cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
ALCOHOL AND TRAFFIC SAFETY: A SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF DATA FROM COMPOSITE SOURCES

Risk factors associated with single-vehicle driver fatalities are explored in a sensitivity analysis of data from composite sources. Information on fatalities was taken from the Federal Accident Reporting System data base for 1976-1981. Characteristics of the driving population were given by the 1973 National Roadside Breath Testing Survey (Wolfe 1974). Using Bayes theorem and logistic regression analysis, the effect of changing driver characteristics on the probability of a fatality was explored. The method used is proposed for a case-control study in which the controls may not accurately represent the population from which the cases were drawn. Risk factors identified are generally in agreement with previous reports.
The antiproliferative role of ERG K+ channels in rat osteoblastic cells

We report on the role of K+ currents in the mechanisms regulating the proliferation of UMR 106-01 osteoblastic osteosarcoma cells. Electrophysiological analysis showed that UMR 106-01 cells produce robust K+ currents that can be pharmacologically separated into two major components: a E-4031-susceptible current, I E-4031, and a tetraethylammonium (TEA)-susceptible component, I TEA. Western blot and RT-PCR analysis showed that I E-4031 is produced by ether a go-go (eag)-related channels (ERG). Incubation of the cells with E-4031 enhanced their proliferation by 80%. Application of E-4031 in the bath solution did not induce instantaneous changes in the membrane resting potential or in the level of cytosolic calcium; however, the cells were slightly depolarized and the calcium content was significantly increased upon prolonged incubation with the compound. Taken together these findings indicate that ERG channels can impair cell proliferation. This is a novel finding that underscores new modes of regulation of mitosis by voltage-gated K+ channels and provides an unexpected insight into the current view of the mechanisms governing bone tissue proliferation.
Quantitative Proteomics of a Chloroplast SRP54 Sorting Mutant and Its Genetic Interactions with CLPC1 in Arabidopsis

cpSRP54 (for chloroplast SIGNAL RECOGNITION PARTICLE54) is involved in cotranslational and posttranslational sorting of thylakoid proteins. The Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) cpSRP54 null mutant, ffc1-2, is pale green with delayed development. Western-blot analysis of individual leaves showed that the SRP sorting pathway, but not the SecY/E translocon, was strongly down-regulated with progressive leaf development in both wild-type and ffc1-2 plants. To further understand the impact of cpSRP54 deletion, a quantitative comparison of ffc2-1 was carried out for total leaf proteomes of young seedlings and for chloroplast proteomes of fully developed leaves using stable isotope labeling (isobaric stable isotope labeling and isotope-coded affinity tags) and two-dimensional gels. This showed that cpSRP54 deletion led to a change in light-harvesting complex composition, an increase of PsbS, and a decreased photosystem I/II ratio. Moreover, the cpSRP54 deletion led in young leaves to up-regulation of thylakoid proteases and stromal chaperones, including ClpC. In contrast, the stromal protein homeostasis machinery returned to wild-type levels in mature leaves, consistent with the developmental down-regulation of the SRP pathway. A differential response between young and mature leaves was also found in carbon metabolism, with an up-regulation of the Calvin cycle and the photorespiratory pathway in peroxisomes and mitochondria in young leaves but not in old leaves. The Calvin cycle was down-regulated in mature leaves to adjust to the reduced capacity of the light reaction, while reactive oxygen species defense proteins were up-regulated. The significance of ClpC up-regulation was confirmed through the generation of an ffc2-1 clpc1 double mutant. This mutant was seedling lethal under autotrophic conditions but could be partially rescued under heterotrophic conditions.
Natural Gas Hydrate Phase Equilibria and Kinetics : Understanding the State-Of-The-Art

An overview is given of gas hydrate phase equilibria and kinetics. It is suggested that with only a few exceptions hydrate phase equilibrium conditions may be predicted with acceptable accuracy for industrial purposes via the current state-of-the art. Hydrate research is at a milestone, going beyond equilibrium experiments to time-dependent measurements, such as in the kinetic arena, where there is a severe paucity of date. To illustrate the concepts, two qualitative microscopic models are presented :1) the hydrate guest: cavity size ratio and2) the dissolution of apolar molecules in liquid water. Hypotheses for macroscopic phase equilibria and kinetic nucleation phenomena are given, based upon the two models.
A procedure for the quantitation of relaxed closed circular DNA in the presence of superhelical DNA: an improved fluorometric assay for nicking-closing enzyme.

Abstract The procedure described here takes advantage of the recently discovered single-strand-specific endonuclease activity of snake-venom phosphodiesterase to convert supercoiled PM2 DNA (DNA I′), but not relaxed DNA (DNA I′), to open forms of DNA. The DNA I' was quantitated using a fiuorometric method for covalently closed circular DNA ( A. R. Morgan and D. E. Pulleyblank, 1974 , Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun.61, 396–403). The percentage of DNA I′ in mixtures of DNAs I and I′ can be determined to ±l%. The procedure was used as an assay for a nicking-closing enzyme activity partially purified from simian virus 40-infected monkey cells. The assay is linear from 0 to 0.4 μg DNA I′ produced and reproducible to ±0.01 μg DNA I′.
Vitamin A - not for your eyes only: requirement for heart formation begins early in embryogenesis.

