cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Stable Views in a Time of Tumult: Assessing Trends in American Public Opinion, 2007-2020

The violent conclusion of Trump's 2017-2021 presidency has produced sobering reassessments of American democracy. Elected officials' actions necessarily implicate public opinion, but to what extent did Trump's presidency and its anti-democratic efforts reflect shifts in public opinion in prior years? Were there attitudinal changes that served as early-warning signs? We answer those questions via a 15-wave, population-based panel 2007-2020. Specifically, we track attitudes including system legitimacy and election fairness, assessments of Trump and other politicians, open-ended explanations of vote choice and party perceptions, and Whites’ racial attitudes. Across measures, there was little movement in public opinion foreshadowing Trump's norm-upending presidency, although levels of out-party animus were consistently high. Recent shifts in public opinion were thus not a primary engine of the Trump presidency's anti-democratic efforts or their violent conclusion. Such stability suggests understanding the precipitating causes of those efforts requires attention to other actors including activists and elites.
Bridge the Gap – The Efficacy of β-Carotene in Immune Sensing of LPS and Intestinal Barrier Integrity in Colon Epithelial Cells

Objectives Gastrointestinal (GI) disorders are causing significant global health care burden. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a structural component of Gram-negative bacteria, induces low-grade inflammation and disturbs GI homeostasis. While the anti-inflammatory function of β-Carotene (BC), a provitamin A carotenoid, has been explored in multiple systems, a limited information exists on the roles of BC in modulating LPS-induced inflammation in colonocytes. Therefore, we aimed to mechanistically investigate the role of BC in LPS-induced colonic inflammation and intestinal barrier dysfunction.
Exercise-induced increases in Anandamide and BDNF during extinction consolidation contribute to reduced threat following reinstatement: Preliminary evidence from a randomized controlled trial.

Abstract Introduction We recently demonstrated that moderate-intensity aerobic exercise delivered during the consolidation of fear extinction learning reduced threat expectancy during a test of extinction recall among women with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These findings suggest that exercise may be a potential candidate for improving the efficacy of exposure-based therapies, which are hypothesized to work via the mechanisms of fear extinction learning. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to examine whether exercise-induced increases in circulating concentrations of candidate biomarkers: endocannabinoids (anandamide [AEA]; 2-arachidonoylglycerol [2-AG], brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and homovanillic acid (HVA), mediate the effects of exercise on extinction recall. Methods Participants (N = 35) completed a 3-day fear acquisition (day 1), extinction (day 2), and extinction recall (day 3) protocol, in which participants were randomly assigned to complete either moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (EX) or a light-intensity control (CON) condition following extinction training (day 2). Blood was obtained prior to and following EX or CON. Threat expectancy ratings during tests of extinction recall (i.e., initial fear recall and fear recall following reinstatement) were obtained 24 h following EX or CON. Mediation was tested using linear-mixed effects models and bootstrapping of the indirect effect. Results Circulating concentrations of AEA and BDNF (but not 2-AG and HVA) were found to mediate the relationship between moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and reduced threat expectancy ratings following reinstatement (AEA 95% CI: −0.623 to −0.005; BDNF 95% CI: −0.941 to −0.005). Conclusions Exercise-induced increases in peripheral AEA and BDNF appear to play a role in enhancing consolidation of fear extinction learning, thereby leading to reduced threat expectancies following reinstatement among women with PTSD. Future mechanistic research examining these and other biomarkers (e.g., brain-based biomarkers) is warranted.
Curved Layer Slicing based on Isothermal Surface

Abstract Conventional slicing algorithms for additive manufacturing (AM) processes slice the designed model into a set of planar layers, due to the simplicity, robustness, and generality of most geometries. However, such planar-layer-based slicing significantly limits the performance of the AM system with stair-stepping surface finishing, massive supporting structures, non-conformable to curved substrates, and reduced strength for thin shell structures. To mitigate these drawbacks of planar layer slicing, we presented a curved layer slicing method by utilizing the isothermal surfaces in heat transfer simulation. The designed part is virtually placed on a heated substrate, and the heat spread out through the part, which establishes a temperature field. The isothermal surfaces of this temperature field naturally create curved layers for the printing process. Our method successfully generated curved layers and tool paths for additive manufacturing processes with three-axis and multi-axis 3D printing. A multi-axis motion 3D printing machine is developed based on fused decomposition modeling (FDM). Several test cases were performed to verify and demonstrate our slicing method’s capabilities. A discussion of future development on our general non-planar slicing system was also given.
Using the theory of planned behavior to understand family forest owners’ intended responses to invasive forest insects

