cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Technology and Medicine: Reimagining Provider Visits as the New Tertiary Care

Technologies enabling remote monitoring and transmission of patients' data hold promise for improved care. The authors caution, however, that these developments might increase the burden on physici...
Readmission Rates and Diagnoses Following Total Hip Replacement in Relation to Insurance Payer Status, Race and Ethnicity, and Income Status

Total hip replacements (THRs) are the sixth most common surgical procedure performed in the USA. Readmission rates are estimated at between 4.0 and 10.9%, and mean costs are between $10,000 and $19,000. Readmissions are influenced by the quality of care received. We sought to examine differences in readmissions by insurance payer, race and ethnicity, and income status. We analyzed all THRs from 2007 to 2011 in California, Florida, and New York from the State Inpatient Databases, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Primary outcomes were readmission at 30 and 90 days after THR. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to estimate adjusted odds ratio (OR) for readmissions. Statistical significance was evaluated at the < 0.05 alpha level. A total of 274,851 patients were included in the analyses. At 30 days (90 days), 5.6% (10.2%) patients had been readmitted. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients insured by Medicaid (OR 1.23, 95%CI 1.17–1.29) and Medicare (OR 1.58, 95%CI 1.44–1.73) had increased odds of 30-day readmission, as did patients living in areas with lower incomes, Black patients, and patients treated at lower volume hospitals. Ninety-day readmissions showed similar significant results. The present study has shown that patients on public insurance, Black patients, and patients who live in areas with lower median incomes have higher odds of readmission. Future research should focus on further identifying racial and socioeconomic disparities in readmission after THR with an eye towards implementing strategies to ameliorate these differences.
A PRESSURE-INDUCED PHASE TRANSITION IN As2Se3 GLASS

Abstract Measurements of the elastic modulus of arsenic triselenide glass under pressure up to 20 kbar show that this glass undergoes a phase transition at 10 kbar. Both phases are apparently amorphous, and the reaction is reversible. The phase change is defined in terms of the bulk modulus and its isothermal pressure derivative as a function of pressure. The change in phase is described by a structural factor in the equation of state, and the variation of this factor represents the mechanical property of glass across the transition pressure.
The Pharmacology of Narcotics: Natural, Semisynthetic, and Synthetic

Opioid addiction is a widespread phenomenon affecting our society. This chapter examines the evolution of addictive opioid use in this century. It also addresses issues of diagnosis, medical versus nonmedical use, pharmacological and non-pharmacological effects, and pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment strategies.
The Politics of Social Provision in the New American Labor Market

The 2007-2009 recession exposed and exacerbated long term trends that have altered the relationship between labor markets and social welfare protections in the United States. Policy decisions during and after the New Deal tied the U.S. social contract to the employment contract, by conditioning eligibility and benefit levels for core welfare-state programs on work status and performance. The resulting system of social provision embodied a set of assumptions about labor market conditions that began to unravel with the structural economic shifts beginning in the mid-1970s. Work was expected to provide open doors to employment, stable floors of security and stability over time, income ladders promising adequate and rising earnings, and safety nets providing public and/or private protections against unforeseen or unavoidable hardships. Each of these assumptions has since been undermined by fundamental changes in the labor market, and this, in turn, has redefined patterns of social provision. As a result, core welfare-state programs have become less effective at meeting their own objectives of providing adequate social protections for rising numbers of working Americans. These trends pre-date the recession and will only be reversed by changes in social policy.
The Distribution of Total Alpha Radioactivity in Selected Manganese Nodules from the North Pacific: Implications for Growth Processes

Analyses of the total alpha radioactivity distribution in 31 North Pacific manganese nodules yield an average growth rate of 6.8 (±2) mm/m.y. Samples from a single box core show almost identical total activity vs. depth profiles, regardless of nodule size or shape. A characteristic feature of many nodules examined is an apparent change (steepening) in slope of the alpha activity profile between depths of 0.5–1.5 mm. This feature may reflect a fundamental feature of nodule growth, possibly mobility of 230Th or its daughters in a regular way, interrupted growth, or nodule turnover. Near-surface decreases in total alpha activity probably result from 226Ra loss.
Mining a Crowdsourced Dictionary to Understand Consistency and Preference in Word Meanings

Big data approaches to psychology have become increasing popular (Jones, 2017). Two of the main developments of this line of research is the advent of distributional models of semantics (e.g., Landauer and Dumais, 1997), which learn the meaning of words from large text corpora, and the collection of mega datasets of human behavior (e.g., The English lexicon project; Balota et al., 2007). The current article combines these two approaches, with the goal being to understand the consistency and preference that people have for word meanings. This was accomplished by mining a large amount of data from an online, crowdsourced dictionary and analyzing this data with a distributional model. Overall, it was found that even for words that are not an active part of the language environment, there is a large amount of consistency in the word meanings that different people have. Additionally, it was demonstrated that users of a language have strong preferences for word meanings, such that definitions to words that do not conform to people's conceptions are rejected by a community of language users. The results of this article provides insights into the cultural evolution of word meanings, and sheds light on alternative methodologies that can be used to understand lexical behavior.
Outpatient allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant following alemtuzumab based reduced intensity conditioning in patients with advanced mycosis fungoides/Sezary syndrome.

