cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Isolation of an FMRP-associated messenger ribonucleoprotein particle and identification of nucleolin and the fragile X-related proteins as components of the complex.

The loss of FMR1 expression due to trinucleotide repeat expansion leads to fragile X syndrome, a cause of mental retardation. The encoded protein, FMRP, is a member of a gene family that also contains the fragile X-related proteins, FXR1P and FXR2P. FMRP has been shown to be a nucleocytoplasmic shuttling protein that selectively binds a subset of mRNAs, forms messenger ribonucleoprotein (mRNP) complexes, and associates with translating ribosomes. Here we describe a cell culture system from which we can isolate epitopetagged FMRP along with mRNA, including its own message, and at least six other proteins. We identify two of these proteins as FXR1P and FXR2P by using specific antisera and identify a third protein as nucleolin by using mass spectrometry. The presence of nucleolin is confirmed by both reactivity with a specific antiserum as well as reverse coimmunoprecipitation where antinucleolin antiserum immunoprecipitates endogenous FMRP from both cultured cells and mouse brain. The identification of nucleolin, a known component of other mRNPs, adds a new dimension to the analysis of FMRP function, and the approach described should also allow the identification of the remaining unknown proteins of this FMRP-associated mRNP as well as the other bound mRNAs. Fragile X syndrome is a common form of inherited mental retardation. It is caused by a loss of expression of the FMR1
Experimental study of spectral index, mode coupling, and energy cascading in a turbulent, hot-ion plasma

Experiments are described in which the spectrum of electrostatic potential fluctuations was measured with a capacitive probe in a steady state turbulent plasma confined in a magnetic mirror geometry. The plasma electron concentration ranged between 5 x 10 to the seventh power and 5 x 10 to the eighth power, the electron temperature ranged between 8 and 38 eV, the ion temperature between 350 and 960 eV, and the maximum-magnetic field was 1.0 T. When oscillation peaks were absent, the amplitude spectrum of electrostatic potential fluctuations was found to have a power law dependence on the frequency. The value of the spectral index was influenced by the probe position in the field, and at a certain position, by the plasma characteristics. The spectral index was generally below the value of 2.5 predicted by turbulence theories formulated in k space. The effects on the amplitude spectrum of a sinusoidal external modulation of the anode voltage were assessed over the range between 0 and 100 kHz. The spectra exhibited several mode coupling phenomena, including enhanced harmonics of the externally imposed frequency, and sideband modulation of plasma generated oscillation peaks.
How we manage requests for recombinant factor VIIa (NovoSeven).

From the Departments of Pathology and Pediatrics, University of New Mexico, United Blood Services of New Mexico, and TriCore Reference Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Address reprint requests to: Toby L. Simon, MD, 5201 Congress Avenue, Suite 220, Boca Raton, FL 33487; e-mail: toby.simon@zlbplasma.com. Received for publication March 31, 2006; revision received August 17, 2006, and accepted August 30, 2006. doi: 10.1111/j.1537-2995.2007.01058.x TRANSFUSION 2007;47:8-14. H O W D O I . . . ?
The NIMH Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program: Historical Context, Major Objectives, and Study Population Characteristics

The National Institute of Mental Health multisite Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) program is described in the context of four previous psychiatric epidemiologic surveys that included a combined total of 4,000 subjects from Stirling County, the Baltimore Morbidity Study, Midtown Manhattan, and the New Haven third-wave survey. The ECA program is distinguished by its sample size of at least 3,500 subjects per site (about 20,000 total); the focus on Diagnostic Interview Schedule--defined DSM-III mental disorders; the one-year reinterview-based longitudinal design to obtain incidence and service use data; the linkage of epidemiologic and health service use data; and the replication of design and method in multiple sites. Demographic characteristics of community and sample populations are provided for New Haven, Conn, Baltimore, and St Louis.
Behavioral synthesis for low power

We present a behavioral synthesis method targeting low power consumption for data-dominated CMOS circuits. A study of how the high-level synthesis process affects power consumption is presented, based on, which we have developed the first allocation method for low power. We also present a method of optimizing the controller to reduce data path power dissipation. We consider loops, conditional branches, and scheduling constructs such as multicycling, chaining and structural pipelining. The techniques were implemented within the framework of an existing behavioral synthesis system. Experiments performed on various examples and benchmarks show that low power circuits can be synthesized by our method with very low or zero overheads. >
Cerebral and Lower Limb Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy in Adults on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

