cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Using data and research to address student misconceptions

Abstract This study presents the results of two pedagogical interventions – an assignment using economic data and an assignment requiring a research project – that attempt to dispel economic misconceptions students carry through a typical principles of economics course. Participants completed a wide-ranging questionnaire at the beginning of an academic semester and again at the conclusion of an academic semester. Control and treatment groups were randomly spread across four academic semesters. The results suggest that students who completed the Research project more accurately estimated the percentage of the labor force who earned the minimum wage. While student responses were more accurate, they were, still far from the correct response, on average. The Research project also encouraged students to respond by saying, “I don’t know” to the surveyed questions. The data assignment did little to improve student responses.
Cryptococcal Antigen Testing in an Integrated Medical System: Eastern Wisconsin

Cryptococcosis is a serious environmentally acquired endemic fungal infection commonly associated with immunocompromised hosts. Little is known regarding frequency or distribution in Wisconsin. We explored the geodemographic and clinical features of patients tested with cryptococcal antigen tests (CrAg) - previously shown to be >90% sensitive and >90% specific - within a large health care system located in eastern Wisconsin. To examine this, we retrospectively analyzed 1465 CrAg tests on 1211 unique patients (female: 50.2%; white race: 73.9%; mean age: 53.7 ± 16.5 years). At least one CrAg result was positive in 23 of 1211 patients (1.9%). From these, 21 of 23 were immunocompromised. Positive patients were disproportionately male (82.6%) and nonwhite (3.8% of those tested vs 1.2% of whites tested); P<0.01 for both. These associations remained in multivariable models. Positive patients were not significantly older (59.1 vs 53.6 years; P=0.07). Overall, 17 separate zip codes had at least one positive case. Positive patients were more prevalent in the zip codes that included the city of Milwaukee (11 of 377 [2.9% of those tested] vs 12 of 834 [1.4% of all those tested in the remaining area of the state]), but this difference was not statistically significant. No other case clustering or close proximity to waterways was observed (41% were <162 m from green space, similar to historical controls). Overall, male sex, nonwhite race/ethnicity, and immunocompromised status, not zip code, were statistically associated with positive CrAg.
Pericyclic reactions of prenylated naphthoquinones: biomimetic syntheses of mollugin and microphyllaquinone.

A total synthesis of the bioactive naphthohydroquinone mollugin and the related naphthoquinone dimer microphyllaquinone is described. Both syntheses exploit the propensity of prenylated quinones to undergo tautomerization/oxa 6π-electrocyclizations.
Implementation of multilayer perceptron network with highly uniform passive memristive crossbar circuits.

The progress in the field of neural computation hinges on the use of hardware more efficient than the conventional microprocessors. Recent works have shown that mixed-signal integrated memristive circuits, especially their passive (0T1R) variety, may increase the neuromorphic network performance dramatically, leaving far behind their digital counterparts. The major obstacle, however, is immature memristor technology so that only limited functionality has been reported. Here we demonstrate operation of one-hidden layer perceptron classifier entirely in the mixed-signal integrated hardware, comprised of two passive 20 × 20 metal-oxide memristive crossbar arrays, board-integrated with discrete conventional components. The demonstrated network, whose hardware complexity is almost 10× higher as compared to previously reported functional classifier circuits based on passive memristive crossbars, achieves classification fidelity within 3% of that obtained in simulations, when using ex-situ training. The successful demonstration was facilitated by improvements in fabrication technology of memristors, specifically by lowering variations in their I–V characteristics. Memristive devices used in neuromorphic computing typically need to be accessed using transistors, adding circuit complexity and size. In this work, the authors demonstrate a neural network using a transistor-free passive memristor crossbar array, offering potential circuit miniaturisation and energy savings.
Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture: Textscapes, Filmscapes, Soundscapes

Accounts of how Germany has changed since unification often portray the Berlin Republic as a new Germany that has left the Nazi past and Cold War division behind and entered the new millennium as a peaceful, worldly, and cautiously proud nation. Closer inspection, however, reveals tensions between such views and the realities of a country that continues to struggle with racism, provincialism, and fear of the perceived Other. Mainstream media foster such fears by describing violence in ghetto schools, failed integration, and the loss of society's core values. The city emerges as a key site not only of ethnic and political tension but of social change. Maria Stehle illuminates these tensions and transformations by following the metaphor of the ghetto in literary works from the 1990s by Feridun Zaimoglu, in German ghettocentric films from the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century, and in hip-hop and rap music of the same periods. In their representations of ghettos, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and performers redefine and challenge provincialism and nationalism and employ transcultural frameworks for their diverging political agendas. By contextualizing these discussions within social and political developments, this study illuminates the complexities that define Germany today for scholars and students across the disciplines of German, European, cultural, urban, and media studies. Maria Stehle is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Cybercasing the joint: on the privacy implications of geo-tagging

