cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Triazolecarboxamidate Donors as Supporting Ligands for Nickel Olefin Polymerization Catalysts

To increase the structural diversity of dinucleating platforms that are used in the construction of olefin polymerization catalysts, we are exploring new ligand designs that feature non-alkoxide/phenoxide bridging groups. In the current study, we demonstrate that 1,2,3-triazole-4-carboxamidate donors are excellent N,N-chelators for nickel and can readily bind secondary metal ions. We found that sterically bulky nickel triazolecarboxamidate complexes are active as ethylene homopolymerization catalysts and can afford low molecular weight polyethylene with about 80–130 branches per 1000 carbon atoms. The addition of zinc salts to our nickel complexes led to catalyst inhibition in some cases, which we have attributed to the formation of catalytically inactive mixed-metal species. To circumvent this problem, we anticipate that further elaboration of the triazolecarboxamidate ligand could provide discrete heterobimetallic complexes that will be useful as single-site catalysts with unique reactivity patterns.
G protein βγ subunits directly interact with and activate phospholipase Cϵ

Phospholipase C (PLC) enzymes hydrolyze membrane phosphatidylinositol 4,5 bisphosphate (PIP2) and regulate Ca2+ and protein kinase signaling in virtually all mammalian cell types. Chronic activation of the PLCE isoform downstream of G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) contributes to the development of cardiac hypertrophy. We have previously shown that PLCE-catalyzed hydrolysis of Golgi-associated phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) in cardiac myocytes depends on G protein βγ subunits released upon stimulation with endothelin-1. PLCE binds and is directly activated by Ras family small GTPases, but whether they directly interact with Gβγ has not been demonstrated. To identify PLCE domains that interact with Gβγ, here we designed various single substitutions and truncations of WT PLCE and tested them for activation by Gβγ in transfected COS-7 cells. Deletion of only a single domain in PLCE was not sufficient to completely block its activation by Gβγ, but blocked activation by Ras. Simultaneous deletion of the C-terminal RA2 domain and the N-terminal CDC25 and cysteine-rich domains completely abrogated PLCE activation by Gβγ, but activation by the GTPase Rho was retained. In vitro reconstitution experiments further revealed that purified Gβγ directly interacts with a purified fragment of PLCE (PLCE-PH-RA2) and increases PIP2 hydrolysis. Deletion of the RA2 domain decreased Gβγ binding and eliminated Gβγ stimulation of PIP2 hydrolysis. These results provide first evidence that Gβγ directly interacts with PLCE and yield insights into the mechanism by which βγ subunits activate PLCE.
Keynote: Artificial Intelligence in the Service of Citizens’ Care

eGovernment data is typically very rich, mixing many different kinds of content ranging from relational data to unstructured text. The complexity of integrating those various kinds of data is in my opinion one of the main hurdles slowing down eGovernment endeavours. In this talk, I will advocate Big Data Integration techniques to solve this issue. I will start this talk by giving an overview of Big Data Integration techniques. I will then describe two recent systems built in my lab and leveraging such techniques: Zen-Crowd, a socio-technical platform that automatically connects Web documents to semi-structured entities in a knowledge graph, and Guider, a Big Data Integration system for the cloud.
Hospitalization for Mental and Other Disorders

Our focus is, of course, the inpatient treatment of mental disorders in general hospitals. As the next chapter will describe more completely, nonfederal, short-term general hospitals represent the centerpiece, now and throughout this century, of the American system of health delivery and policy. Our interests that led us to the “unnoticed majority” was mental health, not physical health. It is important to place this investigation in some historical perspective—especially so because the treatment of serious mental disorders may be triggering many other associations in the minds of our readers, such as deinstitutionalization, the homeless, the welfare state, nursing homes, and the poor.
Television and internet commercials avoidance

