cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Development of a Quick Look Pandemic Influenza Modeling and Visualization Tool

Federal, State, and local decision makers and public health officials must prepare and exercise complex plans to contend with a variety of possible mass casualty events, such as pandemic influenza. Through the provision of quick look tools (QLTs) focused on mass casualty events, such planning can be done with higher accuracy and more realism through the combination of interactive simulation and visualization in these tools. If an event happens, the QLTs can then be employed to rapidly assess and execute alternative mitigation strategies, and thereby minimize casualties. This can be achieved by conducting numerous 'what-if' assessments prior to any event in order to assess potential health impacts (e.g., number of sick individuals), required community resources (e.g., vaccinations and hospital beds), and optimal mitigative decision strategies (e.g., school closures) during the course of a pandemic. In this presentation, we overview and demonstrate a pandemic influenza QLT, discuss some of the modeling methods and construct and visual analytic components and interface, and outline additional development concepts. These include the incorporation of a user selectable infectious disease palette, simultaneous visualization of decision alternatives, additional resource elements associated with emergency response (e.g., first responders and medical professionals), and provisions for other potential disaster events.
Remote biochemical verification of tobacco use: Reducing costs and improving methodological rigor with mailed oral cotinine swabs.

Abstract Introduction Multi-site tobacco cessation trials could benefit from remote biochemical verification for tobacco use without invasive, time-consuming, or expensive collection processes. To the authors' knowledge, there have been no previous studies examining the predictive validity of oral fluid swabs for the detection of cotinine levels with samples collected off-site and mailed for on-site interpretation. Methods Tobacco users were recruited through an online survey and participants who met the initial eligibility criteria were invited to take part. Those who elected to enroll provided two positive iScreen Oral Fluid Device (OFD) cotinine test samples during an in-office visit. One sample was used as a control and stored in a temperature-regulated location, while the other was mailed from one of ten surrounding counties. Mailing method and time from collection to mailing were varied, and results were assessed against control samples. Results Twenty tobacco users enrolled in the study. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 31 (M = 16.45, SD = 1.54). Several types of tobacco use were reported, with electronic cigarettes the most commonly reported product. None of the mailed sample interpretations changed from pre- to post-mailing, with up to twenty-one days from sample collection to results confirmation. Conclusions Results indicate that the use of mailed oral swabs may be an easy to use, reliable, and low-cost option for the detection of cotinine in tobacco users when in-person collection is not feasible. Test result interpretations were found to be unchanged after mailing, and after extended post-collection time gaps.
Rejecting fast narrow-band disturbances with slow sensor feedback for quality beam steering in selective laser sintering

Abstract A fundamental problem arises in feedback control when the system is subject to fast disturbances but can only get slowly updated sensor feedback. The problem is particularly challenging when the disturbances have frequency components near or beyond the sensor’s Nyquist sampling frequency. Such difficulties occur to selective laser sintering, an additive manufacturing process that employs galvo scanners to steer high-power laser beams and relies on non-contact, slow sensing such as visual feedback to enhance the product quality. In pursuit of addressing the fundamental challenge in quality control under slow sensor feedback, this paper introduces a multi-rate control scheme to compensate beyond-Nyquist disturbances with application to selective laser sintering. This is achieved by designing a special bandpass filter with tailored frequency response beyond the slow Nyquist frequency of the sensor, along with integrating model-based predictor that reconstructs signals from limited sensor data. Verification of the algorithm is conducted by both simulation and experimentation on a galvo scanner that directs the energy beam in the additive manufacturing process.
Approach to Suicidal Behaviors

Suicide, suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts and plans, and suicidal communications are common in borderline personality disorder (BPD). The overarching treatment goal is to help the patient shift from repeating suicidal processes to trying to understand and change them – making the painful thoughts, feelings, and urges both more evident and more manageable. The process of helping this happen is complicated by clinician reactions and the many possible uses of suicidal communications. The process of recognizing and accurately assessing risk, while maintaining attention to the relevant interpersonal dynamics and subjective experience of the patient, can help ground clinicians and contribute to effective care.
Before the ‘Founder of Peace’: Remembering Anarchy in Tajikistan

Book Review Roundtable on The Origins of the Civil War in Tajikistan: Nationalism, Islamism and Violent Conflict in Post-Soviet Space, by Tim EpkenhansThe treaty ending Tajikistan’s civil war was s...
Bright environmental light improves the sleepiness of nightshift ICU nurses.

