cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of distributed cover set algorithms in mobile ad hoc network for simplified multicast forwarding

This paper presents design issues and performance analysis of optimized cover set algorithms supporting Simplified Multicast Forwarding (SMF) of data plane traffic within mobile ad hoc network (MANET) environments. SMF is presently being developed within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an experimental specification to provide simplified multicast data dissemination among multi-hop, wireless nodes within peer MANET routing neighborhoods. The SMF protocol allows for a variety of cover set reduction techniques to optimize the simplified data flooding and relaying process amongst routing peers. A variety of distributed algorithms for forming connected dominating sets (CDS) are being considered as mechanisms to reduce the cover set. This paper presents modeling and analysis work of various CDS relay set algorithms and demonstrates working code within an SMF implementation. We provide a brief problem background, discuss models and scenarios, compare various algorithms, and then summarize observations as well as discuss future work. A main purpose of the paper is to begin examining the robustness of the algorithms to mobility and increasing multicast traffic load. We examine the results against a classical flooding baseline for comparison. We observe similar efficiency and robustness performance for several forwarding algorithms of interest.
Abnormal temporal patterns of glucose tolerance in obesity: relationship to sleep-related growth hormone secretion and circadian cortisol rhythmicity

To define the chronobiology of glucose tolerance and insulin secretion in obesity, nine obese men and nine lean men were studied during constant glucose infusion for 53 h, including 8 h of nocturnal sleep, 28 h of continuous wakefulness, and 8 h of daytime sleep. Blood samples were collected at 20-min intervals to assay glucose, insulin, C-peptide, cortisol, and GH. Sleep was polygraphically monitored. Abnormal temporal profiles of glucose regulation were observed during wakefulness and sleep in obese subjects. During daytime hours, the normal profile of glucose tolerance was reversed, as an improvement, rather than a deterioration, was observed from morning to late evening. This reversal of the daytime pattern appeared to be caused by a dual defect in glucose regulation during the previous night. Indeed, during early sleep, GH secretion was markedly reduced, and the nocturnal rises of glucose and insulin secretion were dampened. During late sleep, obese subjects failed to suppress insulin secretion and plasma glucose, resulting in high morning levels. Comparisons of metabolic and hormonal patterns during nocturnal and daytime sleep suggest that the failure to suppress insulin secretion in late sleep may reflect a relative insensitivity of the beta-cell to acute inhibitory effects of cortisol in addition to insulin resistance.
The annual cycle of riverine influence in the eastern Gulf of Mexico basin

[1] The annual cycle of the surface salinity field in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) basin is investigated with a numerical model and observational data. A tongue of low salinity water is evident in the model climatology spreading southward from the Mississippi - Alabama - Florida (MAFLA) shelf and De Soto Canyon in the summer. The model salinity climatology along this path compares well to historical observations. This climatological feature is a consequence of the seasonal availability of low salinity water over the MAFLA shelf and De Soto Canyon for entrainment into jets associated with the mesoscale eddy field in the northern GoM. Additionally, the chlorophyll a monthly climatology from satellite data shows elevated concentrations in a tongue-like pattern similar to the low salinity feature found in the model, suggestive of a biological connection between the eastern GoM basin and river discharge in the northern GoM.
A visualization approach to motif discovery in DNA sequences

Given a set of DNA sequences, the motif finding problem involves finding short DNA sequences or consensus patterns that occur surprisingly often, without any prior knowledge of what these patterns looks like. This paper proposes a visualization technique and algorithm for finding motifs in DNA sequences. The authors demonstrate that the performance of the motif finding algorithm is significantly improved with the proposed visualization technique. In the proposed method, each nucleotide base {A, T, C, G} in a DNA sequence is assigned a unique integer as a function of its immediate subsequent base, allowing the DNA sequence to be mapped to a corresponding numeric sequence. This numeric sequence is then plotted in 3-D space. After plotting multiple DNA sequences in the same 3-D space, approximately identical regions of the plots are aligned by translation and rotational transformations. The images of the approximately identical regions appear as clusters in the combined sequence image and are then used to generate the l-mers alignment matrix from which the nucleotide profile matrix is computed. Finally, the profile matrix is used to generate the consensus string pattern or motif.
Calicum microdomains form within neutrophils at the neutrophil–tumor cell synapse: role in antibody-dependent target cell apoptosis