Private landowner participation in management initiatives can be encouraged by interventions, which must resonate with the underlying subjective motivations of the landowners. In this study, we use the Theory of Planned Behavior to gauge the relative influences of (1) attitudes; (2) subjective norms; and (3) perceived behavioral control on landowner intentions to harvest trees threatened by invasive insects. We use a survey (n=696) to estimate the effects of these latent factors among family forest owners in New England. Our results suggest that, overall, normative pressures are the dominant influence on landowners' harvest intentions. However, for certain subgroups, such as those with especially high levels of knowledge and experience with forest insects, or those with forestry experience, attitudes are dominant. Perceived behavioral control was not revealed to be dominant among any of our subgroups. These findings can be used to inform landowner interventions that are differentiated by landowner type.
Pochva Americana II

By the early 1990s, tens of millions of people had immigrated to the USA. Some immigrants became prominent scientists who individually and collectively shaped American and global soil science, including Jacob Lipman, Jacob Joffe, Constantin Nikiforoff, Selman Waksman, Otto Zeasman, Sergei Wilde, and Vladimir Ignatieff. They came from Russia and surrounding countries in the search for education, which in Russia was the privilege of nobility, government servants, and city folks. Many Jewish families fled because of pogroms, plundering, and persecution. This chapter reviews the life and works of immigrants from Russia and northern Europe and their contributions to the establishment of the soil science discipline and International Society of Soil Science. The soil science connections between Russia and the USA have been an important for the development of the discipline but have also been affected by politics. In the 1950s when anti-Communists views flourished, various soil scientists including Charles Kellogg were questioned about their sympathy for Russian soil science.
Tomato molecular map

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) is well studied among higher plants and has several characteristics, including diploidy (2n = 2x = 24), self pollination and a relatively short generation time, that make it ideal for genetic studies. During the past half-century, the cultivated tomato and its wild relatives have been the subject of numerous and in-depth studies encompassing systematics, transmission genetics and population genetics, cytogenetics and mutation research (for reviews see Rick 1975; Rick and Yoder 1988). It has a nuclear genome that contains approximately 950 Mb of DNA (Arumuganathan and Earle 1991). This is considerably larger than Arabidopsis, but relatively small among crop plants. For comparison, rice has a genome size of 450 Mb, maize, 2500 Mb and wheat, 16000 Mb (Arumuganathan and Earle 1991). Moreover, the tomato genome has a large portion of single copy DNA (approximately 80% of the DNA behaves as single copy at high stringency, Zamir and Tanksley 1988) — a beneficial attribute with respect to chromosome walking. The major repetitive elements have also been cloned and characterized (Ganal et al. 1988) and tomato is the only plant species for which there is detailed knowledge about the long-range structure of telomeres (Ganal et al. 1991).
Learning and performance.

(1971). Learning and Performance. Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation: Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 334-337.
Chapter 4 – Applications of IR spectroscopy to polymers

This chapter discusses the applications of IR spectroscopy to polymers. To identify the chemical nature of the polymer or to determine its composition, IR is a highly useful specific tool. For quantitative analysis of microstructure, stereoregularity, branching, or crosslinking, in many cases, IR analysis is the simplest and most sensitive method. It is a popular tool in the arsenal of the polymer scientist. With the help of IR spectroscopy, the quality of the instrumentation is improving, and the cost is decreasing so that quality instrumentation is available to laboratories of all sizes. IR instrumentation is moving into the quality control laboratory because of its sensitivity to small differences in samples. It is also being used in chemical plants as a process-monitoring device because of its capability of continuously monitoring a large variety of structural aspects in a process stream.
The design and analysis of efficient learning algorithms

Many of the results in this thesis are concerned with the so-called distribution-free or probably approximately correct (PAC) model of learning proposed by Valiant. In this model, the learner tries to identify an unknown concept based on randomly chosen examples of the concept. Examples are chosen according to an unchanging but unknown and arbitrary distribution on the space of instances. Following a brief introduction, this thesis begins in Chapter 2 with a study of the problem of improving the accuracy of a hypothesis output by a learning algorithm in this model. In particular, it is shown that any "weak" learning algorithm that performs just slightly better than random guessing can be converted into one whose error can be made arbitrarily small. Among the many consequences of this result is a technique for converting any PAC-learning algorithm into one that is highly space efficient. In Chapter 3, we next explore in detail a simple but seemingly powerful technique for discovering the structure of an unknown read-once formula from random examples. The method is based on sampling of the target formula's statistical behavior under various perturbations of the underlying instance-space distribution. An especially nice feature of this technique is its powerful resistance to noise. We next consider in Chapter 4 a realistic extension of the PAC model to concepts that may exhibit uncertain or probabilistic behavior. While building on the recent results of Haussler on the sample complexity of learning in probabilistic settings, this chapter focuses primarily on the design of efficient algorithms for learning probabilistic concepts. This work also extends many of the results in the standard PAC model to the new probabilistic model. In the last chapter, we present new algorithms for inferring an unknown finite-state automaton from its input-output behavior. This problem is motivated by the problem faced by a robot in unfamiliar surroundings who must, through experimentation, discover the "structure" of its environment. Some of our algorithms are based on Angluin's algorithm for learning finite-state automata. We also present superior algorithms for the special class of permutation automata. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.) (Abstract shortened with permission of school.)
Organizational Influences on Process Quality Improvement: Shop-Floor Problem-Solving in Auto Assembly Plants

