cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Intrinsic Tau Acetylation Is Coupled to Auto-Proteolytic Tau Fragmentation.

Tau proteins are abnormally aggregated in a range of neurodegenerative tauopathies including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recently, tau has emerged as an extensively post-translationally modified protein, among which lysine acetylation is critical for normal tau function and its pathological aggregation. Here, we demonstrate that tau isoforms have different propensities to undergo lysine acetylation, with auto-acetylation occurring more prominently within the lysine-rich microtubule-binding repeats. Unexpectedly, we identified a unique intrinsic property of tau in which auto-acetylation induces proteolytic tau cleavage, thereby generating distinct N- and C-terminal tau fragments. Supporting a catalytic reaction-based mechanism, mapping and mutagenesis studies showed that tau cysteines, which are required for acetyl group transfer, are also essential for auto-proteolytic tau processing. Further mass spectrometry analysis identified the C-terminal 2nd and 4th microtubule binding repeats as potential sites of auto-cleavage. The identification of acetylation-mediated auto-proteolysis provides a new biochemical mechanism for tau self-regulation and warrants further investigation into whether auto-catalytic functions of tau are implicated in AD and other tauopathies.
Confidentiality: The Illusion and the Reality -- Affirmative Steps for Lawyers and Mediators to Help Safeguard Their Mediation Communications

This column recommends prophylactic steps that advocates and mediators can incorporate to safeguard mediation confidentiality and minimize the likelihood that the mediation will be legally challenged.
“Totally in Love”: Evidence of a Master Narrative for How New Mothers Should Feel About Their Babies

Master narratives, or prevailing cultural storylines, of motherhood provide a framework for new mothers to make sense of their experiences and to develop a coherent maternal identity. The present mixed methods study developed a theory-driven methodology to systematically identify a master narrative and examined whether one is present in 32 U.S. first-time mothers’ accounts of developing feelings for, and connection to, their newborns. In coding these mothers’ 95 episodes, we found that just over half of the mothers exclusively described positive feelings/connection toward their babies that were present in pregnancy or at birth (“At First Sight”; AFS), whereas 31 % exclusively described feelings/connection that took time to develop, or were negative, questioned, and/or tentative (“It Took Time”; ITT). To identify the presence of a master narrative, we compared these groups’ accounts on several theoretical indicators; the episodes of mothers who exclusively described ITT experiences were longer, more often contained talk of expectations, and were more likely to have a mismatch between expectation and experience than those of mothers who exclusively described AFS experiences. This suggests that ITT experience accounts countered a master narrative that mothers should have overwhelming, positive, and immediate feelings for/connection to their babies (AFS). Using discursive analysis, we then examined how the master narrative was actually invoked in the accounts of two mothers, one who positioned her experiences as aligned with, and one who positioned her experiences as counter to, the master narrative. Implications for supporting mothers in making meaning of their experiences, whether by aligning with the master narrative or co-constructing an empowering counter-narrative, are discussed.
Class-specific discriminant time-frequency analysis using novel jointly learnt non-negative matrix factorization

Time-frequency (TF) representation has found wide use in many challenging signal processing tasks including classification, interference rejection, and retrieval. Advances in TF analysis methods have led to the development of powerful techniques, which use non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to adaptively decompose the TF data into TF basis components and coefficients. In this paper, standard NMF is modified for TF data, such that the improved TF bases can be used for signal classification applications with overlapping classes and data retrieval. The new method, called jointly learnt NMF (JLNMF) method, identifies both distinct and shared TF bases and is able to use the decomposed bases to successfully retrieve and separate the class-specific information from data. The paper provides the framework of the proposed JLNMF cost function and proposes a projected gradient framework to solve for limit point stationarity solutions. The developed algorithm has been applied to a synthetic data retrieval experiment and epileptic spikes in EEG signals of infantile spasms and discrimination of pathological voice disorder. The experimental results verified that JLNMF successfully identified the class-specific information, thus enhancing data separation performance.
Spectroscopic NMR Characterizations of HNO Adducts of Ferrous Heme Proteins

HNO reacts with the ferrous states of many heme proteins such as myoglobin and hemoglobin to form stable HNO-Fe(II) adducts. Like the analogous O 2 adducts, the HNO adducts are diamagnetic, but with a characteristic HNO resonance in 1 H NMR c.15 ppm that splits into doublets for H 15 NO adducts. As an illustration, we discuss HNO adducts of several heme-pocket mutants of myoglobin, hemoglobins, and related heme proteins. The 1 H and 15 N NMR resonances, obtained by HSQC experiments, are shown to differentiate subunits and isoforms of proteins within mixtures. NMR characterizations of these HNO adducts is a unique tool that is a sensitive to structural changes within the oxygen-binding cavity, which we suggest may help define modes of oxygen binding and activation in other heme enzymes.
Sensification of computing: adding natural sensing and perception capabilities to machines