7089 Background: Advanced mycosis fungoides/Sezari syndrome (MF/SS) is associated with poor prognosis and is incurable with conventional chemotherapeutic approaches. We describe a novel transplant ...
Are Teachers and Schools Ready to Accept Computer Science as a Graduation Requirement

Recent policies across the United States support rigorous high school computer science courses acting as flex credit courses. This allows the courses to count as graduation requirements in lieu of ...
Components of the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy and the Five-Factor Model Domains Share Largely Overlapping Nomological Networks.

The triarchic model of psychopathy is a recently developed model of psychopathy that identifies three primary domains: Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition. These traits overlap substantially with...
How Do Humans and Data Systems Establish a CommonQuery Language

As most users do not precisely know the structure and/or the content of databases, their queries do not exactly reflect their information needs. While database management systems (DBMS) may interact with users and use their feedback on the returned results to learn the information needs behind their queries, current query interfaces assume that users do not learn and modify the way way they express their information needs in form of queries during their interaction with the DBMS. Using a real-world interaction workload, we show that users learn and modify how to express their information needs during their interactions with the DBMS and their learning is accurately modeled by a well-known reinforcement learning mechanism. As current data interaction systems assume that users do not modify their strategies, they cannot discover the information needs behind users' queries effectively. We model the interaction between users and DBMS as a game with identical interest between two rational agents whose goal is to establish a common language for representing information needs in form of queries. We propose a reinforcement learning method that learns and answers the information needs behind queries and adapts to the changes in users' strategies and prove that it stochastically improves the effectiveness of answering queries. We propose two efficient implementation of this method over large relational databases. Our empirical studies over realworld query workloads indicate that our algorithms are efficient and effective.
Pervasive and perplexing pies: Our evolving relationship with a data display genre

Abstract Although pie charts remain a highly popular genre for visualizing data, evident partly by their continued use in corporate annual reports, designers and theorists and have long critiqued and even denigrated them. This conflicted relationship with pie charts has resulted largely from their paucity of data, labeling difficulties, and perceptual weaknesses. Like many primary data design genres, however, pie charts attained their conventional status as a result of a long evolutionary process, initiated in the later nineteenth century by experimentation, hybrid forms, and data-rich designs. After the subsequent simplification and minimizing effects of twentieth-century modernism, pie charts have begun to experience a reemergence of innovation with digital data design, which has reintroduced hybridity into pie charts, vastly enlarged their data domain, and addressed at least some of their perceived weaknesses.
WaC: A New Doctrine for Hardware Security

In this paper, we promote the idea that recent woes in hardware security are not because of a lack of technical solutions but rather because market forces and incentives prevent those with the ability to fix problems from doing so. At the root of the problem is the fact that hardware security comes at a cost; present issues in hardware security can be seen as the result of the players in the game of hardware security finding ways of avoiding paying this cost. We formulate this idea into a doctrine of security, namely the Doctrine of Shared Burdens. Three cases studies-Rowhammer, Spectre, and Meltdown-are interpreted though the lens of this doctrine. Our doctrine illuminates why these problems exist and what can be done about them.
Assessment of neuroinflammation in the aging hippocampus using large-molecule microdialysis: Sex differences and role of purinergic receptors.

Abstract Aging is associated with an enhanced neuroinflammatory response to acute immune challenge, often termed “inflammaging.” However, there are conflicting reports about whether baseline levels of inflammatory markers are elevated under ambient conditions in the aging brain, or whether such changes are observed predominantly in response to acute challenge. The present studies utilized two distinct approaches to assess inflammatory markers in young and aging Fischer 344 rats. Experiment 1 examined total tissue content of inflammatory markers from hippocampus of adult (3 month), middle-aged (12 month), and aging (18 month) male Fischer (F) 344 rats using multiplex analysis (23-plex). Though trends emerged for several cytokines, no significant differences in basal tissue content were observed across the 3 ages examined. Experiment 2 measured extracellular concentrations of inflammatory factors in the hippocampus from adult (3 month) and aging (18 month) males and females using large-molecule in vivo microdialysis. Although few significant aging-related changes were observed, robust sex differences were observed in extracellular concentrations of CCL3, CCL20, and IL-1α. Experiment 2 also evaluated the involvement of the P2X7 purinergic receptor in neuroinflammation using reverse dialysis of the selective agonist BzATP. BzATP produced an increase in IL-1α and IL-1β release and rapidly suppressed the release of CXCL1, CCL2, CCL3, CCL20, and IL-6. Other noteworthy sex by aging trends were observed in CCL3, IL-1β, and IL-6. Together, these findings provide important new insight into late-aging and sex differences in neuroinflammation, and their regulation by the P2X7 receptor.
Observation of an Electric Quadrupole Transition in a Negative Ion: Experiment and Theory.

