cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Antioxidant Depletion in HDPE Geomembranes Exposed to Low-Level Radioactive Waste Leachate

Low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and mixed waste (MW) disposal facilities in the United States are required to have a service life in excess of 1000 yr. Understanding the rate of degradation of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembranes used in LLW and MW facilities is necessary to assess their service life. HDPE geomembranes (GM) undergo degradation in three stages: antioxidant depletion (Stage I), induction time to the onset of polymer degradation (Stage II), and polymer property degradation (Stage III). This paper focuses on antioxidant depletion in LLW leachate. HDPE geomembrane coupons (2-mm thick) were immersed in radioactive synthetic leachate (RSL) with chemistry representative of leachate in LLW disposal facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental restoration programs. Depletion was assessed at four temperatures (25, 50, 70, and 90 °C). To identify the effect of radionuclides on antioxidant depletion, comparative tests were conducted with nonradioactive synthetic leachate (NSL) having the same chemistry as the RSL leachate, except radionuclides were excluded. Control tests were conducted with deionized water. Specimens were removed periodically and tested to determine their mechanical and chemical properties. Antioxidant depletion was measured by both standard and high-pressure oxidative induction time (OIT) tests. The antioxidant depletion rate increased with exposure temperature and was higher for GMs immersed in RSL. Arrhenius modeling was used to extrapolate the laboratory data at elevated temperatures to a typical LLW liner at 15°C. The predicted time to antioxidant depletion for a GM in a composite liner is 624 yr.
Lateral rupture of cervical intervertebral disks.

Simple “keyhole” facetectomy by the posterior approach is the treatment of choice for lateral rupture of a cervical intervertebral disk. Results are among the most rewarding in neurosurgery. In the vast majority of cases of operable cervical disks (95 per cent) the lesions are lateral. An anterior approach is warranted only in cases of central disk lesions, which comprise the remaining 5 per cent. The majority of lateral disk lesions are “soft.” Arthritic osteophytic “hard” lesions less commonly require operation.
The Search for Neofascism: Julius Evola, Fascism, and Neofascism

One of the more curious features of the search for neofascism after the termination of the Second World War is the insistence, on the part of some of the most widely known researchers, that Julius Cesare Andrae Evola, born in Rome on the 19 May 1898, scion of an ancient aristocratic family, provided the neofascism of post–World War II Europe its ideology. Evola has been seen as the source of neofascism's ideological rationale. It was his ideas that lent neofascism its substance. Umberto Eco, who identifies “traditionalism” as essential to the “Ur Fascism” that he argues serves as the core of generic neofascism, cites no one other than Evola as its critical exponent. Others have identified Evola's thought as quintessentially fascist, as “creative” and “original.” For still others, he is spoken of as a “post-war fascist,” insisting that, after the passing of historic Fascism, his thought provided the inspiration for a resuscitated European neofascism. Together with that, we are confidently told that Evola became a source of neofascist ideological thought because Mussolini's “Fascism had few true believers who could … write articles and books.” Because so few Fascists of the time of the Ventennio were capable of writing articles or books, Evola, as one of the few, provided the texts that became one of “the most important” sources for the neofascism that arose out of the ruins of the Second World War.
Dynamics of Disease Progression and Gastrostomy Tube Placement in Children and Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: Application of Joint Models for Longitudinal and Time-to-Event Data

Background Previous small-sample studies have examined the effect of gastrostomy (g-) tube placement on weight, height, and lung function in adolescent patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), but there are no RCTs to date reporting efficacy. The goal of this study was to implement a dynamic prediction model to 1) understand the role of rapid lung function decline in g-tube placement in real-world clinical settings; 2) provide a prognostic tool with the potential to aid clinicians in optimizing the timing of g-tube placement, in relation to rate of lung function decline and current nutrition status. Methods A dynamic prediction model was developed, utilizing data on patients 6-21 years of age from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry (1997-2013). A joint model was implemented, which coupled a semiparametric mixed model to characterize rapid lung function decline with a time-to-event model to identify risk factors for g-tube initiation. Results The 4,034 individuals (21.3%) who underwent g-tube placement during adolescence or young adulthood had poorer nutrition and lung function at baseline and initially had increased rates of pancreatic enzyme use, infection and gastroesophageal reflux disease, compared to those who did not receive g-tubes; these associations changed over follow up. Rapid lung function decline was associated with increased risk of g-tube supplementation. Conclusions By jointly modeling longitudinal patterns of lung function decline with g-tube delivery, it is possible to construct prognostic aids to evaluate treatment delivery in relation to the onset of rapid lung function decline and other important clinical markers. These algorithms have the potential to enable more effective monitoring of disease progression and promote more timely treatment delivery.
Coordinated and efficient huge page management with ingens