This article aims to raise awareness of a rapidly emerging privacy threat that we term cybercasing: using geo-tagged information available online to mount real-world attacks. While users typically realize that sharing locations has some implications for their privacy, we provide evidence that many (i) are unaware of the full scope of the threat they face when doing so, and (ii) often do not even realize when they publish such information. The threat is elevated by recent developments that make systematic search for specific geo-located data and inference from multiple sources easier than ever before. In this paper, we summarize the state of geo-tagging; estimate the amount of geo-information available on several major sites, including YouTube, Twitter, and Craigslist; and examine its programmatic accessibility through public APIs. We then present a set of scenarios demonstrating how easy it is to correlate geotagged data with corresponding publicly-available information for compromising a victim's privacy. We were, e.g., able to find private addresses of celebrities as well as the origins of otherwise anonymized Craigslist postings. We argue that the security and privacy community needs to shape the further development of geo-location technology for better protecting users from such consequences.
Intimacy and the Psychotherapy of Adolescents

The concept of “intimacy” is a little-used one in the analytic literature. The Standard Edition (Freud, 1974) does not contain a single reference to the subject. There are only two citations to the subject in Grinstein’s (1960, 1966, 1975) “Index of Psychoanalytic Writings,” this in spite of the fact that clinicians regularly describe their patients as having problems with intimacy. The major references to the subject are to be found in Erikson (1968), who defines it as a “normative crisis” in the process of the development of identity, and in Sullivan (1953), who defines it in motivational terms as the “need for interpersonal intimacy.” It should be noted that these two major theoreticians place the special significance of this concept during that stage of life we call adolescence.
Chapter 4 – Data Collection: Intake and Mental Status

Publisher Summary This book describes various actual play therapy activities required by therapists to successfully conduct the play therapy. Logistically, this workbook should be completed in three stages. First of them is to gather the relevant information and enter into Workbook Parts I, II, and possibly III. The chapter provides the reader with instructions for completing Workbook Parts I and II. The chapter focuses on the data collection process involved in the play therapy. It involves appendices and charts that can be directly used for clinical purposes. And various case examples are quoted here for a better insight of the topic. Finally, the chapter concludes that not all of the information gathered in the intake process will be relevant to all cases. The play therapist is free to pick and choose the information to be gathered. The chapter attempts to guide this selection by specifically highlighting those areas that involve potential danger to the client and those that are critical to a complete evaluation of any child. Moreover, even though these data are quite comprehensive, it is often useful to supplement this information with data from more structured assessments.
Integrated Self-Adaptive and Power-Scalable Wideband Interference Cancellation for Full-Duplex MIMO Wireless

A wideband analog/RF interference cancellation technique that is able to autonomously adapt itself to time-varying interference channels and to scale its dc power based on the number of multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) array elements is presented. Least-mean square (LMS) adaptive circuitry is co-designed with and partially embedded in a wideband RF/analog interference canceller and a gain-boosted mixer-first receiver (RX), significantly reducing the system complexity and dc power while achieving rapid (microsecond-scale) adaptation. In addition, the proposed canceller is able to digitally adjust its transconductance and coupling strength at the RX side, essentially trading its dc power with the element-level RX noise figure (NF). At the array level, the NF can be lowered by averaging uncorrelated noise across elements. A prototype 0.5-to-2.5-GHz full-duplex (FD) MIMO RX is designed and fabricated using a 65-nm CMOS process. With the adaptive circuitry fully integrated and consuming 14 mW, the cancellers adapt themselves to an unknown channel in 1 $\mu \text{s}$ , providing >20-dB RF/analog interference cancellation across 20-MHz bandwidth (BW) with antenna voltage-standing-wave ratio (VSWR) up to 2:1. Simultaneous self- and cross-interference cancellation in our FD MIMO RX is also demonstrated using the integrated adaptation circuitry, achieving 24-dB overall interference cancellation across 20-MHz BW. The FD MIMO RX with self- and cross-interference cancellation is power-scalable—the NF-power scalability of the FD RX enables a nearly constant canceller dc power per element, despite a quadratic increase of cancellers.
Importance Weighted Policy Learning and Adaption.

