cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Chagas Disease (American Trypanosomiasis)

American Trypanosomiasis, also known as Chagas disease, is a potentially life-threatening zoonotic illness caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. The disease is most commonly seen in Central and South America, Trinidad, and the southern United States. However, it is less common outside of rural areas where vectors are commonly found in rustic housing. The vector-borne disease is transmitted through vertical transmission between mother and fetus or via contact with contaminated feces/urine of the reduviid bug (triatomine bug, kissing bug) and hence serves as the intermediate host for the parasite. Other modes of transmission include transfusion of blood products, transplant of the infected organ, or by consumption of infected food or drinks. Major complications of this disease includes cardiomegaly, gastrointestinal disease, and in some case peripheral neuropathy.
A phase 1 study of osimertinib and bevacizumab as initial treatment for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancers.

9033Background: EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) are the recommended first line treatment for EGFR-mutant lung cancers. Osimertinib, an EGFR TKI that inhibits both sensitizing EGFR mutations and EGFR T790M, is approved for use after progression on an EGFR TKI with evidence of EGFR T790M, and is currently being assessed as initial treatment for EGFR-mutant lung cancers. The addition of bevacizumab to erlotinib resulted in improved progression free survival (PFS) compared to erlotinib alone as initial treatment (16 vs 10 months, HR 0.41). This phase 1/2 study is assessing osimertinib and bevacizumab as initial treatment for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancers. Methods: We evaluated toxicity and efficacy of osimertinib and bevacizumab as initial treatment for patients with advanced EGFR-mutant lung cancers. Using a 3+3 design, full doses of osimertinib (80mg PO daily) and bevacizumab (15mg/kg IV q3 weeks) were given, with a planned dose de-escalation (osimertinib 40mg PO daily) should grade 3 or grea...
Wavefront dividing interferometer with and without moving parts

1. Michelson interferometer with out moving parts using spatial superposition ofamplitudes.Interferometers without moving parts for Fourier transform spectroscopy use forthe recombination process the spatial spread of the amplitudes of the two beams. Atdifferent points in space the two beams have different path differences, and bysuperposition, the interferogram is formed. There is a center with zero path difference andon both sides the absolute value of the path difference increases. The recombinationprocess is schematically shown in Fig. 1.
Matminer: An open source toolkit for materials data mining

Abstract As materials data sets grow in size and scope, the role of data mining and statistical learning methods to analyze these materials data sets and build predictive models is becoming more important. This manuscript introduces matminer, an open-source, Python-based software platform to facilitate data-driven methods of analyzing and predicting materials properties. Matminer provides modules for retrieving large data sets from external databases such as the Materials Project, Citrination, Materials Data Facility, and Materials Platform for Data Science. It also provides implementations for an extensive library of feature extraction routines developed by the materials community, with 47 featurization classes that can generate thousands of individual descriptors and combine them into mathematical functions. Finally, matminer provides a visualization module for producing interactive, shareable plots. These functions are designed in a way that integrates closely with machine learning and data analysis packages already developed and in use by the Python data science community. We explain the structure and logic of matminer, provide a description of its various modules, and showcase several examples of how matminer can be used to collect data, reproduce data mining studies reported in the literature, and test new methodologies.
Robustness in the Presence of Task Differentiation in Robot Ensembles

In the last fifteen years, much interest has been focused on the deployment of large teams of autonomous robots for applications such as environmental monitoring, surveillance and reconnaissance, and automated parts inspection for manufacturing. The objective is to leverage the team’s inherent redundancy to simultaneously cover wide regions and achieve massive parallelization in task execution while remaining robust to individual failures. Despite recent successes, significant challenges remain, in part, due to the difficulties associated with managing and coordinating the various redundancies that exist in a large team of homogeneous agents. In this chapter, we present an ensemble approach towards the design of distributed control and communication strategies for the dynamic allocation of a team of robots to a set of tasks. This approach uses a class of stochastic hybrid systems to model the robot team dynamics as a continuous-time Markov jump process. The main advantage is a lower-dimensional representation of the team dynamics that is amenable to system-level analysis of the team’s performance in the presence of task differentiation. We show how such analysis can be further used to design and optimize individual robot control policies through simulations and experimental validation.
Assessing the Transfer of Interruption Resumption Skill to Novel Tasks

Interruption interference refers to significant performance decreases that follow task interruption. Evidence has suggested that practicing interruption resumption reduces interruption interference as measured by the time required to resume the interrupted task. However, evidence has also indicated that interruption practice only improves resumption for the practiced pair of primary and interrupting tasks. If this is true, then there is little applied benefit in interruption training, because the training would be unlikely to transfer beyond the training environment. In the current studies, a transfer paradigm was utilized to determine whether interruption resumption skill practiced within a task-pair transfers to a novel task-pair. The results of Experiments 1A and 1B provide evidence that interruption resumption skill transfers to another primary task when the interrupting task is either held constant or varies. Experiment 2 manipulated the primary tasks to minimize the ability to reconstruct the next step in problem solving. When minimizing reconstruction, resumption skill that transfers is likely the ability to successfully retrieve the next planned action that was suspended when interrupted. The results support the conclusion that resumption skill does transfer and, therefore, opens up additional research avenues with applications to minimizing interruption interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Synaptic Regulation of Metabolism

