cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Auger yields in a distorted wave theory for the excitation autoionization of Li and Be sequence ions

Abstract We compute the excitation-autoionization contribution to the cross-section for electron-induced single ionization of Li and Be sequence target ions, using distorted wave theory and LS coupling. Excitations of 1 s target electrons to nl , with n = 2, are considered explicitly, and Auger yields are obtained for these excited states. Results are compared with experiment and with theoretical predictions based on other methods.
Isotropic and kinematic hardening as functions of gamma prime precipitates in a nickel-based superalloy

Abstract A microstructure-explicit constitutive model has been developed for the P/M nickel-based alloy, IN100. In this model, the isotropic and kinematic stress components have been derived as a function of the size and volume fraction of γ′ precipitates. The hardening contributions of these precipitates consider dislocation/precipitate interactions which have been identified in terms of particle shearing and/or Orowan by-passing mechanisms. The critical shearing/looping particle size has been determined from the knowledge of the yield stress of heat treated specimens having different γ′ sizes. This critical size is used to calculate the relative contribution of particles in a distribution based on their size being cut or looped by mobile dislocations. The back stress has been examined through two terms, the first being a short range variable arising from solid solution and the second is a long range variable related to particle by-passing. The material parameters necessary to fully define the isotropic and kinematic hardening components are determined through a series of strain controlled low cycle fatigue tests carried out at 923 K (650 °C) on smooth specimens of the IN100 alloy varying in their secondary and tertiary γ′ precipitate sizes while maintaining constant volume fractions. Numerical simulations of the fully reversed strain-controlled loading, at a strain rate of 10−5 s−1, and strain ranges of ±0.006, ±0.007 and ±0.008 mm/mm, were carried out and the stress vs. strain, as well as, the isotropic, kinematic and viscous stress components are compared with the corresponding experimental results.
Suppression of a baffle-stabilied spray flame by halogenated agents

A series of experiments was conducted on baffle-stabilized spray flames in an effort to provide an improved understanding of the influence of various parameters on the processes controlling flame suppression. Measurements were made of the agent mass required to suppress the spray flames as a function of the agent injection duration (which was designed to deliver a constant mass flow of agent to the burner for a controlled duration), the air velocity, the oxidizer temperature, the ambient pressure, and the fuel flow. The agent mass fraction required to extinguish the flame was estimated from agent mass divided by the agent injection duration. Extinction measurements were performed with the gaseous agents CF3Br, CF3I, C2HF5 (CFC-125), and C3HF7 (HFC-227ea). The results showed that, in general, CF3Br was the most effective agent on a mass basis, followed by CF3I and then C2HF5 and C3HF7, which had similar effectiveness. For elevated air temperatures (T> 100°C), the three candidate replacement agents had similar effectiveness on a mass basis. As the air velocity increased, the agent mass fraction required for suppression (β) decreased. The fuel flow had little effect on β. An expression, based on treating the recirculation zone as a well-stirred reactor, was developed to describe flame suppression as the agent delivery duration varied. Two parameters were determined as crucial in that description. They were a characteristic mixing time that described the rate of agent entrainment into the recirculation zone downstream of a flame holder (or baffle) and the agent concentration at extinction for long agent injection durations. The model facilitated a comparison of the effectiveness of agents in suppressing baffle-stabilized spray and pool fires, two very different combustion configurations.
An Investigation of Multicultural Counseling Competence and Multicultural Counseling Self-Efficacy for Counselors-in-Training.

Counseling necessitates clinicians to be culturally competent and self-efficacious in order to ethically and effectively work with diverse client populations. This study investigated the relationship between counselor education students’ (N = 118) levels of self-reported multicultural counseling competence (MCC), multicultural counseling self-efficacy (MCSE), and demographic data (gender, ethnicity, level of education). Contrary to prior research, results indicated that student gender and ethnicity did not affect MCSE or self-reported MCC. However, students who had been in graduate education longer had higher self-reported MCC and higher levels of multicultural knowledge. Discussion and implications of findings are provided.
Approximate analytical solutions for continuously focused beams and single-species plasmas in thermal equilibrium

Simple, two-dimensional Vlasov–Poisson descriptions of thermal equilibrium have been applied to both an unbunched ion beam propagating in a continuous linear focusing channel and an unneutralized, single-species plasma confined in a Penning–Malmberg trap geometry. In scaled variables, these two thermal equilibrium systems result in an identical nonlinear equation that must be solved to describe the radial density and/or potential of the equilibrium. Numerous publications have been based on numerical solutions of the highly nonlinear equilibrium equation. Following a brief review of the thermal equilibrium model, we construct approximate, closed-form analytical solutions to the equilibrium equation that are accurate over a wide range of system parameters.
A comparison of adult and larval Manduca sexta apolipophorin-III