The world of intelligent and interactive systems is undergoing an era of unprecedented innovation and advanced development. With the rapid progress in natural sensing and perceptual computing technologies, devices and machines are increasingly being endowed with the abilities to sense and understand the world, navigate in the environment, and interact with humans in natural ways. Interfaces based on touch sensing and speech recognition are now ubiquitous, and the race is on to the next frontiers of machine intelligence and interactions based on three-dimensional (3D) sensing. In this paper, we review the recent progress in the development of real-time 3D-sensing technologies and their deployment in a new class of interactive and autonomous systems. As an example of a commercially available platform, we describe the Intel® RealSense technologies, as well as its deployments in a new class of interactive and autonomous systems and applications.
Breastfeeding Campaigns and Ethnic Disparity in Brazil: The Representation of a Hegemonic Society and Quasiperfect Experience:

The purpose of this article is to analyze the ethnic, cultural, and social disparity in the presentation of key messages and themes of breastfeeding campaigns in Brazil. Particularly, this article aims at deconstructing the themes and examining the extent that dominant practices of breastfeeding campaigns create and maintain conditions of cultural subjugation and marginalization. Two questions guided this investigation: To what extent was ethnic, class, and social diversity exemplified in the official posters for the Breastfeeding Week campaigns? (Research Question 1) and what contexts are realized and enacted through the images? (Research Question 2). The method used was qualitative document analysis, and I found that there was a considerable ethnic, class, and social disparity displayed in breastfeeding campaigns in Brazil. Key messages enacted the social reality and lifestyle of wealthier women of European descent, while women of African descent lagged in breastfeeding rates.
Modulating Desires Through Devotion: Hindu Devotionalism and the Science of Managing Desire

Among Indian religions, desires for the mundane are typically viewed as sources of suffering and impediments to liberation. To modulate these and other soteriological impediments, many traditions developed transformational paths of practice. One of the most prominent of these is the Gau??ya Vai??ava path of devotion, which celebrates K???a as the highest deity. The goal is not merely liberation, but to develop uninterrupted loving devotion for K???a. However, self-interested desires remain critical impediments. To overcome these desires and reach the goals of the path, early Gau??ya theologians recommended various practices of devotion. Drawing on scientific research on desire-modulation, I argue that many of these practices would be effective for modulating desires because of the ways in which they manipulate situation and stimulus controls, attention allocation, and processes of valuation. This analysis has implications for our understanding of the development of the Gau??ya path, the development and success of certain kinds of Hindu religious practices over time, and the power of religious practices more generally for modulating desires.
Obesity and Cancer Metabolism: A Perspective on Interacting Tumor–Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors

Obesity is associated with increased risk and poor prognosis of many types of cancers. Several obesity-related host factors involved in systemic metabolism can influence tumor initiation, progression, and/or response to therapy, and these have been implicated as key contributors to the complex effects of obesity on cancer incidence and outcomes. Such host factors include systemic metabolic regulators including insulin, insulin-like growth factor 1, adipokines, inflammation-related molecules, and steroid hormones, as well as the cellular and structural components of the tumor microenvironment, particularly adipose tissue. These secreted and structural host factors are extrinsic to, and interact with, the intrinsic metabolic characteristics of cancer cells to influence their growth and spread. This review will focus on the interplay of these tumor cell-intrinsic and extrinsic factors in the context of energy balance, with the objective of identifying new intervention targets for preventing obesity-associated cancer.
The Nitric Oxide Dimer Reaction in Carbon Nanopores

When confined within nanoporous carbons (activated carbon fibers or carbon nanotubes) having pore widths of about 1 nm, nitric oxide is found to react completely to form the dimer, (NO)2, even though almost no dimers are present in the bulk gas phase in equilibrium with the pore phase. Moreover, the yield of dimer is unchanged upon varying the temperature over the range studied in the experiments. Earlier molecular simulation studies showed a significant increase in dimer formation in carbon nanopores, but the dimer yield was considerably less than that found in the experiments, and decreased rapidly as the temperature was raised. Here, we report an ab initio and molecular simulation study of this reaction in both slit-shaped pores and single-walled carbon nanotubes. The ab initio calculations show that the nitric oxide dimer forms a weak chemical bond with the carbon, and the bonding energy is more than 20 times stronger than the van der Waals energy assumed in the previous studies. When this is accounted for, the predicted dimer yield is in good agreement with the experimental values, as is its temperature dependence. We also report results for the pressure tensor components for this confined reactive mixture. Local tangential pressures near the pore walls are as high as millions of bar, reflecting the strong nanoscale forces.
What Kills Science in School?: Lessons from Pre-Service Teachers' Responses to Urban children's Science Inquiries.

