cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Genetics of the metabolic complications of obesity.

Publisher Summary The mechanisms linking obesity to its metabolic complications are extremely complex and remain hotly debated. It is hypothesized that reasons for variability in susceptibility to obesity-mediated metabolic complications involve both environmental and genetic factors. While advances in the knowledge of variation in the human genome have led to the identification of susceptibility genes contributing to obesity and related disorders, relatively few studies have focused specifically on interactions between obesity and genetic polymorphisms in the development of metabolic complications. With genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and more comprehensive candidate gene studies, there have been tremendous advances in the identification of common gene variants that have main effects on body mass index (BMI) (and other adiposity measures), lipids, and blood pressure. However, there have been relatively few investigations that have evaluated the interactions between genetic variation and obesity on the development of metabolic syndrome traits. A common theme for common variants for complex diseases and traits, including metabolic syndrome traits, is that individual susceptibility loci have very small main effect sizes. However, it is still possible that some of these loci have larger effects on metabolic phenotypes in the presence of obesity or when provoked by a certain dietary or other lifestyle factor. Identification of these functional variants will provide additional insight into disease pathophysiology and may provide the scientific rationale for the design of more individualized prevention and treatment strategies for obesity and its metabolic complications.
Building Relationships with Portal Users

Motivation for Web portal use is an important factor in the continued growth of e-commerce. Particularly for Web portals, motivation may be intertwined with various dimensions of a relationship that is cultivated between the portal and users. Specifically, the four motivation factors (feature, personalization, familiarity, and searching) are highly correlated to trust and satisfaction. Greater loyalty was found for AOL than for other portals, with no significant differences in relationship with Web users among the free Web portals such as Yahoo. Heavy web users and early adopters were more likely to use personalized Web portals and enjoy communicating with others through the Internet. Because a long relationship with Web portals is one motivation to use them, the highly correlated motivation factors found in this study are important to building strong relationships with Web users. These findings have implications for marketers and public relations practitioners.
Interdisciplinary Discourse: Conceptualization and Applications in Public Administration

In academia, the importance of interdisciplinary discourse (IDD) as an instrument of change and evolution for disciplines and subfields has expanded considerably in modern times. The concept of discourse continues to develop as a means of sharing and transmitting communication, dialogue, and ideas across disciplinary boundaries. While basic levels of discourse are simple, they can progress into more advanced stages where distinctive challenges arise. Under such circumstances, the transmission process has a significant impact on the substantive scholarship and value structures of the recipient discipline, causing it to recast itself in order to effectively absorb transmissions. For some disciplines, transmissions over the long run are beneficial and lead to progressive change and development. For others which did not form their own distinct identities early in the developmental stages, the IDD process results in complications since appropriate interfaces do not exist to absorb the transmissions received. This has the potential to trigger an identity crisis, as has been the case with public administration. This article examines three distinct periods of recasting in public administration: 1) early development and the influence of business models (1887-1940); 2) the development of a science of administration (1940-1968); and 3) postmodernism and public administration (1969—present). While public administration has evolved considerably across these periods of recasting, it has not escaped the immanent progression toward an identity crisis.
Pregnancy Outcomes After Fertility Preservation in Transgender Men.

BACKGROUND:Transgender individuals, individuals whose gender identity does not align with their sex assigned at birth, undergoing gender-affirming hormonal or surgical therapies may experience loss of fertility. Assisted reproductive technologies have expanded family-building options for transgender
Inferring Disease Status by Non-parametric Probabilistic Embedding

Computing similarity between all pairs of patients in a dataset enables us to group the subjects into disease subtypes and infer their disease status. However, robust and efficient computation of pairwise similarity is a challenging task for large-scale medical image datasets. We specifically target diseases where multiple subtypes of pathology present simultaneously, rendering the definition of the similarity a difficult task. To define pairwise patient similarity, we characterize each subject by a probability distribution that generates its local image descriptors. We adopt a notion of affinity between probability distributions which lends itself to similarity between subjects. Instead of approximating the distributions by a parametric family, we propose to compute the affinity measure indirectly using an approximate nearest neighbor estimator. Computing pairwise similarities enables us to embed the entire patient population into a lower dimensional manifold, mapping each subject from high-dimensional image space to an informative low-dimensional representation. We validate our method on a large-scale lung CT scan study and demonstrate the state-of-the-art prediction on an important physiologic measure of airflow (the forced expiratory volume in one second, FEV1) in addition to a 5-category clinical rating (so-called GOLD score).
Intrinsic Magnetism in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes of Finite Length