Abstract Apolipophorin-III (apoLp-III) is known to be present in the hemolymph of larval and adult Manduca sexta , but is associated with lipophorin only in the adult. We tested two hypotheses which might account for the lack of apoLp-III in larval lipophorin: (1) there might be a difference in processing of the prepro precursor between adult and larval fat body; (2) there might be larval and adult specific transcription of the apoLp-III gene. ApoLp-III isolated from adult or larval hemolymph has exactly the same amino acid composition and therefore there is not a significant amount of the pro precursor present in hemolymph in either case. We did confirm the presence of the pro precursor in the fat body and showed the site of cleavage of the prepro precursor is between ser (−6) and ala (−5). Restriction mapping, cDNA sequencing and primer extension analysis all indicated that both larval and adult apoLp-III have the same mRNA transcripts and utilize the same coding sequences of a single apoLp-III gene. The data show that neither hypothesis can explain the lack of apoLp-III in larval lipophorin and that other explanations, perhaps involving the mechanism of lipophorin assembly in the fat body, will have to be sought. It was shown that the apoLp-III gene is expressed in a cyclic manner during larval development with maximum expression occurring during the feeding period and that adult fat body contains 2- to 10-fold higher levels of the apoLp-III mRNA.
Evolution of the soft error rate model

Soft error rate (SER) models have been used within IBM since the early sixties to determine the capacity capabilities, of diskfiles. Most models consider the data handling capabilities and the mechanical misregistration to determine the TPI for a given system error rate. Recent models have been used to estimate factory yields, field performance distributions, and the effects of manufacturing tolerances. The authors describe the most recent hybrid models which are used for estimating soft error rates on high TPI designs. Particular attention is given to the modified hybrid SER model and the stress model. >
SAR11 marine bacteria require exogenous reduced sulphur for growth

An intriguing example of genome reduction has been found in SAR11 marine bacteria, the ubiquitous clade with the smallest known genome of all free-living heterotrophic cells. 'Normal' marine aerobic bacteria are known to use assimilatory sulphate reduction to acquire sulphur from the environment. But Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique, and other SAR11 microbes, are deficient in this key metabolic pathway. Instead they rely on reduced sulphur compounds in the environment. This identifies compounds such as DMSP and methionine as essential growth requirements for these large plankton populations, a potentially important factor in microbial population dynamics in the oceans. Marine aerobic bacteria are known to use assimilatory sulphate reduction to acquire sulphur from the environment. The abundant and ubiquitous SAR11 clade is shown to be deficient in this pathway and instead to rely on reduced sulphur components such as DMSP for growth. Sulphur is a universally required cell nutrient found in two amino acids and other small organic molecules. All aerobic marine bacteria are known to use assimilatory sulphate reduction to supply sulphur for biosynthesis, although many can assimilate sulphur from organic compounds that contain reduced sulphur atoms1,2,3. An analysis of three complete ‘Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique’ genomes, and public ocean metagenomic data sets, suggested that members of the ubiquitous and abundant SAR11 alphaproteobacterial clade are deficient in assimilatory sulphate reduction genes. Here we show that SAR11 requires exogenous sources of reduced sulphur, such as methionine or 3-dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP) for growth. Titrations of the algal osmolyte DMSP in seawater medium containing all other macronutrients in excess showed that 1.5 × 108 SAR11 cells are produced per nanomole of DMSP. Although it has been shown that other marine alphaproteobacteria use sulphur from DMSP in preference to sulphate1,2, our results indicate that ‘Cand. P. ubique’ relies exclusively on reduced sulphur compounds that originate from other plankton.
The Impact of Maternal Intergenerational Risk Factors on Adverse Developmental Outcomes

Abstract An important, but often overlooked, area of investigation in developmental psychology is that of intergenerational risk factors. A body of research spanning over 60 years clearly demonstrates the impact of maternal intergenerational factors on physical growth. In addition to operating through this biological mechanism, intergenerational risk factors have been shown to influence the infant/child development through the child-rearing environment. For example, the association between factors in a mother's own developmental history and developmental outcomes for their children has been well documented by attachment researchers. The implications of these studies for cognitive development are clear. It is likely that the same intergenerational factors which influence intrauterine physical growth affect the development of the brain as well through both biological and environmental pathways. In order to fully address the issue of childhood disadvantage, a broadening of the time frame of intervention to include women's health status prior to conception is needed. Researchers studying intergenerational risk factors are encouraged to consider using epidemiological methods to provide an additional, population-based perspective on the study of risk.
Orthogonal rotation of complex principal components

