cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Endodontics: then and now.

Abstract Edgar Coolidge played an important role in the founding of the American Association of Endodontists and the American Board of Endodontics. His research and clinical contributions in endodontics, his high standing in the dental profession, and his influence with the leaders of dentistry on behalf of endodontics helped considerably in gaining recognition for the specialty. His was a lifetime of selflessness dedicated to the common good.
Effects of a Base Cavity on Subsonic Near-Wake Flow

An experimental investigation has been conducted to study the effects of a base cavity on the near-wake flowfield of a slender, two-dimensional body in the subsonic speed range. Three base configurations were investigated and compared: a blunt base, a shallow rectangular cavity base of depth equal to one-half the base height, and a deep rectangular cavity base of depth equal to one base height. Each configuration was studied at three freestream Mach numbers ranging from the low to high subsonic range. Schlieren photographs revealed that the basic qualitative structure of the vortex street was unmodified by the presence of a base cavity. However, the vortex street was weakened by the base cavity apparently due to the enhanced fluid mixing occurring at the entrance of the cavity. The weaker vortex street yielded higher pressures in the near wake for the cavity bases, increases in the base pressure coefficients on the order of 10-14%, and increases in the shedding frequencies on the order of 4-6% relative to the blunt-based configuration. The majority of the observed changes occurred in going from the blunt base to the shallow cavity base.
Heat transfer in an annulus with variable circumferential heat flux

Abstract An analysis of heat transfer in a concentric circular tube annulus with an arbitrarily prescribed heat flux around the periphery of either wall, or both walls, is presented. Solutions have been obtained for the hydrodynamically and thermally fully developed condition for constant heat rate per unit of tube length, for both the laminar and turbulent flow regimes. With these results, the ensuing temperature variation around either wall may be predicted. Contrary to what might be expected, the wall temperature variation is very substantial in turbulent as well as laminar flow. An example shows the importance of this effect.
Powder Diffraction Study of a Coordination Polymer Comprised of Rigid Building Blocks: [Rh2(O2CCH3)4·μ2-Se2C5H8-Se,Se‘]∞

The crystal structure of a new hybrid product comprised of two rigid building blocks, namely dirhodium(II) tetraacetate, [Rh(2)(O(2)CCH(3))(4)] (1), and 2,6-diselenaspiro[3.3]heptane, Se(2)C(5)H(8) (2), has been solved ab initio using laboratory source X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) data. The rigid body refinement approach has been applied to assist in finding an adequate model and to reduce the number of the refined parameters. Complex [Rh(2)(O(2)CCH(3))(4).mu(2)-Se(2)C(5)H(8)-Se,Se'] (3) conforms to the triclinic unit cell with lattice parameters of a = 8.1357(4), b = 8.7736(4), and c = 15.2183(8) A, alpha = 77.417(3), beta = 88.837(3), and gamma = 69.276(4) degrees, V = 989.66(8) A(3), and Z = 2. The centrosymmetric P space group was selected for calculations. The final values of the reduced wR(p), R(p), and chi(2) were calculated at 0.0579, 0.0433, and 5.95, respectively. The structure of 3 is a one-dimensional zigzag polymer built on axial Rh...Se interactions at 2.632(6) A. The 2,6-diselenaspiro[3.3]heptane ligand acts as a bidentate linker bridging dirhodium units via both selenium atoms. The geometrical parameters of individual groups for rigid body refinement have been obtained from X-ray powder data for dirhodium(II) tetraacetate (1) and from single-crystal X-ray diffraction for diselenium molecule 2. The crystal structures of 1 and 2 are reported here for the first time. For 1 indexing based on XRPD data has resulted in the triclinic unit cell P with lattice parameters of a = 8.3392(7), b = 5.2216(5), and c = 7.5264(6) A, alpha = 95.547(10), beta = 78.101(6), and gamma = 104.714(13) degrees, V = 309.51(5) A(3), and Z = 1. The final values were wR(p) = 0.0452, R(p) = 0.0340, and chi(2) = 1.99. The 1D polymeric motif built on axial Rh.O interactions of the centrosymmetric dirhodium units has been confirmed for the solid-state structure of 1. Compound 2,6-diselenaspiro[3.3]heptane (2) conforms to the monoclinic space group P2(1)/c with the unit cell parameters of a = 5.9123(4), b = 19.6400(13), and c = 5.8877(4) A, beta = 108.5500(10) degrees, V = 648.15(8) A(3), and Z = 4.
A Palette of Fluorescent Probes with Varying Emission Colors for Imaging Hydrogen Peroxide Signaling in Living Cells