Percutaneous femoral venoarterial (VA) or jugular venovenous (VV) extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can result in delivery of hypoxic blood to the brain, coronaries, and upper extremities. Additionally, VA-ECMO by percutaneous femoral artery cannulation may compromise perfusion to the lower limbs. Use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) detects regional ischemia and warns of impending hypoxic damage. We report the first known series with standardized monitoring of this parameter in adults on ECMO. This is an institutional review board-approved single institution retrospective review of patients with NIRS monitoring on ECMO from July 2010 until June 2011. Patients were analyzed for drops in NIRS tracings below 40 or >25% from baseline. VA-ECMO and VV-ECMO were initiated by percutaneous cannulation of the femoral vessels and the internal jugular vein, respectively. Sensors were placed on the patients' foreheads and on the lower limbs. NIRS tracings were recorded, analyzed, and correlated with clinical events. Twenty patients were analyzed (median age: 47.5 years): 17 patients were placed on VA-ECMO, and three patients on VV-ECMO. The median duration on ECMO was 7 days (range 2-26). One hundred percent of patients had a significant drop in bilateral cerebral oximetry tracings resulting in hemodynamic interventions, which involved increasing pressure, oxygenation, and/or ECMO flow. In 16 patients (80%), these interventions corrected the underlying ischemia. Four patients (20%) required further diagnostic intervention for persistent decreased bilateral and/or unilateral cerebral oximetry tracings, and were found to have a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). Six (30%) patients had persistent unilateral lower limb oximetry events, which resolved upon placement or replacement of a distal perfusion cannula. No patient was found to have either lower limb ischemia or a CVA with normal NIRS tracings. Use of NIRS with ECMO is important in detecting ischemic cerebral and peripheral vascular events. This allows for potential correction of the underlying process, thus preventing permanent ischemic damage.
A chlorine disinfectant for excess argon released from K-felsspar during step heating

Abstract The release of excess 40Ar (40ArE) from virtually all alkali feldspars at low temperatures ( 40 Ar 39 Ar step-heating experiments obscures potentially valuable age and thermal history information. We report a method that takes advantage of the differential release of 40ArE between contiguous isothermal heating steps, due to the decrepitation of fluid inclusions, and which permits derivation of a correction for the contaminating argon. Differences in age and Cl K between successive temperature pairs commonly yield a single, well-correlated array on a Δ( 40 Ar ∗ K ) versus Δ( Cl K ) plot that identifies the Cl-correlated composition of 40ArE ( 40 Ar E Cl ) affecting that sample. Eighteen of the twenty K-feldspar samples we have measured yield a single 40 Ar E Cl component, that varies from 1.1 × 10−3 to 4.2 × 10−6, making possible recovery of otherwise unobtainable thermochronological information. The upper bound on the 40 Ar E Cl distribution of ∼ 10−3 may reflect Ar saturation of pore fluids, or the maximum duration between deuteric alteration and cooling below Ar closure in K-feldspar.
Cyclooxygenase-2 specific inhibitors in the treatment of dysmenorrhea

Introduction of specific cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitors holds the promise of improved treatment for inflammatory processes without the gastrointestinal effects associated with the conventional non-selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NS-NSAID), which inhibit both COX-1 and COX-2 activity. Dysmenorrhea is a common inflammatory process that affects many adolescent girls, and is the leading cause of recurrent short-term school or work absenteeism among female adolescents and young adults. In vitro studies have shown that the selective COX-2 inhibitors have a potent tocolytic effect. In vivo studies have found the specific COX-2 inhibitors rofecoxib (Vioxx) and valdecoxib (Bextra) effective in treatment of primary dysmenorrhea in women >or=18 years. Adolescents suffering from dysmenorrhea with a prior history of peptic ulcer, or with a history of NS-NSAID gastrointestinal adverse effects, or who require high doses of NS-NSAID during the menstrual period, as well as adolescents with coagulation deficiencies, may benefit from the use of a specific COX-2 inhibitor. Studies are warranted to explore whether the specific COX-2 inhibitors are effective in treating dysmenorrhea in the adolescent age group.
A separation principle between scheduling and admission control for broadband switching

A framework for joint scheduling and admission control in broadband switching systems based on a principle of separation between these two levels of control is developed. It is shown that an admission control strategy can be tailored to a particular mix of traffic by using high-level information from the scheduler. This principle is presented in the context of asynchronous time-sharing (ATS) in which explicit guarantees of cell-level and call-level quality of service (QOS) are given to several traffic classes. The separation principle allows the formulation of an optimal admission control policy that maximizes the expected system utility and maintains all QOS guarantees. Several heuristic admission control policies are considered and compared with the optimal policy. The admissible load region is introduced as a means of quantifying the capacity of a switch under the QOS constraints at the cell and call levels. Numerical calculations for a single MAGNET II switching node carrying two classes of real-time traffic are used to illustrate the effects of different scheduling and admission control policies on both the expected utility and the admissable load region. >
Probabilistic Independence Networks for Hidden Markov Probability Models

