cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Chromium evaporation and oxidation characteristics of alumina-forming austenitic stainless steels for balance of plant applications in solid oxide fuel cells

Abstract The chromium (Cr) evaporation behavior of several different types of iron (Fe)-based AFA alloys and benchmark Cr2O3-forming Fe-based 310 and Ni-based 625 alloys was investigated for 500 h exposures at 800 °C to 900 °C in air with 10% H2O. The Cr evaporation rates from alumina-forming austenitic (AFA) alloys were ~5 to 35 times lower than that of the Cr2O3-forming alloys depending on alloy and temperature. The Cr evaporation behavior was correlated with extensive characterization of the chemistry and microstructure of the oxide scales, which also revealed a degree of quartz tube Si contamination during the test. Long-term oxidation kinetics were also assessed at 800 to 1000 °C for up to 10,000 h in air with 10% H2O to provide further guidance for SOFC BOP component alloy selection.
Perils of Criminalizing Agency Costs

This is a brief and informal discussion of some issues related to corporate criminal liability arising in recent cases. It expands on my remarks in connection with the University of Maryland School of Law’s Roundtable on the Criminalization of Corporate Law, drawing on my recent commentary on this subject, primarily on my weblog.
Shared governance in building community capacity: A case study of sleep apnea.

East Harlem has the highest diabetes mortality rate in New York City, NY. Using Community Based Participatory Research principles, the East Harlem Partnership for Diabetes Prevention—a community- academic partnership—formed to build community capacity with a goal to address health disparities in East Harlem. As part of prevention efforts, community partners chose to study the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea and its relationship to pre-diabetes and progression to diabetes. However, community partners insisted any study of sleep apnea go beyond simple assessment to ensure the largely uninsured, minority population enrolled also have access to state of the art diagnosis and treatment. Through compromise and collaboration, the partnership developed a culturally appropriate and scientifically rigorous method to diagnose and treat sleep apnea as part of a novel research program.
Performance and technology trade-offs of BiCMOS submicron processes for ASIC applications

The technology trade-offs of various BiCMOS processes of submicron feature size are discussed. A method of quantifying performance, cost, density, and reliability is presented. The authors discuss the cost trade-offs and give a comprehensive performance analysis of the high-end and low-end BiCMOS processes at the 0.8- mu m feature size. It is shown that a 2* performance improvement of BiCMOS over CMOS, as predicted in the literature, is not realistic for performance optimized circuits. >
The Penny-Shaped Crack

As in the two-dimensional case, we shall find considerable similarities in the formulation and solution of contact and crack problems. In particular, we shall find that problems for the plane crack can be reduced to boundary-value problems which in the case of axisymmetry can be solved using the method of Green and Collins developed in §22.2.
Employment and Labor, Regulation of

Employment regulation consists of the legal rules and institutions that constitute, govern, and structure the employment relationship. Until recently, most industrial countries had employment regulation that provided most employees with job security and an adequate package of social protection. However, these regulations have been relaxed in recent years as employers have moved away from hiring employees into long-term employment relationships and have created many types of short-term employment relationships instead. The decline of the standard form of employment and the regulatory regime that supported it has given rise to a number of controversies involving employment regulation. In addition, the spread of global trade and the diffusion of production around the world have put pressure on industrial countries to dilute their employment regulation and lower their labor standards. However, as global production and trade continue to proliferate, social pressures are building for more labor law protections both in the developed and in the developing world. Hence employment regulation is not likely to disappear, but it will be transposed as part of the emerging international regime.
New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and After Auschwitz

Primo Levi stands out among over 20,000 survivor memoirists who have struggled to help us “know” and “feel” something of the Shoah experience—before, during, and after. While it was as recently as ...
Electrophoretic Variants of Phosphoglucomutase in Saccharomyces Species

Strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and species with which S. cerevisiae is interfertile display a characteristic pattern of electrophoretic variants of phosphoglucomutase (PGM) consisting of a major component and one or two minor components, all of which migrate toward the cathode. The patterns are consistent with an earlier finding that two unlinked genes, one of which has two known alleles, determine the synthesis of PGM in S. cerevisiae. The PGM patterns of strains of S. fragilis, S. lactis, and S. marxianus, species thought to be closely related to each other and only distantly related to S. cerevisiae, also displayed a characteristic pattern of PGM variants, but it was quite different from that of S. cerevisiae. In these species five or six electrophoretic variants could be detected, all of which migrated toward the anode. We interpret the differences in the PGM variants of the two groups of species as a reflection of differences in genetic composition which have arisen in two phylogenetically distinct groups that have become sexually isolated from each other.
An evaluation of immunologic factors of infertility.