This opportunistic case-study highlights striking differences in 6 urban children’s and 12 preservice suburban middle-class teachers’ perception of science and discuss consequences of science education and beyond. I found that all of the interviewed urban children demonstrated scientific inquiries and interests outside of the school science education that can be characterized by diverse simultaneous discourses from diverse practices, i.e., “heterodiscoursia” (Matusov in Culture & Psychology, 17(1), 99–119, 2011b), despite their diverse, positive and negative, attitudes toward school science. In contrast to the urban children’s mixed attitudes to science, the preservice teachers view science negatively. They could not see science inquiries in the videotaped interviews of the urban children. There seemed to be many reasons for that. One of the possible reasons for that was that the preservice teachers tried to purify the science practice. Another reason was that they did not see a necessity to be interested and engaged in the curriculum that they are going to teach in future. The pedagogical consequences and remedies are discussed.
Physiologic cleavage of von Willebrand factor by a plasma protease is dependent on its conformation and requires calcium ion

von Willebrand factor (vWF) in the circulation is subjected to proteolysis. In a recent study, we reported that normal plasma contains a protease activity that cleaves vWF in a shear-dependent manner, causing a decrease in its multimer size while generating dimers of the 140-kD and the 176-kD fragments indistinguishable from those found in normal plasma. In this study, the plasma protease has been partially purified and characterized and the role of vWF conformation in its cleavage by the protease has been further investigated. Guanidine HCl caused unfolding of vWF in a concentration-dependent manner, resulting in a shift in its fluorescence emission maxima to longer wavelengths. A dramatic increase in its proteolytic susceptibility was seen at 1.1 to 1.2 mol/L guanidine HCl, a concentration causing only a 3- to 4-nm shift in vWF emission maxima. Although vWF molecules refolded as guanidine HCl was removed by dialysis, the refolding was accompanied only by a partial recovery of the proteolytic resistance. The plasma protease, partially purified by approximately 900 folds by Sephacryl S-300 HR gel filtration, Matrex gel orange A dye affinity chromatography, and Q Sepharose anion exchange, had a molecular mass of approximately 200 kD and was inhibited by EDTA, EGTA, or 1,10-phenanthroline. The inhibition by EGTA or EDTA could be reversed by Ca2+ but not by mg2+. It was not inhibited by a panel of synthetic and natural protease inhibitors or adsorbed by gelatin-agarose, and it was present in plasmas deficient in proteins involved in coagulation and anticoagulation. The vWF fragments generated by the protease, as mapped by peptide-specific antibodies VP-1 and LJ-7745, were in distinguishable from the natural fragments but distinct from those produced by plasmin. High molecular weight endothelial vWF, after exposure to guanidine HCLI or high shear stress, was cleaved by the protease to smaller forms. These results support the model that endothelial secreted vWF is converted to multimers by a novel plasma metalloproteinase. Although native vWF exists in a conformation relatively resistant to cleavage, an alteration in the conformation by shear stress can lead to enhanced proteolytic susceptibility. This model may explain the decrease in vWF multimer sizes in various clinical conditions.
Ordinary Jurisprudence and the Democratic Firm: A Response to David Ellerman

David Ellerman has proposed an argument for the democratic firm based on a principle of ordinary jurisprudence, the principle of responsibility. The responsibility principle says that people are to be held legally responsible for the results of their intentional deliberate actions. Ellerman contends that laborers ought to constitute the firm and appropriate its whole product, because production is the intentional deliberate action of laborers. The employment contract is thus invalid, and every firm ought to be reconstructed as a partnership of all those who work in the enterprise. This article argues that there are two flaws in his argument. The first flaw is Ellerman's focus on a distinction between people and things, rather than on the varying forms of participation in an action, including participating by contributing tools. An analogy with the concept of criminal accomplices shows that those who contribute capital to an enterprise could share responsibility for production along with laborers. The second flaw is that while responsibility is inalienable, when responsibility produces a property right, that property right is alienable. The employment contract could be reconceived as a type of futures contract, selling a claim on the eventual whole product in return for something like a fixed wage.
Quest for Negative Dependency Graphs

The Lovasz local lemma is a well-known probabilistic technique commonly used to prove the existence of rare combinatorial objects. We explore the lopsided (or negative dependency graph) version of the lemma, which, while more general, appears infrequently in literature due to the lack of settings in which the additional generality has thus far been needed. We present a general framework (matchings in hypergraphs) from which many such settings arise naturally. We also prove a seemingly new generalization of Cayley’s formula, which helps defining negative dependency graphs for extensions of forests into spanning trees. We formulate open problems regarding partitions and doubly stochastic matrices that are likely amenable to the use of the lopsided local lemma.
Projection Operators, Properties, and Idempotent Variables in the Modal Interpretations