Ca2+ messages are broadly important in cellular signal transduction. In immune cells, Ca2+ signaling is an essential step in many forms of activation. Neutrophil-mediated antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) is one form of leukocyte activation that plays an important role in tumor cell killing in vitro and in patient care. Using fluorescence methodologies, we found that neutrophils exhibit Ca2+ signals during ADCC directed against breast fibrosarcoma cells. Importantly, these signals were localized to Ca2+ microdomains at the neutrophil-to-tumor cell interface where they display dynamic features such as movement, fusion, and fission. These signals were blocked by the intracellular Ca2+ buffer BAPTA. At the neutrophil–tumor cell synapse, the neutrophil’s cytoplasm was enriched in STIM1, a crucial mediator of Ca2+ signaling, whereas the Ca2+-binding proteins calbindin and parvalbumin were not affected. Our findings suggest that Ca2+ microdomains are due to an active signaling process. As Ca2+ signals within neutrophils were necessary for specific tumor cell apoptosis, a central role of microdomains in leukocyte-mediated tumor cell destruction is indicated.
Bioavailability and therapeutic activity of alicaforsen (ISIS 2302) administered as a rectal retention enema to subjects with active ulcerative colitis.

Background Alicaforsen is a phosphorothioate-modified antisense oligodeoxynucleotide designed to sequence-specifically reduce intercellular adhesion molecule 1 messenger RNA levels. Aims To determine the systemic and local bioavailability of alicaforsen, and its activity when administered as a once daily enema in subjects with active ulcerative colitis. METHODS An open-label study was conducted to assess the relative absorption (local and systemic pharmacokinetics) and pharmacologic activity of alicaforsen enema in subjects with active ulcerative colitis. Fifteen subjects received nightly enemas of alicaforsen (240 mg) for a treatment period of 6 weeks. Alicaforsen concentrations in plasma and colonic tissue biopsies were determined. Disease activity index and multiple measurements including endoscopy were used to assess alicaforsen activity in these subjects. Results Plasma concentrations of parent alicaforsen represented
Design Considerations for 60 GHz Transformer-Coupled CMOS Power Amplifiers

This work discusses the design methodologies for efficient power generation at mm-wave frequencies in CMOS. Passive elements play an important role in PA design, as they determine both the output power and power gain of the circuit. In this work, we have developed a methodology for design of transformer-coupled power amplifiers. A distributed model of on-chip transformers has been developed that can predict the performance up to very high frequencies, is length scalable and uses only a few parameters , compared to a complete lumped model. Using the model, a two-stage transformer-coupled PA has been designed in 90 nm CMOS. The prototype has one of the highest output powers reported for a 60 GHz CMOS PA. A three-stage improved design with higher gain and efficiency is reported, stressing the importance of driver stage design at these frequencies. The PA has been integrated into a complete transmitter and tested with 10 Gb/s QPSK modulated data.
Two new infinite families of extremal class‐uniformly resolvable designs

In 1991, Lamken, Rees and Vanstone introduced the notion of class-uniformly resolvable designs, CURDs. These are resolvable pairwise balanced designs PBD(v,K,) in which given any two resolution classes C and C 0 , for each k 2 K the number of blocks of size k in C is equal to the number of blocks of size k in C 0 . Danzinger and Stevens showed that if a CURD has v points, then v (3p3) 2 and v (p2) 2 where pi denotes the number of blocks of size i for i =2 ,3. They then constructed an infinite class of extremal CURDS with v =( 3p3) 2 when p3 is odd and an infinite class with v =( p2) 2 when p2 2 (mod 6). In this note, we construct two new infinite families of extremal CURDs, when v =( 3p3) 2 for all p3 1 and when v =( p2) 2 with p2 0 (mod 3) except possibly when p2 = 12.
A metasystem perspective and implications for governance

The purpose of this paper is to explore a metasystem perspective and implications for governance of complex systems. Governance of complex systems is the set of functions that manage the system to achieve its goals while the system experiences change. A metasystem perspective is essential to understanding the factors affecting system governance and in defining the minimum critical specifications for governance of a complex system or system of systems. This paper explores metasystem perspectives and identifies implications for governance to better understand metasystem functions. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research in complex system governance.
In the Field with the Beck Depression Inventory

Qualitative methods are typically and formally used only in the earliest phases of instrument development to generate items. Once these items are generated, instrument development usually then moves into the testing phases, where quantitative methods prevail. The achievement of psychometric credibility is presumed to depend largely on quantitative measures of reliability and validity. Or if qualitative methods are employed, their use is masked, unfocused, and/or unplanned. The planned use of qualitative methods is critical in every phase of instrument use and in all studies that depend for their results on instruments, and their use is critical in illuminating problems with existing instruments. The authors illustrate these points by drawing on the first author’s experiences in the field with the Beck Depression Inventory in her research program on managing fatigue in persons with HIV/AIDS.
Cross-layer resource allocation over wireless relay networks for quality of service provisioning