The magnetic properties of axially confined hydrogenated single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) of the (n, 0) type, as well as cross-linking architectures based on these units, are systematically explored by use of density functional theory. Emphasis is placed on the relation between the ground state magnetic moments of SWCNTs and zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs). Comparison between SWCNTs with n = 5–24 and ZGNRs of equal length gives rise to two basic questions: (1) how does the nanotube curvature affect the antiferromagnetic order known to prevail in ZGNRs, and (2) to what extent do the magnetic moments localized at the SWCNT edges deviate from the zero-curvature limit n/3 μB? The studies on single SWCNTs are extended to cross-linking carbon nanotubes (CLCNTs) composed of three axially confined single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) of the (10,0) type. Three CLCNT models, differing from each other by the structure of the contact regions of the three SWCNT constituents, are explored in terms of their geometric, electronic, and magnetic properties. Various magnetic phases, as obtained by combining finite SWCNTs in ferromagnetic (FM) or antiferromagnetic (AFM) coordination, are distinguished. The characteristics of these phases are shown to depend on the contact region geometry which plays an essential role in defining the order of their stabilities. Prospects of applying either of the two systems analyzed here, SWCNTs and CLCNTs, as transmission elements in spintronics are discussed.
A new species of Calosima Dietz, 1910 from Kenya (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea: Blastobasidae) reared from the domatia of Vachellia drepanolobium (Fabaceae).

Abstract Calosima smithi n. sp. (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea: Blastobasidae) is described from specimens reared in Kenya from swollen thorn domatia of Vachellia drepanolobium (Fabaceae). Illustrations of the adult and male genitalia are provided.
Fine-grained on-line power monitoring for soft microprocessor based system-on-chip

Today's CMOS technologies allow larger circuit designs to fit on a single chip. However, this advantage comes at a high price of increased process-voltage-temperature (PVT) variations. FPGAs and their designs are no exceptions to such variations. In fact, the same bit file loaded into two different FPGAs of the same model can produce a significant difference in power and thermal characteristics due to variations that exist within the chip. Since it is increasingly difficult to control physical variations through manufacturing tasks, there is a need for practical ways to sense chip variations to provide a way for circuit designers to compensate or avoid its negative effects. One of the most critical aspects of such variation is power. Therefore, we developed and demonstrated a high accuracy on-chip on-line Energy-per-Component (EPC) measurement technology on Xilinx FPGAs since 2011. However, we found that the hardware overhead associated with such method limited the use of the technology. Therefore, our follow-up work in Energy-per-Operation (EPO) on Spartan FPGA with OpenRISC SoC produced an equally accurate power monitoring technology with drastically lower hardware overhead. While this method made our technology more practical for SoC designs on FPGAs, it did not produce component level power dissipation data that previous EPC method provided. Therefore, we extend this prior work with a new algorithm to extract EPC values from EPO result. Despite the lower hardware overhead, this change ended up improving the accuracy of the power result by unraveling the instruction-level abstraction into component-level energy consumption.
Series approximation to probability densities

One of the historical and fundamental uses of the Edgeworth and Gram-Charlier series is to “correct” a Gaussian density when it is determined that the probability density under consideration has moments that do not correspond to the Gaussian [5, 6]. There is a fundamental difficulty with these methods in that if the series are truncated, then the resulting approximate density is not manifestly positive. The aim of this paper is to attempt to expand a probability density so that if it is truncated it will still be manifestly positive.
Archiving Asteroid Photometric Data

Current programs which produce asteroid photometric data range from astrometry through visual and near-infrared photometry and spectrophotometry to thermal infrared (8 to 30 micrometers) photometry. These data are published in a variety of places including observatory publications, IAU Circulars, the Minor Planet Circulars, and various journals.
Abstract 155: Risk of Seizures after Malignant MCA Stroke and Decompressive Hemicraniectomy