The first direct experimental observation of an electric quadrupole ($E2$) absorption transition between bound states of an atomic negative ion has been made. The transition was observed in the negative ion of bismuth by resonant ($1+1$) photon detachment from ${\mathrm{Bi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ via $^{3}{P}_{2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}^{3}{P}_{0}$ excitation. The $E2$ transition properties were completely independently calculated using a hybrid theoretical approach to account for the strong multilevel electron interactions and relativistic effects. The experimental and ab initio theoretical results are in excellent agreement, providing valuable new insight into this complex system and forbidden transitions in negative ions more generally.
Chronic opioid use in patients with sickle cell disease.

Pain is the most common symptom in sickle cell disease (SCD) patients [1]. In the acute setting, SCD patients may have painful crises that require hospitalization [2]. However, these patients also ...
Carpe diem: winner and loser effects are constrained to same-day competitions in collegiate baseball

Competitive outcomes can be significantly influenced by previous experience of winning and losing, whereby all things considered, winners are likely to continue winning and losers are likely to keep losing. Although short-lived, the underlying hormonal changes associated with these effects have been observed into the following day. Here, we assess the functional persistence of winner and loser effects in college baseball by investigating outcomes (splits vs. sweeps) of multigame series played over one or more days. Results show that sweeps occur at disproportionately higher frequencies in single-day series, but drop off to expected levels for multiday series.
Forebrain mechanisms related to internal inhibition and sleep.

In experiments performed on cats and monkeys over the past nine years a “forebrain inhibitory system” has been investigated through recording of neurophysiologic, behavioral, reflexive and intracellular parameters. This forebrain system is capable of expressing its inhibitory influences widely throughout the body, and on both somatic and visceral mechanisms. Electrical stimulation within this system has been shown to: a) suppress ongoing behavior, synchronize the EEG and induce the initial stages of sleep. These behavioral effects could be conditioned to indifferent stimuli. Other studies have shown that lesions within this system result in marked alterations in sleep patterns and in behavioral hyperactivity,b) Inhibit remarkably monosynaptic and polysynaptic reflexes in the brain stem and at cervical and lumbosacral levels of the spinal cord.c) Induce hyperpolarizing potentials within motoneurons of the final common path. Cl infusion caused the hyperpolarization to change to depolarization. Studies of the “forebrain inhibitory system” indicate that at least in part it is a descending system involving both multisynaptic (loop) pathways and direct pathways. It is felt that descending circuits from the forebrain to inhibitory centers in the medulla are responsible for the effects observed at the final common paths from stimulation in the forebrain. It has been found that behaviorally, reflexively and intracellularly, the “forebrain inhibitory system” acts generally in opposition to the reticular activating system of the brain stem, and that the achievement of an organism’s overt behavioral patterns depends on the functional state of both systems.
"Leads" to Expanded Social Networks, Increased Civic Engagement and Divisions Within a Community: The Role of Dogs

Dogs play a distinct role in their impact on human relationships and processes because of the unique role they play in American society, existing in a liminal space of “almost” human. Both the level of emotional attachment and the requisite daily care make dogs important players in bringing humans in contact with one another and mediating human relationships. This study examines the role that dogs play in mediating relationships between and among humans. By analyzing 24 in-depth interviews, as well as Letters to the Editor, editorials, and other items in a local newspaper, and observing public meetings around dog usage at a local park, I identify a range of ways that dogs influence social relationships and processes, even for those who do not have dogs in their homes. On the positive side, I find that dogs act as “tickets” for people to socialize and develop relationships, they facilitate the diversification of social networks, and they act as an avenue to political participation. On the negative side, dog ownership and dog breeds can become the basis for clique formation, stereotypes, and boundary formation, serving as grounds for exclusion.
Benito Pérez Galdós en el cine argentino: El abuelo salteño

In 1954 the director Roman Vinoly Barreto adapted the 1897 novel by the Spanish writer Benito Perez Galdos, El abuelo, to the Argentine screen. In this film the Galdos text was 'Argentinized' through the iconic star actors, Enrique Muino and Mecha Ortiz, and through the use of exteriors, language, customs, and folklore from the province of Salta. In general the film follows the plot of the novel, but the ruined aristocrat, the Count of Albrit of the original text, is turned into the gaucho landowner Don Rodrigo de Achaval, and the melodramatic conclusion takes place during the Fiesta del Senor y la Virgen del Milagro in Salta. The spirit of the film is in keeping with the conciliatory Peronist ideology of the period
Review of Random Vibrations: Analysis of Structural and Mechanical Systems by Loren D. Lutes and Shahram Sarkani

