cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A Note on an Apparent Relationship Between Temperamental Traits and Personality Traits

insights of role-playing do not emerge immediately but take shape slowly as we continue to enact the part. In the same way, by requiring a person to act out a certain role in a continuing series of episodes relating to the same characters, we strengthen the actor's comprehension of his role. (Incidentally we also begin to add an historical dimension to the interaction.) Insight can be augmented further if the actors are required to furnish their own scripts from session to session, for such preparation of material necessitates additional thought about the role.7
Marxism and Democracy

Some of the more significant contributions to social theory in the sixties and seventies were made by Marxists who endeavored to “bring the state back in” to considerations of both the nature of the structure of social relations and to prospects for historical transformation. Following the large divisions of this period between structuralism, critical theory and “plain” Marxism (the approach according to which the economic infrastructure determined, in rough correspondence, the crucial institutions of the superstructure), the precise location of the state in social relations, its effectivity and its vulnerability to protest and reform were the crucial issues in dispute. Notwithstanding these differences, Marxist theory remained largely immune to some of the major debates that had animated the socialist and working-class movements of the nineteenth century, especially the question of democracy. No doubt this glaring omission can be ascribed in a significant measure to the certainties of the post-Bolshevik left which lingered throughout the postwar period, at least until the collapse of “Eurocommunism” in the late seventies. For social democrats the body of liberal democracy was to be incorporated into the new socialist societies.
Amyloidosis: Molecular Insights and Cellular Blindspots

Since the introductory speakers presented very complete overviews of each subject dealt with on the second day of this meeting, mere reiteration of this material seems redundant. Instead, I shall point out what, in my opinion, may be the highlights of the new contributions and where I think we should go from here.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain

Chronic pain represents a challenge for both the individual and the society, in that it is associated with psychological distress, disability, loss of work, and increased health care costs. Over the last few decades, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become the treatment of choice within multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatments and outpatient psychiatric departments, for individuals with chronic pain problems of all types. In this chapter, we discuss cognitive behavioral strategies for management of chronic pain in outpatient behavioral medicine settings. First, we discuss the development of the CBT model for pain. Next, we briefly discuss the most common comorbid psychological factors associated with chronic pain and summarize the efficacy of CBT for chronic pain. The main focus of the chapter includes a review of specific behavioral, cognitive, physiological, and pain-specific modules for pain management, while encouraging the development of a patient-centered treatment plans consistent with patient presentation and goals. These principles are viewed in the context of a case description.
Thin Films of Active Materials

This paper summarizes some recent developments in the study of the mechanics of thin films motivated by the use of active materials in making microactuators.
The effects of information framing on intentions to vaccinate against human papilloma virus.

B28 In June 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a vaccine to prevent human papilloma virus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States and the leading cause of cervical cancer. Because the vaccine was approved for females as young as 9, its success depends largely on parents9 and individuals9 willingness to accept vaccination. It is unknown whether attitudes toward vaccination will be influenced by the way the vaccine is portrayed in the media or in public debate. The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of information framing on beliefs of disease susceptibility and intentions to vaccinate self or female children, if appropriate. Participants read one of three short descriptive paragraphs about the vaccine, each of which emphasized a different aspect of the vaccine: the vaccine protects against cervical cancer; the vaccine protects against cervical cancer and an STI; the vaccine protects against cervical cancer and an STI and may or may not lead to increased sexual promiscuity among the vaccinated. Participants were then asked about their intentions to vaccinate under two conditions: if they had to pay for the vaccine; and if the vaccine were provided at little or no cost. One participant per household was randomly selected from a web-enabled research panel designed to be representative of the US population. Households are provided with free hardware and Internet access if necessary. Survey items were included as a one-time module in a monthly survey. Participants were randomized to read one descriptive paragraph before indicating their intentions toward vaccination. Main effects of the framing manipulation were determined using ANOVA. 635 adults completed the study questionnaire (49% male; mean age= 47.6). The survey response rate was 31%. Although more than half (56%) had heard of HPV and 42% had heard about a vaccine for HPV, 80% indicated that they had never talked to a health care provider about HPV. 56% reported that they had seen or heard news or ads about HPV in the past week. Women who read that the vaccine protects only against cervical cancer had significantly higher intentions to vaccinate themselves when the vaccine was available at little or no cost compared to women who read alternate versions of the descriptive paragraph (F=5.74, p=0.004). Intentions to vaccinate female children were mixed, although this could be attributed to insufficient power to detect significant differences. Despite high levels of exposure to and awareness of the HPV vaccine, intentions to vaccinate are mixed. Trends indicate that intentions are highest when the vaccine is framed to solely prevent cervical cancer and lowest when the vaccine is framed to prevent both cervical cancer and an STI, indicating that people may feel the need for an STI vaccine is unnecessary, perhaps due to a false sense of disease risk.
Application of Evolutionary Computation for Berth Scheduling at Marine Container Terminals: Parameter Tuning Versus Parameter Control