This paper uses case studies of shop-floor problem-solving at three automotive assembly plants to examine organizational influences on process quality improvement. Three complex quality problems - water leaks, paint defects, and electrical defects - were chosen because they are universally found in assembly plants, have multiple sources, and can only be resolved with high levels of interaction and coordination among individuals in multiple departments or functional groups. The case studies focus particularly on the early stages of the problem-solving process: problem definition, problem analysis, and the generation of solutions. The paper then explores consistencies and contrasts within and across the three cases to analyze the factors underlying effective shop-floor problem-solving. Central to this analysis is the idea that successful process quality improvement depends heavily on how the organization influences the cognitive processes of its members. Problem-solving processes benefit from rich data that capture multiple perspectives on a problem; problem categories that are "fuzzy"; and organizational structures that facilitate the development of a common language for discussing problems. Also, when problems are framed as opportunities for learning, the combination of positive attributions that boost motivation and the suppression of threat effects can improve the effectiveness of improvement activities. Finally, when process standardization is understood as marking the beginning (and not the end) of further improvement efforts, the normal inertial tendencies of organizations with respect to adaptive learning can be partially overcome.
The role of psychosocial factors in the development of arteriosclerosis in CBA mice. Observations on the heart, kidney and aorta.

Abstract Approximately 300 mixed male and female CBA mice were exposed to 6 months of social confrontation in intercommunicating population cages. Histological sections were scored for severity of the ensuing acute and chronic interstitial nephritis, of glomerular mesangial changes, of myocardial fibrosis, and of arteriosclerotic degeneration of the intramural coronary vessels and of the aorta. The severity of the changes was contrasted with those found in a control group of the same or greater age in which sexes were separated and the living conditions were arranged to avoid confrontation. The accuracy of the scoring technique was shown to be sufficient to differentiate the severity of the various lesions; and in all of the conditions studied, significantly higher scores were obtained in the socially stimulated group.
Investigation of the One-Armed Bandit by Neural Network

We conducted two experiments with the One-Armed Bandit, one at the VFW lodge at Salisbury, MD. and another at the Taj Mahal Casino and Hotel, at Atlantic City. We trained a backpropagation Neural Network using the patterns of hundreds of successive pulls as input. We show that is is possible to predict, by a trained Network, the pattern of the ensuing combination.
2D HRR Radar Data Modeling and Processing

High Range Resolution (HRR) -based Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) has attracted increasing attention due to a number of potential advantages over alternative radar techniques in moving target identification. Most current HRR-based ATR studies have been conducted using 1D HRR signatures. However, these 1D HRR signatures are generally plagued by scintillation effects, and thus demonstrate highly irregular behavior that dramatically degrades the performance and robustness of algorithms based on these signatures. In order to circumvent this difficulty, an alternative HRR radar data representation and processing technique is presented in this paper. This technique models and extracts the target characteristics directly, based on the 2D HRR raw data. In this paper, we first derive a general, but complex HRR radar model, and then simplify this model by instantiating a set of real-world radar and target parameters for the model. This simplification process produces two HRR radar models with different degrees of simplicity. After establishing this set of models, the typical HRR data processes, such as feature extraction and clutter suppression, are reduced to one problem, which is model-parameter estimation. Based upon the most simplified HRR model we proposed, we devise two model- parameter estimation algorithms. One is a scatterer extraction algorithm based on available 1D Parameter Estimation (1DPE), while the other is based on 2D discrete Fourier Transform (2DFT). In order to examine the performance of these two algorithms a set of simulations are conducted. The experimental results are presented, and the performance comparison between 1DPE and 2DFT is presented.
Conclusions with a Glance at the Future

Primates are the most varied group of extant mammals. The extended array of primate adaptations ranges from the tiny dwarf-mouse lemur, which weighs about 30 g, to the enormous males of the genus Gorilla that weigh up to 170 kilograms. Between these two extremes, primates are of all shapes and sizes. The primate order also contains the most advanced of extant mammals, Homo sapiens . Primatology has become a cutting-edge science as humans eagerly pursue insights into human biology, behavior, genetics, and evolution by way of studying the nearest relatives. The exciting new fields of molecular primatology and primate genomics, however, seem to be an approach with a bright and unrestricted future. Molecular studies can be performed with minute tissue samples. Another new trend in primate biology has emerged since computers and refined data collection technologies have appeared. Enormous databases have now been assembled from which elaborate and often incomprehensible statistical evaluations have sprung.
Calit2: A UC San Diego, UC Irvine Partnership

