cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Origin of nanodiamonds from Allende constrained by statistical analysis of C isotopes from small clusters of acid residue by NanoSIMS

Abstract Meteoritic nanodiamonds carry noble gases with anomalies in their stable isotopes that have drawn attention to their potentially presolar origin. Measurements of 12C/13C isotope ratios of presolar nanodiamonds are essential to understanding their origins, but bulk studies do not show notable deviations from the solar system 12C/13C ratio. We implemented a technique using secondary ion mass spectrometry with maximized spatial resolution to measure carbon isotopes in the smallest clusters of nanodiamonds possible. We measured C and Si from clusters containing as few as 1000 nanodiamonds, the smallest clusters of nanodiamonds measured to date by traditional mass spectrometry. This allowed us to investigate many possible complex compositions of the nanodiamonds, both through direct methods and statistical analysis of the distributions of observed isotopic ratios. Analysis of the breadth of distributions of carbon isotopic ratios for a number of ∼1000-nanodiamond aggregates indicates that the 12C/13C ratio may be drawn from multiple Gaussian distributions about different isotopic ratios, which implies the presence of presolar material. The mean isotopic ratio is consistent with the solar system value, so presolar components are required to be either low in concentration, or to have a mean ratio close to that of the solar system. Supernovae are likely candidates for the source of such a presolar component, although asymptotic giant branch stars are not excluded. A few aggregates show deviations from the mean 12C/13C ratio large enough to be borderline detections of enrichments in 13C. These could be caused by the presence of a small population of nanodiamonds formed from sources that produce extremely 13C-rich material, such as J-stars, novae, born-again asymptotic giant branch stars, or supernovae. Of these possible sources, only supernovae would account for the anomalous noble gases carried in the nanodiamonds.
ED NELSON'S WORK IN QUANTUM THEORY

It is a pleasure to contribute to this celebration of Ed Nelson’s scientific work, not only because of the importance of that work but because it allows me an opportunity to express my gratitude and acknowledge my enormous debt to Ed. He and Arthur Wightman were the key formulative influences on my education, not only as a graduate student but during my early postdoctoral years. Thanks, Ed!
Biasing Schemes and Diagnostics Circuit

The airbag squib drivers operate with multiple supply voltage (MSV ) levels, viz. the LV, MV and HV rails. Our goal is to ensure that there is no inadvertent activation of the drivers that will lead to the activation of the HS_FET and LS_FET. In addition to this inadvertent activation, diagnostic circuits for measuring the squib resistance are required. In this chapter, a robust biasing scheme that prevents inadvertent activation of the powerFETs, high currents triggered by tri-stated circuits, too high output voltage on the output buffer with a voltage and current selector biasing scheme is presented. In addition to the biasing scheme, the design of a bidirectional fault-tolerant current limited voltage source (CLVS ) that is mandatory for the squib resistance measurement is presented. Bidirectional fault-tolerant CLVS indicates both short to battery and short to ground and can be present simultaneously.
Meiotic Chromatin: The Substrate for Recombination Initiation

The DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) that form during meiosis I prophase initiate recombination. DSBs also play a critical role, in many species, in driving progressive association and colocalization of homologs, which culminate in full homolog synapsis at pachytene. Data from many species indicate that DSBs and recombination are not uniformly distributed, but occur more frequently in some places than in others. Studies from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, where DSBs have been mapped at the molecular level, indicate that chromatin structure is an important determinant of where DSBs form, but that other factors are also involved. Less direct data from other species also address possible roles for chromatin structure and higher-order chromosome structure in DSB formation.
Cavity QED and Classical Antenna Theory

We present a classical model for the radiation patterns of atomic dipoles confined between parallel mirrors. Taking a classical radiating dipole to model the atom, we then replace the parallel mirrors with an array of image dipoles that reproduce the correct boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field. Using elementary antenna theory we then compute the radiation pattern of the resultant antenna array. The patterns of this antenna are then plotted for various plate spacings and dipole positions. This model allows one to probe the mode structure of the cavity and to observe the directionality of the emitted radiation from the confined dipoles. In addition, the experimentally observed phenomena of spontaneous emission quenching and enhancement are predicted. These results show that the mode structure of a cavity is essentially a classical phenomenon and it effects the radiative properties of even classically radiating systems.
Acute Pharmacological Actions of Ethanol on the Central Nervous System

The mechanisms by which ethanol produces its effects on the central nervous system are both diverse and complicated. An increasing amount of evidence, however, suggests that many of the primary and secondary effects of this chemical may be related to its interaction with the cell membrane (Hunt, 1975). During the initial phase of ethanol absorption, there is a depression of motor function, leading to overall depression of the central nervous system. Continued administration of ethanol leads to a tolerance of this sedative-hypnotic effect so that, over time, the animal or human no longer responds to the same concentration of ethanol with characteristic depression.
Is It Nutrients or Nurturing? Comparison of the Growth and Development of Mother-Reared and Laboratory-Reared Macaque Infants ( Macaca nemestrina )