Considering a substantial increase in the international seaborne containerized trade volumes, marine container terminal operators have to improve efficiency of the processes inside their terminals in order to meet the growing demand. An efficient berth scheduling is of a high importance for the terminal’s performance, as it significantly influences the turnaround time of vessels. This paper proposes a novel Evolutionary Algorithm to assist with berth scheduling at marine container terminals that, unlike published to date studies on berth scheduling, applies a parameter control strategy. Specifically, an adaptive mechanism is developed for the mutation operator, in which the mutation rate is altered based on feedback from the search. The objective of the proposed mixed integer model aims to minimize the total weighted vessel service cost. A set of numerical experiments are conducted to assess performance of the developed algorithm based on a comparison against a typical Evolutionary Algorithm that applies a constant mutation rate value, determined from the parameter tuning analysis. Results indicate that the optimality gap does not exceed 0.80% for both algorithms. Furthermore, deployment of the adaptive mechanism for the mutation operator yields an average of 5.4% and 8.5% savings in terms of the total weighted vessel service cost for medium and large size problem instances, respectively, without a significant increase in the computational time.
Single-Cell Imaging Using Radioluminescence Microscopy Reveals Unexpected Binding Target for [18F]HFB

Cell-based therapies are showing great promise for a variety of diseases, but remain hindered by the limited information available regarding the biological fate, migration routes and differentiation patterns of infused cells in trials. Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using positron emission tomography (PET) to track single cells utilising an approach known as positron emission particle tracking (PEPT). The radiolabel hexadecyl-4-[18F]fluorobenzoate ([18F]HFB) was identified as a promising candidate for PEPT, due to its efficient and long-lasting labelling capabilities. The purpose of this work was to characterise the labelling efficiency of [18F]HFB in vitro at the single-cell level prior to in vivo studies. The binding efficiency of [18F]HFB to MDA-MB-231 and Jurkat cells was verified in vitro using bulk gamma counting. The measurements were subsequently repeated in single cells using a new method known as radioluminescence microscopy (RLM) and binding of the radiolabel to the single cells was correlated with various fluorescent dyes. Similar to previous reports, bulk cell labelling was significantly higher with [18F]HFB (18.75 ± 2.47 dpm/cell, n = 6) than 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose ([18F]FDG) (7.59 ± 0.73 dpm/cell, n = 7; p ≤ 0.01). However, single-cell imaging using RLM revealed that [18F]HFB accumulation in live cells (8.35 ± 1.48 cpm/cell, n = 9) was not significantly higher than background levels (4.83 ± 0.52 cpm/cell, n = 12; p > 0.05) and was 1.7-fold lower than [18F]FDG uptake in the same cell line (14.09 ± 1.90 cpm/cell, n = 13; p < 0.01). Instead, [18F]HFB was found to bind significantly to fragmented membranes associated with dead cell nuclei, suggesting an alternative binding target for [18F]HFB. This study demonstrates that bulk analysis alone does not always accurately portray the labelling efficiency, therefore highlighting the need for more routine screening of radiolabels using RLM to identify heterogeneity at the single-cell level.
Learning From Major Clinical Trials: Bending Without Breaking

> We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom . > > — E.O. Wilson From basic investigations, case reports, observational analyses, and randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the pace of generating and publishing medical information continues to accelerate at an overwhelming rate.1 Separating the wisdom from the rapidly growing cacophony of less dependable to actually unreliable material represents an increasing challenge. Across the spectrum of medical information, the results of RCTs are considered less susceptible to bias and more reliable. However, RCTs range in quality and reliability. The preponderance of RCTs are small, early-phase studies, a substantial portion of which do not even result in a publication.2 Those designed to test whether an intervention can alter clinical outcomes are considerably larger and more resource-intense. These major clinical-outcome RCTs are the handful that provides estimates of benefits, and harms of a prospective intervention, as well. The most elite outcome RCTs offer results that inform clinical decisions. Despite the intensity of the effort and extensive information collected in these relatively uncommon clinical-outcome RCTs, all too frequently, their results are conveyed by a single word, either positive or negative. With a statistically nonsignificant primary objective, the seemingly less harsh neutral designation can be equally dismissive. Admittedly, it is essential for a valid statistical construct to first either reject or accept the null hypothesis for the declared (registered) primary objective using the prespecified analysis plan. However, that critical primary analysis conveys only a fraction of the information generated from such a major effort. When the primary objective of a RCT is met (positive), further hierarchical statistical testing of secondary analyses provides a legitimate statistical framework to …
The effect of role assignment in high fidelity patient simulation on nursing students: An experimental research study.