Modern computing is hungry for RAM, with today's enormous capacities eagerly consumed by diverse workloads. Hardware address translation overheads have grown with memory capacity, motivating hardware manufacturers to provide TLBs with thousands of entries for large page sizes (called huge pages). Operating systems and hypervisors support huge pages with a hodge-podge of best-effort algorithms and spot fixes that made sense for architectures with limited huge page support, but the time has come for a more fundamental redesign.Ingens is a framework for huge page support that relies on a handful of basic primitives to provide transparent huge page support in a principled, coordinated way. By managing contiguity as a first-class resource and by tracking utilization and access frequency of memory pages, Ingens is able to eliminate a number of fairness and performance pathologies that plague current systems. Experiments with our prototype demonstrate fairness improvements, performance improvements (up to 18%), tail-latency reduction (up to 41%), and reduction of memory bloat from 69% to less than 1% for important applications like Web services (e.g., the Cloudstone benchmark) and the Redis key-value store.
Severity of alcohol dependence is associated with the fatty acid amide hydrolase Pro129Thr missense variant

The endocannabinoid system plays an important role in reward and addiction. One of the two main endocannabinoid neurotransmitters, anandamide, is metabolized by fatty acid amide hydrolase, an enzyme with a functional genetic polymorphism (FAAH Pro129Thr, rs324420). The Thr129 allele has been linked to problem drug and alcohol use, but the association has not been widely replicated and may be stronger for clinical measures of severity rather than categorical diagnosis. In the present study, we sought to determine whether the Thr129 allele was associated with both alcohol dependence (AD) diagnosis and severity in a sample of 1434 European American and African American individuals, 952 of whom were diagnosed with lifetime AD. Participants were genotyped for FAAH rs324420, and ancestry was determined via a genome-wide panel of ancestry informative markers. Subjects participated in Structured Clinical Interviews for psychiatric disorders and 90-day Timeline Followback interviews to assess recent alcohol use. European American participants with current AD had a higher Thr129 allele frequency than non-dependent controls. In European Americans with lifetime AD, there were significantly different distributions of drinking days and binge drinking days between the two genotype groups, with Thr129 carriers reporting a median of 10 fewer abstinent days and 13 more binge drinking days than Pro129/Pro129 homozygotes. In African American participants, there were no significant differences between Thr129 allele frequency in cases and controls and no significant differences in measures of AD severity by genotype. These findings provide evidence that the Pro129Thr missense variant is associated with AD severity in European Americans.
A Three-arm Randomized Clinical Trial Comparing Continuous Femoral Plus Single-injection Sciatic Peripheral Nerve Blocks versus Periarticular Injection with Ropivacaine or Liposomal Bupivacaine for Patients Undergoing Total Knee Arthroplasty.

Background:Multimodal analgesia is standard practice for total knee arthroplasty; however, the role of regional techniques in improved perioperative outcomes remains unknown. The authors hypothesized that peripheral nerve blockade would result in lower pain scores and opioid consumption than two com
Preparation and Optimization of Vanadium Titanomagnetite Carbon Composite Hot Briquette: A New Type of Blast Furnace Burden

A new type of blast furnace burden, named VTM-CCB (vanadium titanomagnetite carbon composite hot briquette), is proposed and optimized in this paper. The preparation process of VTM-CCB includes two components, hot briquetting and heat treatment. The hot-briquetting and heat-treatment parameters are systematically optimized based on the Taguchi method and single-factor experiment. The optimized preparation parameters of VTM-CCB include a hot-briquetting temperature of 300°C, a coal particle size of <0.075 mm, a vanadium titanomagnetite particle size of <0.075 mm, a coal-added ratio of 28.52%, a heat-treatment temperature of 500°C and a heat-treatment time of 3 h. The compressive strength of VTM-CCB, based on the optimized parameters, reaches 2450 N, which meets the requirement of blast furnace ironmaking. These integrated parameters provide a theoretical basis for the production and application of a blast furnace smelting VTM-CCB.
Comparison of three enrichment schemes for the detection of low levels of desiccation-stressed Listeria spp. from select environmental surfaces

