify which levels matter in which contexts - henceforth, referred to as parsimony - could accelerate the field towards broader use of MLIs. We suggest a hypothetical operational framework informed by complexity theory and pragmatic approaches that could enable us to conceptualize, design and evaluate MLIs to consider where reflexive and recursive process mechanisms that cross levels should be targeted by MLI. The approach also emphasizes sustainability of MLIs. Without developing parsimony-based operational frameworks to move us forward, we fear that little will change, and we will simply continue to talk, without proceeding to the walk.
Stability analysis of unsaturated slopes under elevated temperatures

Abstract Several natural and man-made phenomena (e.g., droughts, wildfires, shallow geothermal technologies) can subject unsaturated slopes to elevated temperatures. However, the impact of temperature on the stability of unsaturated slopes is not well understood. This study aims to examine the stability of unsaturated intact slopes under elevated temperatures. An analytical framework is developed to calculate the factor of safety (FOS) of unsaturated slopes under steady fluid flow conditions at various temperatures. The theoretical basis of the framework is built upon the concept that, within the temperatures range investigated, the influence of temperature on the soil's shear strength is primarily attributed to thermal induced changes in apparent cohesion stemming from matric suction. Temperature dependency of apparent cohesion is quantified by employing temperature-dependent soil-water retention curve (SWRC) and effective stress models, which are then integrated into an infinite slope stability analysis of unsaturated soils under steady flow. A saturation-dependent thermal conductivity is used to obtain the temperature profile versus depth. The formulations are used to determine FOS for intact slopes with different hypothetical soils including sand, silt, and clay at surface temperatures of 25, 40, and 55 °C under different steady flow rates. Results show that the effective stress, shear strength, and FOS increase by increasing temperature from 25 °C to 55 °C. Results reveal that the effect of temperature on the stability of clayey and silty slopes can be considerable. The proposed models are validated against two sets of laboratory-measured data from the literature. The presented model provides a simple and effective method for site-specific and regional-scale stability analyses of unsaturated slopes under different thermal and seepage conditions.
Personal Protective Equipment Against Anti‐Blackness: Communicability and Contagion in the Academy

A lethal infectious disease is among us. Alarmingly, the disease burden’s distribution is strikingly unequal. White subjects have a far greater viral load, particularly because of noncompliance with public health guidelines. Yet the virus has a much more harmful impact on Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) populations, which are vulnerable due to structural inequities. The disease is commonly transmitted through talk: The more forcefully an infected individual speaks, the greater the viral shedding of virus‐containing droplets or aerosolized particles;vitriolic political rallies and violent, seditious activities are especially dangerous. However, these widely publicized flare‐ups often overshadow the everyday chronic form of infection, which is even more insidious because it is endemic to the white population and therefore less recognized. therefore less recognized.
'Hey, We Were Here First!': Union Arbitration and the Federal Arbitration Act

The U.S. Supreme Court in its 2018 decision in Epic Systems held, contrary to the position of the National Labor Relations Board (“Board” or “NLRB”), that under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) employer-employee agreements requiring employees to waive their right to participate in class action lawsuits were enforceable and that they did not interfere with the right of employees, under Section7 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), to “engage in concerted activity.” In Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the majority in that 5-4 decision, he stated repeatedly that “§7 focuses on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively.” Justice Gorsuch further stated, and pointed out that the dissent in the decision did the same, that “the legislative policy embodied in the LMRA is aimed at ‘safeguard[ing], first and foremost, workers' rights to join unions and to engage in collective bargaining.’” The references to both the majority and dissenting opinions demonstrate that all Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 agreed that the “foremost” policy of the LMRA was protecting employees’ rights to be represented by a union and have that union bargain collectively with their employer on their terms and conditions of employment. One aspect of that should include union-controlled arbitration of claimed violations of collective bargaining agreements, as an estimated 99% of major union-employer agreements include a grievance procedure that terminates in binding arbitration by a person or panel. And more than 90% of collective-bargaining agreements have a provision protecting employees from termination by requiring employers have “just cause” or something equivalent to fire an employee, meaning that in most union agreements an employee’s termination can be challenged as a contract violation subject to arbitration. The term “union-controlled” for such arbitration was not chosen lightly, but rather was based on the fact that most grievances are over some action of the employer that the union is trying to reverse or otherwise alter, an action that will remain unchanged unless the union decides to bring the grievance to arbitration.
Metal Ion Concentrations in Young, Active Patients Following Total Hip Arthroplasty with the Use of Modern Bearing Couples.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to compare whole blood metal ion levels in young, active patients undergoing primary total hip arthroplasty with the use of a cobalt-alloy (ten patients), ceramic (15 patients), or oxinium (11 patients) femoral head and highly crosslinked polyethylene acetabular liner. At 2 years postoperatively, mean cobalt concentrations were 3.0 times higher in the cobalt-alloy cohort versus the ceramic cohort, and 2.3 times higher versus the oxinium cohort (P = 0.3–0.5). Titanium levels were consistently elevated at all postoperative time points versus preoperatively in all cohorts. Young, active patients following THA demonstrate elevated cobalt and titanium concentrations. Use of a ceramic or oxinium femoral head decreased the degree of cobalt elevation versus a cobalt-alloy femoral head, but did not reach statistical significance.
Chapter 1 Ion Channels of Paramecium, Yeast, and Escherichia coli