Abstract Background Previous studies have evaluated the effectiveness of high fidelity patient simulators (HFPS) on nursing training; however, a gap exists on the effects of role assignment on critical thinking, self-efficacy, and situation awareness skills in team-based simulation scenarios. Objectives This study aims to determine if role assignment and the involvement level related to the roles yields significant effects and differences in critical thinking, situation awareness and self-efficacy scores in team-based high-fidelity simulation scenarios. Design A single factorial design with five levels and random assignment was utilized. Setting A public university-sponsored simulation center in the United States of America. Participants A convenience sample of 69 junior-level baccalaureate nursing students was recruited for participation. Methods Participants were randomly assigned one of five possible roles and completed pre-simulation critical thinking and self-efficacy assessments prior to the simulation beginning. Playing within their assigned roles, participants experienced post-partum hemorrhaging scenario using an HFPS. After completing the simulation, participants completed a situation awareness assessment and a post-simulation critical thinking and self-efficacy assessment. Results Role assignment was found to have a statistically significant effect on critical thinking skills and a statistically significant difference in various areas of self-efficacy was also noted. However, no statistical significance in situation awareness abilities was found. Conclusions Results support the notion that certain roles required the participant to be more involved with the simulation scenario, which may have yielded higher critical thinking and self-efficacy scores than roles that required a lesser level of involvement.
Understanding the Pediatric and Adult Healthcare System: Adapting to Change

Differences in pediatric and adult healthcare systems often become apparent during the transition and transfer from pediatric- to adult-based care. Lack of disease-specific resources and lack of expertise in the adult healthcare system, along with the differences in approach to chronic disease management between the two systems, are often cited as barriers to successful transfer. This chapter examines the epidemiology of chronic disease in the transition-aged population and the etiologies of the differences seen between pediatrics and adult healthcare systems. Finally we discuss ways to mitigate percieved differences between the health systems to assist pediatric and adult health providers make the transfer process successful.
The Role of Learning in Physiological Response to Stress

One of the functions of any society is to protect its members from extreme forms of physical stress, such as cold, tissue damage, pain, and infectious disease. These are the types of stresses that have been studied most intensively in the laboratory, especially by the brilliant work of Selye (1956). However, as our modern technological societies have become better at protecting all but the most disadvantaged of their members from such physical stresses, other more psychological types of stress that involve learning become relatively more important. In the first part of this paper I shall concentrate on one of the best understood of these, namely, fear and the physiological responses to it. In the second part I shall deal with attempts to apply learning more directly to the modification of physiological responses.
Cardiovascular Morbidity in the Hopkins Lupus Cohort1

Publisher Summary Cardiovascular morbidity is a major issue in SLE, both in terms of coronary artery disease and stroke. In the prospective Hopkins Lupus Cohort, the lupus anticoagulant has been a risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD) and anticardiolipin for stroke. The pathogenetic mechanisms leading to cardiovascular morbidity are complex, and involve not just atherosclerosis, but also thromboembolism and lupus-mediated vessel damage. prevalence of CAD risk factors is astonishingly high in the Hopkins Lupus Cohort: African-Americans have on average 3.8 risk factors, and Caucasian patients have 3.6. The most common risk factors are sedentary lifestyle, smoking, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and obesity. Sedentary lifestyle, current smoking, and obesity are more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians. As the cohort follow-up has lengthened, and the size of the cohort has grown, the ability to detect risk factors has increased. As part of the cohort protocol, only serum cholesterol is available. It is possible that LDL cholesterol, or other lipid parameters, would be a more informative risk factor.
Physical Therapy for Low Back Pain.

There is some evidence that early physical therapy may decrease posttreatment health care utilization for low back pain.
Ezrin Expression is Increased During Disease Progression in a Tauopathy Mouse Model and Alzheimer's Disease.