Neurons in the brain, particularly those in the hypothalamus, are essential for the maintenance of whole-body metabolic homeostasis. Dysfunctions or dysregulations of them can result in various metabolic diseases, including eating disorders, obesity, and diabetes. In addition to hormonal and peptidergic regulation, accumulating evidence has shown that these neurons are subject to synaptic regulation, which has been largely overlooked. In this chapter, we focus on synaptic neurotransmission of hypothalamic neurons and summarize current knowledge of synaptic plasticity in the maintenance of energy balance. Synaptic modulation engaged by circulating hormones is also discussed.
Interests and Representation: Ethnic Advocacy on California School Boards:

Background/ContextResearchers have found that school districts with greater representation of Latinos and African Americans on their school boards tend to also have higher percentages of Latino and...
Estimation of Mean Left Atrial Pressure in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes: A Doppler Echocardiographic and Cardiac Catheterization Study.

Background Doppler echocardiography, including the ratio of transmitral E to tissue Doppler e′ velocities (E/e′), is widely used to estimate mean left atrial pressure (mLAP). This method, however, has not been validated in patients with acute coronary syndromes. Methods Fifty-seven patients with acute coronary syndromes who underwent left heart catheterization and transthoracic echocardiography within 8 hours of each other were retrospectively analyzed. Forty-two of the patients (74%) were men, with a mean age of 65 ± 11 years. Patients with known cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, or left-sided valvular disease were excluded. Doppler mLAP was estimated using Nagueh's formula (1.24 × [E/e′] + 1.9). Invasive mLAP was estimated using the formula of Yamamoto et al. (1.20 × mean left ventricular diastolic pressure – 0.82), wherein we averaged left ventricular diastolic pressure starting from the isovolumic relaxation phase to the post-A inflection point. Subanalyses were performed in groups with reduced or normal left ventricular ejection fraction (EF). Results There was stronger agreement between the two techniques to estimate mLAP in the reduced EF group (r = 0.73, r2 = 0.53, P 15 mm Hg. Left atrial volume index did not correlate with invasively estimated mLAP in this cohort. Conclusions In patients with acute coronary syndromes, Doppler- and catheter-derived estimates of mLAP correlate well in patients with reduced EFs. In the acute setting, echocardiographic evaluation is a reliable adjunct to clinical examination in assessment of heart failure in this subgroup of patients.
Antibiotic Prescribing Practices: Is There a Difference Between Patients Seen by Telemedicine Versus Those Seen In-Person?

Background: Direct-to-consumer telemedicine is becoming part of mainstream medicine, but questions exist regarding the quality of care provided. We assessed antibiotic stewardship, one measure of q...
An Exploratory Study of Transgender Inmate Populations in Latin America

Transgender persons disproportionately face inequities, especially in prisons. Despite these inequities, the academic literature on this topic is limited. Even more limited is the literature on tra...
Using the RE‐AIM framework for dissemination and implementation of psychosocial distress screening

Objective To evaluate the RE-AIM framework's effect on retention of participants and implementation outcomes of a 5-year cancer research education programme on psychosocial distress screening in cancer centres across the United States. Methods A one-group pre-/post-test design was used to evaluate the programme on participant retention and implementation outcomes at 6, 12 and 24 months after enrolling in the programme (baseline) and analysed using descriptive statistics. Results Seventy-two cancer centres participated in four cohorts. Participant retention was 100%. At baseline and 24 months, respectively, 52 (72%) and 64 (88%) of the cancer centres had formulated a psychosocial distress screening policy; 51 (71%) and 70 (98%) had started screening in more than one clinic/population; 15 (21%) and 45 (63%) had started auditing health records for documentation of screening. Each outcome rate improved at the cancer-centre level over the 24 months. Conclusion RE-AIM can be used as a framework for cancer research education programmes. Future research is needed on the use of a randomised adaptive design to test the optimal support for implementation of quality care standards according to cancer centres' needs.
Simulation of Hurricane Wind Fields for Community Resilience Applications: A Data-Driven Approach Using Integrated Asymmetric Holland Models for Inner and Outer Core Regions

AbstractAccurate modeling of the damage caused by hurricanes making landfall to physical infrastructure relies on the accurate modeling of temporally and spatially varying wind fields. However, win...
Open borders: in defense of free movement: edited by Reece Jones, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2019, 280 pp., $ 34.95 (Paperback), ISBN: 9780820354262

