cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
An Active Learning Exercise for Product Design from an Operations Perspective

Product design is a topic that is regularly covered in introductory operations management courses. However, a pedagogical challenge exists related to the presentation of introductory-level product design in a way that promotes active learning. The hands-on exercise presented in this article provides instructors with an activity that gives students an open-ended opportunity to quickly develop a realistic product from conception to prototype. A unique material is used that allows students the flexibility to freely form a product prototype. A description of the exercise and an assessment of its efficacy in promoting student understanding of product design from an operations perspective are presented. Opportunities for future work are also identified.
Tobacco Control at Community Colleges: Context and Opportunities.

Introduction Tobacco use among United States college-aged students remains higher than that of the national average. While a majority of public health literature has explained smoking programs and policies at traditional four-year colleges and universities, little research exists on programs and policies at two-year community colleges. It is important to understand such efforts at these institutions as they have vastly different infrastructures and enroll a more diverse and at-risk student body compared to traditional four-year colleges. Methods The role of community colleges in health efforts aimed at smoking was examined at four community colleges. Qualitative research methods included 18 interviews and four focus groups (N=55), document review, and direct environmental observation. Results Community colleges offered a limited number of smoking cessation and secondhand smoke prevention initiatives. All colleges provided cessation literature, though additional programming varied by college. Indoor and outdoor smoking policies existed on all campuses though enforcement was problematic. Little evidence was found that current program and policy approaches are based upon best practices or are being employed successfully. Conclusions Future tobacco control initiatives at community colleges need to require little infrastructure and minimal staffing, and be low cost. Cessation tools for students must be convenient, understandable, and accessible from multiple locations. Feasible approaches for future initiatives could include testing low cost technology such as Web Assisted Tobacco Interventions (WATI) and outside partnerships with community organizations and health agencies. Policy enforcement could be improved with tobacco policy education at orientation for students, faculty and staff.
Physiology in Perspective: Aging and Underlying Pathophysiology

As Mark Twain said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.” But with the demographic shifts in our population, it is time for us to mind and pay more attention to the physiology of aging. In 2014, >46 million people in the U.S. (14.4% of the population) were
Personalized location models with adaptive mixtures

Personalization is increasingly important for a range of applications that rely on location-based modeling. A key aspect in building personalized models is using population-level information to smooth noisy sparse data at the individual level. In this paper we develop a general mixture model framework for learning individual-level location models where the model adaptively combines different types of smoothing information. In a series of experiments with Twitter geolocation data and Gowalla check-in data we demonstrate that the proposed approach can be significantly more accurate than more traditional smoothing and matrix factorization techniques. The improvement in performance over matrix factorization is pronounced and may be explained by the tendency of dimensionality reduction methods to over-smooth and not retain enough detail at the individual level.
The Role of Hospitality Service Quality in Third Places for the Elderly: An Exploratory Study

This study examines the role of hospitality service quality in a third place for the elderly using a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) setting. The study builds from the relational theory...
BETA EMITTOR IDENTIFICATION BY QUENCH ANALYSIS

Abstract A technique has been developed for the identification of beta emittors utilizing the quantity of associated quench produced in a liquid scintillation detection system. By comparing ratios of associated quench of a standard beta emittor with the quench produced by an unknown, relative absorption curves were produced. A standard curve was generated using the calculated slopes of several beta absorption curves. Utilization of the standard curve permits identification of unknown beta emittors. The presence of outside contaminants such as urine, salts, and dust do not significantly alter the response. The techniques may be incorporated into routine biological monitoring of radiation workers or in analyzing environmental samples.
Effect of 1,25(OH)2D3 and 20(OH)D3 on interleukin-1β-stimulated interleukin-6 and -8 production by human gingival fibroblasts

Background and Objective Vitamin D—1,25(OH)2D3 or 1,25D3—maintains healthy osseous tissue, stimulates the production of the antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin and has anti-inflammatory effects, but it can cause hypercalcemia. Evidence links diminished serum levels of 1,25D3 with increased gingival inflammation. Periodontitis progression is associated with increased local production of inflammatory mediators by immune cells and gingival fibroblasts. These include interleukin (IL)-6, a regulator of osteoclastic bone resorption, and the neutrophil chemoattractant IL-8, both regulated by signaling pathways, including NF-κB and MAPK/AP-1. The objectives were to determine the effects of 1,25D3 or a non-calcemic analog, 20-hydroxyvitamin D3—20(OH)D3 or 20D3—on IL-1β-stimulated IL-6 and IL-8 production, and NF-κB and MAPK/AP-1 activation, by human gingival fibroblasts. Material and Methods Human gingival fibroblasts were incubated ± IL-1β, with or without exposure to 1,25D3 or 20D3. IL-6 and IL-8 in culture supernatants were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. NF-κB (p65) and AP-1 (phospho-cJun) and were measured in nuclear extracts via binding to specific oligonucleotides. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and Scheffe's F procedure for post hoc comparisons. Results IL-1β-stimulated IL-6 and IL-8 levels were both significantly inhibited (40%-60%) (P<.045) by 1,25D3, but not 20D3 (0%-15% inhibition, not statistically significant). Both 1,25D3 and 20D3 significantly and similarly inhibited IL-1β-stimulated nuclear levels of p65 and phospho-cJun (P<.02). Conclusion Reduction of the activation of NF-κB and AP-1 alone is not able to inhibit strongly the IL-1β stimulated IL-6 and IL-8 gene expression. 1,25D3 but not 20D3 may affect some of the many other factors/processes/pathways that in turn regulate the expression of these genes. However, the results suggest that topical application of ligands of the vitamin D receptor may be useful in the local treatment of periodontitis while reducing adverse systemic effects.
Swell Potential Related to Building Performance