Background Post-stroke seizures (PSS) have a devastating effect on morale and may further impair an already compromised quality of life. The reported incidence of PSS is 5-12%, but may be higher in patients with malignant MCA stroke requiring decompressive hemicraniectomy. Seizure prophylaxis for stroke survivors is not recommended, and little guidance exists about the use of prophylactic antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) after neurosurgical procedures. We aimed to determine the incidence of seizures after hemicraniectomy in stroke survivors and to identify risk factors for development of seizures after stroke. Via telephone interview, we explored patients own experience after their stroke. Methods We reviewed charts of patients aged 18-99 with malignant MCA infarction who underwent decompressive hemicraniectomy from Jan 1, 2002 to Dec 31, 2008. We looked for seizures that occurred after their stroke and for clinical and imaging factors related to those. All patients who consented to a telephone interview were contacted to inquire about seizure history. Seizure-free survival analysis was used, with log rank testing for associations. Results We identified 38 patients, mean follow-up time was 504 days (IQR 140-857). Nearly half of patients suffered a seizure (18/38) and the seizures were difficult to control in 9/18. Four patients suffered their first seizure during initial hospitalization. For 14/18, the first seizure occurred after or around cranioplasty and mostly at home. Perioperative seizure prophylaxis was variable and did not influence seizure occurrence. Older age showed a trend towards increased seizure risk (log rank p=.09). Neither gender, race, severity, location or hemorrhagic transformation were associated with development of post-stroke seizures. Modified Rankin Scale score (mRS) at discharge was 4 or above in all patients. By last follow-up, 17/38 patients had a mRS of 3 or better. Patients who suffered a seizure did not feel well prepared for the possibility of PSS, and for some the seizures were considered a major setback. Among those who responded to the questionnaire (n=14, 12 had seizures), all would have wanted to know whether or not they were at high risk for developing PSS, and would have opted to take anti-epileptic medications for seizure prophylaxis. Conclusions The frequency of seizures after malignant MCA stroke requiring decompressive hemicraniectomy is higher than expected, and the seizures often difficult to control.
Inventive Knowledge and the Sources of New Technology: Regional Changes in Innovative Capacity in the United States

The United States experienced very radical changes in the regional sourcing of invention and new technology during the twentieth century. In less than five decades, areas that were previously peripheral or undeveloped turned into the most important sources of new technology. This remarkable transformation, and the factors which supported it, need to be understood if we are to make any sense of the forces that drive regional change.
Multimode fiber Φ-OTDR with holographic demodulation

We propose and demonstrate a method to perform quantitative phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) using multimode fiber. While most Φ-OTDR sensors use single-mode fiber, multimode fiber exhibits higher thresholds for non-linear effects, a larger capture fraction of Rayleigh backscattered light, and the potential to avoid signal fading by detecting many spatial modes in parallel. Previous multimode fiber based OTDR sensors discarded most of the backscattered light and thus failed to take advantage of these noise-reducing factors. Here, we show that by performing off-axis holography with a high-speed camera, we can record the entire Rayleigh backscattered field, maximizing the detected light level and making the sensor immune to fading. The sensor exhibits a high degree of linearity, a minimum phase noise of −80 dB [rel. rad2/Hz], and 20 kHz bandwidth.
Loss of HDAC11 ameliorates clinical symptoms in a multiple sclerosis mouse model

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, immune-mediated, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS). There is no known cure for MS, and currently available drugs for managing this disease are only effective early on and have many adverse side effects. Results from recent studies suggest that histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors may be useful for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases such as MS. However, the underlying mechanisms by which HDACs influence immune-mediated diseases such as MS are unclear. More importantly, the question of which specific HDAC(s) are suitable drug targets for the potential treatment of MS remains unanswered. Here, we investigate the functional role of HDAC11 in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a mouse model for MS. Our results indicate that the loss of HDAC11 in KO mice significantly reduces clinical severity and demyelination of the spinal cord in the post-acute phase of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. The absence of HDAC11 leads to reduced immune cell infiltration into the CNS and decreased monocytes and myeloid DCs in the chronic progressive phase of the disease. Mechanistically, HDAC11 controls the expression of the pro-inflammatory chemokine C–C motif ligand 2 (CCL2) gene by enabling the binding of PU.1 transcription factor to the CCL2 promoter. Our results reveal a novel pathophysiological function for HDAC11 in CNS demyelinating diseases, and warrant further investigations into the potential use of HDAC11-specific inhibitors for the treatment of chronic progressive MS.
Factors associated with post-intubation sedation after emergency department intubation: A Report from The National Emergency Airway Registry.

Abstract Background Previous work has suggested low rates of post-intubation sedation in patients undergoing endotracheal intubation (ETI) in the emergency department (ED) with limited data examining factors associated with sedation use. Utilizing a national database; we sought to determine the frequency of post-intubation sedation and associated factors. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected database (National Emergency Airway Registry (NEAR) from 25 EDs from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2017). Patients were considered to have received post-intubation sedation if they received any of the following medications within 15 min of ETI completion; propofol, midazolam, diazepam, ketamine, etomidate, fentanyl, and morphine. We calculated odds ratios for post-intubation sedation. Results Of the 11,748 eligible intubations, 9099 received post-intubation sedation (77.5%) while 2649 did not (22.5%). Pre-intubation hypotension (odds ratio; 95% confidence Interval) (0.27; 0.24–0.31) and post-intubation hypotension (0.27; 0.24–0.31) were associated with lower odds of post-intubation sedation. Patients with a medical indication compared to a traumatic indication for ETI had higher odds of receiving post-intubation sedation (1.16; 1.05–1.28) as did those that underwent rapid sequence intubation (15.15; 13.56–16.93). Use of succinylcholine was associated with a higher odd of post-intubation sedation compared to a long-acting neuromuscular blocking agent (i.e. rocuronium or vecuronium) (1.89; 1.68–2.12). Conclusion Post-intubation sedation rates in NEAR are higher than previously reported and multiple factors including the indication for intubation and succinylcholine use, are associated with higher odds of receiving post-intubation sedation.
A series of 5-aminosubstituted 4-fluorobenzyl-8-hydroxy-[1,6]naphthyridine-7-carboxamide HIV-1 integrase inhibitors

