cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Outcome Of Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia/High Risk MDS According To The Kidney Function

Background Acute renal failure or injury is a common complication of treatment of patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) or high risk MDS, but the effect of renal function of patients who have acute myeloid leukemia/high risk MDS is not clearly highlighted as a predictor of survival, to the best of our knowledge this issue has not been studied in depth before. Aim study the effect of chronic kidney disease on the survival of patient with acute myeloid leukemia/High Risk MDS. Methods A retrospective study of all AML & high risk MDS patients treated at AGMC, Ohio, USA during 2001-2010. After IRB approval of the project, patients’ charts were reviewed to gather information on demographics, diagnosis types/subtypes, glomerular filtration rate (GFR), treatment, and cytogenetics. Patients were classified as low-intermediate risk or high risk according to cytogenetic background using WHO criteria. Also according to GFR patients were classified to GFR 60. Overall survival (OS) rates were determined by Kaplan-Meier Survival Analysis. Prognostic factors were evaluated by Log Rank analysis. Result Out of 130 patients we were able to classify 99 patients (75%). Patient were grouped into 59 Pts with GFR>60, 37 Pts with GFR 30-60 and 3 Pts with GFR<30. Time to event survival analysis was done. View this table: Table 1. Summary View this table: Table 2. Quantiles View this table: Table 3. Tests between Groups ![Figure][1] Conclusion Glomerular filtration rate GFR is a major identified factor in patients survival who have acute myeloid leukemia AML/High Risk MDS, those patients with GFR 30-60 do better in term of survival, we don’t have any explanation for that, more data with high number of patients needed to elaborate on this issue. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare. [1]: pending:yes
Designing for Human Values in a Urban Simulation System: Value Sensitive Design and Participatory design

UrbanSim is a large-scale simulation system that models the development of urban areas over periods of 20 or more years. Its purpose is to help citizens and local governments make more informed decisions about major transportation and land use issues, by projecting the long-term consequences of the different alternatives. Citizens often bring strongly held values to such decisions, for example regarding equity, sustainability, environmental protection, economic expansion, or property rights, and the decisions are often politically charged. To help shape the design of UrbanSim to better support the democratic process, as well as to be responsive to the values held by different stakeholders and the conflicts among them, we are using value Sensitive Design, a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that seeks to account for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process. Participatory Design also has a good deal to say about these issues. Thus, in this paper, we first describe UrbanSim and value Sensitive Design, and provide a snapshot of our ongoing work in this area. We then use the UrbanSim work as an example to bring out key commonalities and differences between value Sensitive Design and Participatory Design, and to motivate some preliminary ideas about ways in which each methodology could evolve based on techniques and concepts from the other.
Hematopoietic Stem Cell and Its Bone Marrow Niche

Stem cells do not thrive without their niche. The bone marrow microenvironment is where hematopoietic stem cells maintain their cell state while receiving physiological input to modify their activity in response to changing physiological demands. The complexity of the bone marrow microenvironment is being unraveled and indicates that multiple different cell types contribute to the regulation of stem and progenitor cells. Further, it is becoming evident that the bone marrow represents a composite of niches with different components and different functional roles in hematopoiesis. It is now evident that alterations in specific stromal cells that comprise the bone marrow microenvironment can contribute to hematologic pathology. In this chapter, we will review the history of the niche concept, evolving information about its components and how niche dysfunction may contribute to disease.
Alteration of Immune Function by Staphylococcal Pyrogenic Exotoxin Type C: Possible Role in Toxic-Shock Syndrome

Staphylococcal pyrogenic exotoxin type C (PE-C) suppressed synthesis of IgM antibodies to sheep erythrocytes by in vitro cultures of murine and rabbit splenocytes. Maximal suppression was observed on day 4 of culture and at PE-C doses of 0.1 and 0.01 microgram per 10(7) splenocytes. Endotoxin, added to cell cultures containing PE-C, caused further suppression of IgM synthesis. Endotoxin alone added to cultures was not immunosuppressive. Sublethal doses of PE-C plus endotoxin also suppressed complement-fixing antibody responses in rabbits to sheep erythrocytes; neither agent alone was suppressive. Further, the combination of PE-C and endotoxin blocked reticuloendothelial clearance of colloidal carbon by 50% during a 20-min period. PE-C enhanced the skin reactivity of rabbits previously sensitized to purified protein derivative. One-half of rabbits immunized with PE-C emulsified in adjuvant failed to make antibody to PE-C during a 112-day period. The animals that were nonresponsive to PE-C were able to make antibodies to sheep erythrocytes.
Flipped-Fishnet Structure Design for Optical Modulator

We investigate a novel design of NIM modulator for optical communication. Numerical studies indicate a strong modulation of fiber-guided signal. Experimental observation verifies simulation results, that shows the good potential for on-fiber small footprint modulator.
Skewness and Co-Skewness in Bond Returns