In times when borders, physical and otherwise, are restated at the center of global politics, the book Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement offers the starting point of a new conversation. In ...
Sex differences in tech tilt: Support for investment theories

Abstract This study examined sex differences in tech tilt, based on within-subject differences in technical abilities (e.g., mechanical and electrical) and academic abilities (math or verbal) on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The within-subject differences produced two types of tilt: tech tilt (tech > academic), indicating stronger technical abilities, and academic tilt (academic > tech), indicating stronger academic abilities. Tech tilt was correlated with math and verbal abilities on college aptitude tests (SAT, ACT, PSAT) and with jobs and college majors in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and humanities. Males showed a tech tilt bias, and females showed an academic tilt bias. The tilt biases persisted after controlling for general intelligence (g). Tech tilt correlated negatively with academic abilities on the college aptitude tests (SAT, ACT, PSAT), with larger effects for females. In addition, relations of tech tilt with STEM jobs and majors were generally larger (and more often significant) for males, but only for tech tilt based on technical and verbal abilities. The negative relations of tech tilt with academic abilities on the college aptitude tests are consistent with investment theories, which predict that investment in one ability (technical) comes at the expense of competing abilities (academic). The sex differences in tech tilt and STEM support trait complexes involving abilities, interests, and vocational preferences (e.g., people versus things). Future research should examine whether spatial abilities and vocational interests mediate relations of tech tilt with sex and STEM criteria.
Using Practice Facilitation to Improve Depression Management in Rural Pediatric Primary Care Practices.

Introduction Depression is a common and serious mental health condition frequently encountered in pediatric primary care. Pediatricians report discomfort in managing depression due in part to limited training and limited access to mental health care, which is accentuated in rural areas. Methods We developed an evidence-based, quality improvement project designed to help pediatricians increase screening and initial management of depression in the primary care setting. We recruited practices from a pediatric accountable care organization as part of a larger quality improvement portfolio that used a practice facilitation model to support practices with data collection and project management. Practitioners received training on quality improvement, depression screening, and a depression management plan (referred to as the depression management bundle). Practices completed Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to improve their performance. Results We recruited 4 practices in rural Ohio to participate. Screening increased from 0% to 81% within 6 months. All 4 practices measured documentation of the depression management bundle for patients diagnosed with depression. Composite data from these practices showed an increase in documentation from 59% to 86% by month 6. Conclusions This study provides preliminary support for the use of practice facilitation combined with skills training to increase screening and improve documentation of depression management in rural primary care practices, where specialty mental health resources may be limited. Further research is needed to determine if this approach can be successfully disseminated and if patient outcomes improved.
Recruitment of undergraduate students in kinesiology: Implications for physical education:

Physical education teacher education enrollment numbers are declining with limited empirical understanding. Recruitment into the physical education profession has been passive, although scholars ha...
Understanding How Adolescents Think about the HPV Vaccine

Despite educational efforts, Tennessee human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates are 43%, among the lowest in the United States. This study examined how adolescents think about the HPV vaccine to identify patterns and misconceptions to enhance educational efforts. Adolescents (ages 11-12) (N = 168) responded to open-ended questions regarding their thinking about the HPV vaccine. Data were analyzed and interpreted using qualitative thematic analysis. Three domains of themes emerged from responses: (1) characteristics of HPV vaccination, (2) knowledge-related themes, and (3) beliefs-related themes. Prevention of HPV and cancer was the most referenced characteristic of HPV vaccination followed by HPV vaccine rates and HPV vaccine efficacy. Student inquiries were mostly centered on HPV vaccine composition, administration, duration and how the vaccine interacts with the body. Some responses indicated a desire for more information about HPV not specific to the HPV vaccine. Overall, adolescent attitudes were positive towards the HPV vaccine. This study highlights specific questions adolescents have about the vaccine that can be used to tailor future HPV educational efforts, empowering adolescents with the knowledge to be more active students in the decision-making process. In addition, the potential for adolescents to serve as community advocates for the vaccine should be considered for future interventions.
Sub-THz/THz Interconnect, Complement to Electrical and Optical Interconnects: Addressing Fundamental Challenges Related to Communication Distances

The big data era has witnessed expansion of information traffic at a 26% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during one decade, as shown in Figure 1(a) [1], [2]. Rising data rates magnify hierarchically down to shorter communication distances. That is, data rate increases are exchanged from interdata centers to interrack, interboard, interchip, and intrachip scenarios. For almost two decades, microprocessor speeds have been stalled due to unsustainable power consumption [4], resulting in multicore computer architectures. Although the multicore architecture mitigates the data processing power consumption requirement, it demands higher data communication rates from core to core, due to increasingly complex functionalities and systems. Figure 1(b) presents the input?output (I/O) bandwidth and I/O pin number evolution through time [5], [6]. The I/O bandwidth increases by approximately 2 every two years or 10 every five years, while the I/O pin number grows at a much smaller rate, 1.7 every five years, because of process and mechanical constraints. This results in a widening gap between I/O bandwidth requirements and capabilities, notoriously named the interconnect gap, which has been a major and long-standing challenge for more than a decade.
Monitoring damage of self-assembled monolayers using metastable excited helium atoms