A series of 5-amino derivatives of 8-hydroxy[1,6]-naphthyridine-7-carboxamide exhibiting sub-micromolar potency against replication of HIV-1 in cell culture was identified. One of these analogs, compound 12, displayed excellent pharmacokinetic properties when dosed orally in rats and in monkeys. This compound was demonstrated to be efficacious against replication of simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) 89.6P in infected rhesus macaques.
Erfahrungshaftigkeit von Narrationen

Geschichten zu Gesundheitsthemen stellen generalisiertes, medizinisches Wissen an einem Einzelfall dar (Kalitzkus & Matthiessen, 2009). Trotz dieser ubergeordneten Gemeinsamkeit sind Geschichten zur Gesundheitsforderung und Pravention sowohl formal-strukturell als auch inhaltlich vielfaltig: eine Liebeserklarung an mehr Bewegung an frischer Luft, ein Krimi uber den Kampf gegen zu viel Schokolade oder ein Drama uber die zu spate Einsicht, etwas fur die eigene Gesundheit zu tun. Diese Geschichten konnen ein einzelnes Ereignis in einem Satz umfassen (siehe Abschnitt 4.1), oder ein ganzes Buch fullen.
Banking crisis and bank supervisory accountability

Abstract The accountability of bank supervisors to the executive and the legislative branches of the government varies across countries and over time. Using cross-country panel data, we explore whether a banking crisis can affect these accountability arrangements. According to our results, supervisory accountability to the executive branch only becomes more likely following a banking crisis. Our contribution is to the nascent but important literature on the governance of bank supervisors.
Hitchhikers on floats to Arctic freshwater: Private aviation and recreation loss from aquatic invasion

This study of aviation-related recreation loss shows that a survey primarily aimed at collecting information on invasive species' pathways can also be used to estimate changes in pathway-related ecosystem services. We present a case study for Elodea spp. (elodea), Alaska's first known aquatic invasive plant, by combining respondents' stated pre-invasion actual flights with stated post-invasion contingent behavior, plane operating costs, and site quality data. We asked pilots about the extent of continued flights should destinations become invaded and inhibit flight safety. We estimate a recreation demand model where the lost trip value to the average floatplane pilot whose destination is an elodea-invaded lake is US$185 (95 % CI $157, $211). Estimates of ecosystem damages incurred by private actors responsible for transmitting invaders can nudge actors to change behavior and inform adaptive ecosystem management. The policy and modeling implications of quantifying such damages and integration into more complex models are discussed.
Gut microbiome in HCC – Mechanisms, diagnosis and therapy

The microbiome exerts essential functions in health and disease, modulating key processes in metabolism, inflammation and immunity. Recent evidence has revealed a key role of the microbiome in carcinogenesis as well as anti-cancer immune responses in mouse models and patients. Herein, we will review functions of the gut microbiome in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the third leading cause of worldwide cancer mortality. The majority of HCC develops in patients with chronic liver disease, caused by viral hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and alcohol-related fatty liver disease. In this review, we will discuss mechanisms by which the gut-liver axis promotes the development of HCC in mouse models and patients, including dysbiosis, the leaky gut and bacterial metabolites, with a particular focus on NAFLD as the fastest growing cause of HCC development. Moreover, we will review recent progress in harnessing the gut microbiome as a potential diagnostic tool and novel therapeutic target in patients with HCC, in particular in the setting of immunotherapy.
Organization and expression of the TUP gene in Daucus carota