Bond skewness and coskewness (i.e., bond return comovement with market volatility) are both time varying, with cross-sectional variation driven by maturity and credit rating. Other things being equal, longer maturity bonds have lower skewness, and lower coskewness with respect to the bond market index; lower quality bonds have lower skewness, and higher coskewness with respect to the bond market index. Three-moment bond alphas (which account for coskewness effects) are time varying and predictable by market default spread. They are significantly different from, and often are closer to zero than, two-moment alphas (which ignore coskewness effects).
Effectiveness assessment of occupational health measures in a pesticide plant

The occupational hazards in a new pesticide plant,in which 450 t/a triasulfuron was manufactured,were identified and the concentration or level of related occupational hazards were measured at workplaces.The rating of occupational hazards was done.Finally the effectiveness of preventive facilities against occupational health hazards was evaluated based on these results.It showed that there existed several occupational health hazards during this production process and it was ranked as a project with severe hazards.However,the preventive facilities were effective to prevent these hazards.The workplaces were healthy and safe with compliance of national hygienic standard for industrial enterprise design and national regulations.
American Federal Agencies

The basic structure of an international financial agency was introduced in Chapter 1 when the role of development banks and supranational institutions was discussed. The same general process described there, borrowing and guaranteeing funds that are earmarked for a credit worthy borrower of less than the highest calibre, is also practised by domestic agencies on behalf of both institutions and individuals in the United States.
Parental-Reported Full Influenza Vaccination Coverage of Children in the U.S.

Introduction Depending upon influenza vaccination history, children aged 6 months–8 years need one or two doses of influenza vaccine to be considered fully vaccinated. The objectives of this study were to quantify the percentage of children aged 6 months–8 years who were fully vaccinated against influenza based on parental report, overall, by state, and by sociodemographic characteristics, and to examine sociodemographic characteristics associated with being fully vaccinated. Methods Data from the National Immunization Survey-Flu for the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 influenza seasons were analyzed in 2015 using the Kaplan–Meier method to produce vaccination coverage estimates. Wald chi-square tests were used to test for bivariate associations, and Cox proportional hazards models were used to test for demographic characteristics independently associated with the child being fully vaccinated. Results The percentages of children aged 6 months–8 years who were fully vaccinated during the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 influenza seasons were 41.0% and 45.2%, respectively. Full vaccination varied widely by state and was more likely for children requiring only one dose. Based on the statistical models, children likely to be fully vaccinated were older, non-black, had a mother with an education >12 years, or lived in a high-income household. Conclusions Most children in the U.S. are not fully vaccinated against influenza. Reminder systems and interventions that reduce or remove barriers to children receiving their second doses of influenza vaccine may improve full influenza vaccination coverage among all children.
Teachers' mental health and perceptions of school climate across the transition from training to teaching

Abstract This study examined the trajectories of depressive and anxious symptoms among early-career teachers (N = 133) as they transitioned from their training programs into their first year of teaching. In addition, perceived school climate was explored as a moderator of these trajectories. Multilevel linear growth modeling revealed that depressive and anxious symptoms increased across the transition, and negative perceived school climate was related to more drastically increasing symptoms. Results suggest that this career stage may be a time when teachers are particularly vulnerable to declines in mental health, and speak to some within-school features that may be related to teachers’ experiences.
Brain–Computer Interfaces: Why Not Better?

Abstract Implanted brain–computer interfaces (iBCIs) have made impressive advances since the first human proof-of-concept demonstrations. Humans with long-standing paralysis have been able to communicate by typing at productive rates and have controlled their own arm or a robotic arm to perform useful reach-and-grasp actions like drinking. Importantly, the body of available evidence so far does not raise safety concerns. However, neuroscience and engineering challenges remain for useful, generally available iBCIs. The two most formidable problems now are, first, a stable, long-lasting implanted electrode and, second, a sufficient understanding of neural information coding principles to generate rich, reliable, and flexible motor commands. Fully implantable microelectronics systems capable of signal processing and wireless transmission, as well as devices for high-throughput generation of command signals, are complex issues but appear to be feasible now or in the near term. Thus the ability to restore productive function, including movement of paralyzed limbs, to millions of people with paralysis at a requisite commercial scale is very promising. Consideration of costs, user needs, and regulatory matters, as well as ethical, legal, and social implications, must also be included as this technology develops.
Species-specific disruption of STING-dependent antiviral cellular defenses by the Zika virus NS2B3 protease.