This paper reviews earlier studies identifying 3 possible immunologic causes of infertility: autoimmunity ABO blood group incompatibility and isoagglutination and presents results of recent studies including an analysis of the incidence of isoagglutinations autoagglutinations and ABO incompatibility in a group of couples with unexplained primary or secondary infertility and couples with an organic cause of infertility; incidence of antibodies in postpartum women women in early pregnancy unmarried women and prostitutes; the relationship between ABO incompatibility and/or sperm-agglutinating antibodies to postcoital testing of cervical mucus; results of condom therapy in couples with positive isoagglutinins; a comparison of hemagglutination test with the microagglutination test; and preliminary studies of the immunoglobulin responsible for a positive microagglutination reaction. Results obtained from 292 women and 176 men indicated that in the 64 couples with primary unexplained infertility 24 wives had isoagglutinins and 5 of the husbands had autoagglutinins. Among 32 couples with secondary unexplained infertility 16 wives had isoagglutinins and only 1 husband had autogglutinins. 50 couples with organic causes of infertility and 25 unmarried women had a 20% incidence of isoagglutinins. Positive serologic reactions were found in 35 of 48 prostitutes. 15 of 44 women in the 1st trimester of pregnancy had isoagglutinins to at least 1 of 3-5 donor semen specimens but serums of 7 of the women gave negative reactions when tested against the husbands ejaculate. The 2 women in the group who aborted had negative antibody titers. Only 1 of 29 serums from postpartum women gave positive agglutination reaction. Among 68 couples 19 subjects had positive microagglutination test reactions but only 7 had positive hemagglutination reactions. No specific relationship was found between ABO incompatibility and the results of postcoital testing of cervical mucus in 58 women tested or positive circulating issoagglutinins in 62 women tested. 27 of 68 couples with primary unexplained infertility 18 of 33 with secondary unexplained infertility and 13 of 46 with organic causes of infertility had ABO incompatiblity. Autoagglutination unless massive was not incompatible with pregnancy. Circulating antisperm antibodies fell to undetectable levels after 2-12 months of condom therapy. Careful timing of ovulation is essential because of the increase in antibodies after reexposure. Results of condom therapy in terms of pregnancies were disappointing.
Distinguishing the Effects of Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict on Strategic Decision Making: Resolving a Paradox for Top Management Teams

Top management teams make strategic decisions, and the products of their decision making influence organizational performance. However, a subtle paradox is embedded in this relationship. This study focuses on conflict as the crux of this paradox and provides evidence from two different samples of conflict's consistent yet contradictory effects on decision quality, consensus, and affective acceptance.
Do we need ANY mathematics in computer science curricula

Do we need math in CS? Silly question, isn't it? Just look at all the computer science curricula ever proposed, most recently CC2001, the ACM-IEEE/CS effort [1]. Mathematics plays a significant role in all of them. So why even pose the question? Well, bear with me.
Bilateral periodic lateralized epileptiform discharges in Mycoplasma encephalitis

Status epilepticus and prolonged coma developed in two patients with respiratory tract infections caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Serial electroencephalography initially revealed bilateral, independent, periodic, lateralized epileptiform discharges. This pattern was replaced several days later by other electroencephalographic abnormalities.
Management of Transitioning Teams During Design Projects

The objective of this paper is to provide ideas on how to better manage a team transition in a design project. Team transitions can be planned or can occur unexpectedly, in either case, disruption can be diminished by taking the appropriate measures. We present an approach on team transitioning and relate it to our experience with undergraduate senior design teams working on a collaborative project that lasts 1 year while the course is limited to 1 semester. Our observations and recommendations include where to start, damage containment measures, how to retrieve the project’s knowledge, what to look for in a replacement team, and how to improve the odds in the event of an unexpected transition.Copyright © 2009 by ASME
The role of cholinergic and GABAergic medial septal/diagonal band cell populations in the emergence of diencephalic amnesia

The septohippocampal pathway, which is mostly composed of cholinergic and GABAergic projections between the medial septum/diagonal band (MS/DB) and the hippocampus, has an established role in learning, memory and disorders of cognition. In Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome (WKS) and the animal model of the disorder, pyrithiamine-induced thiamine deficiency (PTD), there is both diencephalic damage and basal forebrain cell loss that could contribute to the amnesic state. In the current experiment, we used the PTD animal model to access both cholinergic (choline acetyltransferase [ChAT] immunopositive) and GABAergic (parvalbumin [PV]; calbindin [CaBP]) neuronal loss in the MS/DB in relationship to midline-thalamic pathology. In addition, to gain an understanding about the role of such neuropathology in behavioral dysfunction, animals were tested on a non-rewarded spontaneous alternation task and behavioral performance was correlated to neuropathology. Unbiased stereological assessment of neuronal populations revealed that ChAT-positive neurons were significantly reduced in PTD rats, relative to control pair-fed rats, and thalamic mass and behavioral performance correlated with ChAT neuronal estimates. In contrast, both the PV- and CaBP-positive neurons in the MS/DB were not affected by PTD treatment. These results support an interactive role of both thalamic pathology and cholinergic cell loss in diencephalic amnesia.
Ossified skeletal muscle hemangioma: radiologic and pathologic features.