We present a new family of fluorescent probes with varying emission colors for selectively imaging hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) generated at physiological cell signaling levels. This structurally homologous series of fluorescein- and rhodol-based reporters relies on a chemospecific boronate-to-phenol switch to respond to H2O2 over a panel of biologically relevant reactive oxygen species (ROS) with tunable excitation and emission maxima and sensitivity to endogenously produced H2O2 signals, as shown by studies in RAW264.7 macrophages during the phagocytic respiratory burst and A431 cells in response to EGF stimulation. We further demonstrate the utility of these reagents in multicolor imaging experiments by using one of the new H2O2-specific probes, Peroxy Orange 1 (PO1), in conjunction with the green-fluorescent highly reactive oxygen species (hROS) probe, APF. This dual-probe approach allows for selective discrimination between changes in H2O2 and hypochlorous acid (HOCl) levels in live RAW264.7 macrophages....
Group Resistance To Influence By a Conciliatory Member

Subjects were assigned as groups or individuals to the communicator role in a Prisoner's Dilemma in which a simulated individual was the recipient. Each subject was also given either a conciliatory, tough, or individualistic assignment by an "outside" group of constituents the subjects were to represent in the interaction. Individuals, charged either to be conciliatory or tough, were compared with three types of groups: all-conciliatory; conciliatory/tough, in which one group member was charged to be conciliatory and the others were charged to be tough; and conciliatory/ in dividualistic. The results showed that conciliatory individuals did carry out their assignment and were more cooperative in their behavior, promised cooperation more, threatened less, and were more conciliatory in free communication than were tough individuals. The all-conciliatory groups did not differ from conciliatory individuals. The conciliatory members of mixed groups, however, were not successful in moderating their fellows. The...
Current Therapy for Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease.

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), or heritable peripheral neuropathies, is among the most frequent genetic neuromuscular disorders, with a prevalence of approximately 1:2500. Since 1991, remarkable advances have occurred in determining the precise genetic cause of many forms of CMT and in generating animal models of many of these disorders. However, these advances have not yet resulted in cures for CMT. Recently, potential treatments for the most common form of CMT, CMT-1A, have been shown in rodent models of the disorder. Treatment with onapristone, a progesterone antagonist, has improved the neuropathy of the CMT-1A rat. Treatment with large doses of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) has improved the neuropathy of the CMT-1A mouse. Multicentric trials with ascorbic acid are likely to start in the near future to assess if vitamin C supplementation is effective and what is the dosage required in humans to improve neurologic disability. Because of potential side effects with antiprogesterone therapy, particularly in women of childbearing age, research is actively proceeding with progesterone antagonists to develop safe medications that also can be used in clinical trials of CMT-1A. Although no cures are available for CMT, there are many important treatments available for patients with CMT that can improve their quality of life and help them maintain their independence. Some of these therapies involve physiatry and orthopedic surgery. Others involve pain management. Lastly, there are potential concerns about medications or lifestyle issues that may exacerbate CMT. All of these issues will be discussed.
Fatigue, pain, and functional status during outpatient chemotherapy.

Purpose/objectives To examine the relationship of fatigue and pain with functional status and the pattern of the two symptoms' occurrence over time in individuals with cancer who were receiving outpatient chemotherapy. The aims were to describe the levels of fatigue and pain with functional status and the inter-relationships with each other and with demographic and clinical variables over time. Design Descriptive, correlational. Setting Outpatient chemotherapy clinic in the New England region of the United States. Sample Total available population of 70 consecutive adult patients with breast cancer (n = 9), colorectal cancer (n = 21), lung cancer (n = 21), or lymphoma (n = 19). Methods Retrospective data were extracted from the medical records; descriptive, correlational, and mixed-modeling methods were used to describe the sample and to examine the relationships of the symptoms and functional status. Main research variables Fatigue, pain, functional status, and demographic and clinical factors. Findings Fatigue was the most frequently reported symptom; pain was rarely and almost exclusively reported by patients with lung cancer or lymphoma during their early treatments. Fatigue and functional status impairment were highly associated with each other and had similar relationships with the other variables. Conclusions The patterns and relationships of fatigue and functional status reported by this fairly healthy sample provide useful information to help guide early assessments and nursing interventions for people receiving outpatient chemotherapy. Implications for nursing The patterns and severity of symptoms and functional status impairment in people with colorectal cancer or lymphoma warrant further investigation. Targeted exercise interventions for specific outpatient populations should be developed and tested to address specific patterns of symptoms and functional status impairment in individuals with cancer.
Preserving microstructure of concrete under load using the Wood’s metal technique

Abstract A special experimental technique was developed which made possible the preservation of microstructure and the compressive stress-induced microcracks in concrete as they exist under applied loads. Cylindrical specimens of concrete were tested under uniaxial and triaxial compression. The resulting induced cracks were impregnated with a metal alloy, Wood’s metal, that liquefies at higher temperatures (70–85°C), but is solid at normal temperatures. At the stress of interest, this alloy was solidified to preserve the stress-induced microcracks as they exist under load. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was employed to capture images from the cross sections of the concrete specimens. Stereology presents the geometrical statistical background for relating three-dimensional structures to their two-dimensional sections. Stereological estimates were obtained for total crack extension per unit of volume. Further, two-dimensional features of the cracks were analyzed in the section plane, such as orientation distribution, and length.
Use of the dopamine agonists bromocriptine and cabergoline in the management of risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia in patients with psychotic disorders.