Forty structures constructed on a closed site located on the potentially expansive Beaumont Clay formation in Southeast Texas were evaluated for signs of structural distress. The observed distress was correlated to the mean swell potential, computed by common procedures involving soil index properties taken from boring information for the site, and only a weak relationship was found. Furthermore, structures situated entirely below the locally accepted zone of significant seasonal moisture change were found to experience approximately as much distress as those which had floor slabs and grade beams situated at the surface and had only their load bearing footings situated below the zone of seasonal moisture change. Stronger correlations were found between distress and variability of rainfall during and immediately after construction. However, the relatively low coefficients of correlation suggested that other factors not normally detected by widely spaced borings made for foundation design purposes may be important in the prediction of the degree of distress.
Excited State Dynamics of 6-Thioguanine.

Here we present the excited state dynamics of jet-cooled 6-thioguanine (6-TG), using resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI), IR–UV double resonance spectroscopy, and pump–probe spectroscopy in the nanosecond and picosecond time domains. We report data on two thiol tautomers, which appear to have different excited state dynamics. These decay to a dark state, possibly a triplet state, with rates depending on tautomer form and on excitation wavelength, with the fastest rate on the order of 1010 s–1. We also compare 6-TG with 9-enolguanine, for which we observed decay to a dark state with a 2 orders of magnitude smaller rate. At increased excitation energy (∼+500 cm–1) an additional pathway appears for the predominant thiol tautomer. Moreover, the excited state dynamics for 6-TG thiols is different from that recently predicted for thiones.
When is a skirt "national"? The popularization of the Wolnamchima ("Vietnamese skirt") in South Korea during the Vietnam War

Wolnamchima especially represents a dominant cultural phenomena among housewives and rural women in South Korea in the 1970s. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the Wolnamchima, with its Vietnamese modifier, had the ability to become so ubiquitous and to remain popular so long (until the 1980s) in rural areas of Korea. We have approached this study through the lens of two concepts. We borrow the first concept from Benedict Anderson (2006), who characterized a “nation” as an “imagined community.” Through his concept, one can examine impressions and stereotypes that Koreans held regarding the nation of Vietnam: the imagination of a country as different from Korea. The second concept is cultural authentication (Eicher & Erokosima, 1995), as compared to de-cultural authentication (Lutz, 2004). We have used a historical research methodology to gather and interpret our data, using primary and secondary sources.
Emerging Roles for the Lysosome in Lipid Metabolism

Precise regulation of lipid biosynthesis, transport, and storage is key to the homeostasis of cells and organisms. Cells rely on a sophisticated but poorly understood network of vesicular and nonvesicular transport mechanisms to ensure efficient delivery of lipids to target organelles. The lysosome stands at the crossroads of this network due to its ability to process and sort exogenous and endogenous lipids. The lipid-sorting function of the lysosome is intimately connected to its recently discovered role as a metabolic command-and-control center, which relays multiple nutrient cues to the master growth regulator, mechanistic target of rapamycin complex (mTORC)1 kinase. In turn, mTORC1 potently drives anabolic processes, including de novo lipid synthesis, while inhibiting lipid catabolism. Here, we describe the dual role of the lysosome in lipid transport and biogenesis, and we discuss how integration of these two processes may play important roles both in normal physiology and in disease.
Memory, Perception, and Policy Making

This chapter conceptualizes how historical memory influences the actor’s interpretation and understanding of the external world, especially in a specific situation such as a crisis or conflict. A few frameworks are developed to conceptualize the function of historical memory as the lens and motivational tool, and the conditions where historical memory influences the decision-making process. This chapter also discusses research methods regarding perception and attitude, especially about how to identify and measure the influences of historical memory in actors’ perception.
Drug–device combination products

Abstract Combination products, which comprise a medical device and a drug or a medical device and a biologic agent(s), represent a new trend in implantable therapeutics that is drawing a lot of interest from both the pharmaceutical industry and medical device companies. Many drug–device combination products, such as drug eluting stents, antimicrobial central venous catheters, and orthopedic device-based drug delivery systems, have demonstrated clinical success and result in a significant improvement in the quantity of patients’ life. This chapter describes the various types of drug–device combination products, focusing on the technology and the benefits underlying the development of these products.
Viaggiando nel tempo 3: la “fortezza” di Ras ed-Drek