The limited host tropism of numerous viruses causing disease in humans remains incompletely understood. One example is Zika virus (ZIKV), an RNA virus that has reemerged in recent years. Here, we demonstrate that ZIKV efficiently infects fibroblasts from humans, great apes, New and Old World monkeys, but not rodents. ZIKV infection in human—but not murine—cells impairs responses to agonists of the cGMP-AMP synthase/stimulator of IFN genes (cGAS/STING) signaling pathway, suggesting that viral mechanisms to evade antiviral defenses are less effective in rodent cells. Indeed, human, but not mouse, STING is subject to cleavage by proteases encoded by ZIKV, dengue virus, West Nile virus, and Japanese encephalitis virus, but not that of yellow fever virus. The protease cleavage site, located between positions 78/79 of human STING, is only partially conserved in nonhuman primates and rodents, rendering these orthologs resistant to degradation. Genetic disruption of STING increases the susceptibility of mouse—but not human—cells to ZIKV. Accordingly, expression of only mouse, not human, STING in murine STING knockout cells rescues the ZIKV suppression phenotype. STING-deficient mice, however, did not exhibit increased susceptibility, suggesting that other redundant antiviral pathways control ZIKV infection in vivo. Collectively, our data demonstrate that numerous RNA viruses evade cGAS/STING-dependent signaling and affirm the importance of this pathway in shaping the host range of ZIKV. Furthermore, our results explain—at least in part—the decreased permissivity of rodent cells to ZIKV, which could aid in the development of mice model with inheritable susceptibility to ZIKV and other flaviviruses.
Students with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Their Teachers

The past three decades have witnessed heightened levels of awareness and study of what has come to be known as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children diagnosed with ADHD exhibit a constellation of “developmentally deviant” behaviors represented diagnostically by the broad categories of “inattentiveness” or “hyperactivity/impulsivity,” or both, as specified in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The style of behaving associated with ADHD places these children at heightened risk for behavioral, academic, and social difficulties, as well as for a variety of comorbid diagnoses (e.g., Abikoff & Klein, 1992; Biederman, Faraone, Keenan, & Tsuang, 1991; Cantwell & Baker, 1992; Jensen, Shervette, Xenakis, & Richters, 1993; Mannuzza, Klein, Bessler, Malloy, & LaPadula, 1993).
Urologic conditions associated with malignancy

Abstract Introduction Recent advances in cancer research have highlighted the role of genetics in malignancy. Genetic dysregulation of core cellular functions similarly influences benign conditions. These common genetic factors have led researchers to identify an association between certain urologic conditions and malignancy. The objective of this review is to evaluate the literature linking benign urologic conditions including male infertility, Peyronie's disease, cryptorchidism, and hypospadias, to malignancy. Methods A search of PubMed was performed using the following search terms and their combinations: male infertility, female infertility, cancer, malignancy, mortality, male urologic conditions, azoospermia, Peyronie's disease, cryptorchidism, hypospadias, and genetics. Studies were assessed for quality and included or excluded based on study design and relevance to the topic of urologic conditions and malignancy. Results A total of 52 studies were evaluated, of which 38 were included. Associations between male infertility and testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and other cancers including melanoma, bladder cancer, and thyroid cancer were examined. Several genetic alterations were found to be common in the pathogenesis of both male infertility and carcinogenesis. Associations between female infertility and breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancer are also assessed, as are the relationships between Peyronie's disease, cryptorchidism, and hypospadias and malignancy. Conclusions Recent work has identified associations between a number of malignancies and benign urologic conditions including male infertility, Peyronie's disease, cryptorchidism, and hypospadias. Molecular and genetic mechanisms have been proposed, but no definitive causal relationships have been identified to date. Future work will continue to better define the links between malignancy and benign urologic conditions and ultimately facilitate risk stratification, screening, and treatment of affected men.
Multiphysics Simulation of High-Speed Graphene-Based Interconnects in Time Domain

First-principles-based multiphysics simulation algorithms are developed to co-simulate Maxwells equations, equations characterizing graphene materials, and Boltzmann equation directly in time domain. Numerical experiments have validated the proposed multiphysics simulation of high-speed graphene-based interconnects, and demonstrated the importance of a cosimulation as compared to a decoupled analysis.
Blind to bias: The benefits of gender-blindness for STEM stereotyping

Abstract Women continue to be underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields. As such, there has been an increased interest in interventions to reduce bias against, and increase inclusion of, women in STEM. In this paper, we compare and contrast two commonly used strategies: awareness and blindness. We demonstrate that gender-blindness—a diversity ideology that advocates for downplaying gender differences, rather than embracing them—has the potential to diminish stereotyping of women in STEM fields. In six total studies, we show that men who believe, or are primed with, gender-blindness (compared to gender-awareness) are less likely to endorse gender stereotypes around women's STEM competencies. By measuring (Study 1) and manipulating ( Studies 2 –5) gender-blindness, we show that gender-blindness (compared to awareness) minimizes the gender gap on explicit stereotyping measures, as well as diminishes STEM stereotyping in target evaluations. Across six studies, we show the influence of diversity ideologies on stereotyping of women in STEM.
The Whip Hand: Elite Class Formation in Ascham’s The Schoolmaster, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, and the Present Academy