Graphical techniques for modeling the dependencies of randomvariables have been explored in a variety of different areas includingstatistics, statistical physics, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, image processing, and genetics.Formalisms for manipulating these models have been developedrelatively independently in these research communities. In this paper weexplore hidden Markov models (HMMs) and related structures within the general framework of probabilistic independencenetworks (PINs). The paper contains a self-contained review of the basic principles of PINs.It is shown that the well-known forward-backward (F-B) and Viterbialgorithms for HMMs are special cases of more general inference algorithms forarbitrary PINs. Furthermore, the existence of inference and estimationalgorithms for more general graphical models provides a set of analysistools for HMM practitioners who wish to explore a richer class of HMMstructures.Examples of relatively complex models to handle sensorfusion and coarticulationin speech recognitionare introduced and treated within the graphical model framework toillustrate the advantages of the general approach.
Microstructure and ferroelectric properties of fine-grained Ba x Sr 1− x TiO 3 thin films prepared by metalorganic decomposition

Thin films of Ba x Sr 1− x TiO 3 ( x = 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, and 1.0) were prepared by metalorganic decomposition (MOD). The relative permittivity, dissipation, polarization, resistivity, and grain size of these films were studied as a function of composition and temperature. Ferroelectric hysteresis loops were observed for all values of x and were found to be independent of measurement temperature though strongly dependent upon grain size.
Arrhythmias in Adult Patients With Congenital Heart Disease

By the time patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) reach adolescence and early adulthood, rhythm status has often become an active issue, if not the central issue, in their cardiac management. For some, arrhythmias are intrinsic to the structural malformation itself, as is the case with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome in the setting of Ebstein’s anomaly, or atrioventricular (AV) block in the setting of “congenitally corrected” transposition of the great arteries (L-TGA). For most other CHD patients, arrhythmias represent an acquired condition related to the unique myocardial substrate created by surgical scars in conjunction with cyanosis and abnormal pressure/volume loads of long duration. This review will attempt to address the major rhythm difficulties faced by adults with CHD, concentrating on electrophysiological features that distinguish CHD from more conventional forms of adult heart disease. A listing of specific arrhythmias and commonly associated congenital defects is provided in Table 1 to serve as an outline for the discussion. View this table: TABLE 1. Specific Arrhythmias and Associated Defects in Adults With Congenital Heart Disease As of 2001, there were estimated to be 800 000 adults with CHD living in the United States,1 a number that has grown steadily as more survivors of childhood surgery reach maturity. Of these, roughly 45% are considered to have mild forms of CHD (eg, atrial septal defect, valvar pulmonary stenosis), 40% are classified as having moderate disease (eg, tetralogy of Fallot, Ebstein’s anomaly), and 15% are considered to have complex disease (eg, single ventricle, transposition of the great arteries). Although arrhythmias can develop within any of the 3 subgroups, the incidence is highest for patients in the moderate and severe categories. Tetralogy of Fallot is an instructive example of moderate CHD with a large arrhythmia burden. As many as one third of patients with repaired tetralogy develop symptomatic atrial tachycardias by …
Stochastic modeling of fatigue crack dynamics for on-line failure prognostics

This paper presents a nonlinear stochastic model of fatigue crack dynamics for real-time computation of the time-dependent damage rate and accumulation in mechanical structures. The model configuration allows construction of a filter for estimation of the current damage state and prediction of the remaining service life based on the underlying principle of extended Kalman filtering instead of solving the Kolmogorov forward equation. This approach is suitable for online damage sensing, failure prognosis, life prediction, reliability analysis, decision-making for condition-based maintenance and operation planning, and life extending control in complex dynamical systems. The model results have been verified by comparison with experimentally generated statistical data of time-dependent fatigue cracks in specimens made of 2024-T3 aluminum alloy.
Hepatitis C virus infection, age, and Hispanic ethnicity increase mortality from liver cancer in the United States.

Backround & Aims We performed a population-based study to assess factors that are associated independently with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)-related mortality. Methods We evaluated clinicodemographic, laboratory, and mortality data collected from 15,866 individuals in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1988 to 1994. The etiology of chronic liver disease was determined using serologic tests to measure hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA, hepatitis B surface antigen, and iron; excessive alcohol consumption and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) were determined. Cohorts were compared with controls using a stratum-specific chi-square test. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to identify independent predictors of HCC-related mortality. Results After a follow-up period of 160 months, 14.55% of the individuals died; 83 deaths were liver-related (25 HCC and 58 non-HCC liver related). Factors that independently predicted HCC-related mortality were age (hazard ratio [HR], 1.10; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04–1.16; P = .0021), Hispanic ethnicity (HR, 5.14; 95% CI, 1.75–15.06; P = .0036), and HCV infection (HR, 18.12; 95% CI, 3.57–91.98; P = .0008). Factors that independently predicted non-HCC liver-related mortality included age (HR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04–1.10; P P = .0277), alcoholic liver disease (HR, 10.81; 95% CI, 1.32–88.26; P = .0271), HCV (HR, 27.00; 95% CI, 4.70–155.1; P = .0004), iron overload (HR, 6.18; 95% CI, 1.82–20.97; P = .0043), or NAFLD (HR, 11.56; 95% CI, 3.21–41.67; P = .0004). Conclusions This population-based study showed that HCV infection and Hispanic ethnicity independently increase the risk for HCC-related mortality. All liver diseases, including NAFLD, increase the risk for non-HCC liver-related mortality.
Robust Estimation and Outlier Detection for Overdispersed Multinomial Models of Count Data