Vitamin A insufficiency has profound adverse effects on embryonic development. Major advances in understanding the role of vitamin A in vertebrate heart formation have been made since the discovery that the vitamin A active form, all-trans-retinoic acid, regulates many genes, including developmental genes. Among the experimental models used, the vitamin A-deficient avian embryo has been an important tool to study the function of vitamin A during early heart formation. A cluster of retinoic acid-regulated developmental genes have been identified that participate in building the heart. In the absence of retinoic acid the embryonic heart develops abnormally leading to embryolethality.
Architectural support for the management of tightly-coupled fine-grain goals in Flat Concurrent Prolog

We propose architectural support for goal management as part of a special-purpose processor architecture for the efficient execution of Flat Concurrent Prolog. Goal management operations: halt, spawn, suspend and commit are decoupled from goal reduction, and overlapped in the Goal Management Unit. Their efficient execution is enabled using a Goal Cache. We evaluate the performance of the goal management support using an analytic performance model and program parameters characteristic of the System's Development Workload. Most goal management operations are completely overlapped, resulting in a speedup of 2. Higher speedups are obtained for workloads that exhibit greater goal management complexity.
Integrated health systems and evidence-based care: standardizing treatment to eliminate cancer disparities.

10.2217/FON.15.90 © 2015 Future Medicine Ltd Historical explanations for disparities: are we running in place or falling behind? Disparities in cancer incidence and survival have persisted for more than two decades. Historically, the literature has focused on the patient as the agent of poor outcomes. Early reports explained that breast cancer disparities in African–American women were due to a lack of self care. They were more often obese [1], had poorly controlled comorbid disease [2] and delays in seeking medical care resulted in more advanced and more aggressive tumors at the time of presentation [3]. Subsequent studies shifted focus, but continued to point to patient level social factors such as lack of insurance and overall decreased access to care [4]. Because of these explanations, interventions to address disparities have largely focused on changing individual behavior. Programs to raise awareness, promote cancer screening and early detection dominate the approaches deployed by the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and local agencies to address disparities. While patient activation may improve select health outcomes [5], disparities in many prevalent cancers (colorectal, head and neck, uterine [6] persist; and in some cases, the gaps have widened over time [6]).
The 'Uniform Rule' and Its Exceptions: A History of Congressional Naturalization Legislation

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress "[t]o establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." In Part I of this article, I discuss the American colonial experience with naturalization laws and account for the Naturalization Clause's inclusion in the Constitution. I then examine the historical development of Congress's "uniform rule" and deconstruct the mechanism by which certain groups have been excluded from and brought back within its reach. Lastly, I scrutinize Congress's posture towards expatriation, the logical converse of naturalization. In Part II, I ask why Congress might have thought it expedient to carve out statutory exceptions to the naturalization procedures it had earlier prescribed, and I relate the content of two major kinds of historical exceptions to those procedures: derivative citizenship for women and children and an expedited naturalization timeline for alien veterans. My joint investigation of procedure, exclusion and reinclusion, expatriation, and exceptions should furnish the reader an ensemble of rich perspectives from which to explore Congress's unfolding exposition of the meaning of American citizenship. Congress has often used its naturalization power to achieve nakedly partisan goals, an enterprise aided by the absence of any constitutional limitations on its procedural regulations. Congress has held prospective naturalized citizens to a much higher moral and behavioral standard than natural-born Americans, refusing to naturalize perpetrators of certain practices whose domestic criminalization would be ridiculed. The indiscriminate conferral of naturalization on certain non-white groups in the antebellum period sidestepped the implied racial limitations of existing naturalization laws; Congress similarly contravened its own pronouncement in declaring the existence of a natural right - complete discretionary expatriation - yet denying Americans its full enjoyment during wartime. Naturalization laws have often been propelled by the need to eradicate absurdities and prejudicial anachronisms, one of which threatened to hinder America's prosecution of World War II. And that citizenship could be transmitted and derived only through husbands and fathers until 1934 plainly signals another way in which women have been legally subordinate to men for much of American history.
Apparent role of adenosine diphosphoribosyl transferase in the development of Mytilus edulis and the inhibition of differentiation by ligands of the enzyme protein.