Abstract Three commonly used enrichment schemes were evaluated for the detection of Listeria spp. from environmental surfaces: one-step 48 h enrichment in buffered Listeria enrichment broth (BLEB); 26 h primary enrichment in University of Vermont modified (UVM) broth, followed by a transfer of 100 μl primary enrichment culture to Fraser broth (FB) for 24–48 h secondary enrichment; and 26 h primary enrichment in half-Fraser broth (HF), followed by a transfer of 100 μl primary enrichment culture to FB for 24–48 h secondary enrichment. Low levels (20–300 CFU/sample) of Listeria were artificially inoculated onto eight types of surfaces, desiccation stressed, and then collected by swab/sponge samplers for subsequent analysis. Results showed that low levels of desiccation-stressed Listeria recovered and grew rather slowly: 26 h primary enrichment in UVM and HF could not consistently yield 1 cell in 100 μl of enrichment culture, as demonstrated by enumeration of 100 μl primary enrichment culture and transfer of 100 μl enrichment culture to secondary enrichment. We further discovered that, using 20 samples per scheme and for certain Listeria strains on certain surfaces, one-step 48 h enrichment in BLEB generated significantly higher numbers of positive results than the two-step enrichment schemes when there were no competing background microflora. Higher numbers of positive results from two-step schemes were achieved by increasing the duration of primary enrichment for an additional 22 h. Therefore, to improve the detection of desiccation-stressed Listeria in the environment, we must allow sufficient time for primary enrichment and/or transfer a sufficient amount of primary enrichment culture to the secondary enrichment. The study also highlights the importance of using low levels of inoculum and physiologically injured cells for method comparison and evaluation.
Ratings game: an analysis of Nursing Home Compare and Yelp ratings.

Background Two strategies for rating the quality of nursing homes (NHs) in the USA are exemplified by the Nursing Home Compare (NHC) website, launched by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 1998, and Yelp.com, an online consumer review site that has grown in popularity since its founding in 2004. Both sites feature a 5-star rating system. While much is known about NHC ratings, little is known about NH Yelp ratings. This study examines Yelp ratings for NHs in California and compares these ratings with NHC ratings. Understanding how these ratings relate can inform efforts to empower consumers and enhance NH decision-making. Methods We collected NHC and Yelp ratings for all California NHs between September and November 2016. For each NH with a Yelp review, we recorded the star rating and the total number of reviews. We also recorded the NHC 5-star rating and NHC ratings for inspections, staffing and quality measures (QMs). We conducted descriptive statistics and frequencies for these variables. We conducted correlations and tested means to compare the ratings. Results A total of 675 NHs (68.1% of the total sample of 991 NHs) had both Yelp ratings and NHC ratings. Correlations between the Yelp and NHC ratings were relatively weak. The Yelp rating was significantly lower than the 5-star NHC rating and the NHC ratings for staffing and QMs. It was significantly higher than the NHC inspection rating. Conclusions This study found that when consumers rate NHs on Yelp, their ratings differ considerably from NHC ratings, a finding in keeping with similar studies of NH quality measurement. Further research is needed to analyse the content of Yelp reviews and compare the themes and topics consumers identify with those reported on NHC.
Deep independent audio-visual affect analysis

Induced affect the emotional effect of an object on an individual can be quantified through two metrics: valence, which quantifies how “positive” or “negative” something is, and arousal, the emotional intensity from “calm” to “exciting”. Affective content analysis of visual media is a challenging problem due to differences in perceived reactions. The best affect-annotated video data sets are often analyzed by feeding large amounts of visual and audio information through machine-learning algorithms. The goal is to maximize accuracy, with the hope that each representation will bring useful information to the table. We quantify how different modalities such as visual and audio information can aid in understanding affect. To that end, we train independent models for visual and audio modalities. Each are convolutional neural networks paired with support vector machines to classify valence and arousal. We also train various ensemble models that combine multi-modal information. We find that our visual network alone achieves state-of-the-art valence classification accuracy and that our audio network, when paired with our visual features, achieves competitive results on arousal classification. Each network is much stronger on one metric than the other. This may lead to more sophisticated approaches to accurately identify affect in visual media.
SHARE: A Stackelberg Honey-Based Adversarial Reasoning Engine

A “noisy-rich” (NR) cyber-attacker (Lippmann et al. 2012) is one who tries all available vulnerabilities until he or she successfully compromises the targeted network. We develop an adversarial foundation, based on Stackelberg games, for how NR-attackers will explore an enterprise network and how they will attack it, based on the concept of a system vulnerability dependency graph. We develop a mechanism by which the network can be modified by the defender to induce deception by placing honey nodes and apparent vulnerabilities into the network to minimize the expected impact of the NR-attacker’s attacks (according to multiple measures of impact). We also consider the case where the adversary learns from blocked attacks using reinforcement learning. We run detailed experiments with real network data (but with simulated attack data) and show that Stackelberg Honey-based Adversarial Reasoning Engine performs very well, even when the adversary deviates from the initial assumptions made about his or her behavior. We also develop a method for the attacker to use reinforcement learning when his or her activities are stopped by the defender. We propose two stopping policies for the defender: Stop Upon Detection allows the attacker to learn about the defender’s strategy and (according to our experiments) leads to significant damage in the long run, whereas Stop After Delay allows the defender to introduce greater uncertainty into the attacker, leading to better defendability in the long run.
Best Fourier Approximation and Application in Efficient Blurred Signal Reconstruction

