cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Assessment of cardiac risk before nonvascular surgery: Dobutamine stress echocardiography in 530 patients

Abstract OBJECTIVE This study evaluated the incremental value of dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) for assessment of cardiac risk before nonvascular surgery. BACKGROUND Limited information exists regarding the preoperative assessment of cardiac risk in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease who are to undergo nonvascular surgery. METHODS All patients (303 men, 227 women) who underwent DSE before nonvascular surgery and did not sustain an intervening event (coronary revascularization or cardiac event) were studied. Clinical, electrocardiographic and rest and stress echocardiographic variables were evaluated to identify predictors of postoperative cardiac events. RESULTS Events occurred in 6% of patients: 1 cardiac death and 31 nonfatal myocardial infarctions. All of these patients had inducible ischemia on DSE (sensitivity 100%, specificity 63%). Multivariate predictors of postoperative events in patients with ischemia were history of congestive heart failure (p = 0.006; odds ratio = 4.66; confidence interval 1.55 to 14.02) and ischemic threshold less than 60% of age-predicted maximal heart rate (p = 0.0001; odds ratio 7.002; confidence interval 2.79 to 17.61). Clinical variables of Eagle’s index identified 21% of patients as low, 68% as intermediate and 11% as high risk preoperatively; the postoperative event rates were 3%, 6% and 14%, respectively. Dobutamine stress echocardiography identified 60% of patients as low (no ischemia), 32% as intermediate (ischemic threshold 60% or more) and 8% as high risk (ischemic threshold CONCLUSIONS In this population of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease evaluated before nonvascular surgery, DSE had incremental value over clinical, electrocardiographic and rest echocardiographic variables for identifying patients at low, intermediate and high risk for postoperative cardiac events. Ischemia occurring at less than 60% of age-predicted maximal heart rate identified patients at highest risk.
Science and disaster reduction

A serious gap exists between science and disaster decision making, so that many scientific reports have little impact and fail to inform decision making. This article examines the complex linkages between science and disaster reduction, analyzing the barriers that prevent more effective use of science and suggesting how the gap between science and decision making may be narrowed.
G-protein coupled receptor kinase-2 is a critical regulator of TNFα signaling in colon epithelial cells

G-protein-coupled receptor kinase-2 (GRK2) belongs to the GRK family of serine/threonine protein kinases critical in the regulation of G-protein-coupled receptors. Apart from this canonical role, GRK2 is also involved in several signaling pathways via distinct intracellular interactomes. In the present study, we examined the role of GRK2 in TNFα signaling in colon epithelial cell–biological processes including wound healing, proliferation, apoptosis, and gene expression. Knockdown of GRK2 in the SW480 human colonic cells significantly enhanced TNFα-induced epithelial cell wound healing without any effect on apoptosis/proliferation. Consistent with wound-healing effects, GRK2 knockdown augmented TNFα-induced matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) 7 and 9, as well as urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA; factors involved in cell migration and wound healing). To assess the mechanism by which GRK2 affects these physiological processes, we examined the role of GRK2 in TNFα-induced MAPK and NF-κB pathways. Our results demonstrate that while GRK2 knockdown inhibited TNFα-induced IκBα phosphorylation, activation of ERK was significantly enhanced in GRK2 knockdown cells. Our results further demonstrate that GRK2 inhibits TNFα-induced ERK activation by inhibiting generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Together, these data suggest that GRK2 plays a critical role in TNFα-induced wound healing by modulating MMP7 and 9 and uPA levels via the ROS–ERK pathway. Consistent with in vitro findings, GRK2 heterozygous mice exhibited enhanced intestinal wound healing. Together, our results identify a novel role for GRK2 in TNFα signaling in intestinal epithelial cells.
Scalable Provenance Storage and Querying Using Pig Latin for Big Data Workflows

Provenance refers to the information about the derivation history of a data product. It is important for evaluating the quality and trustworthiness of a data product and ensuring the reproducibility of scientific discoveries. Much research has been done on storing and querying scientific workflow provenance - provenance that is produced in the execution of data-centric scientific workflows. To address the challenges of big data in increasing volume, velocity and variety, a new generation of scientific workflows, called big data workflows are under active research. As both data and workflows increase in their scale, the scale of provenance naturally increases, calling for a new scalable storage and querying infrastructure. This paper leverages Pig Latin, a high-level platform for creating programs that run on Apache Hadoop, and OPQL, a graph-level provenance query language, to build a scalable provenance storage and querying system for big data workflows. Our main contributions are: i) we propose algorithms to translate OPQL constructs to equivalent Pig Latin programs, ii) we extend OPQL, to support the W3C PROV-DM standard provenance model, iii) we develop and evaluate our system on provenance datasets from the UTPB benchmark, and (iv) we create some visual OPQL constructs in the DATAVIEW big data workflow system to facilitate the easy creation of complex OPQL queries in a visual workflow style. Our preliminary experimental study shows the feasibility of our framework for big-data-scale provenance storage and querying.
Rethinking antivirus: executable analysis in the network cloud