The authors propose a physical-datalink cross-layer resource allocation scheme over wireless relay networks for quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. By integrating information theory with the concept of effective capacity, the proposed scheme aims at maximizing the relay network throughput subject to a given delay QoS constraint. This delay constraint is characterized by the so-called QoS exponent thetas, which is the only requested information exchanged between the physical layer and the datalink layer in our cross-layer design based scheme. Over both amplify-and-forwards (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relay networks; the authors develop the associated dynamic resource allocation algorithms for wireless multimedia communications. Over DF relay network, the authors also study a fixed power allocation scheme to provide QoS guarantees. The simulations and numerical results verify that our proposed cross-layer resource allocation can efficiently support diverse QoS requirements over wireless relay networks. Both AF and DF relays show significant superiorities over direct transmissions when the delay QoS constraints are stringent. On the other hand, the results demonstrate the importance of deploying the dynamic resource allocation for stringent delay QoS guarantees.
Natural image statistics and efficient coding.

Natural images contain characteristic statistical regularities that set them apart from purely random images. Understanding what these regularities are can enable natural images to be coded more efficiently. In this paper, we describe some of the forms of structure that are contained in natural images, and we show how these are related to the response properties of neurons at early stages of the visual system. Many of the important forms of structure require higher-order (i.e. more than linear, pairwise) statistics to characterize, which makes models based on linear Hebbian learning, or principal components analysis, inappropriate for finding efficient codes for natural images. We suggest that a good objective for an efficient coding of natural scenes is to maximize the sparseness of the representation, and we show that a network that learns sparse codes of natural scenes succeeds in developing localized, oriented, bandpass receptive fields similar to those in the mammalian striate cortex.
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR CHARACTERIZING SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY WIRE: PART 3-LOCALIZATION AND PROPAGATION PHENOMENA

This is the third paper in our series to identify unusual phenomena and to provide recommendations for the thermo-mechanical characterization of shape memory alloy (SMA) wire. Part 1 provided some basic background of the martensitic transformations responsible for the shape memory effect and superelasticity 1 . The characterization of two typical NiTi SMA alloys began with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) thermograms to measure their respective transformation temperatures, specific heats, and latent heats of transformation. It included an experiment for each alloy showing both shape memory and superelasticity, but in different temperature regimes. Part 2 reviewed the various methods for obtaining a fundamental set of isothermal mechanical responses and provided data on the same two SMA wire alloys over their relevant temperature windows 2 . In the process, it showed stress-induced transformations, which lead to an introduction of strain localization and propagation of phase transformation fronts. In this paper(Part 3), we narrow ourfocus on certain unusual phenomena occurring during superelastic tension responses, namely localization of strain and temperature fields. These are often overlooked by the novice, yet they play an important role in the kinetics of stress-induced phase transformation, and in turn, exacerbate the material response’s sensitivities to loading rate and ambient media (which will be the subject of the next paper in this series). Here, we introduce special experimental techniques for (otherwise) difficult to measure features in the underlying material response. We focus on the superelastic response of one of the two NiTi alloys that was used in our previous articles, that is, the alloy with an Austenite finish temperature (Af) below room temperature (designated as superelastic wire). Figure 1 shows four isothermal superelastic experiments, magnified from the set of fundamental mechanical responses of Fig. 8 in 2 . Each was done on a virgin specimen under elongation control at a slow rate, ˙L =± 1 × 10 −4 s −1 , in a temperature-controlled air chamber at different Editor’s Note: This ET feature series is intended as an introduction to this exciting area of experimental mechanics. It aims to increase awareness of active materials and to promote their consistent characterization by disseminating best practices from leading researchers in the field. Each article in the series will address the characterization of one commercially significant active material. Series editors: Nilesh D. Mankame and Paul W. Alexander.
Mobility Control for Complete Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a new control method to cover the "holes" in wireless sensor networks. Many applications often face the problem of holes when some sensor nodes are disabled from the collaboration due to their failures and misbehavior. These holes may occur dynamically, and such a problem cannot be solved completely by simply deploying more redundant sensors. With a synchronization around each hole using the directed Hamilton cycle, one (and only one) snake-like cascading replacement process will be initiated in the local area in order to fill in that vacant area with a spare node. In this way, network connectivity and coverage can be guaranteed. Our analytical and experimental results show substantial improvements of such a replacement compared with the best result known to date.
Effects of CO2 and nitrogen fertilization on vegetation and soil nutrient content in juvenile ponderosa pine