Complex principal components analysis has been shown to be a useful tool for exhibiting propagating features in spatial-temporal data sets. As in other applications of principal components analysis, rotation may lead to more interpretable components. Real orthogonal matrices have been used elsewhere, in combination with the varimax criterion, to find rotated solutions, but these fail to show invariance to complex scalings of the initial eigenvectors. It is shown that complex orthogonal, or unitary matrices have the desired invariance, and their use is illustrated on two examples, one synthetic and one involving sea-level pressure data.
Conformal flattening maps for the visualization of vessels

ABSTRACT In this note, we employ a conformal mapping technique for flattening branching tubular structures for visual-ization of MRA and CT volumetric vessel imagery. This may be used for the study of possible vessel pathology ( cerebral embolism, cerebral thrombosis, or lung nodules near vessels) . Our method is based on a discretizationof the Laplace-Beltrami operator to flatten a surface onto a planar polygonal region in an angle-preservingmanner.Keywords: flattening maps, shape visualization, conformal mappings, MRA brain imagery 1. INTRODUCTION The technique of surface deformations and flattening can be a useful tool for the visualization of highly undulatedand branched surfaces. For example, flattening has been employed in virtual colonscopy for polyp detection.5Flattened representations of the brain surface are also very important in many applications, such as functionalmagnetic resonance imaging by showing the details of neural activity within the folds of the brain.' In this note,we consider the conformal flattening of branched surfaces. Applications include the detection of pathologiesfrom MRA brain images such as cerebral embolism and thrombosis as well as lung nodule detection from CTimagery. In this note, we will illustrate the methodology by flattening Y-shaped tubular surfaces. The techniqueimmediately extends to tubular surfaces with an arbitrary number of branches.A mapping is conformal if it is a one-to-one mapping between surfaces which preserves angles, and thuspreserves the local geometry. Basically, we want to map a section of vessel with branches onto a polygonalregion of the plane. In Ref. 5, we have flattened a colon (a topological cylinder) by solving the appropriateDirichlet problem on the surface defined cutting the tube "lengthwise" from boundary poin to another. For theflattening of a Y-shaped vessel, we need to design a more complex cut going through the branch point. Withthe proper boundary conditions, one can then construct a conformal flattening map by solving a Dirichlet onthe cut surface.We now outline the contents of this note. In Section 2, we give an overview of the flattening method. InSection 3, we describe in detail the numerical method we employ for constructing the flattening map based ona finite element approximation of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a triangulated surface. Next in Section 4,we apply it to some MRA brain vessel imagery. Finally in Section 5, we discuss some possible extensions andfuture research directions.
Efficient Boolean Operations on IC Masks

Circuit extraction and design rule checking programs make extensive use of Boolean operations which accept IC mask data as operands. A wide variety of computer algorithms have been written that implement Boolean operations on sets of geometric entities. These algorithms vary in their efficiency and can be characterized by how they represent, sort, and compare IC artwork files. A bit-map representation of IC layout data precisely localizes mask information and eliminates the need for sorting the layout data prior to or during the performance of Boolean operations. The bit patterns of the mask operands may be compared using the CPU's own Boolean operators. A compacted bit-map format that can represent IC layouts concisely, therefore, provides an excellent data base for a very efficient algorithm to perform geometric Boolean operations.
Bioavailability and Biodegradation Kinetics Protocol for Organic Pollutant Compounds to Achieve Environmentally Acceptable Endpoints during Bioremediation

This paper is an extension of our previous studies on quantitating biodegradation kinetics in soil slurry and compacted soil systems. Previous studies had mainly used phenol as a test contaminant. Phenol represents hydrophilic compounds which exhibit high water solubility and low soil sorption characteristics. This paper extends the experimental protocol using polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as the test contaminants. PAHs are hydrophobic compounds with low water solubility and exhibit significant partitioning in soil organic carbon. Degradation rates of PAHs are much slower, thereby requiring acclimation of indigenous soil microbiota using microcosm reactors. The experimental protocol, elaborated in this paper, results in the measurement of biokinetic parameters which can be used to quantitate both ex situ and in situ bioremediation rates and assess the attainable endpoints. Biodegradation studies were conducted for naphthalene using soil slurry, soil wafer, and soil column reactors. Microcosm reactors were set-up to acclimate soil microbiota, and carbon dioxide evolution was used as a measure of acclimation. It was found that reasonable degree of PAH acclimation was achieved after 250 days of microcosm operation. Abiotic adsorption/desorption studies showed that equilibrium was achieved in about 20 hours and approximately 45% of the initial amount of naphthalene is adsorbed by the time equilibrium is attained. Further, desorption was much slower than adsorption with equilibrium being attained in 40 hours. Biokinetic parameters were derived from the cumulative oxygen uptake data of soil slurry, wafer, and column reactors using detailed mathematical models. The cumulative oxygen uptake in all three reactors were almost the same, since naphthalene primarily degraded in the soil phase and the extent of degradation in the aqueous phase was small.
Supersonic Nonequilibrium Plasma Wind-Tunnel Measurements of Shock Modification and Flow Visualization