Antivirus software installed on each end host in an organization has become the de-facto security mechanism used to defend against unwanted executables. We argue that the executable analysis currently provided by host-based antivirus software can be more efficiently and effectively provided as an in-cloud network service. Instead of running complex analysis software on every end host, we suggest that each end host run a lightweight process to acquire executables entering a system, send them into the network for analysis, and then run or quarantine them based on a threat report returned by the network service. An executable analysis service run inside an enterprise network or by a service provider could integrate antivirus software, behavioral simulation, and other analysis engines from multiple vendors providing better detection of malware and simplify client software enabling deployment on a broader range of devices. To explore this idea we construct a prototype composed of a Windows based host agent and an in-cloud analysis service and evaluate it using a diverse dataset of 5066 unique malicious executables. By correlating information between multiple detection engines, our system provides over 98% detection coverage of the malicious executables using eight antivirus engines and two behavioral engines compared to a 54% to 86% detection rate using the latest commercial antivirus products.
Impact of Tapered Nano-Slits Grating on The Optical Enhancement of Photo-Sensing Devices

A nano-grating structure with a 5nm slit and 15 nm thickness was simulated. Optical enhancement, which can be harnessed to improve photo-sensing devices such as photodetectors and biosensors, was calculated for various tapered nanoslits.
Receipt of Guideline-Concordant Care Among Older Women With Stage I–III Breast Cancer: A Population-Based Study

Background: This study examined receipt of guideline-concordant care (GCC) according to evidence-based treatment guidelines and quality measures and specific types of treatment among older women with breast cancer. Patients and Methods: A total of 142,433 patients aged ≥66 years diagnosed with stage I-III breast cancer between 2007 and 2011 were identified in the SEER-Medicare linked database. Algorithms considering cancer characteristics and the appropriate course of care as per guidelines versus actual care received determined receipt of GCC. Multivariable logistic regression estimated the likelihood of GCC and specific types of treatment for women aged ≥75 versus 66 to 74 years. Results: Overall, 39.7% of patients received GCC. Patients diagnosed at stage II or III, with certain preexisting conditions, and of nonwhite race were less likely to receive GCC. Patients with hormone-negative tumors, higher grade tumors, and greater access to oncology care resources were more likely to receive GCC. Patients aged ≥75 years were approximately 40% less likely to receive GCC or adjuvant endocrine therapy, 78% less likely to have any surgery, 61% less likely to have chemotherapy, and about half as likely to have radiation therapy than those aged 66 to 74 years. Conclusions: Fewer than half of older women with breast cancer received GCC, with the lowest rates observed among the oldest age groups, racial/ethnic minorities, and women with later-stage cancers. However, patients with more aggressive tumor characteristics and greater access to oncology resources were more likely to receive GCC. Considering that older women have the highest incidence of breast cancer and that many are diagnosed at stages requiring more aggressive treatment, efforts to increase rates of earlier stage diagnosis and the development of less toxic treatments could help improve GCC and survival while preserving quality of life.
Individuelle Interventionen – wann und wie?

Dieses Kapitel stellt dar, wann und wie individuell ausgerichtete Interventionen fur die erwachsenen Eltern des Jugendlichen oder den Jugendlichen selbst durch die MST-Therapeuten zur Anwendung kommen. Das Kapitel konzentriert sich zunachst auf erwachsene Eltern, da sie die Hauptrolle bei der Umsetzung von Interventionen im naturlichen Umfeld des Jugendlichen spielen. In der MST sind die Eltern am Entwurf und als Hauptakteure an der Umsetzung solcher Strategien beteiligt, die benotigt werden, um eine Veranderung bestimmter zu den Problemen des Jugendlichen beitragenden Interaktionen in der Familie, Schule und zwischen Peers zu erzielen sowie um zukunftigen Herausforderungen wirksam zu begegnen. Um den gewunschten Erfolg in der Therapie zu erzielen, mussen daher alle Hindernisse fur die Mitwirkung und die Wirksamkeit der Eltern erfolgreich beseitigt werden.
Multiscale Modeling of RNA Structure and Dynamics

We have developed a multiscale approach for RNA folding using discrete molecular dynamics (DMD), a rapid conformational sampling algorithm. We use a coarse-grained representation to effectively model RNA structures. Benchmark studies suggest that the DMD-based RNA model is able to accurately fold small RNA molecules (<50 nucleotides). However, the large conformational space and force field inaccuracies make it difficult to computationally identify the native states of large RNA molecules. We devised an automated modeling approach for prediction of large and complex RNA structures using experimentally derived structural constraints and tested it on several RNA molecules with known experimental structures. In all cases, we were able to bias the DMD simulations to the native states of these RNA molecules. Therefore, a combination of experimental and computational approaches has the potential to yield native-like models for the diverse universe of functionally important RNAs, whose structures cannot be characterized by conventional structural methods.
Ion Diffusion Coefficients in Ion Exchange Membranes: Significance of Counterion Condensation