Differential screening of a somatic embryo cDNA library for genes expressed during embryogenesis has disclosed a small RNA which I have named Tiny Up-regulated Protein (TUP). This mRNA is 402 bp in length, is expressed during embryo formation, and reaches its highest accumulation in the flowers and roots of adult carrot plants. The mRNA is barely detectable in leaves. The accumulation of the TUP mRNA in seedlings is increased by auxin and by abscisic acid. The open reading frame encodes a tiny, uniquely structured protein of 6100 Daltons which has a pi of 5.3. Algorithms predicting protein structure suggest that this tiny, unique protein contains a leader sequence targeting it to the endoplasmic reticulum and potentially through the default secretory pathway. Database searches show homology to antibacterial and arabinogalactan proteins. Protein prediction algorithms also suggest that the gene product may be a GPI-anchored protein. Synthesized TUP protein did not affect the growth of bacteria or fungus, and the accumulation of the mRNA decreased in seedlings grown with a fungus. These data suggest that the TUP does not have a role in defense responses in plants. Antisera generated against the synthetic TUP protein reveal 5 detectable proteins in leaf organs but none in roots. Only one of the 5 proteins is detected in flowers and at a much lower abundance than in leaves. Attempts to immune-precipitate these proteins has been unsuccessful to date. These data outline a very unique, tiny, acidic protein which is most likely secreted in some form to the
The US-China Economic Relationship: A Comprehensive Approach

The U.S.-China economic relationship has reached a critical juncture. Over the past year, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports and China has retaliated, raising tariffs on U.S. exports. The U.S. concerns that underpin these bilateral trade tensions stem from specific practices endemic to China’s economic model that systematically tilt the playing field in favor of Chinese companies domestically and globally. Progress on specific trade issues will require China to comply with its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and to make certain reforms that will likely touch on areas of state control over the economy. In addition, new trade rules are needed to address China’s economic practices not covered by its WTO commitments, including in areas such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs), certain subsidies, and digital trade. These issues also come at a time of increasing U.S. concern over the national security risks China presents, particularly with respect to technology access. Despite the challenges the U.S. has had at the WTO, the WTO should be central to resolving U.S.-China trade tensions. From this perspective, we outline a multipronged strategy, including bilateral, multilateral, and unilateral actions, as well as working with allies, that together would constitute positive next steps for this critical economic relationship.
Mobility-Guided Estimation of Covid-19 Transmission Rates.

It is of critical importance to estimate changing disease-transmission rates and their dependence on population mobility. A common approach to this problem involves fitting daily transmission rates using a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered-(SEIR) model (regularizing to avoid overfitting) and then computing the relationship between the estimated transmission rate and mobility. Unfortunately, there are often several very different transmission-rate trajectories that can fit the reported cases well, meaning that the choice of regularization determines the final solution (and thus the mobility-transmission rate relationship) selected by the SEIR model. Moreover, the classical approaches to regularization-penalizing the derivative of the transmission rate trajectory-do not correspond to realistic properties of pandemic spread. Consequently, models fitted using derivative-based regularization are often biased toward underestimating the current transmission rate and future deaths. In this work, we propose mobility-driven regularization of the SEIR transmission rate trajectory. This method rectifies the artificial regularization problem, produces more accurate and unbiased forecasts of future deaths, and estimates a highly interpretable relationship between mobility and the transmission rate. For this analysis, mobility data related to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic was collected by Safegraph (San Francisco, California) from major US cities between March and August 2020.
Developing fungal bands for control of Asian longhorned beetle,Anoplophora glabripennis,in the U.S.

An invasive long-horned beetle,Anoplophora glabripennis,was first reported in the northeastern and midwestern United States and eastern Canada between 1996 and 2004 and has been given the common name Asian longhorned beetle(ALB).This beetle has also been found in several countries in Europe.ALB is difficult to control because larvae are found within the wood of living trees and the long-lived adults often occur high in tree canopies.This species is native to China and Korea and,because it has been a major tree killer in China,government agencies in the U.S.and Canada are working to eradicate ALB from North America.Our laboratory has been developing a microbial control approach targeting ALB adults,based on the Japanese product Biolisa Kamikiri which is used to control cerambycids in orchards.Entomopathogenic fungi are grown within non-woven fiber bands(= fungal bands)and placed around tree trunks and branches where ALB adults become inoculated when walking across bands.We have conducted bioassays with Beauveria brongniartii,Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae against ALB larvae and adults to identify effective isolates and now focus our efforts on M.anisopliae F52(ARSEF 7711).Caged field trials conducted in China to compare fungal sprays with fungal bands(2000,2001)demonstrated decreased ALB longevity and fitness for both application methods but longer activity of fungi in cages treated with fungal bands compared with sprays.Uncaged field trials(2001,2002)yielded faster ALB adult mortality in fungal-treated plots and decreased fitness.Studies in New York City testing the longevity of activity of fungal bands in the field have documented that bands retain1×107 conidia·cm-2(the threshold for activity of Biolisa Kamikiri)for over 3 months.In contrast,studies with unformulated conidia sprayed onto tree trunks in New York documented conidial survival of only a few days.Sublethal effects of exposure of adult female ALB to fungal bands have been investigated further in the laboratory.After either newly eclosed or reproductively active females are exposed to fungal bands,few viable larvae are produced before death of the females.When females are exposed to fungal bands and then caged with males,males become infected.
A Comprehensive Study of Bugs in Software Defined Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) enables innovative and impressive solutions in the networking domain by decoupling the control plane from the data plane. In an SDN environment, the network control logic for load balancing, routing, and access control is written in software running on a decoupled control plane. As with any software development cycle, the SDN control plane is prone to bugs that impact the network’s performance and availability. Yet, as a community, we lack holistic, in-depth studies of bugs within the SDN ecosystem. A bug taxonomy is one of the most promising ways to lay the foundations required for (1) evaluating and directing emerging research directions on fault detection and recovery, and (2) informing operational practices of network administrators. This paper takes the first step towards laying this foundation by providing a comprehensive study and analysis of over 500 ‘critical’ bugs (including $\sim 150$ with manual analysis) in three of the most widely-used SDN controllers, i.e., FAUCET, ONOS, and CORD. We create a taxonomy of these SDN bugs, analyze their operational impact, and implications for the developers. We use our taxonomy to analyze the effectiveness and coverage of several prominent SDN fault tolerance and diagnosis techniques. This study is the first of its kind in scale and coverage to the best of our knowledge.
Benevolent Maleficence:How a Well-Intentioned Legislature and a Deferential Court Combined to Stunt the Development of Massachusetts Product Liability Law