Background The lack of diagnostic tools and disease-modifying treatments against Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related disorders, collectively known as tauopathies, has led to a socioeconomic burden of epidemic proportion. Proteomics approaches can be used to identify novel proteome changes that could help us understand the pathogenesis of tau-related pathological hallmarks and/or cellular stress responses associated with tauopathy. These studies, however, need to be conducted taking into consideration brain region specificity and stage of neurodegeneration in order to provide insights about the pathological role of the identified proteins. Methods We used a tauopathy mouse model (JNPL3) that expresses human tau bearing a P301L mutation and develops motor impairment, the severity of which correlates with the increased accumulation of pathological tau. Tissue was dissected from asymptomatic and severely motor impaired JNPL3 mice as well as non-transgenic littermate controls and subjected to two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Differentially abundant protein spots were identified by tandem mass spectrometry. Postmortem mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD and normal aging controls were used to validate the pathological significance of the identified protein. Results Ezrin was identified as a protein that is upregulated in tau-mediated neurodegeneration. We demonstrate that Ezrin protein abundance increased in JNPL3 mice preceded motor impairment and was sustained in severely motor impaired mice. Ezrin expression was also increased in the temporal cortex of MCI and AD patients. Conclusion The results demonstrate that increased Ezrin protein abundance changes are associated with the early stages of neurodegeneration in tauopathy models and human disease. Understanding the role of Ezrin in tauopathies such as AD may provide new insights for targeting tau-mediated neurodegeneration.
Teaching Sequences of Pretend Play to Children with Disabilities.

Children with disabilities demonstrate fewer complex pretend play behaviors than children with typical development, which might limit their social participation in early childhood settings. A multi...
Excessive inflammation portends complications: Wound cytokines and head and neck surgery outcomes

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Postoperative wound-healing complications can be devastating after head and neck surgery. Whereas many patients are expected to have more complications, few objective indicators predict these poorer outcomes. We evaluated wound healing in this population by studying the association between biomarkers and surgical outcomes. STUDY DESIGN Prospective cohort study. METHODS A study was performed of head and neck surgery patients at our tertiary care center, from 2012 to 2015. Postsurgical drain fluid was collected 24 hours postoperatively. Biomarkers of wound healing were assayed. These included interleukin (IL)-1, -6, and -8; tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α; transforming growth factor β; epidermal growth factor; fibroblast growth factor; C-reactive protein (CRP); vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF); soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1; and placental growth factor. Patient characteristics and clinical outcomes were recorded. Two-sample, two-sided t tests evaluated differences in cytokine levels by clinical outcomes. RESULTS Twenty-eight patients were enrolled with drain fluid collection. IL-1β, IL-8, and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 were significantly higher in the wound fluid of subjects with complications. Patients with longer length of stay in days had statistically higher levels of TNF-α (P = .011), IL-6 (P = .021), IL-8 (P = .004), IL-1β (P = .004), MMP-1 (P = .002), MMP-2 (P = .022), VEGF-A (P = .038), and CRP (P < .001), and longer length of stay was associated with malignancy. There were no statistically significant associations between baseline clinical characteristics and post-operative complications. CONCLUSIONS In this head and neck surgical cohort, higher IL-1β, IL-8, and MMP-9 levels in wound fluid were associated with postoperative complications, and elevation of multiple proinflammatory cytokines was associated with longer length of stay. These findings suggest excessive inflammation in early wound healing may portend poorer clinical outcomes after head and neck surgery. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE 2b Laryngoscope, 129:E238-E246, 2019.
Examining Somatic Symptoms that Mimic Physical Disorders through a Narrative and Medical Family Therapy Lens

AbstractSomatic symptoms affect about 80% of the population, 15-30% of all primary care consultations (Delfstra & van Rooij, 2015; Kroenke, Arrington, & Mangelsdorff, 1990; Toussaint, Kroenke, Baye, & Lourens, 2017). Despite the high prevalence of somatic symptoms, a gap in existing literature exists regarding different treatment modalities. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the effectiveness of integrating narrative and medical family therapy with a client experiencing somatic symptoms that mimic papillary thyroid cancer symptoms. During treatment, the client learned to differentiate somatic and medical symptoms, developed a sense of agency and communion, and positively reauthored her problem saturated story.
Neumann Networks for Inverse Problems in Imaging.

Many challenging image processing tasks can be described by an ill-posed linear inverse problem: deblurring, deconvolution, inpainting, compressed sensing, and superresolution all lie in this framework. Traditional inverse problem solvers minimize a cost function consisting of a data-fit term, which measures how well an image matches the observations, and a regularizer, which reflects prior knowledge and promotes images with desirable properties like smoothness. Recent advances in machine learning and image processing have illustrated that it is often possible to learn a regularizer from training data that can outperform more traditional regularizers. We present an end-to-end, data-driven method of solving inverse problems inspired by the Neumann series, which we call a Neumann network. Rather than unroll an iterative optimization algorithm, we truncate a Neumann series which directly solves the linear inverse problem with a data-driven nonlinear regularizer. The Neumann network architecture outperforms traditional inverse problem solution methods, model-free deep learning approaches, and state-of-the-art unrolled iterative methods on standard datasets. Finally, when the images belong to a union of subspaces and under appropriate assumptions on the forward model, we prove there exists a Neumann network configuration that well-approximates the optimal oracle estimator for the inverse problem and demonstrate empirically that the trained Neumann network has the form predicted by theory.
Inductance Testing for IPM Synchronous Machines According to the New IEEE Std 1812 and Typical Laboratory Practices