In 1966 a building classified as a fortress was discovered on a hill to the east of Cape Bon, not far from Kerkouane. The discovery was carried out by a joint Italian-Tunisian team created by Sabatino Moscati and Echmi Sebai and directed by Ferruccio Barreca and Mohamed Fantar. The five large cisterns at the top of the building make it possible to classify the structure as a lighthouse. The signal had to indicate to the sailors also the location of a place of temple located on the tip called Ras ed-Drek and perhaps dedicated to the god Melqart.
An Experimental Examination of the Effects of Information Control on Budget Reporting with Relative Project Evaluation

ABSTRACT This paper examines the effects of providing information about coworkers' costs on binding, noncredible commitments and collusion in a capital budgeting setting with relative project evalu...
We Can’t Sell the Surplus Overseas—or Even Give It Away

Many people still say, “There’s really not a food surplus at all. The only problem for American agriculture is how to get the food we grow to the people who really need it.” Yet, there are good reasons why we can’t hope to sell all our surplus food to other countries. In fact, it’s even hard to give this food away.
Efficient routing for peer-to-peer overlays

Most current peer-to-peer lookup schemes keep a small amount of routing state per node, typically logarithmic in the number of overlay nodes. This design assumes that routing information at each member node must be kept small, so that the bookkeeping required to respond to system membership changes is also small, given that aggressive membership dynamics are expected. As a consequence, lookups have high latency as each lookup requires contacting several nodes in sequence. In this paper, we question these assumptions by presenting two peer-to-peer routing algorithms with small lookup paths. First, we present a one-hop routing scheme. We show how to disseminate information about membership changes quickly enough so that nodes maintain accurate routing tables with complete membership information. We also deduce analytic bandwidth requirements for our scheme that demonstrate its feasibility. We also propose a two-hop routing scheme for large scale systems of more than a few million nodes, where the bandwidth requirements of one-hop routing can become too large. This scheme keeps a fixed fraction of the total routing state on each node, chosen such that the first hop has low latency, and thus the additional delay is small. We validate our analytic model using simulation results that show that our algorithms can maintain routing information sufficiently up-to-date such that a large fraction (e.g., 99%) of the queries will succeed without being re-routed.
Vanishing bile duct syndrome temporally associated with ibuprofen use

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are widely used, but the potential hepatotoxic side effects are not always appreciated. Herein, we report the first case, to our knowledge, of an atopic patient in whom severe cholestatic jaundice from bile ductopenia developed 3 wk after initiation of ibuprofen therapy. This drug-induced vanishing bile duct syndrome is probably an immunological (hypersensitivity) reaction. Vanishing bile duct syndrome as a consequence of ibuprofen use should be considered as a potential cause of chronic cholestasis when other more common etiologies have been excluded.
Low-rank coding with b-matching constraint for semi-supervised classification

Graph based semi-supervised learning (GSSL) plays an important role in machine learning systems. The most crucial step in GSSL is graph construction. Although several interesting graph construction methods have been proposed in recent years, how to construct an effective graph is still an open problem. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to constructing graph, which is based on low-rank coding and b-matching constraint. By virtue of recent advances in low-rank subspace recovery theory, compact encoding using low-rank representation coefficients allows us to obtain a robust similarity metric between all pairs of samples. Meanwhile, the b-matching constraint helps in obtaining a sparse and balanced graph, which benefits label propagation in GSSL. We build a joint optimization model to learn low-rank codes and balanced graph simultaneously. After using a graph re-weighting strategy, we present a semi-supervised learning algorithm by incorporating our sparse and balanced graph with Gaussian harmonic function (GHF). Experimental results on the Extended YaleB, PIE, ORL and USPS databases demonstrate that our graph outperforms several state-of-the-art graphs, especially when the labeled samples are very scarce.
Human cerebral malaria.

Possible factors contributing to the development of cerebral malaria were discussed based on pathological changes in Burmese patients who died of cerebral malaria. Blockage of cerebral capillaries by Plasmodiumfakiparum infected erythrocytes appeared to be the principal cause of cerebral malaria. From electron microscopic results, it was concluded that knobs on infected erythrocytes acted as focal junctions which mediated adhesion to endothelial cells. The knobs are, therefore, important contributors to the blockage of the capillary lumen and ensuing pathological changes in cerebral tissues. Host cell molecules such as OKM5 and thrombospondin may function as endothelial cell surface receptors for the attachment of knobs of P.fakiparum infected erythrocytes. Immunological events might also play a role in the pathogenesis of cerebral malaria. This was suggested by the presence of IgG, 1gM, P. falciparum antigens, and knob proteins in the cerebral capillaries of the people with cerebral malaria. It will be important to assess the candidate malaria vaccines now in development not only for their efficacy in reducing parasitemia but for effects they may have on the sequestration of infected erythrocytes in the brain.
Strategic Alliances in the Triad: An Exploratory Study:

The Triad nations—Japan, North America, and Western Europe— have emerged in recent decades. To cope with the growing international competition between these areas, firms based in these countries ha...
An Isoquinoline Scaffold as a Novel Class of Allosteric HIV-1 Integrase Inhibitors.