Massachusetts product liability law is unusual. Unlike most states, Massachusetts does not recognize strict tort liability in the product area. Rather, “strict product liability” is limited to breaches of warranty under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The Massachusetts legislature amended Article 2 in several ways to provide a “strict liability” remedy that is, in the words of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, “congruent in nearly all respects with the principles” of strict tort liability. The court has construed the amendments to the UCC as precluding the adoption of strict tort liability in Massachusetts. In most ways, Massachusetts product liability law is in the mainstream of general American law. There are, however, vestiges of sales law that make that law unusual because of the way it developed. There are also problems of statutory interpretation caused by the engrafting of the concepts of strict tort liability into the contract law of Article 2. This article explores some of these problems. It argues that, by either judicial or legislative action, “strict product liability” should not be restricted to warranties that arise from a sale or lease. The article also discusses one of the remaining encumbrances of sales law, the requirement that a buyer give notice of a claimed breach of warranty to the seller or be barred from any remedy, and argues that the requirement does not apply to warranty beneficiaries, who are not buyers in privity with the seller, and that, in any event, the legislature should abolish the notice requirement in all warranty cases in which there has been personal injury. The article also discusses some of the problems of statutory interpretation caused by having two statutes of limitation and two notice provisions applicable to warranty claims in Article 2 as a result of the product liability amendments.
Self-Reported Effects of Cannabis on ADHD Symptoms, ADHD Medication Side Effects, and ADHD-Related Executive Dysfunction.

Objective: People with ADHD are more likely to use cannabis but little is known about the effects of cannabis on ADHD symptoms, ADHD medication side effects, or ADHD-related executive dysfunction. ...
56 Year Old Central American Male Immigrant with a Persistent Cough and Chest Pain

A 56 year old male who recently immigrated from Equador presents with scattered plaques on his chest.
An Open Source Advertisement Server

This report describes a new online advertisement system and its implementation for the Yioop open source search engine. This system was implemented for my CS298 project. It supports both selling advertisements and displaying them within search results. The selling of advertisement is done using a novel auction system, which we describe in this paper. With this auction system, it is possible to create an advertisement, attach keywords to it, and add it to the advertisement inventory. An advertisement is displayed on a search results page if the search keyword matches the keywords attached to the advertisement. Display of advertisements is done using a probabilistic ranking algorithm which determines the most relevant advertisements for the search query. Our system also supports the display of advertisements from external advertisement servers.
Evidence of Exposure to Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae among Arizona Dogs Outside a Previously Documented Outbreak Area

Since 2003, two communities in eastern Arizona have experienced a sustained outbreak of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), caused by Rickettsia rickettsii, associated with transmission by Rhipicephalus sanguineus, the brown dog tick; 70 human cases, including eight deaths, were reported from these communities during 2003 through 2008. In both of the affected communities, antibodies to spotted fever group rickettsiae (SFGR) were present in dogs before the notice of the first human cases, suggesting that dogs may serve as useful sentinels for human risk of RMSF in this region. During 2005 and 2006, an exploratory serosurvey was conducted among stray and relinquished dogs presenting to animal control facilities in eastern Arizona located outside the area where human cases had been reported. Antibodies to SFGR were detected in 5.7% (14 of 247) dogs assessed outside the RMSF outbreak area. Animal shelters located in counties that either included or shared large borders with the outbreak area were significantly more likely to have seropositive dogs than facilities in more geographically separated counties (P = 0.01). In addition, stray dogs were significantly more likely to be antibody-positive than relinquished animals (P = 0.01), suggesting that control of stray dog populations should be considered as a means of limiting SFGR transmission in this region. The findings from this study may be extrapolated to suggest that the current risk for human RMSF infection may extend beyond the noted outbreak area. Heightened surveillance for human disease is needed in the region.
Second Life: Community and Society as a Focus for Marketing Approaches