This dissertation deals with the problem of video advertising avoidance by TV and Internet viewers. It focuses on the counterintuitive but systematic detrimental impact that brands (logos, trademarks pack shots) as well as emotional evoking scenes (joyous and surprising) may have on commercials avoidance (zapping). Theoretical and empirical support is provided for each phenomenon as well as rigorously tested methods to counteract the negative aspects of branding and emotional scenes without loosing their clear benefits. In Chapter 1, I develop a conceptual framework for understanding the impact that branding activity (the audio-visual representation of brands) and consumers' dispersion of attention have on their moment-to-moment avoidance decisions during television advertising. I formalize this in a Dynamic Probit Model and estimate it with MCMC methods. New, simple metrics of attention dispersion are shown to strongly predict avoidance. I optimize the branding activity under marketing control for ads in the sample to reduce commercial avoidance. This reveals that pulsing the brand presence—while keeping total brand exposure constant—decreases commercial avoidance significantly. In Chapter 2, I study the concomitant effect of two positive emotions, joy and surprise, moment-to-moment on both the viewer's visual attention and on their avoidance decisions (zapping) of Internet commercials. To do so, I propose a novel non-obtrusive means to automatically capture and classify emotions via images from their facial expressions while, at the same time, tracking their eye-movements. Using a simultaneous version of the model in Chapter 1, I find that Joy reduces zapping momentarily with little persistent effect and that this is largely a direct effect, with minimal influence on attention distraction. I also find that Surprise works mainly indirectly by momentarily reducing zapping but at the expense of causing major attentional distraction. The implication for advertisers is that Joyous ads should improve over time, ending strong. As for using Surprise, the risk in showing the unexpected is to loose the viewer's engagement with the story line.
Therapeutic Strategies for Huntington's Disease.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a devastating autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease, caused by expansion of the CAG repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene and characterized pathologically by the loss of pyramidal neurons in several cortical areas, of striatal medium spiny neurons, and of hypothalamic neurons. Clinically, a distinguishing feature of the disease is uncontrolled involuntary movements (chorea, dyskensias) accompanied by progressive cognitive, motor, and psychiatric impairment. This review focuses on the current state of therapeutic development for the treatment of HD, including the preclinical and clinical development of small molecules and molecular therapies.
Comparison of Antibiotic-Amended Potato Dextrose Agar and Acidified Potato Dextrose Agar as Growth Substrates for Fungi

Fifteen fungal species, all isolated from food, were compared for their growth abilities on potato dextrose agar acidified to pH 3.5, and on nonacidified potato dextrose agar amended with 40 ppm chlortetracycline hydrochloride. Comparisons were made at 16, 21, 26, 32, and 37 degrees C. Of the 15 species, only Penicillium expansum exhibited better growth on the acidified medium than on the nonacidified antibiotic medium, while 9 species grew better on the nonacidified antibiotic medium. Five species grew equally well on either medium.
Accusers Lie and Other Myths: Rape Myth Acceptance Predicts Judgments Made About Accusers and Accused Perpetrators in a Rape Case

Previous research results have yielded a consistent link between rape myth acceptance and sexual assault victim blaming: Individuals reporting higher levels of rape myth acceptance also report higher levels of victim blaming. In four studies we explored whether the presentation of rape-myth confirming information or rape-myth debunking information might moderate these tendencies. In these studies, U.S. undergraduates (97 in Study 1, 84 in Study 2, 98 in Study 3, and 116 in Study 4) read scenarios of a heterosexual sexual assault case and were randomly assigned to a control condition, a rape myth confirmation condition, or a rape myth debunking condition; they also reported the extent to which they endorsed or accepted rape myths. Rape myth acceptance robustly correlated with judgments made about accusers and accused rapists regardless whether the accuser/accused pairing was female/male (Studies 1 and 2) or male/female (Studies 3 and 4). For example, those who most strongly endorsed rape myths were also likely to disbelieve accusers. There were few instances indicating that the presentation of rape myth confirming information or rape myth debunking information moderated these effects. This lack of moderation occurred regardless of whether the information came from trial lawyers or from expert witnesses in the case. The relative impotence of the information presentations could be due to several factors (e.g., entrenched nature of rape myth acceptance, psychological reactance, timing and strength of manipulation), and we suggest ideas for how to overcome this relative impotence in future research.
Robot Navigation from Human Demonstration: Learning Control Behaviors

When working alongside human collaborators in dynamic environments such as a disaster recovery, an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) may require fast field adaptation to perform its duties or learn novel tasks. In disaster recovery situations, personnel and equipment are constrained, so training must be accomplished with minimal human supervision. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework which uses learned visual perception and inverse optimal control trained with minimal human supervisory examples. This approach is used to learn to mimic navigation behavior and is demonstrated through extensive evaluation in a real-world environment. Finally, we demonstrate the ability to learn an additional behavior with minimal human demonstration in the field.
Impact of the Timing of Placement of an Intracranial Pressure Monitor on Outcomes in Children with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

BACKGROUND Severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality from trauma. Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines recommend intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring in sTBI. We hypothesized that early ICP monitor placement was associated with better outcomes in children. METHODS This was a retrospective study of children with sTBI admitted to the participating pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and entered into the Virtual Pediatric Systems (VPS), LLC, database between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2015. We compared outcomes of patients who had an ICP monitor placed early (≤6 h from PICU admission) to those with later placement (> 6 to < 72 h). We collected demographics, diagnoses, procedure data, illness severity scores, outcomes, and site data. Multivariable regression analysis was used to identify variables independently associated with outcomes. RESULTS Twenty-seven percent of 3,608 patients with sTBI underwent ICP monitoring, 355 in the early and 156 in the later ICP monitoring groups, respectively. A higher proportion of patients in the early ICP monitoring group had worse markers of illness/injury severity; unadjusted analysis showed higher mortality in this group (31.3 vs. 21.8%, p = 0.029). Multivariable regression analysis showed that ICP monitoring was not independently associated with any of the outcomes. CONCLUSION Time to ICP monitoring was not associated with outcomes after pediatric sTBI.
A Strategic View of IT and Innovativeness