Equivalent circuit parameters serve as the basis for performance estimation and implementation of power electronic drives controls and therefore their accurate evaluation is very important. Specified in the newly approved IEEE Std 1812, a short-circuit test can be employed, in combination with an open-circuit measurement, in order to determine the back emf and the synchronous inductance. In the case of interior permanent magnet (IPM) machines, this approach can be used only to determine the d -axis inductance and additional and separate measurements are required for the q -axis inductance. In this respect, various methods, inclusive of dc step response tests, on-load tests, and a widely used test in industry, which involves locked-rotor measurements at variable voltage and constant frequency supply, are studied in detail, based on two-dimensional finite element analysis. Locked-rotor methods based on dc current supply and static torque versus rotor position measurements are introduced for determining the q -axis inductance in combination with the standardized open-circuit and short-circuit tests. A critical study of the inductances determined from different tests is conducted, and experimental results on an IPM motor design with non-sinusoidal back emf, relatively high torque ripple, and low leakage are presented.
Association of Diagnostic Criteria With Urinary Tract Infection Prevalence in Bronchiolitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Importance Concomitant urinary tract infection (UTI) is a frequent concern in febrile infants with bronchiolitis, with a prior meta-analysis suggesting a prevalence of 3.3%. However, the definition of UTI in these studies has generally not incorporated urinalysis (UA) results. Objective To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the prevalence of UTI in infants with bronchiolitis when positive UA results are incorporated into the UTI definition. Data Sources Medline (1946-2017) and Ovid EMBASE (1976-2017) through August 2017 and bibliographies of retrieved articles. Study Selection Studies reporting UTI prevalence in bronchiolitis. Data Extraction Data were extracted in accordance with meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology guidelines via independent abstraction by multiple investigators. Random-effects models generated a weighted pooled event rate with corresponding 95% confidence intervals. Main Outcomes and Measures Prevalence of UTI. Results We screened 477 unique articles by abstract, with full-text review of 30 studies. Eighteen bronchiolitis studies reported a UTI prevalence and 7 of these reported UA data for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The overall reported prevalence of UTI in bronchiolitis from these 18 studies was 3.1% (95% CI, 1.8%-4.6%). With the addition of positive UA results (defined as the presence of pyuria or nitrites) as a diagnostic criterion, the prevalence of UTI as reported in the 7 studies in bronchiolitis was 0.8% (95% CI, 0.3%-1.4%). Sensitivity analyses yielded similar results, including for infants younger than 90 days. Heterogeneous definitions of UTI and UA criteria introduced uncertainty into prevalence estimates. Conclusions and Relevance When a positive UA result is added as a diagnostic criterion, the estimated prevalence of concomitant UTI is less than recommended testing thresholds for bronchiolitis.
Development and Application of a Distributed Leadership Framework to the Curriculum Mapping of Quantitative Skills in First-Year Undergraduate Agriculture Degrees

Quantitative skills (QS), the ability to use mathematical and statistical reasoning in context, are considered essential threshold learning outcomes in Australian university agricultural courses (degrees). Curriculum mapping can be used to determine how the existing curriculum fosters the development of QS, and identify where opportunities for skills development are missing in the curriculum. To address the challenges of curriculum mapping this paper describes the development and application of a modified distributed leadership model based on the merging of Kotter’s eight steps for structural change (2014) and Jones, Hadgraft, Harvey, Lefoe and Ryland’s framework for distributed leadership (2014). Distributed leadership is built on the foundations of change theory, moving beyond the traditional leadership boundaries and has been increasingly used in higher education. This case study demonstrates how distributed leadership has been used successfully in determining the graduate level QS and driving the mapping process for the first-year curriculum. Curriculum maps showed when the QS were taught, practiced and assessed across 10 science degrees, including three agriculture degrees, at a regional Australian university. As a result, holistic curriculum changes were flagged with the aim of enhancing QS development for both on campus and distance learning students.
Stochastic neural field theory of wandering bumps on a sphere

Abstract We use a combination of group theoretic and perturbation methods to analyze the stochastic wandering of bump solutions in a neural field model on the sphere S 2 . We first construct an explicit bump solution in the absence of external inputs and noise, by taking the synaptic weight distribution to be the sum of first-order spherical harmonics. The corresponding neural field equation is equivariant under the action of the special orthogonal group S O ( 3 ) , which implies that the bump is marginally stable with respect to rotations of the sphere. We then carry out an amplitude–phase decomposition of the solution in the presence of a weakly biased external input and weak noise, and use this to derive a pair of stochastic differential equations for the wandering of the bump, expressed in terms of angular coordinates on the sphere. The stochastic dynamics is a non-trivial generalization of the corresponding phase dynamics describing the wandering of a bump on a ring network with S O ( 2 ) symmetry, since S O ( 3 ) is non-abelian and S 2 is a curved manifold.
Aligning marketing and sales in multi-channel marketing: Compensation design for online lead generation and offline sales conversion