We expand upon the known results on sharp linear Fourier methods of approximation where the approximation is the best in terms of both rate and constant among all polynomial procedures of approximation. So far these results have been studied due to their mathematical beauty rather than their practical importance. In this paper we show that they are the core mathematics underlying best statistical methods of solving noisy ill-posed problems. In particular, we suggest a procedure for recovery of noisy blurred signals based on samples of small sizes where a traditional statistics concludes that the complexity of such a setting makes the problem not worthy of a further study. Thus, we present a problem where a combination of the classical approximation theory and statistics leads to interesting practical results.
Hyperkeratotic Eczema (Psoriasis) of the Palms

Hyperkeratotic eczema of the palms, a common yet somewhat neglected entity, is characterized by chronic, scaly, hyperkeratotic, fissure-prone, erythematous plaques on the palms and palmar surfaces of the fingers. In some patients, the eruption is itchy. This chronic, frustrating, recalcitrant disease may lead to disability in manual workers.
Vascular Endothelial Function: Role of Gonadal Steroids

Since the landmark study of (1980), understanding of the role of the vascular endothelium has exploded. Current knowledge views the endothelium not only as a barrier between blood and tissue, but also as a factory producing a variety of mediators influencing vascular smooth muscle contractility, blood coagulation and inflammatory responses. In addition, beyond the short-term effects of these mediators, they may also have long-term influences on blood vessel growth and development.
An Efficient Simple Cooling Schedule for Simulated Annealing

The capability of Global solution of an optimization problem is the forte of Simulated Annealing (SA). Theoretically only the infinite-time algorithm can guarantee the global solution. The finite-time characteristics of the algorithm depend largely on the ensemble of certain control parameters. Since the main parameter is dubbed temperature, the dynamics of how it is manipulated is widely known as cooling schedule. A variety of methods, from simple geometric to highly complex, have been proposed in the literature. While global solution capability has been the overall goal for all implementation, few schedules combined effective solution with simplicity of the cooling schedule. A novel schedule is proposed which combines efficiency with simplicity into an easily implementable algorithm. Several fundamental cooling schemes are compared with the proposed one based on 2 test problems. Our schedule faired competitively with most while being the simplest. Keywords: Optimization, simulated annealing, cooling schedule.
The Complexity of Culture in Persons

Public culture both creates and depends upon encultured minds. Nonetheless, culture in persons is not simply a mirror of public culture. In this chapter, Strauss draws upon research with Americans from diverse socioeconomic and racial groups to argue that culture in persons is complex. There are six reasons for this complexity: (1) People may internalize conflicting schemas; (2) differing schemas create divergent interpretations of shared experiences; (3) actors’ views are shaped by their self-image, emotion triggers, and motivations; (4) meanings are not the same as schemas; (5) beliefs are internalized in different ways (explicit or implicit, evoking conscious assent or creating an automatic, out-of-awareness association); and (6) beliefs vary in their meta-recognition as being cultural. Thus, cultural models (Holland and Quinn in Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 3–40,1987) and “the native’s point of view” (Geertz in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Basic Books, New York, 1983; Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. E.P. Dutton, New York, 1961) take different forms. Anthropologists should not be reluctant to acknowledge that culture is both inside and outside persons (cf. Handler in Am. Anthropol. 106: 488–494, 2004) if they recognize these complexities.
Green Building: A Primer

Worldwide, buildings consume a lot of materials, energy, and water. They are responsible for a wide range of impacts on human health and the environment. A green building refers to a structure that is designed, built, or operated in an environmentally-conscious and resource-efficient manner throughout the building's life-cycle. Its aim is to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. Sustainable, green buildings attract a lot of attention worldwide.This paper presents a brief introduction on green building.
A numerical equivalence result for generalized method of moments

Abstract This note shows when a GMM estimator has an alternative representation as a 2SLS estimator after data filtering. The result exploits a weaker condition than the conditions earlier invariance to transformation results use and applies to panel and system estimation.
Digging for (Ratings) Gold: The Connection Between Investigative Journalism and Audiences

Investigative journalism’s value to democracy is straightforward: it provides useful information to citizens by exposing wrongdoing and holding powerful institutions accountable. But its financial ...
Assimilation: Ketouronate Pathway