The ability to exploit prior experience to solve novel problems rapidly is a hallmark of biological learning systems and of great practical importance for artificial ones. In the meta reinforcement learning literature much recent work has focused on the problem of optimizing the learning process itself. In this paper we study a complementary approach which is conceptually simple, general, modular and built on top of recent improvements in off-policy learning. The framework is inspired by ideas from the probabilistic inference literature and combines robust off-policy learning with a behavior prior, or default behavior that constrains the space of solutions and serves as a bias for exploration; as well as a representation for the value function, both of which are easily learned from a number of training tasks in a multi-task scenario. Our approach achieves competitive adaptation performance on hold-out tasks compared to meta reinforcement learning baselines and can scale to complex sparse-reward scenarios.
Enhanced SV40 Immortalization of Primary Human Epidermal Cells Following Phorbol Ester Dependent EBV Transformation

The susceptibility of freshly isolated human epithelial cells to simian virus 40 (SV40) transformation is very low (1–5). It has been difficult to quantitate the sensitivity of these cells to SV40 transformation, since the end point is indefinite life span in vitro. None the less, the phenomenon is considered to be a relatively rare event, which may occur in 1 to 10% of cultures inoculated, and with substantially lower frequency within any single culture population.
Abstract SP059: Toxicities of breast cancer treatment

Advances in screening and treatment of breast cancer have led to reductions in breast cancer recurrence and mortality. However, systemic therapies can cause long-term and late effects that negatively impact the quality of life of patients with breast cancer. It is important for patients to be aware of the potential risks, and for providers to be knowledgeable about symptom management options. For example, taxane chemotherapies reduce the risk of disease recurrence but can cause long-lasting neuropathy that interferes with activities of daily living. Unfortunately, few effective interventions for preventing or treating neuropathy have thus far been identified. Similarly, endocrine therapies significantly reduce the risk of recurrence of hormone receptor positive breast cancer. However, tamoxifen and the aromatase inhibitors can cause menopausal symptoms and arthralgias that affect survivors of breast cancer of all ages. Interventions that can effectively treat these symptoms in some, but not all, patients have been identified. In this educational session, prevention and treatment approaches for key long-term and late effects in patients with breast cancer will be discussed. Citation Format: N Henry. Toxicities of breast cancer treatment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Virtual Symposium; 2020 Dec 8-11; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(4 Suppl):Abstract nr SP059.
Association of skin infections with sharing of injection drug preparation equipment among people who inject drugs

Abstract Background Sharing needles and injection drug preparation equipment (IDPE) among people who inject drugs (PWID) are well-established risk factors for viral transmission. Shared needles and IDPE may serve as bacterial niduses for skin and soft tissue infections (SSTI). Given the rising rates of SSTI in PWID, we investigated the association of needle and IDPE sharing on incidence of SSTI in a cohort of PWID. Methods Inpatient PWID (N = 252) were recruited to a randomized controlled trial of an intervention aimed at reducing infections. The primary outcome was self-reported incidence of SSTI one-year post-hospitalization. In this secondary analysis, we assessed two variables: 1) sharing of IDPE alone, 2) sharing needles with or without IDPE, and compared these groups separately to persons who reported no sharing of needles or IDPE via a mixed-effects negative binomial regression model to estimate the effect of baseline sharing behavior on SSTI during follow-up via incidence rate ratios (IRR). Results Participant characteristics: 38 years [mean], 58% male, 60% White, 90% primarily injected opioids, 1.58 (± 2.35) mean SSTI in the year prior to baseline. In terms of sharing behavior, 29% didn't share needles or IDPE, 13% shared IDPE only, and 58% shared needles with or without IDPE three months prior to baseline. After adjusting for co-variables, PWID who shared IDPE alone had a 2.2 fold higher IRR of SSTI (95%CI 1.27; 3.85, p = 0.005) and PWID who shared needles with or without IDPE had a 3.31 fold higher IRR of SSTI (95%CI 2.04; 5.37, p Conclusions In this cohort of hospitalized PWID, we found a significant association between baseline sharing of IDPE alone and of sharing of needles with or without IDPE with one-year incidence of SSTI.
Technical note: Impact of face covering on aerosol transport patterns during coughing and sneezing

Abstract COVID-19 is spread via different routes, including virus-laden airborne particles generated by human respiratory activities. In addition to large droplets, coughing and sneezing produce a lot of small aerosol particles. While face coverings are believed to reduce the aerosol transmission, information about their outward effectiveness is limited. Here, we determined the aerosol concentration patterns around a coughing and sneezing manikin and established spatial zones representing specific elevations of the aerosol concentration relative to the background. Real-time measurements of sub-micrometer aerosol particles were performed in the vicinity of the manikin. The tests were carried out without any face covering and with three different types of face covers: a safety faceshield, low-efficiency facemask and high-efficiency surgical mask. With no face covering, the simulated coughing and sneezing created a powerful forward-propagating fine aerosol flow. At 6 ft forward from the manikin head, the aerosol concentration was still 20-fold above the background. Adding a face covering reconfigured the forward-directed aerosol transmission pattern. The tested face coverings were found capable of mitigating the risk of coronavirus transmission; their effectiveness is dependent on the protective device. The outward leakage associated with a specific face covering was shown to be a major determinant of the exposure level for a person standing or seating next to or behind the coughing or sneezing “spreader” in a bus/train/aircraft/auditorium setting. Along with reports recently published in the literature, the study findings help assess the infectious dose and ultimately health risk for persons located within a 6-ft radius around the “spreader.”
Practical Certainty

