cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Adaptive QoS Admission Control for IEEE 802.11e Network

With the increasing popularity of multimedia applications, quality of services (QoS) support in wireless communication networks has become important. Along with the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) proposed in IEEE 802.e MAC protocol, admission control is a very important component for provision of guaranteed QoS parameters in wireless local area networks (WLANs). Based on the characteristics of real-time application, this study proposes a new adaptive QoS admission control in which quality access point (QAP) dynamically adjusts the QoS level of existing flows so as to provide new data flows acceptable QoS when sufficient resources are not available. The analysis shows that this enhancement admits significantly more voice/video flows into the WLANs than existing admission control mechanism.
EXISTENCE OF STATIONARY SOLUTIONS TO AN ENERGY DRIFT-DIFFUSION MODEL FOR SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES

We analyze a mathematical model for semiconductors derived from the hydrodynamic model under the massless assumption. This model augments the classical drift-diffusion model by including temperature as a dependent variable. We establish the existence of stationary solutions near the equilibrium state.
Precision mass spectrometry and polarizability shifts with one and two ions in a penning trap

A brief review is presented of recent work with the Precision Penning Trap Mass Spectrometer, formerly at MIT, now at Florida State University. This includes atomic mass comparisons using single trapped ions; mass comparisons using two simultaneously trapped ions alternated between large and small cyclotron radii; and measurement of the dipole moment of a molecular ion using the polarizability-induced shift in cyclotron frequency.
Rural residence and poor birth outcome in Washington state.

It is often assumed that poor birth outcomes are more common among rural women than urban women, but there is little substantive evidence to that effect. While the effectiveness of rural providers and hospitals has been evaluated in previous studies, this study focuses on poor birth outcomes in a population of rural residents, including those who leave rural areas for obstetrical care. Rural and urban differences in rates of inadequate prenatal care, neonatal death, and low birth weight were examined in the general population and in subpopu-lations stratified by risk and race using data from five years (1984-88) of birth and infant death certificates from Washington state. Also examined were care and outcome differences between rural women delivering in rural hospitals and those delivering in urban facilities. Bivariate analyses were confirmed with logistic regression. Results indicate that rural residents in the general population and in various subpopulations had similar or lower rates of poor outcome than did urban residents but experienced higher rates of inadequate prenatal care than did urban residents. Rural residents delivering in urban hospitals had higher rates of poor outcomes than those delivering in rural hospitals. We conclude that rural residence is not associated with greater risk of poor birth outcome. White and nonwhite differences appear to exceed any rural and urban resident differences in rates of poor birth outcome.
Radiation-Induced Translocations in Mice: Persistence, Chromosome Specificity, and Influence of Genetic Background

Abstract Giver, C. R., Moore, D. H. II and Pallavicini, M. G. Radiation-Induced Translocations in Mice: Persistence, Chromosome Specificity, and Influence of Genetic Background. The translocation frequency response in the chromosomes of peripheral blood lymphocytes is widely used for radiation biomonitoring and dose estimation. However, this assay is based upon several assumptions that have not been rigorously tested. It is typically assumed that the translocation frequency in blood lymphocytes reflects the level of genomic damage in other hemopoietic tissues and is independent of the chromosome probe and genetic background. We conducted studies to evaluate these assumptions using mice with different genetic backgrounds. Six different whole-chromosome fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) probes were used to detect translocations in peripheral blood lymphocytes at multiple times after whole-body irradiation. Translocation frequencies were chromosome-independent at 6 and 16 weeks after exposure but wer...
Habeas Litigation in the U.S. District Courts

This project was supported by Award No. 2006-IJ-CX-0020, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice. This study is the first to provide empirical information about the processing of habeas petitions filed in U.S District Courts by state prisoners under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), information that will be useful to courts and policymakers in assessing habeas law. The project is a collaborative effort of Vanderbilt University Law School and the National Center for State Courts, with funding from the National Institute of Justice and assistance from an expert Advisory Committee. Data were collected from 2384 non-capital cases randomly selected from all non-capital habeas cases filed by state prisoners in federal district court during 2003 and 2004, and 368 capital cases started in 2000, 2001, and 2002 in the 13 districts with the highest volume of capital filings (TX-S; TX-E; TX-N; TX-W; PA-E; OH-N; OH-S; CA-C; AZ; NV; AL-N; FL-M; and OK-W). These account for over 60% of the capital habeas filings nationwide. The study:  Reports extensive descriptive information about the time elapsing from state sentence to federal filing, claims raised, the application of defenses and limitations, processing time, merits review, and outcome;  Compares processing of cases pre- and post-AEDPA, and compares the processing of capital cases to the processing of non-capital cases; and  Uses regression analysis to examine features associated with processing time for both capital and non-capital cases, features associated with the filing period for capital cases, and features associated with the likelihood of relief in capital cases. Representative findings include:  Capital cases were filed an average of 7.4 years following state judgment.  Non-capital cases averaged 6.3 years before filing, longer than the average 5 years before AEDPA.  Of capital cases, 4% were dismissed as time-barred under AEDPA's statute of limitations, compared to 22% of non-capital cases.  Non-capital cases have averaged 11.5 months in federal court, capital cases have averaged 3.1 years so far (1 in 4 capital cases was still pending in late November 2006).  Of 1986 non-capital cases completed other than by transfer to another district, only 7 received relief. Courts granted the writ in 33 of the 267 completed capital cases.  The location of the case had a significant relationship to both processing time and likelihood of relief, after controlling for case-level factors. Policy recommendations are not within the scope of the project.
Low Temperature Induced Biochemical Mechanisms: Implications for Cold Acclimation and De-Acclimation