The breaking of molecular bonds during exposure to ionizing radiation and electron beams creates irreversible damage in the molecular structure. In some cases, such as lithography, controlled damage of a molecular resist is a desirable process and is the basis for the entire semiconductor industry. In other cases, such as environmental exposure or probing of the molecular structure, the induced damage is a major problem that has limited advances in science and technology. We report here the use of an in situ probe that is minimally invasive to detect real-time damage induced in organic materials. Specifically, we use metastable excited helium atoms in the 3S1 state to characterize the damage caused by a low-energy electron beam ∼30 eV on an organic self-assembled monolayer of 11-bromo-1-undecanethiol on a gold substrate. We were able to monitor the damage caused by the electron beam without introducing any additional observed damage by the probing metastable atoms.
Inference on Heterogeneous Quantile Treatment Effects via Rank-Score Balancing

Understanding treatment effect heterogeneity in observational studies is of great practical importance to many scientific fields because the same treatment may affect different individuals differently. Quantile regression provides a natural framework for modeling such heterogeneity. In this paper, we propose a new method for inference on heterogeneous quantile treatment effects that incorporates high-dimensional covariates. Our estimator combines a debiased $\ell_1$-penalized regression adjustment with a quantile-specific covariate balancing scheme. We present a comprehensive study of the theoretical properties of this estimator, including weak convergence of the heterogeneous quantile treatment effect process to the sum of two independent, centered Gaussian processes. We illustrate the finite-sample performance of our approach through Monte Carlo experiments and an empirical example, dealing with the differential effect of mothers' education on infant birth weights.
Performance on the CVLT-2 during induced pain.

Objective: Chronic pain patients frequently report cognitive problems including learning and memory. However, recent research involving induced pain has demonstrated an absence of reliably detectable decrements on several standard cognitive measures, suggesting that factors other than pain likely explain perceived cognitive deficits in chronic pain patients. This study examined potential effects of induced pain on verbal learning and memory as measured by the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-2). Potential effects of self-reported pain intensity were also evaluated. Method: Participants (111 non-clinical undergraduate students in the Southwestern United States) completed one version (Standard or Alternate) of the CVLT-2 under normal conditions, and then were administered the other version (Alternate or Standard) either while experiencing cold pressor-induced pain (Pain condition) or non-painful warm water immersion (Control condition). Results: For the Pain condition decrements in performance across most CVLT-2 variables were observed, including a mean T-score decrease of 10.98 (SD = 10.99) for Trials 1-5, whereas the comparable decrease in the Control condition was an average of 1.5 words (SD = 8.27). Self-reported pain intensity was significantly correlated with the degree of Time 1 to Time 2 performance decrement for Short-Delay Free Recall (r = -.51, p < .050), but not for Trials 1-5 (r = -.37, p = .160). Conclusion: Induced pain produces detectable decrements in performance on a standard clinical measure of verbal learning and memory performance, suggesting that pain in clinical populations may contribute to learning and memory deficits apart from potential neurological conditions.
Drowning in Health: Murky Perceptions of Mineral Water and Alcohol in Eighteenth-Century Medical Literature and Social Mores

Scribner notices that while modern science generally equates consuming water with health and alcohol with illness, eighteenth-century Britons hardly relied upon such dyads. Rather, these two consumables were inverse, reciprocal, and competitive, often all at the same time. Alcohol, mineral water, taverns, and spas must be understood as homogenous rather than heterogenous. Labelled as ‘intoxicants’ by eighteenth-century physicians, mineral water and alcohol might do as much harm as good if not consumed correctly. Ordered and classified according to strength, certain mineral and alcoholic ‘liquors’ cured certain ailments. All, however, must be taken in moderation. Scribner shows that what was then a social debate often ran counter-current to the very advice that physicians had been pushing on the public for the past century.
THE DIAGNOSIS OF SO-CALLED ORAL EPITHELIOID LEIOMYOMA REVISITED AND REVISED. APPRAISAL OF IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES REVEAL A “TRANSMOGRIFIED” MYOFIBROBLASTIC PROLIFERATION WITH SELECTIVE TERMINAL SMOOTH MUSCLE DIFFERENTIATION