Risperidone is a novel antipsychotic agent that blocks both dopaminergic and serotonergic receptors. In several reports, clinically significant hyperprolactinemia has been reported in patients on this agent. However, the optimal management of risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia has not been clarified. We reviewed the records of 5 patients with psychotic disorders who were evaluated for risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia. There were 4 females and 1 male patient, aged 30–45 yr. All patients had significant hyperprolactinemia, with prolactin (PRL) levels ranging from 65.5 to 209 μg/l. All but 1 of these patients had manifestations of hypogonadism. In these 4 patients, risperidone therapy was continued and the dopamine agonists bromocriptine or cabergoline were added. In 3 out of 4 patients, such additional therapy reduced the PRL level and alleviated hypogonadism. None of the patients treated with these agents had a worsening of psychosis. We conclude that risperidone can cause clinically significant hyperprolactinemia in patients treated with this drug. If risperidone therapy must be continued in such patients, addition of the dopamine agonists bromocriptine or cabergoline may successfully alleviate hyperprolactinemia and the associated manifestations without worsening psychotic symptoms.
Sphere of influence graphs and the L ∞ -metric

We introduce sphere of influence graphs (SIGs) in the L∞-metric and study their elementary properties. We argue that SIGs defined with the L∞-metric are superior to Euclidean SIGs of Toussaint in capturing low-level perceptual information in certain dot patterns. Every graph without isolated vertices is a SIG in the L∞-metric for all sufficiently high dimensions, and this allows us to define a graphical parameter, the SIG-dimension, that is akin to boxicity. We determine the SIG-dimensions for some classes of graphs and obtain inequalities for others.
Capsule Commentary on Melzer et.al., Missing Potential Opportunities to Reduce Repeat COPD Exacerbations

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the most common of the chronic lower respiratory illnesses, the third leading U.S. cause of death.1 Despite the prevalence of COPD, established treatment guidelines and evidence that long-acting beta-agonists and/or inhaled corticosteroids reduce the risk of exacerbations, the disease is often undertreated.2 In this study, Melzer et al. found that nearly all (93 %) of 2,570 Veterans Affairs (VA) patients experiencing a COPD exacerbation were on no or only one long-acting medication, and a minority (~35 %) were prescribed additional medications within 180 days of the exacerbation.3 Older patients, smokers, depression, congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes, use of ipratroprium bromide and prior COPD exacerbations were associated with lower odds of receiving additional therapy. Clinicians can use this study to reflect on their own practice patterns in treating patients with COPD. Given that medication adherence is low among patients with COPD (between 19.8 and 30.6 %), under-prescribing evidence-based therapy magnifies the unnecessary morbidity and cost associated with this disease.4 Clinicians should use COPD exacerbations as an opportunity to review the patient’s current treatment regimen and consider changes to reduce future exacerbations. There are limitations to this study. First, the study uses data from an administrative database. This data set captures prescribing patterns of VA physicians, but not those outside the VA, which may underestimate the amount of medication prescribed. Second, the study assumes that all study patients not on both a bronchodilator and inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) should have additional inhaled therapies added to their regimen. However, there is limited evidence on when to start combination therapy. The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) recommends starting with a bronchodilator and then adding an ICS for those with FEV1 < 50 % or with frequent exacerbations.5 Melzer et al. do not describe how many exacerbations the patients in their study have experienced. If they have only had the single index exacerbation, ICS may not be necessary. Despite these limitations, this study demonstrates missed opportunities to improve treatment for patients with symptomatic COPD. With greater penetration of the electronic medical record, clinicians and practices can review their own prescribing patterns to improve the quality of treatment they provide to their patients with COPD.
Body fat and circulating leukocytes in children.

To determine the effects of obesity on baseline levels of circulating granulocytes, monocytes, and lymphocyte subtypes in otherwise healthy children. Two group comparison of leukocytes in normal weight control and overweight children. In total, 38 boys and girls, ages 6–18 years, divided in two groups: normal weight, (NW, BMI 85th %tile, n=23). BMI obtained from direct measures of height and body mass. Body fat was assessed by DEXA. Complete blood counts (CBC) were obtained by standard clinical hematology methods and surface antigen staining by flow cytometry. The OW group compared to the NW group had increased total leukocytes counts (P=0.011), neutrophils (P=0.006), monocytes (P=0.008), total T (CD3) lymphocytes (P=0.022), and Helper T (CD4+) cells (P=0.003). Significant correlations were evident between leukocytes, and BMI percentile, BMI, or percent body fat. Neither lean body mass nor VO2peak per unit lean body mass were significantly related to any of the leukocytes. Percent body fat and BMI percentile were positively correlated (P<0.05) to total T cells (CD3) and/or helper T cells (CD4+). A group of 23 overweight children displayed elevated counts in most types of circulating immune cells, suggesting the presence of low-grade systemic inflammation, a known pathogenetic mechanism underlying most long-term complications of obesity. Our data provide an additional rationale for the importance of avoiding or correcting pediatric obesity.
Image-Based Visual Servo Control Of Robots