Acclimation and de-acclimation of woody plants is correlated with endogenous levels of raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO), but not to total sugars or other oligosaccharides. Synthesis begins at the onset of cold acclimation and reaches a maximum in mid-winter at peak hardiness. RFO levels decline as cortical stem tissues de-acclimate. Exposure for 24–48 hours at 25°C induces substantial dehardening. Arrhenius plots depict the rate of raffinose accumulation during acclimation, and the rate of degradation during de-acclimation.
Thermal mechanical stress modeling of GCtM seals

Finite-element thermal stress modeling at the glass-ceramic to metal (GCtM) interface was conducted assuming heterogeneous glass-ceramic microstructure. The glass-ceramics were treated as composites consisting of high expansion silica crystalline phases dispersed in a uniform residual glass. Interfacial stresses were examined for two types of glass-ceramics. One was designated as SL16 glass -ceramic, owing to its step-like thermal strain curve with an overall coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) at 16 ppm/oC. Clustered Cristobalite is the dominant silica phase in SL16 glass-ceramic. The other, designated as NL16 glass-ceramic, exhibited clusters of mixed Cristobalite and Quartz and showed a near-linear thermal strain curve with a same CTE value.
Events following queen removal in colonies of Africanized honeybees in South America

The timing of queen rearing and swarming are described after queens were removed from colonies of Africanized bees. New queens were reared from newly hatched to three day old worker larvae, many of which were moved in the egg or newly eclosed larval stages by workers into newly constructed queen cells. Mortality of worker eggs and larvae following dequeening was high, averaging 50%. When new queens emerged, swarms issued from two-thirds of the colonies. This process of queen replacement and queen-loss swarming differs from that of reproductive swarming in the lack of preparation before queen loss, longer queenless interval, lack of correlation between number of swarms and sealed brood area or number of queen cells, and lack of Congestion in colonies when swarms issued.
Contribution to the Etiology of Encephalitis. Differentiation of Encephalitis by Protection Tests

Muckenfuss, Armstrong, and McCordock1, 2 and Webster and File3 have reported that the encephalitis epidemic in St. Louis during the summer and autumn of 1933 is communicable, by inoculation, to monkeys and mice. In addition, Webster and Fite3 reported that the encephalitis prevailing in Kansas City at the same time is likewise communicable to mice; that the infectious agent from the St. Louis and Kansas City cases is filterable, is readily transmissible to mice, is highly virulent when instilled into the nasal passages of mice, and is neutralized by the serum of encephalitis convalescents from the 1933 epidemic.We have continued our studies of the effect on the encephalitis virus of various sera derived from cases of encephalitis and from immunized monkeys, and will report the result of these tests in the present paper.Monkeys injected with the virus develop in their sera protective properties similar to those in the sera of convalescent St. Louis and Kansas City encephalitis cases. Again, serum from a mo...
Design of a Scaled Flight Test Vehicle Including Linear Aeroelastic Effects

A procedure for the design of a scaled aircraft using linear aeroelastic scaling is developed and demonstrated. Previous work has shown the viability in matching scaled structural frequencies and mode shapes in order to achieve consistent linear scaling of simple models. This methodology is adopted for use on a high fidelity joined-wing aircraft model. Natural frequencies and mode shapes are matched by optimizing structural ply properties and non-structural mass. A full-scale SensorCraft concept developed by AFRL and Boeing serves as the target model, and a 1/9 span geometrically scaled remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) serves as the initial design point. The aeroelastic response of the final design is verified against the response of the full-scale model. Reasonable agreement was seen in aeroelastic frequency for a range of flight velocities, but little similarity was seen in aeroelastic damping.
UPTAKE OF A NEW HYDROPHOBIC FLUORESCENT DYE BY HUMAN PLATELETS.