When we engage in practical deliberation, we sometimes engage in careful probabilistic reasoning. At other times, we simply make flat out assumptions about how the world is or will be. A question thus arises: when, if ever, is it rationally permissible to engage in the latter, less sophisticated kind of practical deliberation? Recently, a number of authors have argued that the answer concerns whether one knows that p. Others have argued that the answer concerns whether one is justified in believing that one knows that p. Against both of these, this paper argues that the answer concerns whether p is ‘practically certain’—that is, whether the actual epistemic probability that p differs from epistemic certainty that p only in ways that are irrelevant to the decision one currently faces.
Neoplastic Transformation, Somatic Mutation, and Differentiation

One of the most dreaded diseases of our time is cancer, the topic of this symposium. This disease originates from a single cell, or groups of cells, which become neoplastic or tumorigenic. Also, as indicated from the topics of this symposium, this neoplastic transformation often has a large input from external/environmental factors, particularly man-made. This dread disease then becomes closely related to our personal and economic lives and has a large impact on health care and the economic activities of our society.
Stability: other definitions

The purpose of this chapter is to expand the list of meanings of stability to include those less restrictive than that of local stability discussed in the last chapter. Then, by way of summary, I shall attempt to see which of the various combinations of model formats and definitions of stability seem likely to be the most informative in predicting food web structures. The problem with local stability is that if the nonlinear terms are large, there is only a very small region about equilibrium where the linear approximations are accurate. First, consider an example from Goh (1977) which shows that local stability does not imply global stability. A globally stable system is one that returns to equilibrium from any initial conditions, not just those close to the equilibrium. Goh’s example is for three competing species, each limited by the other species as well as by some external resource: $$ \dot X_1 = X_1 \left( {2.1 - 0.2X_1 - 0.7X_2 - 0.5X_3 } \right) $$ $$ {\dot X_2} = {X_2}\left( {2.1 - 0.2{X_1} - 0.9{X_2} - {X_3}} \right) $$ $$ {\dot X_3} = {X_3}\left( {1.5 - {X_1} - 0.3{X_2} - 0.2{X_3}} \right).$$ (3.1)
Multi-Wavelength Vertical Cavity Laser Arrays Grown on a Patterned Backup Substrate

The capability to fabricate two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor diode laser array is a key and most important step towards making wafer-scale low-cost lasers. The recent emergence of vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) facilitates the fabrication such large 2D arrays. In this paper, I will review recent progress on a novel large-aperture single-mode VCSEL and a 2D multiple-wavelength VCSEL array for ultrahigh bandwidth applications. We demonstrated a passive antiguide region (PAR) VCSEL which emits a stable single mode with very low threshold, a large aperture, and fixed polarization. We also demonstrated multi-wavelength VCSEL arrays with repeatable wavelength spans over 20 nm grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy. The wavelength shift is achieved by varying the GaAs growth rate across the wafer using a patterned backing wafer to induce a temperature profile. Such multiple wavelength laser arrays are promising for ultra-high bandwidth optical transmission and switching systems using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).
The Effects of the Steering Wheel to Pedal Relationship on Driver-Selected Seat Position

A small car packaging study investigated the effects of the wheel to pedal relationship on driver selected seat position. The horizontal seat positions of sixty subjects stratified by stature and sex to represent the general driving population were recorded in package configurations with three pedal to wheel distances and three pedal-wheel relationships to the interior surface of the vehicle (windshield header, pillar, glass and instrument panel surface). Subjects utilized comparable amounts of seat travel in all configurations. Pedal to wheel distance and pedal-wheel relationship to the interior surface of the vehicle affected seat position independently. When the heel point location was held constant and horizontal wheel location was moved forward in 45mm increments, the seat position distributions shifted forward 5 to 10mm. Likewise, when the heel to wheel relationship was held constant but moved forward in 45mm increments in relation to the interior surface of the vehicle, the seat position distribution shifted forward 13 to 16mm. All distributions reasonably approximated normality. Shifts of such magnitude were found to be statistically different but in reality represented less than one seat detent of travel (22mm in GM vehicles). In addition, it appeared that in packages with tight heel to wheel distance, subjects gave greater priority to comfortable leg rather than arm reach when positioning their seats.
Discovering new interactions at colliders

We summarize results of the 1996 Snowmass workshop on future prospects for discovering dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, compositeness, and anomalous couplings of quarks at colliders. We present the mass reach of the Tevatron to a color singlet or octet technirho, and to a topgluon or topcolor Z' from topcolor assisted technicolor. We explore the sensitivity of the Tevatron, LHC, NLC, and VLHC to contact interactions and excited fermions. Finally we investigate the possibility of seeing anomalous couplings of quarks at the Tevatron and LHC.
Role of GADD45a in murine models of radiation- and bleomycin-induced lung injury