The phytopathogenicity of Erwinia chrysanthemi seems to be related to its pectinolytic and cellulolytic activities. Polygalacturonate (PGA) can be degraded into galacturonate or 5-keto-4-deoxyuronate (DKI); 2-keto-3-deoxygluconate (KDG) is a common intermediate in the catabolism of these two compounds. The galacturonate catabolic pathway, first described in Erwinia carotovora, is similar to that existing in Escherichia coli. As described for the PGA metabolism of a phytopathogenic Pseudomonas DKI is isomerized to 2,5-diketo-3-deoxygluconate (DKII) and then reduced to KDG. The enzyme 2-keto-3-deoxygluconate: NAD-oxidoreductase (KDGDH) that converts DKII to KDG has been purified and its biochemical properties analyzed. Mutants impaired in pectin degradation were isolated by chemical mutagenesis and Mu d(Ap lac) insertion. A mutation in the kduD gene coding for KDGDH prevented the growth of the bacteria on polygalacturonate. In the kduD-lac fusion strains resulting from Mu d(Ap lac) insertion, β-galactosidase was induced by polygalacturonate, galacturonate and other intermediates of polygalacturonate catabolism. Galacturonate was inducer unless a mutation prevented its metabolizatin to KDG. Our results suggested that KDG and DKII are the true inducers of the synthesis of KDGDH and pectate lyase. Two kinds of regulatory mutants exhibiting constitutive β-galactosidase synthesis were isolated from the kduD-lac fusion strains. One type of mutant was also affected for pectate lyases synthesis.
Hierarchical Markov Random Field model captures spatial dependency in gene expression, demonstrating regulation via the 3D genome

HiC technology has revealed the eukaryotic genome9s complex 3D architecture. It has been shown that the genome is separated into organizational structures which are associated with gene expression. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have quantitatively measured the level of gene expression in the context of the 3D genome. Here we present a novel model that integrates data from RNA-seq and HiC experiments, and determines how much of the variation in gene expression can be accounted for by the genes9 spatial locations. We used Poisson hierarchical Markov Random Field (PhiMRF), to estimate the level of spatial dependency among protein-coding genes in human IMR90 cells. The inference of PhiMRF follows a Bayesian framework, and we introduce the Spatial Interaction Estimate (SIE) to measure the strength of spatial dependency in gene expression. We find that the quantitative expression of genes in human chromosomes 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 19, 20 , 21 and X all show meaningful positive intra-chromosomal spatial dependency. Moreover, the spatial dependency is much stronger than the dependency based on linear gene neighborhoods, suggesting that 3D chromosome structures such as chromatin loops and Topologically Associating Domains (TADs) are indeed strongly correlated with gene expression levels. In some chromosomes the spatial dependency in gene expression is only detectable when the spatial neighborhoods are confined within TADs, suggesting TAD boundaries serve as insulating barriers for spatial interactions in the genome. We also report high inter-chromosomal spatial correlations in the majority of chromosome pairs, as well as the whole genome. Some functional groups of genes show strong spatial dependency in gene expression as well, providing new insights into the regulation mechanisms of these molecular functions. This study both confirms and quantifies the spatial correlation in gene expression. In addition, PhiMRF improves upon the stochastic modelling of gene expression that is currently widely used in differential expression analyses. PhiMRF is available at: https://github.com/ashleyzhou972/PhiMRF as an R package.
Fitness Costs and Benefits of Resistance to Phage Lambda in Experimentally Evolved Escherichia coli

Fitness tradeoffs play important roles in the evolution of organisms and communities. One such tradeoff often occurs when bacteria become resistant to phage at the cost of reduced competitiveness for resources. Quantifying the cost of phage resistance has frequently relied on measuring specific traits of interest to industrial applications. In an evolutionary context, however, fitness encompasses the effects of all traits relevant to an organism’s survival and reproductive success in a particular environment. Therefore, measurements of the net reproduction and survival of alternative genotypes offer greater power for predicting the fate of different genotypes in complex and dynamic communities. In this study, we measured the fitness of experimentally evolved, λ-resistant Escherichia coli isolates relative to their sensitive progenitor in both the absence and presence of phage. We also characterized certain phage-related phenotypes and obtained complete genome sequences of the bacteria. All of the evolved bacteria exhibited tradeoffs, such that they were more fit than the ancestor in the presence of phage, but less fit than the ancestor in the absence of phage. The fitness benefit of evolved resistance in the presence of abundant phage was generally much larger than the cost, and these effects appear to be driven by only a few resistance mutations. This asymmetrical benefit-tocost relation is consistent with the observation that sensitive cells did not persist in the experimental communities. Quantifying fitness effects in both the presence and absence of phage may thus provide a useful approach for predicting evolutionary outcomes in both natural and engineered microbial communities.
Centralized and Distributed Age of Information Minimization With Nonlinear Aging Functions in the Internet of Things