SummaryA method for uptake of a new hydrophobic fluorescent dye by human blood platelets is described in which cell concentrations are constant and those of dye varied widely. Uptake is measured in isotonic saline buffered with EDTA at a pH of 3.5, where cells are near their isoelectric point and dye maximally affixed to them. Dye uptake did not fit usual patterns of adsorption. At all platelet weights, the amount of added dye bound increased with increasing strengths of dye, being nearly proportional to the square of the concentration of remaining dye. Data from several normal platelet donors show maxima in per cent of dye taken up and slight differences in this per cent of dye over a wide range of dye added. This suggests varying amount of hydrophobic substances in or on platelets and a means for their assay.
Development of a Manufacturing Process for an HCV Protease Inhibitor Candidate Molecule

The scale-up of a prototype HCV protease inhibitor (1) from gram scale in the laboratory to kilogram scale in the pilot plant is described. Key features of the optimization included the synthesis of bulk quantities of exomethylene proline intermediate 6, separation of the diastereomers of spirocycle 2 without chromatography, isolation of the precursor to 1 to purge byproducts that might raise genotoxic structural alerts, and purification of an amorphous drug substance via a crystalline acetic acid solvate.
Anaerobic Filter Treatment of Sulfate-Containing Wastewaters

The use of anaerobic biological processes for the treatment of industrial wastewaters has significant merit. When high levels of sulfate are present, the sulfate is biologically reduced to sulfide, the result being potential toxicity to the consortia of organisms responsible for producing methane. An upflow anaerobic filter-fed propionate as a substrate was used to study the interaction between sulfate-reducing bacteria and methane-producing bacteria. Hydraulic retention times of one and two days were used, organic loading rates were varied from 3 to 5 g COD/L-day, and feed COD/S ratios were varied from 20/1 to 8/1. Unionized hydrogen sulfide and dissolved sulfide levels associated with decreased process performance were approximately 110 mg S/L and 350 mg S/L, respectively. These levels are significantly higher than those levels causing inhibition in completely mixed-reactors. Most of the sulfate reduction and propionate removal took place in the first 300 mm of the 1050-mm-long reactor, indicating that sulfate reduction and methane production were occurring in the sane location in the filter.
Deformation Mechanism Research and Countermeasures for Soft Surrounding Rocks of Mountain Tunnel

The large deformation mechanism in the soft surrounding rock section of Caoyutan tunnel's left line is analyzed here in detail,which is in Leya Expressway from national expressway network.In the process of analysis,based on the geological conditions in sites and combined with detection measures,it is found out that the deformation is attributed to both geological conditions and construction quality defects.According to the deformation mechanism and combined with actual deformation conditions,the reasonable and effective solution is proposed to solve actual engineering problems.
GAIL: Geometry-aware Automatic Image Localization

The access and integration of the massive amount of information, that can be provided by the web, can be of great help in a number of fields, including tourism and advertising of artistic sites. A “virtual visit” of a place can be a valuable experience before, during and after the experience on-site. For this reason, the contribution from the public could be merged to provide a realistic and immersive visit of known places. We propose an automatic image localization system, which is able to recognize the site that has been framed, and calibrate it on a pre-existing 3D representation. The system is characterized by very high accuracy and it is able to validate, in a completely unsupervised manner, the result of the localization. Given an unlocalized image, the system selects a relevant set of pre-localized images, performs a Structure from Motion partial reconstruction of this set and then obtain an accurate camera calibration of the image with respect to the model by minimizing distances between projections on the model surface of corresponding image features. The accuracy reached is enough to seamlessly view the input image correctly super-imposed in the 3D scene.
ε-Differential node privacy in graph data queries

Epsilon differential privacy is a context-independent guarantee of individual privacy in data query results, defined by Cynthia Dwork of Microsoft Research. Given two data-sets which differ only on one (arbitrarily chosen) individual, a differentially private query will return an answer S with nearly the same probability on both sets. Thus given some query result S, we're unable to determine which data set the query ran on, obfuscating the contributions of any individual. Creating differentially private graph queries is especially challenging. If a graph's nodes represent individuals, and its edges represent relationships, the removal of an individual from a data set can have catastrophic effect on the result of the query. We explore which queries are impossible to privatize, which are feasible, and which are feasible under certain constraints.
On-Resonance Chiral Metamaterial for Chiroptical Sensing at the Molecular Level

We present a novel three-dimensional chiral metamaterial design for chiroptical spectroscopy. Utilizing the chiral light-matter interaction between the designed metamaterial and molecule that is chiral in the same wavelength range, we demonstrate chiroptical sensing at the molecular level.
Weakly supervised object localization with deep convolutional neural network based on spatial pyramid saliency map