Many aspects of early nutrition have important implications for later biological programming and health outcome (Henry and Ulijaszek, 1996; Lucas, 1992; McGill et al., 1996). For example, the positive role of breast milk in the development of infant immunocompetence is widely recognized (Arke, 1992; Kelleher and Lonnerdal, 2001; Newburg, 1999). The relation between feeding regimen and growth is more complex, and studies comparing breast-fed infants with formula-fed infants have yielded an inconsistent picture. Some report no difference in weight between the two feeding categories from birth up to 4 or 6 months of age (Auestad et al., 1997; Innis et al., 1996; Pomerance, 1987); others have found that formula-fed infants are heavier than their breast-fed counterparts before this time, starting at 6 weeks (Fomon, 2004; Nelson et al., 1989) or 3 months of age (Dewey et al., 1992). Results for body composition are also conflicting. Some studies report that formula-fed infants are fatter than their breast-fed counterparts (Dewey et al., 1993; Yeung et al., 1981), while others show overall fatness and the proportion of lower-body fat distribution are greater in breast-fed infants (Stuff and Mueller, 1997).
Nano- and Micro-Technology to Spatially and Temporally Control Proteins for Neural Regeneration

Nano- and micro-technologies in the field of neural tissue engineering have implications in the pursuit of spatial and temporal control of protein and sugar cues at the site of injury and in the control over cellular response to these cues to promote regeneration and healing. The nervous system consists of two main components that are relevant from a regeneration and tissue engineering perspective. These components are the central nervous system (CNS), consisting of the cells and processes contained within the spinal and cranial cavities, and the peripheral nervous system (PNS), comprising of the nervous system outside of the CNS. Although a third component, the autologous nervous system, exists and is important physiologically, this component will not be the focus of this chapter for the sake of relevance and brevity.
Census-Based Travel Demand Generation for Transportation Simulations

During the last decades, a lot of progress has been made in understanding the dynamics of traffic flow models. Real world applications of these models require the ability to model traffic in networks, which has been an important research topic lately. We focus on the problem of travel demand generation in transportation networks. Our investigations are based on real world data for the Portland/Oregon area. We present a microscopic approach for iterative activity assignment exemplarily for home-to-work trips. It provides a method to generate real-world macroscopic data - in our case it is the travel time distribution resulting from census data - in a network traffic simulation under simulation feedback. The underlying assignment is based on a simple ansatz to split the probability of choosing a workplace in a particular distance into a term which describes the accessibility of workplaces, and the individuals’ function of travel time acceptance. In combination with the census data, this approach provides the macroscopic acceptance function, which turns out to be an exponentially decaying function plus a ‘repulsive’ behavior for small travel times. Furthermore, these investigations demonstrate that iterative activity assignment on a microscopic level is computationally feasible even for realistically sized transportation systems.
Performance Analysis of a Device-to-Device Offloading Scheme for Vehicular Networks

We consider a scheme for offloading the delivery of contents to mobile devices in a vehicular environment. Each content can be delivered to the requesting device either by a neighboring device or, at the expiration of a maximum delay timeout, by the network infrastructure nodes. We propose an analytical model to compute the expression of the probability that the content delivery is offloaded through a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication as a function of the maximum transmission range allowed for D2D communications, the content popularity, and the vehicles speed. We show that, using the proposed analytical model, it is possible to identify the optimal maximum transmission range, which minimizes the total energy consumption (of the infrastructure plus mobile devices).
Compressed sensing acceleration of biexponential 3D-T 1ρ relaxation mapping of knee cartilage

Purpose Use compressed sensing (CS) for 3D biexponential spin-lattice relaxation time in the rotating frame (T1ρ ) mapping of knee cartilage, reducing the total scan time and maintaining the quality of estimated biexponential T1ρ parameters (short and long relaxation times and corresponding fractions) comparable to fully sampled scans. Methods Fully sampled 3D-T1ρ -weighted data sets were retrospectively undersampled by factors 2-10. CS reconstruction using 12 different sparsifying transforms were compared for biexponential T1ρ -mapping of knee cartilage, including temporal and spatial wavelets and finite differences, dictionary from principal component analysis (PCA), k-means singular value decomposition (K-SVD), exponential decay models, and also low rank and low rank plus sparse models. Synthetic phantom (N = 6) and in vivo human knee cartilage data sets (N = 7) were included in the experiments. Spatial filtering before biexponential T1ρ parameter estimation was also tested. Results Most CS methods performed satisfactorily for an acceleration factor (AF) of 2, with relative median normalized absolute deviation (MNAD) around 10%. Some sparsifying transforms, such as low rank with spatial finite difference (L + S SFD), spatiotemporal finite difference (STFD), and exponential dictionaries (EXP) significantly improved this performance, reaching MNAD below 15% with AF up to 10, when spatial filtering was used. Conclusion Accelerating biexponential 3D-T1ρ mapping of knee cartilage with CS is feasible. The best results were obtained by STFD, EXP, and L + S SFD regularizers combined with spatial prefiltering. These 3 CS methods performed satisfactorily on synthetic phantom as well as in vivo knee cartilage for AFs up to 10, with median error below 15%.
The Outcome of Post-Chemotherapy Retroperitoneal Lymph Node Dissection in Patients with Metastatic Bladder Cancer in the Retroperitoneum.