We conduct a much-needed empirical investigation of a widely accepted but under-examined factor regarded as essential for organizational innovativeness. This factor, the organizational view of information technology (IT) as a strategic investment, is expected to result in greater innovativeness than a non-strategic view of IT. We address the surprising lack of empirical validation of this expectation and find empirical support for it. Although a strategic view of IT contributes to greater innovativeness, its explanatory power is limited. Our major finding challenges future researchers to extend theory by incorporating additional factors beyond the strategic view of IT. Our findings also caution managers to be aware that additional factors matter.
Biological machine learning combined with bacterial population genomics reveals common and rare allelic variants of genes to cause disease

Highly dimensional data generated from bacterial whole genome sequencing is providing unprecedented scale of information that requires appropriate statistical frameworks of analysis to infer biological function from bacterial genomic populations. Application of genome wide association study (GWAS) methods is an emerging approach with bacterial population genomics that yields a list of genes associated with a phenotype with an undefined importance among the candidates in the list. Here, we validate the combination of GWAS, machine learning, and pathogenic bacterial population genomics as a novel scheme to identify SNPs and rank allelic variants to determine associations for accurate estimation of disease phenotype. This approach parsed a dataset of 1.2 million SNPs that resulted in a ranked importance of associated alleles of Campylobacter jejuni porA using multiple spatial locations over a 30-year period. We validated this approach using previously proven laboratory experimental alleles from an in vivo guinea pig abortion model. This approach, termed BioML, defined intestinal and extraintestinal groups that have differential allelic variants that cause abortion. Divergent variants containing indels that defeated gene callers were rescued using biological context and knowledge that resulted in defining rare and divergent variants that were maintained in the population over two continents and 30 years. This study defines the capability of machine learning coupled to GWAS and population genomics to simultaneously identify and rank alleles to define their role in abortion, and more broadly infectious disease.
Magnetic field enhanced cold plasma sterilization

Abstract Cold plasma sterilization offers an efficient way to sterilize medical components and instruments. This paper reports using a magnetized plasma to realize low-temperature sterilization. A radio frequency dielectric barrier discharge is created in a quartz tube using a mixture of argon and oxygen gas. A uniform amount of Escherichia coli is applied onto glass slides and exposed to the plasma afterglow at different pressures with and without a magnetic field. Optical emission spectroscopy is used to identify the plasma species present. The magnetic field significantly promotes the intensity of the plasma and the sterilization efficiency. A process gas pressure of 100 mTorr presents the most effective treatment with a sterilization time less than one minute and sample temperature below 32 °C.
Elevated HbA1c Is Associated with Altered Cortical and Trabecular Microarchitecture in Girls with Type 1 Diabetes.

Context Skeletal fragility is a significant complication of type 1 diabetes (T1D), with an increased risk of fracture observed starting in childhood. Altered bone accrual and microarchitectural development during the critical peripubertal years may contribute to this fragility. Objective To evaluate differences in skeletal microarchitecture between girls with T1D and controls and to assess factors associated with these differences. Design Cross-sectional comparison. Participants Girls ages 10-16 years, 62 with T1D and 61 controls. Results Areal bone mineral density (BMD) measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry did not differ between girls with and without T1D. At the distal tibia, trabecular BMD was 7.3 ± 2.9% lower in T1D (P = 0.013), with fewer plate-like and axially-aligned trabeculae. Cortical porosity was 21.5 ± 10.5% higher, while the estimated failure load was 4.7 ± 2.2% lower in T1D (P = 0.043 and P = 0.037, respectively). At the distal radius, BMD and microarchitecture showed similar differences between the groups but did not reach statistical significance. After stratifying by HbA1c, only those girls with T1D and HbA1c > 8.5% differed significantly from controls. P1NP, a marker of bone formation, was lower in T1D while CTX and TRAcP5b, markers of bone resorption and osteoclast number, respectively, did not differ. The insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) Z-score was lower in T1D, and after adjustment for the IGF-1 Z-score, associations between T1D status and trabecular microarchitecture were largely attenuated. Conclusions Skeletal microarchitecture is altered in T1D early in the course of disease and among those with higher average glycemia. Suppressed bone formation and lower circulating IGF-1 likely contribute to this phenotype.
Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation

Physical therapy management of trigeminal neuralgia focuses on regional interdependence, graded motor imagery, and desensitization. The sudden severe attacks, in addition to the persistent constant pain cause changes in the movement system. These changes develop into biomechanical, myofascial, and neurological changes affecting all aspects of the movement system. In this chapter, regional interdependence will be discussed and its effect on treatment. Evaluation of the movement system focusing on activity limitations and participation restrictions is reviewed. Lastly, treatment strategies are discussed using a variety of interventions.
"Just as Good": Learning Gender Stereotypes from Attempts to Counteract Them.