Abstract Firms engaged in personal selling in business and retail markets tend to invest substantial portions of their marketing budgets on lead generation through marketing agents and conversion by sales reps. However, such an arrangement of marketing-sales interface has often been found to be inefficient due to the multi-channel attribution problem. We use analytical models to find optimal sales compensation designs to solve the multi-channel attribution problem. Findings suggest that contracts involving revenue incentives, lead qualification, and sales autarky leave a gap between the first-best and the achieved profit due to budget balance, costs of lead qualification, and the sales force's lack of specialization in marketing, respectively. An increase in risk aversion favors sales autarky and lead qualification contracts over the revenue incentive contracts while an increase in overall uncertainty favors lead qualification. A certain type of contest (or stack ranking-based pay) achieves first-best profit when uncertainty is moderate.
Cobalt-Based Nitride-Core Oxide-Shell Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysts

Developing high-performance, low-cost, and conductive nonprecious electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) has been a key challenge for advancing fuel cell technologies. Here, we re...
Genetic Basis of Dental Implant Failure and Alveolar Ridge Resorption

The frequency of dental implant failure is approximately 3.5%, a statistic that is independent of the geographic area. The process of dental implant failure has a genetic component that is best defined as complex, and likely has small contributions from multiple genes and is also influenced by environmental factors. With the ever-increasing number of dental implants being performed, the absolute number of failed cases also grows, and thus an interest in preventing those losses from occurring has grown accordingly. An additional challenge for prosthodontists is the amount of alveolar bone resorption that occurs after tooth loss, and the variation seen in populations suggests it has a similar multifactorial inheritance modality.
Impact of Donor Smoking History on Post Heart Transplant Outcomes: A Propensity Matched Analysis of the ISHLT Registry

Purpose Tobacco smoking is a major public health issue and its adverse impact on cardiovascular outcomes is well documented. However, the impact of donor tobacco smoking on post heart transplant (HT) outcomes is unclear. This study aims to compare long term outcomes between adult HT recipients based on the history of donor smoking. Methods All primary adult HT recipients (age ≥18y) transplanted between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2016, with known donor smoking status were queried in the ISHLT thoracic transplant registry. Primary outcome was overall patient survival and secondary endpoints were graft failure, acute rejection and cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV). We derived propensity score matching to reduce bias using a greedy algorithm to identify a matched cohort with no history of donor smoking. Hazard ratios for post-transplant outcomes for the propensity matched sample were estimated from separate Cox proportional hazard models using robust sandwich covariance matrix estimates. Results Of the 26,390 HT patients in the cohort, 18.9% (N=4664) had history of donor smoking. Donors with history of smoking were older, predominantly male and had higher incidence of diabetes, hypertension, cocaine use and ‘high risk’ status as compared to non-smokers. Propensity score matching identified 4,572 HT patients with similar propensity scores. In the propensity matched analysis, HT patients with a history of donor smoking had worse 10 year survival (HR 1.11, 95% CI 1.03-1.20) (Figure 1), and a higher incidence of graft failure (HR 1.11, 95% CI 1.03-1.20). Rates of CAV and acute rejection were not statistically different between groups (Table 1). Conclusion Donor smoking was independently associated with increased long term mortality, and higher incidence of graft failure after HT, independent of rejection and CAV. Careful consideration of donor smoking history is needed while evaluating donor hearts prior to HT.
Plateau’s Problem

Intimately connected with Dirichlet’s Principle and conformal mapping is Plateau’s problem which has long challenged mathematicians by the contrast between its simplicity of statement and difficulty of solution: to find the surface G of least area spanned in a given closed Jordan curve γ. If the surface G is represented in x,y,z-space by a function z(x,y) with continuous derivatives, the area A is given by $$ A = {\rm{ }}{(1 + z_x^2 + z_y^2)^{1/2}}dxdy, $$ where B is the domain in the x,y-plane bounded by the projection β of γ. The surface G is obtained as solution of the boundary value problem for Euler’s (non-linear) differential equation $$ {z_{xx}}(1 + z_y^2) - 2{z_{xy}}{z_x}{z_y} + {z_{yy}}(1 + z_x^2) = 0 $$
Necessities-Based Society and Technological Education