The textbook by Lutes and Sarkani is a timely and highly valuable addition to the short list of books on random vibrations ~or stochastic dynamics! that have appeared in the past 2 decades. I stress the word “textbook” rather than “book,” because what they have produced is truly a textbook with numerous instructive examples and end-of-chapter exercises. This is a massive undertaking, with over 600 pages, covering a very broad scope of topics in stochastic dynamics. As the authors suggest, the book can be used for an introductory course on random vibrations and, quite plausibly, for a more advanced course with some additional reading. It can also be used effectively for self-study by graduate students and professional engineers who have the requisite mathematical background. Lutes and Sarkani use informal language that takes away some of the intimidating nature of the random vibrations topic and helps put the reader at ease. While maintaining a high level of rigor, they avoid unnecessary mathematical complexity. Because of these factors, I believe this book is more accessible than most other books on this topic. However, the most valuable aspect of the book, in my view, is the physical insight that the authors provide through their extensive analysis and discussion of formulas and results throughout the book. This aspect is particularly important for beginning students of random vibrations — a topic which by its nature is somewhat abstract and not as easy to interpret as deterministic dynamics. The textbook is organized into 12 chapters. After the introductory chapter, Chapters 2 and 3 provide a review of the necessary material in probability theory, random variables, and mathematical expectation. A thorough understanding of this material provides sufficient background to study the remaining chapters. Chapter 4 introduces the notion of a stochastic process, defines moment functions, stationarity and ergodicity, and develops the tools of stochastic calculus that are essential for dynamic analysis. Some definitions here are different, somewhat more general, than the accepted convention. For example, stationarity is defined separately for each moment function. Thus, a process can be covariant stationary, i.e., have an autocovariance function that only depends on the time lag, while having a time-varying mean. The chapter provides only a time-domain view of the stochastic process with frequency-domain notions delayed until Chapter 6. This breakup is somewhat unnatural and produces one or two problems. For example, while the non-negative-definite property of the covariance function is defined in Chapter 4, the student is not offered an effective method of checking this property for a can-
Disassembly analysis, material composition analysis and environmental impact analysis for computer drives

The main objective of this paper is to i) provide the results of disassembly analysis of the computer drives such as hard disk drive of desktop, floppy disk drive and CD-ROM drive of server and floppy disk drive of laptop ii) to identify the components and material and iii) determine the environmental impact of these material and product as a whole. For the disassembly analysis the computer drives were first disassembled to the component level and disassembly time was recorded. The best disassembly sequence is presented in this paper to indicate the least amount of disassembly time for these drives. Material assessment was conducted as another part of this study and the results are presented here in detail for the drives analyzed. Printed circuit boards (PCB's) from the computer drives were analytical tested for determining precious and hazardous metal content. All plastics and few other components are identified by the plastic label or from the available results in the literature. Environmental impact assessment was done by using eco-indicator 99 methodology. Environmental impact caused by components and materials of the drive was calculated and environmental impact of the computer drive as a whole was also calculated. This paper presents the above data with respect to the computer drives and can be used as a base to conduct further advancement in the studies involving the design modification and alternate material selection for making the computer drives less burden some for the environment.
Self-Compensation-Limited Conductivity in Binary Semiconductors. III. Expected Correlations With Fundamental Parameters

The previously developed calculation of the degree of self-compensation in a binary semiconductor is used to obtain a useful correlation between the degree of self-compensation by singly ionized natural defects and the ratio of the electronic energy gap to certain generally known thermodynamic quantities. The latter quantities are related to the cohesive energy. It is shown, however, that the correlation factor given herein is more meaningful than the previously suggested ratio of the energy gap to the cohesive energy. The results are generalized to include compounds having a composition ${M}_{a}{N}_{b}$. One interesting conclusion is the prediction that $M$-atom vacancies will generally dominate interstitial $N$ atoms when $bla$ and vice versa. It has previously been shown that the second ionization level of a compensating natural defect can be critical in determining the degree of self compensation, particularly in the case of the II-VI compounds. A simple model of a singly ionized vacancy is presented which suggests that size considerations should play a major role in determining the second ionization level of such a defect. It is shown that the gross electrical properties of the II-VI compounds can be completely correlated with a single parameter, the ratio of the tetrahedral covalent radii of the elements. Finally, the over-all classification scheme described above is applied to a reasonably large group of compounds. The predicted gross electrical properties of these compounds are found to be in essential agreement with what is known experimentally, with the single exception of $n$-Cd${\mathrm{F}}_{2}$, for which an explanation is offered.
Transforming growth factor-beta: selective increase in glycosaminoglycan synthesis by cultures of fibroblasts from patients with progressive systemic sclerosis.