Larry Smarr, the founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), reflects on the Institute's past 10 years of successes and challenges. In 2010, more than 700 university scientists, artists, engineers, and social scientists and over 300 non-university partners are associated with the Institute. Innovative and multi-disciplinary research projects are being carried out in diverse fields such as environmental monitoring, human/robotic communication, digital archaeology, nanotechnology, life sciences, information technology, and telecommunications. Calit2 was one of four new research initiatives created in 2000 in a partnership between the State of California, the University of California, and California industry in order to foster and drive entrepreneurial business growth and expand the California economy into new industries and markets. Calit2 was the result of a partnership between both the University of California, San Diego and University of California, Irvine. As Calit2's first decade comes to a close, Smarr considers the future of the Institute and, in particular, its leadership and sustainability.
Change in Moisture Distribution in Lasagna Pasta Post Cooking

ABSTRACT: The time-dependent internal moisture distributions in lasagna pasta were experimentally evaluated and mathematically modeled as a function of cooking time and holding time. During the holding time, changes in the moisture distribution were followed using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) spin-echo-based pulse sequence. Immediately after cooking, the moisture distribution was highly nonuniform for all samples. The moisture content was high on the surface of the pasta and low in the central plane. This gradient equilibrated over time as the moisture redistributed. The moisture redistribution was modeled using a one-dimensional Fickian diffusion equation; values of the diffusion coefficient ranged from 0.8 to 1.6 × 10−7 cm2/s.
The inhibition of pancreatic ribonuclease by anionic polymers.

Abstract The inhibition of pancreatic ribonuclease by ten sulfate-containing polymers has been examined. Sulfated corn amylose (13.9% S) and sulfated polyvinyl alcohol (17.2% S) were the most effective compounds. With sulfated corn amylose the inhibition was shown to be of the competitive type.
A Survey of Food System Knowledge, Attitudes, and Experiences Among High School Students

ABSTRACT Students were surveyed to assess food system knowledge, attitudes, and experiences. Participants are least knowledgeable about food system sectors, sustainability, and agriculture; more knowledgeable about nutrition and food origins; and most knowledgeable about food safety, local foods, and hunger. The majority of participants support both farmland protection and new land development. Student attitudes favor local food systems, but attitudes are not supported by behavioral intentions. Food system knowledge and attitudes supportive of sustaining the local food system are positively associated with participation in youth clubs, gardening, and food related activities at home. Knowledge is negatively associated with television viewing.
Ballistocardiography with elimination of the influence of the vibration properties of the body

Abstract The influence of the body mechanical system on the ballistocardiogram is discussed and a ballistocardiograph is described which is designed to give a record of the force acting upon the “total body mass.” Typical and calibrated records are shown and discussed.
The roughness of the dark side of Iapetus from the 2004 to 2005 flyby

Abstract The roughness of a planetary surface offers clues to its past geologic history. We apply a surface roughness model developed by Buratti and Veverka (Buratti, B.J., Veverka, J. [1985]. Icarus 64, 320–328) to Cassini ISS data from the January 1st, 2005 flyby of Iapetus. This model uses the observed scattering behavior to provide a depth to radius factor q quantifying the size of idealized craters on the surface. Our findings indicate that the surface on the dark side is significantly smoother than the surfaces of other icy low-albedo saturnian satellites. We have found that the average depth to radius on the leading (dark) side is 0.084, corresponding to a Hapke mean slope angle of 6°. As compared to the 13–33° Hapke mean slope angle of other icy satellites (Buratti, B.J., and 10 colleagues [2008]. Icarus 193, 309–322), our results present a clearly different picture for the leading surface of Iapetus, suggesting that the dark deposit contributes to the decrease in macroscopic surface roughness of the leading side. Attempts were made to obtain an average depth to radius value for the trailing (bright) side; however the scans of the bright side from this flyby exhibited large variations in albedo, resulting in results that were physically unrealistic.
Is Inhibition of Phosphodiesterase Type 5 by Sildenafil a Promising Therapy for Volume-Overload Heart Failure?

Phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) is an enzyme that belongs to a large family of cyclic nucleotide PDEs that catalyze cAMP and cGMP. cAMP and cGMP are 2 essential intracellular second messengers regulating many different cellular functions of living cells. PDE5 specifically breaks down the substrate cGMP. Inhibition of PDE5 increases intracellular cGMP levels by inhibiting its degradation. Sildenafil (Viagra) is a potent and selective inhibitor of cGMP-specific PDE5 and is the first oral treatment for men with erectile dysfunction; it was approved by Food and Drug Administration on March 27, 1998. Sildenafil binds to the catalytic site of PDE5 and inhibits the degradation of intracellular cGMP in smooth muscle within the corpus cavernosum, resulting in increased levels of cGMP, which cause smooth muscle cell relaxation and vasodilation and improve erectile function.1,2 Article see p 1390 In recent years, there has been growing interest in therapeutic applications of PDE5 inhibitors for cardiovascular diseases other than erectile dysfunction. Some experimental studies demonstrated direct cardioprotective effects of inhibition of PDE5 in experimental acute myocardial infarction models. In 2002, Ockaili et al3 treated rabbits with sildenafil (0.7 mg/kg given as an intravenous bolus) either 30 minutes or 24 hours before coronary occlusion. The rabbits were then subjected to 30 minutes of left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion followed by 3 hours of reperfusion, and the infarct size was measured by tetrazolium staining. The results demonstrated for the first time that sildenafil had a powerful preconditioning-like effect against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury. Our research group4 injected 1.45 mg/kg intravenous sildenafil or saline 30 minutes before ischemia in anesthetized open-chest rabbits subjected to 30 minutes of left anterior descending coronary occlusion followed by 3 hours of reperfusion. Compared with saline, sildenafil significantly decreased coronary resistance in the ischemic risk area, slightly increased …
Effective Schottky Barrier lowering for contact resistivity reduction using silicides as diffusion sources

In this work we present a potential solution for forming ultra-shallow junctions with extremely low contact resistivities in which dopants are implanted into silicides and diffused to the semiconductor interface using low temperature anneals. Conventional silicide process requires a fine tuning of silicide thickness and deep source/drain doping profile to achieve low contact resistance and low source/drain diffusion sheet resistance. With the silicide implantation approach, we show that they can be engineered independently, providing a larger design space for the reduction of total external resistance. We demonstrate that contact resistance for NiPt silicide can be significantly reduced down to 7×10−9 Ω-cm2 for p+ Si and 6×10−9 Ω-cm2 for n+ Si by using Schottky Barrier Height (SBH) tuning through the implantation of B/As into pre-formed NiPtSi followed by low-temperature drive-in annealing (see Fig. 1 for the process flow). Moreover, we find that the same low contact resistance can be achieved for both heavily and moderately doped junctions, which grants an additional degree of freedom in junction design to reduce series resistance. With this technology, the ultra-shallow junction process can be simplified to the formation of ultra-thin silicide followed by shallow implantation and low temperature RTA (<600C) without any demand of ultra-high thermal budget for the S/D doping. Implantation into silicides, as an alternative to surface implantation prior to silicidation, prevents silicide morphology degradation (encroachment, roughness, or inverted pyramids) induced by extra defects from the surface implantation.
Adding holes and crosscaps to the superstring

A hole or crosscap in the world sheet of a superstring creates the eigenstate of the quantized boundary conditions. This observation makes the calculation of open string loop divergences almost trivial. We confirm that the O(32) theory is finite. In other theories, the divergences induce BRST anomalies. Cancelling them against the tree-level BRST anomalies of the sigma model gives the loop-corrected equations of motion without ambiguities.
Improved representation of diurnal variability of rainfall retrieved from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission Microwave Imager adjusted Precipitation Estimation From Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) system

[1] Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) is a satellite infrared-based algorithm that produces global estimates of rainfall at resolutions of 0.25° x 0.25° and a half-hour. In this study the model parameters of PERSIANN are routinely adjusted using coincident rainfall derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission Microwave Imager (TMI). The impact of such an adjustment on capturing the diurnal variability of rainfall is examined for the Boreal summer of 2002. General evaluations of the PERSIANN rainfall estimates with/without TMI adjustment were conducted using U.S. daily gauge rainfall and nationwide radar network (weather surveillance radar) 1988 Doppler data. The diurnal variability of PERSIANN rainfall estimates with TMI adjustment is improved over those without TMI adjustment. In particular, the amounts of afternoon and morning maximums in rainfall diurnal cycles improved by 14.9% and 26%, respectively, and the original 2-3 hours of time lag in the phase of diurnal cycles improved by 1-2 hours. In addition, the rainfall estimate with TMI adjustment has higher correlation (0.75 versus 0.63) and reduced bias (+8% versus -11%) at monthly 0.25° x 0.25° resolution than that without TMI adjustment and consistently shows higher correlation (0.62 versus 0.51) and lower bias (+22% versus -30%) at daily 0.25° x 0.25° scale. This study provides evidence that the TMI, which measures instantaneous rain rates from the TRMM platform flying on a non-Sun-synchronous orbit, enables PERSIANN to capture more realistic diurnal variations of rainfall. This study also reveals the limitation of current satellite rainfall estimation techniques in retrieving the rainfall diurnal features and suggests that further investigation of precipitation generation in different periods of cloud life cycles might help resolve this limitation.
Transport of mass in ternary liquid‐liquid systems. Part II. Mass transfer and interfacial studies