Experiments conducted in a new, small-scale, nonequilibrium plasma wind tunnel recently developed at Ohio State University are discussed. The facility provides a steady-state supersonic e ow of cold nonequilibrium plasma with well-characterized, near uniform, properties. The plasma is produced in aerodynamically stabilized highpressureglowdischargethatformstheplenumofthesupersonicnozzle.Thepossiblemodie cation ofthesupersonic e ow due to ionization is studied by measuring the angle of oblique shocks attached to the wedge located in the nozzle test section. The results do not show any detectable shock weakening or attenuation in weakly ionized nitrogen plasma, compared to the measurements in a nonionized gas e ow. Experiments in supersonic e owing nitrogen and helium afterglow also demonstrate a novel technique for high-density supersonic e ow visualization. It allows identifying all key features of the supersonic e ow, including shocks, boundary layers, e ow separation regions, andwakesby recording intensevisibleradiation of theweakly ionizedplasmas.Interpretation ofradiation intensitydistributionsinnonequilibriumsupersonice owingafterglowmayprovideinformationonkeymechanisms of energy storage and ultraviolet radiation in high-altitude rocket plumes. In addition, these e ow visualization experiments can be used for validation of multidimensional computer e ow codes used for internal e ow simulation.
Output and Unanticipated Money in the Dependent Economy Model

This paper builds a "new classical" model for a fixed-exchange rate economy based on the dependent economy framework, which has proved particularly fruitful for the analysis of macroeconomic issues in developing countries. The implied reduced-form output equations are quite different from their closed, one-sector counterparts. In particular, anticipated policy changes have real effects in this model, though these effects differ from those of unanticipated changes. These equations are estimated for Mexico for the fixed exchange-rate period 1953-75. The results cast some doubts on the relevance of new classical analysis for Mexico during this period.
Nd:YAG laser followed by radiation for treatment of malignant airway lesions

Patients with malignant obstructive airway lesions often present with total or segmental atelectasis of lung. In spite of prompt initiation of palliative external radiation alone, some patients were unable to complete the planned course of radiation therapy. Since May 1983, 17 patients with malignant obstructive endobronchial lesions have been treated by endoscopic Nd:YAG laser vaporization of the tumor. One to seven days later, fractionated external radiation therapy was initiated. Endoscopic use of the laser was repeated as needed during the course of treatment. Fifteen out of 17 patients successfully completed the planned course of therapy. The improved performance status was sustained in 13 of 15 patients for 2-13 months. A control group was selected from among patients with similarly located lesions who underwent external radiation treatment only prior to the availability of the Nd:YAG laser therapy. One patient developed radiation pneumonitis six weeks after completion of a second course of external radiation, another patient developed bronchopleural fistula after laser treatment which healed following closed chest tube drainage. The others had longer palliation of symptoms and improved quality of life. The results indicate that relief of airway obstruction by use of the Nd:YAG laser improved the patients' ability to tolerate subsequent external radiation treatment.
The design and implementation of a table driven, interactive diagnostic programming system

CAPS is a highly interactive diagnostic compiler/interpreter that allows beginning programmers to prepare, debug, and execute fairly simple programs at a graphics display terminal. Complete syntax checking and most semantic analysis is performed as the program is entered and as it is subsequently edited. Analysis is performed character by character.The most remarkable feature of CAPS is its ability to automatically diagnose errors both at compile time and at run time. Errors are not automatically corrected. Instead, CAPS interacts with the student to help him find the cause of his error.Most components of CAPS are table driven, both to reduce the space needed for implementation and to increase the flexibility of the multilingual system. Over 500 students have used CAPS to learn Fortran, PL/I, or Cobol in conjunction with a computer assisted course on introductory computer science.
Inequality and Redistribution: Some Continuing Puzzles