This essay describes the ideological correlations between Tudor Latin School practices and twenty-first century higher education. Focusing on Roger Ascham’s The Schoolmaster, and Love’s Labour’s Lost, this essay suggests that historical work on the Humanists, including recent studies attuned to contemporary theoretical requirements, fails to articulate fully the brutal, and class-based nature of an education designed to equip ministers of state with the rhetorical skills to silence popular dissent. Scholars’ blindness to the social function of their work, the domination inherent in Humanist—and humanities—education, is no accident. The essay concludes by urging early modern scholars to examine both research and pedagogy through this lens to ask how professors, especially those at elite institutions, ensure they, too, are not enforcing “the whip hand”?
Online Friends Recommendation Based on Geographic Trajectories and Social Relations

With the rapid development of GPS-enabled mobile devices, people like to publish online data with geographic information. The traditional online friend recommendation methods usually focus on the shared interests, topics or social network links, but neglect the more and more important geographic information. In this paper, we focus on users’ geographic trajectories that consisting of a series of positions in time order. We reduce the length of each trajectory by clustering the points and normalize every trajectory according to its positions and time in the trajectory. The similarity between trajectories is computed based on the distance of each corresponding point pair in the respective trajectory and the trajectories’ trends. The potential online friends are recommended based on the trajectory similarity and social network structures. Extensive experiment results have validated the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed approach.
Deoxydehydration of Biomass-Derived Polyols with a Reusable Unsupported Rhenium Nanoparticles Catalyst

Oxorhenium catalysts effectively transform biomass-derived polyols into corresponding alkenes via deoxydehydration (DODH) with a secondary alcohol as a hydrogen donor. This study describes the preparation of unsupported rhenium oxide nanoparticles (ReOx NPs), their use as DODH heterogeneous catalyst, and changes in the speciation and structure of Re during catalysis leading to a possible mechanism for DODH by a heterogeneous catalyst. The unsupported nanoparticles catalyze various polyols transformation to produce alkenes with high efficiency and recyclability. X-ray spectroscopy analysis shows that the structure of as-prepared ReOx NPs is similar to perrhenate with oxidation state between Re(VI) and Re(VII). Under reaction conditions and postcatalysis, the ReOx NPs are reduced by approximately two oxidation units. Kinetic isotope effect demonstrates that dissociation of a C–H bond during reduction of ReOx NPs by 3-octanol is part of the rate-determining step. Based on all experimental observations, the m...
A Machine Learning Approach to Workflow Prioritization

Our client, S&P Global, is a leading provider of cross-industry data products, whose success is largely dependent on the timeliness and quality of its data. The company relies heavily on manual search across a variety of public documents to update internal records, making workflow prioritization an important component to the timeliness of its value proposition. Given the broad scope of prioritizing a highly granular workflow, our team aimed to leverage operational metadata at the lowest level: information extraction. Rather than parsing documents themselves, we aimed to preserve parsimony in developing a model capable of providing actionable insight towards workflow optimization. The selected model was trained using gradient decision tree-boosting with a logistic output, predicting the probability of task success. By combining a number of previously unused features, we were able to classify tasks that resulted in an update to any of our client's expansive datasets. The classification accuracy was measured with a ROC-AUC and the recall for the positive outcome class. Given the 98% F1 score achieved predicting at this level, we constructed a priority score, at a higher level of granularity, where the implementation of a rating system is of more practical use to our client in scheduling. The model was trained on our client's financial domain data from 2018, with hopes of generalizing our findings to other domains in the future.
Moving Camera Analytics: Computer Vision Applications

To date, billions of cameras have been actively used on moving platform. Video analytics applications for camera are emerging in diverse areas. Among various video analytics applications for moving cameras, we will discuss the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). First, we present a system for summarizing videos by automatically creating a panorama for videos, detecting and tracking moving objects in the videos. Our video summarization experiments on the UAV dataset demonstrate that we can achieve efficient data reduction without losing significant activities of interest. Second, a distributed 3D reconstruction algorithm will be presented. Most methods for 3D reconstruction methods are either centralized or operate incrementally. The poor scalability affects the quality of solution for large-scale structure from motion (SfM). Our algorithm uses alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to formulate a distributed bundle adjustment (BA) algorithm. The results are comparable to an alternate state-of-the-art centralized bundle adjustment algorithm on synthetic and real 3D reconstruction problems. The runtime of our implementation scales linearly with the number of observed points.
Shift in the timing of microvascular free tissue transfer failures in head and neck reconstruction.