How do children learn gender stereotypes? Although people commonly use statements like "Girls are as good as boys at math" to express gender equality, such subject-complement statements subtly perpetuate the stereotype that boys are naturally more skilled. The syntax of such statements frames the item in the complement position (here, boys) as the standard for comparison or reference point. Thus, when the statement concerns ability, listeners infer that this item is naturally more skilled than the item in the subject position (here, girls). In 2 experiments, we ask whether subject-complement statements could not only reinforce preexisting gender stereotypes, but also teach them. The participants were 288 adults (51% women, 49% men) and 337 children ages 7 to 11 (50% girls, 50% boys; of the 62% who reported race, 44% self-declared as White; from primarily middle-class to upper middle-class families). Participants were provided with subject-complement statements about either novel abilities (e.g., "Girls are as good as boys at trewting") or nonstereotyped activities (e.g., "Boys are as good as girls at snapping"). Both adults and children inferred that the gender in the complement position was naturally more skilled than the gender in the subject position. Using subject-complement statements to express gender equality (e.g., "Girls are as good as boys at math") could thus backfire and teach children that boys have more natural ability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Condon: Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities

This new 190-page book is power packed. It’s one of the most direct, informed, and pragmatic takes on the urban design of and for this century. And it comes at a critical time when cities can eithe...
Encapsulin Nanocontainers as Versatile Scaffolds for the Development of Artificial Metabolons

The construction of non-native biosynthetic pathways represents a powerful, modular strategy for the production of valuable synthons and fine chemicals. Accordingly, artificially affixing enzymes that catalyze sequential reactions onto DNAs, proteins, or synthetic scaffolds has proven to be an effective route for generating de novo metabolons with novel functionalities and superior efficiency. In recent years, nanoscale microbial compartments known as encapsulins have emerged as a class of robust and highly engineerable proteinaceous containers with myriad applications in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Herein we report the concurrent surface functionalization and internal packaging of encapsulins from Thermotoga maritima to generate a catalytically competent two-enzyme metabolon. Encapsulins were engineered to covalently sequester up to 60 copies of a dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) enzyme variant on their exterior surfaces using the SpyCatcher bioconjugation system, while their lumens were packaged with a tetrahydrofolate-dependent demethylase enzyme using short peptide affinity tags abstracted from the encapsulin's native protein cargo. Successful cross-talk between the two colocalized enzymes was confirmed as tetrahydrofolate produced by externally tethered DHFR was capable of driving the demethylation of a lignin-derived aryl substrate by packaged demethylases, albeit slowly. The subsequent introduction of a previously reported pore-enlarging deletion in the encapsulin shell was shown to enhance metabolite exchange such that the encapsulin-based metabolon functioned at speeds equivalent to those of the two enzymes freely dispersed in solution. Our work thus further emphasizes the engineerability of encapsulins and their potential use as flexile scaffolds for biocatalytic applications.
Sophia Cruz’s Emotional Construction of Learning Dis/Abilities: A Liberation DisCrit Emotion Narrative and Community Psychology Approach

The fields of learning disabilities (LD) and special education within the United States have historically ignored how culture, power, and emotionality impact theory, research, practice, and praxis, particularly concerning the academic, social, and emotional lives of historically and multiply marginalized youth labeled with LD. This paper theorizes a Liberation Disability Studies (DS) and Community Psychology (CP) through a Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit), emotion narrative inquiry and sociocultural and affective historical developmental approach to fill this gap. Such an approach positions theorists, researchers, and practitioners to grapple with the human rights of students with LD at their intersections for their liberation, freedom, and human dignity. This chapter pays particular attention to the role of emotion, feelings, and affect on the meaning and idea of LD for one 14-year-old female Mexican-American student with LD who was bilingual in Spanish and English, and in the seventh grade—Sophia Cruz. Historically, the sociocultural contexts of students with LD, like Sophia, have not been utilized as a part of interrogating the meaning of LD. This chapter also addresses this gap by placing those sociocultural influences, such as family members and home life such as Sophia’s mother—Luciana Cruz—into conversation with how those living with the label and other forms of difference have experienced the meanings of LD within educational contexts situated in transnational settings such as the U.S. and Mexico. Sophia and Luciana’s transnational dis/ability experiences are critically analyzed at the nexus of global dis/ability hegemony and emotionality.
Diethylene glycol produces nephrotoxic and neurotoxic effects in female rats.