unequal distribution of income and wealth is an inherent feature of all complex societies, and up to a point, a desirable one. A highly skewed distribution, however, raises questions of serious moral and practical concern: To what extent does socioeconomic inequality undermine the principle of political equality on which democratic societies are based? Under what conditions does it lead to lead to political polarization that retards economic growth or threatens the stability of democratic institutions? And under what circumstances do distributive struggles become the basis for violent social protest or rebellion? Interest in these questions has grown in recent decades, but answers have diverged quite a lot. The median voter theorem (Meltzer and Richard 1981) has provided an influential basis for explaining why people vote for redistributive policies, but evidence to support its simplified motivational assumptions has been mixed, at best. The American experience shows this quite clearly (Bartels 2008), although it is hardly a unique example (e.g., Wallerstein and Moene 2003; Kenworth and McCall 2008). Research on the effects of economic inequality on broader forms of political protest and rebellion has also yielded apparently contradictory results. Recent landmark studies by Boix (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) provide politicaleconomy foundations for the long-standing argument that high concentrations of wealth impede the emergence or consolidation of democracies. In a similar vein, economists have argued that inequality leads to political instability and low levels of investment (e.g., Alesina and Perotti 1993; Birdsall, Graham, and Sabot 1998). On the other hand, influential studies of contentious politics and civil war dismiss inequality as a significant explanatory variable (Collier and Hoeffler 2000; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Fearon and Laitin 2003). They contend that social grievances are not closely linked to differences in the actual distribution of income and focus
Conversion of aluminum foil to powders that react and burn with water

Abstract In the US, the total amount of aluminum scrap and waste, including foil, is outpacing efforts to recycle it into conventional aluminum materials. It would be attractive to develop technologies for converting aluminum foil scrap and waste to useful products and energy carriers. The present paper focuses on the feasibility of converting foil to activated Al powders that chemically split water, releasing hydrogen. As a method for this conversion, high-energy ball milling of Al foil with sodium chloride is investigated, with removing NaCl from the obtained powder by dissolution in cold water or methanol. The powders are characterized using BET specific surface area analysis, laser diffraction particle size analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The obtained micron-sized Al powders readily react with warm (35–80 °C) water. Hydrogen evolution is studied using water displacement, while solid byproducts are examined by X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis. The powders are also mixed with gelled water at various mass ratios and combustion of these mixtures is studied in argon environment. With increasing Al concentration, the combustion front velocity increases despite the decrease in the combustion temperature. The burning rate of the stoichiometric mixture of the activated Al powder with water is comparable with the values reported previously for the mixtures based on nanoscale aluminum, while the content of active Al in the obtained micron-sized powder is significantly higher.
Sparse Kernel-Based Ensemble Learning With Fully Optimized Kernel Parameters for Hyperspectral Classification Problems

Recently, a kernel-based ensemble learning technique for hyperspectral detection/classification problems has been introduced by the authors, to provide robust classification over hyperspectral data with relatively high level of noise and background clutter. The kernel-based ensemble technique first randomly selects spectral feature subspaces from the input data. Each individual classifier, which is in fact a support vector machine (SVM), then independently conducts its own learning within its corresponding spectral feature subspace and hence constitutes a weak classifier. The decisions from these weak classifiers are equally or adaptively combined to generate the final ensemble decision. However, in such ensemble learning, little attempt has been previously made to jointly optimize the weak classifiers and the aggregating process for combining the subdecisions. The main goal of this paper is to achieve an optimal sparse combination of the subdecisions by jointly optimizing the separating hyperplane obtained by optimally combining the kernel matrices of the SVM classifiers and the corresponding weights of the subdecisions required for the aggregation process. Sparsity is induced by applying an l1 norm constraint on the weighting coefficients. Consequently, the weights of most of the subclassifiers become zero after the optimization, and only a few of the subclassifiers with non-zero weights contribute to the final ensemble decision. Moreover, in this paper, an algorithm to determine the optimal full-diagonal bandwidth parameters of the Gaussian kernels of the individual SVMs is also presented by minimizing the radius-margin bound. The optimized full-diagonal bandwidth Gaussian kernels are used by the sparse SVM ensemble to perform binary classification. The performance of the proposed technique with optimized kernel parameters is compared to that of the one with single-bandwidth parameter obtained using cross-validation by testing them on various data sets. On an average, the proposed sparse kernel-based ensemble learning algorithm with optimized full-diagonal bandwidth parameters shows an improvement of 20% over the existing ensemble learning techniques.
Analysis of warpage and residual stress in plastic ball grid array package after post mold cure

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a design and material selection guideline for a plastic ball grid array (PBGA) package in order to improve its reliability and manufacturing ability after post mold cure.Design/methodology/approach – Numerical experiments based on a three‐dimensional (3‐D) viscoelastic finite element method have been conducted to evaluate governing damage mechanisms after post mold cure (PMC) for PBGA packages. The parametric studies for the PBGA package with various molding compounds have been performed. A wide range of the modulus (1MPa∼15GPa) and the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) (10ppm∼300ppm) are evaluated to see feasibility of a new class of material set in the molding compound. Effects of thermo‐mechanical properties of selected molding compound on the warpage and residual stress of the PBGA are analyzed.Findings – The present study shows that the material properties such as modulus and CTE of molding compounds play an important role in warpages and reliabi...
Density functional theory study of the concerted pyrolysis mechanism for lignin models