This paper will discuss the representation of properties in two modal interpretations of quantum mechanics: Richard Healey’s interactive interpretation (Healey, 1989) and the Kochen-Dieks-Clifton (KDC) interpretation, as presented in Clifton (1995). Like many realist interpretations, these interpretations take the set of a system’s dynamical properties, ordered by some appropriate ordering relation, to be isomorphic to the set of projection operators in the Hilbert space associated with the system. The two interpretations share a further similarity: as i will discuss in Section 3, they both assign to the biorthogonal decomposition theorem (or to a generalization of that theorem) a central role in determining which of a system’s properties are possessed at a given time.
Carbon Sequestration in Soil and Vegetation and Greenhouse Gases Emissions Reduction

Improved land use and management of cropland and grassland ecosystems can increase soil organic matter providing a significant sink (sequestration) of CO2 from the atmosphere, thus contributing to greenhouse gas mitigation. Improvements in quantification methods and providing economic incentives for “C-friendly” management are key to realizing mitigation potentials in the agricultural sector.
Response to Perkins and Murmann: Pay Attention to What Is and Isn't Unique about Tesla

Perkins and Murmann (2018) advance a provocative thesis, based on Tesla Motors, that ‘a well-funded company could develop a new electric vehicle (EV) from scratch and move it into production within 3 to 5 years. . . .’ This thesis of feasibility – indeed likelihood – of more new entrant EV automakers is at odds with my recent work (e.g., Jacobides, MacDuffie, & Tae, 2016; MacDuffie, 2013) which argues that automotive OEMs have been able to prevent extensive value migration to suppliers and new entrants due to their structural role as system integrators with the capabilities to manage a primarily integral product and organizational architecture. This role is bolstered by societal demands for OEMs to meet regulatory requirements for safety and handle legal liability claims. These structural features have helped automotive OEMs avoid the fate of IBM, which saw massive value migration, after introducing the modular PC, to Intel and Microsoft (suppliers of key components). These same features, I argue, will position these OEMs for continued centrality, forestalling a wave of successful new entrants despite many new, disruptive changes in technology and business models.
Implications of Trust on Patient Generated Health Data

Propelled by a focus on patient-centered care, technology development is moving in a direction of providing the patient formal avenues of contributing health information. Specifically, patient generated health data (PGHD), ranging from biometric to health status interpretation is an emerging topic in health informatics (Hull, 2015). Further, tools are in development to allow for the electronic delivery of PGHD from the patient to the provider in the electronic health record (EHR).At its core, human factors is concerned with representing information in a way that supports safe and efficient decision making. PGHD is a topic area that requires a human factors perspective for multiple reasons including the need to identify user needs and requirements of data capture on the patient side, data use on the provider side, and supporting technology design to support these users effectively. Much research in health informatics and healthcare human factors is concerned with the EHR, as the system has not reached inte...
Repositioning Flubendazole for Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract We previously reported the serendipitous observation that fenbendazole, a benzimidazole anthelmintic, improved functional and pathological outcomes following thoracic spinal cord contusion...
Contextual Variation in Early Adolescent Childbearing: A Multilevel Study From 33,822 Communities in 44 Low- And Middle-Income Countries

Abstract Purpose Existing literature calls for a deeper examination into how local context influences adolescent sexual and reproductive health outcomes. We seek to describe individual and contextual variation in early adolescent childbearing (younger than 16 years) in 44 low- and middle-income countries by (1) examining the role of individual-level social disadvantage, (2) exploring the ecological influence of context at the country and community level, and (3) assessing whether ecological effects vary according to a woman's wealth. Methods We used nationally representative data from 33,822 communities in 44 low- and middle-income countries. We employed multilevel modeling to examine the variation in early adolescent childbearing apportioned to the individual, community, and country levels. Results Globally, poverty and low educational attainment are associated with early adolescent childbearing. After accounting for individual-level characteristics, significant residual variance remains at both the community and country levels. Routine, individual-level covariates explain 46.4% of the total variance at the community level and 21.3% of the total variance at the country level in relation to the baseline, age-adjusted model. The variance apportioned to the community level is estimated to equal 43.5% (95% confidence interval: .40, .49) of the total variance among the poorest women compared with 32.6% (95% confidence interval: .25, .39) among the richest women. Across countries, we find substantial heterogeneity in the variance observed at the community level. Conclusions Our results point to the need for a continued focus on multilevel interventions that include approaches to target both the individual and population levels. More research is needed to identify the mechanisms through which local context influences adolescent sexual and reproductive health outcomes.
Waveform LiDAR concepts and applications for potential vegetation phenology monitoring and modeling: a comprehensive review

Researchers continually demonstrated through published literature how LiDAR could create unparalleled measurements of ecosystem structure and forest height. There are a number of studies conducted ...
Wound Irrigation in Orthopedic Open Fractures: A Review.