This study presents a new framework for extracting single ion diffusion coefficients in ion exchange membranes from experimental ion sorption, salt permeability, and ionic conductivity data. The framework was used to calculate cation and anion diffusion coefficients in a series of commercial ion exchange membranes contacted by aqueous NaCl solutions. Counterion diffusion coefficients were greater than co-ion diffusion coefficients for all membranes after accounting for inherent differences due to ion size. A model for ion diffusion coefficients in ion exchange membranes, incorporating ideas from counterion condensation theory, was proposed to interpret the experimental results. The model predicted co-ion diffusion coefficients reasonably well with no adjustable parameters, while a single adjustable parameter was required to accurately describe counterion diffusion coefficients. The results suggest that for cross-linked ion exchange membranes in which counterion condensation occurs condensed counterions mi...
Weak Supervision and Machine Learning for Online Harassment Detection

Automated detection tools can enable both the study of online harassment and technology that mitigates its harm. Machine learning methods allow these tools to adapt and improve using data. Yet current well-established machine learning approaches require amounts of data that are often unmanageable by practitioners aiming to train harassment detectors. Emerging methods that learn models from weak supervision represent one important avenue to address this challenge. In contrast to the full supervision used in most traditional machine learning methods, weak supervision does not require annotators to label individual examples of the target concept. Instead, annotators provide approximate descriptions of the target concept, sucsh as rule-of-thumb indicators. In this chapter, we describe the weak supervision paradigm and some general principles that drive emerging methods. And we detail a weakly supervised method for detection of online harassment that uses key-phrase indicators as the form of weak supervision. This method considers multiple aspects of the online harassment phenomenon, using interplay between these aspects to bolster the weak supervision into a useful model. We describe experimental results demonstrating this approach on detecting harassment in social media data. Finally, we discuss the ongoing challenges for using machine learning methods to build harassment detectors.
Safety and Outcome of Transsphenoidal Pituitary Adenoma Resection in Elderly Patients.

Objective Pituitary adenomas account for 10%–20% of intracranial brain tumors but have greater incidence in elderly patients. We assessed microsurgical treatment for pituitary adenomas in this population. Methods A retrospective cohort of patients ≥60 years of age was identified. Patients were divided into deciles by age for evaluation of variables affecting outcome: 60–70 (group 1), 71–80 (group 2), and >80 years (group 3). Results Two hundred five patients were identified among group 1 (n = 131), group 2 (n = 65), and group 3 (n = 9). Preoperative variables other than age did not differ. Most patients presented with visual disturbance, in 56.5%, 73.8%, and 50% in groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The next most common indication was headache, followed by endocrinopathy. Tumors were overwhelmingly nonfunctional (P = 0.97) and macroadenomas (P = 0.5) in all 3 groups. Gross total resection occurred in 56.9%–80% of patients, and this rate did not differ among groups. Complication rates of 6.9% in group 1, 9.2% in group 2, and 0.0% in group 3 were observed (P = 0.8). No perioperative mortality was identified. Mean length of follow-up ranged from 8.9 to 28.3 months. Conclusions In this series of microsurgical resection of pituitary adenomas in elderly patients, good efficacy and safety of treatment were observed. Preclusion of surgical treatment, including open resection, simply because of age is not warranted and instead a comprehensive evaluation of a patient's risk profile and surgical goals should be undertaken.
Pheochromocytoma and Adrenal Medullary Hyperplasia

The chromaffin cells of the adrenal medulla produce catecholamines such as epinephrine. The adrenal medulla appears gray-white grossly and comprises 10 % of the gland. The medulla may be hyperplastic in adrenal medullary hyperplasia, as may be seen in multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) types 2A and 2B, cystic fibrosis, and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, as well as sporadically. Adrenal medullary hyperplasia may have clinical and biochemical findings similar to those of pheochromocytoma. Adrenal medullary hyperplasia usually affects both adrenals, unlike most sporadic pheochromocytomas. However, bilateral pheochromocytomas occur and may arise in a background of medullary hyperplasia. Pheochromocytoma is a tumor of the neural crest–derived medulla chromaffin cells.
CHECK: a multi-level program to improve outcomes for urban children and youth with asthma.