The objective of this work is to experimentally examine mass transfer during liquid-liquid extraction in the system acetonitrile-benzene-n-heptane. The interfacial characteristics of the system are simultaneously investigated. (Part I deals with the diffusion properties of the system). The mass transfer experiments are conducted in a stirred extraction cell of the Lewis type. The transfer between an unsaturated and nearly saturated phase is studied. The mass transfer coefficients for the partially miscible binary system, and for those ternary experiments in which the slope of the operating line was negative are found to be independent of the driving force. A photographic investigation, which employed the schlieren technique, indicates that Marangoni-type instabilities are absent in such experiments. However, in ternary experiments, in which the slope of the operating line is positive and above a certain critical value the mass transfer coefficients decreases as equilibrium approached. The schlieren results confirm the presence of interfacial turbulence for this case. The driving-force dependence of the turbulent mass transfer coefficients is explaine using a surface renewal model. The model provides a correlation for the results of ternary experiments in which interfaical turbulence is present.
Ending Ethnic Civil War: The Peace Process in Sri Lanka

The ethnic civil war in Sri Lanka is one of the most intractable conflicts in the world today. Despite numerous efforts to resolve it, no agreement has been forthcoming between the two parties to the conflict: the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This article focuses on the peace process initiated in 2002 that was led by Norway and supported by the international community. It analyses how the process interacted with the fragmented political situation on the ground in Sri Lanka to produce the contrary result of a return to and intensification of the war.
Redeeming the Still Redeemable: Post Sovereign Constitution Making

My concern here is for the dramatic new method of democratic constitution making, one that I call post-sovereign in the sense that the constituent power is not embodied in a single organ or instance with the plenitude of power, and all organs participating in constitutional politics are brought under legal rules. This method is the democratic alternative to revolutionary constitution making that all too easily steps over the threshold to dictatorship. And, this was the method that was reluctantly adopted in Iraq. Yet, because of what happened in Iraq, future international efforts during military occupations are likely to avoid the instruments used in that country. In this sense, this essay is part a rescue operation, an attempt to redeem the still redeemable. In what follows, I would first like to present the developed new paradigm of constitution making, as it has been first developed in Poland and Hungary and fully realized in South Africa, making the relevant comparisons with the two classical models of democratic constituent power originating in America and France. I would like to show that all components of the model are significant and mutually reinforcing, including the role of the constitutional court that is the most important clue to the newness of what is involved. Next, I would like to argue that, while the application of constitutionalism to the process as well as the result of constitution making seems to be a conscious part of these new efforts, this move in my view does not represent a sufficient solution of the problem of legitimacy. The second part of the essay will therefore focus on that question, trying to formulate a hypothesis that could serve as a beginning point for a normative theory of democratic post-sovereign constitution making. The third part will reconsider the very old problem whether beginnings can be mad legitimate.
Tracking control of direct-drive servos

Multi-objective optimization, data-intensive analysis and hardware-software co-design are the major challenging themes in the concurrent design of high-performance electromechanical systems. Direct-drive servos guarantee superior torque and force densities, efficiency, robustness, simplicity and other enabling performance quantities. Nano-, micro-, mini- and macro-scale axial and radial actuators exist in a great variety, e.g., from living organisms to various engineered electromechanical systems. Permanent-magnet actuators and servos are widely used in aerospace, automotive, biotechnology, energy, medical, power, robotic and other applications. The major goal of this paper is to report and apply advanced concepts in design and implementation of tracking control laws. These control laws are designed using the state transformation method applying the Hamilton-Jacobi optimization and Lyapunov stability theory. We design and evaluate high-performance drives and servos. Various servo-systems with radial- and axial-topology actuators are demonstrated and characterized by evaluating analog and digital tracking control laws. The studied direct-drive actuators with SmCo permanent-magnet arrays guarantee high toque density, high efficiency, reliability, fast dynamics, etc. The controllers designed guarantee stability, high precision and robustness. The high-frequency PWM drivers vary the voltage applied by changing the duty ratio of FETs. High-accuracy sensors measure angular velocity and displacement. Linear and nonlinear analog control laws guarantee superior performance, enabling capabilities, minimal complexity, simplicity, noise immunity, etc. The analog control laws can be discretized and implemented using microcontrollers and DSPs. The studied drives and servos are applicable in many applications, including hard drives, high-precision pointing systems, rotating tables, manipulators, etc. This paper examines and solves a spectrum of pertinent problems in design and implementation of enabling minimal-complexity control laws and controllers which guarantee near-optimal system performance
Personalizing public health: Your health avatar