Background: Management of open fractures remains a major clinical challenge because of the higher energy involved in the injury, the greater local trauma, tissue necrosis, and extensive contamination. Even though early surgical debridement was thought to be critical, limited available operative techniques have minimized surgery in favor of early antibiotic administration. No clear agreement on the surgical approach, debridement, or irrigation technique exists. Surgeons continue to argue about the use of various fluids, the appropriate pressure of irrigation, antiseptics, and other factors. The current work reviews the available data and summarizes the capabilities of modern orthopedic irrigation solutions. Methods: To delineate available research on the topic, the PubMed database was queried for the most common techniques, fluid variables, and chemical adjuvants utilized in current open fracture and wound irrigation methodologies. Modes of delivery, volume, pressure, temperature, timing, solution type, and additives are evaluated in the context of known outcomes to determine which solutions may be preferable. Results: Various methods have been described with their own advantages as well as limitations. Particular solutions may apply to specific clinical scenarios, presence of implants, and degree of tissue contamination. Desired irrigation solutions are isotonic, non-toxic, non-hemolytic, transparent, sterilizable, efficient in removing debris and pathogens, as well as affordable; however, no current irrigant achieves all these desired characteristics. Conclusions: Despite being crucial for the healing of open fractures, there is no clear gold standard for irrigation. Although there are some novel irrigation solutions, there has been a paucity of research on finding new, safer, and more effective irrigation solutions that will promote wound healing and reduce infection.
Peer Support for Self-Management of Chronic Pain: the Evaluation of a Peer Coach-Led Intervention to Improve Pain Symptoms (ECLIPSE) Trial.

Pain self-management is an effective, evidence-based treatment for chronic pain. Peer support, in which patients serve as coaches for other patients, has been effective in other chronic conditions and is a potentially promising approach to implementing pain self-management programs using fewer clinical resources. To test a peer coach-delivered pain self-management program for chronic pain. Randomized controlled trial. Veterans with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Intervention patients were assigned a trained peer coach for 6 months. Coaches, who were volunteers, were asked to contact their assigned patients, either by phone or in person, twice per month. Coaches and patients were given an intervention manual to guide sessions. The control group was offered a 2-hour pain self-management class. The primary outcome was total pain, assessed by the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI). Secondary outcomes were anxiety, depression, pain catastrophizing, self-efficacy, social support, patient activation, health-related quality of life, and healthcare utilization. Outcomes were measured at baseline, 6 months, and 9 months. Two hundred fifteen patients enrolled (120 intervention, 95 control). Adherence to intervention protocol was low, with only 13% of patients reporting having at least the recommended 12 peer coach meetings over the 6-month intervention. BPI total decreased from baseline to 6 months and baseline to 9 months in both groups. At 9 months, this change was statistically significant (intervention, − 0.40, p = 0.018; control, − 0.47, p = 0.006). There was not a statistically significant difference between groups on BPI at either time point. No secondary outcomes improved significantly in either group after adjusting for multiple comparisons. Patients randomized to peer support did not differ from control patients on primary and secondary outcomes. Other peer support models that do not rely on volunteers might be more effective. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02380690
Does COVID-19 Testing Create More Cases? An Empirical Evidence on the Importance of Mass Testing During a Pandemic

The importance of testing and surveillance of an infectious disease cannot be underestimated. The testing is the first step to detect an infectious disease, and mass testing can slow or mitigate the spread of an infectious disease. Despite overwhelming evidence and the importance of testing discussed in the literature, there have been claims that "more COVID-19 testing creates more cases". Therefore, there is a need to study whether massive testing is the reason for detecting more positive COVID-19 cases. In this research, we used a dataset from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and empirically showed that by increasing the COVID-19 testing in the U.S., the spread of the COVID-19 decreased significantly. Our results indicate a negative relationship between the number of positive cases and the number of tests performed in the past months. The large-scale testing may have helped identify positive and asymptomatic cases early in the course of illness, which enabled individuals to isolate themselves, thus reducing the chances of spreading the diseases and slowing the spread of the pandemic.
Thermal performance of an absorption-assisted two-stage ejector air-to-water heat pump

Abstract A gas-fired air-to-water ejector heat pump (EHP) for domestic hot water production is proposed and analyzed thermodynamically. The COP of the EHP is improved by using binary fluids (HFE7500 and water), and the high backpressure in the primary ejector (first-stage) is actively controlled by either a second-stage ejector and/or a LiBr-H2O absorption subsystem. A thermodynamic model is established for analysis and performance evaluation. A case study shows the backpressure of the first-stage ejector is reduced by 53.5%, and the backpressure control using the second-stage ejector increases the system COP by 21.0% compared with that using LiBr-H2O absorption. Parametric studies are conducted to investigate the roles of the first-stage ejector, the second-stage ejector, and the LiBr-H2O absorption subsystem. The first-stage ejector plays a dominant role in the EHP system performance. The EHP’s heating COP can reach 2.0 with an entrainment ratio of 0.12 in the first-stage ejector. EHP performance can be improved with a high entrainment ratio and a low-temperature primary working fluid in the first-stage and second-stage ejectors, a low condensation temperature in the first-stage ejector, and a high generating temperature and a low concentration of the LiBr-H2O solution.
Western Blotting Using In-Gel Protein Labeling as a Normalization Control: Advantages of Stain-Free Technology