Asthma is common diagnosis in children. Minority, urban children carry an unequal burden of asthma (1,2). In Chicago, the overall asthma prevalence for children is 12.9% compared with 19.9% in pred...
Influence of wind events on larval fish mortality rates in the southern California Current Ecosystem

Wind-induced mixing can affect the vertical distribution of plankton in the upper water column, influencing the prey available for larval fishes. The stable ocean hypothesis proposes that periods o...
Macrophage Activation Syndrome Secondary to Underlying Sarcoidosis

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) due to an underlying rheumatologic condition is known as macrophage activation syndrome (MAS), a rare and serious complication that often has a delayed diagnosis. MAS can complicate any rheumatologic disease, although it is most prevalent in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis. MAS occurring as a sequela of sarcoidosis is seldom reported. Herein, we present an uncommon case of MAS occurring secondary to suspected extrapulmonary sarcoidosis and the associated diagnostic challenges. A 53-year-old White female presented with a 20-month history of constitutional symptoms of an unclear etiology. Her extensive workup included equivocal bone marrow and liver biopsies, suggestive of occasional hemophagocytosis. On admission, she met criteria for HLH based on the HLH-94 diagnostic guidelines. A repeat liver biopsy was performed revealing non-necrotizing granulomas in the parenchyma. Given the concern for an extrapulmonary sarcoidosis, she was started on pulse-dose steroids with subsequent symptomatic resolution. Two years later, she remains in complete remission. As a systemic disease, sarcoidosis can manifest in any organ and present in a variety of ways. While HLH and MAS have numerous etiologies, sarcoidosis should be considered as a potential underlying diagnosis, and prompt treatment initiation with steroids may reduce morbidity and mortality.
Fit-for-Purpose Validation of a Ligand Binding Assay for Toxicokinetic Study Using Mouse Serial Sampling

The purpose of this study was to validate a ligand binding assay for the quantitation of a monoclonal antibody-based biotherapeutics (PF-57781346) in samples collected via capillary microsampling to support a regulated mouse toxicity study. A quantitative ligand binding assay on the Gyrolab platform was developed to quantify PF-57781346 in blood samples derived from capillary mouse serial sampling. The method validation evaluated assay characteristics including accuracy and precision, influence of sample processing on drug quantitation, whole blood matrix selectivity, dilution linearity and the stability of the drug in the study sample matrix. The method validation demonstrated acceptable analytical characteristics. The whole blood selectivity testing demonstrated accuracy between −4.8% and 13.9% in 10 out of 10 individual whole blood samples, suggesting that drug quantitation from whole blood is not impacted by the serial sampling procedure. Short-term and long-term drug stability in study sample matrix were established to cover required stability for sample storage and analysis (accuracy between −7.3% and 6.1%). We reported a successful validation of a bioanalytical method that quantifies PF-55781346 in samples collected via capillary microsampling. The experience shared in this study could serve as a model process for bioanalytical method validation when capillary microsampling is used.
Nuclear Forces in the Medium: Insight From the Equation of State

In this review, we concentrate on recent efforts of our group aimed at investigating the nuclear equation of state of symmetric nuclear matter (equal concentrations of protons and neutrons) and the one of pure neutron matter. Although idealized, these systems are suitable \laboratories" to probe nuclear forces in the many-body system. The energy per particle as a function of density can reveal rich information about the nature of nuclear forces in the medium and how they impact observable properties. For instance, the pressure in neutron-rich matter has been found to have profound impact on very diverse systems, ranging from the thickness of the neutron skin in a heavy nucleus to the properties of compact stars. The current trend in nuclear physics is to build few-nucleon forces according to the prescription of chiral effective field theory. We open by reviewing in depth how we develop equations of state based on state-of-the-art chiral interactions. We then highlight some applications in neutron-rich nuclei and neutron stars.
The Process Parameter Simulation of Press-fit Pin in a Power Module

In this paper, a 3D finite element analysis (FEA) model is developed to simulate the process of inserting the press-fit pin in PCB board. In the package assembly process, the bottom of pin base is attached on DBC by laser soldering process. In the process of inserting press-fit pin in PCB board, the pin base will support the pin pillar and push pin head into the hole of PCB board. Contact pairs between pin bottom and pin pillar, between pin head and PCB hole, between pin side and hole of module case, between pin pillar and DBC top are defined. The risk of laser tooling displacement and pin tilt are studied through simulation. The impact of PCB offset on the two failure modes is also studied. The simulation results agreed with the actual test trends.
Beyond Marie Curie: Grace Hopper and the ENIAC Six

I recently went to lunch with some friends, and we ended up discussing the lack of female role models in engineering and how that may be limiting the growth of diversity in our field. The discussion went a little further, and the point was made that the role models we already have are not getting enough attention.
Partition Pruning: Parallelization-Aware Pruning for Dense Neural Networks

As recent neural networks are being improved to be more accurate, their model’s size is exponentially growing. Thus, a huge number of parameters requires to be loaded and stored from/in memory hierarchy and computed in processors to perform training or inference phase of neural network processing. Increasing the number of parameters causes a big challenge for real-time deployment since the memory bandwidth improvement’s trend cannot keep up with models’ complexity growing trend. Although some operations in neural networks processing are computational intensive such as convolutional layer computing, computing dense layers face with memory bandwidth bottleneck. To address the issue, the paper has proposed Partition Pruning for dense layers to reduce the required parameters while taking into consideration parallelization. We evaluated the performance and energy consumption of parallel inference of partitioned models, which showed a 7.72x speedup of performance and a 2.73x reduction in the energy used for computing pruned fully connected layers in TinyVGG16 model in comparison to running the unpruned model on a single accelerator. Besides, our method showed a limited reduction in accuracy while partitioning fully connected layers.
Prescription opioid misuse and its correlates among veterans and military in the United States: A systematic literature review.