Background In 1996, an unusual oral lesion was described as epithelioid leiomyoma featuring epithelioid and spindle cells that expressed smooth muscle actin (SMA) and selectively desmin (DES). Objectives To revisit the morphologic properties of such lesions given (a) the availability of novel and more specific smooth muscle markers and (b) the significant advances made in the characterization of myofibroblasts. Methods Two examples were studied that presented as hyperplastic polyps on the buccal mucosa of 2 female patients (38 and 80 years old). Immunohistochemical evaluation was performed for SMA, DES, calponin (CALP), smooth muscle myosin (SMM), h-Caldesmon(h-CALD), smoothelin (SMOO), MyoD1, myogenin (MYOG), collagen type IV (COLIV), laminin (LAM), CD68, and CD34. Results The lesions were characterized by 2 cell types: (a) epithelioid cells with eosinophilic, granular, or clear cytoplasm and (b) elongated spindle cells with eosinophilic cytoplasm showing spindle tapered nuclei. The stroma was fibromyxoid and vascular. Cells of interest were highlighted and equally decorated by SMA, CALP, and SMM. DES, h-CALD, and SMOO identified fewer spindle and epithelioid cells with these 3 antibodies decorating the same cell population, which also exhibited collagen type IV and LAM positivity. MyoD1, myogenin, and CD34 were negative. CD68 highlighted few spindle and epithelioid cells, suggesting the presence of lysosomes. Conclusions Based on advances in the study of myofibroblasts, the present findings confirm the capability of myofibroblasts to attain or transform into smooth muscle properties. The present cases are reactive myofibroblastic lesions with transformation of some cells into smooth muscle cells. The term epithelioid leiomyoma is not favored.
Mulieres viriliter vincentes: Masculine and Feminine Imagery in Augustine’s Sermons on Sts. Perpetua and Felicity

This paper argues that Augustine makes use of two principal images in his four extant sermons on Perpetua and Felicity: the masculine image of the combatant, who engages in spiritual warfare with the devil, and the feminine image of the mother, who tramples the diabolical serpent through childbirth. This paper makes the case that in styling the martyrs as combatants and mothers Augustine develops images that first appear in their third-century Passio. This thesis challenges the scholarly consensus which claims that Augustine departs from the content of their Passio in order to present these women behaving in conformity with the “patriarchal” norms of the late antique Church.
Acoustic detection of biosonar activity of deep diving odontocetes at Josephine Seamount High Seas Marine Protected Area

The temporal occurrence of deep diving cetaceans in the Josephine Seamount High Seas Marine Protected Area (JSHSMPA), south-west Portugal, was monitored using a passive acoustic recorder. The recorder was deployed on 13 May 2010 at a depth of 814 m during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation cruise “Sirena10” and recovered on 6 June 2010. The recorder was programmed to record 40 s of data every 2 min. Acoustic data analysis, for the detection and classification of echolocation clicks, was performed using automatic detector/classification systems: M3R (Marine Mammal Monitoring on Navy Ranges), a custom matlab program, and an operator-supervised custom matlab program to assess the classification performance of the detector/classification systems. M3R CS-SVM algorithm contains templates to detect beaked whales, sperm whales, blackfish (pilot and false killer whales), and Risso's dolphins. The detections of each group of odontocetes was monitored as a function of time. Blackfish and Risso's dolphins were detected every day, while beaked whales and sperm whales were detected almost every day. The hourly distribution of detections reveals that blackfish and Risso's dolphins were more active at night, while beaked whales and sperm whales were more active during daylight hours.
Using proteomic and genomic methods to understand JDM

Juvenile dermatomyositis is a complex illness characterized by vascular/perivascular inflammation, primarily in the skin and muscles. In this review, we discuss how proteomic and genomic technologies have expanded our understanding of the immune pathogenesis of this disease. We will also discuss further directions that the field may take to use existing and developing technologies to further our understanding of this often-perplexing disease.
Hand preference for tool-use in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) is associated with asymmetry of the primary motor cortex.

Skilled motor actions are associated with handedness and neuroanatomical specializations in humans. Recent reports have documented similar neuroanatomical asymmetries and their relationship to hand preference in some nonhuman primate species, including chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys. We investigated whether capuchins displayed significant hand preferences for a tool use task and whether such preferences were associated with motor-processing regions of the brain. Handedness data on a dipping tool-use task and high-resolution 3T MRI scans were collected from 15 monkeys. Capuchins displayed a significant group-level left-hand preference for this type of tool use, and handedness was associated with asymmetry of the primary motor cortex. Left-hand preferent individuals displayed a deeper central sulcus in the right hemisphere. Our results suggest that capuchins show an underlying right-hemisphere bias for skilled movement.
A New Total Flooding Test Procedure for Evaluating Fire-Suppressant Agents

A simple laboratory apparatus is described for observing the performance of fire extinguishing agents in total flooding applications. Known compositions of agents mixed with dry air are prepared in a 2 L glass combustion flask, and a flame fed by propane, butane, or other gaseous fuel from a pressure cylinder is inserted into the flask through a standard taper joint. Burning times to extinguishment are measured, both in the absence and presence of added physical or chemical agents. From the known rate of propane burning and initial compositions, the percentages of gas volume in the combustion flask at extinguishment are calculated for each burning time. Agents that are not sufficiently volatile to be investigated with the ordinary cup burner method are readily studied with the new technique.
Benchmarking statewide trauma mortality using Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's patient safety indicators.

