cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Agent-based modeling of the context dependency in T cell recognition.

Abstract Antigen recognition by T cells is a key event in the adaptive immune response. T cells scan the surface of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) or target cells for specific peptides bound to MHC molecules. In the physiological setting, a typical APC presents tens of thousands of diverse endogenous self-derived peptides complexed to MHC (pMHC complexes). When ‘foreign’ peptides are presented, they constitute a small fraction of the total surface peptide repertoire. As T cells seem to be capable of discerning minute amounts of ‘foreign’ peptides among a complex background of self-peptides, endogenous peptides are generally assumed to play no role in recognition. However, recent results suggest that these background peptides may alter the sensitivity of T cells to foreign peptides. Current experimental limitations preclude analysis of peptide mixtures approaching physiological complexity, making it difficult to further address the role of complex background peptides. In this paper, we present a computational model to test how complex, varied peptide populations on an APC could potentially modulate a T cell's ability to detect the presence of small numbers of agonist peptides among a diverse population. We use the model to investigate the notion that under physiological conditions, T cell recognition of foreign peptides is context dependent, that is, T cells process signals gathered from all pMHC interactions, not just from a few agonist peptides while ignoring all others.
Panic syndromes in a population-based sample of male and female twins.

Background. The risk for panic disorder (PD) is substantially increased in relatives of probands with PD. Prior literature provides only limited information about the degree to which this increase is due to genetic factors or family environment. Methods. In personal interviews with both members of 3194 twin pairs, we assessed the lifetime history of lifetime panic attacks and PD. Twin resemblance was assessed by tetrachoric correlation and single and multiple threshold biometrical model fitting. Results. As fully syndromal PD, by DSM-III-R criteria, was too rare to analyse usefully we examined four other dichotomous definitions of increasing stringency : panic probe and very broad, broad and intermediate PD. For all four definitions and for the multiple threshold analyses, the best-fit model indicated that twin resemblance was due solely to genetic factors with a moderate heritability (33-43%). For the broad and intermediate dichotomous definitions of PD, however, a model with twin resemblance due to familial environmental factors fit nearly as well. No gender effects were seen on the genetic risk factors for these PD-like syndromes. Conclusion. Even with large epidemiological samples of twins, studying disorders as uncommon as PD is problematical. Despite these difficulties, our results suggest that : (i) narrowly and broadly defined PD are probably on the same continuum of liability; (ii) twin resemblance for these PD-like syndromes is likely due largely to genetic factors with a moderate level of heritability although a contribution of familial-environmental factors cannot be excluded; and, (iii) the same familial risk factors impact, to a similar degree, on the liability to PD in males and females.
Songs From the Car Seat: Exploring the Early Childhood Music-Making Place of the Family Vehicle

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate the musical “place” of the family vehicle by describing the music making of nine young children, ages 10 months to 4.5 years, that occurred in vehicles over the course of 9 weeks during which the children were enrolled in a researcher-led early childhood music course. Research questions examined the qualities of children’s music making in the car, optimal activities, and comparison of in-car and at-home music spaces. Data included parent journals on music activities that occurred in a vehicle, parent-filmed videos of children’s music-making activities both in and out of vehicles, videos of early childhood music classes, researcher field notes of music classes, and exit interviews with parents regarding their perceptions of music-making in the vehicles. The children sang, moved, listened to music, composed, and improvised while in the car, with activities mostly similar to those that occurred inside of the home. The family vehicle provided sever...
Acrylic Reactions — Ten-Years’ Experience

Sixteen cases of adverse reactions to acrylics seen over a 10-year period reflect the increasing use of these chemicals for industrial and consumer application. Fourteen patients had contact dermatitis typically of the hands and/or face (11 allergic, 1 irritant, and 2 undetermined) and two had nail dystrophy. Sources of the acrylics were nail chemicals (5 cases), adhesives (3 cases), research laboratories (3 cases), dental acrylics (3 cases), histology embedding medium (1 case), and printing plates (1 case). Eleven cases were occupational. Highest patch-test reactivity rates were for THFMA, HPMA, EGDMA, HDDA, and TMPTM. In screening for acrylic allergy MMA, n-AA and PEGDMA are suggested as a minimum.
Evaluation of Salt Coolants for Reactor Applications