Allosteric HIV-1 integrase inhibitors (ALLINIs) are a new class of potential antiretroviral therapies with a unique mechanism of action and drug resistance profile. To further extend this class of inhibitors via a scaffold hopping approach, we have synthesized a series of analogues possessing an isoquinoline ring system. Lead compound 6l binds in the v-shaped pocket at the IN dimer interface and is highly selective for promoting higher-order multimerization of inactive IN over inhibiting IN-LEDGF/p75 binding. Importantly, 6l potently inhibited HIV-1NL4–3 (A128T IN), which confers marked resistance to archetypal quinoline-based ALLINIs. Thermal degradation studies indicated that at elevated temperatures the acetic acid side chain of specific isoquinoline derivatives undergo decarboxylation reactions. This reactivity has implications for the synthesis of various ALLINI analogues.
Dual Portraits of the Deceased in Yangqiaopan M1, Jingbian, Shaanxi

Murals decorating an Eastern Han tomb excavated in Jingbian, Shaanxi include two large-scale representations of the deceased who appears in a processional scene on the left front wall of the tomb wearing typical Han elite dress, and then again on the rear wall in a regional version of a spirit seat (lingwei) composition, clean-shaven and donning a hairstyle uncommon in Han mortuary art. This paper considers these depictions in terms of Han pictorial conventions and argues that they are dual portraits of the deceased in which different attributes of his political, social, and cultural identity are stressed.
Identification of Suitable Consumer Groups for Participation in Demand Response Programs

Distribution utilities serve millions of customers and have traditionally depended on measurements with low temporal resolution, historical data or pseudo-measurements. With increasing deployment of residential smart meters in recent years, they now have access to a very large amount of data and need efficient data mining strategies to effectively utilize consumer consumption information. This paper presents a computationally efficient strategy using k-means clustering for identifying suitable candidates in demand-response programs. The attribute selection approach used takes into account the average annual consumption of customers, shapes of their load profiles and also aims to minimize computation burden. The objective is to identify a small group of customers who can be incentivized to curtail their peak period consumption leading to significant aggregate peak-shaving for the utility. Performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated using real-world data from the Irish smart meter trial.
Made in My Village: Exploring Country of Origin Effects and Bi-National Products Across Cohorts in Ukraine

AbstractUkraine’s geopolitical past has created a unique environment for consumer socialization and global marketing. This study investigated possible cohort differences in the ways that Ukrainians...
In-Bore Experimental Validation of Active Compensation and Membrane Puncture Detection for Targeted MRI-Guided Robotic Prostate Biopsy

It is estimated that in the United States there will be 164,690 new cases and 29,430 deaths from prostate cancer in 2018 [1]. Trans-Rectal Ultrasound (TRUS) has typically been used to facilitate sampling of up to twenty biopsy cores, but due to variable prostate size this technique often still misses clinically significant cancers [2]. Instead, MRI provides higher image quality and multiparametric imaging, allowing for procedures with fewer needle insertions via direct targeting of suspicious lesions.
TRANSIENT BOWEL ISCHEMIA FROM MIGRATION OF AN AXILLARY INTRA-AORTIC BALLOON PUMP

Optimal placement of the distal tip of an axillary IABP is not known with unique challenges to this approach. Few cases of axillary intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) migration into the superior mesenteric artery (SMA) have been reported. A 37 year old female with end-stage heart failure underwent
"She's the Center of My Life, the One That Keeps My Heart Open": Roles and Expectations of Native American Women.

Historically, Native American (NA) mothers have proven essential to the survival of their families and communities, yet scant research has examined their roles today. Current gender roles in NA com...
Assessment of Value of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status in Models That Use Electronic Health Record Data to Predict Health Care Use Rates and Mortality.