Purpose While a definitive cure can be achieved by radical cystectomy and pelvic lymph node dissection in select patients with regional lymphadenopathy, the benefit remains uncertain in patients who present with non-regional metastases. We analyzed the survival outcomes of post-chemotherapy retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Materials and methods We reviewed our institutional database and identified 13 patients with radiographically evident or biopsy proven retroperitoneal nodal metastases with a significant response to chemotherapy. These patients underwent consolidative surgery with concomitant or delayed retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. The primary endpoints were progression-free survival and disease-specific survival from the time of retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Results All patients had primary urothelial cell carcinoma. Twelve patients underwent concomitant radical cystectomy, pelvic and retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Seven patients (54%) had residual disease in the retroperitoneum and the median number of retroperitoneal nodes containing metastases was 4 (IQR 2-6). Six (86%) developed disease recurrences within 2 years of surgery and 5 (71%) died of cancer. Of the 6 patients without residual disease in the retroperitoneum, 2 (33%) developed recurrences and died of disease progression. The 2-year disease-specific survival was worse for patients with residual disease in the retroperitoneum than those without residual retroperitoneal disease (34%, 95% CI 5-68 vs 50%, 95% CI 6-85). Conclusions The presence of retroperitoneal nodal metastases at post-chemotherapy retroperitoneal lymph node dissection is a poor prognosticator. Consolidative surgery with retroperitoneal lymph node dissection provides important prognostic information and may be therapeutic in a very small subset of these patients.
The Economic Impacts of the Commercial Space Industry

Abstract The market structure of government investment domination in the space industry is being disrupted as commercial companies began working in the commercial space sector. As the 1960s was known as a government-funded space race, the 21st century may be known as a private interest space race. U.S. policy intended to speed innovation and drive costs down by expanding the role of commercial space companies. Hence, the 2018 orbiting sports car, yet more importantly, reusable rockets, satellites, and associated services developed as a result of the deliberate shift in government policy starting with the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984. As growth is expected to accelerate, input-output analysis is useful to predict what industries will benefit and inform the government in their policy decisions. Using a benchmarked growth rate, this research constructed the projected economic impact of yearly growth in commercial space on the U.S. and Florida economies and industries. Growth in the sector not only spurs growth in higher labor income jobs but also causes growth in jobs in other sectors, some of which also have higher than average labor income. Furthermore, growing these types of jobs would have a positive influence on the U.S. and Florida's economy and tax revenues.
Amelioration of metabolic syndrome by metformin associates with reduced indices of low-grade inflammation independently of the gut microbiota.

Metformin beneficially impacts several aspects of metabolic syndrome including dysglycemia, obesity, and liver dysfunction, thus making it a widely used frontline treatment for early-stage type 2 d...
Dipole strength function in Li-11

The dipole response of the neutron-rich nucleus $^{11}\mathrm{Li}$ is calculated in the random phase approximation and compared with the recent experimental measurement of Coulomb breakup by Kobayashi et al. While th theory predicts a softening of the dipole mode as expected, the response is not sufficiently enhanced to explain the experimental data. This shows the need for a theory that deals with correlations beyond those included in random phase approximation.
Anipose: a toolkit for robust markerless 3D pose estimation

Quantifying movement is critical for understanding animal behavior. Advances in computer vision now enable markerless tracking from 2D video, but most animals live and move in 3D. Here, we introduce Anipose, a Python toolkit for robust markerless 3D pose estimation. Anipose consists of four components: (1) a 3D calibration module, (2) filters to resolve 2D tracking errors, (3) a triangulation module that integrates temporal and spatial constraints, and (4) a pipeline for processing large numbers of videos. We evaluate Anipose on four datasets: a moving calibration board, fruit flies walking on a treadmill, mice reaching for a pellet, and humans performing various actions. Because Anipose is built on popular 2D tracking methods (e.g., DeepLabCut), users can expand their existing experimental setups to incorporate robust 3D tracking. We hope this open-source software and accompanying tutorials (www.anipose.org) will facilitate the analysis of 3D animal behavior and the biology that underlies it.
Bankers in the Bedroom