AbstractThe poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase or transferase (ADPRT) activity of developing embryos of Mytilus edulis increases with the progression of larval growth. ADPRT protein was partially purified from 2-hr-old embryos and identified by gel electrophoresis and immunotransblot, demonstrating cross-reactivity with anti-ADPRT IgG produced against the calf thymus enzyme. Two inhibitors of ADPRT, benzamide, competing with NAD at the nicotinamide binding site, and 6-amino-1,2-benzopyrone, which competes with DNA at the DNA binding site(s), both selectively arrest differentiation at the prodissoconch stage. The DNA site-oriented inhibitor, 6-amino-1,2-benzopyrone, has a much larger differentiation arresting effect than benzamide. The arrest of differentiation by 6-amino-1,2-benzopyrone is reversible. A probable ecotoxicity of ADPRT ligands on mussel differentiation is proposed.
From selection hits to clinical leads: progress in aptamer discovery

Aptamers were discovered more than 25 years ago, yet only one has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to date. With some noteworthy advances in their chemical design and the enzymes we use to make them, aptamers and aptamer-based therapeutics have seen a resurgence in interest. New aptamer drugs are being approved for clinical evaluation, and it is certain that we will see increasingly more aptamers and aptamer-like drugs in the future. In this review, we will discuss the production of aptamers with an emphasis on the advances and modifications that enabled early aptamers to succeed in clinical trials as well as those that are likely to be important for future generations of these drugs.
Performance Compared By Shift

The day and evening clinical laboratory staffs of 50 Pennsylvania hospitals were presented with identical proficiency testing materials for analysis. The materials tested the ability of the shifts to duplicate results for glucose, BUN, sodium, potassium, chloride, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, CSF Gram stain, and a differential blood film. A significant difference ( P >.05) was found for the Gram stain evaluation. Of those factors considered to explain this difference, only years of technical experience were shown to be significant.
Stromal fibroblast heparan sulfate is required for cytokine-mediated ex vivo maintenance of human long-term culture-initiating cells

We have recently demonstrated that 50% of primitive human long-term culture-initiating cells (LTC-IC) are maintained for up to 8 weeks in stroma-dependent cultures in which progenitor-stroma contact is prevented (stroma noncontact), or when progenitors are cultured in medium conditioned by stromal feeders. This indicates that factors responsible for LTC-IC maintenance are present in soluble form in stromal supernatant (SN). Although the picogram concentrations of cytokines present in stromal SN can induce the differentiation of CD34+/HLA-DR- (DR-) cells to clonogenic cells (colony forming cells; CFC), they maintain only 10% of LTC-IC for 5 weeks, suggesting that factors other than these cytokines are required for LTC-IC maintenance. To characterize the factor(s) in stromal SN responsible for LTC-IC maintenance, we purified glycoproteins and proteoglycans (PG) from the SN of the LTC-IC supportive murine marrow stromal fibroblast cell line M2–10B4 by ion exchange high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Culture of DR- cells in a combination of M2–10B4-derived PG, but not glycoproteins and picogram concentrations of recombinant human interleukin-6 (IL-6), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), stem cell factor (SCF), leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), granulocyte- macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and macrophage inflammatory protein-1alpha (MIP-1alpha) resulted in the recovery of 96% +/- 8% of LTC-IC maintained in cultures supplemented with unfractionated stromal SN. LTC-IC maintenance was largely retained after digestion of the PG-rich fraction with proteinase K and after dissociative gel filtration chromatography, but was completely abolished following treatment with nitrous acid, which digests heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycans (HS GAG). As for M2–10B4-derived HS GAG, high concentrations of bovine kidney HS GAG, but not bovine tracheal chondroitin sulfate, significantly improved cytokine-mediated LTC-IC maintenance. Maintenance of LTC-IC by these nonmarrow-derived HS GAG was, however, significantly lower than that seen with M2–10B4-derived HS. These studies demonstrate a role for marrow stroma-derived HS GAG in the long-term in vitro maintenance of human LTC-IC. Further structure-function analysis of these HS GAG may have important implications for ex vivo stem cell expansion and gene transfer into hematopoietic progenitors.
Glucocorticoid receptors in the brain.

The ability to downregulate the stress response is essential to good health. We still have much to learn about the biochemical bases of glucocorticoid effects on brain function—but it is now clear that the interaction between hormones and neurons provides a pathway by which thoughts and emotions can influence hormone secretion and hormones can influence behavior and mood.
Evaluation of Endothelial Injury in the Human Lung

The pulmonary endothelium plays a crucial role in the normal function of the lungs. Damage to the pulmonary endothelium is thought to be a primary event leading to deficits in pulmonary function in diverse forms of lung injury, but it is difficult to detect until these secondary deficits are manifest. Indicator dilution methods are practical for evaluation of endothelial function in patients. Interpretation of the information contained in the data is potentially complex, and specificity may be improved by using multiple indicators, each of which interacts with the endothelium in a different way. The general clinical utility of the methods is not yet established. However, encouraging experimental results, clinical studies, and improved technologies suggest that the methods have the potential to be of significant diagnostic and prognostic value.
Dynamic frame rate: a study on viewer perception of changes in frame rate within an animated movie sequence