This paper summarizes the data on nutrient uptake and soil responses in opentop chambers planted with ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Laws.) treated with both N and CO2. Based upon the literature, we hypothesized that 1) elevated CO2 would cause increased growth and yield of biomass per unit uptake of N even if N is limiting, and 2) elevated CO2 would cause increased biomass yield per unit uptake of other nutrients only by growth dilution and only if they are non-limiting. Hypothesis 1 was supported only in part: there were greater yields of biomass per unit N uptake in the first two years of growth but not in the third year. Hypothesis 2 was supported in many cases: elevated CO2 caused growth dilution (decreased concentrations but not decreased uptake) of P, S, and Mg. Effects of elevated CO2 on K, Ca, and B concentrations were smaller and mostly non-significant. There was no evidence that N responded in a unique manner to elevated CO2, despite its unique role in rubisco. Simple growth dilution seemed to explain nutrient responses in almost all cases.
Twisted waveguides for particle accelerator applications

A novel microwave device for accelerating charged particles based on twisted waveguide is presented. Twisted guides support slow-wave TM modes whose phase velocity could reach the speed of light c. The axial electric field in these structures can travel synchronously with the particles to achieve nearly uniform acceleration in a traveling-wave topology. The advantages of using twisted guides over conventional RF accelerating cavities are discussed. We present two types of twisted accelerating structures, one analogous to the well-known disk-loaded accelerating structure, and the other analogous to the popular elliptical (or TESLA-type) accelerating geometry. The propagation characteristics of these two structures are considered, and prototypes are made to experimentally validate our theoretical results.
Applications of Fast-Moving RFID Tags in High-Speed Railway Systems

RFID technology has been widely utilized for the tracking and identification of numerous stationary and moving objects. One of the most challenging RFID applications has to do with the improvement in reliability, scheduling and efficiency of large-scale transportation infrastructure. As an example, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in Ultra High Friency (UHF) frequencies (840–845MHz and 920–925MHz) is one of several technologies currently being utilized in China to monitor and regulate the railway system. Despite the very successful performance of ATIS RFID-based system for conventional trains with speeds up to 150kph, numerous challenges have to be resolved for the extension of this technology to modern high-speed and ultra high-speed railway systems with speeds up to 500kph. This paper identifies these issues, such as collision and insufficient reading time, and proposes various ways to alleviate their effect in UHF-RFID enabled railway systems
The Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities

The Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (CETH) was funded in 1993 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to act as a national focus for the scholarly use of electronic texts in the humanities within the USA. CETH has three major activities: an Inventory of Machine-Readable Texts in the Humanities which is held on RLIN, the establishment of focussed collections of scholarly texts for access over the Internet via appropriate software, and an annual summer seminar on methods and tools for electronic texts in the humanities. CETH also provides information and support services for these activities. A Consortium of member institutions will be established. Consortium members will work together with CETH in our long-term objective of conducting research on the `uses and users’ of electronic texts in the humanities and using the results of this research to provide a continuous enhancement path for our facilities.
The effects of morphine on conditioned suppression in rhesus monkeys

Suppression of operant responding maintained by a variable-interval schedule of food reinforcement was established in two rhesus monkeys by the presentation of a preshock stimulus under conditions that resulted in long-term baseline stability. Reports in the literature that morphine restores operant behavior suppressed by preshock stimuli were not confirmed. Morphine produced only dose-related decreases in responding.
"Bad" Decisions, Poverty, and Economic Theory: The Individualist and Social Perspectives in Light of "The American Myth"

Social outcomes are analyzed either by placing responsibility for those outcomes on the individual or to locate the cause in a specific social factor – discrimination. Here, I argue that individual decision-making cannot be the cause of poverty, illustrative of one outcome, and that commentary specifying a particular social factor is insufficient to address the fundamental, underlying cause of poverty. Rather, one must examine the nature of the economic system that lies at the root of such issues. In the process of developing the argument, it is shown that the individualist explanation of poverty is linked to the neoclassical framework, and that this individualist explanation is a product of the (capitalist) economic system itself which then induces an ideology both privileging such an explanation and preventing the development of satisfactory theory that would inform proper policy. An example of this point is drawn from the 1960’s “war on poverty” program.
Construction of an Index of Impact of Industry on Water Pollution for the Piracicaba River Basin, Mg, Brazil

This paper proposes a methodology for the construction of an index of impact of economic activities on pollution from the perspective of the technological linkages among those activities. The index is calculated from an input-output model and continuous strictly monotonic functions mapping subsets of the production space for all activities into the unit interval. As a case study, I focus on industry and water pollution in a region with significant industrial production, environmental degradation and population in Brazil. I then compare the index for the different industrial sectors with the direct and indirect employment they generate, and suggest a partial measure of sustainability of local economic development. Local economic development is heavily based on water pollution. The economic activities responsible for most production and employment in the region are also associated with most direct and indirect pollution of the local water resources. The extension of the proposed methodology to other economic activities and types of pollution is straight forward.
Data for life: Wearable technology and the design of self-care