OBJECTIVE Analyze the cause and significance of a shift in the timing of free flap failures in head and neck reconstruction. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective multi-institutional review of prospectively collected databases at tertiary care centers. METHODS Included consecutive patients undergoing free flap reconstructions of head and neck defects between 2007 and 2017. Selected variables: demographics, defect location, donor site, free flap failure cause, social and radiation therapy history. RESULTS Overall free flap failure rate was 4.6% (n = 133). Distribution of donor tissue by flap failure: radial forearm (32%, n = 43), osteocutaneous radial forearm (6%, n = 8), anterior lateral thigh (23%, n = 31), fibula (23%, n = 30), rectus abdominis (4%, n = 5), latissimus (11%, n = 14), scapula (1.5%, n = 2). Forty percent of flap failures occurred in the initial 72 hours following reconstruction (n = 53). The mean postoperative day for flap failure attributed to venous congestion was 4.7 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.6-6.7) versus 6.8 days (CI 5.3-8.3) for arterial insufficiency and 16.6 days (CI 11.7-21.5) for infection (P < .001). The majority of flap failures were attributed to compromise of the arterial or venous system (84%, n = 112). Factors found to affect the timing of free flap failure included surgical indication (P = .032), defect location (P = .006), cause of the flap failure (P < .001), and use of an osteocutaneous flap (P = .002). CONCLUSION This study is the largest to date on late free flap failures with findings suggesting a paradigm shift in the timing of flap failures. Surgical indication, defect site, cause of flap failure, and use of osteocutaneous free flap were found to impact timing of free flap failures. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE 4 Laryngoscope, 130:347-353, 2020.
Binge drinking in male adolescent rats and its relationship to persistent behavioral impairments and elevated proinflammatory/proapoptotic proteins in the cerebellum

To demonstrate that repeated episodes of binge drinking during the adolescent period can lead to long-term deficits in motor function and memory in adulthood, and increase proteins in the brain involved with inflammation and apoptotic cell death. Groups of early adolescent (PND 26) and periadolescent (PND 34) Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to either ethanol or plain air through a vapor chamber apparatus for five consecutive days (2 h per day), achieving a blood ethanol concentration equivalent to 6–8 drinks in the treatment group. Subjects then underwent a series of behavioral tests designed to assess memory, anxiety regulation, and motor function. Brains were collected on PND 94 for subsequent western blot analysis. Behavioral testing using the rota-rod, cage-hang, novel object recognition, light-dark box, and elevated plus maze apparatuses showed significant differences between groups; several of which persisted for up to 60 days after treatment. Western blot testing indicated elevated levels of caspase-3/cleaved caspase-3, NF-kB, and PKC/pPKC proteins in the cerebella of ethanol-treated animals. Differences on anxiety tests indicate a possible failure of behavioral inhibition in the treatment group leading to riskier behavior. Binge drinking also impairs motor coordination and object memory, which involve the cerebellar and hippocampal brain regions, respectively. These experiments indicate the potential dangers of binge drinking while the brain is still developing and indicate the need for future studies in this area.
Association between vision impairment and suicidal ideation among older adults: Results from National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Abstract Background Vision impairment (VI) is a significant risk factor for depression among older adults. The stigma attached to VI, which has multidimensional aspects consisting of ageism and ableism, may constitute a major impediment to accepting one’s VI and engaging in help-seeking behaviors, which could have led to suicide prevention. Objective This study aims to investigate the relative strength of association for VI on suicidal ideation among a nationally representative sample of older adults. Methods The study sample was composed of 10,635 adults aged 65 years and over, drawn from the 2015–2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Respondents were asked if they had serious thoughts about suicide in the past year. Results Of the total sample, 6.85% reported VI (n = 729), defined as being blind or having serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses. In comparison to those without VI, older adults with VI were more likely to report impoverished sociodemographic status and poor health conditions. After adjusting for a comprehensive set of covariates, multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that older adults with VI were more likely to report suicidal ideation, compared to their counterparts without VI (OR = 3.12, 95% CI [1.24, 7.85]. p Discussion This study contributes to the scant body of literature by identifying the relative strength of association between VI and suicide in a nationally representative sample.
Multi-User Mobile Sequential Recommendation for Route Optimization

We enhance the mobile sequential recommendation (MSR) model and address some critical issues in existing formulations by proposing three new forms of the MSR from a multi-user perspective. The multi-user MSR (MMSR) model searches optimal routes for multiple drivers at different locations while disallowing overlapping routes to be recommended. To enrich the properties of pick-up points in the problem formulation, we additionally consider the pick-up capacity as an important feature, leading to the following two modified forms of the MMSR: MMSR-m and MMSR-d. The MMSR-m sets a maximum pick-up capacity for all urban areas, while the MMSR-d allows the pick-up capacity to vary at different locations. We develop a parallel framework based on the simulated annealing to numerically solve the MMSR problem series. Also, a push-point method is introduced to improve our algorithms further for the MMSR-m and the MMSR-d, which can handle the route optimization in more practical ways. Our results on both real-world and synthetic data confirmed the superiority of our problem formulation and solutions under more demanding practical scenarios over several published benchmarks.
A “Mega Population” of the Wild Potato Species Solanum fendleri