Abstract Background Prescription opioid misuse (POM) has become a critical public health issue in the United States (US), with veteran and military population being especially vulnerable to POM. However, limited behavioral interventions have been developed for veterans and military to reduce POM risk due to the lack of an adequate understanding of POM andrelated factors among veterans and military. The current study aims to review and synthesize empirical findings regarding POM and its correlates among US veterans and military. Methods We conducted a systematic review of 17 empirical studies (16 quantitative studies and one qualitative study) from 1980 to 2019 that reported POM statistics (e.g., prevalence) and examined correlates of POM in veterans and military. Results The prevalence of POM in veterans and military ranged from 6.9%–77.9% varying by study samples, individual POM behaviors, and recalled time periods. Several factors were identified to be associated with POM in veterans and military. These factors included socio-demographic factors (age, race/ethnicity, education, relationship status, and military status), pain-related factors (pain symptoms, severity, interference, and cognitions), other physical factors (e.g., common illness), opioid-medication-related factors (receipt of opioid medications and quantity of opioid medications), behavioral factors (substance use disorder, alcohol use, cigarette use, and other prescription drug use), and psychological factors (psychiatric symptoms and cognitive factors). Conclusions POM was prevalent in veterans and military and could be potentially influenced by multiple psycho-behavioral factors. Future research guided by a theoretical framework is warranted to examine psycho-behavioral influences on POM and their mechanisms and to inform effective psychosocial POM interventions in veterans and military.
Is HIV disease associated with a discrepancy between premorbid verbal IQ and neurocognitive functions

Introduction: There is debate about the optimal approach to diagnose neurocognitive impairment in people with HIV disease. The current "gold-standard" uses normative data to determine whether performance is below that of demographically comparable peers. This study investigated the utility of a discrepancy analysis approach, which compares normative neurocognitive performance directly to estimated premorbid intellectual functioning. Method: A total of 570 adults with and without HIV disease completed a comprehensive neurocognitive battery and the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading (WTAR), an oral word reading measure that was used to estimate premorbid verbal IQ. Normative scores for six neurocognitive domains were subtracted from the WTAR standardized score to calculate discrepancy scores where higher scores indicated greater discrepancies. Results: In models adjusting for relevant confounds, an interaction between HIV serostatus and domain discrepancy scores emerged such that persons with HIV had significantly higher discrepancy scores than seronegative participants, specifically in the domains of attention and episodic memory. Of clinical relevance, persons with HIV were two to three times more likely than their seronegative counterparts to have clinically discordant performance relative to premorbid verbal IQ in these domains. Additionally, the standard normative approach and discrepancy analysis method had fair to moderate agreement for classifying attention and episodic memory impairment in the participants with HIV disease. Conclusions: HIV disease is associated with discrepancies between premorbid IQ estimates and the domains of attention and memory, consideration of which may be a clinically useful complement to standard normative approaches to diagnosing HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.
Climatology of Sundowner winds in coastal Santa Barbara, California, based on 30 yr high resolution WRF downscaling

Abstract Sundowner winds are a type of downslope windstorms observed on the southern slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains (SYM) in Santa Barbara, southern California. The name “Sundowner” is due to the onset of strong winds near sunset. Sundowner winds can reach gale force and are extremely dangerous during wildfires. This study presents a climatology of Sundowners based on a 30 yr high spatiotemporal resolution dataset obtained with the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Combined empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of hourly zonal and meridional winds (10 m) with 1 km grid spacing is performed to characterize the diurnal variability of surface winds. The first two eigenmodes (EOF-1, EOF-2) (58% of total variance) characterize the variability of surface winds in the western and eastern parts of the SYM, respectively. The hourly percentiles of the frequency distribution of the first two time coefficients (PC1, PC2) are used to identify three types of Sundowner regimes. The western (eastern) regime occurs when surface winds project strongly on EOF-1 (EOF-2) but not on EOF-2 (EOF-1). The western regime is characterized by a strong coastal jet around Point Conception with northwesterly winds extending into the Santa Barbara Channel. In contrast, a weak coastal jet not extending into the Santa Barbara Channel is observed in the eastern regime. In the Santa Barbara (SBA) regime, hourly surface winds project strongly on both EOF-1 and EOF-2. The western regime occurs more frequently than the eastern and SBA regimes and peaks during March-May. The eastern regime has maximum in January-February, whereas the SBA regime has a seasonal cycle similar to the western regime. Horizontal and vertical structures of winds and potential temperature show that the lee slope jet and mountain wave activity on the SYM exhibit strong spatial variations in the three regimes.
An Immediate Relief Plan for Coronavirus-Related Economic Mitigation