We develop a robust estimator—the hyperbolic tangent (tanh) estimator—for overdispersed multinomial regression models of count data. The tanh estimator provides accurate estimates and reliable inferences even when the specified model is not good for as much as half of the data. Seriously ill-fitted counts—outliers—are identified as part of the estimation. A Monte Carlo sampling experiment shows that the tanh estimator produces good results at practical sample sizes even when ten percent of the data are generated by a significantly different process. The experiment shows that, with contaminated data, estimation fails using four other estimators: the nonrobust maximum likelihood estimator, the additive logistic model and two SUR models. Using the tanh estimator to analyze data from Florida for the 2000 presidential election matches well-known features of the election that the other four estimators fail to capture. In an analysis of data from the 1993 Polish parliamentary election, the tanh estimator gives sharper inferences than does a previously proposed heteroskedastic SUR model.
Hydroacoustic Target Strength Distributions of Alewives in a Net-Cage Compared with Field Surveys: Deciphering Target Strength Distributions and Effect on Density Estimates

Abstract Acoustic estimation of fish abundance requires knowledge of the target strength (TS) distribution associated with the fish present. We measured the TS distribution at 70 kHz for five size-groups of alewives Alosa pseudoharengus (mean total length = 68-138 mm) swimming freely in a large net-cage. Although the mean and mode of the distributions were significantly related to fish length, the TS range obtained from each length-class was over 25 decibels (dB). The TS distributions were negatively skewed and had a tendency toward bimodality. The TS distributions at 70 and 123 kHz were similar for one alewife size-group that was measured with both frequencies. Small but inconsistent differences were found between day and night for the same groups of fish. Shapes of the TS distributions were similar when centered on the mode, and we derived a probability density function (PDF) for TS at 70 kHz as a function of fish length to describe these distributions. We used this PDF to predict TS distributions based...
Targeting Ballistic Lunar Capture Trajectories Using Periodic Orbits

DOI: 10.2514/1.46843 A particular periodic orbit in the Earth–sun circular restricted three-body problem is shown to have the characteristics needed for a ballistic lunar capture transfer. An injection from a circular parking orbit into the periodic orbit serves as an initial guess for a nonlinear targeting algorithm. By targeting appropriate parameters incrementally in increasingly complicated force models and using precise derivatives calculated from the state transition matrix, a reliable algorithm is produced. Ballistic lunar capture trajectories in restricted four-body systems are produced in a systematic way.
Why Railroads Supported Regulation: The Case of Wisconsin, 1905–1910

Recent studies of the progressive era by Gabriel Kolko and Robert Wiebe have proven that much reform legislation was supported by many of the interests against which the bills were ostensibly written. Professor Caine shows that, in at least one important state, railroads fought reform bitterly, accepting the principle of regulation only when conservative administration of the Railroad Regulation Act of 1905 offered them unexpected protection from progressive reformers.
Increased kidney cyclic AMP levels and erythropoietin production following cobalt administration.

SummaryThe possible role of adenosine-3',5'-monophosphate (cyclic AMP) in mediating the effect of the hormone erythropoietin (ESF) was evaluated. The administration of dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dBcAMP) to exhypoxic polycythemic mice resulted in an increase in radioactive iron (59Fe) incorporation in RBC. This 59Fe incorporation in RBC was linear with doses of dBcAMP ranging from 300 to 1000 μmoles/kg. This erythropoietic response was partially blocked by the antibody to ESF. Three hours after cobalt administration, kidney cyclic AMP levels were significantly increased over control values. This elevation in cyclic AMP preceded a rise in renal REF activity which reached a maximum 9 hr after cobalt administration. Plasma ESF levels were also elevated reaching a maximum 12 to 15 hr after cobalt treatment. These data suggest that cyclic AMP is involved in the activation and/or production of ESF following cobalt administration.The authors acknowledge the excellent technical assistance of Mary Catherine Mueller, Phy...
Instability and Transition Research in a Mach-6 Quiet Tunnel