Shift work can disturb circadian homeostasis and result in fatigue, excessive sleepiness, and reduced quality of life. Light therapy has been shown to impart positive effects in night shift workers. We sought to determine whether or not prolonged exposure to bright light during a night shift reduces sleepiness and enhances psychomotor performance among ICU nurses. This is a single-center randomized, crossover clinical trial at a surgical trauma ICU. ICU nurses working a night shift were exposed to a 10-h period of high illuminance (1500–2000 lx) white light compared to standard ambient fluorescent lighting of the hospital. They then completed the Stanford Sleepiness Scale and the Psychomotor Vigilance Test. The primary and secondary endpoints were analyzed using the paired t test. A p value <0.05 was considered significant. A total of 43 matched pairs completed both lighting exposures and were analyzed. When exposed to high illuminance lighting subjects experienced reduced sleepiness scores on the Stanford Sleepiness Scale than when exposed to standard hospital lighting: mean (sem) 2.6 (0.2) vs. 3.0 (0.2), p = 0.03. However, they committed more psychomotor errors: 2.3 (0.2) vs. 1.7 (0.2), p = 0.03. A bright lighting environment for ICU nurses working the night shift reduces sleepiness but increases the number of psychomotor errors. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03331822 . Retrospectively registered on 6 November 2017.
Issues Posed by the Symposium: A Dialogue

The symposium concludes with a discussion by the presenters and members of the audience. This is their first real opportunity to dialogue with each other and pursue in depth the ideas, issues, and dilemmas which have developed during these two days.
Classifying and Measuring the Performance of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds

This article offers a factor model for classifying socially responsible mutual funds and measuring their performance. The authors provide a factor model that consists of six factors: the four widely used factors of market, smalllarge (SMB), value-growth (HML), and momentum, and two social responsibility factors, reflecting the criteria most widely used by socially responsible funds. The first social responsibility factor is the top-bottom factor (TMB), consisting of the difference between the returns of stocks of companies ranked in the top third and the bottom third by five social responsibility criteria: employee relations, community relations, environmental protection, diversity, and products. The second is the accepted-shunned factor (AMS), consisting of the difference between the returns of stocks of companies commonly accepted by socially responsible investors and the returns of stocks of companies they commonly shun. Shunned stocks are stocks of companies in the alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms, military, and nuclear industries. A factor’s coefficient is its loading, tilt, or beta; the authors use the term beta. TMB and AMS factors’ betas effectively capture the social responsibility features of indices and mutual funds, and the TMB and AMS betas of indices and mutual funds generally reflect the social responsibility scores of the companies whose stocks they contain. The classification of socially responsible mutual funds by betas and contents differs from classification by Morningstar and other classifying services. Mutual funds’ measured performance when the authors consider TMB and AMS factors differs from their measured performance when these factors are overlooked.
Synergistic Actions of Interferons and Tumor Necrosis Factor

Although the clinical application of interferons has resulted in some notable therapeutic successes, most common forms of cancer are proving to be resistant to interferon therapy. Failure of single-agent therapy with interferons in many neoplastic diseases has led to attempts to combine interferon with chemotherapeutic agents or with other cytokines. A cytokine widely considered as a potential anti-tumor agent is tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Although clinical trials with TNF have started only recently (1), various combinations of TNF and interferons have already been evaluated quite extensively in preclinical studies, both in tissue culture and in animals. Results of these studies will be reviewed in this article.
Book reviewPrivate property in the 21st century: The future of an American ideal, Harvey M. Jacobs (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK (2004), 192 pages

This book collects papers originally presented at a symposium sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in May 2002 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The purpose of the symposium was to present ...
Providing 5G Coverage Using Optical Methods for Terahertz Frequencies

This paper studies the propagation of terahertz signals (100 GHz to 2THz) when using convex lenses. The terahertz band has a great deal of unexploited spectrum and therefore is ideally suited to provide ultra-high data rates at short ranges. The paper presents a channel model for terahertz when using convex lenses at the transmitter. The model incorporates channel impairments such as molecular absorption and lens characteristics such as a Gaussian intensity distribution. The model is verified against detailed measurements conducted using a terahertz system. We show that the model is in very close agreement with the measured data.
Can Frailty and Sarcopenia Be Mitigated in Lung Resection Candidates

Frailty or sarcopenia are present in a large percentage of the elderly and are associated with a number of adverse outcomes after lung resection. These include an increased risk of postoperative complications, prolonged hospital length of stay, an increased frequency of discharge to other than home, increased costs of care, and decreased long-term survival. There is growing evidence that the negative effects of frailty on surgical outcomes can be mitigated by preoperative exercise, including respiratory muscle training, resistance training, and improving stamina. Most randomized trials demonstrate an improvement in exercise capacity associated with an exercise intervention, even in as little as 1 week. Preoperative exercise is associated with improved postoperative outcomes, most commonly a reduction in pulmonary complications and shortened length of hospital stay. A preoperative exercise program is recommended for patients who are at increased risk for complications after lung resection.
The Influence of Agritourism Experiences on Consumer Behavior toward Local Food