The Coronavirus crisis calls for an emergency supply-side and demand-side economic mobilization, financed using debt-free mechanisms as were used during the Great Depression and WWII, to prevent catastrophic economic collapse during the Coronavirus crisis. The plan calls for: • Debt holiday covering all types of short-term debt and rental payments. • $1,000 biweekly in universal income support, delivered through existing IRS/EITC mechanisms and direct deposits into bank accounts and digital wallets where necessary. (The $1,000/month proposals currently gaining support will still leave many families cutting spending and contributing to the negative demand spiral.) • Direct support for small businesses, manufacturers and other sectors of the economy to prevent a wave of bankruptcies, protect against permanent destruction of productive capacity, and head-off any inflation concerns. • Investment in building up stockpiles of needed goods and supplies. • Temporary suspension of relevant tariffs and other trade impediments. • Finance using emergency mechanisms such as negative rate Treasury issuance, Fed ‘helicopter money’ for taxpayers and government agencies, and/or ‘rollable’ Fed Discount Window lending to small businesses. • Suspend requirement that Treasury issue new debt to finance operations.
Did Pinochet Cause the Chilean Miracle

This paper analyzes the impact of Augusto Pinochet’s autocracy on the Chilean economy. The study compares outcomes under Pinochet’s leadership with those in a synthetic counterfactual made of a weighted average of countries with similar characteristics. I find that, relative to the control, income per capita did not diverge till several years after Pinochet’s coup. In contrast, health outcomes measured by life expectancy improved immediately after Pinochet’s installment, though only slightly. The evidence I present suggests that the remarkable economic growth did not depend on Pinochet’s autocracy. Also, the results on life expectancy show that positive health effects may not be an exclusive consequence of democracies.
Offering lung resection to current smokers: An opportunity for more equitable care

Objective Minority patients with lung cancer are less likely to undergo surgical resection and experience worse survival than non-Hispanic White patients. Currently, 40% of thoracic surgeons require smoking cessation before surgery, which may disproportionately affect minority patients. Our objective was to assess the risk of smoking status on postoperative morbidity and mortality among patients with lung cancer. Methods A prospectively maintained institutional database was queried for all patients who underwent surgical resection of a primary lung malignancy between 2006 and 2020. Operative mortality, major morbidity, and a composite of morbidity and mortality were compared between current smokers and prior smokers. Results A total of 601 patients underwent resection, and 236 (39.3%) were current smokers. Current smokers were more likely to be younger (P Conclusions Current smokers experienced similar rates of mortality and major morbidity as prior smokers. In the context of continued racial and ethnic disparities in lung cancer survival, in particular decreased resection rates among minorities, smoking cessation requirements should not delay or prevent operative intervention for lung cancer.
Coliform Aftergrowths in Chlorinated Storm Overflow

Laboratory tests were conducted on the possible bacteriological effects of combined sewer storm overflows into a tidal estuary. A standard overflow mixture was diluted with 3 to 25 volumes of estuarine waters to represent dilutions expected under average storm conditions. Bacterial growths were observed in the raw overflow and at the various dilutions, using 3-1 flasks at 68○ F, with incubation periods up to 120 hr. MPN values of coliforms were determined after fixed time intervals. Without chlorination MPN values increased from 10 to 40 times the value at the point of discharge, or up to 13,000,000 coliforms per 100 ml after 30 hr of mixture with estuarine water. Chlorination to 15-min chlorine demand of the overflow liquid did not stop aftergrowth but reduced the aftergrowth by 70% to 90%, with peak values of 500,000 per 100 ml in 40 hr. These studies indicate that the aftergrowth phenomenon must be studied in the determinations of design criteria for the treatment of storm overflows from combined sewer systems.
The effects of antihypertensive drugs on serum lipids and lipoproteins, I. Diuretics.