Dynamic Frame Rate (DFR) is the change in frame rate of a movie sequence in real time as the sequence is playing. Throughout the majority of the past century and after the introduction of sound in films, frame rates used in films have been kept at a standardization of 24 frame per second despite technological advancement [Salmon et. Al 2011]. In the past decade, spatial resolution has been increasing in display systems while the temporal resolution, the frame rate, has not been changed. Because of this, researchers and filmmakers stress that motion judders and blurriness are much more apparent and they propose that high frame rates will solve the issue [Emoto et. Al 2014] [Turnock 2013]. Some industry experts and critics, however, oppose the use of high frame rates [Wilcox 2015]. Despite all the research and attempts in using high frame rate, the idea of using dynamic frame rate in digital cinema has not been explored in depth. As such, there is very limited information on how people perceive DFR and how it actually works. By understanding DFR and how viewers perceive the changes in frame rate, it will help us adapt new techniques in the creation of cinema. We can utilize high frame rate in sequences that could benefit from high frame rate while keeping the rest of the sequences at standard frame rate. This thesis aims to understand the basics of DFR, how different implementations of DFR changes viewer perception and how people perceive a change of frame rate in an animated movie sequence displayed.
Thirty-Day Readmission Rate Is High for Hospitalized Patients Discharged With Home Parenteral Nutrition or Intravenous Fluids

Background: Reducing hospital readmissions decreases healthcare costs and improves quality of care. There are no published studies examining the rate of, and risk factors for, 30-day readmissions for patients discharged with home parenteral support (HPS). Objective: Determine the rate of 30-day readmissions for patients discharged with HPS and whether malnutrition and other demographic or clinical factors increase the risk. Materials and Methods: Retrospective review of patients discharged with HPS from the Cleveland Clinic between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014, and followed by the Cleveland Clinic Home Nutrition Support Service. Results: Of the 224 patients studied, 31.6% (n = 71) had unplanned readmissions within 30 days of hospital discharge. Of these, 21.1% (n = 15) were HPS related, with catheter-related bloodstream infection (n = 5) and dehydration (n = 5) the most common. The majority of patients (84.4%) were diagnosed with malnutrition, but the presence or degree did not influence the readmissio...
Islam and Peace: A Preliminary Survey on the Sources of Peace in the Islamic Tradition

The conditions that are conducive to a state of peace are primarily spiritual and have larger implications for the cosmos, the individual, and society. Dr Ibrahim Kalin explains the theological and metaphysical foundations of the Islamic conception of Peace as well as the way this vision shaped Muslim Empires through centuries.
A Primer on Using Behavioral Data for Testing Theories in Advertising Research

Interactions with and between customers in digital, social, and mobile environments are commonly recorded, producing behavioral data that have the potential to advance advertising research. This article provides an accessible guide on how to leverage such data for advertising researchers who may have thus far relied mostly on lab experiment or survey data. Specifically, we suggest potential sources for behavioral data and present a process for analyzing and interpreting behavioral data. Each step of the process is discussed: exploring, understanding and preparing data; specifying and estimating models; and interpreting and presenting the results. Some fundamental issues with using multiple regression to analyze such data are covered, including standardization, outliers, transformations, multicollinearity, and the omitted variable bias. We also discuss issues that are especially problematic with using behavioral data in advertising research, including endogeneity, count data, data with many zeros, and grou...
Assistive Optimal Control-on-Request with Application in Standing Balance Therapy and Reinforcement

This chapter develops and applies a new control-on-request (COR) method to improve the capability of existing shared control interfaces. These COR enhanced interfaces allow users to request on-demand bursts of assistive computer control authority when manual/shared control tasks become too challenging. To enable the approach, we take advantage of the short duration of the desired control responses to derive an algebraic solution for the optimal switching control for differentiable nonlinear systems. Simulation studies show how COR interfaces present an opportunity for human–robot collaboration in standing balance therapy . In particular, we use the Robot Operating System (ROS) to show that optimal control-on-request achieves both therapy objectives of active patient participation and safety. Finally, we explore the potential of a COR interface as a vibrotactile feedback generator to dynamically reinforce standing balance through sensory augmentation.
Issues and Challenges for Teaching Successful Online Courses in Higher Education: A Literature Review

Online education changes all components of teaching and learning in higher education. Many empirical studies have been conducted to examine issues in delivering online courses; however, few have sy...
Using voltage-sensor toxins and their molecular targets to investigate Nav1.8 gating

Voltage-gated sodium (NaV ) channel gating is a complex phenomenon which involves a distinct contribution of four integral voltage-sensing domains (VSDI, VSDII, VSDIII and VSDIV). Utilizing accrued pharmacological and structural insights, we build on an established chimera approach to introduce animal toxin sensitivity in each VSD of an acceptor channel by transferring in portable S3b-S4 motifs from the four VSDs of a toxin-susceptible donor channel (NaV 1.2). By doing so, we observe that in NaV 1.8, a relatively unexplored channel subtype with distinctly slow gating kinetics, VSDI-III participate in channel opening whereas VSDIV can regulate opening as well as fast inactivation. These results illustrate the effectiveness of a pharmacological approach to investigate the mechanism underlying gating of a mammalian NaV channel complex.
Magnetic Properties of Cr 5 S 6 in Chromium Sulfides