Agritourism—visiting a working farm for education or recreation—may serve as a tool to increase local food consumption as it often includes opportunities to purchase local food on-site. Yet, the in...
On Secure Topological Interference Management for Half-rate-feasible Networks

The topological interference management (TIM) problem is a framework for studying partially connected interference networks with no channel state information at transmitters (CSIT), except network topology. TIM is a more pragmatic setting as CSIT is often available imperfectly, or may not be available at all. In this paper, we study the TIM problem with confidential messages, denoted in short by the secure TIM (STIM) problem. More specifically, we focus on the STIM problem for half-rate-feasible (HRF) networks. Half-rate-feasible networks are a class of partially connected interference networks whose sum degrees of freedom (DoF) have been characterized by K/2, without any secrecy constraints. The main contribution of this paper is as follows: We design achievable schemes for HRF networks subject to secrecy constraints, and present a lower bound on the secure degrees of freedom (SDoF). To this end, we first show the necessity of classifying HRF networks into two sub-categories based on some properties of the underlying network topology. As it turns out, the division of HRF networks into these sub-categories is critical for the design of secure transmission schemes. We then leverage the underlying topological properties along with ideas from secure interference alignment (SIA) in order to design achievable schemes for both subclasses of HRF networks.
Readmissions among patients with COVID-19

Background Hospital readmissions are associated with poor patient outcomes and increased health resource utilisation. The need to study readmission patterns is even bigger during a pandemic because the burden is further stretching the healthcare system. Methods We reviewed the initial hospitalisation and subsequent readmission for 19 patients with confirmed COVID-19 in the largest statewide hospital network in Rhode Island, US, from March 1st through April 19th, 2020. We also compared the characteristics and clinical outcomes between readmitted and non-readmitted patients. Results Of the 339 hospitalised patients with COVID-19, 279 discharged alive. Among them, 19/279 were readmitted (6.8%) after a median of 5 days. There was a significantly higher rate of hypertension, diabetes, chronic pulmonary disease, liver disease, cancer and substance abuse among the readmitted compared with non-readmitted patients. The most common reasons of readmissions happening within 12 days from discharge included respiratory distress and thrombotic episodes, while those happening at a later time included psychiatric illness exacerbations and falls. The length of stay during readmission was longer than during index admission and more demanding on healthcare resources. Conclusion Among hospitalised patients with COVID-19, those readmitted had a higher burden of comorbidities than the non-readmitted. Within the first 12 days from discharge, readmission reasons were more likely to be associated with COVID-19, while those happening later were related to other reasons. Readmissions characterisation may help in defining optimal timing for patient discharge and ensuring safe care transition.
Semi-annihilation of dark matter

We show that the thermal relic abundance of dark matter can be affected by a new type of reaction: semi-annihilation. Semi-annihilation takes the schematic form ψ i ψ j → ψ k φ, where ψ i are stable dark matter particles and φ is an unstable state. Such reactions are generically present when dark matter is composed of more than one species with “flavor” and/or “baryon” symmetries. We give a complete set of coupled Boltzmann equations in the presence of semi-annihilations, and study two toy models featuring this process. Semi-annihilation leads to non-trivial dark matter dynamics in the early universe, often dominating over ordinary annihilation in determining the relic abundance. This process also has important implications for indirect detection experiments, by enriching the final state spectrum from dark matter (semi-)annihilation in the Milky Way.
André Bazin's Eternal Returns: An Ontological Revision

The recent publication of Andre Bazin's Ecrits complets (2018), an enormous two-volume edition of 3000 pages which increases ten-fold Bazin's available corpus, provides opportunities for renewed re...
Application of a Bayesian Statistical Framework for Planetary Protection as a Means of Verifying Low-Biomass, Zero-Inflated Test Data from Spacecraft.

Abstract Planetary Protection is applicable for missions to biologically sensitive targets of interest in the solar system. For robotic missions landing on the Martian surface, Earth-based biological contamination must be reduced, controlled, and monitored to adhere to forward planetary protection requirements. To address the overall biological load limit and microbial density requirements per spacecraft each component is tracked based on its manufacturing pedigree and/or directly assessed using a direct sampling technique with either a swab or wipe. The tracking and reporting of requirements compliance has varied from mission to mission and reporting of numbers has consistently leaned towards the conservative worst-case scenario. With an increase in the number of missions and mission complexities, the need to establish a technically sound, statistical, and biological solution that provides a single point solution which addresses the distribution of spacecraft contamination becomes critical. Select components of the InSight mission, launched in 2018, have been used as a test case to evaluate the efficacy of applying Bayesian statistics to planetary protection data sets. Eight representative components covering the various bounding cases of high and low surface area, biological count, and sampling devices were analyzed as well as an assembly level case to evaluate the rollup of directly sampled and manufacturing pedigree components. A Bayesian approach was developed leveraging different priors from the zero-inflated data sets and compared to the heritage and existing NASA bioburden assessment approaches. In addition, several non-informative priors were evaluated for use in performing bioburden calculations. The results have demonstrated a viable framework to enable a Bayesian statistical approach to be further developed and utilized for planetary protection requirements assessment.
Rich Club Characteristics of Alcohol-Naïve Functional Brain Networks Predict Future Drinking Phenotypes in Rhesus Macaques.