Potassium-losing diuretic drugs, when used in the treatment of hypertension, cause unfavourable short term alterations in blood lipid and lipoprotein concentrations. The disturbance is characterised by increases in total cholesterol of 4 to 13%, in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol of 7 to 29%, in very-low density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol of 7 to 56%, and in total triglyceride of 14 to 37%. The disturbance is variable among patients and over time in individual patients; it is absent in some. In long term treatment the data are fragmentary, but total cholesterol and triglycerides usually return to baseline values or below. The variability of the lipid response to diuretics has several consequences: firstly, it necessitates a sizeable study population (minimum of 30 patients) in order to document convincingly its presence or absence; secondly, lipoprotein fractions must be examined to define the pattern of the disturbance; and thirdly, the subsidence of the diuretic-induced lipid effects in long term treatment may be more apparent than real because even larger decreases have been noted in untreated groups in the few studies that wisely included these important controls for comparison. While the cause of the lipid-lipoprotein aberration is unclear, existing data suggest that certain attributes of the study population influence the response, i.e. age, habitual diet, hormonal milieu (gender), baseline cholesterol concentrations, and induced glucose intolerance. The apparent absence of lipid alterations with indapamide needs to be substantiated and compared with low doses of a standard thiazidetype drug. The lipid-lipoprotein effects of diuretics seem inconsequentially small, but they may contribute to the disappointing failure of diuretic-based regimens to lower the incidence of coronary heart disease in hypertensive patients. Nevertheless, diuretic-based treatment remains the only therapeutic regimen of proven benefit to congestive heart failure in patients with hypertension, and it is superior to β-blockade in preventing stroke. Hence, alternative antihypertensive drug regimens must be compared prospectively with diuretics in order to verify any theoretic superiority.
The Dependence of Neutron-Induced Radioactivity in Fusion Reactors on Geometric Design Parametersa

Although the neutron-induced activation in a fusion reactor is a non-linear problem whose solution requires the use of neutron transport codes and neutron activation and decay codes, a number of simple arguments can be made which give useful scaling laws for the total radioactivity in a fusion reactor. Because these laws rely heavily on assumptions of linearity and the smallness of second-order effects, we have compared them to the results of computer experiments designed to investigate their validity over the range of operating parameters typical of fusion reactors.
How Do Maternal Risk Factors Affect Children in Low-Income Families?

SUMMARY This longitudinal study examines the role of depressive symptoms and low literacy among mothers receiving welfare in predicting outcomes for both parents and children (mothers' psychological and employment-related outcomes and children's development across multiple domains). For African-American single mothers (n = 351), depressive symptoms in mothers are an important predictor of their later psychological well-being, while maternal literacy affects both their participation in welfare-to-work activities and later employment. An analysis of the academic functioning of children found a main effect for maternal literacy. Maternal literacy also significantly interacted with maternal depression. The children of mothers with a greater number of depressive symptoms had less favorable cognitive achievement outcomes when their mothers also had low literacy. Structural equation models indicate that parenting behavior mediates the relationship between depressive symptoms, literacy and later child outcomes. A...
Reclaiming the Promise of the Indian Child Welfare Act: A Study of State Incorporation and Adoption of Legal Protections for Indian Status Offenders

The implementation, adoption, and enforcement of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) protections in status offense proceedings are inconsistent among the states and can be based on highly discretionary ad hoc determinations made by intake officers, practitioners, advocates, and judges without clear legal guidance. The lack of systemic adoption and enforcement of the ICWA's protections has led to: (1) the creation of special committees to evaluate the protections for status offenders; (2) the issuance of court decisions clearly identifying the ICWA protections that are applicable in status offense proceedings; (3) the adoption of statutes that specifically define protec- tions for Indian status offenders under the ICWA; and (4) the adoption of new court rules further clarifying the standards for inclusion of status offenses under the ICWA. If state courts do not ensure that all Indian children who come in contact with the ICWA are given full benefits of its protections and rights, the tribe's perspective on the welfare of the child will not be heard. Such silencing of tribal voices will continue to result in a loss of Indian youth to the juvenile justice system. This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I provides historical context for the passage of the ICWA. Part I identifies the specific textual provisions in the ICWA legislative history, the text of the ICWA and of the accompanying BIA Guidelines that recognizes the inclusion of status offense proceedings in which out-of-home placement occurs under the substantive and procedural framework of the ICWA. Part I also provides an overview of the current interactions between Indian status offenders and the juvenile justice system. Part II presents findings from the first national study of state laws, state court rules, and administrative policies, revealing conflicting applications of the ICWA procedural protections for Indian status offenders across the country. Part III concludes with a consideration of the implications of disparate state adoption of the ICWA protections for status offenders.
Mucinous cystadenoma of the pancreas: Endoscopy as an aid to diagnosis

Abstract Pancreatitis and pancreatic insufficiency have not previously been associated with mucinous cystadenoma of the pancreas. This report describes a patient with a long history of chronic pancreatitis whose course was complicated by obstructive jaundice and cholangitis and pancreatic insufficiency. Endoscopy with retrograde cholangiopancreatography provided the correct diagnosis, and the findings are described.
Why Does Molten Aluminum Explode at Underwater or Wet Surfaces