We previously reported protective effects of GADD45a (growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible gene 45 alpha) in murine ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) via effects on Akt-mediated endothelial cell signaling. In the present study we investigated the role of GADD45a in separate murine models of radiation- and bleomycin-induced lung injury. Initial studies of wild-type mice subjected to single-dose thoracic radiation (10 Gy) confirmed a significant increase in lung GADD45a expression within 24 h and persistent at 6 wk. Mice deficient in GADD45a (GADD45a(-/-)) demonstrated increased susceptibility to radiation-induced lung injury (RILI, 10 Gy) evidenced by increased bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid total cell counts, protein and albumin levels, and levels of inflammatory cytokines compared with RILI-challenged wild-type animals at 2 and 4 wk. Furthermore, GADD45a(-/-) mice had decreased total and phosphorylated lung Akt levels both at baseline and 6 wk after RILI challenge relative to wild-type mice while increased RILI susceptibility was observed in both Akt(+/-) mice and mice treated with an Akt inhibitor beginning 1 wk prior to irradiation. Additionally, overexpression of a constitutively active Akt1 transgene reversed RILI-susceptibility in GADD45a(-/-) mice. In separate studies, lung fibrotic changes 2 wk after treatment with bleomycin (0.25 U/kg IT) was significantly increased in GADD45a(-/-) mice compared with wild-type mice assessed by lung collagen content and histology. These data implicate GADD45a as an important modulator of lung inflammatory responses across different injury models and highlight GADD45a-mediated signaling as a novel target in inflammatory lung injury clinically.
The Sun as a Magnetic Star

The Sun as a magnetic star is described on the basis of recent work on solar magnetism. Observations at an arbitrary angle to the rotation axis would show a 22-year polar field variation and a 25-day equatorial sector variation. The sector variation would be similar to an oblique rotator with an angle of 90° between the magnetic and rotational axes.
The role of structured observational research in health care

Structured observational research involves monitoring of healthcare domains by experts to collect data on errors, adverse events, near misses, team performance, and organisational culture. This paper describes some of the results of structured observational studies carried out in health care. It evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, and future challenges facing observational researchers by drawing lessons from the human factors and neonatal arterial switch operation (ASO) study in which two human factors specialists observed paediatric cardiac surgical procedures in 16 UK centres. Lessons learned from the ASO study are germane to other research teams embarking on studies that involve observational data collection. Future research needs robust observer training, clear measurable criteria to assess each researcher's domain knowledge, and observational competence. Measures of inter-rater reliability are needed where two or more observers participate in data collection. While it is important to understand the factors that lead to error and excellence among healthcare teams, it is also necessary to understand the characteristics of a good observer and the key types of error that can occur during structured observational studies like the human factors and ASO project.
Rejecting Outliers in Factorial Designs

In [1] C. Daniel proposed a statistic equivalent to the maximum normed residual for detecting a single bad value in an unreplicated factorial design. The following paper gives a general procedure for calculating critical values of the maximum normed residual and contains revised tables for a two-way layout with one observation per cell, which can be used as a replacement of Table 2 in [l].
8 Treatment Options for Np-C: Changing Our Approach to the Disease

Definitive disease-modifying therapy for Niemann-Pick disease, type C (NPC) would either correct the primary genetic defect or replace the deficient gene product [1]. Neither strategy is currently applicable to patients with NPC1 mutations, but replacement of the NPC2 protein by haematopoietic stem cell transplantation is theoretically possible, although proof of principle in humans is lacking. Alternative approaches involve interdicting pathways downstream to the primary mutation that lead to cellular dysfunction. These approaches include reduction of substrate burden, replacement of deficient downstream products, suppression of inflammation, inhibition of apoptosis and activation of alternate pathways. Of these approaches, only substrate reduction therapy has been studied and approved for use in humans. Miglustat is an iminosugar that competitively inhibits glucosylceramide synthase, the enzyme catalysing the rate-limiting step in the synthesis of higher order glycosphingolipids. Miglustat has been shown to delay the onset of symptoms in the NPC murine model. Both prospective and retrospective human studies have also found evidence of a beneficial effect on disease progression in NPC [2-5]. The availability of such a treatment mandates early diagnosis of patients with NPC, since those without irreversible disease will be likely to benefit most. Currently, there is no readily available test for NP-C, but in future, oxysterols or other biomarkers may facilitate screening for NPC. Guidelines have been published for the general medical management of people with NPC [6]. It is essential that physicians take a comprehensive approach to managing NPC, since patients are most likely to benefit when disease-modifying therapy is combined with meticulous general medical care and symptom management.
Identification and Characterization of a Dimerization Domain in CED-6, an Adapter Protein Involved in Engulfment of Apoptotic Cells