Abstract Background Improving clinical outcomes of trauma patients is a challenging problem at a statewide level, particularly if data from the state's registry are not publicly available. Promotion of optimal care throughout the state is not possible unless clinical benchmarks are available for comparison. Using publicly available administrative data from the State Department of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) patient safety indicators (PSIs), we sought to create a statewide method for benchmarking trauma mortality and at the same time also identifying a pattern of unique complications that have an independent influence on mortality. Methods Data for this study were obtained from State of Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. Adult trauma patients were identified as having International Classification of Disease ninth edition codes defined by the state. Multivariate logistic regression was used to create a predictive inpatient expected mortality model. The expected value of PSIs was created using the multivariate model and their beta coefficients provided by the AHRQ. Case-mix adjusted mortality results were reported as observed to expected (O/E) ratios to examine mortality, PSIs, failure to prevent complications, and failure to rescue from death. Results There were 50,596 trauma patients evaluated during the study period. The overall fit of the expected mortality model was very strong at a c-statistic of 0.93. Twelve of 25 trauma centers had O/E ratios perioperative hemorrhage or hematoma . Mortality could be further substratified by PSI complications at the hospital level. Conclusions AHRQ PSIs can have an integral role in an adjusted benchmarking method that screens at risk trauma centers in the state for higher than expected mortality. Stratifying mortality based on failure to prevent PSIs may identify areas of needed improvement at a statewide level.
Application of ribotyping for differentiating aeromonads isolated from clinical and environmental sources.

Abstract We have investigated the usefulness of ribotyping for the differentiation of aeromonads isolated from five patients with gastroenteritis and from the source water, treatment plant, and distribution system of a small public water supply. Aeromonas hydrophila and Aeromonas caviae were isolated from fecal specimens preserved in Cary-Blair transport medium by using blood ampicillin agar or alkaline peptone water (pH 8.4) subcultured to blood ampicillin agar plates. A. hydrophila, Aeromonas sobria, and A. caviae were isolated from duplicate 100-ml water samples by the membrane filter technique by using ampicillin dextrin agar for quantitative determination of growth and alkaline peptone water enrichment for detection of the presence or absence of aeromonads below the detection limit of the membrane filter method. In addition, free chlorine residuals and pH values were determined for all water samples and heterotrophic plate counts and total and fecal coliform analyses were performed on them. Ribotyping patterns of aeromonads recovered from well 1, detention basin, sand filter, softener, and distribution samples were compared with those of the five clinical isolates. All patient strains were unique; however, identical ribotypes of A. hydrophila and A. sobria isolated from multiple sites in the water system indicated colonization of a well, sand filters, and the softener, with the potential for sporadic contamination of distribution water. Plant operational deficiencies were noted and corrected. Ribotyping can effectively differentiate otherwise indistinguishable strains of bacteria, thus providing a powerful tool for investigation of waterborne diseases and bacteriological problems within water treatment plants and distribution systems.
Changing healthcare practice for older adults with late-stage non-small cell lung cancer: practical considerations of targeted therapy in primary care and oncology.

Healthcare practice for cancer care is rapidly evolving because of advances in technology, scientific discovery, drug development, and aging demographics in America. Among the substantive changes in science and drug development is targeted therapy. Targeted agents are changing the scope of practice in treating lung cancer—the leading cause of cancer death in older adults. Given the growing use of these agents in cancer management, shared awareness of practical management considerations between specialists and primary care providers is important. This article reviews targeted therapy in late-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and shared care concerns in continuity of care of older Americans with this disease. Important practice points for providers caring for older patients with late-stage lung cancer treated with targeted therapy are presented through an educational guide addressing potential management concerns.
Production, Metabolism and Possible Functions of Adenosine in Brain Tissue in situ

Adenosine and H+ may act synergistically to regulate cerebral blood flow because adenosine production is enhanced under various experimental conditions associated with an imbalance between oxygen supply and oxygen need. Direct application of adenosine dilates the pial vessels, but changes in cerebral vascular resistance are not observed when adenosine is infused intraarterially. This is because adenosine does not readily cross the blood-brain barrier. The studies reported here show that in dogs the adenosine released into the interstitium is partly reincorporated into adenine nucleotides via an adenosine kinase (EC 2.7.1.20) reaction (salvage pathway) and partly degraded to inosine and hypoxanthine. However, in contrast to other tissues, the accumulation of iosine and hypoxanthine in brain tissue proceeds at a rate slower than that of adenosine because one of the degradative enzymes, namely purine-nucleoside phosphorylase (EC 2.4.2.1) is located only in the vessel wall, which is not readily permeable to adenosine. Thus, the slow access of adenosine to its degradative enzymes delays the appearance of its products, inosine and hypoxanthine.
CFD Models for Analysis and Design of Chemical Reactors