Studies on the pyrolysis mechanisms of lignin model compounds have largely focused on initial homolytic cleavage reactions. It has been noted, however, that concerted mechanisms may also account for observed product formation. In the current work, the latter processes are examined and compared to the former, by the application of density functional theory calculations to fully substituted lignin models. Results show that activation energies for the concerted reactions are somewhat lower than the bond dissociation energies of the homolysis reactions. Kinetic analysis revealed that the concerted pathway is the retro-ene fragmentation mechanism.
Analysis and Design of Half-Bridge DC-DC Converters with Current Tripler Rectification

A half bridge dc-dc converter with a novel current tripler rectifier (HBCTR) is proposed for low-voltage high-current applications. The proposed topology features high efficiency, good thermal management and simple magnetics design. A unified steady-state model is derived for the symmetrical and asymmetrical controlled HBCTR, and the dc analysis shows that the proposed HBCTR topology has high current capability that meets the high-current low-voltage requirements for microprocessor and telecommunication power supplies. Design considerations are presented based on mathematical analysis. Experimental results show the efficiency improvement compared with other conventional topologies.
On finding k-cliques in k-partite graphs

In this paper, a branch-and-bound algorithm for finding all cliques of size k in a k-partite graph is proposed that improves upon the method of Grunert et al. (in Comput Oper Res 29(1):13–31, 2002). The new algorithm uses bit-vectors, or bitsets, as the main data structure in bit-parallel operations. Bitsets enable a new form of data representation that improves branching and backtracking of the branch-and-bound procedure. Numerical studies on randomly generated instances of k-partite graphs demonstrate competitiveness of the developed method.
Concentrations of Bisphenol A and Seven Other Phenols in Pooled Sera from 3–11 Year Old Children: 2001–2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Concerns exist regarding children's exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) and other phenols because of the higher sensitivity, compared to adults, of children's developing organs to endocrine disruptors. Several studies reported the urinary concentrations of these phenols in children, but data on levels of these compounds in children's serum are limited. We present here the total (free plus conjugated) and free concentrations of BPA and seven other phenols in 24 pooled serum samples prepared from individual specimens collected from 936 children 3-11 years old who participated in the 2001-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. We detected benzophenone-3, triclosan, 2,4-dichlorophenol, 2,5- dichlorophenol, and three parabens in at least 60% of the pools suggesting children's exposure to these compounds or their precursors. Conjugated phenols were the major species. However, although many previous studies have shown widespread detection of BPA in children's urine, we only detected total or free BPA in 3 and 2 pooled serum samples, respectively, at concentrations of 0.1-0.2 μg/L. The nonpersistent nature of BPA and the phenols examined and the likely episodic nature of the exposures to these compounds (or their precursors) suggest that for general population biomonitoring of these nonpersistent phenols, urine, not serum or plasma, is the preferred matrix.
A Comparison of the Paris Principles and the International Cataloguing Principles

After more than forty-five years of cataloging experience with the Paris Principles and their impact on the international sharing of bibliographic data, the process of replacing them with a wider and deeper set of International Cataloguing Principles has been completed. This article compares the scope, technological context, process of decision making, conceptual framework, and amount of change involved in the adoption of the two different statements.
Holographic Interferometry The Twentieth Anniversary

Professor Ryszard Pryputniewicz of Worcester Polytechnic Institute has assembled a significant group of papers on the subject of holographic interferometry in celebration of the first twenty years of activity in this field. Several of these papers were received too late for inclusion in this issue but will be published as a group in the next issue of Optical Engineering. Taken together, these papers are an indication of the tremendous progress made during the twenty years of this field's existence.
Biaxial Crystal Optics

Biaxial crystal optics is studied both classically and quantum mechanically. A light can, in general, be decomposed into two linearly polarized waves. By proper choice of one of the three eulerian angles, two characteristic waves in the crystal are determined. Quantization is facilitated by postulating commutation relations between D and B fields and Heisenberg equations of the motion or, equivalently, Maxwell’s equations. Two types of photons corresponding to the two characteristic waves are found and their energy states are calculated.
Education in Information Science