Importance Prediction models are widely used in health care as a way of risk stratifying populations for targeted intervention. Most risk stratification has been done using a small number of predictors from insurance claims. However, the utility of diverse nonclinical predictors, such as neighborhood socioeconomic contexts, remains unknown. Objective To assess the value of using neighborhood socioeconomic predictors in the context of 1-year risk prediction for mortality and 6 different health care use outcomes in a large integrated care system. Design, setting, and participants Diagnostic study using data from all adults age 18 years or older who had Kaiser Foundation Health Plan membership and/or use in the Kaiser Permantente Northern California: a multisite, integrated health care delivery system between January 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014. Data were recorded before the index date for each patient to predict their use and mortality in a 1-year post period using a test-train split for model training and evaluation. Analyses were conducted in fall of 2019. Main outcomes and measures One-year encounter counts (doctor office, virtual, emergency department, elective hospitalizations, and nonelective), total costs, and mortality. Results A total of 2 951 588 patients met inclusion criteria (mean [SD] age, 47.2 [17.4] years; 47.8% were female). The mean (SD) Neighborhood Deprivation Index was -0.32 (0.84). The areas under the receiver operator curve ranged from 0.71 for emergency department use (using the LASSO method and electronic health record predictors) to 0.94 for mortality (using the random forest method and electronic health record predictors). Neighborhood socioeconomic status predictors did not meaningfully increase the predictive performance of the models for any outcome. Conclusions and relevance In this study, neighborhood socioeconomic predictors did not improve risk estimates compared with what is obtainable using standard claims data regardless of model used.
Putting the August Krogh principle to work in developmental physiology

Abstract The August Krogh principle has guided many comparative physiological studies, being especially useful for developmental physiology. Several attributes of unusual, if not unique, animals enable researchers to understand developmental phenomena more generally – the essence of the Krogh principle. This article provides examples of unusual traits of animals currently being used to understand development and reproduction. 1) Accelerated development greatly minimizes time spent examining how animals develop across time from egg to adult. For example, the tropical gar begins to breath air within as little as 2.5 days after hatching – much faster than other air-breathing fishes - facilitating study of the development of respiratory reflexes in fishes. 2) Transparency of the body wall has been exploited to image cardiac output in near-microscopic larvae of the zebrafish and mahi mahi, and to capitalize on bacterial biosensors to investigate development of in vivo digestive function in Caenorhabditis elegans. 3) Gigantism, as in the chicken-sized embryos of the emu, or the larvae of the paradoxical frog, allows surgeries not otherwise feasible. 4) Reproductive traits such as polyembryony in armadillos and parthenogenesis in planaria have informed us about classic gene vs. environment questions. Finally, 5) large body mass range enables clearer allometric analyses. Insects like the silk moth, show a more than a 1000-fold difference between eggs and adults. The August Krogh principle, then, is not simply to justify the study of exotic animals (as interesting as that is!), but has been used to generate a broader synthesis and understanding of all taxa.
Externally heated geothermal bridge deck: Performance analysis of the U-tube ground heat exchanger

In recent years, the geothermal heat pump de-icing system (GHDS) is introduced as a sustainable solution for bridge deck de-icing, which utilizes renewable geothermal energy. Existing GHDS designs mostly rely upon hydronic loops embedded in concrete decks. To extend the GHDS for existing bridges, a new external hydronic deck has been developed recently, which employs a hydronic pipe being attached to the bottom surface of the bridge deck. In this study, the performance of the externally heated geothermal bridge deck is investigated through winter deicing and summer recharging tests with the focus on the ground loop heat exchanger (GLHE), a key component of the GHDS. The test results show that the de-icing system was successful in maintaining the deck surface temperature above freezing in all winter tests. The soil temperature measurements indicate, the 132.5 m vertical U-tube ground heat exchanger is benefited from the undisturbed soil temperature of around 21 °C. The overall average hourly heat extraction of 0.67 kW during winter operation and average hourly heat injection of 0.69 kW during the summer operation were observed. Also, the ground thermal recharge test showed the increase of undisturbed soil temperature at 1.5 m from the geothermal borehole by 0.36 °C after 50 days of system operation.
Deception in weight-loss advertising: Newspaper use of press releases issued by the Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates advertising associated with dietary supplements, acting for consumers in cases of deception. This study examines the extent to which regional and nation...
A Descriptive Analysis of the Scientific Literature on Meteorological and Air Quality Factors and COVID-19

The role of meteorological and air quality factors in moderating the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and severity of COVID-19 is a critical topic as an opportunity for targeted intervention and relevant public health messaging. Studies conducted in early 2020 suggested that temperature, humidity, ultraviolet radiation, and other meteorological factors have an influence on the transmissibility and viral dynamics of COVID-19. Previous reviews of the literature have found significant heterogeneity in associations but did not examine many factors relating to epidemiological quality of the analyses such as rigor of data collection and statistical analysis, or consideration of potential confounding factors. To provide greater insight into the current state of the literature from an epidemiological standpoint, the authors conducted a rapid descriptive analysis with a strong focus on the characterization of COVID-19 health outcomes and use of controls for confounding social and demographic variables such as population movement and age. We have found that few studies adequately considered the challenges posed by the use of governmental reporting of laboratory testing as a proxy for disease transmission, including timeliness and consistency. In addition, very few studies attempted to control for confounding factors, including timing and implementation of public health interventions and metrics of population compliance with those interventions. Ongoing research should give greater consideration to the measures used to quantify COVID-19 transmission and health outcomes as well as how to control for the confounding influences of public health measures and personal behaviors.
Metformin intoxication requiring dialysis.