Abstract Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) has been found in all cells examined thus far, and has been shown to play an important role in inflammation and connective tissue formation. We now report that TGF-beta, alone or in combination with epidermal growth factor (EGF), led to a preferential increase in glycosaminoglycan synthesis by cultures of dermal fibroblasts from patients with progressive systemic sclerosis (PSS) when compared with normal fibroblasts ( p p
CFTR chloride channels in human and simian heart

Objectives: The cAMP-dependent Cl− conductance in heart is believed to be due to cardiac expression of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). While CFTR expressed in rabbit and guinea-pig heart (CFTRcardiac) is an alternatively spliced isoform of the epithelial gene product, little information is known regarding possible expression of CFTR in primate heart. In this study, we examined molecular expression of CFTR in human and simian atrium and ventricle and functional expression of cAMP-dependent Cl− currents in isolated human atrial and simian ventricular cells. Methods: The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed on human and simian atrial and ventricular mRNA using primers designed to border regions of the CFTR gene product corresponding to transmembrane segments I–VI (TSI-VI), the first nucleotide binding domain (NBD1), transmembrane segments VII–XII (TSVII-XII), and the large cytoplasmic domain which includes the regulatory (R) domain and NBD1. Functional expression of CFTR Cl− channels in human atrial and simian ventricular myocytes was determined using whole-cell and giant inside-out patch-clamp techniques. Results: Southern blot analysis of these RT-PCR products demonstrated expression of CFTR transcripts in human and simian atrial and ventricular tissue and revealed a novel pattern of expression compared to most animal species studies: both the exon 5 plus (unspliced) and exon 5 minus (spliced) CFTR transcripts are co-expressed in human and simian atrium and ventricle. Whole-cell experiments demonstrated a Cl− sensitive time-independent background conductance in both human atrial and simian ventricular myocytes that was activated by forskolin (FSK) and insensitive to 4,4′-diisothiocyanatostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid (DIDS). In inside-out patches utilizing the giant patch technique on human atrial myocytes, unitary Cl− sensitive channels resembling CFTR Cl− channels (approximately 14 pS conductance) were activated by the catalytic subunit of protein kinase A (PKA) in 3/12 patches examined. Conclusions: These results clearly demonstrate the molecular expression of CFTR Cl− channels and provide electrophysiological evidence consistent with functional expression of these channels in human atrial and simian ventricular myocardium.
Space-charge and third-order aberrations in quadrupole focusing systems

Abstract Our purpose is to consider third-order aberrations due to space charge. We derive the single-particle equations of transverse motion for a beam of elliptical cross section that propagates down a focusing channel. These equations include electric and magnetic fields caused by space charge and magnetic fields caused by quadrupoles and octupoles. We then calculate the third-order aberrations of a point-to-parallel system. We suggest that beam sizes should be minimized in order to control aberrations.
Left Ventricular Assist Device in Patients With Body Mass Index Greater Than 30 as Bridge to Weight Loss and Heart Transplant Candidacy

Abstract Introduction In obese patients with heart failure, weight reduction may be difficult due to physical restrictions, but may be necessary to achieve heart transplant candidacy. We report the outcomes of obese patients who underwent implantation of a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) using a pulsatile (HeartMate XVE [XVE]) or continuous flow (HeartMate II [HMII]) design and the effect on body mass index (BMI). Methods Of 37 patients with BMI >30 kg/m2 who underwent LVAD implantation, 29 survived at least 30 days and were followed for weight change. In the 30-day survivors, end points of the study were continued LVAD support, heart transplant, or death. One patient underwent gastric bypass surgery and was excluded. Results In the 28 patients who met inclusion criteria, BMI was 35.6 ± 4.4 kg/m2 at baseline, and at follow-up was 33.1 ± 5.5 kg/m2 (mean BMI change −2.5 kg/m2; P = .063), with a mean follow-up time of 301.6 ± 255.5 days. The XVE group showed a significant BMI reduction of 3.9 kg/m2 (P = .016 vs baseline); however, the HMII group showed 0.1 kg/m2 increase in BMI. BMI Conclusions LVAD placement in patients with BMI >30 kg/m2 provided significant weight loss in the pulsatile XVE group, but not in recipients of the continuous flow HMII. In patients successfully bridged to a heart transplant after LVAD insertion, mean reduction in BMI was 4.6 kg/m2 (P = .003). LVAD implantation provides a period of hemodynamic support for obese patients with advanced heart failure, during which time opportunity may be available for weight loss. Pulsatile devices appear to be associated with greater weight loss than nonpulsatile continuous flow devices. Additional therapies may be necessary to achieve significant weight loss in recipients of the continuous flow LVAD.
Love and The Triffids

