cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Guest Service Management and Processes in Restaurants: What We Have Learned in Fifty Years:

Although restaurant-related research has long focused on boosting sales, the focus on revenue as a quantitative discipline has arisen only in the past fifteen years, with restaurant revenue management. This series of studies is emblematic of the increased focus on scientific studies to help restaurateurs improve their operations. Another thread of research, on service process management, included a series of articles explaining the many elements beyond the food itself that go into a successful restaurant operation. A particular element in guest satisfaction is the extent to which employees believe that their restaurant maintains service standards. Finally, when service goes awry, service recovery requires handling guest complaints in a prompt and appropriate fashion. Service failures subject restaurants to negative word of mouth, but it is not simply a matter of a dissatisfied guest complaining to a certain number of friends. Instead, the nature and number of subsequent negative comments depends on the ty...
Virulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis Strains Evade Apoptosis of Infected Alveolar Macrophages

Human alveolar macrophages (AMphi) undergo apoptosis following infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis in vitro. Apoptosis of cells infected with intracellular pathogens may benefit the host by eliminating a supportive environment for bacterial growth. The present study compared AMphi apoptosis following infection by M. tuberculosis complex strains of differing virulence and by Mycobacterium kansasii. Avirulent or attenuated bacilli (M. tuberculosis H37Ra, Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin, and M. kansasii) induced significantly more AMphi apoptosis than virulent strains (M. tuberculosis H37Rv, Erdman, M. tuberculosis clinical isolate BMC 96.1, and M. bovis wild type). Increased apoptosis was not due to greater intracellular bacterial replication because virulent strains grew more rapidly in AMphi than attenuated strains despite causing less apoptosis. These findings suggest the existence of mycobacterial virulence determinants that modulate the apoptotic response of AMphi to intracellular infection and support the hypothesis that macrophage apoptosis contributes to innate host defense in tuberculosis.
The Korteweg-de Vries equation: a historical essay

The Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, usually attributed to Korteweg & de Vries (1895), governs the propagation of weakly dispersive, weakly nonlinear water waves and serves as a model equation for any physical system for which the dispersion relation for frequency vs. wavenumber is approximated by ω/k = c0(1 − βk2) and nonlinearity is weak and quadratic. It first appears explicitly in de Vries's dissertation (1894), although it is implicit in the work of Boussinesq (1872). Its current renaissance stems from the Fermi, Pasta & Ulam (1955) problem for a string of nonlinearly coupled oscillators, which, through the work of Zabusky & Kruskal and their colleagues, led to the discovery of the soliton and the development of inverse-scattering theory by Gardner et al. (1967). Many related evolution equations, each of which represents a balance between some form of dispersion (or variation of dispersion in the case of wave-packet evolution) and weak nonlinearity in an appropriate reference frame, have since been found to have properties analogous to those of the KdV equation - in particular, inverse-scattering solutions that are asymptotically dominated by solitons.
Imagining the Administrative State: Legal Pragmatism, Securities Regulation, and New Deal Liberalism

After more than two decades of “bringing the state back in,” law persists as a neglected stepchild in the history of American state-building. Legal historians have identified a profound transformation in jurisprudence that took place during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they have said relatively little about how radically new conceptions of law influenced public policy during the 1930s.1 Conversely, historians of public policy have written extensively about American political development, the nature of bureaucratic autonomy, and the uses of economic knowledge in upholding the administrative state, but the role of law and jurisprudence in recasting state power has remained elusive.2 Moreover, as William J. Novak has observed, both groups of scholars remain hamstrung by the inherited wisdom of Progressive historiography, and they continue to subscribe to a familiar litany of cases from Lochner to Schechter that undergirds a grand narrative about law’s sole function as an impediment to state-building. As a corrective, Novak has urged historians to consider more carefully the “massive amount of everyday lawmaking” and “structural sociolegal changes” rendered invisible by the court battles of the first third of the twentieth century. Although largely unacknowledged in public discussion and debate, such developments ultimately provided critical support for the consolidation and legitimation of the modern American state.3 This essay examines the place of law in the making of the New Deal state by focusing on three of the early chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—James M. Landis, William O. Douglas, and Jerome N. Frank—and the key role jurisprudence played in their efforts to regulate the securities market and uphold the administrative state. General histories of the New Deal devote little attention to the SEC, but
State estimation in multi-agent decision and control systems