Skeletal muscle hemangiomas are relatively uncommon tumors in children and young adults. Although the operative management of these lesions may be affected by their vascularity, the correct preoperative dignosis is often not made. Ossification of these lesions is rare. Two patients are described whose skeletal muscle hemangiomas contained abundant osseous tissue. This was radiologically reflected by the ‘swiss cheese’ appearance of the tumors. Such an appearance in an ossified soft tissue mass may allow the correct preoperative diagnosis of this condition.
A Bayesian Methodology for Estimating the Impacts of Improved Coastal Ocean Information on the Marine Recreational Fishing Industry

The study develops a model of recreational fish catch probabilities, based on angler fishing strategies, that is conditional on uncertain information about the coastal ocean environment. We calculate expected catch based on a hypothetical Baseline Data Set and hypothetical data from an Integrated Ocean Observation System (IOOS) to demonstrate potential benefits from IOOS. The role of Bayesian probabilities in Random Utility Models of recreational fishing is identified. The study discusses the types of information that will be required by recreational anglers in the Gulf of Mexico. Results have implications for the construction of ocean observation systems for recreational fishermen.
Infectious feline leukaemia virus is erythrosuppressive in vitro.

Abstract The direct effect of the feline leukaemia virus (FeLV) on erythroid colony formation in vitro was investigated. Bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMC) from FeLV-naive, specificpathogen-free (SPF), adult cats were inoculated with FeLVs of characterized strains and biologically cloned subgroups and the subsequent development of colony forming units-erythroid (CFU E ) and burst forming units-erythroid (BFU E ) and colony forming units-granulocyte-macrophage (CFU GM ) was monitored. Exposure to the anaemia-causing Kawakami-Theilen strain of FeLV (FeLV-KT), a phenotypic mixture of subgroups A, B, and C, caused constant depression of day 2 CFU E (to 47% of sham-inoculated controls), day 4 CFU E (41% of controls), and day 10 BFU E (38% of controls). CFU GM were unaffected. The lymphoma-causing Rickard strain of FeLV (FeLV-R-TL) caused sporadic depression of CFU E and BFU E . In contrast, neither FeLV-R passaged through feline embryonic kidney fibroblasts (FeLV-R-CRFK) nor biologically cloned, subgroup-specific, FeLVs of fibroblast origin, caused decrements in CFU E or BFU E , suggesting that fibroblast passage attenuated the direct erythrosuppressive effect of FeLV. Suppression of CFU E and BFU E by lymphoma cell-origin FeLV was dependent on infectious virus and was associated with FeLV replication by the cultured myelomonocytic precursor cells. Attenuation of infectivity by heat or u.v. restored CFU E and BFU E development. Examination of the relationship between viral infectivity (VI), viral protein concentration, and CFU E suppression showed that the infectious FeLV was 20-fold more effective than u.v.-inactivated FeLV as an inhibitor of erythrogenesis in vitro .
Closed System Delivery of Halothane and Isoflurane with a Vaporizer in the Anesthetic Circle

Forty-four healthy dogs undergoing elective ovariohysterectomy were anesthetized with halothane or isoflurane delivered with an in-circuit vaporizer with closed system flow rates or an out-of-circuit vaporizer with semi-closed system flow rates. When dogs were anesthetized with halothane, there were no differences in heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiratory rate, or lingual venous pH, Pco2, or Po2 during induction and maintenance. Lingual venous Po2 was significantly less but still within a clinically acceptable range when isoflurane was used in an in-circuit vaporizer. Recovery times tended to be longer with in-circuit vaporizers. The amount of anesthetic used was not affected by vaporizer location. In-circuit vaporizers were suitable for delivery of halothane or isoflurane to healthy dogs.
Capsule synthesis by Bacillus anthracis is required for dissemination in murine inhalation anthrax

Bacillus anthracis, the agent of anthrax, produces a poly-D-glutamic acid capsule that has been implicated in virulence. Many strains missing pXO2 (96 kb), which harbors the capsule biosynthetic operon capBCAD, but carrying pXO1 (182 kb) that harbors the anthrax toxin genes, are attenuated in animal models. Also, noncapsulated strains are readily phagocytosed by macrophage cell lines, whereas capsulated strains are resistant to phagocytosis. We show that a strain carrying both virulence plasmids but deleted specifically for capBCAD is highly attenuated in a mouse model for inhalation anthrax. The parent strain and capsule mutant initiated germination in the lungs, but the capsule mutant did not disseminate to the spleen. A mutant harboring capBCAD but deleted for the cap regulators acpA and acpB was also significantly attenuated, in agreement with the capsule-negative phenotype during in vitro growth. Surprisingly, an acpB mutant, but not an acpA mutant, displayed an elevated LD50 and reduced ability to disseminate, indicating that acpA and acpB are not true functional homologs and that acpB may play a larger role in virulence than originally suspected.
On Art and Science: An Epistemic Framework for Integrating Social Science and Clinical Medicine