Supervised object localization requires detailed image annotation, such as bounding box, to indicate the location of the object. However, labeling image with bounding box is labor-intensive. Besides, the labeling process may involve ambiguous decisions. Weakly supervised object localization only needs category annotation which is available in large amounts. Recently, many weakly supervised object localization methods, based on global pooling, have been proposed. However, these methods only localize part of the object. This paper proposes a deep convolutional neural network with spatial pyramid saliency map to localize the full extent of the object. The experimental result on Cub-200 dataset shows that our method outperforms the traditional ones.
Propaganda for Kids: Comparing IS-Produced Propaganda to Depictions of Propaganda in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter Film Series

The Harry Potter and The Hunger Games films are wildly popular with adolescents and adults alike, despite touching on themes that parallel the horrors in our own world’s geopolitical climate. The Islamic State (IS) promotes its own messages of violence, brutality, and even utopia through sophisticated propaganda disseminated via social media. This article discusses the extent to which propaganda depicted in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games approximates—in content and/or medium—that produced by IS in recent years. Propaganda in the Harry Potter films, largely produced in written form, resembles propaganda of the past, whereas propaganda in The Hunger Games makes use of contemporary mediums and techniques that resemble that which originates from IS. It is worthwhile to explore whether fiction provides audiences with a realistic portrayal of propaganda, as it may assist viewers in turning a critical eye toward the themes and technologies that are used in their own world to disseminate propaganda.
Risk Factors, Additional Length of Stay, and Cost Associated with Postoperative Ileus Following Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion in Elderly Patients.

Objective To identify independent risk factors, additional length of stay, and additional cost associated with postoperative ileus following anterior lumbar interbody fusion in elderly patients. Methods The PearlDiver Patient Records Database was queried for all Medicare patients ≥65 years of age undergoing 1- or 2-level primary elective anterior lumbar interbody fusion from 2005 to 2014. Independent risk factors, additional length of stay, and additional cost associated with postoperative ileus were evaluated with multivariate analysis. Results There were 13,139 patients identified, and 642 patients experienced postoperative ileus within 3 days after surgery. Multivariate analysis identified perioperative fluid or electrolyte imbalance (odds ratio = 4.03; 95% confidence interval, 3.37–4.80; P Conclusions Patients with perioperative fluid and electrolyte imbalances were 4 times as likely to experience postoperative ileus. Fluid balance and electrolyte levels should be carefully monitored during the perioperative period in patients undergoing anterior lumbar interbody fusion as a potential means to reduce the incidence of postoperative ileus and the additional length of stay and cost burden associated with this complication.
Ubiquitylation - Dependent Signaling in Heart Disease

The regulation of cell signaling by posttranslational phosphorylation of proteins has emerged as a major mechanism by which external ligands regulate cell function. Like phosphorylation, modifying proteins with ubiquitin can regulate a number of ever-expanding cellular functions such as cell growth, apoptosis, the innate immune response, and proteins that regulate responses to DNA damage. In this chapter we review recently published findings implicating the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) in regulating key signal transduction pathways and transcription factors in the heart, including MAPK JNK, calcineurin, FOXO, p53, estrogen receptors α and β, NF-κB, and SMAD. We then discuss how regulation of these signal transduction pathways by the UPS plays a role in common cardiac diseases, including cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure, ischemia reperfusion injury, myocardial infarction, and diabetes.
When Mathematicians and Mathematics Teachers Come Together

tutes which bring these groups together for up to four weeks. Through living, working, and studying together, the two normally disparate groups are expected to develop a dialogue for the mutual benefit of the participants and for their students. The present study of one such institute was conducted with the use of interviews of the participants, examination of some of the teachers' daily journals, and naturalistic observations of classes, lectures, socializing, and dorm life. In addition to documenting the respective goals and activities of senior research geometers, seeking-to-be researchers, and high school mathematics teachers, this study also documents the types of mathematical discussions which characterize each of these groups. The study concludes that the mathematical discussions of mathematicians differ from the mathematical discussions of mathematics teachers with respect to goals, values, social configurations, and style. Furthermore, there are political ramifications in that the mathematicians are accorded status over the teachers.
Radiation Optic Neuropathy

Radiation-induced retinopathy and radiation-induced optic neuropathy (RION) are rare and disabling late-onset complications of ocular irradiation. Radiation-induced retinopathy is characterized by progressive, occlusive vasculopathy, leading to subsequent retinal inflammation, edema, ischemia, and neovascular proliferation. These changes ultimately lead to retinal hemorrhage, maculopathy, and gradual decline in visual acuity. In contrast, optic neuropathy involves the optic nerve or chiasm and may present with sudden onset of visual changes. Both can lead to profound and irreversible vision loss and substantial disability and are thus critically important to consider in the treatment of any intracranial or base of skull disease.
Congestive Heart Failure in Children