Purpose: A fundamental question for Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is how and when naive brain networks are reorganized in response to alcohol consumption. The current study aimed to determine the progression of alcohol’s effect on functional brain networks during transition from the naive state to chronic consumption. Procedures: Resting-state brain networks of six female rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) monkeys were acquired using magnetoencephalography (MEG) prior to alcohol exposure and after free-access to alcohol using a well-established model of chronic heavy alcohol consumption. Functional brain network metrics were derived at each time point. Results: The average connection frequency (p < 0.024) and membership of the Rich Club (p < 0.022) changed significantly over time. Metrics describing network topology remained relatively stable from baseline to free-access drinking. The minimum degree of the Rich Club prior to alcohol exposure was significantly predictive of future free-access drinking (r = −0.88, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Results suggest naive brain network characteristics may be used to predict future alcohol consumption, and that alcohol consumption alters functional brain networks, shifting hubs and Rich Club membership away from previous regions in a non-systematic manner. Further work to refine these relationships may lead to the identification of a high-risk drinking phenotype.
Analysis of Direct Oral Anticoagulant Therapy With Concomitant Use of Interacting Antiretroviral Agents.

Background: A theoretical interaction exists between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antiretroviral (ARV) agents and direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), although the clinical significance is unc...
Distribution of Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis in Minnesota Dairy Farms Using Bacterial Culture of Fecal Pools

Paratuberculosis, or Johne's disease, is a chronic and progressive intestinal disease in ruminants caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). The usual route of infection is fecal-oral, with young cattle becoming infected by exposure to infected adults or their contaminated environment. The disease becomes manifest in adulthood and results in economic losses due to premature culling, reduced milk production and loss of body weight in cattle sold for slaughter. Johne's disease control programs have been developed in different countries and in several US states, with a goal to test and classify herds of cattle as infected or presumptively non-infected with maximum accuracy and least cost. Generally, these programs utilize recognized laboratory tests such as ELISA or direct microbiological individual fecal culture. However, these tests have several disadvantages, especially when applied in herds with subclinical disease or low prevalence. A pooled fecal culture method, which aggregates several cows' fecal samples to one culture unit, has been recently suggested as a good alternative strategy for lowering the procedure cost for herd screening programs for dairy cattle. The objectives of the current study were to: 1) describe the apparent fecal pool prevalence of MAP in known to be infected and non infected Minnesota dairy herds based on pooled fecal culture, 2) estimate the animal-level prevalence based on fecal pool results, 3) characterize the association between cow age and pool status and shedding level results, and 4) characterize the association between pooled culture results and serum ELISA results at the herd level.
Rationing Dialysis in the United States: Possible Implications of Capitated Systems

The application of managed care to dialysis raises concerns that dialysis will be rationed in the United States. Rationing means the implicit or explicit denial of beneficial or marginally beneficial medical treatment as a result of insufficient resources to provide treatment to all. In this era of cost containment and budget cutting, rationing appears inevitable in the end-stage renal disease program because of its continued growth in numbers and cost and because many are questioning the benefit of dialysis to certain groups of patients. Rationing according to social worth, ability to pay, or age is not ethically justifiable, but it is justified to ration according to medical benefit. There is an important role for guidelines developed with broad input from patients, families, health care professionals, ethicists, health policy experts, and payers. Consensus statements exist in the literature, and the nephrology community is in the process of developing practice guidelines that will be available for future use. In the meantime, managed care companies should look to broader community input in the form of consensus statements and community dialogue. Managed care companies will need ethics committees to ensure that their policies and procedures for rationing are fair, principled, and subject to review and appeal.
Taking a new look at the latent semantic analysis approach to information retrieval