Calls for incorporating social science into patient care typically have accounted for neither the logistic constraints of medical training nor the methodological fallacies of utilizing aggregate "social facts" in clinical practice. By elucidating the different epistemic approaches of artistic and scientific practices, this paper illustrates an integrative artistic pedagogy that allows clinical practitioners to generate social scientific insights from actual patient encounters. Although there is no shortage of calls to bring social science into medicine, the more fundamental processes of thinking by which art and science proceed have not been addressed to this end. As such, the art of medical practice is conceptualized as an innate gift, and thus little is done to cultivate it. Yet doing so is more important than ever because uncertainty in diagnosing and treating chronic illnesses, the most significant contemporary mortality risks, suggests a re-expanding role for clinical judgment.
Parsing Three German Treebanks: Lexicalized and Unlexicalized Baselines

Previous work on German parsing has provided confusing and conflicting results concerning the difficulty of the task and whether techniques that are useful for English, such as lexicalization, are effective for German. This paper aims to provide some understanding and solid baseline numbers for the task. We examine the performance of three techniques on three treebanks (Negra, Tiger, and TuBa-D/Z): (i) Markovization, (ii) lexicalization, and (iii) state splitting. We additionally explore parsing with the inclusion of grammatical function information. Explicit grammatical functions are important to German language understanding, but they are numerous, and naively incorporating them into a parser which assumes a small phrasal category inventory causes large performance reductions due to increasing sparsity.
Differential mediation of the anticonvulsant effects of carbamazepine and diazepam

Abstract Possible mechanisms of action of carbamazepine and diazepam on amygdala-kindled seizures were studied using compounds acting at the central and “peripheral-type” benzodiazepine binding sites. Ro-15-1788, a selective antagonist at the central benzodiazepine site, blocked the anticonvulsant effect of diazepam, but not of carbamazepine. In contrast, Ro5-4864, which acts at the “peripheral-type” benzodiazepine site, blocked the anticonvulsant effect of carbamazepine, but not of diazepam. The effect of Ro5-4864 was itself reversed by PK-11195, a compound that displaces Ro5-4864 binding in vitro and in vivo . These data indicate that the anticonvulsant effects of carbamazepine and diazepam on amygdala-kindled seizures are differentially mediated and suggest that the “peripheral-type” benzodiazepine binding site is functionally involved in the anticonvulsant effect of carbamazepine.
Nucleate pool boiling heat transfer augmentation on hydrophobic self-assembly mono-layered alumina nano-porous surfaces

Abstract In this study, we have observed substantial pool boiling heat transfer augmentation by creating one-dimensionally grown Alumina Nano Porous Surface (1-D ANPS). Pre-organized numerous nano pores have structural uniqueness such as enlarged surface area, increase in active nucleation sites, and liquid thin film evaporation at vapor–liquid menisci of the pore mouth. At the same time, the surface wetting of a cylindrical heater is modified with a hydrophobic Self-Assembled Monolayer (SAM) coating. Enhanced water contact angle of the 1-D ANPS yields substantial active nucleation site increase by preventing liquid impregnation into nano pores, which play a role of trapping non-condensible gas. The combination of structural uniqueness of the 1-D ANPS and surface wettability modification achieves significant heat transfer coefficient (HTC) enhancement in the nucleate pool boiling regime. Also, HTC improvement is closely related to bubble interactions on the cylindrical heating surface while they are moving along the periphery. For a hydrophobic surface, bubble sweeps along the heater periphery and efficiently removes adjacent premature bubbles. It leads to reduced waiting time. Enlarged bubbles carry more heat from the surface and yield huge internal/external convection. In order examine bubble motions, an analytical model and high speed camera were used.
Pharmacological action of FPL 55712 on canine cerebral arterial segments.

The pharmacological action of a leukotriene antagonist FPL 55712 was studied on canine cerebral arterial segments. FPL 55712 at concentrations of 10−6M and 10−5M showed dosedependent inhibition of the constrictor responses of the artery to prostaglandin F2α. The constrictor responses of the artery to either serotonin or haemoglobin were suppressed by 10−5M FPL 55712, while 10−6M FPL 55712 failed to alter the responses. The KCL-induced constriction was not affected by treatment with either 10−6M or 10−5M FPL 55712. The present results suggest that FPL 55712 has vasodilator properties other than those related to the inhibition of leukotrienes.
Wind tunnel tests of inclined circular cylinders

Forces on naturally roughened cylinders were measured for Reynolds numbers between 2 X 10/sup 5/ and 2 X 10/sup 6/ and inclinations of 0 to 40/sup 0/. Results demonstrated the validity of the flow-independence principle in postcritical flow. Drag coefficients agreed with published values for artifically roughened cylinders. Strouhal numbers of about 0.21 were observed.
Model development and evaluation of methane potential from anaerobic co-digestion of municipal wastewater sludge and un-dewatered grease trap waste