Context Diethylene glycol (DEG) is an organic compound found in household products but also as a counterfeit solvent in medicines. DEG poisonings are characterized by acute kidney injury (AKI) and by neurological sequelae such as decreased reflexes or face and limb weakness. Previous studies in male rats have demonstrated that neurotoxic effects develop only with the establishment of AKI, but the dose sensitivity of females to DEG toxicity is unknown. Objectives Assessing whether subacute administration of DEG in female rats would delineate any sex-differences in neuropathy or in kidney injury. Methods Female Wistar-Han rats were orally administered doses of 4 - 6 g/kg DEG every 12 h and monitored for 7 days. Urine was collected every 12 h and endpoint blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were collected for renal plasma parameters and total protein estimation, respectively. Motor function tests were conducted before and after treatment. Kidney and brain tissue were analyzed for metabolite content. Results Of 12 animals treated with DEG, 3 developed AKI as confirmed by increased BUN and creatinine concentrations. Renal and brain DGA contents were increased in animals that developed AKI compared to animals without AKI. Total CSF protein content in animals with AKI was markedly elevated compared to control and to treated animals without AKI. Decreases in forelimb grip strength and in locomotor and rearing activity were observed in animals with AKI compared to control and to animals without AKI. Discussion Repeated dosing with DEG in a female model produced nephrotoxic effects at a dose similar to that in males. The decrease in motor function and increase in CSF protein were only present in females that developed AKI. However, kidney and neurologic effects were assessed only at the end of the treatments, thus limiting determination of which effect occurs first. Limb function and coordination were measured globally and more sensitive tests such as nerve conduction studies might offer a detailed neurotoxicity assessment of the effects of DEG. Conclusions These studies show that DEG toxicity does not appear to be sex-specific and that, in males and females, neurological symptoms are present only when DGA accumulation and kidney injury also occur.
Feasibility study of student-led fall prevention care management: reducing fall risks in assisted living facilities.

Falls are common in Assisted Living Facilities (ALFs). We evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact of student-led Fall Prevention Care Management (FPCM) on reducing fall risks in ALFs. Residents who were age ≥65, had a fall in the previous year Or considered high fall risk at the facility, and who had a MoCA cognition score>15 were enrolled. The FPCM interventions were semi-structured to facilitate students' learning while addressing participants' unique fall risks. Twenty-five older adults in the U.S. completed the study (recruitment rate: 55%; retention rate: 64%). Participants rated the study as 87.16 (100 = excellent), and likelihood to recommend the study to others was 80.85 (100 = most likely). Participants were 84% female, mean age 88.6 years old. Fall risks such as fear of falling decreased from 16.05 to 15.12 (p = .022), fall prevention behaviors increased from 2.94 to 3.07 (p = .048), and the level of confidence to prevent falls increased from 63.38 to 78.35 (p = .015). Students commonly provided education and coaching on fall prevention strategies, and addressed emotional and behavioral aspects of fall prevention. With improvement with recruitment and retention, student-led FPCM intervention is a promising approach for fall prevention in ALF.
I Am Sorry to Send You SPAM

A series of studies investigating cultural differences in apology usage in unsolicited email advertising messages (i.e., SPAM) are reported. Study 1 documented that in comparison to American SPAM, a greater percentage of Korean SPAM included apologies. The next five studies (Ns= 516, 3132, 662, 524, 536) tested various explanations for cross-cultural differences in uses of, and responses to, apologies. Findings indicated that advertising messages containing apologies were not necessarily more effective than advertising messages without apologies. Koreans, however, considered advertising messages with apologies as more credible and normal and exhibited a greater tendency to model other people's apology use than did Americans. Thus, the frequent presence of apologies in Korean unsolicited email advertising is likely to be based on Koreans' modeling behavior (i.e., a greater tendency to follow social norms).
TH‐C‐BRD‐01: Optimization of CT Simulation Imaging in Radiation Therapy: Background and Motivations

IGRT has significantly improved the accuracy of radiation treatment by utilizing CT scans for contouring target and organ during treatment planning and x-ray imaging devices integrated to treatment units for patient positioning during radiation delivery. A significant progress has been made recently to improve CT image quality in treatment planning and to reduce daily imaging guidance dose. This course is designed to provide educational guidance on these two important imaging issues. I) Optimization of CT Simulation Imaging. This part will provide guidance on optimizing CT image quality in radiation therapy. There have been many publications on optimizing CT protocols for diagnostic imaging purposes. However, the effort to optimize CT protocols for imaging applications in radiation therapy has been limited. Although some lessons we learn from diagnostic CT imaging can be applied to CT imaging in radiation therapy, there should be more emphasis on task-based image quality. In addition, there are imaging features widely used in diagnostic CT imaging (e.g., metal artifact reduction) may not be well known in radiation therapy community but can play critical roles for accurate radiation treatment planning. This part of the session will feature a conversation between a radiation therapy physicist and a diagnostic imaging physicist focusing on the needs specific to CT simulation imaging in radiation therapy and the approaches to address these needs. II) Techniques to reduce radiation dose resulting from daily imaging guidance procedures. This part will provide an overview of radiation dose to patients resulting from different image devices used in image-guided procedures and provide guidance on the techniques available to reduce imaging dose resulting from daily imaging guidance procedures. Depending on the image modality including MV and kV imaging devices, a variety of techniques are available to significantly reduce daily imaging guidance dose to organs at risk. Different methods of accounting for the imaging doses will be discussed. Learning Objectives: 1. Understand CT image quality needs specific to imaging applications in radiation therapy 2. Learn the imaging acquisition and reconstruction optimization for CT imaging applications in radiation therapy 3. Discuss appropriate approaches to optimize CT protocols in radiation therapy; 4. Briefly review the typical radiation dose to patients resulting from different image-guided procedures MV and kV imaging modalities; 5. Understand the techniques available to reduce imaging dose 6. Discuss different methods of accounting for the imaging doses
Two novel DXZ4-associated long noncoding RNAs show developmental changes in expression coincident with heterochromatin formation at the human (Homo sapiens) macrosatellite repeat