Pitot-probe measurements were made to determine the spatial extent of the uniform quiet flow core for the laminar nozzle-wall boundary layer. The uniformity of the flow for a turbulent nozzle-wall boundary layer was determined as well. The nozzle was re-polished in August, and quiet flow is currently being achieved at higher stagnation pressures, around 162 psia. The laser perturber system for the BAM6QT is being re-established. The laser used for this system performs as in previous experiments and a new optical system has been designed for the BAM6QT. Tests were conducted to characterize the effect of suction downstream of the nozzle exit on starting larger blunt models in hypersonic flow. Pressure measurements were made in the upstream pipe-insert section and found that suction levels were highest with a 0.375-in. gap. Models of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) with diameters of 1.000 and 1.250 in. started regardless of model positioning and gap suction. A 1.500-in. model started in quiet flow, but did not start in noisy flow with pipe-insert suction alone. The 1.500-in. CEV model did, however, start in noisy flow with bleeds open above the maximum quiet pressure. Another project looked at the effect of nosetip roughness on the crossflow instability with a 7-deg half-angle cone at 6-deg angle of attack. When the average roughness of the nosetip was varied by an order of magnitude, the temperature-sensitive paint data showed no effect on the stationary vortices. It appears that the paint step at the nosetip-frustum junction was dominating the generation of the stationary vortices. Lastly, measurements upstream of a cylindrical roughness have confirmed the existence of an absolute instability in the separation region, as suggested by computations. A second absolute instability was also detected at lower Reynolds numbers.
Modeling three-phase grid-connected inverter system using complex vector in synchronous dq reference frame and analysis on the influence of tuning parameters of synchronous frame PI controller

This paper presents a mathematical modeling of three-phase grid-connected inverter system including output LCL filter and closed loop control using complex vector notation. The control scheme used is synchronous frame PI control on complex space vector of grid current in synchronous dq reference frame. Effect of controller's tuning parameters is investigated using complex vector root locus and complex vector frequency response function of closed loop system according to different tuning parameters. Control scheme and three-phase grid-connected inverter are simulated using MATLAB Simulink and SimPowerSystems™.
Using Parallel Corpora to enrich Multilingual Lexical Resources.

This paper describes the use of a bilingual vector model for the automatic discovery of German translations of English terms. The model is built by analysing co-occurence patterns in a parallel corpus of English and German medical abstracts, and can also be used for Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval. The model generates candidate German translations of English words using the cosine similarity measure between terms in the bilingual vector space. The correct translations could be added to UMLS, the multilingual dictionary in question. The accuracy of the translations is evaluated by measuring how many of the existing UMLS translations are correctly predicted by the vector translations. The model also detects synonymy, particularly acronyms. An online public demonstration of the model is available.
First-principles calculations and thermodynamic modeling of the S-Se system and implications for chalcogenide alloys

Abstract The S-Se system is the key to many chalcogenide alloys. A thermodynamic model of the S–Se system is formulated using an integrated approach of first-principles calculations and the CALculation of PHAse Diagram (CALPHAD) method, which is used to predict the vapor-liquid-solid S-Se phase diagram. An existing first-principles approach is modified through considering the contribution from the acoustic Gruneisen parameters to the thermodynamic properties, enabling more accurate prediction of thermodynamic properties of crystals with large unit cells. The approach is applied to all the stable and metastable phases with complex molecule structures within the S-Se system with the exception of an intermediate phase due to its unknown structure. The prediction of the transition temperature between α-S and β-S (428 K) is close to the experimental value (369 K). Given the high complexity of solid solutions containing multiple molecular species, two models based on homogeneous and randomly substituted species are constructed and applied to give an interval estimation of solid mixing enthalpies. The CALPHAD approach is applied using both selected experimental measurements and thermodynamic properties predicted by first-principles calculations, reproducing experimental data and predictions reasonably well.
Development of 30KVA inverter using SIC MOSFET for 180°C ambient temperature operation

A 30kVA SiC MOSFET inverter is developed for 180°C ambient temperature operation. The power structure and gate drivers of the inverter system are designed based on SiC MOSFETs and other high temperature (HT) components. The prototype inverter system has been built, and placed in a thermal chamber of 180°C for testing. The HT operation of the inverter has lasted for more than 85 hours accumulatively without any problems, and the designed HT SiC inverter technology is verified.
3D-printed poly(vinylidene fluoride)/carbon nanotube composites as a tunable, low-cost chemical vapour sensing platform

We report the production of flexible, highly-conductive poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) composites as filament feedstock for 3D printing. This account further describes, for the first time, fused deposition modelling (FDM) derived 3D-printed objects with chemiresistive properties in response to volatile organic compounds. The typically prohibitive thermal expansion and die swell characteristics of PVDF were minimized by the presence of MWCNTs in the composites enabling straightforward processing and printing. The nanotubes form a dispersed network as characterized by helium ion microscopy, contributing to excellent conductivity (∼3 × 10−2 S cm−1). The printed composites contain little residual metal particulate relative to parts from commercial PLA-nanocomposite material visualized by micro-X-ray computed tomography (μ-CT) and corroborated with thermogravimetric analysis. Printed sensing strips, with MWCNT loadings up to 15% mass, function as reversible vapour sensors with the strongest responses arising with organic compounds capable of readily intercalating and subsequently swelling the PVDF matrix (acetone and ethyl acetate). A direct correlation between MWCNT concentration and resistance change was also observed, with larger responses (up to 161% after 3 minutes) being generated with decreased MWCNT loadings. These findings highlight the utility of FDM printing in generating low-cost sensors that respond strongly and reproducibly to target vapours. Furthermore, the sensors can be easily printed in different geometries, expanding their utility to wearable form factors. The proposed formulation strategy may be tailored to sense diverse sets of vapour classes through structural modification of the polymer backbone and/or functionalization of the nanotubes within the composite.
All Tied Up in Knots: The Complex Relationship between Bidders and Their 401(K) Trustees