Several samples of CrS x with 1.145<x< 1.200 were carefully prepared and chemically analyzed. The expected crystal structures were verified by x-ray analysis, which failed to indicate the presence of any impurities. Conductivity measurements indicated the existence of metallic conductivity in these samples between 77° and 300 °K. Magnetic measurements supported the suggestion that the ferrimagnetism of CrS x materials arises from the presence of the Cr5S6 phase.
Optoelectronic Devices Integrated on Silicon

Abstract Silicon is the established platform for analog and digital electric circuits and devices. The tremendous infrastructure and experience available in CMOS-silicon technology form an excellent basis for extending the functionality of the silicon platform by integrating new devices and materials. This approach is generally referred to as a “More than Moore” strategy, in contrast to the dimensional scaling of CMOS electronics according to Moore's law. A good example is microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). These devices are realized in silicon, building on the infrastructure, tools, and processes for CMOS devices, though additional processing steps are introduced that go beyond traditional CMOS processing schemes. Optical communication is another application area where silicon technology is now starting to play an important role. In this chapter, we will discuss the motivation for integrating optical devices in silicon and give an overview of some emerging silicon photonics technology platforms. Then, we describe the next level of integration in which III-V materials are monolithically cointegrated onto the silicon photonics platform for enhancing the functionality with active optical devices such as lasers and optical amplifiers.
Ion-selective electrode response in biologic fluids.

The response of ion-selective electrodes in biological fluids may be affected by a wide variety of physical and chemical factors. These may influence the indicator electrode directly or may affect the liquid junction of the reference electrode. A brief discussion is presented of the various sources of error and uncertainty in electrode measurements in biologic media especially with micro-electrodes. A serious need exists for the development of practical standards for the calibration of ion-selective electrodes in physiologic media in order to ensure the consistency of inter-laboratory measurements.
Abstract 14535: Regional in vivo Assessment of Myocardial Stiffness Using 3d Magnetic Resonance Elastography in a Pig Model With Induced Myocardial Infarction

Introduction: Myocardial stiffness is a novel biomarker with both diagnostic and prognostic potential in a range of cardiac diseases. The application of a noninvasive imaging technique called Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) to the heart enables the measurement of myocardial stiffness in vivo. The potential of this technique to assess regional myocardial stiffness has not yet been demonstrated. Hypothesis: MRE can regionally differentiate between normal and infarcted myocardial tissue. Methods: A myocardial infarction was induced in 5 pigs by embolizing the left circumflex artery with ceramic microspheres. Fourteen days post-surgery, imaging was performed in diastole on a 1.5 Tesla scanner (GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI) with 3-mm isotropic resolution using an ECG-gated spin-echo echo-planar-imaging MRE sequence with 140 Hz vibrations. After MRE, the pig was sacrificed using potassium chloride solution and the heart was excised and cut into short-axis slices and stained with 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) to identify the location of the myocardial infarction. Uniaxial tensile testing was performed (MTS, Eden Prairie, MN) on sections of infarcted and remote myocardium. For each pig, MRE stiffness images were calculated, and the mean stiffness was reported over two manually drawn ROIs, prescribed off the magnitude image, over both the infarct and remote normal myocardium. Results & Conclusions: Increased stiffness in myocardial infarctions was observed (Figure 1) in all 5 pigs, with mean infarct stiffness = 4.6 kPa ± 0.7 and normal stiffness = 3.0 kPa ± 0.6 (p = 0.02). Ex vivo uniaxial mechanical testing showed the mean tensile modulus was 0.65 ± 0.08 MPa and 0.11 ±0.02 MPa (p= 0.012) for the infarct and normal myocardium, respectively. This marks the first time that regional myocardial stiffness has been directly measureable in vivo and the first time that cardiac MRE has been validated against a material-testing reference standard.
Alfred Schutz and the Project of Phenomenological Social Theory

A discussion of Schutz’ phenomenological approach to social theory leads me to some fundamental doubts about his project. Is phenomenology’s central concept, intentionality, conducive to the task of understanding relations among persons? My doubts are expressed through a historical account: I claim the concept of intentionality was devised as a response to questions about the relation between human experience and nature. Applying it to social relations, I argue, may be a case of employing it outside its proper sphere.
Characterization of the baboon responses to Shiga-like toxin: descriptive study of a new primate model of toxic responses to Stx-1.