On the male X and female active X chromosome (Xa), the macrosatellite repeat (MSR) DXZ4 is packaged into constitutive heterochromatin characterized by CpG methylation and histone H3 tri-methylated at lysine-9 (H3K9me3). In contrast, DXZ4 on the female inactive X chromosome (Xi), is packaged into euchromatin, is bound by the architectural protein CCCTC-binding factor, and mediates Xi-specific long-range cis contact with similarly packaged tandem repeats on the Xi. In cancer, male DXZ4 can inappropriately revert to a Xi-like state and other MSRs have been reported to adopt alternate chromatin configurations in response to disease. Given this plasticity, we sought to identify factors that might control heterochromatin at DXZ4. In human embryonic stem cells, we found low levels of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine at DXZ4 and that this mark is lost upon differentiation as H3K9me3 is acquired. We identified two previously undescribed DXZ4 associated noncoding transcripts (DANT1 and DANT2) that are transcribed toward DXZ4 from promoters flanking the array. Each generates transcript isoforms that traverse the MSR. However, upon differentiation, enhancer of Zeste-2 silences DANT1, and DANT2 transcription terminates prior to entering DXZ4. These data support a model wherein DANT1 and/or DANT2 may function to regulate constitutive heterochromatin formation at this MSR.
A report on the 2007 iGov Research Institute: overcoming four dimensions of language barriers

Multi-disciplinary, international collaborative research is not an easy task. A number of doctoral students interested in the field of digital government research got together in New York City for the Annual Institute on International Digital Government Research (iGov Research Institute) and had a week-long experience in international and multi-disciplinary collaboration. This paper will provide a report on those students' experiences of overcoming dimensions of language barriers and promoting international, multi-disciplinary research.
International Gross Capital Flows: A New Measure and Application to a Global Panel

This paper presents a new measure of international gross capital flows and applies it to a global panel from 1970 to 2004. We explain why paying attention to the gross flows underlying net capital flows may be important and how our gross flow measure differs from the standard measure in the literature. For ex ample, while by the standard measure a capital inflow decline more than fully ex plains Mexico’s current account reversal during the 1994-95 Tequila Crisis, our measure assigns an important role to capital outflows and implies a 63 percent higher ou tflow in 1995 compared to the standard measure outflow.
Vallejo, Vargas Vila. Oposición, redundancia

En este articulo, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Espitia interroga el papel de Vallejo como intelectual. A traves de un analisis de las filiaciones del discurso de Vallejo con Vargas Vila, el articulo evalua lo que la tensa division de opiniones en el ambito publico con respecto a estos dos autores separados por un siglo puede aportar en la definicion de lo que es el intelectual en America Latina. Su analisis explora las formas en que tanto Vargas Vila como Vallejo ejercen su papel de polemicos y heterodoxos productores de opinion. Al enfocarse principalmente en la repeticion que satura la obra y la opinion de Vallejo como una forma de oposicion a la redundancia totalizante del discurso hegemonico, Gonzalez Espitia hace un importante aporte a la comprension de la compleja dimension politica del discurso de Vallejo.
Avitaminosis E in cystic fibrosis of the pancreas: a morphologic study of gastrointestinal and striated muscle.

Ceroid-pigment is present in the smooth muscle fibers of the gastrointestinal tract of patients with cystic fibrosis of the pancreas. It is first seen during the second year of life. It is found in all patients of 5 years of age and older, and the amount increases with age. It has not been found in other pediatric conditions with the exception of biliary atresia and cirrhosis of the liver. Extensive ceroid deposit probably represents an expression of prolonged and severe vitamin-E deficiency, related to protracted malabsorption of fat-soluble tocopherols. Alterations of striated muscle appear to be rare and minimal in cystic fibrosis of the pancreas.
FUSE: lightweight guaranteed distributed failure notification

FUSE is a lightweight failure notification service for building distributed systems. Distributed systems built with FUSE are guaranteed that failure notifications never fail. Whenever a failure notification is triggered, all live members of the FUSE group will hear a notification within a bounded period of time, irrespective of node or communication failures. In contrast to previous work on failure detection, the responsibility for deciding that a failure has occurred is shared between the FUSE service and the distributed application. This allows applications to implement their own definitions of failure. Our experience building a scalable distributed event delivery system on an overlay network has convinced us of the usefulness of this service. Our results demonstrate that the network costs of each FUSE group can be small; in particular, our overlay network implementation requires no additional liveness-verifying ping traffic beyond that already needed to maintain the overlay, making the steady state network load independent of the number of active FUSE groups.
Water soluble, biodegradable amphiphilic polymeric nanoparticles and the molecular environment of hydrophobic encapsulates: Consistency between simulation and experiment