Institutional investors that serve as 401(k) trustee at portfolio firms face a complex set of incentives. Through the lens of M&A monitoring, I find evidence funds both cater to management and use the business tie to benefit their fund investors. Trustee funds are more likely to vote for a deal and to trade out of the bidder’s stock before the announcement of value-destroying deals. While funds charged in the mutual fund trading scandals clearly limit their monitoring of management, the average trustee institution balances the costs of its business tie with the benefits generated from the relationship.
Safety impacts of pavement surface roughness at two-lane and multi-lane highways: accounting for heterogeneity and seemingly unrelated correlation across crash severities

Highway agencies continue to show interest in measuring pavement condition effects on safety. This paper estimates univariate negative binomial (UNB) and random-parameters seemingly-unrelated negat...
Translating Knowledge Into Therapy for Acute Kidney Injury

No therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Given the high morbidity and mortality associated with AKI this represents an important unmet medical need. A common feature of all of the therapeutic development efforts for AKI is that none were driven by target selection or preclinical modeling that was based primarily on human data. This is important when considering a heterogeneous and dynamic condition such as AKI, in which in the absence of more accurate molecular classifications, clinical cohorts are likely to include patients with different types of injury at different stages in the injury and repair continuum. The National Institutes of Health precision medicine initiative offers an opportunity to address this. By creating a molecular tissue atlas of AKI, defining patient subgroups, and identifying critical cells and pathways involved in human AKI, this initiative has the potential to transform our current approach to therapeutic discovery. In this review, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that this initiative presents, with a specific focus on AKI, what additional efforts will be needed to apply these discoveries to therapeutic development, and how we believe this effort might lead to the development of new therapeutics for subsets of patients with AKI.
Topical therapy for refractory rhinosinusitis caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: First report in a prospective series.

Abstract Objective The incidence of refractory chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) associated with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is rising and remains a therapeutic challenge. The goal of this study is to demonstrate the efficacy of a non-invasive topical therapy against MRSA in these patients. Methods Seventeen patients with refractory CRS caused by MRSA were treated with a topical therapy protocol. Treatment consisted of weekly endoscopic sinus debridement followed by intra-sinus installation of a hydroxyl-ethylcellulose gel that releases mometasone and a culture-directed antibiotic for a period of 6 weeks, along with daily nasal nebulization of mometasone with the same antibiotic and saline rinses. Clinical outcome was assessed using the Lund–Kennedy (LK) symptom and endoscopic appearance scores. Sinus mucosal tissue was homogenized and cultured, and microbial biofilm burden was assessed based on colony forming units (CFUs) counts. Results Rhinotopic therapy resulted in clearance of MRSA in 13 of 16 patients (81.2%). Treated patients also demonstrated significant improvement clinically as measured by the LK scores. In addition, a significant decrease in mucosal CFUs was observed post-therapy. Conclusion Our findings demonstrate that topical therapy is an effective method for treating MRSA-associated refractory CRS.
Induction of the acid inducible lipF promoter is reversibly inhibited in pH ranges of pH 4.2-4.0.

In the human body pathogenic mycobacteria encounter low pH within the phagosomes of macrophages where they reside after being internalized by the host cell. Low pH within macrophages has been shown to induce expression of a variety of genes within these bacteria. It had been previously observed that the Mycobacterium tuberculosis lipF promoter is transcriptionally upregulated between pHs 4.5–6.4 in Mycobacterium smegmatis, with an upper pH limit of 6.4 capable of promoter induction. To better understand the parameters of acid induced gene expression, we sought to determine the lower pH limit capable of lipF promoter induction. As we had already determined an upper pH limit, we determine here that there is a lower limit of pH’s capable of upregulating the lipF promoter, with pH below 4.3 not positively upregulating the promoter. At non-inducing pH 4.2 the bacterial cells remain viable in the absence of acid induced lipF promoter upregulation and subsequent exposure to acid pH 5.0 results in lipF promoter upregulation. There appears to be a lower limit of pH capable of upregulating lipF promoter expression and this limit is not due to cell death.
Quantum-inspired Boolean states for bounding engineering network reliability assessment