The performance of anaerobic co-digestion of municipal wastewater sludge with un-dewatered grease trap waste was assessed using modified biochemical methane potential tests under mesophilic conditions (35°C). Methane potentials, process inhibition and chemical behavior of the process were analyzed at different grease trap waste feed ratios on volatile solids basis. Nonlinear regression analyses of first order reaction and modified Gompertz equations were performed to assist in interpretation of the experimental results. Methane potential of un-dewatered grease trap waste was measured as 606 mL CH4/g VS(added), while methane potential of municipal wastewater sludge was only 223 mL CH4/g VS(added). The results indicated that anaerobic digestion of grease trap waste without dewatering yields less methane potential than concentrated/dewatered grease trap waste because of high wastewater content of un-dewatered grease trap waste. However, anaerobic co-digestion of municipal wastewater sludge and grease trap waste still yields over two times more methane potential and approximately 10% more volatile solids reduction than digestion of municipal wastewater sludge alone. The anaerobic co-digestion process inhibitions were reported at 70% and greater concentrated/dewatered grease trap waste additions on volatile solids basis in previous studies; however, no inhibition was observed at 100% un-dewatered grease trap waste digestion in the present study. These results indicate that anaerobic co-digestion of un-dewatered grease trap waste may reduce the inhibition risk compared to anaerobic co-digestion of concentrated/dewatered grease trap waste. In addition, a mathematical model was developed in this study for the first time to describe the relationship between grease trap waste feed ratio on volatile solids basis and resulting methane potential. Experimental data from the current study as well as previous biochemical methane potential studies were successfully fit to this relationship and allowed estimation of key performance parameters that provide additional insight into the factors affecting biochemical methane potential.
Adding contextual information to improve character recognition on the Archimedes Palimpsest

The objective of the character recognition effort for the Archimedes Palimpsest is to provide a tool that allows scholars of ancient Greek mathematics to retrieve as much information as possible from the remaining degraded text. With this in mind, the current pattern recognition system does not output a single classification decision, as in typical target detection problems, but has been designed to provide intermediate results that allow the user to apply his or her own decisions (or evidence) to arrive at a conclusion. To achieve this result, a probabilistic network has been incorporated into our previous recognition system, which was based primarily on spatial correlation techniques. This paper reports on the revised tool and its recent success in the transciption process.
Dissociative Adsorption of Br2 on Pt(111): Hot Atom Dynamics

Scanning tunneling microscopy was used to study the dissociative adsorption of Br2 on a Pt(111) surface held at 25 K. At low coverage, Br atoms were observed in correlated pairs with a mean separation of 9.2 ± 1 A, indicative of substantial repulsive energy release and transient mobility as the nascent Br atoms separate during dissociative adsorption. An upper bound for the friction coefficient of these hot Br atoms on Pt(111) was calculated to be η ≤ 2.2 ps-1. At higher Br2 exposures, Br atoms were found in chainlike structures, and eventually two-dimensional islands, even though thermal diffusion of Br atoms was quenched at 25 K. The latter observations are consistent with Br2 adsorption into a transient molecular precursor state and enhanced dissociation in the vicinity of preadsorbed Br atoms.
Optical deflection in thin-film nematic-liquid-crystal waveguides

The phase velocities of the optical waves guided in nematic-liquid-crystal waveguides can be electrically modulated by about 10 percent. Optical deflection in such waveguides are demonstrated in a configuration with an electric field applied across a film of thickness of the order of 1 μ. Effective index of refraction is changed by about 0.01/volt. Response time of the effect is in the millisecond range. Results of an analysis show good agreement with the measurements.
On the evolutionary significance of Mendel's ratios.

Abstract Length of time in polymorphism is investigated as a possible evolutionary criterion for Mendel's laws in the case of two alleles at one locus and finite population. Deterministic models with constant and random segregation schemes are investigated. In deterministic models the optimum segregation system depends on the zygotic selection and is Mendelian only in symmetric models. In finite population models the initial gene frequencies interact with the segregation to determine mean time to fixation. In deterministic models with random distortion reduction of the variance of the distortion is more likely to produce polymorphism.
The changing pattern in focal fatty change of the liver: a case report.

Abstract Rapid change in the appearance of lesions of focal fatty change of the liver is described. To the best of our knowledge, this rapid change has not been reported previously.
Mitochondrial oxidant generation and oxidative damage in Ames dwarf and GH transgenic mice

Aging is associated with an accumulation of oxidative damage to proteins, lipids and DNA. Cellular mechanisms designed to prevent oxidative damage decline with aging and in diseases associated with aging. A long-lived mouse, the Ames dwarf, exhibits growth hormone deficiency and heightened antioxidative defenses. In contrast, animals that over express GH have suppressed antioxidative capacity and live half as long as wild type mice. In this study, we examined the generation of H2O2 from liver mitochondria of Ames dwarf and wild type mice and determined the level of oxidative damage to proteins, lipids and DNA in various tissues of these animals. Dwarf liver mitochondria (24 months) produced less H2O2 than normal liver in the presence of succinate (p<0.03) and ADP (p<0.003). Levels of oxidative DNA damage (8OHdG) were variable and dependent on tissue and age in dwarf and normal mice. Forty-seven percent fewer protein carbonyls were detected in 24-month old dwarf liver tissue compared to controls (p<0.04). Forty percent more (p<0.04) protein carbonyls were detected in liver tissue (3-month old) of GH transgenic mice compared to wild types while 12 month old brain tissue had 53% more protein carbonyls compared to controls (p<0.005). Levels of liver malonaldehyde (lipid peroxidation) were not different at 3 and 12 months of age but were greater in Ames dwarf mice at 24 months compared to normal mice. Previous studies indicate a strong negative correlation between plasma GH levels and antioxidative defense. Taken together, these studies show that altered GH-signaling may contribute to differences in the generation of reactive oxygen species, the ability to counter oxidative stress and life span.
A Disaster Medicine Curriculum for Medical Students