Resource management in Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems is a major challenge due to the massive scale and heterogeneity of the IoT system. For instance, most IoT applications require timely delivery of collected information, which is a key challenge for the IoT. In this article, novel centralized and distributed resource allocation schemes are proposed to enable IoT devices to share limited communication resources and to transmit IoT messages in a timely manner. In the considered system, the timeliness of information is captured using nonlinear Age-of-Information (AoI) metrics that can naturally quantify the freshness of information. To model the inherent heterogeneity of the IoT system, the nonlinear aging functions are defined in terms of IoT device types and message content. To minimize AoI, the proposed resource management schemes allocate the limited communication resources considering AoI. In particular, the proposed centralized scheme enables the base station to learn the device types and to determine aging functions. Moreover, the proposed distributed scheme enables the devices to share the limited communication resources based on available information on other devices and their AoI. The convergence of the proposed distributed scheme is proved, and the effectiveness in reducing the AoI with partial information is analyzed. Furthermore, the proposed resource management schemes with different number of devices, activation probabilities, and outage probabilities are analyzed in terms of the average instantaneous AoI. Simulation results show that the proposed centralized scheme achieves significantly lower average instantaneous AoI when compared to simple centralized allocation without learning, while the proposed distributed scheme achieves significantly lower average instantaneous AoI when compared to random allocation. The results also show that the proposed centralized scheme outperforms the proposed distributed scheme in almost all cases, but the distributed approach is more viable for a massive IoT.
A Case Report of Hypoglycemia Following a Tramadol Overdose in a Non-Diabetic Patient.

Introduction:Tramadol is an opioid analgesic that binds to mu-opioid receptors and inhibits the uptake of norepinephrine and serotonin. Through its activation of these receptors, it has potential t...
“Liberating the Small Devils”: Red Guard Newspapers and Radical Publics, 1966–1968

Red Guard newspapers and pamphlets (wenge xiaobao) were a key source for early research on the Cultural Revolution, but they have rarely been analysed in their own right. How did these publications regard their status and function within the larger information ecosystem of the People's Republic, and what is their role in the history of the modern Chinese public sphere? This article focuses on a particular subset of Red Guard papers, namely those published by radical groups within the PRC's press and publication system. These newspapers critiqued the pre-Cultural Revolution press and reflected upon the possible futures of a new, revolutionary Chinese press. Short-lived as these experiments were, they constitute a test case to re-examine the functioning of the public in a decidedly “uncivil” polity. Ultimately, they point to the ambiguous potential of the public for both consensus and conflict, liberation and repression, which characterizes the press in 20th-century China.
Carbon Management in Conservation Agriculture Systems

As food demands rise, we need to keep our soil healthy and productive. The practice of no-tillage (NT), initially evolved as a way to combat the soil erosion associated with intensive tillage, also improves soil health and function. The favourable effect on soil properties and processes led to the transition from NT to bio-diverse, regenerative NT, generally known as Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems. CA integrates three key principles: (1) continuous crop residue cover on the soil surface, (2) minimum soil disturbance, and (3) diverse crop rotations and cover-crop mixes with location-specific, complementary practices. The potential increase in stored carbon under CA, especially in response to no-tillage, is an important benefit; many studies, worldwide, have documented higher carbon storage under no-till compared with conventional tillage. Biodiversity with carbon cycling and flow is necessary for harmony and stability in nature and for global food security. Global environmental preservation may well require soil carbon storage as the main goal for improved management of carbon flow management in regenerative farming systems.
A narrative review on the use of ultrasonography in critical care transport: is POCUS hocus?

Abstract The use of ultrasound imaging in the in-hospital setting has grown in popularity over the last few decades, distinguishing itself as a valuable tool for both diagnosis and procedural guidance. Despite widespread adoption in the in-hospital setting, ultrasound use has remained extremely limited in the out-of-hospital setting until very recently. The critical care transport setting – especially the air-medical environment – presents unique opportunities and challenges for ultrasonography. A number of intriguing studies have shown how ultrasound has the potential to improve patient care and augment provider abilities specifically in critical care transport. This review chronologically summarizes the use of ultrasound in critical care transport, paying special attention to how various studies uncovered specific ultrasound applications, ultrasound challenges unique to critical care transport, and how the use of ultrasound impacted both patients and providers.
Overlap Syndrome

Purpose of Review This paper aims to critically evaluate recent literature on the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and management of overlap syndrome (OS).
Climate Change Cosmopolitanism

If one nation damages another, what are its obligations? This question can be approached and understood in diverse ways, but it is concretized in debates over the social cost of carbon, which is sometimes described as the linchpin of national climate policy. The social cost of carbon, meant to capture the damage done by a ton of carbon emissions, helps to determine the stringency of regulations in many domains, including emissions limits on motor vehicles and on stationary sources. In determining the social cost of carbon, agencies must decide whether to use the global number (as chosen by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden) or instead the domestic number (as chosen by President Donald Trump). Use of the global number should be seen as a form of climate change cosmopolitanism, whether the grounding is moral or otherwise. There are four central arguments in favor of using the global figure. (1) The epistemic argument: Experts do not know a great deal about the purely domestic harms from climate change, which makes it impossible to generate a purely domestic number. (2) The interconnectedness argument: Harms done by domestic emissions are not limited to those done by the incremental increase in temperatures in the United States; they include harms to U.S. citizens living abroad and harms to U.S. citizens and interests that come from the cascading effects of harm done to foreigners (including governments, companies, and individuals), which are ultimately felt in the United States. (3) The moral cosmopolitan argument: In deciding on the scope of its regulations, the United States should account of the harms it does to non-Americans. (4) The prisoner’s dilemma argument: If all nations used a domestic figure, all nations would lose; a successful approach to the climate problem requires nations to treat greenhouse gas emissions as a global, and not merely domestic, externality. Neither the epistemic argument nor the incompleteness argument justifies choice of the global number. The moral cosmopolitan and prisoner’s dilemma arguments stand on much stronger grounds.
The Role of Conversation Policy in Carrying Out Agent Conversations