Congestive heart failure is a final common clinical pathway for several diseases in childhood, such as familial cardiomyopathy, viral myocarditis, inborn errors of metabolism, and autoimmune disorders. Early identification and treatment can reduce symptom severity and may affect outcomes. In this review, the clinical characteristics of pediatric heart failure are described, and the initial diagnostic evaluation is outlined. Evidence-based heart failure treatment strategies at various clinical stages are discussed in detail, including the management of acute decompensated heart failure.
Inhibition of Pro-Inflammatory Cytokine Secretion by Select Antioxidants in Human Coronary Artery Endothelial Cells

Inflammatory and oxidative stress in endothelial cells are implicated in the pathogenesis of premature atherosclerosis in diabetes. To determine whether high-dextrose concentrations induce the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, human coronary artery endothelial cells (HCAEC) were exposed to either 5.5 or 27.5 mM dextrose for 24-hours and interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interleukin-2 (IL-2), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF α) levels were measured by enzyme immunoassays. To determine the effect of antioxidants on inflammatory cytokine secretion, cells were also treated with α-tocopherol, ascorbic acid, and the glutathione peroxidase mimetic ebselen. Only the concentration of IL-1β in culture media from cells exposed to 27.5 mM dextrose increased relative to cells maintained in 5.5 mM dextrose. Treatment with α-tocopherol (10, 100, and 1,000 μM) and ascorbic acid (15, 150, and 1,500 μM) at the same time that the dextrose was added reduced IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 levels in culture media from cells maintained at 5.5 mM dextrose but had no effect on IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 levels in cells exposed to 27.5 mM dextrose. However, ebselen treatment reduced IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 levels in cells maintained in either 5.5 or 27.5 mM dextrose. IL-2 and TNF α concentrations in culture media were below the limit of detection under all experimental conditions studied suggesting that these cells may not synthesize detectable quantities of these cytokines. These results suggest that dextrose at certain concentrations may increase IL-1β levels and that antioxidants have differential effects on suppressing the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines in HCAEC.
Solid particle erosion in gradual contraction geometry for a gas-solid system

Abstract Numerical approaches have been used extensively for predicting solid particle erosion in various industrial applications. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-based erosion calculation procedure is a powerful tool that can be used to track solid particles and determine their impact speed, angle and frequency. Then, various wear models are used to calculate erosion caused by solid particles. This approach offers some flexibility for engineering estimation of erosion in many complex geometries for practical applications. However, there are some geometries and operating conditions including gas-solid flows, which demand a more detailed selection and evaluation of various parameters that are available in this approach. In this investigation, CFD has been utilized to calculate erosion rates in a gradual contraction geometry with gas-solid flow. Various flow models and particle tracking approaches were employed to evaluate the accuracy of predicted erosion magnitude and pattern. This revealed the importance of utilizing a suitable particle-wall interaction model for such cases in order to avoid non-physical results as the accuracy of various models are examined by comparison to available experimental data. Furthermore, taper angle and contraction ratio effects on small and large particles’ trajectories and consequently, erosion pattern were also examined. This work aims to classify challenges of erosion calculation for the gradual contraction geometry with gas-solid flow and add complementary steps to the available guideline developed in the literature for predicting solid particle erosion in gas-solid flows.
Novel Recursive Technique for Finding the Optimal Solution of the Nurse Scheduling Problem

Solving the Nurse Scheduling problem is a major research area in Operations Research. Due to it being an NP-Hard problem, most researchers develop a heuristic solution for it. The NSP has several constraints that need to be satisfied: several mandatory “hard” constraints that reflect hospital requirements, and several optional “soft” constraints that reflect the nurses’ preferences. In this paper, we present a recursive solution to the problem that makes use of those constraints to shrink the search space and obtain results in a reasonable amount of time. We present two variations of the solution, a nurse-by-nurse method of building the optimal schedule, and a shift-by-shift approach. Both variations were implemented and tested with various scenarios and the shift-by-shift solution provided much better results. The solution can also be modified easily to provide fair long-term scheduling.
S62 Changing landscape of paediatric tracheostomy ventilation: single centre experience