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) [4] is a mathematical approach to the discovery ofsimilarity relationships among documents, fragments of documents, and the wordsthat occur within collections of documents. Although LSA was originally appliedin the context of information retrieval [4], it has since been successfully applied toa wide variety of text-based tasks [16].LSA is a variant of the vector space model for information retrieval that usesa reduced-rank approximation to the term-document matrix. In the informationretrieval domain, rank reduction is applied in an e ort to remove the \noise" thatobscures the semantic content of the data [4]. In this context, two claims aretypically made for LSA: that it provides a substantial improvement in retrievalperformanceoverthestandardvectorspacemodelandthatthisimprovementresultsfrom LSA’s ability to solve what is known as the synonymy problem.Despite the many successful applications of LSA, there are a large numberof unanswered questions that bear on where, and in what manner, LSA should beapplied. The purpose of this paper is to begin to investigate these issues in LSA’soriginal context of information retrieval and to pose new directions for future work.Among the more critical questions that we address in this paper are the following: Does LSA reliably improve retrieval performance as compared to the vectorspace model? Does LSA improve retrieval performance by addressing the synonymy prob-lem? How can the optimal rank be chosen? How can relevant and irrelevant documents be distinguished? And are there alternative matrix techniques that can be used to discoverreduced representations?This paper is organized as follows. In Sections 0.2{0.3, we review the details of thevector space model and LSA. In Section 0.4, we outline our empirical methods. InSection 0.5, we compare the retrieval performances of LSA and the full-rank vectorspace model. In Section 0.6, we evaluate how the performance of LSA depends onits ability to handle synonyms. In Sections 0.7{0.8, we consider the choice of rankand how best to identify relevant documents. In Section 0.9, we examine the useother orthogonal decompositions for rank reduction. Finally, in Section 0.10, wesummarize our results.
High spin effects in superdense matter

A model of relativistic interacting superdense matter with vector, scalar and symmetric second-rank tensor exchange is developed. The Green’s functions of the model are solved in the self-consistent Hartree approximation. In this paper the contributions of the symmetric secondrank tensor are emphasized. It is found that these high-spin contributions affect the superdense matter at densities just beyond those predicted to occur in neutron star matter or nuclear collisions. The spin-two effects do produce an unusual asymptotic dependence,p =-1 ɛ. This effect is examined in a simple model of the early universe.
Factors influencing the formation of shallow landslides in the Boston Mountains of northwest Arkansas, USA

Slope failures cause billions of dollars of damage annually and put human lives at risk. This study employed field measurements and observations to provide the framework for laboratory simulations to investigate the effects of environmental characteristics on slope stability in the highly fractured bedrock region of the Boston Mountains, northwest Arkansas. Field measurements, to determine characteristics and possible controls of 10 shallow slope failures along an interstate highway, revealed that slope failures occurred within a relatively narrow range of slope angles (17–36°) and in loamy soils. Based on field observations, flume experiments were conducted to investigate the relationships between soil texture, slope angle, bedrock fractures, soil compaction, and slope instability. Time to failure differed (p < 0.05) among treatment combinations. Generally, slopes composed of loam were more stable than slopes composed of sand. Time to failure decreased more on slopes of 15–20° than on slopes of 20–25°. F...
Risk of Bleeding from Antithrombotic Agents (AT) in Patients with Cerebral Cavernous Malformations (CCMs). (I2-1.002)

OBJECTIVE: To determine if the rate of hemorrhage was increased in patients with CCMs taking AT. BACKGROUND: CCMs are vascular malformations of the brain and spine that can present with seizure or hemorrhage, but are frequently found as incidental findings on MRI. CCMs in general are thought to have a low risk of recurrent hemorrhage, on the order of 0.2 to 4.0 % per person per year. DESIGN/METHODS: From a clinical database, 52 patients with either cerebral or spinal CCMs were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS: Among 52 patients, CCMs were located in the brain in 50 (including brainstem in 17) and in the thoracic spine in 2; 16 were multiple on MRI. Mean age was 54 years; 60% female; 77% white. Medical history: migraine (44%), HTN (39%) and previous seizures (21%). The most common presenting symptoms at the time of diagnosis were incidental finding in 30 and hemorrhage in 17. Follow-up was a mean of 4.3 years. During follow-up, 7 patients had recurrent hemorrhage. The overall rate of hemorrhage was 3.1% per person year, and was independent of age, race, sex, risk factors, brainstem location and hemorrhage at the time of initial diagnosis. AT were used at some point during follow-up in 12 patients (antiplatelet 6, anticoagulation 1, combination 5). The mean length of time patients were on AT was 1.6 years (range 1 month to 9.3 years). None of the 7 patients with recurrent hemorrhage were on AT at the time of the bleed. CONCLUSIONS: There is no apparent increase in the rate of hemorrhage in CCM patients while taking AT, although the small number of patients may limit the power to detect a difference. We are expanding this study to include a larger clinical database. Study Supported by: Disclosure: Dr. Wityk has nothing to disclose.
Contemporary Research on Hispanic Women: A Selected Bibliography of the Social Science Literature

One of the difficulties in developing a new area of research in any field is the lag time between the interest in the area on the part of researchers and the interest in publishing on the part of editors. Initial work may appear in books or publications outside the disciplinary mainstream and be overlooked in literature searches that focus on established journals. Further, work appearing in mainstream journals may be constrained by traditional paradigms and reflect Anglocentric and sexist biases of traditional research. This has been true for work on Hispanic women, which has been hallmarked by Anglocentric and sexist bias (Senour, 1977).This 134-item bibliography addresses the difficulty of identifying the diverse work on Hispanic women in the U.S. and Puerto Rico by bringing a large part of it together in one place. We have three goals. The first is to facilitate the integration of material on Hispanic women into the curriculum of psychology. The second is to promote and disseminate research on the psyc...
Vibration energy harvesting for wireless underground sensor networks