Genebanks aim to maximize the preservation, classification, evaluation and distribution of germplasm in their collections to researchers and breeders. The wild is the source of most of the diversity available to genebanks, so diversity in the wild and how to best capture it also deserves study. The ultimate in valuable information from the wild would be the discovery of a large robust population at a single location on public land that is very easy to visit and contains a large proportion of the total genetic diversity detected in the species, which we have termed a “MegaPopulation”. We here report such a population of the wild potato species Solanum fendleri in the USA (also known as S. stoloniferum) on Mount Lemmon at the top of the Santa Catalina mountains near Tucson, Arizona.
How to prescribe and troubleshoot continuous renal replacement therapy: A case-based review

Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is the preferred dialysis modality for solute management, acid-base stability, and volume control in critically ill patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) in the intensive care unit (ICU). CRRT offers multiple advantages over conventional hemodialysis in the critically ill population such as greater hemodynamic stability, better fluid management, greater solute control, lower bleeding risk and a more continuous (physiologic) approach of kidney support. Despite its frequent use, several aspects of CRRT delivery are still not fully standardized or do not have solid evidence-based foundations. In this manuscript, we provide a case-based review and recommendations of common scenarios and interventions encountered during the provision of CRRT to critically ill patients. Specific focus is made on initial prescription, CRRT dosing, and adjustments related to severe hyponatremia management, concomitant extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support, dialysis catheter placement, use of regional citrate anticoagulation and antibiotic dosing. This case-driven simulation is made as the clinical status of the patient evolves and is based on step-wise decisions made during the care of this patient according to specific patient9s needs and the logistics available at the corresponding institution.
Voices Without Volume:: Was the Voice of Nursing Missing From the COVID-19 Pandemic?

When our nation was challenged by a global pandemic in 2020, nursing stepped forward to carry out what needed to be done—to take care of the nation’s people. As the pandemic evolved and became the largest single public health concern of our modern times, there seemed to be a void of the profession of nursing being involved in the strategy to address the pandemic. Although there were many nurse leaders across our nation speaking for their organizations and working tirelessly to ensure they delivered the care necessary, it seemed to this author that the voice of nursing was missing at the highest levels of our state and government agencies. As nurses, we own our profession and have a responsibility to elevate the profession to a level of respect and trust that when the next public health crisis occurs, nursing is sitting at the table, ready to contribute to the strategy to save our patients’ lives.
Academic Publishing for Graduate Students

Finding work following a graduate degree is perhaps one of the more pressing concerns facing any graduate student in the humanities. Not only have academic job openings decreased while job candidates have increased, but the competitive nature of these pursuits have significantly increased over the years, requiring more and more work from graduate students. In this article Dr. Emily Clark, who led a workshop at the 2019 meeting of the AAR in San Diego, discusses some highlights from her talk and offers helpful advice for pursuing publications as a graduate student, which she sees as an excellent way to gain a competitive edge in the shifting job market.
Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on house-staff in the USA: addressing the ripple effects

Background: The novel corona virus has changed the way individuals interact with each other and society. In the medical sector, this has affected the residents and fellows who spend the majority of...
Ankle-Brachial Index Is Independently Associated With Cardiovascular Outcomes and Foot Ulcers in Asian Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background and aims: The ankle-brachial index (ABI) is an efficient tool for objectively documenting the presence of lower-extremity peripheral arterial disease (PAD). The factors predictive of cardiovascular outcomes and diabetic foot ulcers were not clear from the ABI examination in Taiwanese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Methods: We enrolled 482 patients with type 2 DM who regularly visited the outpatient department of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and ABI and brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (ba-PWV) examinations. Age, gender, PAD symptoms, history of chronic disease, family history of chronic disease, lifestyle data (smoking, alcohol consumption, and exercise), height, weight, waistline, monofilament test results, dorsalis pedis artery test results, and foot ulcer status were studied. Results: There were 104 (22%) patients (mean age, 67 years) with the ABI value <1.0. These patients with low ABI (ABI<1.0) had a significantly older age (p=0.001), higher delta PWV (p<0.001), a significantly higher rate of stroke (p=0.007), myocardial infarction (p=0.016), and foot ulcer (p=0.039). In a multivariable analysis model, the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for myocardial infarction, stroke, and foot ulcers associated with low ABI were 1.219 (0.397-3.743, p=0.729), 1.204 (0.556-2.610, p=0.638), and 2.712 (1.199-6.133, p=0.017), respectively. The patients with low PWV (PWV<1400) were significantly younger (p<0.001) and had a lower rate of hypertension (p<0.001), stroke (p=0.027), and family history of dialysis (p=0.041). Conclusions: Our results demonstrated that values of ABI were independently associated with diabetic foot in patients with type 2 DM. Screening patients with type 2 DM using ABI, a simple and noninvasive marker, may help identify patients at high risk of diabetic foot.
The Structure of Intellect in the Mental Retardate