Information science encompasses many notions, ideas, concepts, principles, and techniques. It relates symbols, words, and language to the world about us. It permits us to hypothesize about the structure of the universe, forecast about future events, and extend knowledge. Information is dynamic, and its rate of growth demands of us that scientific methods and technology be applied to deal with this problem or it will be virtually impossible to meet the demands it imposes on our society. To meet this challenge, trained professional personnel are needed. The universities have the responsibility of preparing such manpower. The career opportunities exist for information scientists, information systems analysts and designers, and professional staff in information transfer, and the demands for experts are increasing. The important question is, are our programs and our curricula in the universities accomplishing this mission? The probability is that many of these programs could be improved substantially. It is our responsibility to examine these programs and analyze this data, which should indicate to us the degree to which our mission is being accomplished. We should be able to provide guidelines that would be useful to individual institutions in reviewing their own programs.
The importance of setting the right genetic distance threshold for identification of clones using amplified fragment length polymorphism: a case study with five species in the tropical plant genus Piper

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) has been widely used for clone identification, but numerous studies have shown that clonemates do not always present identical AFLP fingerprints. Pairwise AFLP distances that distinguish known clones from nonclones have been used to identify a threshold genetic dissimilarity distance below which samples are considered to represent a single clone. Most studies to date have reported threshold values between 2% and 4%. Here, I determine the consistency of the clonal threshold across five species in the tropical plant genus Piper, and evaluate the sensitivity of genetic diversity indices and estimates of frequency of clonal reproduction to the threshold value selected. I sampled multiple ramets per individual from widely distributed plants for each of the five Piper species to set a threshold at the point where the error rate of clonal assignments was lowest. I then sampled all individuals of each shade-tolerant species in a 1-ha plot, and of each light-demanding species in 25 × 35-m plot, to estimate the frequency of asexual recruitment in natural populations using a series of different thresholds including the threshold set with the preliminary sampling. Clonal threshold values for the different species ranged from 0% to 5% AFLP genetic dissimilarity distance. To determine the sensitivity of estimates of clonal reproduction, I calculated several clonal diversity indexes for the natural populations of each of the five species guided by the range in clonal threshold values observed across the five Piper species. I show that small changes in the value of the clonal threshold can lead to very different conclusions regarding the level of clonal reproduction in natural populations.
Morphological changes during oriented polymer crystallization

A theory of the stress-induced crystallization of polymeric networks is presented which takes into account 1) the free energy of fusion, 2) crystal surface energies and 3) entropic changes in the amorphous sections of crystallizing chains. It is assumed that the vector running from one end to the other of the crystallite is oriented in the direction of network extension, irrespective of crystal morphology, thus minimizing the free energy of crystallization. Assuming that the network assumes the crystal morphology which minimizes the free energy of the network at a given degree of crystallinity and that the crystallization proceeds along this lowest free energy path, it is predicted for simple network extension that growth of a perfectly oriented extended-chain crystal occurs initially, changing to a one-fold crystal oriented perpendicular to extension at low extension and to a two-fold crystal having nearly perfect orientation at High extension. The stress is predicted to decay initially and then to rise as the network chains switch from an extended-to a folded-chain morphology. Spatial factors which may trap chains in the ex tended-chain morphology or prematurely stopping the crystallization process can result in a mixed crystal morphology. At high extension, the structure is similar to that of the shish kebab.
Multiple view perspectives: improving inclusiveness and video compression in mainstream classroom recordings

Multiple View Perspectives (MVP) enables deaf and hard of hearing students to view and record multiple video views of a classroom presentation using a stand-alone solution. We show that deaf and hard of hearing students prefer multiple, focused videos over a single, high-quality video and that a compacted layout of only the most important views is preferred. We also show that this approach empowers deaf and hard of hearing students by virtue of its low cost, flexibility, and ease of use in the classroom.
Electrochemically initiated polymerization of zinc(II)5-vinyl-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin

Abstract The vinyl-substituted metalloporphyrin, zinc(II)5-vinyl-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin (ZnVTPP), has been synthesized, characterized, and examined electrochemically to demonstrate that ZnVTPP films can be deposited on electrode surfaces via electrochemically initiated polymerization. ZnVTPP was synthesized using the method of Lindsey and co-workers (J.S. Lindsey, C.I. Schreiman, H.C. Hsu, P.C. Kearney, A.M. Marguerettaz, J. Org. Chem. 52 (1987) 827–836; J.S. Lindsey, in: F. Montanari, L. Casella (Eds.) Metalloporphyrins Catalyzed Oxidations, Catalysis by Metal Complexes Series, vol. 17, Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1994, p. 49). Electrochemical studies of ZnVTPP in nonaqueous electrolyte solutions using cyclic voltammetry under dry, anaerobic conditions revealed that electrochemical polymerization of ZnVTPP followed by polymer deposition does occur if the solvent conditions are properly adjusted. A mixture of dichloromethane and hexane was found to promote polymer deposition substantially demonstrating the importance of solvent composition in the precipitation of electrochemically generated polymers. The electrochemical characteristics of the resulting film suggest that the zinc porphyrin moiety is still intact. Copolymerization experiments with ZnVTPP and vinylferrocene support an electrochemically initiated free radical polyvinyl polymerization mechanism. UV-visible spectrophotometry of ZnVTPP films deposited on optically transparent electrodes confirmed that the zinc porphyrin moiety does not decompose during the film deposition process.
LPCMO nano-templates grown using substrate induced strain