Publisher Summary The field of chemical reaction engineering (CRE) is intimately and uniquely connected with the design and scale-up of chemical reacting systems. To achieve the latter, two essential elements must be combined. First, a detailed knowledge of the possible chemical transformations that can occur in the system is required. This information is represented in the form of chemical kinetic schemes, kinetic rate parameters, and thermodynamic databases. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in this area using computational chemistry and carefully controlled experiments for isolating the chemical kinetics in the absence of transport effects. The second essential element is a detailed knowledge of the transport phenomena in chemical reacting systems. Indeed, because commercial chemical reactors are almost always operated in a regime where mass and energy transport affect or even control the product distribution from the system, understanding the coupling between transport processes and chemical reactions is an essential step in the design and scale-up of chemical reacting systems.
Efficient discretization scheduling in multiple dimensions

There is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy in fitness evaluations when various discretization sizes are used to estimate the fitness. This paper introduces discretization scheduling, which varies the size of the discretization within the GA, and compares this method to using a constant discretization. It will be shown that when scheduling the discretization, less computation time is used without sacrificing solution quality. Fitness functions whose cost and accuracy vary because of discretization errors from numerical integration are considered, and the speedup achieved from using efficient discretizations is predicted and shown empirically.
Large Scale Relation Detection

We present a technique for reading sentences and producing sets of hypothetical relations that the sentence may be expressing. The technique uses large amounts of instance-level background knowledge about the relations in order to gather statistics on the various ways the relation may be expressed in language, and was inspired by the observation that half of the linguistic forms used to express relations occur very infrequently and are simply not considered by systems that use too few seed examples. Some very early experiments are presented that show promising results.
Aging and the Intersection of Cognition, Motivation, and Emotion

Publisher Summary This chapter aims to integrate the disparate domains of cognitive aging and socio-emotional aging from the perspective of a motivational theory of life-span development. A thorough understanding of how the human mind adapts ontogenetically requires an integrative perspective of cognition, emotion, and motivation. The aging mind is generally characterized by divergent trajectories. Old age is marked by deterioration in most mental processes; especially those that are effortful and deliberative decline ubiquitously, while a few automatic processes and well-learned expertise-related functions remain unscathed. Evidence also indicates that even in old age there is remarkable plasticity of function. Not only can practice improve the performance of older adults, but instructional frames that portray a positive account of aging and memory can also improve performance. Long-standing independence of socio-emotional and cognitive research arenas may have led to the inadvertent exclusion of important aspects of the psychology of aging.
The genome and the germ cell.

A report on the third biennial Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting on Germ Cells, Cold Spring Harbor, USA, 9-13 October 2002.
Resurgence of two fetal-type of aldolases (A and C) in some fast-growing hepatomas.

Abstract We have previously demonstrated the resurgence of aldolase “A” (Muscle type) in hepatomas. In this communication we shown that in some solid transplantable hepatomas, this aldolase “A” is hybridized with a third type of aldolase present also in fetal-liver. The kinetic and electrophoretic properties of this third type of aldolase are identical to those found in aldolase “C” (Brain type).
Lagrangian density for collisional plasma

For the purpose of deriving appropriate Lagrangians for plasma equations that include effects of energy loss, the paper examines the inverse problem of the calculus of variations for systems of first- and second-order quasi-linear partial differential equations. This results in convenient forms of the sufficient conditions under which the given differential equations are Euler-Lagrange equations of a Lagrangian. These conditions are then applied to determine the necessary transformation that converts equations, apparently not already in it, into Euler-Lagrange form. The appropriate Lagrangian for a warm collisional plasma is obtained, and the Lagrangian is derived for a resistive transmission line.
Effect of modes of crystallization on habit and morphology of copper dendrites

Abstract Copper dendrites were grown from molten thallium solutions by three modes of crystallization. The crystals were examined for facet planes and growth directions. Changes in habit and morphology are reported.
Green optical/wireless in-building networks: The physics of design

Energy efficiency is rapidly becoming an important requirement for modern networks. In this paper, we discuss the physical limits to the power consumption of wireless and optical transmission. We show that there is an optimum cell size that results in the least power consumption in optical/wireless in-building networks and explain why. We then discuss the principles that govern the design of in-building Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) distribution networks. We use theoretical models to analyze the impact of key design factors on the energy consumption of point-to-point RoF links and how their adverse effects can be mitigated. Finally, we compare the energy consumption of several key in-building optical/wireless architectures based on several different RoF technologies, and demonstrate that centralized architectures based on RoF links can be substantially more energy efficient than baseband-over-fiber (BoF) architectures in network capacity-limited scenarios, when designed properly. Our findings also show that RoF-based architectures are energy efficient for cell sizes less than 10m.
Bromide excretion as affected by chloride administration.