Phagocytosis of apoptotic cells is a key step in the completion of programmed cell death that occurs throughout life in multicellular organisms. The molecular events involved in clearance of apoptotic cells are just beginning to be elucidated. Recently, CED-6, an adapter protein involved in engulfment has been cloned in Caenorhabditis elegans and in humans. CED-6 is composed of a phosphotyrosine-binding (PTB) domain and a proline-rich C-terminal domain with no apparent catalytic domain. Since PTB domains, originally identified in Shc, mediate intracellular signaling downstream of cell surface receptors, CED-6 has also been proposed to mediate intracellular signals leading to engulfment. In this report, we demonstrate that CED-6 dimerizes through a leucine zipper domain that is immediately adjacent to the PTB domain, Several lines of evidence based on co-immunoprecipitation studies, yeast two-hybrid assays, and gel filtration studies suggest that CED-B exists as a dimer in vivo. Through mutational analyses, we show that the leucine zipper is necessary and sufficient for CED-6 dimerization and that this dimerization is conserved among C. elegans, rodent, and human CED-6 proteins. We propose that dimerization may have unique implications for ligand binding via CED-6 and its function during the phagocytosis of apoptotic cells.
Tagging it: Considering how ontologies limit the reading of identity

Tagging, part of the ‘social’ turn in new media, asks users to categorically describe media objects with which they interact, including web pages, videos, and photos. This more populist technology empowers ‘folk’ input into the shaping and framing of digital objects. It empowers the sharing of local, personal ontologies that speak to diverse ways of categorizing and describing the world. Tagging concurrently promotes, however, flattened versions of identity, stabilizing categories and frameworks, devaluing possibilities for movement beyond or among fixed identities, though some dynamic tag systems present users with the possibility to consider shifting categories over time. Yet the world of new media need not resign itself to these mixed conclusions, as another line of technologies has emerged to prioritize the performative, resist tags and categories, and empower digitally interruptive encounters that destabilize the fixing of identification.
Younger and older adolescents' thinking about commitments

Abstract One hundred and sixty-three adolescents listed factors they consider or would consider when choosing a career and a romantic partner, and defined “commitment” in an open-ended essay. Male and female ninth graders, twelfth graders, and college juniors, from public and private schools served as subjects. Gender, grade, and type of school differences were found in the types and number of different types of factors listed for the above commitments, but not in the number of factors listed. Conceptions of the nature of commitment became more complex with grade, and differed as a function of gender and of type of school. Females listed more “internal” factors than did males for romantic commitments. Males described commitment more contractually, women more affectively. Older students focused more upon long-term and internal concerns, and defined “commitment” more in terms of cognitive processing and emotional attachment than younger students. Implications for related areas of work are discussed.
Tales of Decline: Reading Social Pathology into Individual Suicide in South India

In the south Indian state of Kerala, the nation’s so-called suicide capital, suicide can often appear self-evident in meaning and motivation to casual onlookers and experts alike. Drawing on explanatory accounts, rumors, and speculative tales of suicide collected between 2004 and 2007, this article explores the ontological power of certain deaths to assert themselves as always-already known on the basis of perceived and reported demographic patterns of suicide. I demonstrate the ways suicides are commonly read, less through the distinct details of their individual case presentations than “up” to broader scales of social pathology. Shaped by the intertwined histories of public health intervention and state taxonomic knowledge in India, these “epidemic readings” of suicide enact a metonymy between individual suffering and ideas of collective decline that pushes the suicide case to fit—and thus to stand for—aggregate trends at the level of populations. Focusing on how family navigated the generic meanings and motivations ascribed to the deaths of their loved ones, I argue that the ability of kin to resist, collude with, or strategically deploy epidemic readings in their search for truth and closure hinged significantly on their classed fluency in the social, legal, and bureaucratic discourses of suicide.
Inclusive education and the No Child Left Behind Act: resisting entrenchment

This article examines inclusive education in view of the current US policy climate. The No Child Left Behind Act provides the opportunity to examine dominant social forces and the underlying theories of mechanism and positivism that run counter to a constructivist approach to inclusive education. The incompatibility of these theories is explored in terms of four factors that influence efforts to implement change: images of teaching and learning, images of organisation, approaches to policy and organisational characteristics. This framework provides a means of clarifying and working to restore the movement towards inclusive education within local schools and communities.
The Dynamics of Ventricular Contraction and Relaxation in Patients With Mitral Stenosis as Studied by the Kinetocardiogram and Ballistocardiogram

Kinetocardiograms (precordial movements) and ballistocardiograms were studied in patients with "pure" mitral stenosis. The findings were correlated with catheterization data and clinical findings. Certain characteristics of the kinetocardiograms were presented as well as hypothesis for the movements of the heart and dynamics of ventricular contraction and relaxation in patients with mitral stenosis.
Dairy calcium is related to changes in body composition during a two-year exercise intervention in young women.