Introduction and objectives Children on long term tracheostomy ventilation (tr-LTV) have complex needs and are high users of PICU, specialist inpatient beds, and community care packages. Improvements in survival in PICU, and changing expectations mean children with previously life limiting conditions are often offered tr-LTV. Although a Canadian study showed no increase in total numbers of tr-LTV patients,1 data on complexity and outcomes of tr-LTV children is sparse. We hypothesised that both numbers of patients, and complexity, were increasing. Our goal was to examine outcomes to inform counselling of families when tr-LTV was being considered. Methods All children established on home tr-LTV since 1998 at a large Children’s Hospital were included. Year/age of initiation, diagnostic group, treatment intention (‘bridge to recovery’ or ‘destination’2), and outcomes were recorded. Data were compared between 2 decades (1998–2008, 2009–19). Results 56 patients were established on tr-LTV (table 1). Between the two decades 4.5 times (10 vs 46) more children were established on tr-LTV. Both the proportion established under 1yr of age (40% to 59%), or with multi-system problems (10% to 52%) increased. Whilst mortality was similar (20% vs 22%) in both groups, of the total 12 deaths, 9 patients had multi-system problems. Median time on tr-LTV for patients who died was 12 months (12,48 months). In total 9 patients weaned off ventilation of which 8 had single system involvement only. Conclusions Not only has there been an increase in the number of patients receiving tr-LTV, but the patients are younger and have multi-system problems. This may impact on mortality. References McDougall CM :ADC: 2013, 98(9):660–5 Ray S: ADC: 2018,103(11):1080–1084.
Need for Caution in the Diagnosis of Radiation Pneumonitis During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract Purpose Patients with cancer are at high risk for mortality from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Radiation pneumonitis (RP) is a common toxicity of thoracic radiation therapy with clinical and imaging features that overlap with those of COVID-19; however, RP is treated with high-dose corticosteroids, which may exacerbate COVID-19–associated lung injury. We reviewed patients who presented with symptoms of RP during the intensification of a regional COVID-19 epidemic to report on their clinical course and COVID-19 testing results. Methods and Materials The clinical course and chest computed tomography (CT) imaging findings of consecutive patients who presented with symptoms of RP in March 2020 were reviewed. The first regional COVID-19 case was diagnosed on March 1, 2020. All patients underwent COVID-19 qualitative RNA testing. Results Four patients with clinical suspicion for RP were assessed. Three out of 4 patients tested positive for COVID-19. All patients presented with symptoms of cough and dyspnea. Two patients had a fever, of whom only 1 tested positive for COVID-19. Two patients started on an empirical high-dose corticosteroid taper for presumed RP, but both had clinical deterioration and ultimately tested positive for COVID-19 and required hospitalization. Chest CT findings in patients suspected of RP but ultimately diagnosed with COVID-19 showed ground-glass opacities mostly pronounced outside the radiation field. Conclusions As this pandemic continues, patients with symptoms of RP require diagnostic attention. We recommend that patients suspected of RP be tested for COVID-19 before starting empirical corticosteroids and for careful attention to be paid to chest CT imaging to prevent potential exacerbation of COVID-19 in these high-risk patients.
Effectively Evaluating the Accessibility of Electronic Monographs Using VPATs and Other Resources at the College of Staten Island Library- CUNY

This study, building upon previous research work at the College of Staten Island (CSI) library, attempts to evaluate the accessibility of select digital monograph platforms and file formats utilize...
Exchange Rate Volatility and Economic Growth In Nigeria

This study seeks to evaluate the effect of exchange rate volatility on economic growth in Nigeria on the basis of annual datafrom 1970 to 2009. A review of the literature reveals that exchange rate volatility can have either positive or negative effect on economicgrowth. The empirical analysis began with testing for stationarity of the variables by applying the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF). Thiswas followed by co-integration test of the model. The unit root test results show that all variables except exchange rate volatility wereintegrated at order one, that is I(1) while exchange rate volatility is integrated at order zero that is I(O). Also, co-integration analysisindicated that variables are co-integrated. Employing the Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) techniqueto generate exchange rate volatility, the relationship between exchange rate volatility and economic growth was estimated. Findingsfurther show that in the short run, economic growth is positively responsive to exchange rate volatility while in the long run, a negativerelationship exist between the two variables. The long run result also indicate that increase in oil price depress economic growth inNigeria. Thus, the income effect of rising oil price is not felt while the output effect is evidenced in factory closure and re-location toneighbouring countries. The study recommends control of import content of both public and private expenditure, greater diversification ofthe economy through investment in key productive sectors of the economy to guard against the vicissitude exchange rate volatility. Also,domestic refining of crude oil to avoid the current massive importation and in the short run, we recommend the legalisation of the refiningactivities in the creeks to supplement the existing refineries in the country.
Pressurized Thermal Shock — An Integrated Analysis

The potential for long term neutron embrittlement of reactor vessels has been recognized for a number of years. Reactor vessel thermal shock is not a new concern, but with a growing number of plants approaching their mid-lives, it is a concern that must be understood and dealt with. Recent attention has focused on the performance of vessels during overcooling transients. This concern was designated as Unresolved Safety Issue A-49 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 1981. The USNRC staff has identified eight overcooling events of concern in U.S. PWRs (Table 1). The concern is currently limited to Pressurized Water Reactors. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has supported research on reactor vessel integrity for a number of years and has supported an extensive effort on reactor vessel pressurized thermal shock (PTS) over the last three years. In addition, EPRI has developed a linked set of computer codes to simulate the pressurized thermal shock transients and assess the integrity of the nuclear reactor vessels for various overcooling transients. This paper focuses on the integrated analysis approach being used by EPRI in performing such analysis.
The Politics of Monumentalizing Trauma: Visual Use of Martyrdom in the Memorialization of the Iraq-Iran War