Molten fluorides were initially developed for use in the nuclear industry as the high-temperature fluid fuel for the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energ...
Pulsed Eddy Current Inspections of Aircraft Structures in Support of Holistic Damage Tolerance

Riveted fuselage splice joints are a common feature in the construction of transport aircraft. Traditional durability and damage tolerance analyses of these joints have often ignored or greatly simplified the effect of corrosion damage and its interaction with fatigue. This has required that corrosion damage be repaired as soon as it is detected, which has in turn discouraged the use of sensitive nondestructive inspection (NDI) techniques which may find structurally insignificant amounts of damage. New holistic life assessment models which do account for corrosion damage are under development by many research groups including the National Research Council Canada. These models require quantitative assessment of corrosion damage as well as fatigue damage. Pulsed eddy current (PEC) inspection methods have been developed to address these needs, and this paper presents the results of a signal processing technique developed to characterize material loss in a two-layer structure from PEC data. The goal of the technique is to map the thickness of both the 1st and 2nd layers. Applying this method to PEC data measured on a laboratory test specimen shows that corrosion can be quantified with an error of less than 4% of a layer thickness. The effect of NDI error in corrosion quantification on maintenance and repair is estimated using a holistic, probabilistic life assessment model. The paper will discuss how these models, along with verified NDI techniques, can be used to implement new proactive maintenance paradigms for aircraft structural components.
The Effect of pH and Flash Frequency on Electron Transfer Through the Quinone Acceptor Complex of Ps II in Bicarbonate Depleted or Anion Inhibited Thylakoid Membranes

Electron transfer through the plastoquinone acceptors of photosystem II (PS II) is inhibited by a number of monovalent anions. These include formate, nitrite and acetate [1–3]. However, the HCO- 3 anion possesses the unique ability to reverse this inhibition. We have suggested that the ability of HCO- 3 to facilitate electron flow may involve participation in the protonation reactions of the two-electron gate [4]. To test this hypothesis we have studied the kinetics of QA reoxidation in control, anion inhibited/HCO- 3-depleted and HCO- 3-restored samples as a function of pH and flash frequency. Below, we present some preliminary findings from this work.
Offloaded GPU Collectives Using CORE-Direct and CUDA Capabilities on InfiniBand Clusters

GPGPUs are becoming ubiquitous entities in high performance computing systems owing to their large compute capacities at low power footprints. Together with high performance interconnects such as InfiniBand (IB), GPGPUs are paving the way for highly capable, energy-efficient distributed computing systems for scientific applications. GPGPUs are throughput devices that benefit immensely from latency hiding techniques. Thus, long latency communication operations such as MPI collectives that originate or finish at GPU memories must be well hidden. Although popular Message Passing libraries offer non-blocking collective operations based on host memories, no known works have explored the same for GPU memories. In this work we propose, for first time, Non-blocking MPI collective operations from GPU memories and realize an efficient implementation through the coupling of CORE-Direct offload mechanisms and NVIDIA CUDA capabilities. In addition, we also propose a novel way to avoid peer-to-peer limitations without explicit host processor intervention to maximize overlap with good latency. Our micro-benchmark evaluations show that the proposed designs can yield close to maximum overlap percentages for dense collective operations. Results with as many as 64 GPU nodes also show that the designs can perform comparably with the latency of blocking variant of the collective in the medium and large message ranges.
Feminist Explanations for the Feminization of Poverty

(2003). Feminist Explanations for the Feminization of Poverty. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 37, Papers From The 2003 AFEE Meeting, pp. 353-361.
Localization of cytoplasmic water-soluble reserve (1→3)-β-glucans in Achlya with immunostaining

AbstractThe cytoplasmic water-soluble reserve (1→3)-β-glucans of Achlya are of two types: a small neutral and a large phosphorylated. These glucans have been localized using indirect immunolabellin...
Advanced Air Evaporation System with Reusable Wicks for Water Recovery