Abstract Star polymers with a crosslinked nanogel core constitute an unusual class of polymers with many arms emanating from the functionalized core. Although the core is usually hydrophobic, the arms can be hydrophobic, hydrophilic or amphiphilic. We describe the synthesis of biodegradable nanogel core stars which are largely water soluble and use encapsulated pyrene fluorescence to probe the environment both in aqueous solution and in solid thin films. In spite of the expected hydrophobic nature of the inner portions, the encapsulated pyrene environment seems quite polar. Although the molecular environment based on the pyrene fluorescent probe of the inner aliphatic polyester regions is more polar than expected for an aliphatic polyester, the molecular environment of the encapsulated probe in aqueous solution is influenced by the proximity of water even though simulations suggest that water excursions into the inner regions of the hydrophobic core area are rare and transient. NMR studies in water show the disappearance of the arm polyester signals. This and the pyrene environmental probe studies are consistent with collapse of the inner polyester regions and localization of the probe at or near the hydrophobic/hydrophilic interface as suggested in the simulations. This study has implications for the encapsulation of strongly hydrophobic cargos barring some loosening of the collapsed core by sterically-demanding substituents, increased hydrophobicity and/or some optimized specific interactions of the cargo with the core.
Bounded rank-1 transformations

We define the notion of canonical boundedness among rank-1 transformations and use it to characterize the class of bounded rank-1 transformations with trivial centralizer. We also explicitly characterize totally ergodic rank-1 transformations with bounded cutting parameter. Together with a recent result of Ryzhikov, our results provide a simple procedure for determining, purely in terms of the cutting and spacer parameters for the transformation, whether a bounded rank-1 transformation has minimal self-joinings of all orders.
Vasopressin Inhibits Glutamate Release via Two Distinct Modes in the Brainstem

The hypothalamus coordinates autonomic responses in part through arginine vasopressin (AVP) released in medial nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS). However, the mechanisms and sites of AVP action within NTS pathways are uncertain. In brainstem slices, we activated solitary tract (ST) primary afferents to release glutamate and tested whether AVP modulated synaptic transmission to second-order neurons. NTS neurons were classified as second order by ST synaptic characteristics or the presence of anterograde tracers from peripheral baroreceptor afferents. Stimulus recruitment curves indicated ST-EPSCs on individual neurons were evoked by stimulation of single ST axons. Variance-mean (V-M) analysis of ST-EPSCs in individual neurons revealed uniformly high release probability (p approximately 0.9) from an average of 19 release sites (N) and a quantal size (q) of 34.0 +/- 4.7 pA. In 26 of 49 neurons, AVP inhibited afferent synaptic transmission. In most neurons, AVP reduced ST-EPSC amplitudes (n = 20) by decreasing p to 0.65, whereas q, N, and conduction times were unaffected. The V1a antagonist SR49059 alone decreased ST-EPSC V and increased M, suggesting tonic AVP actions, and blocked exogenous AVP action (n = 4). In other neurons with identical ST release properties, AVP induced synaptic failures and increased conduction time without altering the V-M relationship of successful ST-EPSCs (n = 6). Interestingly, frequency-depressed ST-EPSCs were not affected by AVP. AVP failed to alter holding or voltage-dependent potassium currents. Thus, AVP regulates NTS neurons by two distinct novel and state-dependent mechanisms: one, an analog, graded presynaptic inhibition of terminal glutamate release and the other, a binary, extraterminal block of conducted excitation.
The Surface Photoelectric Effect

The probability of ejection of an electron in the surface photo-effect is expressed in terms of a function of the potential barrier, the energy of the electron after ejection, and the frequency. This function is dominated, for low energies of ejection, by the transmission coefficient of the surface. It is then assumed that the function can be expanded in a power series in terms of the energy of the electron after ejection. In calculating the total emitted current it is shown that the power series development leads to a series of distinctive functions expressing the current in terms of the frequency and the stopping potential. Each of these functions has its own temperature dependence, so that from a complete knowledge of the energy distribution and the temperature dependence of the emitted current it would be possible to draw conclusions as to the nature of the potential barriers. By comparing the theoretical expressions with the observed curves of Overhage, and of Mann and DuBridge, it is possible to conclude that the transmission coefficient of Overhage's anode and of the sodium cathode used by Mann and DuBridge vanished linearly with the diminishing energy of the ejected electrons.
An in vivo evaluation of the inflammatory effect of purified comedonal components in human skin.