Visual servo control offers advantages for flexibility and interactive performance of robotic systems. Design of such systems requires formal analysis of both the image processing requirements and the control strategy for multi-degree-of-freedom systems. Image features may be extracted and interpreted to provide estimates of relative camera position in three-dimensional space. Image features in themselves often maintain continuity during sequences of time-varying images, and that continuity provides a basis for use of features as control variables. Analysis and simulation of model reference adaptive control structures have shown that with proper attention to regimes of operation and priority among features, image-based control of multi-degree-of-freedom systems may provide improved dynamic performance due to reduction in image interpretation computational load and estimation noise.
Pediatric High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging

High-field 3 T magnetic resonance (MR) imaging provides greater signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared with 1.5 T systems. Various MR imaging clinical applications in children can benefit from improvements resulting from this increased SNR. High-resolution imaging of the brain, arterial spin labeling perfusion imaging, diffusion imaging, MR spectroscopy, and imaging of small anatomic parts are some areas in which these improvements can increase our clinical diagnostic capabilities. However, challenges inherent to 3 T imaging become more relevant in children. The use of 3 T imaging in children has allowed better diagnostic efficacy in neuroimaging, but certain technique modifications may be required for optimal imaging.
Canine neurotensin, neurotensin6-13 and neuromedin N: primary structures and receptor activity.

Abstract Canine neurotensin (NT) and neuromedin N (NMN) were isolated from extracts of ileal mucosa using radioimmunoassay for detection. The structures determined were consistent with those predicted by earlier cDNA work. The molar ratio of NT to NMN was ca. 7, suggesting that the NT/NMN precursor, which contains one copy of each peptide, undergoes complex posttranslational processing or that other NT-precursors lacking NMN exist. In addition to NT, small quantities of NT 6–13 and NT 2–13 were obtained. Native and synthetic preparations of these peptides were indistinguishable in a radioreceptor assay employing rat brain membranes and 125 I-labeled NT; NT 6–13 was ca. 8-times more potent than NT and NMN was about one-sixth as potent as NT. NT 6–13 was also ca. 10 times more potent than NT in inhibiting spontaneous contractile activity in longitudinally-oriented smooth muscle strips of porcine jejunum. Preparations of intestinal N-cells as well as N-cell vesicles also appeared to contain NT 2–13 and NT 6–13 ; however, it is not yet clear whether these peptides are utilized physiologically or simply represent metabolites of NT. These results suggest that further work on the processing of NT precursor and on biologic abilities of partial sequences of NT could be fruitful.
Advances in Security Technologies: Imaging, Anomaly Detection, and Target and Biometric Recognition

Security system design and analysis are constantly improving. There are advances in sensors, in system concept, and in signal and image processing that all contribute to these improvements. Several of these advances are discussed, with an emphasis on imaging sensors with a wide range of wavelengths and deployment scenarios. In order for a security system to provide timely, reliable information, the processing must be efficient and robust. Specific, yet generalizable, developments in surveillance systems and in recognition systems are detailed.
Nursing administration in Russia.

During graduate studies in a nursing administration program, an opportunity presented itself to travel to a rural Russian community of 10,000 to study the healthcare system. The Russian healthcare system has not changed much since the Soviet days. All healthcare facilities are government owned and all healthcare providers are government employees. Basic healthcare provided to citizens is paid for by the government.1,2 Fee-for-service physicians are available in larger cities but at costs that are prohibitive for most Russians. On average, nurses working at the clinics make 4,000 rubles a month, or approximately $148. Hospital nurses are paid more than those working in clinics and home health agencies. Physicians' salaries are only slightly higher than those of nurses, averaging $160 to 180 a month.
Serotonin receptors in human neuroblastoma: A possible biologic tumor marker

We used saturation radioligand binding to measure nine types of serotonin receptors in 13 neuroblastomas from children. 5-HT1E and 5-HT3 sites were found in neuroblastomas with receptor density and affinity similar to human or rat brain. No 5-HT1A, 5-HT1B, 5-HT1C, 5-HT1D, 5-HT2, or 5-HT uptake sites were found in any of the tumors, although all were detected in human or rat brain. These data demonstrate that human neuroblastomas possess 5-HT receptors found in human brain and relevant to human myoclonus. We speculate that 5-HT receptors in human neural crest-derived tumors may have clinical and neurobiological significance.
Ectopic pairing and evolution of 5S ribosomal RNA genes in the chromosomes of Drosophila funebris