Virtual worlds such as Second Life have recently gained increased visibility from businesses seeking to market products “in -world” to virtual world participants. However, without unders tanding the sociological orientation of virtual participants, the effectiveness of marketing approaches in virtual worlds may be limited. This study utilizes a Delphi approach to determine the sociological orientation of a panel of Second Life participant s, with the goal of constructing a theoretical model which can be used for testing the effectiveness of various marketing approaches in virtual worlds.
Pheromone killing of multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecalis V583 by native commensal strains

Multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecalis possess numerous mobile elements that encode virulence and antibiotic resistance traits as well as new metabolic pathways, often constituting over one-quarter of the genome. It was of interest to determine how this large accretion of mobile elements affects competitive growth in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract consortium. We unexpectedly observed that the prototype clinical isolate strain V583 was actively killed by GI tract flora, whereas commensal enterococci flourished. It was found that killing of V583 resulted from lethal cross-talk between accumulated mobile elements and that this cross-talk was induced by a heptapeptide pheromone produced by native E. faecalis present in the fecal consortium. These results highlight two important aspects of the evolution of multidrug-resistant enterococci: (i) the accretion of mobile elements in E. faecalis V583 renders it incompatible with commensal strains, and (ii) because of this incompatibility, multidrug-resistant strains sharing features found in V583 cannot coexist with commensal strains. The accumulation of mobile elements in hospital isolates of enterococci can include those that are inherently incompatible with native flora, highlighting the importance of maintaining commensal populations as means of preventing colonization and subsequent infection by multidrug-resistant strains.
Velocity neurons improve performance more than goal or position neurons do in a simulated closed-loop BCI arm-reaching task.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) that convert brain-recorded neural signals into intended movement commands could eventually be combined with Functional Electrical Stimulation to allow individuals with Spinal Cord Injury to regain effective and intuitive control of their paralyzed limbs. To accelerate the development of such an approach, we developed a model of closed-loop BCI control of arm movements that (1) generates realistic arm movements (based on experimentally measured, visually-guided movements with real-time error correction), (2) simulates cortical neurons with firing properties consistent with literature reports, and (3) decodes intended movements from the noisy neural ensemble. With this model we explored (1) the relative utility of neurons tuned for different movement parameters (position, velocity, and goal) and (2) the utility of recording from larger numbers of neurons – critical issues for technology development and for determining appropriate brain areas for recording. We simulated arm movements that could be practically restored to individuals with severe paralysis, i.e., movements from an armrest to a volume in front of the person. Performance was evaluated by calculating the smallest movement endpoint target radius within which the decoded cursor position could dwell for one second. Our results show that goal, position, and velocity neurons all contribute to improve performance. However, velocity neurons enabled smaller targets to be reached in shorter amounts of time than goal or position neurons. Increasing the number of neurons also improved performance, although performance saturated at 30-50 neurons for most neuron types. Overall, our work presents a closed-loop BCI simulator that models error corrections and the firing properties of various movement-related neurons that can be easily modified to incorporate different neural properties. We anticipate that this kind of tool will be important for development of future BCIs.
Assembly and Stability of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus Particle

Publisher Summary This chapter explores the recent studies on the chemistry of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), which provides insight into both the molecular basis of virus pathogenicity and the basic mechanism of information transfer from nucleic acid to protein. The structural and physical chemical studies on TMV considered in this chapter provide a picture of the way in which the viral nucleic acid is packaged for transmission, and illustrate some general principles regarding the molecular organization of biological structures. The chapter discusses that the stability of virus particles is a property of their structural organization. The nature of this structural organization is analyzed in a number of different ways. First, it describes the physical and geometrical principles that apply to the construction of a virus particle. Second, the arrangement of the molecules—which build the virus particle—is determined by X-ray analysis and electron microscopy. Third, from the known structure and the construction principles, the physicochemical observations on the process of virus assembly and disassembly are also interpreted. Fourth, by combination of chemical, physicochemical, and structural studies the nature of some of the specific noncovalent bonding determines the virus structure that can be established. The ultimate goal is the construction of a molecular model of the virus particle, which would account for all its structural properties.
Breast cancer risk and drinking water contaminated by wastewater: a case control study.