Publisher Summary The state of the art in molecular biology is defined by work done on yeast and E. coli. Two experimental systems have been used to reveal entire enzymatic cascades in various physiological and cell biological processes through genetic and biochemical analyses. These capabilities should be of great advantages in studying the biophysics and biochemistry of channels native to, or grafted into, these microbes. They should also be useful in the analyses of the sequences or cascades of events including synthesis, assembly, deployment, turnover, mediation, and modulation of ion channels. The extensive physiological and genetic work on Purumecium ion channels cannot presently be fully and easily exploited for molecular information, because some of the current recombinant DNA techniques have not been successfully applied to ciliated protozoa.
Single Magnet Test Results of the First EBT-P Development Magnet

The first development coil (D1) for the ELMO Bumpy Torus Proof-of-Principle (EBT-P) machine was successfully tested1 in a large “bucket” dewar — the “open dewar test”. Since then, it has been welded closed and installed in an individual dewar by a McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics magnet development team. During the open dewar test, the bath contained 500 to 600 L of liquid helium surrounding the coil. In contrast, there is only a volume of about 15 L left for helium inside the individual dewar. This, plus the heat load introduced by the support structure, changed the cryogenic environment of the coil.
Exploiting result equivalence in caching dynamic web content

Caching is currently the primary mechanism for reducing the latency as well as bandwidth requirements for delivering Web content. Numerous techniques and tools have been proposed, evaluated and successfully used for caching static content. Recent studies show that requests for dynamic web content also contain substantial locality for identical requests. In this paper, we classify locality in dynamic web content into three kinds: identical requests, equivalent requests, and partially equivalent requests. Equivalent requests are not identical to previous requests but result in generation of identical dynamic content. The documents generated for partially equivalent requests are not identical but can be used as temporary place holders for each other while the real document is being generated. We present a new protocol, which we refer to as Dynamic Content Caching Protocol (DCCP), to allow individual content generating applications to exploit query semantics and specify how their results should be cached and/or delivered. We illustrate the usefulness of DCCP for several applications and evaluate its effectiveness using traces from the Alexandria Digital Library and NASA Kennedy Center as case studies.
Micro and macroeconomics of tax reform

Abstract Indonesia enacted reforms in taxation in 1983. The new laws replace outdated, complicated and unproductive taxes adopted several decades earlier. A complete overhaul of the tax system was required. Use of higher tax rates or other forms of tinkering with the old system were not options under the circumstances. Reform studies began in early 1981. They were strongly focused on base broadening and drastic simplification. While the original impetus for the reform was not fiscal crisis, the new system will be in place in time to supplant much of a projected decline in oil revenues. Other objectives of the reform were more effective income redistribution, simplification of taxation, a new tax information system and streamlining of tax administration. The Indonesian reform made eclectic use of the lessons from similar fiscal exercises in Asia, Africa and Latin America and of recent innovations in tax analysis elsewhere, but was tailored to national objectives and constraints. Prospects for fruitful implementation of the reform are as yet unknowable: one factor augering for some success is that the tax reform was introduced as one of a series of six major belt-tightening policy measures which gained a measure of public acceptance. None were imposed or required for external assistance. It is unclear which, if any, of the lessons derived from this tax reform are transferable elsewhere. However, among the lessons of possible relevance elsewhere is the importance of identifying at the outset those fiscal problems lying at the intersection of the sets of ‘complex’, ‘difficult’ and ‘politically sensitive’ issues. Of the dozens of issues faced in the process of reform in Indonesia, three such issues in this intersection accounted for more than half the intellectual and other resources expended on the reform.
Cryosurvival of human spermatozoa frozen in eight different buffer systems