5S ribosomal RNA from Drosophila melanogaster labeled with 125I was used to locate the 5S rRNA genes in chromosomes of D. funebris by means of in situ hybridization. Silver grains were observed at three distinct sites, one of which was a recognized reverse repeat. Only one half of the reverse repeat, however, hybridizes with 5S rRNA and the significance of this phenomenon is discussed. A case of ectopic pairing between two different 5S sites in the genome is reported, and the significance of ectopic pairing is considered.
Six-sigma design (quality control)

The approach to customer satisfaction taken at Motorola is described. It is based on two conclusions derived from various studies: A product is built in the shortest time and at the lowest cost if no mistake is made in the process; and if no defect can be found anywhere in the process of building a product for the customer, then the customer probably will not find one either. Beginning in 1987, Motorola designers were required to adopt +or-6-sigma tolerance limits, i.e., product design margins were to be twice the normal variation of the process. The way in which this was implemented in a six-step design process is described. >
Effects of the duration, intensity, and breadth of family preservation services: A new analysis of data from the illinois family first experiment☆

Abstract Effects of key components of family preservation services were examined using data from a rigorous evaluation of intensive family preservation services in Illinois. Simultaneous equations were developed using two-stage least squares estimates to model relationships between case characteristics, service characteristics, and case outcomes. Results indicate that the duration, intensity, and breadth of family preservation services have little overall impact on out-of-home placement of children, the recurrence of child maltreatment, or the closing of cases in the public child welfare agency. Policy makers, practitioners, and researchers are advised to look beyond these features of family preservation programs in search of effective interventions for children and families.
Environments and populations of supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud

The stellar and interstellar environments of the 32 known SNRs in the LMC have been examined to determine the relative numbers of population I and II progenitors. At least 2/3 of the LMC SNRs are associated with pop I environments. The data suggest that the existing SNR surveys are biased against the detection of SNRs located in evolved star-forming regions, such as supershells produced by OB asociations, and in the cores of luminous H II regions. Therefore, the fraction of SNRs in pop I environments may be even higher. The results are compared to previous studies of SN statistics in late-type galaxies.
Multi-resolution navigation of mobile robots with complete coverage of unknown and complex environments

This paper presents a multi-resolution navigation algorithm for mobile robots operating as a single agent in unknown and complex environments. The algorithm seamlessly integrates the concepts of local navigation and global navigation, and enables adaptive decision-making based on the sensory information. The algorithm guarantees complete coverage of the search area and does not suffer from the local minima problem that is commonly encountered in potential field-based methods. The efficacy of the algorithm is validated on a high-fidelity Player/Stage simulator. Potential applications include humanitarian de-mining, hazard detection and floor-cleaning tasks.
Presenilin-1 regulates intracellular trafficking and cell surface delivery of β-amyloid precursor protein

Presenilins (PS1/PS2) play a critical role in proteolysis of beta-amyloid precursor protein (beta APP) to generate beta-amyloid, a peptide important in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Nevertheless, several regulatory functions of PS1 have also been reported. Here we demonstrate, in neuroblastoma cells, that PS1 regulates the biogenesis of beta APP-containing vesicles from the trans-Golgi network and the endoplasmic reticulum. PS1 deficiency or the expression of loss-of-function variants leads to robust vesicle formation, concomitant with increased maturation and/or cell surface accumulation of beta APP. In contrast, release of vesicles containing beta APP is impaired in familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD)-linked PS1 mutant cells, resulting in reduced beta APP delivery to the cell surface. Moreover, diminution of surface beta APP is profound at axonal terminals in neurons expressing a PS1 FAD variant. These results suggest that PS1 regulation of beta APP trafficking may represent an alternative mechanism by which FAD-linked PS1 variants modulate beta APP processing.
Agricultural technology, wealth, and responsibility

Responsibility as a dual to human rights is presented as a moral alternative to extended, complex systems of animal and ecological rights. This simple idea of responsibility is then applied to four levels of agricultural technology: animal (nature) rights, conservation, organization of agriculture, and people versus planet relationships. The stewardship argument is freed from at least some of the complications of animal rights and ecology, but leaves responsibility with humans to do the right thing.
A ten-year review of amebic abscess of the liver: 1956-1966.