Western blotting is one of the most used techniques in research laboratories. It is popular because it is an easy way of semiquantifying protein amounts in different samples. In Western blotting, the most commonly used method for controlling the differences in the amount of protein loaded is to independently quantify housekeeping proteins (typically actin, GAPDH or tubulin). Another less commonly used method is total protein normalization using stains, such as Ponceau S or Coomassie Brilliant Blue, which stains all the proteins on the blots. A less commonly used but powerful total protein staining technique is stain-free normalization. The stain-free technology is able to detect total protein in a large linear dynamic range and has the advantage of allowing protein detection on the gel before transblotting. This chapter discusses the theory, advantages, and method used to do total protein quantification using stain-free gels for normalization of Western blots.
Collaborative Top Distribution Identifications with Limited Interaction (Extended Abstract)

We consider the following problem in this paper: given a set of $n$ distributions, find the top- $m$ ones with the largest means. This problem is also called top- $m$ arm identifications in the literature of reinforcement learning, and has numerous applications. We study the problem in the collaborative learning model where we have multiple agents who can draw samples from the $n$ distributions in parallel. Our goal is to characterize the tradeoffs between the running time of learning process and the number of rounds of interaction between agents, which is very expensive in various scenarios. We give optimal time-round tradeoffs, as well as demonstrate complexity separations between top-1 arm identification and top- $m$ arm identifications for general $m$ and between fixed-time and fixed-confidence variants. As a byproduct, we also give an algorithm for selecting the distribution with the $m$ -th largest mean in the collaborative learning model.
Preoperative Guidance With Weight-Bearing Computed Tomography and Patient-Specific Instrumentation in Foot and Ankle Surgery.

The use of preoperative and intraoperative guidance in foot and ankle surgery has grown substantially in recent years. Weight-bearing computed tomography (WBCT) and patient-specific instrumentation...
Chronic Nutrition Impact Symptoms Are Associated with Decreased Functional Status, Quality of Life, and Diet Quality in a Pilot Study of Long-Term Post-Radiation Head and Neck Cancer Survivors

Background: As a result of tumor location and treatment that is aggressive, head and neck cancer (HNC) survivors experience an array of symptoms impacting the ability and desire to eat termed nutrition impact symptoms (NISs). Despite increasing cancer survival time, the majority of research studies examining the impact of NISs have been based on clinical samples of HNC patients during the acute phase of treatment. NISs are often chronic and persist beyond the completion of treatment or may develop as late side effects. Therefore, our research team examined chronic NIS complications on HNC survivors’ functional status, quality of life, and diet quality. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of 42 HNC survivors who were at least 6 months post-radiation. Self-reported data on demographics, NISs, quality of life, and usual diet over the past year were obtained. Objective measures of functional status included the short physical performance battery and InBody© 270 body composition testing. NISs were coded so a lower score indicated lower symptom burden, (range 4–17) and dichotomized as ≤10 vs. >10, the median in the dataset. Wilcoxon rank sum tests were performed between the dichotomized NIS summary score and continuous quality of life and functional status outcomes. Diet quality for HNC survivors was calculated using the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015). Wilcoxon rank sum tests examined the difference between the HNC HEI-2015 as compared to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data calculated using the population ratio method. Results: A lower NIS score was statistically associated with higher posttreatment lean muscle mass (p = 0.002). A lower NIS score was associated with higher functional (p = 0.0006), physical (p = 0.0007), emotional (p = 0.007), and total (p < 0.0001) quality of life. Compared to NHANES controls, HNC survivors reported a significantly lower HEI-2015 diet quality score (p = 0.0001). Conclusions: Lower NIS burden was associated with higher lean muscle mass and functional, physical, emotional, and total quality of life in post-radiation HNC survivors. HNC survivors reported a significantly lower total HEI-2015 as compared to healthy NHANES controls, providing support for the hypothesis that chronic NIS burden impacts the desire and ability to eat. The effects of this pilot study were strong enough to be detected by straight forward statistical approaches and warrant a larger longitudinal study. For survivors most impacted by NIS burden, multidisciplinary post-radiation exercise and nutrition-based interventions to manage NISs and improve functional status, quality of life, and diet quality in this survivor population are needed.
Institutional Free Riding