This thesis addresses the problem of estimating the state in multi-agent decision and control systems. In particular, a novel approach to state estimation is developed that uses partial order theory in order to overcome some of the severe computational complexity issues arising in multi-agent systems. Within this approach, state estimation algorithms are developed that enjoy provable convergence properties and are scalable with the number of agents. The dynamic evolution of the systems under study are characterized by the interplay of continuous and discrete variables. Continuous variables usually represent physical quantities such as position, velocity, voltage, and current, while the discrete variables usually represent quantities internal to the decision protocol that are used for coordination, communication, and control. Within the proposed state estimation approach, the estimation of continuous and discrete variables is developed in the same mathematical framework as a joint continuous-discrete space is considered for the estimator. This way, the dichotomy between the continuous and discrete world is overcome for the purpose of state estimation. Application examples are considered, which include the state estimation in competitive multi-robot systems and in multi-agent discrete event systems, and the monitoring of distributed environments.
Toxic Megacolon in Ulcerative Colitis

A consecutive series of 18 patients with toxic megacolon has been managed with a policy of early operative intervention if optimal medical therapy has failed to effect a rapid remission. One patient achieved a sustained remission on medical management alone. Seventeen patients underwent ileostomy and colectomy. There was one death (5.6% mortality rate) in a complication of ulcerative colitis in which the average reported mortality rate has been 23.1%. It is suggested that surgical intervention be used early enough to prevent colonic perforation and the progressive metabolic deterioration that prolonged nonoperative medical management may produce. The ominous prognosis of toxic megacolon and of its surgical management in the past can be overcome by resort to earlier surgical intervention. Colectomy, rather than decompressive enterostomy, is advocated as the operative treatment of choice.
Intellectual Property, Economic Development, and the China Puzzle

Since the late 1980s, the Chinese economy has been growing at an enviable average annual rate of about 10 per cent. Accompanying this unprecedented economic development and growth was the maturation of the modern Chinese intellectual property system. Since the reopening of its market to foreign trade in the late 1970s, China introduced its first modern copyright, patent, and trademark laws. A decade later, China revamped its intellectual property system in response to US pressure and did so again in preparation for its accession to the WTO. At present, China is a proud member of many multilateral intellectual property agreements. Notwithstanding these developments, the enforcement of intellectual property rights in China remains inadequate. Although commentators often link intellectual property protection with economic development, China thus far has presented a puzzle to those who study this link. While some commentators consider China a paradigmatic case for showing that rapid economic development can take place despite limited intellectual property protection, others have noted gradual improvements in the Chinese intellectual property system as the country became more economically developed. In fact, history suggests that China is now simply following the economic development paths of Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan--or even Germany and the United States. It is only a matter of time before China is converted from a pirating nation to a country that respects intellectual property rights. This book chapter examines the relationship between intellectual property protection and economic development. It begins by exploring the conventional linkage between intellectual property protection and foreign direct investment. The chapter then examines why China expanded its intellectual property protection even though such expansion was unnecessary for attracting FDI. The final section highlights the country's regional and sectoral disparities, its inadequate development of an enabling environment for effective intellectual property protection, and its improvements in intellectual property protection at both the microscopic and qualitative levels. The chapter takes the view that a better understanding of the role of intellectual property protection in promoting economic development will provide a more accurate forecast of when China will reach a crossover point at which it will find stronger intellectual property protection in its self-interests.
Management Information Systems and Changing Technologies in Libraries

The health and prosperity of a library depends critically on what information is available for decision makers in the library and how management structure provides for the flow of information to them.
Appraising Machine-Readable Records

MACHINE-READABLE RECORDS ARE DEFINED as records created for processing by a computer. While this definition encompasses a wide variety of storage media including punched cards, magnetic discs, cassettes, and paper tape, the vast majority of machine-readable records are stored on magnetic computer tape. It is reasonable to anticipate that, over the next decade, on-line storage and retrieval devices with random access capability will replace magnetic tape as the primary storage medium. This suggests the possibility that new computer storage technology will radically alter the appraisal of machine-readable records. Current appraisal practices of machine-readable records differ in significant ways from those for textual records; and as computer technology progresses these differences will become even more pronounced. Indeed, it is likely that current practices and standards will be obsolete and irrelevant within a decade. It is quite costly to accession and preserve properly a single reel of computer tape. The proliferation of on-line data base management systems will make this process even more expensive, and costs will receive even greater consideration in appraisal decisions. As a result, the consequences of the rationalization (in the British sense) of the records retention process will become more evident, to the discomfort of archivists and researchers. These possibilities suggest or imply a number of points that merit consideration. The standards and practices now employed in the Machine-Readable Archives Division of the National Archives and Records Service, with attention to the changes likely to occur within the next decade, provide the context for this consideration. Since 1969 the staff of the National Archives has appraised machine-readable records and thereby contributed to the refinement of certain concepts and criteria that comprise the present "state of the art," as it were. A delineation of the sequence of decisions involved in the appraisal of machine-readable records can convey the current state of the art. The first decision—whether a file will be appraised—is left largely to agency records officers. A disposition schedule for machine-readable records identifies categories of disposable and non-disposable computer tape files. The former, consisting of processing files that range from initial data input to update transactions, are automatically disposable without regard to subject matter. In most federal agencies at least 60 percent of computer tape files are disposable as "processing files." Most non-disposable files, which must be offered to the National
Design Optimization of Tower Structure for Raising Line Suspension Height