Nationwide, men and women today don't have equal access to credit. Banks, savings and loan associations, credit-card companies, finance companies, insurance companies, retail stores and even the federal government discriminate against women in extending credit. – Representative Martha Griffiths, 1972 “Discrimination is a necessary function in the extension of credit to determine whether a person has the ability and willingness to repay the debt,” wrote Arvonne Fraser in a letter to senators as they prepared to vote on a bill that would have outlawed sex discrimination in lending. Fraser was the president of the Women's Equity Action League, which belonged to a larger coalition of women's and civil rights groups that had helped to lift the issue of sex discrimination in lending to the public agenda beginning in 1972. Their aim was to convince the government to extend the existing ban on mortgage discrimination by race, national origin, and color to cover marital status and sex as well, and for legislation that dealt with sex discrimination in consumer lending generally. Another year would pass before the 1974 Housing and Community Development and Equal Credit Opportunity acts would accomplish these goals. Reformers faced several challenges in introducing nondiscrimination policies into an industry that, by its nature, discriminates. By the 1970s, racial discrimination in home lending was often concealed and typically not codified, but lenders were direct and blatant about their need to hold female applicants to different standards than male applicants. For decades, lenders had maintained that such differential treatment was necessary to protect banks’ financial interests – that differences between the sexes created valid concerns about default risk. The federal government largely agreed, with several agencies explicitly requiring banks whose loans they underwrote to hold female applicants to a different standard than male ones, and others implicitly condoning sex discrimination by their failure to regulate it. Credit discrimination against women emerged in the national political agenda in the early 1970s. In a multistage model of collective action common to boundary groups – and evident in civil rights groups described in the previous chapter – feminist credit advocates and their allies played four roles. First, they collected women's individual experiences of lending discrimination and aggregated those individual (and private) difficulties into collective grievances.
Automated Chagas Disease Vectors Identification using Data Mining Techniques

Chagas disease (CD) is a vector-borne zoonotic disease affecting large parts of the world. It is imposing a tremendous social burden on public health and ranks as one of the most severe threats to human health. CD is often transmitted to humans by the feces of insects called triatomine or kissing bugs. The diagnosis of CD can be performed at any stage of the disease and involves the analysis of clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory data. The CD has two different phases, acute phase and chronic phase. Since controlling and treating CD is easier in the early stages, detecting it in the acute phase plays an essential role in overcoming and controlling it. There are many clinical trials dedicated to this problem, but progress in applicational research (automatic identification) has been slower. Due to this shortcoming and the importance of this problem, this research is dedicated to present two automatic CD vector identification systems that classify several different vectors of kissing bugs with an acceptable and promising identification rate. Our proposed methods are composed of preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification phases. Principal component analysis (PCA) is utilized for feature extraction and Random Forrest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are employed in the classification stages. A dataset consisting of more than two thousand kissing bug images is used as input of our methods. The accuracy for the first proposed approach, namely PCA-SVM, is 87.62% for 410 images of 12 Mexican and 75.26% for 1620 images of 39 Brazilian species. The second proposed approach, namely PCA-RF, has an accuracy of 100% for both Brazilian and Mexican species. We achieved perfect results with the PCA-RF method. Our results are promising and outperform the results of other available developed automatic identification systems for CD vectors.
Measuring Rural P-12 Teachers' Attitudes, Perceptions, and Utilizations of Social Media.

Social media continues to evolve and change the way people interact, learn, and communicate. As social media continues to grow in importance within societies, it is critical to better understand how teachers view social media as an educational resource. This quantitative study examines the general attitudes, perceptions, and utilizations of social media among P-12 teachers in a rural school district. Findings indicate that most teachers view social media as a high risk proposition for student use in the classroom, but do see social media as potentially useful and relevant to learning in the P-12 classroom.
Many-body wave scattering by small bodies and applications

A rigorous reduction of the many-body wave scattering problem to solving a linear algebraic system is given bypassing solving the usual system of integral equation. The limiting case of infinitely many small particles embedded into a medium is considered and the limiting equation for the field in the medium is derived. The impedance boundary conditions are imposed on the boundaries of small bodies. The case of Neumann boundary conditions (acoustically hard particles) is also considered. Applications to creating materials with a desired refraction coefficient are given. It is proved that by embedding a suitable number of small particles per unit volume of the original material with suitable boundary impedances, one can create a new material with any desired refraction coefficient. The governing equation is a scalar Helmholtz equation, which one obtains by Fourier transforming the wave equation.
Use of 30-hour in vitro neutral-detergent-fiber digestibility of feedstuffs in dairy ration-formulation software: Evaluation of predictions for milk and methane production in lactating dairy cows