Certain institutions give countries comparative advantage in certain areas, such as IPRs and the development of semiconductors. If their trading partners lack these institutions, they benefit from these goods through trade. Trading partners can misappropriate the benefit of these institutions, such as IPRs, by infringing or extorting value. The benefit of good economic institutions can be nonexcludable, and the flow of this benefit is determined by country-level decisions. This chapter explains how one country can free ride on others’ economic and political institutions. It also explains why victims of free riding continue to acquiesce. Institutional free riding has contributed to more rent seeking behavior and market concentration in the West. These direct results can lead to detrimental political and institutional change.
An integrable counterpart of the D-AKNS soliton hierarchy from so(3,R)

Abstract An integrable counterpart of the D-AKNS soliton hierarchy is generated from a matrix spectral problem associated with so ( 3 , R ) . Hamiltonian structures of the resulting counterpart soliton hierarchy are furnished by using the trace identity, which yields its Liouville integrability.
Sex and the New Woman in "The Golden Notebook"

Doris Lessing is not a feminist, and The Golden Notebook is not a feminist novel ?Lessing's remarks outside her fiction have been numerous and emphatic enough finally to convince everyone of these facts.1 But the reasons for a great deal of confusion in the not-so-distant past about the aims of The Golden Notebook are extremely significant, for this novel provides more insight into the lineaments of liberation than any other contemporary work by and about women. Women read Lessing with the same intensity and anxiety that accompany their own philoso phical and pragmatic struggles to create a new, viable selfhood. As Alison Lurie says, we come to Lessing "to find out, first, How it really is, and second, What to do about it."2 Because The Golden Notebook asks all the questions that obsess women striving for liberation, it seems imperative to find out why Lessing has tried to suggest only some of the answers. Moreover, what Lessing considers the novel's true subject?the relation between the individual and his society?far from denying its feminist value only increases its relevance to the contemporary women's movement. For women have been dehumanized and victimized largely because of the limitations of their sanctioned social roles and their remoteness from the larger political context in which they exist. If they are to emerge as fully developed individuals they must learn to establish their own relation to the world without relying on men as intermediaries. As a novelist Lessing is famous (in some eyes, infamous) for her "inclusiveness," and The Golden Notebook is the last and greatest of her novels to be fully inclu sive. While the book explores in detail and in depth virtually every situation, idea and feeling that may involve a woman, Anna herself inquires into all of the world, all of life. The reader who is herself striving to be genuinely intellectual as well as liberated feels that she has a true counterpart in Anna, a companion who is in
Fetal salvage and the prolapsed umbilical cord

Abstract This study evaluates the results of a regimen for the diagnosis and management of prolapse of the umbilical cord followed by the house staff of the University of Tennessee Memorial Research Center and Hospital. Of 8,868 patients studied, prolapse of the cord occurred in 39 for an incidence of 0.43 per cent. Diagnostic procedures and methods of delivery are discussed and results are evaluated. Two thirds of the infants whose birth was associated with prolapse of the umbilical cord were salvaged.
An Epithermal Neutron Beam from the MURR and from an Accelerator Source Compared to the Beam at the BMRR

An ideal neutron beam for BNCT is a beam of epithermal neutrons, forward directed, and free of gamma rays and thermal and fast neutrons. There are now two reactor-based epithermal beams1,2 in service in the USA and one in The Netherlands3. Several designs for reactor-and accelerator-based epithermal beams have been proposed. Of these neutron beams, three neutron beams have been selected, evaluated, and compared: (1) the operating Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR) epithermal beam1, (2) the designed Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR) epithermal beam4, and (3) the accelerator-based epithermal neutron beam designed by Wu5. The horizontal sections of these three neutron beams are depicted in Figure 1 to Figure 3. Irradiation points for future reference are labelled as “Y” in each figure. These neutron beams are compared with respect to the neutron spectra, neutron and gamma fluxes and doses, and beam directionality.
Smoothing Method for Minimax Problems

In this paper, we propose a smoothing method for minimax problem. The method is based on the exponential penalty function of Kort and Bertsekas for constrained optimization. Under suitable condition, the method is globally convergent. Preliminary numerical experiments indicate the promising of the algorithm.
On the mechanism of erythropoietin-induced differentiation: II. The effect on RNA synthesis

1. 1. An increase in RNA synthesis in bone marrow cells in vitro within 15 min after the addition of an erythropoietin extract has been demonstrated. 2. 2. The high purity of the hormone preparation used and the inhibition of this effect with trypsin make it probable that the effect is due to erythropoietin itself. 3. 3. This effect is not apparent in the undifferentiated Murphy-Sturm tumor. 4. 4. The increased RNA synthesis due to erythropoietin is abolished by actinomycin D, indicating that the effect of the hormone is on DNA-dependent RNA synthesis. 5. 5. The rapid labeling, high specific activity, DNA dependence, and sucrose gradient fractionation suggest that the component responsible for the effect is messenger RNA.
James Couzens, Andrew Mellon, the 'Greatest Tax Suit in the History of the World,' and Creation of the Joint Committee on Taxation and Its Staff