Over the last 5 years, wearable technology – comprising devices whose embedded sensors and analytic algorithms can track, analyze and guide wearers’ behavior – has increasingly captured the attention of venture capitalists, technology startups, established electronics companies and consumers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted 2 years running at the Consumer Electronics Show and its Digital Health Summit, this article explores the vision of technologically assisted self-regulation that drives the design of wearable tracking technology. As key artifacts in a new cultural convergence of sensor technology and self-care that I call ‘data for life’, wearables are marketed as digital compasses whose continuous tracking capacities and big-data analytics can help consumers navigate the field of everyday choice making and better control how their bites, sips, steps and minutes of sleep add up to affect their health. By offering consumers a way to simultaneously embrace and outsource the task of lifestyle management, I argue, such products at once exemplify and short-circuit cultural ideals for individual responsibility and self-regulation.
The North Caucasus between the Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Muscovy: The Beginnings, 1552-1570

The present paper explores the hitherto unknown beginnings of the Ottoman-Russian imperial rivalry by focusing on the mid-16th-century encounter between the Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Muscovy over the North Caucasus, where the ambitions of these two asymmetric powers—the Ottomans being an established “super power” and the Muscovites a rising power—became entangled for the first time. This first encounter, which was the harbinger of many future engagements not only in this region but also in the broader steppe frontier around the Black Sea, was more of a “cold war” rather than a military confrontation, as both the Ottomans and the Muscovites rather preferred to establish spheres of influence and eventually their hegemony over the North Caucasus through their vassals and clients. In addition to demonstrating the Tsardom of Muscovy’s initial claims and policies over the North Caucasus, this study will shed light on the reasons of the Ottoman failure to transform their nominal claims over the region to a de facto hegemony similar to what they had established over Eastern European principalities.
Can ultrashort-TE (UTE) MRI sequences on a 3-T clinical scanner detect signal directly from collagen protons: freeze-dry and D2 O exchange studies of cortical bone and Achilles tendon specimens.

Ultrashort-TE (UTE) sequences can obtain signal directly from short-T2 , collagen-rich tissues. It is generally accepted that bound and free water can be detected with UTE techniques, but the ability to detect protons directly on the collagen molecule remains controversial. In this study, we investigated the potential of UTE sequences on a 3-T clinical scanner to detect collagen protons via freeze-drying and D2 O-H2 O exchange studies. Experiments were performed on bovine cortical bone and human Achilles tendon specimens, which were either subject to freeze-drying for over 66 h or D2 O-H2 O exchange for 6 days. Specimens were imaged using two- and three-dimensional UTE with Cones trajectory techniques with a minimum TE of 8 μs at 3 T. UTE images before treatment showed high signal from all specimens with bi-component T2 * behavior. Bovine cortical bone showed a shorter T2 * component of 0.36 ms and a longer T2 * component of 2.30 ms with fractions of 78.2% and 21.8% by volume, respectively. Achilles tendon showed a shorter T2 * component of 1.22 ms and a longer T2 * component of 15.1 ms with fractions of 81.1% and 18.9% by volume, respectively. Imaging after freeze-drying or D2 O-H2 O exchange resulted in either the absence or near-absence of signal. These results indicate that bound and free water are the sole sources of UTE signal in bovine cortical bone and human Achilles tendon samples on a clinical 3-T scanner. Protons on the native collagen molecule are not directly visible when imaged using UTE sequences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Association Between Evaluation at Academic Centers and the Likelihood of Expectant Management in Low-risk Prostate Cancer

Objective To identify factors associated with expectant management (EM) in a large cohort of men with low-risk prostate cancer based on cancer center type (community vs academic). EM, consisting of active surveillance or observation for men with low-risk prostate cancer, is an increasingly recognized management option, given the morbidity and lack of a survival benefit associated with definitive treatment. However, the influence of cancer center type on treatment selection is uncertain. Materials and Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of the National Cancer Data Base from 2010 to 2013. Men with low-risk prostate cancer were divided by management strategy into groups consisting of EM or definitive treatment. The association between management strategy and facility type (community vs academic) was characterized using 2-level hierarchical mixed effects logistic regression models. Results There were 52,417 (57%) men evaluated at community centers and 39,139 men (43%) evaluated at academic centers. Patients evaluated at academic centers were significantly more likely to receive EM than those at community centers (17% vs 8%, P Conclusion The likelihood of receiving EM for low-risk prostate cancer was significantly lower in men evaluated at community centers. Further investigation is warranted to elucidate factors that influence the management of low-risk prostate cancer, including individual treatment center patterns.
Regulation of Voltage Sensing Structures of CaV1.2 Calcium Channels by the Auxiliary β-Subunit (β3)