Publisher Summary Factor analysis is a data reduction technique, and its employment and consequences depend on the particular research problem, whether in the area of personality, motivation, or ability. This chapter provides an overview of the role that factor analysis can play in research on mental retardation. The use of factor scores and patterns of factor scores should provide a needed stimulus to the investigators of particular diagnostic entities in the field of mental retardation. Because the damage to the central nervous system that produces retardation can produce differences in physical development, some systematic differences in intellectual functioning may also be produced. As more factor studies are carried out with young children, factorial tests will be available to begin longitudinal studies to aid in the investigation of the development of the intellect. Studies at selected age levels seem to show a continuity of factorial development, but it seems clear that there must either be more splitting of factors or development of new factors before a child reaches adulthood. Thus, the value of factor analysis as a research tool increases as large scale digital computers make the technique more available to research workers in the area of mental retardation.
The Role Of Sulfur In Soil Fertility

Publisher Summary Sulfur has been described as a neglected plant nutrient. In surface soils, sulfur is predominantly in the organic fraction, and native supplies of sulfur vary with the supplies of organic matter, from low to adequate. This native sulfur is supplemented by variable additions from rainwater, irrigation water, atmosphere, fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides. Although sulfur deficiency under field conditions is not universally a problem, it may be acute in some areas. This probably accounts for the neglect of sulfur nutrition as a general problem for research. Sulfur is also essential in animal nutrition. A complete assessment of sulfur nutrition thus, involves soil, plant, and animal phases and the interrelationships of all three.
A one-step preparation method of monolithic enzyme reactor for highly efficient sample preparation coupled to mass spectrometry-based proteomics studies

Mass spectrometry (MS) coupled to sample preparation and separation techniques has become a primary tool for proteomics studies. However, due to sample complexity, it is often challenging to achieve fast and efficient sample preparation prior to MS analysis. In recent decades, monolithic materials have been developed not only as chromatographic media, but also as efficient solid supports for immobilizing multiple types of affinity reagents. Herein, the N-acryloxysuccinimide-co-acrylamide-co-N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide (NAS-AAm-Bis) monolith was fabricated within silanized 200 μm i.d. fused-silica capillaries and was used as an immobilized enzyme reactor (IMER). The column was conjugated with trypsin/Lys-C and Lys-N enzymes to allow enzymatic digestions to occur while protein mixture was loaded onto the IMER column followed by MS-based proteomics analysis. Similar MS signal and protein sequence coverage were observed using protein standard bovine serum albumin (BSA) compared to in-solution digestion. Furthermore, mouse serum, yeast, and human cell lysate samples were also subjected to enzymatic digestion by both IMER (in seconds to minutes) and conventional in solution digestion (overnight) for comparison in large-scale proteomics studies. Comparable protein identification results obtained by the two methods highlighted the potential of employing NAS-based IMER column for fast and highly efficient sample preparation for MS analysis in proteomics studies.
How companies create value with technology

Summary form only given as follows. This paper examines the process by which we can measure the impacts of technology on business companies. The paper considers the state of knowledge in this area. It starts with a discussion of what business companies want and what technology can deliver. Needs, expectations and goals are examined as they relate to actors in the company. A model is then suggested of what companies want, what technology can deliver, and the value that is thus created. The paper also proposes a model that allows for computations of the value companies create with technology. Eight propositions are then advanced on how industrial companies exploit technology to create business value. The paper discusses several issues such as the link between technological innovation and market disposition, and offers a model that explains the advantages and disadvantages to industrial companies from radical technological innovations and hyper competition. The paper concludes with suggestions for companies to consider the generation of value from technology as a complex and multidimensional process, rather than a simple link between investments in R&D and strategic objectives.
The new multinationals: Developing-country firms in international markets

Abstract Driven by a variety of factors, including deficiencies in domestic demand, developing-country firms are increasing their direct foreign investment in, and sales of technology to, other developing countries. The recipients usually gain various benefits that they would not in similar deals with OECD multinationals. But any increase in such international flows depends heavily on the strategic choices of OECD corporations (ie which markets they move out of) and on the pattern of government incentives and controls in the countries of origin and destination.
Teaching process improvement in a graduate software engineering course