Abstract The phase diagram of mixed phase manganites exhibits an electronic soft matter (ESM) like state, where the coexisting metallic and insulating phases behave like a fluid under the influence of external stress and electric field. We present here the nano-template growth of (La0.5Pr0.5)0.67Ca0.33MnO3 on NdGaO3 (NGO) (1 1 0) and SrTiO3 (STO) (1 0 0) substrates using pulsed laser ablation technique. The films grown on STO have disconnected islands due to the large lattice mismatch of about 2%. These single crystalline islands are approximately 50 nm in size and also display the ESM state. The ESM state in these nano-templates is found to be sensitive to the substrate induced strain. On NGO, the ESM is formed near the insulator to metal transition temperature (TIM). When the film thickness is increased, i.e. the substrate strain is relaxed; the ESM region in the phase diagram shrinks, confirming the influence of strain on the ESM. Thus by engineering strain, we can create nano-templates which display electronic soft matter like behavior. Since the magnetism of the nano-templates can be manipulated by an electric field, novel magneto-electronic devices can be fabricated.
Preface to The Abbess

(2006). Preface to The Abbess. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 20, Directors and Directing in South African Theatre, pp. 334-338.
A GPS for Heart Progenitor Cell Lineages

The good news about human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is that they can potentially become any cell. The bad news is that hESCs can potentially become any cell. It is this very conundrum that demands the construction of a road map that will allow high-efficiency generation of a given differentiated daughter cell from pluripotent human stem cells, regardless of whether they are derived from ESCs or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). In work described in this issue of Molecular Therapy, Dixon and colleagues have devised and implemented a genetics-based approach toward the goal of identifying the key transcriptional factors that can drive the differentiation of hESCs into heart progenitors and their downstream lineages.1 The study employed a panel of lentiviral vectors that encompass a hit list of likely candidate factors and then applied them, both individually and in combination, to an engineered, stable hESC line that carries a fluorescent reporter driven by a cardiac-specific enhancer/promoter construct. Using fluorescence-activated cell-sorting analysis, the investigators defined four key transcription factors—GATA4, TBX5, NKX2.5, and the cardiac-specific transcriptional cofactor BAF60c—as being sufficient for the maximal generation of heart progenitors, as identified by the progenitor marker ISL1,2,3,4 as well as of the desired downstream differentiated cardiac muscle cells. In essence, the study recapitulates approaches that Takahashi and Yamanaka5 utilized in the landmark series of experiments outlining the ability to reprogram skin fibroblasts directly into pluripotent stem cells, but in this case for the purpose of determining the minimal combinatorial transcriptional cocktail to drive cardiogenesis.
Performance evaluation of the Cray X1 distributed shared memory architecture

The Cray X1 supercomputer is a distributed shared memory vector multiprocessor, scalable to 4096 processors and up to 65 terabytes of memory. The X1's hierarchical design uses the basic building block of the multi-streaming processor (MSP), which is capable of 12.8 GF/s for 64-bit operations. The distributed shared memory (DSM) of the X1 presents a 64-bit global address space that is directly addressable from every MSP with an interconnect bandwidth per computation rate of one byte per floating point operation. Our results show that this high bandwidth and low latency for remote memory accesses translates into improved application performance on important applications, such as an Eulerian gyrokinetic-Maxwell solver. Furthermore, this architecture naturally supports programming models like the Cray shmem API, Unified Parallel C (UPC), and coarray FORTRAN (CAF), and it is imperative to select the appropriate models to exploit these features as our benchmarks demonstrate.
Impact of dexmedetomidine on early extubation in pediatric cardiac surgical patients

Purpose To evaluate the impact of dexmedetomidine on early extubation in post-operative pediatric cardiac patients compared to patients on standard sedation regimens without dexmedetomidine.
Modeling cerebral blood flow and regulation

Cerebral autoregulation is a homeostatic mechanism which maintains blood flow despite changes in blood pressure in order to meet local metabolic demands. Several mechanisms play a role in cerebral autoregulation in order to adjust vascular tone and caliber of the cerebral vessels, but the exact etiology of the dynamics of these mechanism is not well understood. In this study, we discuss two patient specific models predicting cerebral blood flow velocity during postural change from sitting to standing. One model characterises cerebral autoregulation, the other describes the beat-to-beat distribution of blood flow to the major regions of the brain. Both models have been validated against experimental data from a healthy young subject.