Recent developments in wireless underground communication have enabled the realization of underground sensor network applications. To this end, it is desirable to provide a sustainable operation for wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) with extended lifetimes as maintenance is significantly costly. One promising method towards sustainable operation is to harvest energy underground based on the vibration sources in the environment. However, to the best of our knowledge, underground vibration energy harvesting has not been investigated before. In this paper, the feasibility of vibration energy harvesting for WUSNs is investigated. First, an analytical framework is developed to model the maximum harvestable power by a piezoelectric energy harvester at a certain depth underground, due to an above-ground vibration source. Then, field experiments are conducted to measure the vibration in an agricultural testbed and evaluated the harvestable output power. The results from this study illustrate the feasibility of vibration energy harvesting as a promising approach to be considered for the future underground sensor networks.
A performance comparison of empirical Bayes and Bayes estimators of the Weibull and gamma scale parameters

A mean-squared error comparison of smooth empirical Bayes and Bayes estimators for the Weibull and gamma scale parameters is studied based on a computer simulation. The smooth empirical Bayes estimators are determined as functions of up to 15 past estimates of the parameter of interest. Results indicate that at best the mean-squared errors of the empirical Bayes estimators are about 20–40% larger than those of the corresponding squared-error optimal Bayes estimators.
Psychodynamic and developmental aspects of expectant and new fatherhood: Clinical derivatives from the literature

Expectant and new fatherhood has received increasing attention in the literature. During this major adult transitional period, earlier developmental conflicts are reactivated. These in turn influence adaptation to current life processes, consistent with psychoanalytic theory. Three major psychodynamic and developmental findings that repeatedly emerge in the literature—rearoused sibling rivalry, intensified dependency needs, and reawakened oedipal conflicts—are delineated. Less prominent psychosocial manifestations reported in the literature are also identified and discussed. Knowledge of the psychodynamic and developmental issues of this life transition is helpful to clinicians.
Microcanonical Study of the Planar Spin Model

The planar spin model is simulated by microcanonical and Monte Carlo algorithms. The average action, topological charge density and spin-spin correlation functions are measured on 15 × 15 and 30 × 30 lattices at temperatures surrounding the critical point. In general very good agreement between the methods is found. Accurate runs (5.105 sweeps) expose the finite volume differences between the canonical and microcanonical ensembles. A small shift (of order 1/volume) of the temperature brings the two sets of measurements into excellent agreement.
Business modeling using SQL spreadsheets

One of the critical deficiencies of SQL is the lack of support for array and spreadsheet like calculations which are frequent in OLAP and Business Modeling applications. Applications relying on SQL have to emulate these calculations using joins, UNION operations, Window Functions and complex CASE expressions. The designated place in SQL for algebraic calculations is the SELECT clause, which is extremely limiting and forces applications to generate queries with nested views, subqueries and complex joins. This distributes Business Modeling computations across many query blocks, making applications coded in SQL hard to develop. The limitations of RDBMS have been filled by spreadsheets and specialized MOLAP engines which are good at formulas for mathematical modeling but lack the formalism of the relational model, are difficult to manage, and exhibit scalability problems. This demo presents a scalable, mathematically rigorous, and performant SQL extensions for Relational Business Modeling, called the SQL Spreadsheet. We present examples of typical Business Modeling computations with SQL spreadsheet and compare them with the ones using standard SQL showing performance advantages and ease of programming for the former. We will show a scalability example where data is processed in parallel and will present a new class of query optimizations applicable to SQL spreadsheet.
Seigniorage payments for use of the dollar: 1977–1995

Abstract I compute alternative seigniorage estimates for the US and relate them to total tax receipts and GDP. The estimates indicate the proximate size of the prize coveted by emerging and transitional economies unable to provide their residents with stable national monies. Barro's (1982) conjecture that Federal Reserve payments to the Treasury as percentage of corporate tax receipts would remain at early 1980s levels is examined also.
p53-dependent apoptosis modulates the cytotoxicity of anticancer agents

Although the primary cellular targets of many anticancer agents have been identified, less is known about the processes leading to the selective cell death of cancer cells or the molecular basis of drug resistance. p53-deficient mouse embryonic fibroblasts were used to examine systematically the requirement for p53 in cellular sensitivity and resistance to a diverse group of anticancer agents. These results demonstrate that an oncogene, specifically the adenovirus E1A gene, can sensitize fibroblasts to apoptosis induced by ionizing radiation, 5-fluorouracil, etoposide, and adriamycin. Furthermore, the p53 tumor suppressor is required for efficient execution of the death program. These data reinforce the notion that the cytotoxic action of many anticancer agents involves processes subsequent to the interaction between drug and cellular target and indicate that divergent stimuli can activate a common cell death program. Consequently, the involvement of p53 in the apoptotic response suggests a mechanism whereby tumor cells can acquire cross-resistance to anticancer agents.
Group preventive maintenance An example of controlled jump processes