A 10-year review of 17 patients with amebic abscess of the liver is presented. In our patients, a clinical picture occurred consistently enough to make one strongly suspect amebic liver abscess. Usually, the patient was a male with a 2- to 4-month history of weight loss, and right pleuritic or right upper quadrant pain. During examination, fever, signs of a right pleural effusion, and a large tender liver were found. Once a diagnosis is suspected, definitive steps should be taken to demonstrate an abscess, since this potentially fatal disease is curable.
A Computer-Controlled Adaptive Antenna System

The problem of active pattern control in multibeam or phased array antenna systems is one that is well suited to technologies based upon microprocessor feedback control systems. Adaptive arrays can be realized by incorporating microprocessors as control elements in closed-loop feedback paths. As intelligent controllers, microprocessors can detect variations in arrays and implement suitable configuration changes. The subject of this paper is the application of the Howells-Applebaum power inversion algorithm in a C-band multibeam antenna system. A proof-of-concept, microprocessor controlled, adaptive beamforming network (BFN) was designed, assembled, and subsequent tests were performed demonstrating the algorithm's capacity for nulling narrowband jammers.
Analyzing statistical relationships between global indicators through visualization

There is a wealth of information collected about national level socio-economic indicators across all countries each year. These indicators are important in recognizing the level of development in certain aspects of a particular country, and are also essential in international policy making. However with past data spanning several decades and many hundreds of indicators evaluated, trying to get an intuitive sense of this data has in a way become more difficult. This is because simple indicator-wise visualization of data such as line/bar graphs or scatter plots does not do a very good job of analyzing the underlying associations or behavior. Therefore most of the socio-economic analysis regarding development tends to be focused on few main economic indicators. However, we believe that there are valuable insights to be gained from understanding how the multitude of social, economic, educational and health indicators relate to each other.The focus of our work is to provide an integration of statistical analysis with visualization to gain new socio-economic insights and knowledge. We compute correlation and linear regression between indicators using time-series data. We cluster countries based on indicator trends and analyze the results of the clustering to identify similarities and anomalies. The results are shown on a correlation or regression grid and can be visualized on a world map using a flexible interactive visualization system.This work provides a pathway to exploring deeper relationships between socio-economic indicators and countries in the hands of the user, and carries the potential for identifying important underpinnings of policy changes.
Decentralized Output Feedback Control of Interconnected Systems with High-Order Nonlinearities

This paper considers the problem of global decentralized output feedback control of large-scale systems with subsystems interconnected by nonlinearities which are functions of the measurable and unmeasurable states. The distinguishing factor of this paper is that the nonlinearities are allowed to be of higher-order in these unmeasurable states, and one subsystem's nonlinearities need not be similar to another's.
Exploiting weakly-labeled Web images to improve object classification: a domain adaptation approach

Most current image categorization methods require large collections of manually annotated training examples to learn accurate visual recognition models. The time-consuming human labeling effort effectively limits these approaches to recognition problems involving a small number of different object classes. In order to address this shortcoming, in recent years several authors have proposed to learn object classifiers from weakly-labeled Internet images, such as photos retrieved by keyword-based image search engines. While this strategy eliminates the need for human supervision, the recognition accuracies of these methods are considerably lower than those obtained with fully-supervised approaches, because of the noisy nature of the labels associated to Web data. In this paper we investigate and compare methods that learn image classifiers by combining very few manually annotated examples (e.g., 1-10 images per class) and a large number of weakly-labeled Web photos retrieved using keyword-based image search. We cast this as a domain adaptation problem: given a few strongly-labeled examples in a target domain (the manually annotated examples) and many source domain examples (the weakly-labeled Web photos), learn classifiers yielding small generalization error on the target domain. Our experiments demonstrate that, for the same number of strongly-labeled examples, our domain adaptation approach produces significant recognition rate improvements over the best published results (e.g., 65% better when using 5 labeled training examples per class) and that our classifiers are one order of magnitude faster to learn and to evaluate than the best competing method, despite our use of large weakly-labeled data sets.
Threats to the teaching alliance.

Ursano, Karthesier and Ursano’s insights on the teaching alliance provide a foundation for creating and maintaining an effective educational atmosphere in clinical training. Ursano and colleagues base their suggestions on the premise that teaching mental health professionals has an analog in the concept of the therapeutic alliance, a concept that has proven to be of great descriptive use in psychoanalysis as well as most, if not all, schools of psychotherapy. In the treatment situation, fostering an alliance is typically seen as the first and perhaps most important task of the therapist, as it is viewed as a prerequisite for future therapeutic efficacy. Greenson and Zetzel, referenced by the authors, spoke explicitly about the value of allying with the part of the patient that wished to be helped. The alliance, like any other interpersonal encounter involves transference (Brenner, 1979), but these analytic luminaries plus Ursano and colleagues see this as essentially a rational act, based in secondary process thinking. The authors do teachers a service by applying the lessons learned in the consultation room to the classroom. Attending to mutually understood goals, tasks, and expected resistances allows for the student and teacher to make good use of the opportunities for both the transfer of knowledge and identification with a learned instructor. When life is going well in the classroom or seminar, such success probably has something to do with the teacher wittingly or unwittingly following some or all of the clear prescriptions that Ursano and colleagues have outlined. The educational diagnosis of Ursano and colleagues is a useful template for the teacher to attend to some of the elements that facilitate establishing and maintaining the teaching alliance and repairing it when disrupted by individual dynamics, particularly narcissistic vulnerabilities. I infer that one of the reasons Ursano’s paper is published in Psychiatry rather than an educational journal is that there are elements of the subject matter of mental functioning and the experience of working with unconscious conflicts of our patients as well as our own that arise during this work that complicate and may undermine the rational basis upon which the teaching alliance is constructed. I think it may be useful to provide some additional thoughts on these and other sources of interferences. Freud (1937) listed psychoanalysis as one of the three impossible professions in his gloomy but seminal contribution, Analysis Terminable and Interminable. It is less commonly known that education is one of the others (government was the third). Succeeding as a psychoanalyst was seen as impossible bePsychiatry 70(3) Fall 2007 200
SAGA: a subgraph matching tool for biological graphs