Tower structural design itself has requirement of optimization.Raising conductor suspension height is one of the solutions to problems of building overcrossing and EM environment in regions with limited line corridors.As suspension height increases,towers become larger,resulting in more steel consumption,which makes it more important to perform structural optimization.There are 2 ways,namely,raising tower height and changing conductor suspension modes,to raise suspension height.Taking 500 kV cat-head-shaped suspension tower in East China as an example,2 methods are used to study how to raise suspension height,and structural optimization is performed to the raised tower.Through reconfiguration of tower body and loading analysis of tower members,rational tower type and structural optimization methods are proposed.
Mind Your $$R, \varPhi $$s: Location-Based Privacy Controls for Consumer Drones

This position paper explores the threat to individual privacy due to the widespread use of consumer drones. Present day consumer drones are equipped with sensors such as cameras and microphones, and their types and numbers can be well expected to increase in future. Drone operators have absolute control on where the drones fly and what the on-board sensors record with no options for bystanders to protect their privacy. This position paper proposes a policy language that allows homeowners, businesses, governments, and privacy-conscious individuals to specify location access-control for drones, and discusses how these policy-based controls might be realized in practice. This position paper also explores the potential future problem of managing consumer drone traffic that is likely to emerge with increasing use of consumer drones for various tasks. It proposes a privacy preserving traffic management protocol for directing drones towards their respective destinations without requiring drones to reveal their destinations.
Student Feedback on Robotics in CS1.

We describe a robotics assignment for CS1. This assignment has been used at our college since 2002. Recently we have been surveying our students as to whether the lab reinforced the programming concepts taught in the course and if students wanted to see more robotics in future courses. Student responses were positive with respect to both issues.
Pediatric Behavioral Neuropsychology

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the current approaches to assessment in pediatric neuropsychology as well as interview issues in the examinations. It offers standard assessment instruments of the child's cognitive and emotional behavior, and presents a variety of parent-report instruments designed to assess the aspects of both child behavior and family functioning. Because the brain is responsible for both cognitive and emotional functioning, and because emotional processing deficits may arise as a consequence of or in response to childhood neurological disorders or traumatic injuries, assessment of mood and psychiatric symptoms is an important part of a comprehensive pediatric neuropsychological assessment. There are a variety of self-report questionnaires that assess the child's and adolescent's awareness of problems in attention, impulsivity, and executive abilities. These can be compared to parent-report questionnaires of the same domains in order to develop a convergent and divergent picture of problematic behaviors that may be present. Finally, one important aspect of neuropsychological assessment is to understand the impact of a developmental or acquired neurological disorder on adaptive functioning.
Theorizing Social Movements

The analysis and theorization of social movements is central to understanding social life, state-society relations, and social change, and comprises one of the most vibrant areas of sociological research today. Theories of collective action and mobilization typically aim to understand the factors and conditions producing organized collective action dedicated to fostering or resisting change across time and place, as well as the consequences of those challenges. In light of our conceptualization of social movements as collectivities that seek to challenge or defend existing institutional and/or cultural systems of authority and their associated practices, we provide an overview of dominant paradigms used to conceptualize and theorize the emergence, dynamics, and outcomes of social movements. We then conclude by drawing on recent innovations in the field to suggest ways that scholars can refine, elaborate, and expand the existing theoretical repertoire.
Neuropathology of Alzheimer’s Disease