I describe, analyze, and critique modern mainstream institutionalized education with its hegemony of instrumental technological education that suppresses and disvalues intrinsic education. I argue that this instrumental, technological, education is mostly based on pattern recognition and pattern production (mediated or unmediated) rather than on meaning-making. This form of education makes learned knowledge mostly conventional (like language patterns) rather than conceptual. I criticize conventional instrumental education for its systematic creation of alienation of students from their education, authorial agency, and life itself. I also discuss a necessities-based society that generates and supports this type of education that focuses on producing humans acting as smart machines.
SPEAr: Expediting Stream Processing with Accuracy Guarantees

Stream Processing Engines (SPEs) are used for realtime and continuous processing with stateful operations. This type of processing poses numerous challenges due to its associated complexity, unpredictable input, and need for timely results. As a result, users tend to overprovision resources, and online scaling is required in order to overcome overloaded situations. Current attempts for expediting stateful processing are impractical, due to their inability to uphold the quality of results, maintain performance, and reduce memory requirements.In this paper, we present the SPEAr system, which can expedite processing of stateful operations automatically by trading accuracy for performance. SPEAr detects when it can accelerate processing by employing online sampling and accuracy estimation at no additional cost. We built SPEAr on top of Storm and our experiments indicate that it can reduce processing times by more than an order of magnitude, use more than an order of magnitude less memory, and offer accuracy guarantees in real-world benchmarks.
Crisis as Opportunity: Fostering Inclusive Public Engagement in Local Government

In addressing local challenges, such as budget deficits, aging infrastructure, workforce development, opioid addiction, homelessness, and disaster preparedness
Pulsed Electric Bus Charging Management Considering Charge Redistribution Effect

This paper aims at incorporating the supercapacitor charge redistribution effect into the cooperative control of networked hybrid AC/DC microgrids that consisting of electric buses charging infrastructures and PV generations. Hybrid energy storage systems, which consist of supercapacitors and Li-ion battery units, are controlled to integrate the highly pulsed charging demands caused by electrified bus fleets. Each major transit hub is modeled with a hybrid AC/DC microgrid and needs to handle charging needs of electric bus fleets as well as maximizing penetration of PV energy. Energy storage resources are shared among the neighboring microgrids in a coordinated manner based on the bus schedules. This paper includes a more accurate and advanced model of supercapacitors to integrate the supercapacitor redistribution effect to the control strategy. The supercapacitor redistribution is the automatic recovery of supercapacitor terminal voltage to a certain percentage depending its discharge pattern. For this application, the supercapacitor will be discharged quickly due to the high current of the electric bus load, thus the redistribution effect could recover 10-15% of supercapacitor voltage by delaying recharging the supercapacitor. This provides an opportunity for energy savings and improvement on the previous control strategy.
ROC analysis of p16 expression in cell blocks of metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Background Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma is associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) and often presents with early metastasis to cervical neck lymph nodes that are amenable to fine-needle aspiration (FNA). The most common method of HPV status determination is p16 immunohistochemistry (IHC). The literature suggests that a lower threshold is needed for p16 positivity on cell block. We examined and quantified p16 IHC staining on cell block and used receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis to determine an optimal cutoff value with high sensitivity and specificity. Methods Thirty-six FNAs of metastatic squamous cell carcinoma from cervical lymph nodes with p16 IHC were evaluated. The p16 stain was quantified in 5% increments and high-risk HPV mRNA in situ hybridization was performed as a gold standard test. Statistical analysis was performed. Results Interobserver variability was evaluated and was shown to be low with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.857. ROC analysis was performed and showed that a cell block p16 IHC cutoff of 15% yielded the highest sensitivity (80%) and specificity (81.8%). Conclusion Our data show that a threshold of 15% p16 staining in cell block maximizes sensitivity and specificity.
A Reconfigurable Underactuated Grasper with In-hand Manipulation

One of the hallmarks of a dexterous robotic hand is the ability to perform in-hand manipulation (i.e., without re-grasping). In the field of robotic hand design, however, there are competing interests between dexterity, simplicity, and reconfigurability. It can be difficult to achieve all of these objectives simultaneously. This paper presents the design of a simple underactuated grasper which uses a gimbal and parallelogram mechanism to achieve in-hand manipulation while maintaining grasp. The new grasper also integrates elements which make it reconfigurable or metamorphic, and is readily adapted for different types of robotic fingers.
Mandatory Retirement and Age, Race, and Gender Diversity of University Faculties