Molten Al sometimes explodes when it inadvertently contacts a wet or underwater solid surface. With laboratory experiments, we investigated these initiations at seventeen different submerged surfaces. Surfaces nonwettable by liquid water were inert, while water-wettable surfaces initiated explosive molten Al-water interactions. We hypothesize that the water-wetted surfaces provide a thin layer of liquid water beneath the molten Al that can heat rapidly during transient liquid-liquid contact between melt and water. Because the surfaces of the wettable solid and the molten metal are both presumed to be poor nucleators of bubbles, substantial superheating of the water layer may occur. The resultant vaporization may be explosive, causing local fragmentation of the melt and pressure disturbances that initiate steam explosions elsewhere where melt and water are adjacent. Nonwetted surfaces, on the other hand, are essentially dry beneath the melt and produce little assistance to the explosive interaction.
Variability of treatment selection among surgeons for patients with cT1 urothelial carcinoma

Study Type – Therapy (case series) Level of Evidence 4 OBJECTIVES To report the heterogeneity in the treatment of patients with cT1 urothelial carcinoma by different surgeons, and to report outcomes in patients with and without bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 396 patients who had undergone a re-staging transurethral resection (TUR) for cT1 bladder cancer. We assessed both differences in the treatment by surgeon, and the association of early treatment with BCG with recurrence, progression and bladder cancer-specific death. RESULTS Muscle was captured in the re-staging TUR specimen in a median of 76% of patients (range 50–94 when stratified by surgeon). On multivariable analysis there was significant heterogeneity among surgeons in the use of early cystectomy (P < 0.001), deferred cystectomy (P < 0.001), and BCG (P= 0.014). However, there was no significant heterogeneity between surgeons in clinical outcome for recurrence (P= 0.9) and overall survival (P= 0.3). Among 288 patients placed on surveillance, the 5-year probability (95% confidence interval) of freedom from recurrence was 45 (36–54)% for those receiving and 54 (44–62)% for those not receiving early BCG. On multivariable analysis, early BCG was not significantly associated with recurrence (P= 0.14). The cumulative incidence of progression was ≈10% for both groups, and the cumulative incidence of bladder cancer-specific death was ≈7% for both groups. The cumulative incidence of deferred cystectomy before progression was 14% for those receiving and 15% for those not receiving early BCG. CONCLUSIONS There is a significant variability among surgeons in the management of patients with T1 disease. The similar outcome for the BCG-treated and -untreated patients in our study is most likely confounded by patient selection.
Tacrolimus (FK506) modulates calcium release and contractility of intestinal smooth muscle

Several proteins have been identified that associate with calcium release channels and potentially regulate their function. Using tacrolimus as a pharmacological tool, we investigated whether the immunophilin FKBP12 modulates ryanodine receptor channels in intestinal smooth muscle. Results with PCR demonstrated the presence of type-3 ryanodine receptor and FKBP12 in this tissue. Tacrolimus caused an irreversible increase of the intracellular calcium concentration, which was abolished by pretreatment with caffeine. The calcium channel blocker verapamil did not affect the response to tacrolimus. Tacrolimus decreased the calcium concentration in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Caffeine, but not inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate or heparin, abolished this effect. Finally, tacrolimus significantly and irreversibly decreased the tension generated by intestinal muscle strips. These data support our hypothesis that the immunophilin FKBP12 modulates ryanodine receptor function in smooth muscle. Interactions between such regulatory proteins and calcium release channels may play an important role in excitation-contraction coupling and other intracellular signaling processes.
Optimal power and reserve capacity procurement policies with deferrable loads

Deferrable loads can be used to mitigate the variability associated with renewable generation. In this paper, we study the impact of deferrable loads on forward market operations. Specifically, we compute cost-minimizing ex-ante bulk power and reserve capacity procurement policies in the cases of fully deferrable and non-deferrable loads. For non-deferrable loads, we analytically express this policy on a partition of procurement prices. We also formulate a threshold policy for deferrable load scheduling in the face of uncertain supply, that minimizes grid operating costs.
The Mars Water Cycle: Determining the Role of Exchange with the Regolith☆

Abstract The near-surface nighttime atmospheric water vapor concentrations inferred by Ryan et al. (J. A. Ryan, R. D. Sharman, and R. D. Lucich 1982. J. Geophys. Res. 87, 7279–7284) from Viking Lander air temperature measurements are a factor of 2–3 lower than the same quantities estimated from daytime atmospheric column water vapor abundances observed from the Viking Orbiters. We show that a physical model of the atmospheric boundary layer and regolith can produce a nighttime depletion of this magnitude by diffusion of water into the regolith and adsorption onto regolith grains. Quantitative validation of the model is not possible at present due to the lack of direct measurements of the near-surface atmospheric water vapor concentration and by uncertainties regarding surface regolith and atmospheric boundary layer properties. However, if the diurnal exchange of water vapor with the surface is as large as is suggested by the Viking Lander and Orbiter measurements, then the exchange of water between the atmosphere and regolith also is important in the seasonal cycle of water vapor. Further characterization of these processes can be made using measurements from the various landing site and atmospheric profiling experiments to be conducted by the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Surveyor Lander and Orbiter missions.