ABSTRACT Objective Our objective was to determine whether the use of 30-h in vitro NDF digestibility (NDFD30) of fibrous ingredients included in rations fed to lactating dairy cattle improves the accuracy of milk and CH4 production predictions from the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS, v. 6.5). Materials and Methods Animal performance from 8 energy-balance studies were compiled into a database along with the treatments fed during those studies. Observed animal performance was compared with milk and CH4 predictions from CNCPS (v. 6.5) when using CNCPS feed library NDF rate of digestion (kd) values or when using NDF kd calculated from NDFD30. The in vitro analysis was conducted according to Goering and Van Soest (1970) , and ash-free, α-amylase-treated NDF of the residue was determined according to methods outlined by Mertens (2002) . Results and Discussion Predictions of milk production were poorer with use of NDFD30, the concordance correlation coefficient decreased from 0.87 to 0.82 and mean bias increased −0.23 to 1.30 kg. Methane production predictions were unaffected with use of NDFD30. The concordance correlation coefficient increased from 0.33 to 0.38, but slope and mean bias were similar. These results indicate that including NDFD30 to estimate the kd of NDF may not improve ME allowable milk or CH4 production predictions when using the CNCPS ration model. Implications and Applications Our results suggest that milk production predictions from CNCPS (v. 6.5) are reliable but CH4 predictions can be improved. Including NDFD30 did not provide additional value to ration formulation because it did not improve milk or CH4 production predictions. The next steps should evaluate including more time points, such as 30, 120, and 240 h in vitro, to determine whether altering the total pool of potentially digestible NDF and the rate of NDF digestion would improve predictions from CNCPS.
The “Umbrella Man”, Occam’s Razor, and the Archaeological Noise of Personal Practice

This essay considers the ramifications of “The Umbrella Man” - a brief mystery that was of interest to historians and theorists examining the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 - on the practice of modern archaeology and some of the basic tenets upon which it relies. The paper focuses on certain materials, analytical methods, and research themes associated with the study of nineteenth-century sites in the Midwest, contextualized to varying degrees by the presence of a written record left behind by the makers and users of the material world as it existed in the region during the 1800s.
Using 3D in vitro cell culture models in anti-cancer drug discovery

The high failure rate in drug discovery remains a costly and time-consuming challenge. Improving the odds of success in the early steps of drug development requires disease models with high biologi...
Measuring Consumer Engagement in Omnichannel Retailing: The Mobile In-Store Experience (MIX) Index

We draw insights from Activity Theory within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores. We developed and validated a nine-item, formative MIX index using survey data collected from fashion consumers in the United States (n = 1,267), United Kingdom (n = 370), Germany (n = 362), and France (n = 219). As survey measures of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing using a mobile device, the index items with stronger factor loadings described in-store shopping activities whereas those with weaker factor loadings described activities related to behavioral targeting and social networking. These results suggest that retailers should give consumers the autonomy to independently find, evaluate and purchase merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores, thereby enabling them to co-create personalized shopping experiences as active participants within an omnichannel retail servicescape. Our findings also suggest that retailers should provide consumers with more authentic ways to build community and brand affiliations than mobile marketing and social media promotions. In-store activities should not simply be a migration of pre-existing e-commerce capabilities onto mobile devices. An engaging mobile in-store experience should be an amalgam of physical and digital activities that produce a seamless shopping journey and leverage the unique properties of mobile devices - ultra-portability, location sensitivity, untetheredness, and personalization. Retail executives can use the validated MIX index to prepare strategic investments in mobile technology applications and capabilities for retail stores within their omnichannel operations. The nine-item MIX index is also well-suited for consumer surveys, which also makes it an attractive measure of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing for future academic research.
Optimizing mother-baby wellness during the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic: A case for telemedicine

Background:The 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic poses unique challenges to healthcare delivery. To limit the exposure of providers and patients to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, ...
Cognitive Impairment in Older Incarcerated Males: Education and Race Considerations.

ABSTRACT Objective Assess cognitive impairment (global cognition and executive functioning) in older incarcerated males overall, and according to education and race. Design Cross-sectional Participants The sample included 239 racially diverse (37.7% White, 41.4% Black, 20.9% Hispanic/Other) incarcerated males age ≥50 (mean age = 56.4 ± 6.1; range 50–79 years). Measurements Global cognitive impairment assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) − standard MoCA scoring (1-point adjustment for ≤12 years education, and score Results Average MoCA score was 24.12 ± 3.38. Overall, 62.8% and 38.5% of participants met criteria for cognitive impairment using standard scoring and education- and race-specific cutpoints, respectively. This difference was largely attributed to the change in proportion of Blacks who met criteria for cognitive impairment after applying education- and race-specific cutpoints (62.6% versus 19.2%). Fewer White inmates were impaired (51.1% versus 36.7%) after applying demographically-adjusted norms; however, the proportion of Hispanics/Others remained largely unchanged (84% versus 80%). A considerable proportion of participants were mildly impaired on TMT-A (18.2% Whites, 7.1% Blacks) and TMT-B (20.5% Whites, 4.1% Blacks). Race differences were observed in missed MoCA items. Conclusions Cognitive impairment is common in older incarcerated persons, despite applying education- and race-specific norms. Notable race differences highlight need for validated assessments for this diverse population.
Solving Environmental Problems is Changing Cultural Perception Toward Environment