Drinking water contaminated by wastewater is a potential source of exposure to mammary carcinogens and endocrine disrupting compounds from commercial products and excreted natural and pharmaceutical hormones. These contaminants are hypothesized to increase breast cancer risk. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has a history of wastewater contamination in many, but not all, of its public water supplies; and the region has a history of higher breast cancer incidence that is unexplained by the population's age, in-migration, mammography use, or established breast cancer risk factors. We conducted a case-control study to investigate whether exposure to drinking water contaminated by wastewater increases the risk of breast cancer. Participants were 824 Cape Cod women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988–1995 and 745 controls who lived in homes served by public drinking water supplies and never lived in a home served by a Cape Cod private well. We assessed each woman's exposure yearly since 1972 at each of her Cape Cod addresses, using nitrate nitrogen (nitrate-N) levels measured in public wells and pumping volumes for the wells. Nitrate-N is an established wastewater indicator in the region. As an alternative drinking water quality indicator, we calculated the fraction of recharge zones in residential, commercial, and pesticide land use areas. After controlling for established breast cancer risk factors, mammography, and length of residence on Cape Cod, results showed no consistent association between breast cancer and average annual nitrate-N (OR = 1.8; 95% CI 0.6 – 5.0 for ≥ 1.2 vs. < .3 mg/L), the sum of annual nitrate-N concentrations (OR = 0.9; 95% CI 0.6 – 1.5 for ≥ 10 vs. 1 to < 10 mg/L), or the number of years exposed to nitrate-N over 1 mg/L (OR = 0.9; 95% CI 0.5 – 1.5 for ≥ 8 vs. 0 years). Variation in exposure levels was limited, with 99% of women receiving some of their water from supplies with nitrate-N levels in excess of background. The total fraction of residential, commercial, and pesticide use land in recharge zones of public supply wells was associated with a small statistically unstable higher breast cancer incidence (OR = 1.4; 95% CI 0.8–2.4 for highest compared with lowest land use), but risk did not increase for increasing land use fractions. Results did not provide evidence of an association between breast cancer and drinking water contaminated by wastewater. The computer mapping methods used in this study to link routine measurements required by the Safe Drinking Water Act with interview data can enhance individual-level epidemiologic studies of multiple health outcomes, including diseases with substantial latency.
Seasonal fire danger forecasts for the USA

The Scripps Experimental Climate Prediction Center has been making experimental, near-real-time, weekly to seasonal fire danger forecasts for the past 5 years. US fire danger forecasts and validations are based on standard indices from the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), which include the ignition component (IC), energy release component (ER), burning index (BI), spread component (SC), and the Keetch–Byram drought index (KB). The Fosberg fire weather index, which is a simplified form of the BI, has been previously used not only for the USA but also for other global regions and is thus included for comparison. As will be shown, all of these indices can be predicted well at weekly times scales and there is even skill out to seasonal time scales over many US West locations. The most persistent indices (BI and ER) tend to have the greatest seasonal forecast skill. The NFDRS indices also have a weak relation to observed fire characteristics such as fire counts and acres burned, especially when the validation fire danger indices are used.
A hybrid frequency-space domain algorithm for estimating projective transformations of color images

This paper makes two important contributions to the estimation of projective transformations. First, it presents a new algorithm for estimating these transformations between pairs of color images; a frequency-domain algorithm initially estimates an affine approximation to the actual projective transformation relating the two images; a space-domain algorithm then computes the projective transformation parameters through an iterative procedure where the affine approximation is used as the starting-point. Second, it provides a discussion on the role played by color in the estimation of projective transformations by testing the proposed algorithm in various color spaces and by suggesting the solutions which allow the best trade-off between estimate accuracy and computational complexity.
Measuring high-frequency wave propagation in railroad tracks by joint time-frequency analysis

Abstract The behavior of high-frequency elastic waves propagating in railroad tracks is relevant to the field of rail noise generation and long-range rail inspection. While a large amount of theoretical and numerical work exists to predict transient vibrations propagating in rails, obtaining experimental data has been particularly challenging due to the multimode and dispersive behavior of the waves. In this work a joint time–frequency analysis based on the Gabor wavelet transform is employed for characterizing longitudinal, lateral and vertical vibrational modes propagating in rails in the 1000– 7000 Hz range. The Gabor transform optimizes the time–frequency resolution of the measurements and theoretically requires a single excitation point and a single measurement point. These features make the analysis well-suited for the study of wave propagation in rails. The theory of the wavelet transform is reviewed in the context of dispersive measurements. Accelerometer data were taken from a section of rail subject to impulse dynamic testing in the laboratory. The group (energy) velocity dispersion curves and the frequency-dependent attenuation of the waves were successfully extracted from the wavelet scalograms of the accelerometer signals.