Metformin (MTF) is one of the most common oral agents used to treat diabetes mellitus. Intoxication is associated with lactic acidosis and has significant clinical consequences. We report 12 cases requiring dialytic intervention. Twelve patients were analyzed from 2005 to 2010; 10 of these patients were treated with dialysis. Conventional hemodialysis (HD) and continuous veno-venous hemodialysis treatments with bicarbonate dialysis were used, and the results were presented as mean and standard deviation. The results are as follows: 33% of the patients were male, hospital stay was 9.3 (± 12) days, average MTF dose 1.7 g/day, mortality was 25%. Baseline glomerular filtration rate for these patients was 51.5 mL/min, with an average age of 64 (± 11) years. On presentation, all had acute kidney injury with blood urea nitrogen/creatinine 75 (± 30)/8.1 (± 3.7) mg/dL, lactic acid 12.4 (± 8.1) mmol/L, pH 7.04 (± 0.19), bicarbonate 7.2 (± 4.5) mmol/L. Metformin level was 25 (± 17) µg/mL; anion gap was 28 (± 9), and serum potassium was 5.4 (± 1.3) mEq/L. Seventy percent of patients were treated with conventional HD. Patients required 4 (± 5) dialysis treatments at blood flow QB 330 (± 53), dialysis flow QD 571 (± 111) for 305 (± 122) minutes. Postdialysis, the acidosis parameters improved: bicarbonate 19.2 (± 4.1) mmol/L, lactic acid 6 (± 4) mmol/L and MTF levels decreased 8.9 (± 5.7) µg/mL. Metformin percentage removal was calculated to be 60% (± 24). No difference was found between HD and continous veno-venous hemodialysis. The only difference between survivors was the age 53 (± 7) vs. 78 (± 10) (P < 0.05). Metformin toxicity is a serious clinical condition and causes severe lactic acidosis and significant mortality. Hemodialysis is an efficient method to treat MTF intoxication and correct the metabolic abnormalities.
Oxidation of Alcohols by Botrytis cinerea

Crude cell-free preparations of Botrytis cinerea were found to oxidize straight-chain primary alcohols (except methanol), aromatic primary alcohols, and unsaturated primary alcohols. The resulting products were the corresponding aldehydes and an equal molar quantity of hydrogen peroxide.
Increased Long-Term Mortality among Black CABG Patients Receiving Preoperative Inotropic Agents

The aim of this study was to examine racial differences in long-term mortality after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), stratified by preoperative use of inotropic agents. Black and white patients who required preoperative inotropic support prior to undergoing CABG procedures between 1992 and 2011 were compared. Mortality probabilities were computed using the Kaplan-Meier product-limit method. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were computed using a Cox regression model. A total of 15,765 patients underwent CABG, of whom 211 received preoperative inotropic agents within 48 hours of surgery. Long-term mortality differed by race (black versus white) among preoperative inotropic category (inotropes: adjusted HR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.009-2.4; no inotropes: adjusted HR = 1.15, 95% CI = 1.08-1.2; P(interaction) < 0.0001). Our study identified an independent preoperative risk-factor for long-term mortality among blacks receiving CABG. This outcome provides information that may be useful for surgeons, primary care providers, and their patients.
Construction of Lactose-Assimilating and High-Ethanol-Producing Yeasts by Protoplast Fusion

The availability of a yeast strain which is capable of fermenting lactose and at the same time is tolerant to high concentrations of ethanol would be useful for the production of ethanol from lactose. Kluyveromyces fragilis is capable of fermenting lactose, but it is not as tolerant as Saccharomyces cerevisiae to high concentrations of ethanol. In this study, we have used the protoplast fusion technique to construct hybrids between auxotrophic strains of S. cerevisiae having high ethanol tolerance and an auxotrophic strain of lactose-fermenting K. fragilis isolated by ethyl methanesulfonate mutagenesis. The fusants obtained were prototrophic and capable of assimilating lactose and producing ethanol in excess of 13% (vol/vol). The complementation frequency of fusion was about 0.7%. Formation of fusants was confirmed by the increased amount of chromosomal DNA per cell. Fusants contained 8 x 10 to 16 x 10 mug of DNA per cell as compared with about 4 x 10 mug of DNA per cell for the parental strains, suggesting that multiple fusions had taken place.
Adaptive Control Strategies for Process Startup

In many process control problems it is desirable to startup the process by making a smooth and rapid transition to the desired operating condition with little or no overshoot. For processes with large thermal capacitances, it is especially difficult to avoid overshoot during startup unless a very conservative (i.e., slow) startup is implemented. Adaptive control strategies are a promising solution because they can be used to predict the time at which heating should be stopped and cooling begun. Simulation studies for a fluidized sandbath demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach.
A ética em Watchmen

No presente texto vem apresentar aspectos eticos e pedagogico da historia em quadrinho Watchmen. Teorias sobre etica de diversos filosofos e historia mundial sao apresentadas nesta historia, atraves de uma obra para o entretenimento. Pretende-se apresentar alguns Super-Herois de Watchmen, e mostrar como cada um deles apresenta um aspecto importante da referidas teorias eticas. Destacando a etica aristotelica, Kantiana e Utilitarista.
Efficient Coupling and Transport of a Surface Plasmon at 780 nm in a Gold Nanostructure