Abstract Objectives To describe the creation of a health avatar, with the goals of providing patients with complete health information from various sources, establishing an interactive and customizable platform, empowering users to determine how the health information best fits or speaks to their personal needs, and providing perspective by comparing the health status of the individual with that of the individual's community. Summary The Internet is rapidly becoming integrated into Americans' daily lives. According to the 2007 Health Information National Trends Study, 69% of U.S. adults had access to the Internet and 23% reported using a social networking site. The impact of social media has further grown, and an estimated 50% of adults in America have a profile on social media. The potential for using cyber communities to improve health messaging is great. Several health care organizations have implemented the use of social media in a variety of ways to varying degrees of success. We propose a platform that automatically gathers information and reflects the health status of an individual back to the user. An avatar, which is a representation of a user, could be created and assigned characteristics that allow users to appreciate their health status. The health avatar platform also would allow users to compare their personal status with that of their community. The overall goal is to engage and then motivate users to improve their overall health status. Conclusion Medicine must acknowledge the evolving relationships that the next generation of patients will have with technology. The health avatar is a platform that incorporates a connection with the health system through electronic medical records and connects individuals to the greater community.
Guidance and the teaching of high school psychology

In this paper it is argued that secondary school counselors who deal in the area of personal problems are limited in their functioning by (a) the fact that their method is entirely verbal, and (b) the fact that they refuse to recognize the influence they have on others. It is suggested that counselors would be more effective if they influenced unashamedly and taught a psychology course. The purpose of the course would be to facilitate behavior change through field work, exposure to psychological literature, and supervised self-scrutiny. An attempt to develop such a course at the Newton High School is discussed.
The Marginalization of Black Executives

Employment barriers appear to have lifted to allow greater numbers of educated blacks to move into high-paying professional and managerial occupations. But are the numerical gains by blacks really indicative of equal participation in the labor market? To address this question, I analyze interviews on the careers of 76 of the top-ranking black executives employed in Chicago white-owned corporations. My findings indicate that blacks have succeeded within white management hierarchies, but their upward mobility has been delineated racially. Respondents differentially filled personnel and public relations jobs explicitly created during the 1960s and 1970s to respond to black demands for civil rights. I conclude that this base of achievement built obsolete features into the current positions blacks hold in management. The corporate response to civil rights protest created a highly visible but economically vulnerable black managerial elite.
Characterization of high resolution MR images reconstructed by a GRAPPA based parallel technique

This work implemented an auto-calibrating parallel imaging technique and applied it to in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of trabecular bone micro-architecture. A Generalized auto-calibrating partially parallel acquisition (GRAPPA) based reconstruction technique using modified robust data fitting was developed. The MR data was acquired with an eight channel phased array receiver on three normal volunteers on a General Electric 3 Tesla scanner. Microstructures comprising the trabecular bone architecture are of the order of 100 microns and hence their depiction requires very high imaging resolution. This work examined the effects of GRAPPA based parallel imaging on signal and noise characteristics and effective spatial resolution in high resolution (HR) images, for the range of undersampling or reduction factors 2-4. Additionally quantitative analysis was performed to obtain structural measures of trabecular bone from the images. Image quality in terms of contrast and depiction of structures was maintained in parallel images for reduction factors up to 3. Comparison between regular and parallel images suggested similar spatial resolution for both. However differences in noise characteristics in parallel images compared to regular images affected the threshholding based quantification. This suggested that GRAPPA based parallel images might require different analysis techniques. In conclusion, the study showed the feasibility of using parallel imaging techniques in HR-MRI of trabecular bone, although quantification strategies will have to be further investigated. Reduction of acquisition time using parallel techniques can improve the clinical feasibility of MRI of trabecular bone for prognosis and staging of the skeletal disorder osteoporosis.
Psychosocial Impacts of Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management in a Rural African-American Population

This qualitative study explored the underlying psychosocial factors and conditions that may influence type 2 diabetes (T2D) self-management among adult T2D-diagnosed African Americans in the Arkansas Delta. Listening to participants’ narratives in their own voices provided meaningful insights in their real-life experiences of T2D-related psychological and emotional challenges in African American social cultural contexts. Self-determination theory was used to conceptualize the participants’ motivations for making health behavior changes. Using purposive sampling, 31 participants total (16 women and 15 men) were interviewed. The study participants described their (1) concern over prescribed dietary and physical exercise guidelines as impractical and culturally not relevant to them; (2) doubts over the availability of social supports necessary to implement T2D self-management; and (3) fatalistic expectations of negative outcomes that undermined their self-motivation to follow self-management guidelines. Specific strategies for developing culturally competent T2D selfmanagement guidelines and community-based communication outreach initiatives are discussed.
Evolutionary dynamics of tag mediated cooperation with multilevel selection