Vagabond Holes: David McComb and The Triffids , edited by Chris Coughran and Niall Lucy (Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Press, 2009, 384pp, $35.00). Publisher’s website: www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/currentaffairs_culture_social_history/1104
Exploiting ISAT to solve the reaction–diffusion equation

We develop and demonstrate a computationally efficient numerical splitting technique for solving the reaction–diffusion equation. The scheme is based on the Strang splitting technique wherein the portions of the governing equations containing stiff chemical reaction terms are separated from those parts containing the less-stiff transport terms. As demonstrated, the scheme achieves second-order accuracy in space through the use of centred finite differences; second-order accuracy in time is achieved through Strang splitting. To improve greatly the computational efficiency, the pure reaction sub-steps use in situ adaptive tabulation (ISAT) to compute efficiently the reaction mapping while the pure diffusion sub-steps use an implicit Crank–Nicolson finite-difference method. The scheme is applied to an unsteady one-dimensional reaction–diffusion model equation with detailed chemical kinetics. For this test problem, we show spatial and temporal convergence results, the impacts of ISAT and ODE solver error tole...
Post-reconstruction non-local means filtering methods using CT side information for quantitative SPECT.

Quantitative SPECT techniques are important for many applications including internal emitter therapy dosimetry where accurate estimation of total target activity and activity distribution within targets are both potentially important for dose–response evaluations. We investigated non-local means (NLM) post-reconstruction filtering for accurate I-131 SPECT estimation of both total target activity and the 3D activity distribution. We first investigated activity estimation versus number of ordered-subsets expectation–maximization (OSEM) iterations. We performed simulations using the XCAT phantom with tumors containing a uniform and a non-uniform activity distribution, and measured the recovery coefficient (RC) and the root mean squared error (RMSE) to quantify total target activity and activity distribution, respectively. We observed that using more OSEM iterations is essential for accurate estimation of RC, but may or may not improve RMSE. We then investigated various post-reconstruction filtering methods to suppress noise at high iteration while preserving image details so that both RC and RMSE can be improved. Recently, NLM filtering methods have shown promising results for noise reduction. Moreover, NLM methods using high-quality side information can improve image quality further. We investigated several NLM methods with and without CT side information for I-131 SPECT imaging and compared them to conventional Gaussian filtering and to unfiltered methods. We studied four different ways of incorporating CT information in the NLM methods: two known (NLM CT-B and NLM CT-M) and two newly considered (NLM CT-S and NLM CT-H). We also evaluated the robustness of NLM filtering using CT information to erroneous CT. NLM CT-S and NLM CT-H yielded comparable RC values to unfiltered images while substantially reducing RMSE. NLM CT-S achieved −2.7 to 2.6% increase of RC compared to no filtering and NLM CT-H yielded up to 6% decrease in RC while other methods yielded lower RCs than them: Gaussian filtering (up to 11.8% decrease in RC), NLM method without CT (up to 9.5% decrease in RC), and NLM CT-M and NLM CT-B (up to 19.4% decrease in RC). NLM CT-S and NLM CT-H achieved 8.2 to 33.9% and −0.9 to 36% decreased RMSE on tumors compared to no filtering respectively while other methods yielded less reduced or increased RMSE: Gaussian filtering (up to 7.9% increase in RMSE), NLM method without CT (up to 18.3% increase in RMSE), and NLM CT-M and NLM CT-B (up to 31.5% increase in RMSE). NLM CT-S and NLM CT-H also yielded images with tumor shapes that better-matched the true shapes than other methods. All NLM methods using CT information were robust to small misregistration between SPECT and CT, but NLM CT-S and NLM CT-H were more sensitive than NLM CT-M and NLM CT-B to missing CT information.
Effect of temperature on metabolic activity of intact microbial communities: Evidence for altered metabolic pathway activity but not for increased maintenance respiration and reduced carbon use efficiency

Abstract We used metabolic tracers and modeling to analyze the response of soil metabolism to a sudden change in temperature from 4 to 20 °C. We hypothesized that intact soil microbial communities would exhibit shifts in pentose phosphate pathway and glycolysis activity in the same way as is regularly observed for individual microorganisms in pure culture. We also hypothesized that increased maintenance respiration at higher temperature would result in greater energy production and reduced carbon use efficiency (CUE). Two hours after temperature increase, respiration increased almost 10-fold. Although all metabolic processes were increased, the relative activity of metabolic processes, biosynthesis, and energy production changed. Pentose phosphate pathway was reduced (17–20%), while activities of specific steps in glycolysis (51%) and Krebs cycle (7–13%) were increased. In contrast, only small but significant changes in biosynthesis (+2%), ATP production (−3%) and CUE (+2%) were observed. In a second experiment, we compared the metabolic responses to temperature increases in soils from high and low elevation. The shift in activity from pentose phosphate pathway to glycolysis with higher temperature was confirmed in both soils, but the responses of Krebs cycle, biosynthesis, ATP production, and CUE were site dependent. Our results indicate that 1) in response to temperature, communities behave biochemically similarly to single species and, 2) our understanding of temperature effects on CUE, energy production and use for maintenance and growth processes is still incomplete.
Effects of Alternative Postharvest Treatments on the Microbiological Quality of Lowbush Blueberries