This presentation discusses the experience at Drexel University (USA) in using the Personal Software Process (PSP) to teach software process improvement in a graduate software engineering course. The presentation describes the context in which the PSP is used and discusses issues related to students, course structure, PSP features, and instructor load. The faculty members participating in this work believe that the PSP is a very effective approach to teaching about process improvement and to enhancing students' understanding of software engineering. The presentation includes some preliminary results that provide insight into the impact of the course on student attitudes toward software engineering. This data is drawn from a post course survey administered six to eighteen months after students completed the course. The survey data also provides information about adoption of the PSP by the students after they complete the course. The presentation provides a useful summary of experience for faculty members considering teaching the PSP.
Strongly nonlinear nature of interfacial-surfactant instability of Couette flow

AbstractNonlinear stages of the recently uncovered instability due to insoluble surfactantat the interface between two ﬂuids are investigated for the case of a creeping planeCouette ﬂow with one of the ﬂuids a thin ﬁlm and the other one a much thicker layer.Numerical simulation of strongly nonlinear longwave evolution equations which couplethe ﬁlm thickness and the surfactant concentration reveals that in contrast to all similarinstabilities of surfactant-free ﬂows, no amount of the interfacial shear rate can lead to asmall-amplitude saturation of the instability. Thus, the ﬂow is stable when the shear iszero, but with non-zeroshear rates, no matter how small or large (while remaining belowan upper limit set by the assumption of creeping ﬂow), it will reach large deviationsfrom the base values– of the order of the latter or larger. It is conjectured that thetime this evolution takes grows to inﬁnity as the interfacial shear approaches zero. It isveriﬁed that the absence of small-amplitude saturation is not a singularity of the zerosurface diﬀusivity of the interfacial surfactant.AMS Subject Classiﬁcation: 76E17,76E30Key Words and Phrases: Two ﬂuids; Couette; Insoluble surfactant; Nonlinear sat-uration of instability; Pattern formation
Hardware Synthesis from Term Rewriting Systems

Term Rewriting System (TRS) is a good formalism for describing concurrent systems that embody asynchronous and nondeterministic behavior in their specifications. Elsewhere, we have used TRS’s to describe speculative micro-architectures and complex cache-coherence protocols, and proven the correctness of these systems. In this paper, we describe the compilation of TRS’s into a subset of Verilog that can be simulated and synthesized using commercial tools. TRAC, Term Rewriting Architecture Compiler, enables a new hardware development framework that can match the ease of today’s software programming environment. TRAC reduces the time and effort in developing and debugging hardware. For several examples, we compare TRAC-generated RTL’s with hand-coded RTL’s after they are both compiled for Field Programmable Gate Arrays by Xilinx tools. The circuits generated from TRS are competitive with those described using Verilog RTL, especially for larger designs.
Regulation of RNA Polymerase I-Dependent Promoters by the Hepatitis B Virus X Protein via Activated Ras and TATA-Binding Protein

The hepatitis B virus (HBV) X protein is essential for viral infectivity, and evidence indicates that it is a strong contributor to HBV-mediated oncogenesis. X has been shown to transactivate a wide variety of RNA polymerase (Pol) II-dependent, as well as RNA Pol III-dependent, promoters. In this study, we have investigated the possibility that X modulates RNA Pol I-dependent rRNA transcription. In both human hepatoma Huh7 and Drosophila Schneider S2 cell lines, X expression stimulated rRNA promoter activity. Extracts prepared from X-expressing cells stably transfected with an X gene also exhibited an increased ability to transcribe the rRNA promoter. The mechanism for X transactivation was examined by determining whether this regulatory event was dependent on Ras activation and increased TATA-binding protein (TBP) levels. Our previous studies have demonstrated that X, and the activation of Ras, produces an increase in the cellular levels of TBP (H.-D. Wang, A. Trivedi, and D. L. Johnson, Mol. Cell. Biol. 17:6838-6846, 1997). Expression of a dominant negative form of Ras blocked the X-mediated induction of the rRNA promoters, whereas expression of a constitutively activated form of Ras mimicked the enhancing effect of X on rRNA promoter activity. When TBP was overexpressed in either Huh7 or S2 cells, a dose-dependent increase in rRNA promoter activity was observed. To analyze whether the increase in TBP was modulating rRNA promoter activity indirectly, by increasing activity of RNA Pol II-dependent promoters, a Drosophila TBP cDNA was constructed with a mutation that eliminated its ability to stimulate RNA Pol II-dependent promoters. Transient expression of wild-type TBP in S2 cells increased the activities of specific RNA Pol I- and Pol II-dependent promoters. Expression of the mutant TBP protein failed to enhance the activity of the RNA Pol II-dependent promoters, yet the protein completely retained its ability to stimulate the rRNA promoter. Furthermore, the addition of recombinant TBP to S2 extracts stimulated rRNA promoter activity in vitro. Together, these results demonstrate that the HBV X protein up-regulates RNA Pol I-dependent promoters via a Ras-activated pathway in two distinct cell lines. The enhanced promoter activity can, at least in part, be attributed to the X- and Ras-mediated increase in cellular TBP, a limiting transcription component.