Background: Hospitals are viewed as a haven of safety within a community in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster. Thus, the importance of disaster training for hospital personnel is paramount. Regardless of specialty, all physicians will be called upon to serve. Yet, disaster training is not routinely incorporated into the curriculum of undergraduate medical education. The development and implementation of a disaster management course for medical students should therefore be a priority. Description: The objectives of this study were to develop an introductory disaster curriculum for medical students, to measure its effectiveness by assessing students' mastery of knowledge and their ability to analyze a historic disaster, and to measure student course satisfaction by standard assessment methods. Based on medical students' evaluation of a 2-day disaster training seminar held in the preceding year, as well as an investigation of existing disaster courses, we identified core objectives that medical...
How the Fall of the Iron Curtain Has Affected Consumers' Perceptions of Urban and Rural Quality of Life in Romania

Summary Marketing and quality of life (QOL) literature is reviewed to conceptualize a model of the impact of marketing activity on QOL. This model outlines how the four elements of the marketing mix affect the life domain of shopping, dealing with the acquisition, possession, use, and consumption of goods. In turn, four strategic considerations/indicators connecting this life domain with QOL are identified: the four A's linking marketing with QOL -i.e., appearance of goods in the market, and awareness, availability, and affordability of goods for consumers. A large-scale field study in urban and rural Romania, a country undergoing rapid marketization, was conducted to test hypotheses and to validate secondary data findings relating availability and affordability of goods with QOL for urban and rural consumers. The findings support the predictions that availability and affordability are positively related to QOL. Secondary data findings concerning changes in the availability and affordability of goods and ...
Children With Developmental Disabilities at a Pediatric Hospital: Staff Education to Prevent and Manage Challenging Behaviors

Children with developmental disabilities may get frustrated in unpredictable hospital environments. Frustration may escalate to challenging behaviors, which are a safety concern and may contribute to staff and patient injuries, use of restraints, and procedure delay or cancelations. The purpose of this article was to describe a pilot staff education program on preventing and managing challenging behaviors of children with developmental disabilities at a pediatric hospital. The 2-hour-long education (1 hour on-line and 1 hour instructor led) content focused on family-centered care and communication skills, including verbal judo™ modified for use in the health care setting. Participants in the instructor-led sessions reported improved knowledge and decreased fear about caring for children with developmental disabilities. Relationships of the education and fewer staff injuries, fewer canceled procedures, and decreased use of restraints merit further study.
Success Criteria in Implant Dentistry: A Systematic Review

The purpose of this study was to examine the most frequently used criteria to define treatment success in implant dentistry. An electronic MEDLINE/PubMED search was conducted to identify randomized controlled trials and prospective studies reporting on outcomes of implant dentistry. Only studies conducted with roughened surface implants and at least five-year follow-up were included. Data were analyzed for success at the implant level, peri-implant soft tissue, prosthetics, and patient satisfaction. Most frequently reported criteria for success at the implant level were mobility, pain, radiolucency, and peri-implant bone loss (> 1.5 mm), and for success at the peri-implant soft-tissue level, suppuration, and bleeding. The criteria for success at the prosthetic level were the occurrence of technical complications/prosthetic maintenance, adequate function, and esthetics during the five-year period. The criteria at patient satisfaction level were discomfort and paresthesia, satisfaction with appearance, and ability to chew/taste. Success in implant dentistry should ideally evaluate a long-term primary outcome of an implant-prosthetic complex as a whole.
Weighted Algebraic Connectivity: An Application to Airport Transportation Network

Abstract The airport transportation network structure and its performance are key factors to benefit the local area or national transportation capability and economic development. This paper presents a method based on the weighted algebraic connectivity to optimize and analyze the network. The indispensability of the weighted adjacent matrix and weighted Laplacian matrix in airport transportation network performance study is emphasized in this paper. According to practical operational viability, we formulate the weighted algebraic connectivity application as the flight routes addition/deletion problems. The greedy perturbation heuristic by Ghosh and Boyd is analyzed and extended into the Modified Greedy Perturbation Algorithm (MGP) to provide a local optimum in a fast iterative manner. The unweighted tabu search applying algebraic connectivity to airport transportation network by Vargo and Kincaid is re-designed as the Weighted Tabu Search (WTS) to fit the new weighted flight routes addition/deletion problems, potentially offering a global optimum with much longer running time. The simulation results indicate the trade-off between the Modified Greedy Perturbation and the Weighted Tabu Search, with which we can decide the appropriate algorithm to be used for enhancing the performance of an airport transportation network.
Prenatal development of the rodent rostral migratory stream.