This poster focuses on three mediums of commemoration: the monument, the memorial, and the museum as tools of state-sanctioned memory creation, and thereby spaces for politicized rituals of memory which further state-building projects. Specifically, during and after The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the al-Shaheed Monument (1983), and the Victory Arch (1989) in Baghdad and the Martyrs’ Museum (1996) in Tehran functioned as politically strategic representations of collective trauma. Both the Ba'ath party in Iraq and the emerging Islamic Republic in Iran used these sites to render and politicize memories of violence and loss. Despite obvious differences, the projects in Baghdad and Tehran appealed to a need to address national trauma while bolstering idealized images of statehood. The Ba'athist party under Saddam Hussein capitalized on the collective trauma of the Iraq-Iran war to further a hegemonic Sunni identity, which was both religious and political. The use of immense scale, vulgar displays of power, and Islamic imagery in both the al-Shaheed Monument and Victory Arch linked Sunni and Ba'athist causes and allowed Hussein to characterize the Iran-Iraq War as a sacred project of national and religious vindication. Similarly, the Martyrs’ Museum in Tehran constructs a specific version of history using motifs of the Battle of Karbala, Imam Husayn, martyr and civilian deaths, and blood to tie Iranian national identity to ritualized Shia martyrdom. The Martyrs’ Museum parallels the religification of national identity as seen in Iraq, and configures death as a public, religiopolitical act. Despite Ba'athist Iraq's secular self-image, the strategic harnessing of trauma both Iraq and Iran demonstrates a constructed connection between political state hegemony, religious practice, and rituals of grief. In these ways, state propagated imagery through physical commemorations of the Iran-Iraq War furthered the political – and resulting religious – sectarian divide in the official positions of the two nations.
Mitigation of Human EMF Exposure in a Cellular Wireless System

While research on communications at frequencies above 6 gigahertz (GHz) has been primarily confined to per- formance improvement, their potentially harmful impacts on human health are not studied as significantly. Most of the existing studies that paid attention to the health impacts above 6 GHz focused only on the uplink due to closer contact with a transmitter to a human body. In this paper, we present the human electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure in the downlink of Fifth-Generation Wireless Systems (5G). Moreover, we propose a downlink protocol that guarantees the EMF exposure under a threshold while keeping the data rate above the 5G requirements.
A physics-constrained deep learning based approach for acoustic inverse scattering problems

Abstract The control of acoustic and elastic waves via engineered materials has several important real-world applications such as non-destructive evaluation of structural components, synthesis of biomedical devices, high-resolution imaging, and remote sensing. Being formulated as inverse problems, all these applications share as a common denominator the need for efficient solution methodologies. Available techniques, mostly based on conventional optimization approaches, have shown some significant limitations in terms of the ability to explore a vast design space and to limit the computation burden. In this study, a novel deep auto-encoder (DAE) based approach is proposed in order to solve a benchmark inverse problem consisting in designing assemblies of acoustic scattering elements capable of molding an incoming plane wave into a target (user-defined) downstream pressure distribution. The proposed approach is validated numerically through three design scenarios, involving either a single or multiple scatterer configuration, and target pressure fields defined at different frequencies. The proposed network consists of a geometry estimator and a DAE that imposes constraints due to the physics of the problem on the geometry estimator during the learning process which leads to more robust design. By joint optimization, the estimation of scatterer geometry is strengthened with the latent representations of the target pressure field learned by the DAE. For a trained network, the design inference is quasi-instantaneous given a target 2D pressure field. The generalization capability of the proposed network is further explored by using a dataset generated based on scatterers having new shapes.
Saddle point sampling using scaled normal coordinates

Abstract The sampling of saddle points (SPs) on a potential energy surface (PES) is critical for describing the dynamics and transport properties of materials. Here, we propose a saddle point search (SPS) method that enables efficient sampling of practically meaningful SPs around a local minimum by converting the PES to the scaled normal coordinates (SNCs), together with the dimer method. We find that the pathway leading to a SP using SNCs is highly efficient and is independent of the system size. This results in the significantly increased SPS efficiency and the enhanced possibility of a complete catalog of the SPs. In addition, we perform SPSs using the SNCs for the diffusion of a vacancy and a dumbbell in body-centered cubic Fe and demonstrate (1) the required number of system force evaluations for a SPS decreases by at least an order of magnitude, (2) the effects of the system size on the number of force evaluations are greatly decreased, and (3) the effects of the number of atoms involved in the SPS on the probability of finding practically meaningful SPs is mostly eliminated. We also discuss the computational cost of introducing the SNCs. It should be highlighted that the SNCs could also be applied to other minimum-mode following methods, demonstrating the general versatility of the proposed method.
Looking Back on Planned Parenthood v. Casey