Blood bromide concentrations in rabbits and dogs were found to be elevated following discontinuance of bromide, not only in animals receiving chloride, but also in controls. Elevation of the blood bromide level in controls was significantly greater than the elevation observed in those receiving chloride. Fluctuations in bromide levels during excretion are taken as evidence that bromide toxicity is related to total bromide extracellular retention rather than simply to blood chloride replacement.
Complex role of matrix metalloproteinases in angiogenesis.

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) play a significant role in regulating angiogenesis, the process of new blood vessel formation. Interstitial collagenase (MMP-1), 72 kDa gelatinase A/type IV collagenase (MMP-2), and 92 kDa gelatinase B/type IV collagenase (MMP-9) dissolve extracellular matrix (ECM) and may initiate and promote angiogenesis. TIMP-1, TIMP-2, TIMP-3, and possibly, TIMP-4 inhibit neovascularization. A new paradigm is emerging that matrilysin (MMP-7), MMP-9, and metalloelastase (MMP-12) may block angiogenesis by converting plasminogen to angiostatin, which is one of the most potent angiogenesis antagonists. MMPs and TIMPs play a complex role in regulating angiogenesis. An understanding of the biochemical and cellular pathways and mechanisms of angiogenesis will provide important information to allow the control of angiogenesis, e.g. the stimulation of angiogenesis for coronary collateral circulation formation; while the inhibition for treating arthritis and cancer.
MDCT of extranodal mantle cell lymphoma: a single institute experience.

To study the pattern of extranodal and particularly gastrointestinal (GI) involvement of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) on MDCT In this IRB-approved, HIPAA compliant retrospective study, MDCT features of 78 patients (62 males and 16 females, mean age 57 years) with MCL including 28 patients at presentation were reviewed. Clinical and histopathological (blastoid vs. non-blastoid) data were noted from medical records. Extranodal involvement was present in overall 51/78 patients on CT (65%), 18/28 (64%) patients at presentation. Spleen (21/78–27%) and bowel (19/78–24%) were the most common sites of extranodal involvement by MCL on imaging, followed by lungs (10/78–13%) and skin/subcutaneous tissue (9/78–12%). Bowel involvement was either in the form of endophytic polypoidal lesions (n = 11, mean size 3.1 cm), as focal mild bowel wall thickening (n = 5, mean thickness 1.4 cm), or as combination of the two (n = 3). Blastoid histology was present in 14/78 (24%) patients and was statistically associated with skin/subcutaneous involvement (p < 0.05; Fisher’s exact t test). Median follow-up was 72 months during which 21 patients died with median survival of 48 months (26 months for blastoid histology vs. 47 months for non-blastoid histology). There was no statistical correlation between sites of involvement and survival. MCL has a predilection for extranodal disease, predominantly involving the spleen, bowel, lungs, and subcutaneous tissue. GI involvement on CT is in the form of endoluminal polypoidal lesions and mild bowel wall thickening. Skin/subcutaneous involvement was statistically more common with blastoid histology in our study.
Advanced Modern Algebra

This book is designed as a text for the first year of graduate algebra, but it can also serve as a reference since it contains more advanced topics as well. This second edition has a different organization than the first. It begins with a discussion of the cubic and quartic equations, which leads into permutations, group theory, and Galois theory (for finite extensions; infinite Galois theory is discussed later in the book). The study of groups continues with finite abelian groups (finitely generated groups are discussed later, in the context of module theory), Sylow theorems, simplicity of projective unimodular groups, free groups and presentations, and the Nielsen-Schreier theorem (subgroups of free groups are free). The study of commutative rings continues with prime and maximal ideals, unique factorization, noetherian rings, Zorn's lemma and applications, varieties, and Grobner bases. Next, noncommutative rings and modules are discussed, treating tensor product, projective, injective, and flat modules, categories, functors, and natural transformations, categorical constructions (including direct and inverse limits), and adjoint functors. Then follow group representations: Wedderburn-Artin theorems, character theory, theorems of Burnside and Frobenius, division rings, Brauer groups, and abelian categories. Advanced linear algebra treats canonical forms for matrices and the structure of modules over PIDs, followed by multilinear algebra. Homology is introduced, first for simplicial complexes, then as derived functors, with applications to Ext, Tor, and cohomology of groups, crossed products, and an introduction to algebraic $K$-theory. Finally, the author treats localization, Dedekind rings and algebraic number theory, and homological dimensions. The book ends with the proof that regular local rings have unique factorization. (GSM/114)