The baboon response to intravenous infusion of Shiga toxin 1 (Stx-1) varied from acute renal failure, proteinuria, hyperkalemia, and melena with minimal perturbation of host inflammatory and hemostatic systems (high-dose group, 2.0 μg/kg; n = 5) to renal failure with hematuria, proteinuria, thrombocytopenia, schistocytosis, anemia, and melena (low-dose group, 0.05 to 0.2 μg/kg; n = 8). Both groups exhibited renal shutdown and died in 57 hours or less. Both groups produced urine that was positive for tumor necrosis factor and interleukin-6 although neither of these cytokines was detectable (≤5 ng/ml) in the general circulation. Light and electron microscopy showed organelle disintegration and necrosis of the renal proximal tubular epithelium and of the intestinal mucosal epithelium at the tips of the microvilli, both of which were previously shown to bear Gb3 receptors. The renal distal tubular epithelium was spared. The renal proximal tubular epithelial changes were accompanied by swelling of visceral epithelial cells (podocytes) and by swelling and detachment of endothelial cells of the glomerular capillaries. In addition, all of the animals receiving low-dose Stx-1 showed microvascular fibrin deposition and thrombosis in renal glomerular and peritubular capillaries in association with a fall in hematocrit and platelet count and a rise in schistocyte count. The gastrointestinal villous tip lesions were accompanied by varying degrees of mucosal and submucosal congestion, hemorrhage, or necrosis. Electron microscopic images of cerebral cortex and cerebellum showed diffuse unraveling of myelin sheaths with occasional disintegration of neuronal cell bodies. In contrast to the gastrointestinal mucosal and renal proximal tubular epithelium, the Gb3 receptor glycolipid of the renal glomerular and neuronal tissues as determined using toxin overlay thin-layer chromatography plates was below the limit of detection (<13 pM/g wet tissue). We conclude that, depending on the status of the host and amount of toxin infused, Stx-1 can produce a variety of responses ranging from damage to cells carrying the Gb3 receptor (renal proximal tubular epithelial cells and gastrointestinal mucosa) to damage to renal glomerular tissues with microvascular thrombosis as a result of the host’s inflammatory response localized to the kidney. We conclude that this thrombotic coagulopathy arises from local changes in the kidney because the appearance of host inflammatory mediators was limited to the urine. This suggests that the initial host response is localized in the kidney, and that the systemic thrombocytopenia, anemia, and schistocytosis may arise secondarily.
A Follow-Up Study of the Effects of An Arm Support Exoskeleton on Physical Demands and Task Performance During Simulated Overhead Work

This study supports that use of an arm-support exoskeleton (ASE) can lower the activity of shoulder and lower trunk muscles during an overhead drilling and a light assembly task, and also improve w...
Recent trends in age at diagnosis of colon cancer in the United States, 2004-2015, a National Cancer Database study.

490Background: The incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) in adults younger than age 50 has been increasing in the US since 1970. The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening for CRC be...
Ring Oscillator Based Delta-Sigma ADCs

In this work, we will review recent advances in VCO based low power ADCs as well as present a summary of our recent and on-going works. We will present a 18.5fJ/step discrete-time VCO-based 0–1 MASH ADC as well as a continuous-time, third-order purely VCO-based ADC architecture. We will also present applications of our ADCs for sensing, such as capacitance-to-digital conversion and current-to-digital conversion.
Area-Specificity and Plasticity of History-Dependent Value Coding During Learning.

Summary Decision making is often driven by the subjective value of available options, a value which is formed through experience. To support this fundamental behavior, the brain must encode and maintain the subjective value. To investigate the area specificity and plasticity of value coding, we trained mice in a value-based decision task and imaged neural activity in 6 cortical areas with cellular resolution. History- and value-related signals were widespread across areas, but their strength and temporal patterns differed. In expert mice, the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) uniquely encoded history- and value-related signals with persistent population activity patterns across trials. This unique encoding of RSC emerged during task learning with a strong increase in more distant history signals. Acute inactivation of RSC selectively impaired the reward-history-based behavioral strategy. Our results indicate that RSC flexibly changes its history coding and persistently encodes value-related signals to support adaptive behaviors.
Data-Assistive Course-to-Course Articulation Using Machine Translation

Higher education at scale, such as in the California public post-secondary system, has promoted upward socioeconomic mobility by supporting student transfer from 2-year community colleges to 4-year degree granting universities. Among the barriers to transfer is earning enough credit at 2-year institutions that qualify for the transfer credit required by 4-year degree programs. Defining which course at one institution will count as credit for an equivalent course at another institution is called course articulation, and it is an intractable task when attempting to manually articulate every set of courses at every institution with one another. In this paper, we present a methodology towards making tractable this process of defining and maintaining articulations by leveraging the information contained within historic enrollment patterns and course catalog descriptions. We provide a proof-of-concept analysis using data from a 4-year and 2-year institution to predict articulation pairs between them, produced from machine translation models and validated by a set of 65 institutionally pre-established course-to-course articulations. Finally, we create a report of proposed articulations for consumption by the institutions and close with a discussion of limitations and the challenges to adoption.
A Framework for Identifying Neurobiologically Based Intervention Targets for NSSI

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a common problem in adolescents. Recent advances in understanding the neurobiology of NSSI can serve to guide the conceptualization and development of new treatments to address adolescent NSSI. The purpose of this review is to integrate the extant findings from neurobiological NSSI research, with the goal of identifying potential treatment targets. NSSI is associated with disruption across several neurobiological systems, including negative and positive valence, cognitive control, and social processes. These findings provide some groundwork for forming hypotheses about how to target these mechanisms, using psychotherapeutic, psychopharmacological, or neuromodulation approaches. Although the extant neurobiological research on NSSI still faces some limitations, recent advances in knowledge in this area have begun to identify possible treatment targets. Next steps should (a) confirm the relevance of these targets to NSSI using robust methodology, (b) test how these biological markers change with treatment, and (c) utilize these targets in experimental therapeutics research designed to optimize treatment strategies.
Mathematics of the Not-So-Solid Solid Earth