Understanding the conditions and dynamics that produce cooperation in evolving systems remains a fundamental goal of evolutionary theory. Significant progress has been made in determining the conditions that support cooperation in simple models, but the evolutionary dynamics that lead from noncooperative conditions to cooperation are still poorly understood. And, in more complex models, even the conditions that support cooperation are not well defined. In this paper we study the dynamics of the evolution of cooperation in both a simple tag-mediated cooperation model and in a more complex version of the same system in which there is multilevel competition----competition between both individuals and populations of individuals. The results show that the inclusion of multilevel competition has both quantitative effects (increasing the frequency and duration of the periods of cooperation) and qualitative effects (introducing a new stable state) on the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation.
Solar heating of a rotating spherical space vehicle

Abstract This paper is concerned with the temperature distribution of a thin-walled spherical satellite subjected to solar radiation. The satellite rotates about an axis perpendicular to the incident radiation. The linearized differential equation of the temperature distribution is solved in terms of Legendre polynomials and associated Legendre functions. The results demonstrate the role of the angular velocity in the temperature distribution. A numerical example is included and an error analysis is performed in order to evaluate errors due to the linearization process.
High altitude Venus haze from Pioneer Venus limb scans

High-resolution limb scans of Venus made with the Orbiter Cloud Photopolarimeter aboard Pioneer Venus have been used to observe the high altitude Venus haze and its variation over almost one half a Venusian year. A model for a spherical atmosphere with tangential viewing geometry was used to analyze the observations and derive the haze properties. Values are found for the particle size and refractive index, particle number density and scale height, and eddy diffusion coefficient. Single scattering computations show good agreement with observed intensities for particles smaller than 0.3 micron radius and refractive index less than 1.7, consistent with, but not limited to, concentrated sulfuric acid. Particle scale height in the 0.5 to 2 mbar pressure regions varies between 1 and 3 km over the season, latitude, and local time ranges of the observations. Detached layers of haze are sometimes present. An average particle scale height of 2.2 km at 84 km altitude yields an eddy diffusion coefficient of 130,000 sq cm/sec.
Tea Enhances Insulin Activity

The most widely known health benefits of tea relate to the polyphenols as the principal active ingredients in protection against oxidative damage and in antibacterial, antiviral, anticarcinogenic, and antimutagenic activities, but polyphenols in tea may also increase insulin activity. The objective of this study was to determine the insulin-enhancing properties of tea and its components. Tea, as normally consumed, was shown to increase insulin activity >15-fold in vitro in an epididymal fat cell assay. Black, green, and oolong teas but not herbal teas, which are not teas in the traditional sense because they do not contain leaves of Camellia senensis, were all shown to increase insulin activity. High-performance liquid chromatography fractionation of tea extracts utilizing a Waters SymmetryPrep C18 column showed that the majority of the insulin-potentiating activity for green and oolong teas was due to epigallocatechin gallate. For black tea, the activity was present in several regions of the chromatogram corresponding to, in addition to epigallocatechin gallate, tannins, theaflavins, and other undefined compounds. Several known compounds found in tea were shown to enhance insulin with the greatest activity due to epigallocatechin gallate followed by epicatechin gallate, tannins, and theaflavins. Caffeine, catechin, and epicatechin displayed insignificant insulin-enhancing activities. Addition of lemon to the tea did not affect the insulin-potentiating activity. Addition of 5 g of 2% milk per cup decreased the insulin-potentiating activity one-third, and addition of 50 g of milk per cup decreased the insulin-potentiating activity approximately 90%. Nondairy creamers and soy milk also decreased the insulin-enhancing activity. These data demonstrate that tea contains in vitro insulin-enhancing activity and the predominant active ingredient is epigallocatechin gallate.
Rayleigh-Taylor growth measurements in the acceleration phase of spherical implosions on OMEGA.

The Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) growth of 3D broadband nonuniformities was measured using x-ray radiography in spherical plastic shells accelerated by laser light at an intensity of $\ensuremath{\sim}2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{14}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$. The 20- and $24\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$-thick spherical shells were imploded with 54 beams on the OMEGA laser system. The shells contained diagnostic openings for backlighter x rays used to image shell modulations. The measured shell trajectories and modulation RT growth were in fair agreement with 2D hydro simulations during the acceleration phase of the implosions with convergence ratios of up to $\ensuremath{\sim}2.2$. Since the ignition designs rely on these simulations, improvements in the numerical codes will be implemented to achieve better agreement with experiments.