Abstract The applicability of commonly used postharvest treatments to control produce decay is often limited by toxicity regulations and residual by-product accumulation. Chlorine is the most widely used sanitizer in the produce industry for improving microbial quality and extending shelf-life of most minimally processed fruits and vegetables. Although effective, recent environmental and public health concerns associated with the use of chlorine have stimulated the produce industry to identify alternative treatments equivalent to chlorine in antimicrobial effectiveness. This study compared the effectiveness of alternative post-harvest treatments, hydrogen peroxide and citric acid, to the current industry standard, chlorine, in improving the microbiological quality of lowbush blueberries. Significant differences (p < 0.05) in antimicrobial effectiveness existed among treatments allowed the same contact time. Samples treated with 100 ppm chlorine resulted in the greatest microbial reduction in total aerobes...
When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups

The article reviews the book “When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups,” by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap.
On the structure of the broad faces of ferrite plates

Etude de faces de plaquettes de ferrite dans une matrice d'austenite residuelle dans Fe-0,62%C-2,0%Si. Discussion entre les auteurs, relative aux arrangements de dislocations interfaciales observes par microscopie electronique en transmission
Study on mechanism of action of Chinese medicine Chan Su: dose-dependent biphasic production of nitric oxide in trophoblastic BeWo cells

Background: Chan Su, a traditional Chinese medicine, is used for treating the heart diseases and other systemic illnesses. Our studies with animal model have revealed its role in increasing intracellular calcium concentration in cardiomyocytes. Nitric oxide (NO), a second messenger molecule, and its metabolites have been demonstrated to maintain and modulate multiple physiologic functions including the cardiovascular and reproductive systems. In order to explore the mechanism of action of Chan Su, we studied the ability of Chan Su to stimulate NO production in cultured trophoblastic BeWo cells. Materials and methods: BeWo cell is a cloned established cell line purified from human choriocarcinoma. These cells have some similarities in biological behavior with endothelial cells. Therefore, BeWo cell line may act as a model system for production of nitric oxide by Chan Su both in placenta and in cardiovascular tissue, and the results can easily be extrapolated to cardiomyocytes. Very small amount of ethanol extract of Chan Su was added to the cultured cells in KBM buffer and a chemiluminescence system was used for the measurement of nitric oxide. The amounts of Chan Su extract added to cultured cells were comparable to expected level of Chan Su in human serum after ingestion. We also repeated these experiments with bufalin, the active component of Chan Su. Results: The ethanol extract of Chan Su (5 and 10 μg/ml) significantly increased NO production up to 110% of basal control value, but higher concentrations (40 and 80 μg/ml) of Chan Su (as expected in an overdose) resulted in decreased NO production below the control level. This biphasic effect on nitric oxide production was also observed with bufalin, the active component of Chan Su responsible for its digoxin-like immunoreactivity. The presence of bufalin in Chan Su preparation was confirmed by thin layer chromatography (TLC) analysis. Conclusions: Chan Su as well as bufalin is able to modulate the production of NO in BeWo cell line.
Polarization and edge effects in photolithographic masks using three-dimensional rigorous simulation

The rigorous electromagnetic simulation program TEMPEST has been extended for analysis of three-dimensional problems, and is applied to study transmission through small contact holes and printability of 360 degree(s) phase quartz bump defects. REsults generated from the rigorous electromagnetic simulator TEMPEST can be fed into the simulator SPLAT for partial coherent imaging with arbitrary lens aberrations. Application of three-dimensional TEMPEST in small contact hole studies shows that transmission loss is about three times as much as the loss in space openings in 1X projection printing, and polarization effects can be more important than the orientation of a rectangular mask. The thin mask and scalar approximations are unacceptable as they predict no polarization effects and peak intensities that can be 2X larger than that predicted from TEMPEST. Also, 360 degree(s) phase quartz bump defects in chromeless phase-shifting masks do not produce intensity drop severe enough to cause undesired printing.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Structural differences in the cerebral cortex of healthy female and male subjects: a magnetic resonance imaging study