As a result of climatic variations over the past 700,000 years, large ice sheets in high-latitude regions of the Earth formed and subsequently melted, loading and unloading the surface of the Earth. This chapter introduces the mathematical analysis of the vertical motion of the solid Earth in response to this time-varying surface loading. This chapter focuses on two conceptual models: the first, proposed by Haskell [Physics, 6, 265–269 (1935)], describes the return to equilibrium of a viscous half-space after the removal of an applied surface load; the second, proposed by Farrell and Clark [Geophys. J. Royal Astr. Soc., 46, 647–667 (1976)], illustrates the changes in sea level that occur when ice and water are rearranged on the surface of the Earth. The sea level equation proposed by Farrell and Clark accounts for the fact that sea level represents the interface between two dynamic surfaces: the sea surface and the solid Earth, both of which are changing with time.
Large Shareholders of Rating Agencies and Timing Rating Changes

We find that large shareholders of Moody’s (affiliated investors) abnormally decrease their stock ownerships in a firm before its downgrade by Moody’s. This finding is stronger for informationally opaque stocks and active affiliated investors, significant only after Moody’s initial public offering when affiliated investors become Moody’s shareholders, and insignificant among Moody’s small shareholders and for rating upgrades that are not expected to impact stock prices. Affiliated investors do not trade abnormally before S&P’s or Fitch’s downgrades. Additional tests suggest that, rather than trading on illicit tips, affiliated investors have a soft information advantage in timing Moody’s ratings.
Opportunities to Enhance Discovery, Explorability, and Access for Digital Aerial Imagery Collections

The author discusses opportunities for enhancing discovery, explorability, and access for digital aerial imagery collections. These opportunities are informed by a user survey that was conducted to...
Analysis of Gut Microbiome Using Explainable Machine Learning Predicts Risk of Diarrhea Associated With Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Neratinib: A Pilot Study.

Neratinib has great efficacy in treating HER2+ breast cancer but is associated with significant gastrointestinal toxicity. The objective of this pilot study was to understand the association of gut microbiome and neratinib-induced diarrhea. Twenty-five patients (age ≥ 60) were enrolled in a phase II trial evaluating safety and tolerability of neratinib in older adults with HER2+ breast cancer (NCT02673398). Fifty stool samples were collected from 11 patients at baseline and during treatment. 16S rRNA analysis was performed and relative abundance data were generated. Shannon's diversity was calculated to examine gut microbiome dysbiosis. An explainable tree-based approach was utilized to classify patients who might experience neratinib-related diarrhea (grade ≥ 1) based on pre-treatment baseline microbial relative abundance data. The hold-out Area Under Receiver Operating Characteristic and Area Under Precision-Recall Curves of the model were 0.88 and 0.95, respectively. Model explanations showed that patients with a larger relative abundance of Ruminiclostridium 9 and Bacteroides sp. HPS0048 may have reduced risk of neratinib-related diarrhea and was confirmed by Kruskal-Wallis test (p ≤ 0.05, uncorrected). Our machine learning model identified microbiota associated with reduced risk of neratinib-induced diarrhea and the result from this pilot study will be further verified in a larger study. Clinical trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02673398.
Psychosocial factors 3-months after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction predict 6-month subjective and objective knee outcomes.

The objective of the study was to determine if psychological readiness for sport and knee self-efficacy assessed early (3 months) after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) are predictive of self-reported functional outcomes, quadriceps strength, and knee mechanics while running at the time of return to sport training (6 months). Thirty athletes with unilateral ACLR completed the ACL Return to Sport after Injury (ACL-RSI) and Knee Self-Efficacy Scale (K-SES) 3 months after ACLR and completed self-reported functional outcomes, isometric quadriceps strength testing, and three-dimensional running gait analysis 6 months after ACLR. The 3-month ACL-RSI significantly correlated with the 6-month International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC; r = 0.565, p = 0.001), Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) sport/recreational activities (KOOSSport ; r = 0.548, p = 0.002) and quality of life (KOOSQoL ; r = 0.431, p = 0.017), and quadriceps strength (r = 0.528, p = 0.003). The 3-month K-SES significantly correlated with the 6-month IKDC (r = 0.528, p = 0.003), KOOSSport (r = 0.430, p = 0.018), KOOSQoL (r = 0.411, p = 0.024), quadriceps strength (r = 0.465, p = 0.010), and knee flexion excursion (r = 0.472, p = 0.008). With multivariate modeling, both the ACL-RSI and K-SES were predictive of the IKDC (R2 = 0.411; p = 0.001). Only the ACL-RSI was predictive of the KOOSSport (R2 = 0.300; p = 0.002), KOOSQoL (R2 = 0.186; p = 0.017), and quadriceps strength (R2 = 0.279; p = 0.003), whereas only the K-SES was predictive of knee flexion excursion (R2 = 0.173; p = 0.022). Athletes with greater psychological readiness for sport and knee self-efficacy at 3 months demonstrated higher scores on self-reported functional outcomes, greater quadriceps strength, and greater knee flexion excursion at 6 months after ACLR. This study indicates that psychosocial measures may be important to include into early post-surgical evaluations to help guide and facilitate interventions to restore subjective and objective knee function.
The Physiometrics of Inflammatory Proteins and Implications for Medical and Psychiatric Research: Investigation of Empirically-informed Inflammatory Composites