The group preventive maintenance problem is used to illustrate problems of computing with the optimality conditions for continuous time contolled jump processes. It is claimed that considerations for this problem motivate using iterative techniques such as policy improvement or successive approximations.
Case report 815

Rotator interval tears are an uncommon, but clinically important subtype of rotator cuff tear. As MRI assumes an ever increasing role in the imaging evaluation of the painful shoulder, radiologists must be aware of this entity and appreciate the difficulty in diagnosing these tears with MRI. Differentiation of a true rotator interval tear from normal synovium and capsule in this space is most likely not possible with MRI, and symptoms may be referred and misleading. It is therefore important to correlate the MR findings with the clinical history and physical examination.
Addressing the Wellness Needs of Online Distance Learners

As more opportunities for enrolling in online courses and programs become available, ensuring the quality of such educational experiences will continue to increase in importance. One factor determining quality concerns the student support services available to distance learners. Unfortunately, these services are often underdeveloped or overlooked, especially those support services associated with the 'extracurricular needs' of distance learners. The inclusion of wellness resources within the instructional design of an online course is one approach attempting to meet the challenge of providing such services to learners. The purpose of this study was to determine which student support service resources should be included in an Online Wellness Resource Center (OWRC) available within an online course. A needs assessment was conducted to determine whether learners perceived a need for access to wellness resources. Finding that they did express this need, the assessment then identified the specific wellness res...
A biological spectral weighting function for ozone depletion research with higher plants

Biological spectral weighting functions (BSWF) play a key role in assessing implications of stratospheric ozone reduction. They are used to calculate the increase in biologically effective solar UV radiation due to ozone reduction (radiation amplification factor, RAF), assess current latitudinal gradients of solar UV radiation, and compare solar UV radiation with that from lamps and filters used in experiments. As a basis for a BSWF, we developed an action spectrum for growth responses of light-grown oat (Avena sativa L. cv. Otana) seedlings exposed to narrowband UV radiation from a large double water-prism monochromator. Five UV wavelength peaks were used (275, 297, 302, 313 and 366 nm) in the absence of any visible radiation. Growth responses were measured from 1 to 10 days after the treatments. At all these wavelengths, the UV radiation inhibited height growth, including the height at which the first leaf separated from the stem. Radiation at all wavelengths used, except the one UV-A wavelength, promoted the length of the second leaf. The resulting action spectrum closely resembles the commonly used generalized plant response function except that it indicates continued sensitivity into the UV-A region. When used as a BSWF for the ozone depletion problem, this new function for plant growth would suggest substantially less impact of ozone depletion because it results in only a modest increment of biologically effective UV for a given level of ozone depletion (a lower RAF). Yet this new BSWF also suggests that experimental treatments based on previous BSWF with less emphasis on the UV-A may have resulted in simulations of less pronounced ozone depletion than intended. The validity of this new BSWF with UV-A sensitivity, designated the UV plant growth weighting function, was verified in field experiments as described in the companion paper.
Morphological stability in the presence of fluid flow in the melt

Recent experiments have shown that the presence of a vertical buoyancy-driven flow adjacent to an initially cylindrical crystal-melt interface may produce a time-dependent helical deformation of the interface, with a rotation period ranging from several minutes to many hours, depending upon the width of the melt. The temperature distribution is such that the interface is expected to be morphologically stable in the absence of fluid flow. A linear stability analysis reveals that the instability is due to a coupling between a basic hydrodynamic instability in the buoyant flow and the deformable boundary separating the two phases. The crystal-melt interface lowers the critical Grashof number of an analogous rigid-walled system by an order of magnitude for succinonitrile with a Prandtl number P = 22.8; furthermore, the hydrodynamic mode that is actually destabilized by the interface is not the least stable mode in the rigid-walled system for P = 22.8. The results show that the instability may be regarded either as a rather large alteration of a basic hydrodynamic instability by the crystal-melt interface, or as a significant modification of the morphological stability of the interface by the presence of the buoyant flow.
Volterra operator, area integral and Carleson measures

We characterize the boundedness of Volterra operators from Bergman spaces to Hardy spaces. Area integral operators and Carleson measures are heavily involved.
Ontogeny and distribution of GABAA receptors in rat brainstem and rostral brain regions