High Voltage-Activated channels (HVA) are composed of four non-identical repeats with distinct voltage-sensing domain (VSD). The cardiac HVA CaV1.2 is modulated by at least two auxiliary subunits, α2δ and β. The β-subunit is known to facilitate channel opening without altering gating currents or single channel conductance. By tracking the movement of individual voltage sensors in human CaV1.2 channels using voltage clamp fluorometry we learned that individual voltage-sensors contribute to channel opening and gating currents to a different degree (Pantazis et al. 2014, PNAS). Taking advantage that rabbit CaV1.2 can be expressed without auxiliary subunits, we explored the impact that β subunits exert on voltage-sensing or coupling and found that β3 regulates Voltage-sensor I (VSD I) activity. Voltage-sensors of all members of the voltage-gated ion channel family have three main conformations: resting, active and relaxed. VSD transition from the resting to the active conformation is thought to be coupled to channel opening, while the relaxed configuration is populated during prolonged depolarizations. Once in the relaxed state, strong hyperpolarizations are necessary to return to the resting state. When rabbit CaV1.2 channels are co-expressed without β subunit the voltage-dependency of VSD I indicates that near 50% of VSD I are in the relaxed state even at −90mV holding potential. In contrast, with β3 present, VSD I dwells between resting and active state. The augmented preference of VSD I for the relaxed state in the absence of β3 may explain why CaV1.2 channels lacking the β-subunit are less willing to open and together with our results with human CaV2.1 suggest that VSD I participates in inactivation rather than activation. We hypothesize that when in the relaxed state, VSD I keeps channels from opening or in an “unwilling” state.
Introduction: Refining Child Pornography Law: Crime, Language, and Social Consequences

This is a page proof of the Introduction to Refining Child Pornography Law: Crime, Language, and Social Consequences (Michigan Univ. Press 2016), which presents the work of experts in law, sociology, and social work who study child pornography law and its consequences. The legal definition of child pornography is, at best, unclear. In part because of this ambiguity and in part because of the nature of the crime itself, the prosecution and sentencing of perpetrators, the protection of and restitution for victims, and the means for preventing repeat offenses are deeply controversial. This edited volume clarifies the questions surrounding child pornography law and begins to formulate answers. Focusing on the roles of language and crime definition, the contributors discuss the increasing visibility child pornography plays in the national conversation about child safety, and present a range of views regarding the punishment of those who produce, distribute, and possess materials that may be considered child pornography. The Introduction includes brief summaries of subsequent chapters.
Efficiency of transfection and localization of superparamagnetic iron oxide particles in neural progenitor cells using two methods

Stem cells represent a potentially revolutionary therapy for neurological pathologies but for which a thorough investigation of cell behavior in the living nervous system has yet to be performed. Contrast-enhanced cell tracking with magnetic resonance imaging can enable this investigation by introducing superparagmagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particles within the cell membrane. Before magnetically labeled cells can be observed in vivo, it is essential to maximize SPIO transfer into the cell and to fully understand the localization of the contrast agent in mature neural cells. For practical applications, a quantitative evaluation of labeled cells before implantation will allow in vivo assertions. In this study, we present a comparison between two methods for magnetic transfection of neural progenitor cells: the hemmaglutinating virus of Japan envelope (HVJ-E) as a viral vector and a liposomal reagent. We show that HVJ-E is a more efficient vehicle of cell transfection using quantitative evaluation and that the iron content per cell can be predicted using a simple, automated image analysis of stained, labeled cells. Image analysis is also used in this study to show that the contrast agent is distributed in the axon after differentiation, an important aspect of understanding cell tracking in vivo.
Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Development of Social Behavior in Primates

Oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) are critical neurotransmitters/hormones that are involved in social behavior and many peripheral processes. While well studied in rodents, a number of technical barriers have existed to our understanding of these peptides in nonhuman primates and humans. This chapter reviews what is known about their neuroanatomy and development in nonhuman and human primates, with references to rodents when necessary. The chapter also reviews paradigms of early experience in nonhuman primates and what is known about their relationship to OT and AVP systems. Finally, it reviews technical innovations in the world of OT and AVP research, which may lead to new possibilities in studying these systems during primate development.
Lanthanide-dependent cross-feeding of methane-derived carbon is linked by microbial community interactions