fessions,1 Terry Sandalow's essay on affirmative action,2 Joe Sax and Phillip Hiestand's description of the emotional impact of living in a slum,3 Martha Chamallas and Linda Kerber's demonstration of how injuries that uniquely befall women have been dismissed as merely emotional wrongs,4 and, most relevant to my project, Don Regan's article on abortion5 and Martha Mahoney's on separation assault.6 Civil rights doctrine is thin and vulnerable when it develops without any genuine effort to understand and articulate the significance of the right claimed to the protected class. The Supreme Court's abortion law is an important example of this phenomenon. A woman's right to choose to have an abortion free from state coercion was defined, developed, and constricted without any sustained effort on the part of the Court to articulate why such a right actually is important to women. The right has survived almost three decades but is now barely alive, apparently settled into a minimal existence, protected only against the most overwhelming of state incursions. In this Essay, I explore the implications of this failure. Part I discusses the compromise reached by the Supreme Court a decade ago in
Alliance Partition Number in Graphs

Let G be a graph with vertex set V (G) and edge set E(G). A (defensive) alliance in G is a subset S of V (G) such that for every vertex v ∈ S, |N [v] ∩ S| ≥ |N(v) ∩ (V (G) − S)|. The alliance partition number of a graph G, ψa(G), is defined to be the maximum number of sets in a partition of V (G) such that each set is a (defensive) alliance. In this paper, we give both general bounds and exact results for the alliance partition number of graphs, and in particular for regular graphs and trees.
Competing values and moral imperatives: An overview of ethical issues in biological control

This overview and synthesis of the papers presented in this Special Issue suggests that there is a remarkably rich set of ethical issues having direct relevance to the development and practice of biological control for the management of agricultural pests. The perception and resolution of ethical issues appear to emerge from a set of factors that includes one's ethical viewpoint (anthropocentric or biocentric), agricultural system (industrial or sustainable), economic context (rich or poor), and power structure (expert or public). From this set of parameters at least five major ethical questions can be formulated: (1) How should we regulate and apply biological control in the face of persistent ecological uncertainty regarding environmental impacts? (2) How ought we to balance the established and expected benefits of biological control to human and ecosystem well-being against the known and anticipated risks? (3) Who should be empowered to develop policies and make decisions regarding the study and practice of biological control? (4) How can we assure a more just distribution of benefits and costs associated with biological control technologies (e.g., sharing the costs of nonmarketable goods and services that benefit the public, and compensating people from whom biological control agents are acquired), and (5) Can biological control be justified as a resource substitution for pesticides or is its ethical application only possible as part of a reconceptualization of agricultural production? These central questions and possible answers are presented in a varied set of provocative analyses by some of the leading thinkers and authorities in their fields.
Metabolism of tyrosine to p-hydroxyphenylpropionic acid and to p-hydroxyphenylacetic acid by the haemolymph of the american cockroach

Abstract Labelled tyrosine (14CU) is metabolized through two different pathways: tyrosine → p- hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid → p- hydroxyphenylacetic acid and tyrosine → p- hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid → p- hydroxyphenyl-lactic acid → p- hydroxyphenylpropionic acid. These reactions have been shown to take place in vitro using partially purified enzymes from whole haemolymph. The purification procedure involved column chromatography on Sepharose 6B which effectively eliminated tyrosinase-phenoloxidase participation via removal of necessary cofactors and/or activators. Tyrosine decarboxylase is in competition for the substrate since pyridoxal phosphate is an essential cofactor for both this enzyme and the synthesis of the four acids. Subsequent β-hydroxylation of tyramine can be inhibited by the deletion of ascorbic acid from the reaction mixture. The synthesis of the acids can be obtained by using haemolymph from newly ecdysed larvae, intra-ecdysal larvae, and adult female cockroaches. Thus the enzyme system is present throughout the life of the insect and the synthesis is not ‘switched off’ during ecdysis as it is in blowflies.
Exploring the success factors of state website functionality: an empirical investigation

Analyzing information technology (IT) success factors is not a recent academic and practical interest. The last two decades have been rich in studies exploring the phenomenon of IT success/failure in both private and public organizations. However, many of the previous studies hypothesized only direct effects and did not allow more complex relationships between different categories of factors. Based on Fountain's technology enactment theory, this study develops a model to explore the influence of organizational, institutional, and contextual factors on the functionality of e-government state websites in the US. Data about all 50 states were gathered from available published sources and the theoretical model was evaluated using partial least squares (PLS). Organizational factors such as size of the IT organization, budget structure, IT training, in-house development, outsourcing, and marketing strategy were found to have a significant direct effect on state website functionality. The availability of resources for state government agencies represented by the overall size of the state economy also has a significant direct influence. Institutional arrangements, political orientation, and demographic factors have an indirect effect on state website functionality.