Leakage of intrafollicular material from closed comedones is thought to induce the perifollicular inflammation in acne. Previously free fatty acids (FFA) were implicated as the incendiary factors in comedones, but recent studies have disputed this (J invest Dermatol 68:93–97, 1977). The present investigation reevaluated the inflammatory effect of intradermal injection of different comedonal fractions in amounts which approximate the levels present in comedones. The following substances were injected in 0.03ml of saline into 29 volunteers (16 with acne, 13 acne-free): 500 μg of skin surface lipids (SSL), 200 μg of FFA, 50 μg of squalene, 2 × 105 Propionibacterium acnes . 1 × 105 Staphylocuccus epidermidis. 0.7 μg of P. acnes cell walls, 60 μg of water-soluble comedonal extract, and 30 μg of comedonal insoluble keratinous material. Of all comedonal components tested, insoluble keratinous material was most uniformly inflammatory in all subjects. Reactions to P. acnes were consistently more severe in subjects with acne compared to acne-free controls and it made no difference whether the injected organisms were viable or heat killed. Water-soluble extracts of comedones induced inflammatory response in most subjects, but SSL, FFA, and squalene did not produce visible inflammation in any subject tested. Addition of 300 μg of SSL to suspensions of 2 × 105 P. acnes intensified the inflammatory effect of the organisms. These observations suggest that sebaceous lipids per se are not the inflammatory agents in acne. The effect of antibiotics in acne is more likely to depend on direct suppression of P. aenes as inflammatory agents, rather than on the indirect reduction of intrafollicular lipases as the free fatty acid theory of acne pathogenesis had previously supposed.
Phase transitions in dilute, locally connected neural networks.

We report numerical studies of the memory-loss'' phase transition in Hopfield-like symmetric neural networks in which the neurons are connected to all other neurons within a local neighborhood (dense, short-range connectivity). The number of connections per neuron {ital K} scales as the number of neurons {ital N} raised to a power less than 1 (i.e., {ital K}{similar to}{ital N}{sup {eta}}, {eta}{lt}1). We use the recently developed Lee-Kosterlitz finite-size scaling technique to determine the critical value of {eta} below which the first-order phase transition disappears.
Branching ratios for the decay ofp-shell Λ-hypernuclei

The possibility of determining the spin dependence of the Λ-nucleon force from a study of hypernuclei in which the Λ particle is bound to a nucleus with an incompletely filled (1p) nuclear shell is investigated. It is pointed out that present uncertainties in the data on binding energies of hypernuclei permit only the determination of the combinationEs+3Et, whereEs andEt are the singlet and triplet interaction energies, respectively. It is shown that the decay of hypernuclei by π− emission can give information regarding the spin dependence of the force if the branching ratio for decay to the ground state and first excited state of the daughter nucleus is measured. In particular, if the spin of12BΛ is 2, decay to the first excited state of12C is favored by a factor 1.2 over decay to the ground level. However, ifJ=1 for this hypernucleus, decay to the ground state is preferred by a factor of 2.4. The change that the interaction of the π−-meson with the12C nucleus produces in the branching ratio is estimated by use of a complex square well potential. Inclusion of the interaction significantly increases the branching ratio for a hypernuclear spin of 2, but does not change the ratio forJ=1. On the other hand, for7LiΛ the branching ratio for decay to the ground and first excited state of7Be is independent of the spin of hypernucleus.
Quantum phase transitions and structural evolution in nuclei

Abstract This overview discusses the evolution of collectivity in atomic nuclei, with particular focus on the rapidly developing field of quantum phase transitions in the nuclear shape, and on trajectories of structural evolution in the N / Z plane. Particular stress is put on the interplay of a nucleon-based description of the driving mechanisms in the emergence of coherence and collectivity in nuclei with a more macroscopic perspective in terms of nuclear shapes and the symmetries and quantum numbers of the many-body system taken as a whole.
Poorer Aerobic Fitness Relates to Reduced Integrity of Multiple Memory Systems

Epidemiological investigations have revealed increases in the prevalence of sedentary behaviors in industrialized societies. However, the implications of those lifestyle choices and related cardiorespiratory fitness levels for memory function are not well-understood. To determine the extent to which cardiorespiratory fitness relates to the integrity of multiple memory systems, a cross-sectional sample of young adults were tested over the course of 3 days in areas related to implicit memory, working memory, long-term memory, and aerobic fitness. Findings revealed an association between aerobic fitness and memory function such that individuals with lower cardiorespiratory fitness exhibited poorer implicit memory performance and poorer long-term memory retention. These data indicate that cardiorespiratory fitness may be important for the optimal function of neural networks underlying these memory systems.
Epidermolysis bullosa: preliminary observations of blister formation in keratinocyte cultures

Keratinocytes from patients with different types of epidermolysis bullosa (EB) demonstrated an abnormal tendency to blister or bleb formation after 14-22 days in culture. The changes were most marked in samples from cases of junctional EB and were not observed in control cultures of normal skin. These findings suggest the possibility of a primary abnormality of keratinocyte adhesion in different varieties of EB and that keratinocyte culture should provide a useful model for further studies on disorders of adhesion in EB.