Abstract Previous studies from our laboratory and others have shown that there are major age-related differences in brainstem neuronal function. Since GABAA receptors are major targets for GABA-mediated inhibitory modulation and play a key role in regulating cardiorespiratory function, especially during O2 deprivation, we examined differences in GABAA receptor density and distribution during postnatal development. Using quantitative receptor autoradiography, the present study was performed to examine the postnatal expression of GABAA receptors in the rat brainstem and rostral brain areas at five ages, i.e. postnatal day 1 (P1), P5, P10, P21 and P120. Ten-micrometer brain sections at different brain levels were labelled with [3H]muscimol in Tris-citrate buffer. We found that (i) GABAA receptors appeared very early in almost all the brainstem as well as rostral areas; (ii) at P1, the brainstem had a higher GABAA receptor binding density than rostral areas and its density peaked at P5 or P10; and (iii) receptor densities of the cerebellum and rostral brain areas such as cortex, thalamus and dentate gyrus increased with age, especially between P10 and P21, but most other subcortical areas like caudate-putamen and hippocampal CA1 area did not increase remarkably after birth. We conclude that: (i) GABAA receptors exist in most brain areas at birth; (ii) there are several patterns of postnatal development of GABAA receptors in the CNS with dramatic differences between the brainstem and cortex; (iii) brainstem functions rely more on GABAA receptors in early postnatal life than at more mature stages. We speculate that GABAA receptors develop earlier in phylogenetically older structures (such as brainstem) than in newer brain regions (such as cortex).
Dynamic loss minimizing control of DB-DTFC IM drives using a flux command look ahead filter

This work investigates the performance of optimal flux trajectory-based induction motor loss minimization methods when applied to typical "servo motion profiles" which require large step changes in torque occurring at high repetition rates. This work proposes a new method of filtering the optimal stator flux command for improved power savings.
Patterns of Nonverbal Behavior Associated with Truth and Deception: Illustrations from Three Experiments

The digital age has brought with it new and powerful computer-based methods of analyzing heretofore elusive patterns of nonverbal behavior. C-BAS (Meservy 2010) is a computer-assisted behavioral observation tool for identifying and tracking nonverbal behaviors from video. THEME (Magnusson, The hidden structure of interaction: from neurons to culture patterns, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 4–22, 2005) is a software program that discovers patterns among discrete events in time-ordered data. Together, these tools enable more precise measurement and analysis of nonverbal behavioral dynamics. Applications to three corpora derived from interpersonal deception experiments reveal unique nonverbal patterns that distinguish deceptive from nondeceptive interactions. The first and second experiments produced serial, hierarchically related patterns of behaviors that differed in length and complexity between truthful and deceptive participants during interviews about a theft and cheating, respectively. The third experiment produced differential patterns by and among group members completing a task. Deceivers were inclined toward strategic initiations and interactional control, whereas suspicious group members adopted a more passive, possibly watchful stance. Discovery of these patterns challenges the prevailing view that nonverbal behaviors are too faint and inconsistent to identify deceptive communication. Results have numerous implications regarding the following: the development of new measurement tools locating significant effects of nonverbal behaviors, support for theory that coherent and repetitive relationships exist within and among interactants’ communication, demonstration of the role of nonverbal behaviors in deceptive communication and the dynamic and strategic nature of deception.
Improving QoS in BitTorrent-like VoD Systems

In recent years a number of research efforts have focused on effective use of P2P-based systems in providing large scale video streaming services. In particular, live streaming and Video-on-Demand (VoD) systems have attracted much interest. While previous efforts mainly focused on the common challenges faced by both types of applications, there are still a number of fundamental open questions in designing P2P-based VoD systems, which is the focus of our effort. Specifically, in this paper, we consider a BitTorrent-like VoD system and focus on the following questions: (1) how the lack of load balance, which typically exists in a P2P- based VoD system, affects the performance and what steps can be taken to remedy that, and (2) is a FCFS approach to serving requests at a peer sufficient or whether a Deadline-Aware Scheduling (DAS) approach can lead to performance improvements. Given the deadline considerations that exist in VoD systems, we also investigate approaches to avoiding unnecessary queueing time. For each of these questions, we first illustrate deficiencies of current approaches in adequately meeting streaming quality of service requirements. Motivated by this, we propose several practical schemes aimed at addressing these questions. To illustrate the benefits of our approach, we present an extensive simulation-based performance study.
Enthalpies of hydrogen bonding of quinoline with o-phenylphenol and of hydrogen-bonding reactions involving the acid and base components of a coal-derived asphaltene

Abstract Calorimetric studies are reported of hydrogen bonding between quinoline (Qu) and o-phenylphenol (OPP). The enthalpies of hydrogen-bonding of the acid and base components of a coal-derived asphaltene with OPP and Qu are also reported. The results provide strong evidence that the acid and base components of asphaltene function substantially as hydrogen donor and acceptor, respectively.