To understand the relationship between cognitive status during life and brain pathology, a number of studies have obtained brain autopsies from individuals followed prospectively for cognition during life. Several sets of neuropathologic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have been developed, culminating in the Reagan criteria that assign high, intermediate, and low likelihoods for neuropathologic AD based on the numbers and locations in the brain of neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Clinicopathologic studies have shown that the correspondence between severity of AD neuropathology and cognition during life is relatively strong. However, one-third of individuals with high likelihood for neuropathologic AD are not demented during life and many individuals with low levels of pathology are demented. The presence of dementia in individuals with AD lesions is strongly modified by the presence of vascular lesions and Lewy bodies. Recent findings also point to a critical role of brain reserve in blunting the effect of AD lesions on the presence of dementia. MRI and PET scan markers appear to be effective in identifying the presence and severity of AD lesions during life.
Eulogy for the Metabolic Clinical Investigator

A recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by Nathan et al. (1) dwelt on the decision to cease direct National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of Clinical Research Centers (CRCs). As the authors rightly point out, the lack of extramural support for the CRC infrastructure will doom this valuable resource for human research at academic institutions without the wherewithal to support clinical research. CRCs as they currently exist might no longer require NIH support if we already knew the entirety of human physiology as it relates to disease or if entities such as industry would fund the studies needed to understand the primary mechanisms of complex human disease. We are certain the former is untrue and highly doubtful the latter will occur. The subsequent demise of the CRCs and our diminished ability to perform complex, mechanistic studies in humans will have both immediate and long-term adverse effects on biomedical research. Support obtained by the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) mechanism will be insufficient to maintain the necessary research infrastructure. Consequently, investigators will abandon comprehensive, mechanistic studies in humans because of the costs involved. The eventual fall in the number of investigators capable of designing, conducting, and interpreting such studies threatens to make the U.S. a second-tier biomedical research environment. This is especially important for the field of diabetes and metabolism where related human studies account for a significant proportion of CRC use. Certainly, rigorous metabolic research requires meticulous control of diet and activity prior to study. Moreover, ensuring participant safety with intensive monitoring often requires extended inpatient stays. The elimination of the NIH-supported CRC system will also substantially constrain the infrastructure necessary for intensive human studies, such as those requiring tissue biopsy, vascular catheterization, and frequent sampling of the …
Traditional Islamic Exclusivism - A Critique

In this paper, I give an account and critique of what I call ‘Traditional Islamic Exclusivism’ – a specific Islamic interpretation of religious exclusivism. This Islamic version of religious exclusivism rests on exclusivist attitudes towards truth, epistemic justification and salvation. After giving an account of Traditional Islamic Exclusivism by explaining its theological roots in the Qur’an and ahadith (reports of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), I proceed to critique it. I do so by arguing that Islamic epistemic exclusivism, which forms the main core of Traditional Islamic Exclusivism, is implausible. This criticism subsequently opens up further lines of criticism and discussion of both salvific and alethic exclusivism in an Islamic context. I conclude with some remarks about the implications and significance of my criticisms of Traditional Islamic Exclusivism.
Dynamical effects in the population of compound nuclei

Evidence for the influence of reaction dynamics on the population of compound nuclei will be presented. Large dissipation in certain heavy-ion reactions leads to long compound nucleus formation times which can change the initial angular momentum and excitation energy distribution of the compound nucleus. This effect can be observed by measuring high energy γ-rays from the giant dipole resonance. The overall neutron multiplicity, however, is not a sensitive observable. The long formation times might even influence the final spin distribution of evaporation residues, which could possibly explain the entrance channel dependent population of superdeformed bands.
Experimental and computational investigation of the blast response of Carbon-Epoxy weathered composite materials