Motivation: With the rapid increase in the availability of biological graph datasets, there is a growing need for effective and efficient graph querying methods. Due to the noisy and incomplete characteristics of these datasets, exact graph matching methods have limited use and approximate graph matching methods are required. Unfortunately, existing graph matching methods are too restrictive as they only allow exact or near exact graph matching. This paper presents a novel approximate graph matching technique called SAGA. This technique employs a flexible model for computing graph similarity, which allows for node gaps, node mismatches and graph structural differences. SAGA employs an indexing technique that allows it to efficiently evaluate queries even against large graph datasets. Results: SAGA has been used to query biological pathways and literature datasets, which has revealed interesting similarities between distinct pathways that cannot be found by existing methods. These matches associate seemingly unrelated biological processes, connect studies in different sub-areas of biomedical research and thus pose hypotheses for new discoveries. SAGA is also orders of magnitude faster than existing methods. Availability: SAGA can be accessed freely via the web at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/saga. Binaries are also freely available at this website. Contact: jignesh@eecs.umich.edu Supplementary material: Supplementary material is available at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/periscope/publ/saga-suppl.pdf.
Collaborative Spatial Object Recommendation in Location Based Services

Recommendation systems have found their ways into many on-line web applications, e.g., product recommendation on Amazon and movie recommendation on Netflix. Particularly, collaborative filtering techniques have been widely used in these systems to personalize the recommendations according to the needs and tastes of users. In this paper, we apply collaborative filtering in spatial object recommendation which is essential in many location based services. Due to the large number of spatial objects and participating users, using collaborative filtering to obtain recommendations for a particular user can be very expensive. However, we observe that users tend to have affinity for some regions and argue that using users with similar regional bias in recommendation may help in reducing the search space of similar users. Thus, we propose two techniques, namely, Access Minimum Bounding Rectangle Overlapped Area (AMBROA) and Grid Division Cosine Similarity (GDCS), to form regions of interests that represent user location interests and activities and to find users with local access similarity to facilitate effective spatial object recommendation. We conduct an extensive performance evaluation to validate our ideas. Evaluation result demonstrates the superiority of our proposal over the conventional approach.
Voting with bystanders

A voting protocol overcoming the usual requirements of a minimum number of three copies to be of any practical use and relatively high number of read and write requests is presented. It provides a significant amount of fault-tolerance with as few as two replicas. This protocol, voting with bystanders (VWB), applies to all networks consisting of local area network segments that are immune to partial failures linked by gateways that might fail. A stochastic analysis of the protocol under general Markovian assumptions is presented showing that VWB provides excellent read availabilities and good write availabilities with as few as two or three replicas. >
A Gaussian neural network implementation for control scheduling

Using neurons with Gaussian nonlinearities, a neural network is designed to implement a control law scheduler. For the implementation discussed, the neural network is supplied information about existing operating conditions and then responds by supplying control law parameter values to the controller. The neural network has two layers of weights, and the values of the weights and biases are based on given operating points for the scheduler. By designing the neural network's generalization behavior, specifications for the interpolation between the given operating points are satisfied. The neural network implementation performs best when the operating points are equidistant and has some drawbacks when used to implement multiparameter schedulers. >
ASPMN Survey—Nurses' Practice Patterns Related to Monitoring and Preventing Respiratory Depression

The American Society for Pain Management Nursing convened a taskforce to develop guidelines on monitoring for opioid-induced sedation and respiratory depression. Part of the guideline development was the determination of nursing practice patterns related to monitoring and preventing respiratory depression during the administration of analgesics for pain. One hundred and forty-seven responses were received from 90 unique institutions across the United States. Monitoring adults with intermittent pulse oximetry while using intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA) was 58%. Adults were monitored with continuous pulse oximetry by 25% of respondents. When using continuous epidural analgesia, 56% of patients were monitored intermittently, and 40% were monitored continuously. The use of end tidal CO2 (ETCO2) monitoring was much less, with 2.2% patients on epidural therapy, and 1.5% of institutions were using ETCO2 with IV PCA. The survey also included the location of the alarm, respiratory parameters for alarms, changes in procedures reported by institutions, and definitions of high-risk patients.
Countering the Politics of Class, Race, Gender, and Geography in Early Childhood Education