The aim of this study was to elucidate the embryological origins of the unique neuronal progenitor cells that form the rostral migratory stream (RMS), the path traversed by cells from the anterior part of the forebrain subventricular zone (SVZa) en route to the olfactory bulb. To determine when and where cells constituting the RMS initially exhibit their characteristic neuronal phenotype and high mitotic capacity, we analyzed the cells of the rat forebrain between embryonic day 14 (E14) and postnatal day 2 (P2). At E14, cells with a neuronal phenotype were observed within the ventricular zone in close proximity to the mantle layer of the future olfactory bulb. By E15, cells expressing neuronal markers are also PSA-NCAM immunoreactive and become aligned in chains of similarly oriented cells, a hallmark of the postnatal RMS. The cells that form chains organize into a patch that enlarges in the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral dimensions from E16 to E22 (birth). In comparing the forebrain cytoarchitecture to the pattern of cell type-specific staining, the patch constitutes only the central part of the proximal RMS. Early during development, the region of the RMS surrounding the patch expresses low levels of PSA-NCAM and neuron-specific markers. The proliferative activity of cells forming the patch vs. nonpatch regions of the RMS was analyzed following a short bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) exposure. Between E15 and E22, the patch can be recognized by the mitotic activity of its cells; the cells of the patch incorporate less BrdU than the nonpatch portion of the RMS. The time course of appearance of cells forming the RMS indicates that the RMS arises in advance and independently of the cortical SVZ. Although the patch and the nonpatch regions of the embryonic RMS appear to merge postnatally, the two regions may originate separately under the influence of distinct intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
The Buyer–Supplier Relationship: An Integrative Model of Ethics and Trust

The buyer–supplier relationship is the nexus of the economic partnership of many commercial transactions and is founded upon the reciprocal trust of the two parties that participate in this economic exchange. In this article, we identify how six ethical elements play a key role in framing the buyer–supplier relationship, incorporating a model articulated by Hosmer (The ethics of management, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2008). We explain how trust is a behavior, the relinquishing of personal control in the expectant hope that the other party will honor the duties of a psychological contract. Presenting information about six factors of organizational trustworthiness, we offer insights about the relationship between ethics and trust in the buyer–supplier relationship.
Influence of the glia limitans on pial arteriolar relaxation in the rat.

We examined whether damage to the glia limitans (GL), via exposure to the gliotoxin l-α-aminoadipic acid (l-αAAA), alters hypercapnia-induced pial arteriolar dilation in vivo. Anesthetized female r...
The Nature of Hypnotically Induced Behavior

Recent studies ( 1 ) have attempted to evaluate both the meaningfulness and the genuineness of behavior induced through hypnotic techniques. Utilizing a Reid Polygraph, studies have been undertaken in connection with a variety of hypnotic phenomena including age regression, inducing hallucinations, hypnotic anesthesia, and alterations in temporal and spacial orientation as well as induced variations in body image awareness ( 2 ) . The results have indicated that, with increasing involvement in the hypnotic relationship, as evidenced by rapidity with which changes in sensory and motor behavior may be induced, there appears to be an increasing acceptance uncritically, of the nature and the meaning of hypnotically induced behavior. In this respect, we find that polygraphic evidence from experimental Ss reveals their essential belief in the reality of subjective experience and response in the same way that they would accept on a non-hypnotic level a sense of belief in other conscious experiences such as dreaming, thinking and perceptual recognition. The acceptance of hypnotically induced behavior would appear psychodynamically to be consistent with the implication that hypnosis involves a degree of self-exclusion and the capacity to accept subjective responses without the necessity for critical evaluation by the self, allowing for the structuring of hypnotic perception through the ego involvement with the hypnotist and the focusing of attention upon that process. Current studies are attempting to compare the psychodynamic patterns of dreaming with the patterns of hypnotically induced behavior. As part of this study, nocturnal dreams are being smdied in connection with hypnotic dreams and other forms of perceptual alterations induced through hypnosis. It is hoped that further explorations of this sort will lead to some clarification of the regre:sive aspects of subjective responses as they occur in a variety of states of consciousness of which hypnosis is one.
Common ADRB2 Haplotypes Derived from 26 Polymorphic Sites Direct β2-Adrenergic Receptor Expression and Regulation Phenotypes