Objective: Relationships between micronutrients and dairy product intake and changes in body weight and composition over two years were investigated.Design: Two year prospective non-concurrent analysis of the effect of calcium intake on changes in body composition during a two year exercise intervention.Subjects: 54 normal weight young women, 18 to 31 years of age.Measures of Outcome: Mean intakes of nutrients of interest were determined from three-day diet records completed at baseline and every six months for two years. The change in total body weight and body composition (assessed by dual x-ray absorptiometry) from baseline to two years was also determined.Results: Total calcium/kilocalories and vitamin A together predicted (negatively and positively, respectively) changes in body weight (R2 = 0.19) and body fat (R2 = 0.27). Further, there was an interaction of calcium and energy intake in predicting changes in body weight, such that, only at lower energy intakes, calcium intake (not adjusted for energ...
Transgressions of the man on the moon: climate change, Indigenous expertise, and the posthumanist ethics of place and space

Indigenous peoples have been enrolled in climate change research for decades, participating in data-gathering, as writing collaborators, and serving as the symbolic “canary in the coal mine” for public outreach and policy-making. They have indeed experienced some of the most rapid environmental changes, but rather than emphasize their vulnerabilities, we argue their expertise is narrowly understood in formulating knowledge; the research on climate change has a limited understanding of what it might mean to be inter- or trans-disciplinary because research is formulated exclusively through the assumptions of Enlightenment thought, without sufficiently engaging non-Western subjectivities. Qualitative social sciences and “Indigenous methodologies” can be used to better achieve trans-disciplinarity; in this article we re-tell a story told by Native elders from tribes across Alaska about the “man on the moon.” While literally referring to the US moon landing, elders invoke this story when addressing climate change: it teaches the ethics of the human-nature relationship, developed from a “more-than-human” (or “posthuman”) philosophy. Our data comes from participant-observation and oral history; we draw upon poststructuralist theory, and frame our analysis through the literatures of critical geography, science studies, and American Indian studies. To ensure that Indigenous peoples are not used as props in Western policy agendas, researchers must engage with non-Enlightenment intellectual traditions. More than being a source of data or a symbol of humanity’s ruin, Indigenous wisdom can productively inform sustainable policy agendas to adapt to climate change. What can be learned, for example, is a more-than-human ethics of place and space.
Revisiting Indocyanine Green: Effects of Serum and Physiological Temperature on Absorption and Fluorescence Characteristics

Indocyanine green (ICG) remains as the only near infrared dye approved by the FDA. Despite its long history of usage in clinical medicine, a systematic study of the effects of serum proteins at physiologically relevant levels and temperature on absorption and fluorescence characteristics of ICG has been missing. We incubated ICG at concentrations in the range of 0.6-25.8 μM in McCoy's 5a cell culture medium, without and with supplemental fetal bovine serum (FBS) at 5% and 10% levels. Our analyses of absorption and fluorescence spectra indicate that the peak absorbance of ICG associated with its monomeric form increases in the presence of FBS. For example, at ICG concentration of 25.8 μM, the monomer absorbance is increased by nearly 100% in the presence of 10% FBS. Similarly, there is an increase in the relative fluorescence quantum yield of ICG, by as much as nearly 3.5 times in the presence of FBS. When incubated at 37 °C, the presence of FBS in the cell culture medium helps maintain the monomeric absorption of ICG and sustain the increased fluorescence emission. We offer explanations to describe the possible photophysical mechanisms underlying the observed effects and discuss the importance of these results to in-vivo applications of ICG.
Increased fecundity, as a function of multiple mating, in an arctiid moth, Utetheisa ornatrix

Female Utetheisa ornatrixmate multiply and may receive up to thirteen spermatophores. Spermatophores provide the female not only with sperm but also with a nuptial gift of pyrrolizidine alkaloid that she transmits to the eggs, protecting them against predation. Thus, through multiple mating the female accrues nuptial gifts that add to the defence of her offspring. 2. Multiple mating in female U. ornatrix brings about increases in fecundity, but not in longevity or egg mass. These increases occur through the third mating; the fourth and fifth matings, however, have no additional effect on fecundity. 3. These results, taken with the fact that spermatophores are sizeable and are digested within the female, suggest that they bear nutritive gifts that the female uses in egg construction. Multiple mating thus allows females to accrue the resources to build additional eggs. 4. These results are discussed in relation to the potential benefits accruing to donating such gifts and to male and female mating strategies.
Feynman propagator and space-time transformation technique

Abstract We evaluate the exact propagator for the time-dependent two-dimensional charged harmonic oscillator in a time-varying magnetic field, by taking direct recourse to the corresponding Schrodinger equation. Through the usage of an appropriate space-time transformation, we show that such a propagator can be obtained from the free propagator in the new space-time coordinate system.
CT screening for early stage lung cancer