Water contained in brine is critical to water loop closure during future extended manned space missions where resupply logistics become increasingly prohibitive beyond earth orbit. Current primary water processes recover greater than 90% of the water in wastewater and produce highly contaminated brine. Additional water recovery has been limited by the high level of solids in urine, one of the largest wastewater sources, because inorganic solids reach saturation levels and precipitate while organic solids tend to form sticky pastes that foul equipment and impede water removal. This paper describes a microgravity-compatible Advanced Air Evaporation System (AAES) for reclaiming nearly 100% of water from brine without concern for these solids. This novel approach utilizes hydrophilic ceramic fabrics, felts, or fibers as a refractory wicking material. Water is evaporated from brine-saturated ceramic wicks in a drying chamber resulting in the recovery of water vapor by condensation while brine solids accumulate on ceramic wicks. Several sub-processes are utilized to regenerate these wicks. After each drying cycle, organic solids are removed by thermal oxidation leaving inorganic salts on the wick. Additional brine may then be processed using the partially regenerated wick. Following several oxidation cycles, inorganic salts are removed by elutriation with water forming a saturated salt solution and a fully regenerated wick. This initial two-step regeneration cycle recovers 78% of the water from the brine with the remaining water forming the salt solution. Recovery of the remaining water from the salt solution without the presence of organic solids is a straightforward process and the resultant overall water recovery will approach 100%. Future development of the AAES will enable increased water recovery, reduced resupply logistics, improved reliability, and lowered Equivalent System Mass (ESM) for water recycling during future space missions.
Abstract P1-05-02: The N-terminus of Twist1 is responsible for interacting with transcriptional repressors to promote EMT and metastasis of breast cancer cells

Twist1, a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, plays a key role to mediate epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and promote breast cancer metastasis. However, knowledge about Twist1 structure-function relationships to cancer-related phenotypes is limited. Therefore, we studied the requirement of Twist1 N-terminus in Twist1-dependent breast cancer metastasis. We showed that the amino-terminus of Twist1 was the dominant negative mutant of Twist1. Overexpression of Twist1 N-terminus exhibited different cell morphology and motility in vitro. Inoculation of Twist1 N-terminus overexpression cells into SCID mice showed delayed tumor formation and reduced lung metastasis. Furthermore, Twist1 N-terminus overexpression induced expression change of EMT markers, including E-cadherin, β-catenin, vimentin and Twist1 both in vivo and in vitro. Co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry revealed that Twist1 N-terminus interacted with several members of the Mi2/nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase (Mi2/NuRD) complex, HDAC2, 3 and 7, MTA1 and 2, RbAp46/48, and many corepressors including NCoR1 and 2, which released them from the proximal region of E-cadherin promoter for transcriptional activation. These data suggest that Twist1 N-terminus is required for Twist1-mediated transcriptional programs and breast cancer metastasis. Citation Format: Yu X, He T, Xu J. The N-terminus of Twist1 is responsible for interacting with transcriptional repressors to promote EMT and metastasis of breast cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2015 Dec 8-12; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-05-02.
Pseudodiverticulum of the Bladder: An Unusual Complication of Pelvic Trauma

AbstractInvestigation of frequent urinary tract infections 2 months after an accident in which a man sustained pelvic fractures and a head injury revealed a large pseudodiverticulum between the left bladder wall and pelvis, and extending inferiorly and medially through the separated symphysis pubis into the upper left thigh.
Training the Behavioral Health Workforce for the Patient-Centered Medical Home

The argument that behavioral health providers (BHPs) require specialized training to meet the unique demands of the primary care than what is usually provided in, for example, the standard clinical psychology or social work curricula has been a topic discussed by others. Recommendations about what basic competencies an integrated care BHP requires to be effective have also been provided by federal agencies, like SAMSHA. One of the functions of these basic competencies provided by SAMSHA is to act as a guideline for what content and skill domains should be emphasized in workforce development. To be fair, most of these prior discussions have been concerned with training for BHPs to function in integrated care settings rather than the personally controlled health management systems (PCHMs). Integrated care is an earlier innovation to come on the scene, and thus it has a longer history of scholars exploring training implications. However, it is fair to say that no clear consensus has been reached on training needs regarding integrated care and probably of more concern there has been little implementation of training programs that can produce providers to meet current and future demand. There are weekend certificate courses, consultants who provide training, workshops, some specialty tracks in doctoral training programs, and even new doctorate degree in integrated behavioral health (e.g., the Doctorate of Behavioral Health at Arizona State University).
Value Assessment in the Regulatory Context