We study plasmonic nanostructures in single-crystal gold with scanning electron and femtosecond photoemission electron microscopies. We design an integrated laser coupling and nanowire waveguide structure by focused ion beam lithography in single-crystal gold flakes. The photoemission results show that the laser field is efficiently coupled into a propagating surface plasmon by a simple hole structure and propagates efficiently in an adjacent nano-bar waveguide. A strong local field is created by the propagating surface plasmon at the nano-bar tip. A similar structure, with a decreased waveguide width and thickness, displayed significantly more intense photoemission indicating enhanced local electric field at the sharper tip.
Border Effects on Yields in a Strip‐Intercropped Soybean, Corn, and Wheat Production System

Strip-intercropping of corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] normally results in corn producing a negative border effect on soybean production. This study was conducted to determine whether including a small grain strip between corn and soybean strips could reduce the negative border effects of corn and enhance soybean yields. Corn, soybean, and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were grown as strip intercrops (15-ft wide) in a ridge-till system at two locations in southern Minnesota from 1991 through 1994 and were compared with a two-crop corn-soybean system. Rows were oriented east-west at one location and north-south at the other. Soybean yield in the three-crop system was reduced by 17% for the north row adjacent to corn and 8% for the south row next to wheat compared with nonborder east-west rows. In north-south rows, soybean yields were reduced by 21% in the east row next to corn compared with nonborder rows with no yield reduction in the west row next to wheat. In the two-crop corn-soybean strip system, soybean yields were reduced by 34 and 11% in the south and north border rows, respectively, compared with the nonborder rows in east-west rows. In north-south rows, the outside east row yielded 19% less and the west row yielded 21% less than the nonborder rows. Corn yield of the outside north row next to wheat in east-west rows was 6% greater while the south row next to soybean yielded 18% greater than the nonborder rows. In north-south rows, the east outside row next to wheat yielded 23% greater and the west row next to soybean yielded 27% greater than the nonborder rows. In the two-crop system, yield of the outside corn rows was enhanced similarly compared with the nonborder rows in both row orientations. Wheat yield in the 5-ft section next to soybean was 4% greater than the center 5-ft section and 6% greater than the 5-ft section next to corn in east-west rows and 9 and 17% greater in north-south rows. Results from this 4-yr study indicate that wheat planted between corn and soybean strips improved soybean production over the two-crop system without adversely affecting wheat yields. Corn production was enhanced by 9 to 12% in north-south rows and 2 to 7% in east-west rows in both the two-and three-crop strip systems.
Atomistic treatment of nanotube-metal interfaces

As silicon-based devices progressively move down towards atomistic dimensions, there is a lot of interest in assessing post-CMOS devices of the quantum wire and quantum dot flavor. Understanding transport through nanotube-metal interfaces requires a combination of expertise belonging to different domains of research. One needs electronic structure calculations that do justice to the individual tube and metal bandstructures, surface physics calculations that describe the geometry and surface states of the relaxed metal-nanotube interfaces, quantum chemical codes that describe the bonding between the tube and metal atoms, electrostatic codes that describe charge and potential rearrangement driven by the workfunction difference between the tube and the metal, and quantum transport calculations that describe non-equilibrium transport through the interface under bias. In this article, we discuss how we can combine insights and techniques from these disparate disciplines into one unified formalism to generate an atomistic code for studying nanotube-metal interfaces. Such a natural partitioning is offered by the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) treatment of transport where we model the device bandstructure within a suitable Hamiltonian, the self-consistent electrostatic potential separately using Poisson's equation, and the contact-induced shifting and broadening of the tube levels using self-energy matrices.
Food demand in rural China: evidence from rural household survey

Abstract The recent rural reforms in China have had great effects on agricultural production and productivity as well as rural household consumption. While much has been written on production and productivity effects of these reforms, very few Chinese studies have attempted to analyze the changes in rural consumption patterns. This paper uses a dynamic AIDS model to estimate various food demand parameters for Chinese rural households using rural household survey data recently released by the China State Statistical Bureau. The results show that all important food commodities including rice, wheat, coarse grains, vegetables, meat, tobacco and alcohol have positive expenditure elasticities. Rice, wheat and coarse grains are necessities, while meat, vegetables, alcohol and tobacco are luxuries. The expenditure elasticities for rice, coarse grains and tobacco are declining, but those for wheat, meat, vegetables and alcohol are increasing. As per capita income rises and population increases, the demand for these items will continue to increase. Therefore, China must continue to increase its food production by a greater rate in the future in order to avoid food shortages.
Robustness of noise filtering by kriging analysis