Structured conversation diagrams, or conversation specifications, allow agents to have predictable interactions and achieve predefined information-based goals, but they lack the flexibility needed to function robustly in an unpredictable environment. We propose a mechanism that dynamically combines conversation structures with separately established policies to generate conversations. Policies establish limitations, constraints, and requirements external to specific planned interaction and can be applied to broad sets of activity. Combining a separate policy with a conversation specification simplifies the specification of conversations and allows contextual issues to be dealt with more straightforwardly during agent communication. By following the conversation specification when possible and deferring to the policy in exceptional circumstances, an agent can function predictably under normal situations and still act rationally in abnormal situations. Different conversation policies applied to a given conversation specification can change the nature of the interaction without changing the specification.
Coping with Crosscutting Software Changes Using Information Transparency

Designers are often unsuccessful in designing for change using traditional modularity techniques. A complementary modularity technique called information transparency can improve a designer's ability to simplify changes by exposing the interdependence of dispersed program elements that must be changed together for correctness. Information transparency represents modules via similarity and architecture, rather than locality and abstraction.With these, a programmer can create locality with a software tool, easing change in much the same way as traditional modularity. When combined with information hiding, then, more complex module structures can be represented. Information transparency techniques include naming conventions, formatting style, and ordering of code in a file. Transparency can be increased by better matching tool capabilities and programming style. We discuss applications of information transparency and introduce design principles for software designers and tool designers.
Project quality activities and goal setting in project performance assessment

The similarities of two quality-related initiatives – total quality management (TQM) and project quality activities (PQA) – are investigated for their impact on organizational and project performance. A brief review of each initiative is given and relev..
Recursive Collective Actions Problems: the Structure of Procyclicality in Financial and Monetary Markets, Macroeconomies and Formally Similar Contexts

The hallmark of a collective action problem is its aggregating multiple individually rational decisions into a collectively irrational outcome. Arms races, “commons tragedies” and “prisoners’ dilemmas” are well-known, indeed well-worn examples. What seem to be less widely appreciated are two complementary propositions: first, that some collective action problems bear iterative, self-exacerbating structures that render them particularly destructive; and second, that some of the most formidable challenges faced by economies, societies, and polities are iteratively self-worsening problems of precisely this sort. Financial markets, monetary systems and macroeconomies in particular are rife with them – as are other complex systems subject to group-mediated procyclicalities or “feedback” effects. I call the mentioned challenges “recursive collective action problems,” and show that a great many familiar regulatory and policy challenges – including asset price bubbles and busts, consumer price hyperinflations and debt deflations, “paradoxes of thrift” and “recessionary spirals” – constitute instances of this general phenomenon. I also hazard suggestions as to how best to address such challenges. Key to the effort is first to recognize their shared structure, second to recognize that collective action problems require coherent collective agency for their solution, and third to recognize that the collective agents in question must act to render no longer individually rational such decisions as aggregate into collectively irrational outcomes.I close with specific examples of what problem-solving strategies informed by the “three recognitions” will tend to look like. The implications for macroeconomic and “macroprudential” finance-regulatory policy in particular are manifold. If we but attend to the shared nature, structure, and pervasiveness of recursive collective action problems, I conclude, we can recoup much in the way of wealth and wellbeing that is now needlessly lost.
An efficient algorithm for characteristic polynomial of 2-D state-space structures

For a class of 2-D digital filters realized by a 2-D state-space structure, two different methods for computing the coefficients of their characteristic polynomial are introduced. The relative efficiencies of these methods are compared with that of the conventional method. An efficient method is then chosen which computes the coefficients with a minimum number of multiplications. The effectiveness of this method has been examined on a numerical example.
Constitutive Modeling of Metal Powder Behavior During Compaction