This paper argues that solving environmental problems is complex because it is not a matter of introducing strict laws on the environment. Laws will be always considered as an external burden to be followed. People’s environmental awareness must be roused because the environmental problem is coming from the mind which has been shaped by the culture. Therefore, it is not a question of laws but more than this, it is about cultural awareness that has influenced the attitude and behavior of the people toward the environment. Changing cultural perceptions is one fundamental option in solving environmental problems.
Investment externalities in models of fire sales

Abstract Two alternative models of fire sales that yield the same aggregate predictions have different normative implications. If fire sales result from marginal misallocation, a pecuniary externality leads to ex-ante overinvestment. If they result from asymmetric information, the overinvestment result is reversed. However, there may be a tradeoff between present and future underinvestment. Ex-ante macroprudential policy may need to treat different types of investment differently, but ex-post intervention is useful in both cases.
Interactive multi-modal motion planning with Branch Model Predictive Control.

Motion planning for autonomous robots and vehicles in presence of uncontrolled agents remains a challenging problem as the reactive behaviors of the uncontrolled agents must be considered. Since the uncontrolled agents usually demonstrate multimodal reactive behavior, the motion planner needs to solve a continuous motion planning problem under these behaviors, which contains a discrete element. We propose a branch Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework that plans over feedback policies to leverage the reactive behavior of the uncontrolled agent. In particular, a scenario tree is constructed from a finite set of policies of the uncontrolled agent, and the branch MPC solves for a feedback policy in the form of a trajectory tree, which shares the same topology as the scenario tree. Moreover, coherent risk measures such as the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) are used as a tuning knob to adjust the tradeoff between performance and robustness. The proposed branch MPC framework is tested on an overtake and lane change task and a merging task for autonomous vehicles in simulation, and on the motion planning of an autonomous quadruped robot alongside an uncontrolled quadruped in experiments. The result demonstrates interesting human-like behaviors, achieving a balance between safety and performance.
From Listening to Asking: Issues of Power Balance in P4C

This article explores a P4C-style of response to criticisms addressed to P4C’s inconsistencies. The main argument against P4C is that, although P4C theory stands for, by, and with children in terms of educational philosophy, P4C advocates do not follow the same approach when they defend P4C theory from criticism. By developing a discussion about listening and education through Megan Laverty’s idea of listening, Jane Roland Martin’s idea of pretending as if listening, and Darren Chetty and Judith Suissa’s idea of misunderstanding as if listening, Kanako W. Ide argues that the central business for P4C advocates with regard to these criticisms is not to respond to them well, but rather to create a suitable educational environment for children to deliberate and discuss them, thereby allowing the adults to extract the children’s wisdom and apply it to this adult-generated problem.
Das genealogische Verhältnis der konstitutionellen Demokratie zur kosmopolitischen Menschenrechtsidee

Alexis de Tocqueville auserte in seinem Buch „Die Demokratie in Amerika“ die Meinung, dass alle Nationen, und so auch die Demokratien, Teil der „societe universelle“ seien bzw. zur „genre humain“ gehorten (Tocqueville 1959/1962, Bd. 1, 2. Teil, Kap. 7). Er bezeichnete die Nation als eine Art Geschworenenkollegium, das die gesamte Menschheit vertritt und ihr allgemeines Gesetz, die Gerechtigkeit, verwirklichen soll; noch uber der Souveranitat des Volkes liege die Souveranitat der Menschheit. Daher kann der Mensch, bedrangt von der moralischen Macht der Mehrheit, die in extremer Form wie ein Tyrann wirken kann, an die Souveranitat der Menschheit appellieren. Damit hat Tocqueville das Spannungsverhaltnis beschrieben, in dem gegenwartig die Menschenrechtsidee und die Demokratieidee stehen.
Dynamics of hepatic glycosaminoglycan accumulation in murine Schistosoma japonicum infection.