Much inflammation research examines individual proteins; however, some studies have used summed score composites of all available inflammatory markers without first investigating dimensionality. Using three different samples (MIDUS-2: N = 1,255 adults, MIDUS-R: N =863 adults, and ACE: N = 315 adolescents), this study investigates the dimensionality of eight inflammatory proteins (C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-), fibrinogen, E-selectin, and intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1) and compares the resulting factor structure to a) an "a priori" factor structure in which all inflammatory proteins equally load onto a single dimension (a technique that has been used previously) and b) proteins modeled individually (i.e., no latent variable) in terms of model fit, replicability, reliability, temporal stability, and their associations with medical history and depression symptoms. A hierarchical factor structure with two first-order factors (Factor 1A: CRP, IL-6, fibrinogen; Factor 2A: TNF-, IL-8, IL-10, ICAM-1, IL-6) and a second-order general inflammation factor was identified in MIDUS-2 and replicated in MIDUS-R and partially replicated in ACE (which unfortunately only had CRP, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and TNF- but, unlike the other two, has longitudinal data). Both the empirically-identified structure and modeling proteins individually fit the data better compared to the one-dimensional "a priori" structure. Results did not clearly indicate whether the empirically-identified factor structure or the individual proteins modeled without a latent variable had superior model fit. Modeling the empirically-identified factors and individual proteins (without a latent factor) as outcomes of medical diagnoses resulted in comparable conclusions, but modeling empirically-identified factors resulted in fewer results "lost" to correction for multiple comparisons. Importantly, when the factor scores were recreated in a longitudinal dataset, none of the individual proteins, the "a priori" factor, or the empirically-identified general inflammation factor significantly predicted concurrent depression symptoms in multilevel models. However, both empirically-identified first-order factors were significantly associated with depression, in opposite directions. Measurement properties are reported for the different aggregates and individual proteins as appropriate, which can be used in the design and interpretation of future studies. These results indicate that modeling inflammation as a unidimensional construct equally associated with all available proteins does not fit the data well. Instead, empirically-supported aggregates of inflammation, or individual inflammatory markers, should be used in accordance with theory. Further, the aggregation of shared variance achieved by constructing empirically-supported aggregates might increase predictive validity compared to other modeling choices, maximizing statistical power.
Cancer metabolism: looking forward

Tumour initiation and progression requires the metabolic reprogramming of cancer cells. Cancer cells autonomously alter their flux through various metabolic pathways in order to meet the increased bioenergetic and biosynthetic demand as well as mitigate oxidative stress required for cancer cell proliferation and survival. Cancer driver mutations coupled with environmental nutrient availability control flux through these metabolic pathways. Metabolites, when aberrantly accumulated, can also promote tumorigenesis. The development and application of new technologies over the last few decades has not only revealed the heterogeneity and plasticity of tumours but also allowed us to uncover new metabolic pathways involved in supporting tumour growth. The tumour microenvironment (TME), which can be depleted of certain nutrients, forces cancer cells to adapt by inducing nutrient scavenging mechanisms to sustain cancer cell proliferation. There is growing appreciation that the metabolism of cell types other than cancer cells within the TME, including endothelial cells, fibroblasts and immune cells, can modulate tumour progression. Because metastases are a major cause of death of patients with cancer, efforts are underway to understand how metabolism is harnessed by metastatic cells. Additionally, there is a new interest in exploiting cancer genetic analysis for patient stratification and/or dietary interventions in combination with therapies that target metabolism. In this Perspective, we highlight these main themes that are currently under investigation in the context of in vivo tumour metabolism, specifically emphasizing questions that remain unanswered.
EBG-Based Self-Interference Cancellation to Enable mmWave Full-Duplex Wireless

Full-duplex (FD) wireless is a new technology that allows a wireless device to transmit and receive at the same time and on the same frequency. The key challenge to FD is self-interference (SI): a node’s transmitting signal generates significant interference to its own receiver. Recent works have proposed several techniques to reduce SI and enable FD but they are primarily specific to sub-6 GHz frequency bands. In this paper, we focus on mmWave frequencies and propose to design the antennas in a way that they reduce SI. In particular, we design a novel electromagnetic band gap (EBG) architecture and integrate it with the antenna array to reduce SI. Extensive simulations show that the proposed design reduces SI by more than 60 dB over 100 MHz of isolation bandwidth at 28 GHz frequency. We also show that the design has minimal impact on the antenna array gain, maintains the gain over large bandwidth, and has a return loss similar to a design with no EBG.