CT screening for “early” lung cancer is a topic under current investigation in an increasing number of centers worldwide. However, a number of centers have already reported the results of chest CT scanning in the assessment of candidates for surgical management of pulmonary emphysema. To our knowledge, six series have reported rates of discovery of stage I lung carcinoma at CT evaluation of these subjects (Table 1). Combining the data of these studies, CT-detected stage I and stages II through IV carcinoma of the lung showed overall prevalences of 3.0% and 0.7%, respectively. These prevalences differ significantly ( 2 16.0, p 0.01); the proportions of stage I vs stages II-IV cancers in the six series are homogeneous ( 2 4.67, p 0.46, not significant [NS], and 2 4.45, p 0.49, NS, respectively), ie, the differences among the series can be regarded as chance fluctuations. These results, obtained from populations who were fit to undergo thoracic surgery and in the age range for which lung
A technique for qualitatively synthesizing the structure of risk management vehicles

Abstract In design, inferring structure from function is a generate-and-test problem that is subject to combinatorial explosion. For certain types of economic and physical systems, it is fruitful to specify function in terms of desired behavior, and to identify sets of structurally connected components whose combined behavior under specific operating conditions matches the desired behavior. Specifically, in the financial risk management domain, behaviors of the components (stocks, bonds, options, etc.) are specified by two-dimensional piecewise linear functions called “payoff profiles,” and the goal is to identify linear combinations of these functions that produce a constrained behavior in response to uncontrollable economic events (e.g., interest rate fluctuations). Each identified combination corresponds to a configuration of investment vehicles which provide that constrained behavior. This paper presents a qualitative synthesis technique which uses this concept to construct all configurations of investment vehicles with a given desired behavior. Because the space of linear combinations of two-dimensional piecewise linear functions is subject to combinatorial explosion, the technique constrains the generation of combinations using two means. One is a goal-directed search process that relies on knowledge pertaining to the additivity of piecewise linear functions. Another is a qualitative abstraction over all piecewise linear functions with a similar shape, combined with the use of heuristic synthesis operators that rediscover information lost due to the abstraction. The technique is currently applied in a prototype expert system that supports the entire design process of risk management vehicles. The paper also discusses the possibility of using the technique in physical domains, through the configuration of analog computers.
Precipitating factors in lymphedema: myths and realities.

BACKGROUND. Lymphedema is an all too common occurrence following breast carcinoma therapy. Despite its prevalence, the predisposing factors to the development of this secondary form of lymphedema remain poorly understood. METHODS. Several studies have addressed these questions and are reviewed here. RESULTS. Treatment factors that appear to predispose to the late, subjective appearance of lymphedema include the extent of axillary surgery and exposure to high dose axillary radiotherapy, particularly when combined with surgical clearance of the axilla. Other pertinent patient factors may include the presence of hypertension and exposure to airline travel. Clinical features unrelated to the risk of lymphedema development include patient age; drug therapy; time interval to presentation, surgery, or radiotherapy to the breast; total dose of radiation; and menopausal status. The potential importance of concomitant venous abnormalities in these patients is worthy of consideration. CONCLUSIONS. Breast carcinoma-related secondary lymphedema is an important subjective and functional problem for affected patients. Additional research into the predisposing factors to this common problem is likely to foster enhanced patient education and to produce more efficacious measures to control this disease.
Managerial and Public Attitudes Toward Ethics in Marketing Research

This research updates and significantly extends Akaah and Riordon’s (J Market Res 26:112–120, 1989) evaluation of ethical perceptions of marketing research misconduct among marketing research professionals. In addition to examining changes in perceptions toward key marketing research practices over time, we assess professionals’ judgments on the ethicality, importance, and occurrence of a variety of new marketing research ethics situations in both online and offline contexts. In a second study, we assess ethical judgments of the public at large using a representative sample of US consumers—key stakeholders ignored in prior research on unethical marketing research practices. Generally speaking, disapproval of unethical research conduct has grown across the board in the last 20 years for both managers and marketing researchers. The same misconduct elicits a stronger disapproval in the online environment compared to the offline environment. Compared to marketing researchers, managers tend to think that unethical research conduct occurs more frequently. Those who conduct marketing research or use its findings (i.e., marketing researchers and managers) are less tolerant of unethical research conduct than the general public.
Between Venice and Surat: The Trade in Gold in Late Safavid Iran

The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal states each in its own way reconstituted a common legacy of combined Perso-Islamic and Turco-Mongolian religious and political elements into sociopolitical structures that exhibit remarkable similarities alongside significant differences. This, as well as the myriad ways in which they interacted, culturally, politically, as well as economically, renders these three states more than simply a series of discreet and self-contained political entities. Premodern and early modern west and south Asia is most productively approached and analyzed as an interactive continuum.