Abstract Significant methodological progress has taken place to quantify the reliability of networked systems over the past decades. Both numerical and analytical methods have enjoyed improvements via a host of advanced Monte Carlo simulation strategies, state space partition methods, statistical learning, and Boolean functions among others. The latter approach exploits logic to approximate network reliability assessments efficiently while offering theoretical error guarantees. In parallel, physicists have made progress modeling complex systems via tensor networks (TNs), particularly quantum many-body systems. Inspired by the representation power of quantum TNs, this paper offers a new approach to efficiently bound all-terminal network reliability (ATR). It does so by exactly solving a related network Boolean satisfiability counting problem (or # SAT NET ), represented as a TN, by counting configurations in which all network nodes are connected to at least a neighbor. Our # SAT NET counting outperforms state-of-the-art approximate and exact counters for the same problem as shown for challenging two-dimensional lattice networks of increasing size. While the over-counting from # SAT NET increases exponentially relative to the number of configurations that satisfy ATR problems (or # REL AT ), the bias is predictable for ideal networks, such as lattices, and our upper bound is guaranteed with 100 % confidence. This bound also cuts through the upper bound from other analytical methods for the ATR problem, such as recursive decomposition algorithms (RDA)—a desirable feature when exact or approximate methods with error guarantees fail to scale. Clearly, our goal is not to solve the general stochastic network reliability problem, which remains a # P problem in the computational complexity hierarchy (i.e., a counting version of non-deterministic polynomial time [NP] problems for which there is no known polynomial time algorithms to find their solutions). Instead, we present a novel bounding technique for network reliability, which relies on exactly counting configurations for our network satisfiability problem by using quantum computing principles. We offer a proof for the counting bound to hold in a connectivity ATR sense, and illustrate trends with cubic and lattice networks. Overall, the proposed method provides an alternative to available system reliability assessment approaches, and opens directions for future research, especially as discoveries in logic, algebraic projections, and quantum computation continue to accrue.
Therapeutic Angiogenesis and Myocardial Regeneration

Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the Western world. The term “ischemic heart disease” covers a broad spectrum of manifestations ranging from effort-induced angina without myocardial damage, through stages of chronic myocardial ischemia with associated reversible impairment in ventricular function, to states of irreversible myocardial injury and necrosis resulting in congestive heart failure (CHF). Ischemic heart disease, therefore, is the leading cause of CHF, a disease process that affects approx 1% of adults in the United States, with 550,00 new cases diagnosed annually and an incidence of 10 cases per 1000 population after age 65 (1). With the aging of the population, the incidence of this problem is increasing, as evidenced by the number of discharges for CHF, which rose from 377,00 in 1979 to 999,000 in 2000 (165% increase) (1) . In addition, >50,000 deaths per year in the United States are directly attributable to CHF (1). Likewise, the costs of caring for these patients is enormous, with $3.6 billion ($5471 per discharge) paid to Medicare beneficiaries for CHF-related treatment based on the most recently available data from 1998 (1). Currently, median survival after diagnosis of CHF is 1.7 yr for men and 3.2 yr for women (1), indicating a general inadequacy of presently available treatment options for the majority of these patients. Consequently, novel therapies are needed to improve the outlook for this patient population.
Coherent Structures in the Axisymmetric Turbulent Jet Mixing Layer

In 1967 Lumley proposed two different, but complimentary approaches to the objective determination of coherent structures. The first uses an orthogonal decomposition to extract eigenvectors from two point velocity measurements, the lowest order eigenvector representing the largest structure. Where there are partial homogeneities, or when the flow is stationary, the eigenfunctions are the harmonic ones and the coherent features are impossible to identify. To organize these fluctuating Fourier modes into coherent features, a second decomposition is used, the shot-noise decomposition.
HIP, KNEE AND ANKLE JOINT FORCES IN HEALTHY WEIGHT, OVERWEIGHT AND OBESE INDIVIDUALS DURING WALKING

Worldwide in 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults, age 20 and older, were overweight. Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. The World Health Organization defines overweight as having a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 25 kg/m2 and obese as a BMI greater than or equal to 30 kg/m2. The aim of this study was to compare peak hip, knee, and ankle joint compressive loads during gait at self-selected speed between overweight and healthy weight individuals and to examine the functional relationship between body mass and peak joint forces. Twelve subjects, six high BMI subjects and six normal BMI control subjects, participated in this investigation. Absolute peak hip, knee, and ankle joint forces were 40 %, 43 %, and 48 % greater, respectively, for the high-BMI versus normal group. Joint loads were found to increase approximately linearly with body mass. Body mass accounted for 70–80 % of the variation in the peak compressive load at the hip, knee, and ankle during gait. These findings support the link that increased body mass leads to increased biomechanical loading of the joints and could be a factor linking obesity to osteoarthritis.
Adeno-Associated Virus Defectiveness and the Nature of the Adenovirus Helper Function