Abstract An experimental study with corresponding numerical simulations was conducted to investigate the blast response of weathered Carbon-Epoxy composite plates. The dynamic behavior of the composite plates with and without prior exposure to an aggressive marine environment was explored using a shock tube apparatus coupled with a high speed photography system. In order to simulate prolonged exposure in an aggressive marine environment, specimens were submerged in an elevated temperature, 3.5% salt solution for 0, 30 and 60 days. The saline solution temperature was maintained at 65 °C to accelerate the aging process. Finite Element Modeling (FEM) for the blast loading experiments was performed using the Ls-Dyna code. Models have been developed for both the simply supported and fixed boundary condition cases. Tensile and four point bend tests were performed to characterize the quasi-static mechanical behavior of the composite material before and after prolonged exposure to aggressive marine environments. After 30 and 60 days of submergence, the tensile modulus decreased by 11% and 13%, the ultimate tensile strength decreased by 12% and 13%, and the ultimate flexural strength decreased by 22% and 22%, respectively. Dynamic blast loading experiments were performed on simply supported and fully clamped specimens, to determine the effects of the boundary conditions on the Carbon-Epoxy specimen response. The Weathered (30 and 60 days) and Non-Weathered (0 day) specimens displayed dramatically different behavior after being subjected to a blast load. For the simply supported case, Non-Weathered specimens displayed an average maximum out of plane displacement of 20 mm and recovered elastically. Weathered specimens, both 30 and 60 days exhibited similar initial transient behavior but failed catastrophically due to through thickness cracking at the point of maximum deflection. For the fixed boundary condition, the Non-Weathered specimens displayed an average maximum out of plane displacement of 5.57 mm, whereas the 30 day and 60 day weathered specimens displayed a maximum out of plane displacement of 6.89 mm and 6.96 mm, respectively. The corresponding numerical simulations matched well with the experimental data. However, for the fixed boundary case, the beam vibration of the simulation was off phase with the experimental results due to imperfect boundary conditions in the experiments.
The graduate student experience in the neoliberal academy

This commentary discusses graduate student perspectives on the disjuncture between the neoliberal framing of value as pursuit of economic profit and the academic community’s pursuit of knowledge. Declining opportunities and the devaluing of different frames of knowledge and practice in the academy suppress graduate students’ ability to contribute to their chosen fields of study and to create value in novel ways. Our participation as graduate students in the academic community, including organizations such as American Association of University Professors, has been instrumental in articulating the interconnectedness of the systemic consequences that the neoliberal constitution of value has on the campus and community.
Preliminary antioxidant activity analysis of Brazilian pepper tree (Schinus terebinthifolius) extracts via TLC, FRAP, and DPPH

Medicinal plants continue to attract increasing attention because of their potential benefits in the field of medicine and pharmacology. Recently, the study of antioxidant levels in plants has received a great deal of attention because it is widely believed that increased oxidative stress and free radical levels in the body lead to the progression of any diseases. In the present study, Schinus terebinthifolius (Brazilian Pepper Tree) extracts were evaluated for antioxidant activity using free radical scavenging activity, and ferric reducing power. The plant was collected in the organic garden at St. Thomas University and the extracts were prepared by maceration of three parts of the plants, the leaves, the berries, and the bark. The extracts were made using varying proportions of ethanol and hexane solvents. All the samples were analyzed using thin layer chromatography (TLC). Multiple extract samples were submitted to DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1- picrylhydrazyl) assay to determine the free radical scavenging (FRS) capacity, and absorbance was read at 517 and 520 nm in a plate reader. A control sample was prepared containing the same volume of solvent and DPPH without any extract and reference ascorbic acid. Percent scavenging activity of the DPPH free radical is expressed as an ascorbic acid (AA) equivalent antioxidant capacity (mg AA/100g). A Ferric reducing anti-oxidant power assay (FRAP) was performed and absorbance was measured at 700 nm to quantify the total antioxidant activity. FRAP and DPPH assays indicated that the bark has significantly higher free radical scavenging ability than any other part of the plant. Ethanol was optimal for extracting and preserving the plant’s active compounds. Cytotoxicity assay on chemical extracts were tested on breast cancer cells, and methylthiazol tetrazolium (MTT) assays were used to quantify cytotoxicity. Preliminary data indicated the extracts were not cytotoxic at the concentrations tested.
On Value Function Representation of Long Horizon Problems.

In Reinforcement Learning, an intelligent agent has to make a sequence of decisions to accomplish a goal. If this sequence is long, then the agent has to plan over a long horizon. While learning the optimal policy and its value function is a well studied problem in Reinforcement Learning, this paper focuses on the structure of the optimal value function and how hard it is to represent the optimal value function. We show that the generalized Rademacher complexity of the hypothesis space of all optimal value functions is dependent on the planning horizon and independent of the state and action space size. Further, we present bounds on the action-gaps of action value functions and show that they can collapse if a long planning horizon is used. The theoretical results are verified empirically on randomly generated MDPs and on a gridworld fruit collection task using deep value function approximation. Our theoretical results highlight a connection between value function approximation and the Options framework and suggest that value functions should be decomposed along bottlenecks of the MDP’s transition dynamics.
1610c Global impact: whwb-us model of increasing professional outreach and growth