While many have documented the changing demographics of universities, understanding the effects of prohibiting mandatory retirement (“uncapping”) has proved challenging. We digitize detailed directories of all American law school faculty from 1971–2017 and show that uncapping in 1994 had dramatic effects. From 1971 to 1993, the percent of faculty above 70—when mandatory retirement would typically have been triggered—remained stable at 1%, but starting in 1994, that proportion increased to 14%. We use a permutation test of moving cohorts to show that these increases are attributable to uncapping. Roughly 39% of faculty members would counterfactually have been subject to mandatory retirement. Effects were less pronounced at public schools, which were more likely to have defined benefits retirement plans. Second, we show that schools with the highest proportion of faculty over 70, and thus most impacted by uncapping, also exhibit the slowest integration of female and minority faculty members. Our study highlights crosscutting effects of civil rights laws: preventing age discrimination can have collateral effects on racial and gender integration.
Relief Well Evaluation: Three-Dimensional Modeling and Blanket Theory

AbstractThis study compares the differences in calculated relief well performance at the Profit Island vicinity levee (PIVL) near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, between the three-dimensional (3D) USGS MOD...
An adaptive adversarial domain adaptation approach for corn yield prediction

Abstract Recently, statistical machine learning and deep learning methods have been widely explored for corn yield prediction. Though successful, machine learning models generated within a specific spatial domain often lose their validity when directly applied to new regions. To address this issue, we designed an unsupervised adaptive domain adversarial neural network (ADANN). Specifically, through domain adversarial training, the ADANN model reduced the impact of domain shift by projecting data from different domains into the same subspace. Also, the ADANN model was designed to be trained in an adaptive way, which guaranteed the model can learn the domain-invariant features and perform accurate yield prediction simultaneously. Informative variables including time-series vegetation indices and sequential weather observations were first collected from multiple data sources and aggregated to the county level. Then, we trained the ADANN model with the extracted features and corresponding reported county-level corn yield from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Finally, the trained model was evaluated in four testing years 2016–2019. The U.S. corn belt was used as the study area and counties under study were grouped into two diverse ecological regions. The experimental results showed that the developed ADANN model had better performance than three other state-of-the-art machine learning models in both local experiments (train and test in the same region) and transfer experiments (train and test in different regions). As the first study using adversarial learning for crop yield prediction, this research demonstrates a novel solution for improving model transferability on crop yield prediction.
Nursing Students Visiting People with Dementia Online during COVID-19: A Qualitative Study

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has impacted the daily routines of students, people living with dementia, and their care partners. Social distancing results in fewer interpersonal in...
Psychosocial outcomes 1-year post total pancreatectomy and autologous islet cell transplant.

Background A paucity of research regarding the psychosocial outcomes after TPIAT exists. Methods Adults (>18 years), adolescents (13-18 years), and children (5-12 years) with their parents were administered questionnaires at the time of evaluation for TPIAT and 1-year postsurgery to assess psychosocial outcomes. Results A total of 13 adults (6 male, 46%; mean age 35.2 years) and 9 children/adolescents (4 female, 44.4%; mean age 11.78 years) with CP were included in the study. A total of 69.2% of the adults and 66.7% of the children and adolescents were insulin dependent at 1-year postsurgery. In adults, improvements on the SF-36 pain (p = .001) and general health (p = .045) subscales were generally observed 1-year postsurgery. Adult patients who underwent robotic-assisted surgery compared to open surgery specifically reported better general health on the SF-36 (p Conclusions While few transplant centers offer this treatment, the improvement in quality of life suggests this may be a viable treatment option for those with CP complicated by intractable pain. (IRB Approval PRO 19080302).
Dispelling myths and misconceptions about the treatment of acute hyperkalemia

Abstract Hyperkalemia represents a widespread and potentially lethal condition that affects millions of people across their lives. Despite the prevalence and severity of the condition, there are no consensus guidelines on the treatment of hyperkalemia or even a standard definition. Herein, we provide a succinct review of what we believe to be the most significant misconceptions encountered in the emergency care of hyperkalemia, examine current available literature, and discuss practical points on several modalities of hyperkalemia treatment. Additionally, we review the pathophysiology of the electrocardiographic effects of hyperkalemia and how intravenous calcium preparations can antagonize these effects. We conclude each section with recommendations to aid emergency physicians in making safe and efficacious choices for the treatment of acute hyperkalemia.
The Electrooculogram in ‘Vitelliform’ Macular Lesions

Fifty seven patients originally referred with the tentative diagnosis of Best’s vitelliform dystrophy were examined. With the aid of electrooculography the cases could be clearly divided into three groups: Best’s vitelliform dystrophy (BVD), (12 cases); Pseudovitelliform macular degeneration (PMD), (42 cases); and Pigment epithelium detachment (PED), (3 cases). All cases of BVD had abnormal EOG’s with an average Lp to Dt ratio of 1.38. Cases with PMD had normal or only slightly abnormal EOG’s with an average Lp to Dt ratio of 2.16. The three cases with PED had normal EOG’s.