Abstract Hepatic fibrosis is the major pathologic sequela of schistosomiasis and is comprised of extracellular collagen and proteoglycan macromolecules. Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), the major constituents of proteoglycan molecules, were studied in mice infected with Schistosoma japonicum. Total GAG content was measured by extraction of uronic acid from murine liver sections and isolated hepatic granulomas during the progression from acute (0–15 wk) to chronic (20–30 wk) infection. Infected livers contained elevated levels of uronic acid throughout infection when compared to noninfected livers. Glycosaminoglycan content was found to peak at a value of 2.5 ± 0.1 pmol/mg tissue (five times normal value) in acute infection (6–15 wk), a time of increasing hepatic fibrosis. Peak uronic acid content in isolated granulomas was also observed during acute infection with a maximal value of 7.1 ± 0.9 pmol/mg tissue (9–11 wk). During chronic infection (30 wk), hepatic uronic acid content was reduced by 68% in unfractionated liver tissue and by 49% in isolated granulomas (both p
Mechanisms of unexplained anemia in the nursing home

OBJECTIVES: To characterize anemia in elderly nursinghome residents.DESIGN: Prospective multiinstitutional cohort study.SETTING: Five nursing homes.PARTICIPANTS: From retrospective analysis, residentsfound to be anemic using chart review were prospectivelyrandomized. Of the 81 residents enrolled, 60 were anemic.MEASUREMENTS: Chart review for medical history andfactors related to treatment or history of anemia, extensivelaboratory evaluation for causes of anemia, and classiﬁca-tion of anemia by two hematologists.RESULTS: Among the 60 anemic residents, the causes ofanemia were idiopathic (n527), iron-deﬁciency (n514),anemia associated with chronic disease (n58), anemia ofrenal insufﬁciency (n56), and other (n55). The eryrthro-poietin (EPO) response to anemia was lower in residentswith idiopathic anemia (IA) than in those with iron-deﬁciency anemia, and this correlated with renal functionas estimated using calculated creatinine clearance. In thiselderly population, advancing age was not correlated withlower EPO response.CONCLUSION: IA is common in nursing home residents.AlowerEPOresponsecontributestothehighprevalenceofanemia in this setting and may be due, in part, to occultrenal dysfunction. J Am Geriatr Soc 52:423–427, 2004.Key words: elderly; anemia; erythropoietin; renal insufﬁ-ciency; frail
A comparison of parallel and sequential implementations of a multisensor multitarget tracking algorithm

Parallel and sequential implementations of the multisensor joint probabilistic data association (MSJPDA) tracking algorithm are analyzed and compared. The sequential implementation is shown to be exponentially less computationally complex as the number of sensors increases. Simulation results suggest that the sequential method also yields better tracking performance on the average. This is primarily due to the fact that better filtered estimates are available after processing each sensor's data. Thus, while sequential and parallel implementations are equivalent in multisensor filtering when no data association routine is needed, the sequential implementation gives superior tracking performance when data association is required.
Interpersonal Traits, Complementarity, and Trust in Virtual Collaboration

Trust has been a focus of research on virtual collaboration in distributed teams, e-commerce, e-learning, and telemedicine. Central to several models of trust and virtual collaboration is user's disposition to trust. This construct, however, has generally been conceptualized in as a stand-alone trait without a substantive theoretical background in personality theory. This paper advances the interpersonal circumplex model (ICM) as a theoretical framework for understanding the role of personal traits in collaboration in virtual contexts. The ICM posits that tendencies in interpersonal interaction stem from personal dispositions that can be understood in terms of dimensions of power and affiliation, fundamental constituents of user's personality. We develop a model that proposes that interpersonal traits, specifically, personality type as defined by the circumplex, affect the individual's disposition to trust, perceived trustworthiness, communication, and thereby affects willingness to collaborate and the sustainability and productivity of the collaboration. The model enables us to unpack the black box concepts of disposition to trust, faith in others, and trusting stance that are currently incorporated in theories of trust in information systems. The theory also enables explanation of trust dynamics at the dyadic and group levels. We develop propositions positing that individual's traits and dyadic complementarity are mediating factors in interpersonal trust and willingness to use new technologies and significantly affect the initiation, duration, and productivity of computer-mediated collaboration.
Strong Consistency of Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis for Networks with Correlated Service Times

The paper will concern strong consistency of infinitesimal perturbation analysis (IPA) for a class of queueing networks with correlated service times. The networks are assumed to have a single class of customers, and service times with bounded density functions. Strong consistency will be discussed in terms of a set of sufficient conditions, recently established by the authors [1]. The conditions will be verified for sojourn times in serial and tree-shaped networks, and for an approximate measure of the threshold delay-probability in serial networks.
Dynamics of an Unsteady Turbulent Boundary Layer