Problem WHWB-US is an independent affiliate of WHWB. Many of our founding members are sensitive to global issues because of occupational health risks encountered during their work in other countries. There is a limited number of US industrial hygienists with global perspectives and, therefore, we need to develop a strategy that will increase our membership. We believe our approach may offer a blueprint for occupational hygienists in similar situations throughout the world. Possible solutions As WHWB-US grows, we wish to establish student chapters and to reach out to other professionals in fields such as engineering, public health, medicine, and business. WHWB-US chose Ann Arbour as its headquarters because the University of Michigan’s (UMich) Industrial Hygiene (IH) program has a strong global orientation. This led to the establishment of our first UMich student chapter in 2016. We are in the process of establishing student chapters at Brigham Young University in Utah and Idaho and George Washington University in Washington DC. Student members have worked with the electronics industry in Mexico, the e-waste industry in Thailand and the Vietnamese-American community in nail salons. We hope to add members by encouraging interested professionals from business, unions, consumer groups, physicians, and safety disciplines to join WHWB-US. We expect that lessons learned from these efforts will be scalable to global problems. Going forward WHWB-US is urging the involvement of graduate students and their faculty in medicine, public health, environmental epidemiology, engineering, IH and business to participate in the 2018 IOHA Conference in Washington DC. New members will contribute to WHWB-US growth, and these younger professionals will be encouraged to join in leadership and recruitment efforts. Conclusion We feel this approach will enable WHWB-US to expand its membership and offer a model for other practitioners from outside the US to join WHWB International and develop their own chapters and professional collaborations.
International assessment on quality and content of internet information on osteoarthritis.

Summary Objective Osteoarthritis is one of the leading causes of global disability. Numerous studies have assessed the quality and content of online health information; however, how information content varies between multiple countries remains unknown. The primary objective of this study was to examine how the quality and content of online health information on osteoarthritis compares on an international scale. Methods Internet searches for the equivalent of “knee osteoarthritis treatment” were performed in ten countries around the world. For each country, the first ten websites were evaluated using a custom scoring form examining: website type; quality and reliability using the DISCERN and Health-on-the-Net (HON) frameworks; and treatment content based on three international osteoarthritis treatment guidelines. Consistency of search results between countries speaking the same language was also assessed. Results Significant differences in all scoring metrics existed between countries speaking different languages. Western countries scored higher than more eastern countries, there were no differences between the United States and Mexico in any of the scoring metrics, and HON certified websites were of higher quality and reliability. Searches in different countries speaking the same language had at least 70% overlap. Conclusions The quality of online health information on knee osteoarthritis varies significantly between countries speaking different languages. Differential access to quality, accurate, and safe health information online may represent a novel but important health inequality. Future efforts are needed to translate online health resources into additional languages. In the interim, patients may seek websites that display the HON seal.
Fog Computing Architecture, Evaluation, and Future Research Directions

IoT has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. In fact, the number of connected devices has already surpassed the total population on Earth. Current developments in various technologies have paved the way for many IoT services that are now being deployed in different sectors. IoT can extend its scope and service provisioning capabilities with the integration of the cloud computing paradigm. Similarly, cloud cannot only access underlying IoT nodes and provide them with cloud services, but can also create further enhanced services based on the data collected from IoT nodes. However, IoT and sensor networks on the ground are often far from the cloud, which is normally accessible via the Internet. Some services require fast response and a great deal of pre-processing and filtering, and may also have security and privacy requirements. For all such cases, middleware, also known as fog, is required between the cloud and IoT devices. We present cloud-IoT integration issues followed by a comparison between fog and cloud computing. We evaluate the performance of fog computing using performance metrics such as processing delay, processing costs, and processing power, and derive the performance gains obtained in comparison to a cloud computing only approach. Finally, we identify some future research directions for fog computing.
GEMS: User Control for Cooperative Scientific Repositories

Opportunistic techniques have been widely used to create useful computational infrastructures and have demonstrated an ability to deliver computing resources to large applications. However, the management of disk space and usage in such systems is often neglected. While overarching filesystemsstructures and policies for their data.
Can We Afford Longevity

The nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) generally are faced with crises in their pension and health care systems, not because they are poor but because they are, by historical or Third World standards, exceedingly rich. It is the enormous increase in their per capita incomes over the past century that permitted the average length of retirement to increase by five-fold, the proportion of a cohort that lives to retire to increase by seven-fold and the amount of leisure time available to those still in the labor force to increase by nearly four-fold (Appendices 5.2 and 5.3 inFogel 1999; cf. Ausubel & Grubler 1995; Costa 1998;Lee 1996).
Sensational Human Rights Curriculum and the Discourse on Saving the Other.