Mirroring many of the same social and geographic inequities present in the K-12 educational system, the promise of early childhood education has been unfulfilled for many young children and their families. Social norms and funding structures, including the lack of universal, publicly funded high-quality preschool offerings, have served to perpetuate gender, class, economic, and racial inequity. The outcomes of these inequities are clearly manifested in the politics of universal preschool access and quality. In this policy analysis, the author discusses disparities in preschool access and quality, critiques social and political barriers to equitable distribution of preschool resources, and suggests several strategies for countering the current politics of class, race, gender, and geography in early childhood education. Findings from this analysis suggest that in order to provide high-quality early childhood education for all children, policy makers and advocates must address structural and attitudinal inequities.
The Culture of War: A Study of Women Military Nurses in Vietnam:

Many books and studies have described the male Vietnam War culture, whereas similar literature about women is almost nonexistent. This study describes the culture of war nursing as experienced by 24 U.S. women military nurses. Data were generated using a core question and in-depth interviews. Phenomenology served as the research method, incorporating data analysis procedures of Colaizzi and Lincoln and Guba. Nine theme categories were identified to describe the culture of war nursing. Core values of the military culture were threaded throughout descriptions, and activities to make their environment more homelike embodied the positive values of their culture.
Role of Salicylic Acid and NIM1/NPR1 in Race-Specific Resistance in Arabidopsis

Salicylic acid (SA) and the NIM1/NPR1 protein have both been demonstrated to be required for systemic acquired resistance (SAR) and implicated in expression of race-specific resistance. In this work, we analyzed the role that each of these molecules play in the resistance response triggered by members of two subclasses of resistance (R) genes, members of which recognize unrelated pathogens. We tested the ability of TIR and coiled-coil-class (also known as leucine-zipper-class) R genes to confer resistance to Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato or Peronospora parasitica in SA-depleted (NahG) and nim1/npr1 plants. We found that all of the P. syringae pv. tomato-specific R genes tested were dependent upon SA accumulation, while none showed strong dependence upon NIM1/NPR1 activity. A similar SA dependence was observed for the P. parasitica TIR and CC-class R genes RPP5 and RPP8, respectively. However, the P. parasitica-specific R genes differed in their requirement for NIM1/NPR1, with just RPP5 depending upon NIM1/NPR1 activity for effectiveness. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that at least in Arabidopsis, SA accumulation is necessary for the majority of R-gene-triggered resistance, while the role of NIM1/NPR in race-specific resistance is limited to resistance to P. parasitica mediated by TIR-class R genes.
Analysis of Temperature in Phase Change Memory Scaling

We analyze constant-voltage isotropic and non-isotropic scaling issues for phase change memory (PCM) based on electrothermal physics. Various analytical and simulation models of general and typical PCM cells that support the analysis is also provided. The analysis shows that the maximum temperature in the PCM cell, which is a key parameter for PCM operation, is independent of geometrical sizes and depends only on the voltage and material properties. This leads to the minimum programming voltage concept, which is determined by material properties of the phase change material. Constant-voltage scaling, electrothermal modeling, ovonic unified memory (OUM), phase change memory (PCM, phase change random access memory, PRAM), proximity disturbance, thermal disturbance.
Learning user preferences for sets of objects

Most work on preference learning has focused on pairwise preferences or rankings over individual items. In this paper, we present a method for learning preferences over sets of items. Our learning method takes as input a collection of positive examples---that is, one or more sets that have been identified by a user as desirable. Kernel density estimation is used to estimate the value function for individual items, and the desired set diversity is estimated from the average set diversity observed in the collection. Since this is a new learning problem, we introduce a new evaluation methodology and evaluate the learning method on two data collections: synthetic blocks-world data and a new real-world music data collection that we have gathered.
Experiences with Disjoint Data Structures in a New Hardware Transactional Memory System

In this paper we present our experiences constructing and testing in-memory data structures designed to be disjoint enough for transactional memory to be profitable as a serialization mechanism with no fallback to traditional locking. Our goal was to restrict memory conflicts to actual contention situations so that transactional memory techniques could be used as efficiently as possible. We describe the hardware transactional execution facility in the IBM enterprise EC12 server. We present an order preserving hashed structure that permits insertion, deletion, and traversal operations typically supported by a sorted linked list. We measure the performance and scalability for these operations on the IBM enterprise EC12 server. Our results show near linear scalability of the insertion and deletion operations for up to 96 CPUs. We also discuss transaction abort frequency and hardware/software interactions.