In early 1924, James Couzens was a Republican Senator from Michigan and reportedly the richest member of Congress. Andrew Mellon was beginning his fourth year as Secretary of the Treasury — a service that would eventually span 11 years under three Republican Administrations — and one of the wealthiest persons in the entire country. This article describes how a feud between these two men, an ensuing investigation led by Couzens of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) (predecessor to the modern-day IRS), and a tax case against Couzens that was described as the “greatest tax suit in the history of the world,” helped lead to creation of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and its staff. The events — filled with political intrigue, backstabbing (real or imagined), and unintended consequences — antagonized Congress’s relationship with the executive branch, but improved cooperation between the House and Senate, and both were instrumental in the JCT’s creation. The story also helps to explain certain of the unique characteristics of the JCT and its staff since their formation. Finally, the article describes how creation of the JCT became entangled with two of the most contentious tax issues of the day — the publicity of tax return information and the depletion allowance for oil and gas production — and played a role in changing the law in both areas. Although the feud and its aftermath were direct factors in the JCT’s creation, the development of the modern income tax during roughly its first decade was an essential ingredient. The decisions made by Congress, the Treasury, and the BIR during that period, and their later understanding (or misunderstanding) of the law and its effects, set the stage for the feud and subsequent events. Thus, in addition to detailing the largely untold story of the origins of an important Congressional committee and its staff, this article explains and analyzes key, early portions of our nation’s 100-year-old law as well as the sometimes flawed decision-making process — involving an intriguing mix of policy, politics, and personality — that helped produce this new institution of government.
Identification and chemical synthesis of a substrate-binding site for factor IX on coagulation factor XIa.

We have previously used monoclonal antibodies to identify an epitope on the heavy chain of factor XIa that is a substrate-binding site for factor IX (Sinha, D., Seaman, F.S., and Walsh, P.N. (1987) Biochemistry 26, 3768-3775; Baglia, F.A., Sinha, D., and Walsh, P.N. (1989) Blood 74, 244-251). To define the factor XIa domain that binds factor IX, we have now screened a panel of factor XI heavy chain-derived synthetic peptides for their capacity to inhibit the formation of an activation peptide reflecting factor IX activation by factor XIa. Peptide Asn145-Ala176 (which is located in the second tandem repeat or A2 domain of the factor XI heavy chain) is a competitive inhibitor of factor IX activation by factor XIa with a Ki of 30 nM, whereas structurally similar peptides in the A1, A3, and A4 domains were required at 10-1000-fold higher concentrations for similar effects, and a synthetic peptide identical with a highly homologous region of the heavy chain A2 domain of prekallikrein (Tyr143-Ala176) had no effect on factor IX activation by factor XIa. Because detailed structural information is lacking, a potential three-dimensional structure for the factor XI A2 domain was calculated based on its sequence information in conjunction with previously determined structural constraints. The resulting structure depicted three juxtaposed beta-stranded stem-loops that, based on biological information, constitute a candidate surface for contact with factor IX. The A2 model was therefore used as a template in the rational design of three synthetic peptides (Ala134-Ile146 (peptide a), Leu148-Arg159 (peptide b), and Ile160-Leu172 (peptide c]. When peptides a and b or a and c were added together and the activation of factor IX by factor XIa was examined, a synergistic inhibitory effect was observed, compared with each peptide added individually, whereas peptides b and c showed additive effects. Our data suggest that the sequence of amino acids from Ala134 through Leu172 of the heavy chain of factor XI contains three antiparallel beta-strands connected by beta-turns that together comprise a continuous surface utilized for the binding of factor IX.
Phospholipid Metabolism in the Absence of Net Phospholipid Synthesis in a Glycerol-Requiring Mutant of Bacillus subtilis

A glycerol-requiring auxotroph of Bacillus subtilis showed no net synthesis of phospholipid when deprived of glycerol. Although there was no net synthesis of phospholipid, we found that: (i) fatty acids and (32)P were slowly incorporated into phospholipid; (ii) in pulse-chase experiments, both (32)P and (14)C in the glycerol portion of the phospholipids were lost from phosphatidlyglycerol (PG) and lysylphosphatidylglycerol and accumulated in cardiolipin (CL); (iii) the proportions of the phospholipids in the membrane changed with a loss of PG and an accumulation of CL. The addition of glycerol to the glycerol-deprived cells resulted in a rapid incorporation of glycerol and restoration to the predeprivation metabolism and PG to CL ratio.