This article advocates for the need to develop a more critical approach to theorizing human rights curriculum and critiques dominant/western liberal interpretation of human rights discourse that cl...
Modeling of Droplet Impact onto Polarized and Nonpolarized Dielectric Surfaces.

This paper is concerned with simulation of the droplet impact on a dielectric surface, referred to as the dynamic electrowetting-on-dielectric (DEWOD). In particular, we seek to shed more light on ...
Characterization of Early Blight Resistance in Potato Cultivars

Early blight, caused by the fungus Alternaria solani, is one of the most economically important foliar diseases of potatoes worldwide. In this study, 217 tetraploid old and modern potato cultivars were evaluated for foliar resistance to early blight in field experiments in Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2017. Relative area under the disease progress curve (RAUDPC) was calculated based on visual assessment of foliar disease during the growing season each year. RAUDPC ranged from 0.0090 to 0.7372 in 2016 and from 0.0215 to 0.7889 in 2017, respectively. Significant differences in resistance to A. solani among cultivars were found (P < 0.0001). A significant interaction was found between cultivar and environment (P < 0.0001). Cluster analysis classified the cultivars into five groups: resistant, moderately resistant, intermediate, moderately susceptible, and susceptible. Broad-sense heritability for early blight resistance was estimated as 0.89 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.86 to 0.92. All cultivars were also evaluated for foliage maturity in separate field trials in 2016 and 2017, and a strong negative correlation between early blight resistance and maturity was found. Maturity-adjusted RAUDPC was calculated by regressing maturity on RAUDPC; predicted values more than two standard deviations greater or less than observed values were used to identify cultivars with greater genetic susceptibility or resistance to early blight, respectively, independent of maturity. Although most resistant and moderately resistant cultivars showed late maturity and most susceptible cultivars showed early maturity, a few exceptions were found.
Palliative Care/End-of-Life Care

This chapter will address the role of palliative care across the cancer care continuum, with emphasis on advance care planning, communication, and decision-making. It will also provide readers with management strategies for common symptoms experienced by patients at the end of life.
Decomposition as Design: Co-Creating (with) Natureculture

HCI in recent years has shown an increasing interest in decentering humans in design. This decentering is a response to concerns about environmental sustainability, technology obsolescence, and consumerism. Scholars have introduced theoretical notions such as natureculture from feminist technoscience. Yet how such theories translate into material design practices remains an open question. This research seeks to broaden the repertoire of nonanthropocentric design practices in HCI. Specifically, it draws on the natural processes of decomposition as a creative approach to develop and test design tactics. To do so, we curate and critique hundreds of examples of decomposition in architecture, design, textile, crafting, and food making. We observe that decomposition often depends on what we call a "scaffold," and we further propose four variants of it as design tactics: fragmenting, aging, liberating, and tracing. We then tested the tactics over a period of four months in a ceramics studio using diverse materials, with a mixture of successes and failures. We conclude by reflecting on how the design tactics might be deployed in nonanthropocentric HCI/design.
Leveraging External Knowledge for Out-Of-Vocabulary Entity Labeling.

Dealing with previously unseen slots is a challenging problem in a real-world multi-domain dialogue state tracking task. Other approaches rely on predefined mappings to generate candidate slot keys, as well as their associated values. This, however, may fail when the key, the value, or both, are not seen during training. To address this problem we introduce a neural network that leverages external knowledge bases (KBs) to better classify out-of-vocabulary slot keys and values. This network projects the slot into an attribute space derived from the KB, and, by leveraging similarities in this space, we propose candidate slot keys and values to the dialogue state tracker. We provide extensive experiments that demonstrate that our stratagem can improve upon a previous approach, which relies on predefined candidate mappings. In particular, we evaluate this approach by training a state-of-the-art model with candidates generated from our network, and obtained relative increases of 57.7% and 82.7% in F1 score and accuracy, respectively, for the aforementioned model, when compared to the current candidate generation strategy.
Genome dynamics and pathotype evolution in the rice blast fungus.