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) was first observed as a contaminant in preparations of adenovirus (Brandon and Maclean, 1962; Archetti and Bocciarelli, 1963, 1964, 1965; Archetti et al., 1965; Hoggan, 1965; Hull et al., 1965; Melnick et al., 1965) and subsequently recognized as a defective virus which was unconditionally dependent for its replication upon coinfection of the host cell with a helper adenovirus (Atchison et al., 1965; Hoggan et al.,1966; Parks et al., 1966). It was also realized that one other group of viruses, namely, herpes viruses could provide helper functions for the production of AAV DNA, RNA, and proteins (Atchison, 1970; Blacklow et al., 1970; 1971a; Boucher et al., 1971; Carter and Rose, 1972; Carter et al., 1972; Dolin and Rabson, 1973; Rose and Koczot, 1972). For some time, it was generally believed that the herpes virus helper function for AAV was incomplete and that either formation of AAV capsids or packaging of AAV DNA into capsids failed to occur (Atchison, 1970; Henry et al.,1972). However, more recent work has demonstrated that herpes viruses can provide a complete AAV helper function and allow production of fully infectious AAV particles (Buller et al., 1981).
Quantitative assessment of growth stimulating activity of the vitreous during PVR.

This report postulates that the activity of cellular proliferation along the surface of the retina during proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) is reflected in the aggregate effect of proliferation-inducing growth factors in the vitreous. A method for quantifying the "net" proliferation-inducing capacity of an individual vitreous sample was developed and this assay was used to evaluate the vitreous proliferative activity in a model for experimental PVR. Vitreous was aspirated sequentially after onset of fibroblastinduced PVR in a rabbit model. A simple bioassay for the "aggregate" stimulating activity was developed and each sample was assigned a quantitative value in terms of "proliferation units" (PU). Experimental eyes demonstrated a wide range of stimulating activity (0-1765 PU), but control eyes showed uniformly low levels of activity (0-337 PU). Experimental eyes that ultimately developed retinal detachment displayed higher levels of proliferative activity than did those eyes destined to remain attached. The differences were statistically different by day 3, prior to the onset of clinical retinal changes. We conclude that quantification of vitreous proliferation-stimulating activity is possible and that this method might be useful for screening eyes at high risk for the development of recurrent retinal detachment from PVR. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 33:2436-2442, 1992 Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) remains the leading cause of persistent and recurrent retinal detachment, complicating as many as 10% of all retinal detachments. 1 ' 2 Although the pathogenesis of PVR is complex, at least four distinct stages appear to be important in its development, including chemotaxis and cellular migration, cellular proliferation, membrane formation, and contraction. 3 " 8 Many studies are consistent with the notion that the vitreous fluid/gel forms a microenvironment that reflects, if not modulates, each of these phases, especially the growth and proliferation of PVR-inducing cells along the surface of the retina. 9 " 14 The vitreous cavity, especially in a vitrectomized eye, can be thought of as a collecting pool for the aggregate growth factors produced by the proliferating cells and leaking from the blood. Not surprisingly, investigators have demonstrated that vitreous from eyes with PVR can stimulate proliferation
Stochastic Analysis and Optimization of Multiserver Systems

Motivated by emerging trends and applications such as autonomic computing, this chapter presents an overview of some research in the stochastic analysis and optimization of multiserver systems. Our primary focus is on multiserver systems in general, since this research provides the mathematical methods and results that have been and will continue to be used for the stochastic analysis and/or optimization of existing and future multiserver systems arising in a wide variety of application domains including autonomic computing.
Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital

Much of the philosophy of mind has been dedicated to reconciling the mental with the material. But to the extent that the “mental” is seen as equivalent to the “intentional” and the “material” as equivalent to the “biological,” the project of reconciling the intentional with the material is unnecessary. Concepts exhibiting the special logical properties thought to be unique to intentionality are a commonplace in biology. Thus, the special problem of the emergence of intentionality in human evolution, in human conscious and language, and in human culture is neither special nor of problem: in the relevant logical respects, intentionality is, and—has always been immanent in the simplest of biological systems.
Trends and disparities in the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma

Introduction: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) prior to radical or partial cystectomy is considered the standard of care for eligible patients with muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma. Despite guideline recommendations, adoption of NAC has historically been low, although prior studies have suggested that use is increasing. In this contemporary study, we examine trends in the use of NAC and explore factors associated with its receipt. Methods: We identified patients in the National Cancer Database who underwent radical or partial cystectomy for cT2-cT4N0M0 urothelial carcinoma from 2006–2014. The proportion of patients receiving NAC during each year was examined. Logistic regression models were used to evaluate clinical and socioeconomic factors associated with the receipt of NAC. Results: A total of 18 188 patients were identified who underwent radical or partial cystectomy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Overall, 3940 (21.7%) received NAC. We noted a significant increase in the use of NAC over time, from 9.7% in 2006 to 32.2% in 2014. Factors associated with lower use of NAC include older age, higher comorbidity score, lower cT stage, lower hospital radical cystectomy volume, treatment at a non-academic facility, lower patient income, and receipt of partial cystectomy (all p<0.001). Interestingly, neither sex nor race were associated with receipt of NAC. Conclusions: Use of NAC has increased significantly over time to a modest rate of 32%. However, disparities still exist in the receipt of NAC, and future efforts aimed at mitigating these disparities are warranted.