Background The beta2-adrenergic receptor (beta2AR) is expressed on numerous cell-types including airway smooth muscle cells and cardiomyocytes. Drugs (agonists or antagonists) acting at these receptors for treatment of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart failure show substantial interindividual variability in response. The ADRB2 gene is polymorphic in noncoding and coding regions, but virtually all ADRB2 association studies have utilized the two common nonsynonymous coding SNPs, often reaching discrepant conclusions. Methodology/principal findings We constructed the 8 common ADRB2 haplotypes derived from 26 polymorphisms in the promoter, 5'UTR, coding, and 3'UTR of the intronless ADRB2 gene. These were cloned into an expression construct lacking a vector-based promoter, so that beta2AR expression was driven by its promoter, and steady state expression could be modified by polymorphisms throughout ADRB2 within a haplotype. "Whole-gene" transfections were performed with COS-7 cells and revealed 4 haplotypes with increased cell surface beta2AR protein expression compared to the others. Agonist-promoted downregulation of beta2AR protein expression was also haplotype-dependent, and was found to be increased for 2 haplotypes. A phylogenetic tree of the haplotypes was derived and annotated by cellular phenotypes, revealing a pattern potentially driven by expression. Conclusions/significance Thus for obstructive lung disease, the initial bronchodilator response from intermittent administration of beta-agonist may be influenced by certain beta2AR haplotypes (expression phenotypes), while other haplotypes may influence tachyphylaxis during the response to chronic therapy (downregulation phenotypes). An ideal clinical outcome of high expression and less downregulation was found for two haplotypes. Haplotypes may also affect heart failure antagonist therapy, where beta2AR increase inotropy and are anti-apoptotic. The haplotype-specific expression and regulation phenotypes found in this transfection-based system suggest that the density of genetic information in the form of these haplotypes, or haplotype-clusters with similar phenotypes can potentially provide greater discrimination of phenotype in human disease and pharmacogenomic association studies.
Thick metal surface-polariton polarizer for a planar optical waveguide

A metal half-space is situated parallel to a planar dielectric film waveguide. As a consequence of the wave interaction between the surface polariton supported by the metal surface and the transverse-magnetic guided mode of the dielectric film, either the latter can be completely extinguished or its power can be substantially reduced in a small interaction length. The insertion loss in the same interaction length for the transverse-electric guided mode of the dielectric film is negligibly small. A metal cladding therefore serves as a polarizer for a planar dielectric film waveguide. The theory of this surface-polariton polarizer for a planar dielectric film optical waveguide is developed, and representative numerical results are presented.
A quantitative measure of postural sway deficits in schizophrenia

Clinicians rely on observational methods to assess obvious signs of postural abnormalities in schizophrenia, yet subtle signs of postural deficits may go unnoticed. Posture is controlled, in large part, by the cerebellum, which has been implicated in numerous reports of structural and functional deficits in schizophrenia. Given the possibility of an underlying disruption of cerebellar function in schizophrenia, this study used an objective, quantitative measure to assess the magnitude of postural stability in this disorder. A total of 36 schizophrenia patients and 36 non-psychiatric age-matched controls stood on a pressure-sensitive platform that recorded shifts in weight (body sway) through pressure points in the feet. Patients demonstrated more postural sway than did healthy controls (p<0.01). When patients with noticeable signs of tardive dyskinesia were removed from analyses, group differences remained (p<0.01). There was no significant correlation between neuroleptic medication level and degree of postural sway (r=0.16, p=0.37). These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia have subtle, yet quantifiable, disturbances in the control of posture and balance. Quantitative measures of postural sway may provide a more sensitive means of detecting disturbances of movement than do standard clinical observations alone.
A comparison of JKR-based methods to analyze quasi-static and dynamic indentation force curves

Abstract The Johnson–Kendall–Roberts (JKR) theory of elastic contact, extended to take viscoelastic effects into account, is used to evaluate work of adhesion and modulus of elastomeric films. In this paper, we present a comparison of five approaches to analyze quasi-static and dynamic JKR force curve data obtained using instrumented indentation. The load-displacement experiments were performed using a 200-μm radius borosilicate glass sphere against poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS). By applying a small oscillation to the tip during indentation, dynamic stiffness vs load data were also obtained for frequencies between 25 and 160 Hz. Direct curve fitting as well as simplified 2- and 3-point analysis methods were used to compare modulus values obtained from load-displacement and stiffness-load data. Fit methods not requiring determination of the initial point of tip–sample contact (“zero” displacement) provided modulus values closest to those obtained by direct curve fitting. The dynamic stiffness-load data revealed a frequency dependent modulus; load-displacement measurements obtained simultaneously were consistent with the relaxed, or low-frequency, modulus of the PDMS sample. These experiments demonstrate that both the frequency dependent and relaxed modulus can be obtained from a single experiment.
Effects of Human & Social Capital on Employees’ Strategic Orientation:A Knowledge-based Perspective

Drawing on the knowledge-based view, researchers have noted that both human and social capital contribute to the firm’s ability to compete and achieve competitive advantage. Nonetheless, it is uncl...
Application of the second rule of transient-state kinetic isotope effects to an enzymatic mechanism.

The transient-state kinetic approach reveals the formation and subsequent interconversions of intermediates in real time. Its potential for the mechanistic resolution of enzymatic and other complex chemical mechanisms has been severely limited however by the lack of a rigorous and applicable theoretical basis in contrast to that of the less direct but soundly based algebraic algorithms of the steady-state approach. Having recently established three rigorously derived fundamental “rules” of transient-state kinetics applicable to realistic multiple step reactions, we present here the successful application of the very counterintuitive “second rule” to the resolution of the mechanism of the l-phenylalanine dehydrogenase catalyzed reaction.