Intraspecific variation is a common feature of many plant pathogenic fungi. Many damaging species are composed of highly selective host or cultivar-specific forms, whose ability to evolve new virulence types continues to hamper the best efforts of plant breeders and pathologists. In our laboratory we are using the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe grisea, to examine the genetic basis for intraspecific variation. This fungus is notorious for its ability to evolve new virulence types and infect new hosts. In this chapter we summarize current research efforts to understand the genetic organization of the M. grisea genome, the molecular basis for variation within and between various host-specific forms and the structure and dynamics of rice infecting populations.
Beyond energy savings: Investigating the co-benefits of heat resilient architecture

Abstract Heat is a growing concern in cities around the word, especially in the face of climate change. Because buildings are an important component of the built environment vis-a-vis both energy use and heat resiliency in cities, we explored their climate mitigation and adaptation potential. Specifically, we investigated how design decisions interact with regard to three heat-related factors—namely, energy use/CO2 emissions, passive survivability, and heat rejection to the urban climate. We selected an archetypical building as our test case, created various design permutations, and used whole-building simulations to analyze their performance. Our simulations show that permutations of the building with a smaller carbon footprint also emit less heat to ambient air and had a better passive survivability. However, we also noted potential trade-offs (e.g., where ventilation is inadequate, increasing insulation levels for energy efficiency may hurt passive survivability). Based on our findings, we argue that, at least at a policy level, it is imperative to take advantage of the synergies, and their collective benefits. Moreover, building regulations or incentive programs should look beyond energy as the sole performance metric of interest and consider passive survivability as well as thermal interactions with urban climate.
Chapter 21 Engineering Pathogen Resistance in Crop Plants

As the world population continues to increase, food supplies must also grow to meet nutritional requirements. One means of ensuring the stability and plentitude of the food supply is to mitigate crop loss caused by plant pathogens. Strategies for combating disease include traditional technologies such as plant breeding and chemical applications; current technologies such as generating transgenic plants that express components of known defence signalling pathways and the adaptation of newer technologies such as RNA silencing of pathogen and plant transcripts. Breeding has been used to pyramid resistance (R) genes into many different plants including rice. Chemical strategies include application of salicylic acid (SA) analogues to stimulate systemic acquired resistance (SAR) responses. Genetic screens in Arabidopsis have identified genes controlling SAR and these genes have been manipulated and used to engineer crop plants. The diseases caused by plant viruses are being thwarted through the initiation of endogenous RNA silencing mechanisms. Many of these strategies show great promise, some limitations and exciting opportunities to develop many new tools for combating plant pests. Keywords: resistance; gene-pyramiding; RNAhomology-dependent; silencing; systemic acquired resistance (SAR); salicylic acid (SA)
Operation-effect analysis of surgical repair combined with collateral embolization for cyanotic congenital heart disease with major aortopulmonary collateral arteries

Objective To evaluate the operation-effect of surgical repair combined with collateral embolization for cyanotic congenital heart disease with major aortopulmonary collateral arteries (MAPCAs) and optimal time of the associated operation. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data of 151 patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease and MAPCAs from 1992 to Nov of 2009. Two hundred and fifty two MAPCAs were embolized. One hundred and thirty two patients were performed one-stage surgical correction, another 19 patients received palliative operation and 7 patients received staging surgical repair after palliative operation. Results All patients received combined therapy of MAPCAs embolization and surgical repair with total in-hospital mortality of 7.3%. There was no death in 6 cases of preoperative interventional embolization, 2 death in 6 cases of postoperative embolization before July 2007 and none after July 2007. Simultaneous hybrid procedures (4.3%) had lower in-hospital mortality than intraoperative embolization before July 2007 (21.1%). There were significant differences regarding the duration of respirator usage, duration of ICU and postoperative hospital stay, as well as the cost of hospitalization for the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative embolization groups ( P = 0.000, 0.000 and 0.000, respectively). Patients had a shorter duration of ICU and hospital stay after July 2007 ( P = 0.002, 0.002 ). The duration of ICU and hospital stay in simultaneous hybrid procedures was shorter than those of intraoperative embolization before July 2007 (5.37 days vs. 8.38 days, P=0.079 and 13.01 days vs. 18.74 days, P=0.059, respectively). Conclusion The surgical volume of the associated opertaion increased rapidly since the establishment of hybrid operating room. Simultaneous hybrid surgery significantly reduced the operative mortality, shortened the duration of ICU and hospital stay, and improved the operation-effect. Preoperative and intraoperative embolization could alleviate operative injury, reduce respirator usage, shorten the duration of PICU and hospital stay. Therefore, the cost of hospitalization was reduced. Postoperative embolization was a good compensate procedure for decreasing operative complications. Key words: Heart defects, congenital; Collateral circulation; Hybrid surgery; Interventional embolization