The utilization of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is an important component of local and global carbon cycles that is characterized by tight linkages between methane-utilizing (methanotrophic) and nonmethanotrophic bacteria. It has been suggested that the methanotroph sustains these nonmethanotrophs by cross-feeding, because subsequent products of the methane oxidation pathway, such as methanol, represent alternative carbon sources. We established cocultures in a microcosm model system to determine the mechanism and substrate that underlay the observed cross-feeding in the environment. Lanthanum, a rare earth element, was applied because of its increasing importance in methylotrophy. We used co-occurring strains isolated from Lake Washington sediment that are involved in methane utilization: a methanotroph and two nonmethanotrophic methylotrophs. Gene-expression profiles and mutant analyses suggest that methanol is the dominant carbon and energy source the methanotroph provides to support growth of the nonmethanotrophs. However, in the presence of the nonmethanotroph, gene expression of the dominant methanol dehydrogenase (MDH) shifts from the lanthanide-dependent MDH (XoxF)-type, to the calcium-dependent MDH (MxaF)-type. Correspondingly, methanol is released into the medium only when the methanotroph expresses the MxaF-type MDH. These results suggest a cross-feeding mechanism in which the nonmethanotrophic partner induces a change in expression of methanotroph MDHs, resulting in release of methanol for its growth. This partner-induced change in gene expression that benefits the partner is a paradigm for microbial interactions that cannot be observed in studies of pure cultures, underscoring the importance of synthetic microbial community approaches to understand environmental microbiomes.
Microfluidic device enabled quantitative time-lapse microscopic-photography for phenotyping vegetative and reproductive phases in Fusarium virguliforme , which is pathogenic to soybean

Time-lapse microscopic-photography allows in-depth phenotyping of microorganisms. Here we report development of such a system using a microfluidic device, generated from polydimethylsiloxane and glass slide, placed on a motorized stage of a microscope for conducting time-lapse microphotography of multiple observations in 20 channels simultaneously. We have demonstrated the utility of the device in studying growth, germination and sporulation in Fusarium virguliforme that causes sudden death syndrome in soybean. To measure the growth differences, we developed a polyamine oxidase fvpo1 mutant in this fungus that fails to grow in minimal medium containing polyamines as the sole nitrogen source. Using this system, we demonstrated that the conidiospores of the pathogen take an average of five hours to germinate. During sporulation, it takes an average of 10.5 h for a conidiospore to mature and get detached from its conidiophore for the first time. Conidiospores are developed in a single conidiophore one after another. The microfluidic device enabled quantitative time-lapse microphotography reported here should be suitable for screening compounds, peptides, micro-organisms to identify fungitoxic or antimicrobial agents for controlling serious plant pathogens. The device could also be applied in identifying suitable target genes for host-induced gene silencing in pathogens for generating novel disease resistance in crop plants.
Erlang renewal models for genetic recombination

Erlang renewal models, also called chi-squared models, provide a tractable model for genetic recombination that exhibits positive interference. Closed form expressions for multilocus probabilities are derived for the crossover process when it is a renewal process with the distance between crossovers modeled by a Erlang distribution. These expressions yield explicit formulas for the map functions, coincidence functions and distributions of the identity-by-descent process, giving exact results for a class of models that better model observed biological data.
The impact of caudate lobe resection on margin status and outcomes in patients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma: a multi-institutional analysis from the US Extrahepatic Biliary Malignancy Consortium.

Abstract Background The objective of this study was to determine the impact of caudate resection on margin status and outcomes during resection of extrahepatic hilar cholangiocarcinoma. Methods A database of 1,092 patients treated for biliary malignancies at institutions of the Extrahepatic Biliary Malignancy Consortium was queried for individuals undergoing curative-intent resection for extrahepatic hilar cholangiocarcinoma. Patients who did versus did not undergo concomitant caudate resection were compared with regard to demographic, baseline, and tumor characteristics as well as perioperative outcomes. Results A total of 241 patients underwent resection for a hilar cholangiocarcinoma, of whom 85 underwent caudate resection. Patients undergoing caudate resection were less likely to have a final positive margin (P = .01). Kaplan-Meier curve of overall survival for patients undergoing caudate resection indicated no improvement over patients not undergoing caudate resection (P = .16). On multivariable analysis, caudate resection was not associated with improved overall survival or recurrence-free survival, although lymph node positivity was associated with worse overall survival and recurrence-free survival, and adjuvant chemoradiotherapy was associated with improved overall survival and recurrence-free survival. Conclusion Caudate resection is associated with a greater likelihood of margin-negative resection in patients with extrahepatic hilar cholangiocarcinoma. Precise preoperative imaging is critical to assess the extent of biliary involvement, so that all degrees of hepatic resections are possible at the time of the initial operation.
Effects of Professional Development on Teacher Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Inquiry Teaching Practices, and Student Understanding of Interdisciplinary Science

Systematic studies on the effectiveness of in-service teacher professional development (PD) are important for science education research and practice. Previous studies have mostly focused on certai...
Egocentric Improvement Evaluations: Change in the Self as an Anchor for Brand Improvement Judgments