The present study was conducted to ascertain optimal cryoconditions for human spermatozoa by comparing the relative cryoprotective efficiency of eight buffer systems and assessing various cryovials and thaw rates under two freeze rates. Spermatozoa that were cryopreserved in one of four zwitterion buffers (TES-Tris-citrate-egg yolk-glycerol; TES-Tris-citrate-I) maintained higher progressive motility at 0, 1, 2, and 4 hours post-thaw as compared to cells frozen in glycerol only, citrate-egg yolk-glycerol and TES-Tris-citrate-egg yolk without glycerol (TES-Tris-citrate-III; P less than 0.01). Freezing in TES-Tris-citrate-I also resulted in spermatozoa that penetrated the furthest distance through cervical mucus and possessed the highest percent live spermatozoa when compared to other cryoprotective media. Spermatozoa were analyzed for their ability to penetrate zona-free hamster ova and no difference was found between buffers when the assay was corrected for progressive motility. After removal of seminal plasma/buffers and incubation for 2 hours in BWW, TES-Tris-citrate-II and TES-Tris-citrate-milk showed the greatest sperm longevity (P less than 0.05). Pooled semen was extended in TES-Tris-citrate-I and frozen in straws or ampoules in static N2 vapor or in pellets on dry ice. Thaw bath temperatures ranged from 0 to 37 C. Post-thaw progressive motility and cervical mucus penetration were similar in all treatment groups. In conclusion, the present results indicate the use of TES-Tris-citrate-I for cryopreservation of human spermatozoa. With this optimal cryoprotective buffer, the containers and thaw rates used have little effect on human sperm cryosurvival.
A monolithic 625 Mb/s data recovery circuit in 1.2 /spl mu/m CMOS

This paper presents a technique and circuitry for recovering high speed data using a novel matched delay sampler. By simultaneously propagating the data and a slow clock through two different delay taps, the sampler achieves a very fine sampling resolution which is mainly limited by the delay difference between data and clock. Thus it is capable of oversampling data signals and greatly enhances the possibility of very high rate data recovery. This circuitry has been designed in MOSIS 1.2 /spl mu/m CMOS technology with an area of 10.8 mm/sup 2/. Simulation shows it is capable of taking 625 Mb/s (SONET-OC12) input data and makes a 1:4 demultiplexing of the data into four 156.25 Mb/s output streams. In the processing of data recovery, the slow clock phase tracks with the input data based on values extracted from the digital phase control circuit. >
Rethinking the Validity of Interviews for Employment Decision Making: Implications of Recent Developments in Meta-Analysis

(Book Chapter) Oh, I.-S., Postlethwaite, B. E., & Schmidt, F. L. (2013). Rethinking the validity of interviews for employment decision making: Implications of recent developments in meta-analysis (Chapter 12, pp. 297-329). In D. J. Svyantek & K. Mahoney (Eds.), Received wisdom, kernels of truth, and boundary conditions in organizational studies. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Applying TRIZ and bass model to forecast fitness tracking devices technology

65% of the world's population lives in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than those who are underweight. Healthcare organizations, private corporations and individuals are investing in proactive health and weight management. Advances in sensor technologies have enabled development of affordable wearable technology devices, the most rapid expansion being fitness trackers which entered the market in 2012. This paper describes the application of a combination of TRIZ and Bass modeling to forecast the technology growth projections for fitness trackers. For the TRIZ modeling, the fitness tracking system was divided into three subsystems and each was analyzed per the technology trends from current literature. The subsystems' combined assessment was then visualized via a radar plot. The analysis showed the technology to be in an emergent state with primary growth in the hardware and software subsystem areas. For the Bass model adoption rate projection, the market size was estimated to be 69% of the US population who are active health trackers. The innovator and imitator parameters were calculated using information from analogous products such as cellular phone, home PC and ultrasound imaging. The Bass model showed the market peaking at eight and saturating in fifteen years.
The growth of China and India: implications and policy reform options for Malaysia

This study explores the trade-related impacts of rapid growth of China and India on the Malaysian economy and evaluates policy options to better position Malaysia to take advantage of these changes. Higher growth in China and India is likely to raise Malaysia’s national income and to expand Malaysia’s natural resource and agricultural exports, while putting downward pressure on exports from some manufacturing and service sectors. Increases in the quality and variety of exports from China and India are likely to increase substantially the overall gains to Malaysia. The expansion of the natural resource sectors and the contraction of manufacturing and services reflect a Dutch-disease effect that will raise the importance of policies to facilitate adaptation to the changing world economy and improve competitiveness. Most-favoured-nation (MFN) liberalisation would increase welfare, and, by increasing competitiveness, raise output and exports of key industries. Preferential liberalisation with India and completely free trade with China would provide greater market access gains than MFN reform, but neither would be as effective in increasing income as MFN liberalisation, and free trade agreements would lead to greater competitive pressure on many of Malaysia’s industries than MFN liberalisation. Increased investments in education and infrastructure could boost manufacturing and services sectors in Malaysia, while improving trade logistics would benefit sectors with high transport costs, including the agricultural and resource-based industries.