The response of a well-defined, steady, flatplate turbulent boundary layer subjected subsequently to two types of oscillations of the freestream velocity in the test section is studied in this investigation. In the first case, the free-stream velocity decreased linearly in the test section in a time-dependent manner such that the magnitude of the streamwise gradient of the free-stream velocity varied sinusoidally from zero to a maximum value at frequencies ranging from zero to approximately the bursting frequency. In the second case, the mean free-stream velocity decreased in the test section in a nonlinear fashion independent of the oscillation frequency, while the amplitude and phase of the free-stream oscillations varied along the streamwise direction in an arbitrary manner, depending upon the oscillation frequency. Detailed measurements are reported for the first case. It was found that the mean velocity and mean turbulence intensity profiles in the boundary layer were unaffected by the imposed oscillations. The ratio of the amplitude of the periodic velocity component in the boundary layer to that in the free-stream, although as much as 1.7 for quasi-steady oscillations, becomes unity over the outer region of the boundary layer at high frequencies. Also, at high frequencies of imposed oscillations, both the boundary layer thickness and the Reynolds stress distribution across the boundary layer becomes frozen over the oscillation cycle at their mean values. Only the mean velocity profile measurements were carried out in the second case. It was found that, despite the large streamwise variations of the amplitude and phase of the free-stream oscillations, the mean velocity profile in the boundary layer once again remained independent of the imposed oscillation frequency so long as the mean free-stream velocity distribution remained unchanged.
Genesis of the Calcium-Rich Achondrites in Light of Rare-Earth and Barium Concentrations

Rare-earth and barium concentrations have been determined by mass-spectrometric isotope-dilution for a chondrite composite, nine calcium-rich achondrites, two plagioclase separates, and two pyroxene separates. The brecciated basaltic achondrites have higher (3–17 times) absolute rare-earth and barium concentrations than those in the average chondrite, but similar relative concentrations. Rare-earth and barium data, petrography, and chemistry indicate that the brecciated achondrites cannot be cumulates, to any great extent, of pigeonite or plagioclase, which have fractionated relative rare-earth and barium concentrations. The brecciated achondrites apparently represent liquids, perhaps with different amounts of phenocrystic hypersthene; the closed-system crystallization of the Juvinas achondrite, which is induced from the whole-rock and mineral europium concentrations, strongly supports this interpretation. Hypabyssal or extrusive (rather than plutonic) crystallization is indicated. Measured plagioclase and clinopyroxene partition coefficients for the rare earths and barium place limits on maximum amounts of plagioclase and pigeonite of approximately 20% each that could have been removed from the achondritic magmas.
A vortex‐based model of velocity and shear stress in a partially vegetated shallow channel

[1] This paper presents a method for predicting the distributions of velocity and shear stress in shallow channels with a boundary of emergent vegetation. Experiments in a laboratory channel with model vegetation show that the velocity profile exhibits a distinct two-layer structure, consisting of a rapidly varying shear layer across the vegetation interface and a more gradual boundary layer in the main channel. In addition, coherent vortices are observed which span both layers, and are the dominant contributors to lateral momentum fluxes. From these observations, we propose a model for the vortex-induced exchange and find expressions for the width of momentum penetration into the vegetation, the velocity and shear stress at the vegetation edge, and the width of the boundary layer in the main channel. These variables, along with a momentum balance in the main channel, comprise a modeling framework which accurately reproduces the observed velocity and shear stress distributions. The predictions for the velocity and shear stress can provide a basis for modeling flood conveyance, overbank sediment transport, and scalar residence time in the vegetated layer.
Option-Implied Idiosyncratic and Systematic Risk in the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns

I introduce a model-based approach to estimate higher order idiosyncratic moments and co-moments (co-skewness and co-kurtosis) of individual equities exclusively from the cross-section of option prices, including the full spectrum of available maturities and strike prices. These estimates are forward-looking and can, thus, be interpreted as truly ex-ante conditional measures of risk. Using standard cross-sectional asset pricing tests, I show that ex-ante moments help explain the cross-section of expected stock returns beyond traditional asset pricing factors, firm characteristics, and ex-post measures of moments. Specifically, I find that idiosyncratic volatility, idiosyncratic skewness and co-skewness are significantly negatively related to expected returns, while co-kurtosis shows a significantly positive relationship. Ex-ante moments are economically significant. A one-standard-deviation increase in idiosyncratic volatility, for example, leads to a 4.44% drop in annual expected returns.
FUZZY LOGIC CONTROL OF VEHICLE SUSPENSION SYSTEMS.

Passenger ride comfort has been one of the major issues of vehicle design. The most efficient way of achieving better ride quality is to improve the control of vehicle suspension systems. This paper focuses on developing a robust control algorithm for vehicle suspension systems which can handle a wide range of road roughness as well as mechanical variances of suspension systems while providing a comfort ride. Specifically, a model reference self–tuning fuzzy logic control scheme which consists of a primary and a secondary controller is proposed. The primary controller performs the major control function of the actual sprung mass acceleration. The secondary controller, however, is used to tune the output membership function of the primary fuzzy logic controller on line such that it is capable of adapting process variations such as sprung mass change, spring and damper rate variations and harsh road conditions. The simulation results show that the proposed fuzzy logic controller can make the active suspension system accommodate normal road condition variations and provide near–zero sprung mass acceleration, which in turn yields good quality ride. The comparison study through simulation also demonstrates the superior robustness of the proposed controller over the conventional controller for active vehicle suspension systems.