ABSTRACT Prior research has identified product improvement perceptions as critical to consumers' product upgrade decisions (e.g., upgrading to a new iPhone), but little work has examined factors influencing these improvement perceptions. This research shows that drawing consumers' attention to their global self-improvement can increase product improvement judgments and upgrade intentions when self-brand connection is high, a phenomenon the authors refer to as egocentric improvement evaluations. Consistent with egocentric categorization theory, which identifies the self as a dominant reference category in product judgment, the authors demonstrate cognitive drivers of the effect. Specifically, egocentric improvement evaluations are moderated by self-focus, which determines whether the self is an accessible reference category. Furthermore, the authors propose that egocentric improvement evaluations also have a motivational driver: Consumers project their self-improvement onto self-connected brands to satisfy...
Online planning for resource production in real-time strategy games

Planning in domains with temporal and numerical properties is an important research problem. One application of this is the resource production problem in real-time strategy (RTS) games, where players attempt to achieve the goal of producing a certain amount of resources as fast as possible. In this paper, we develop an online planner for resource production in the RTS game of Wargus, where the preconditions and effects of the actions obey many properties that are common across RTS games. Our planner is based on a computationally efficient action-selection mechanism, which at each decision epoch creates a possibly sub-optimal concurrent plan from the current state to the goal and then begins executing the initial set of actions. The plan is formed via a combination of means-ends analysis, scheduling, and a bounded search over sub-goals that are not required for goal achievement but may improve makespan. Experiments in the RTS game of Wargus show that the online planner is highly competitive with a human expert and often performs significantly better than state-of-the-art planning algorithms for this domain.
Distributed and accelerated inference algorithms for probabilistic graphical models

Learning graphical models from data is of fundamental importance in machine learning and statistics; however, this task is often computationally challenging due to the complexity of the models and the large scale of the data sets involved. This dissertation presents a variety of distributed and accelerated inference algorithms for probabilistic graphical models. The first part of this dissertation focuses on a class of directed latent variable models known as topic models. We introduce synchronous and asynchronous distributed algorithms for topic models which yield significant time and memory savings without sacrificing accuracy. We also investigate various approximate inference techniques for topic models, including collapsed Gibbs sampling, variational inference, and maximum a posteriori estimation and find that these methods learn models of similar accuracy as long as hyperparameters are optimized, giving us the freedom to utilize the most computationally efficient algorithm. The second part of this dissertation focuses on accelerated parameter estimation techniques for undirected models such as Boltzmann machines and exponential random graph models. We investigate an efficient blocked contrastive divergence approach that is based on the composite likelihood framework. We also present a particle filtering approach for approximate maximum likelihood estimation that is able to outperform previously proposed estimation algorithms.
Sensitivity and Selectivity Enhancement in Perchlorate Anion Quantitation Using Complexation-Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry

The general nature and analytical chemistry of perchlorate have been reviewed elsewhere.1–3 By its very existence this volume affirms the importance of having analytical chemistry tools capable of measuring low concentrations of perchlorate in water and other matrices. Other chapters delve into the toxicology4 or regulatory and occurrence aspects.5 The reader should refer to those for more information. The need for confirmatory techniques and methods of chemical analysis will exist whenever regulation occurs. Although we can expect ion chromatography to dominate drinking water monitoring for perchlorate, Chromatographic and electrophoretic retention times are not unique to a particular analyte. Consequently, there is a need for robust, rugged methods using alternate techniques, such as mass spectrometry.
Income and Vote Choice in the 2000 Mexican Presidential Election

Using multilevel modeling of state-level economic data and individual-level exit poll data from the 2000 Mexican presidential election, we find that income has a stronger effect in predicting the vote for the conservative party in poorer states than in richer states - a pattern that has also been found in recent U.S. elections. In addition (and unlike in the U.S.), richer states on average tend to support the conservative party at higher rates than poorer states. Our findings are consistent with the 2006 Mexican election, which showed a profound divide between rich and poor states. Income is an important predictor of the vote both at the individual and the state levels.
The Binary Bias: A Systematic Distortion in the Integration of Information:

One of the mind's most fundamental tasks is interpreting incoming data and weighing the value of new evidence. Across a wide variety of contexts, we show that when summarizing evidence, people exhibit a binary bias: a tendency to impose categorical distinctions on continuous data. Evidence is compressed into discrete bins, and the difference between categories forms the summary judgment. The binary bias distorts belief formation-such that when people aggregate conflicting scientific reports, they attend to valence and inaccurately weight the extremity of the evidence. The same effect occurs when people interpret popular forms of data visualization, and it cannot be explained by other statistical features of the stimuli. This effect is not confined to explicit statistical estimates; it also influences how people use data to make health, financial, and public-policy decisions. These studies ( N = 1,851) support a new framework for understanding information integration across a wide variety of contexts.