There are both reproductive and nonreproductive behavioral differences between men and women. Brain regions involved in determining sexual behavior have been reported to differ between the sexes. Nonreproductive, cognitive functional differences between sexes might be reflected in higher-order cortical structural dimorphisms, which have not previously been studied. We hypothesized that cortical regions involved in verbal behavior (which is sexually dimorphic) would differ between sexes. Using magnetic resonance imaging, we assessed gray matter volumes in several cortical regions in 17 women and 43 men. Women had 23.2% (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and 12.8% (superior temporal gyrus) greater gray matter percentages (corrected for overall brain size and age) than men in a language-related cortical region, but not in a more visuospatially related cortical region. These data seem to establish sexually dimorphic structural differences in the cerebral cortex, consistent with prior cerebral blood flow reports.
Item response theory analysis of the Western Aphasia Battery

The purpose of this investigation was to improve the validity of the Western Aphasia Battery for measuring aphasia severity and change over time by examining its fit to an item response theory (IRT) measurement model. The advantages of IRT include interval scaling, potential for equating scores across aphasia tests, and more veridical reporting of score reliability. Despite reasonable overall fit to the model, a small number of WAB items demonstrated substantial misfit, suggesting that they do not productively contribute to the measurement of aphasia severity. Potential explanations for this misfit, and implications of IRT for aphasia testing will be discussed.
Hygiene in the Prevention of Udder Infections I. Comparative Efficacy of Four Teat Dips

Three trials of teat dips were conducted with experimental exposure to mastitis pathogens. A control group of animals and a group treated with a hypochlorite preparation were included in all trials while a third group was dipped with a different iodophor preparation in each trial. Four teat dips were highly effective in reducing the incidence of udder infection. Some teat irritation was transitory during each trial; most occurred in the hypochlorite group.
Aqueous humor dynamics in low-tension glaucoma.

We measured the diurnal aqueous humor flow in patients with low-tension glaucoma by clearance of topically applied fluorescein. Ten patients with low-tension glaucoma participated in the study, and ten age-matched healthy volunteers served as control subjects. The diurnal aqueous humor flow was 2.58 ± 0.78 μl/min (mean ± standard deviation) in the control group and 2.48 ± 0.61 μl/min in the low-tension glaucoma group. The corresponding nocturnal data were 0.98 ± 0.22 μl/min and 1.24 ± 0.45 μl/min. The differences were not statistically significant. Tonographic facility of outflow and intraocular pressure were also measured. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in either facility or pressure. No evidence was found in this small group of patients to support the hypothesis that the normal tension in this disease results from a combination of low facility and low flow.
Perceptions, not illustrations, of Sefrou, Morocco: Paul Hyman's images and the work of ethnographic photography

In 1969, photographer Paul Hyman spent over four months in the Sefrou region of Morocco at the invitation of anthropologist Paul Rabinow. Sixty-four of his black-and-white photos were selected for the insert in the 1979 publication on Sefrou authored by Clifford Geertz, Hildred Geertz, and Lawrence Rosen, Meaning and order in Moroccan society. Geertz described Hyman's work as ‘visual notations,’ and Hyman as ‘a professional photographer rather than an anthropologist’ who catches ‘the look of the place, its people, and its life,’ yet the possessor of ‘a mindful eye.’ This essay explores Geertzian approaches to Hyman's images in particular and to visual anthropology in general.
Appraisal processes in the enactment of intentions to use coupons

Although much research has been performed on the role of intentions in consumer behavior, relatively little attention has been given to the processes intervening between intentions and behavior. Because coupon usage behavior requires planning and implementation effort with respect to intermediary acts or means, the behavior is considered problematic. This article proposes a model for explaining how consumers enact intentions once they decide to use coupons. Enactment of intentions is hypothesized to be a function of three appraisal processes: self-efficacies, instrumental beliefs, and affect toward intermediate acts or means. These three appraisal processes are hypothesized to combine multiplicatively to influence the target behavior, coupon usage. Also, one's prior history of coupon usage is expected to be an important determinant of coupon usage. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
Broad Line Region Clouds and the Absorbing Material in NGC 4151

A discussion is presented of the constraints imposed by X-ray, UV and optical observations on the absorbing material in the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy NGC 4151, comparing said observations with both photoionization model predictions of broad line region clouds and models of the narrow line region gas. The weakness of both semiforbidden C III 1909 and the broad component of H-alpha relative to C IV 1549, in conjunction with the absence of an absorption Balmer jump, indicate a broad line region ionization parameter that is greater in NGC 4151 than in QSO clouds by a factor of 30. The present calculations suggest that narrow line region clouds have a composition similar to extragalactic giant H II regions, with the H line spectrum showing that dust is mixed with narrow line region gas. It is hypothesized that broad line region clouds are likely to be in a radiatively driven wind, and it is shown that such clouds are opaque to radio emission.