In this paper, a constitutive modeling of the metal powder compaction is presented as a first step of ongoing research of a multiscale and multistage mathematical based model concept for powder metallurgy component design and performance prediction using the finite element method. In recent years, techniques such as finite element analysis have received wide attention for their high applicability to powder metallurgy (PM) industry. These techniques provide a valuable tool in predicting density and stress distributions in the pressed compact prior to the actual tooling design and manufacturing process. However, the accuracy of FE prediction highly depends on the possibility to obtain appropriate experimental data to calibrate and validate the powder material model. Within the framework of continuum mechanics, the plasticity model depends on external and internal state variables such as temperature, stress, hardening, relative density and contact between metal powder particles. The material model considers different microstructural and mechanical aspects such as dislocation dynamics, friction, porosity/density evolution, pressure dependent yield surface, particle size/shape distribution, and rate effects related to press speed. To represent the powder densification, we describe a double-surface plasticity model, based on a combination of a convex yield surface consisting of a failure envelope, such as a Mohr-Coulomb yield surface and, a hardening cap model with the use of internal state variables that capture the structure of the structure-property relations. The model is aimed to be implemented in the finite element program. The Molecular Dynamics is also introduced in this multiscale methodology as numerical experiments to study the metal compaction and sintering processes at the nanoscale level. These numerical experimental data are aimed to determine and correlate the micrpstructure-plasticity relationships at the macroscale.
A Novel Melanoma Gene (MG50) Encoding the Interleukin 1 Receptor Antagonist and Six Epitopes Recognized by Human Cytolytic T Lymphocytes

We identified a novel 8.1-kb human melanoma gene, MG50, derived from subtractive hybridization with a squamous lung carcinoma cell line, LU-1. 6.8 kb containing an open reading frame were sequenced, and the structure of the encoded 1496 amino acid protein was deduced. With HLA-A2.1-transduced Drosophila cells as antigen-presenting cells, we identified six epitopes restricted by HLA-A2.1 that elicited CTLs in vitro. Reactivity of the CTLs to melanoma cells containing MG50 indicated that the epitopes were displayed naturally. Significant cross-reactivity of CTLs immunized against a melanoma cell line that lacked HLA-A2.1 indicated that at least four of the epitopes were also recognized in a different HLA class I context, most likely HLA-A*6802. By quantitative reverse transcription, MG50 message was found in one of two skin melanoma cell lines, an ocular melanoma cell line, two of four metastatic skin melanomas, two of three mammary carcinomas, one of two colon carcinomas, and an ovarian carcinoma. Of six normal tissues, MG50 was found only in a specimen of normal skin and was absent from a congenital nevus. It is likely that MG50 is the gene for the interleukin 1 receptor antagonist because a reported sequence of cDNA from the latter had a sequence of 528 bases in the 3' region, a long contiguous base sequence, and 176 encoded amino acids identical with those of MG50. MG50 is one of the few melanoma-associated antigens that is not a differentiation antigen or a mutated protein. Because of its nature, it may prove to be important in the pathogenesis of the tumors in which it is found, as well as an immunogen and target for immunotherapy.
STUDIES ON THE EFFECT OF CHRONIC GAMMA RAYS ON RICINUS. I. DEVELOPMENT OF POLLEN, OVULE AND FEMALE GAMETOPHYTE

Abstract Young seedlings of Ricinus commuais cv. ‘early spineless’ (Syn. Anjou, Mautner) at the three-leaf-stage of growth were put in the gamma greenhouse at approximate dose rates of 500, 400, 300, 200, 100, 50 and 25 R per day (exposure period of 22 hr/day) for varying periods of time. Plants at 500 R/day did not produce any inflorescences due to growth inhibition. At 400 R/day the inflorescences formed were extremely reduced and non-viable. At 300 R/day and lower doses the flowers in the inflorescence were usually unisexual-male at the base, intergrades in the centre and female at the top. At chronic doses of 100 and 200 R/day terminal hermaphrodite flowers were produced occasionally and in about 5–10 per cent of the plants at 300 and 400 /Rday. Morphogenetic abnormalities described are dose related, but we do not have enough data to construct a dose-response curve for each organ or stage of development. The gynoecium under irradiation may show a variable number of carpels, open ovary chamber, the formation of accessory gynoecia and transformation of carpellary tissue into pollen sacs. The development, structure and fate of the anther wall were similar under unirradiated and irradiated conditions, but variations were observed in microsporogenesis, in microspores and in mature pollen, probably due to failure of cytokinesis, excessive vacuolation and failure of one or both meiotic divisions. The orientation or organization and development of the ovules and of the embryo sac in two-thirds of the plants were abnormal at 300 and 400 R/day, and to some degree also at 200 and 100 R/day. These are the most radiosensitive stages of flower development. Isolated tracheids in the nucellus were observed under irradiated conditions only. The development of the female gametophyte in a majority of cases followed the monosporic (Polygonum) type, but a tendency in irradiated plants toward the bisporic and tetrasporic type was also reflected. Ionizing radiations affect all developmental stages of pollen, ovule and female gametophyte except (a) the mechanism responsible for the movement of the two first division nuclei toward the poles of the embryo sac and (b) the position of vacuole and nucleus in the synergid and egg nuclei, both of which seem to be radioresistant.