In geostatistics, factorial kriging is often proposed to filter noise. This filter is built from a linear model which is ideally suited to a Gaussian signal with additive independent noise. Robustness of the performance of factorial kriging is evaluated in less congenial situations. Three different types of noise are considered all perturbing a lognormally distributed signal. The first noise model is independent of the signal. The second noise model is heteroscedastic; its variance depends on the signal, yet noise and signal are uncorrelated. The third noise model is both heteroscedastic and linearly correlated with the signal. In ideal conditions, exhaustive sampling and additive independent noise, factorial kriging succeeds to reproduce the spatial patterns of high signal values. This score remains good in presence of heteroscedastic noise variance but falls quickly in presence of noise-to-signal correlation as soon as the sample becomes sparser.
Correctness and determinism of parallel Monte Carlo processes

Abstract Many natural processes are best modeled by Monte Carlo type algorithms. When parallelizing these, several problems emerge. Some difficulties are well known from parallelizing algorithms in general, such as data coherence or load balancing. Other problems are specific to this kind of algorithm, namely code correctness and deterministic behavior of the code. We illustrate these two problems by describing and iPSC/2 implementation of a simple simulation of population evolution. This paper describes two techniques, the unrolling of an algorithm and the usage of decision dependent random seeds, which may be useful for adapting other dynamic algorithms to parallel computers.
Discovering long lifetime routes in mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, node mobility causes frequent link failures, thus invalidating the routes containing those links. Once a link is detected broken, an alternate route has to be discovered, incurring extra route discovery overhead and packet latency. The traffic is also interrupted at the transport layer, and proper traffic recovery schemes have to be applied. To reduce the frequency of costly route re-discovery procedures and to maintain continuous traffic flow for reliable transport layer protocols, we suggest discovering long lifetime routes (LLR). In this paper, we first propose g-LLR, a global LLR discovery algorithm, that discovers LLRs of different route lengths for any given pair of nodes. We then propose a distributed LLR discovery scheme (d-LLR) that discovers two of the most desirable LLRs through one best-effort route discovery procedure. Simulations show that the lifetimes of the routes discovered by d-LLR are very close to those discovered by g-LLR. Simulations also show that the performance of different transport layer protocols is greatly improved by using LLRs. More importantly, traffic can remain continuous using the provided LLRs. D-LLR can be implemented as an extension to existing ad hoc routing protocols, and it improves the performance of transport layer protocols without modifications on them.
Nuclear delivery of p53 C-terminal peptides into cancer cells using scFv fragments of a monoclonal antibody that penetrates living cells

scFv fragments of a monoclonal antibody that penetrates living cells and localizes in nuclei were designed as fusion proteins with C-terminal p53 peptides and tested for restoring p53 function in p53 mutant cancer cells. scFv fragments transported a 30-mer C-terminal peptide of p53 into cancer cells and induced cellular cytotoxicity in contrast to scFv fragments alone and other scFv-p53 fusion peptides. Cellular toxicity was not observed with scFv fragments containing a single mutation in VH that prevented antibody penetration. Our results demonstrate the potential efficacy of antibody scFv fragments as a nuclear delivery system in cancer cells.
A Lower Bound for the Dimension of Trivariate Spline Spaces

We consider trivariate Cr spline spaces of degree d defined on arbitrary tetrahedral partitions. A lower bound for the dimension of trivariate spline spaces over arbitrary tetrahedral partitions for d > r is computed. This is the first general lower bound known.
Excimer pulsed laser ablation of polymers in air and liquids for micromachining applications

Abstract Micromachining of polymers is an important field that has both immediate and future applications in diverse fields such as medicine, microelectromechanical systems, and photonics. In this work, ultraviolet pulsed laser ablation of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene (PE) was performed using a KrF (krypton-fluoride) excimer laser in air, methanol, and ethyl alcohol. The size of the hole and etch depth were marginally increased in PMMA but were markedly reduced in PP and PE by the organics. There are other beneficial and detrimental effects of the organics in regard to the taper of the hole, contamination, thermal damage, and cracking that are explained based on laser-liquid-polymer interactions, which include self-focusing, chemical reactions, pressure-wave generation, and thermal quenching. Existing polymer ablation models were used to describe the observed etch depth versus incident laser energy fluence.
Phase Identification in Heated Thermal Barrier Coatings using Microbeam X-ray Diffraction Combined with Quantitative X-ray Mapping

Phase evolution in a yttria-partially-stabilized zirconia (Y-PSZ) thermal barrier coating (TBC) was studied by using quantitative electron probe x-ray mapping combined with microbeam x-ray diffraction. The as-sprayed coating contains a single t ' phase with the composition of the feedstock material. After annealing at 1400 °C for 1 hour, the yttria content of the t ' phase increases slightly to compensate for the formation of 0.06 mass fraction of a t phase containing 0.01 mole fraction YO 1.5 . These results are in contrast to those determined by bulk x-ray and neutron diffraction, and therefore highlight the need for multiple techniques of phase analysis in Y-PSZ.