Value assessments are made on new drugs before they even enter the market. Regulators at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the US Food and Drug Administration make a clinical benefit-risk assessment to determine whether to approve a new drug. Benefits of a drug are typically quantified directly, as an assessment of efficacy. CDER defines risk as the intersection of the severity of possible harm and the probability of that harm. For a novel drug to be approved, its benefits and risks must be well understood, and the trade-off between the two must be acceptable. To assist with these benefit-risk value assessments, CDER has two ongoing initiatives: the Patient-Focused Drug Development Initiative that aims to substantially increase the role of patient voice in the regulatory process, and a transparency initiative that focuses on creating a structured framework for benefit-risk assessment.
Wade Nobles: The Intellectual as Healer:

Healers and priests were archetypes of intellectuals in West Africa that were maintained in the cultural memory of Africans in the diaspora in spite of enslavement. The presence of these intellectu...
Evaluating the contributions of GO term properties to semantic similarity measurement

Recent systematic approaches for semantic analysis and annotations in bio-ontology databases have advanced understanding of molecular functions in a genomic scale. Over the last decade, various semantic similarity measures have been proposed to quantify functional similarity between genes using Gene Ontology (GO) and its annotations. However, major challenges in these applications are the increasing complexity of ontology structures and the inconsistency of annotation data. In this study, we explore term properties in GO, such as term specificity and the term balancing effect, and evaluate the contributions of these properties to semantic similarity measurement. Our experiment is designed to predict positive protein-protein interactions (PPIs) by semantic similarities to which these term properties are applied. The experimental results show prediction accuracy improved when GO terms are weighted by term specificity. The experimental results also show balancing terms with respect to their specificity are significant factor in measuring semantic similarity between proteins.
Fast linear algebra-based triangle counting with KokkosKernels

Triangle counting serves as a key building block for a set of important graph algorithms in network science. In this paper, we address the IEEE HPEC Static Graph Challenge problem of triangle counting, focusing on obtaining the best parallel performance on a single multicore node. Our implementation uses a linear algebra-based approach to triangle counting that has grown out of work related to our miniTri data analytics miniapplication [1] and our efforts to pose graph algorithms in the language of linear algebra. We leverage KokkosKernels to implement this approach efficiently on multicore architectures. Our performance results are competitive with the fastest known graph traversal-based approaches and are significantly faster than the Graph Challenge reference implementations, up to 670,000 times faster than the C++ reference and 10,000 times faster than the Python reference on a single Intel Haswell node.
Light Extraction Efficiency Analysis of Flip-Chip Ultraviolet Light-Emitting Diodes With Patterned Sapphire Substrate

This study investigates polarization-dependent light extraction efficiency (η extraction ) of AlGaN-based flip-chip ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emitting at 230 nm and 280 nm with microdome-shaped patterning on sapphire substrate based on 3-D finite-difference time-domain simulations. Three types of patterned sapphire substrates (PSS) have been analyzed: bottom-side PSS, top-side PSS, and double-sided PSS. Our results show that microdome-shaped patterning on sapphire substrate is predominantly beneficial in enhancing transverse-magnetic (TM)-polarized output. Specifically, TM-polarized η extraction enhancement of up to ~4.5 times and ~2.2 times can be obtained for 230 nm and 280 nm UV LEDs with bottom-side PSS, respectively, and ~6.3 times and ~1.8 times for 230 nm and 280 nm UV LEDs with top-side PSS, respectively. By employing double-sided PSS, up to ~11.2 times and ~2.6 times enhancement in TM-polarized η extraction can be achieved for 230 nm and 280 nm UV LEDs, respectively. In contrast, the microdome-shaped PSS act as a reflector for transverse-electric-polarized photons which leads to severe limitation in light extraction for both 230 nm and 280 nm flip-chip UV LEDs. Thus, it is expected that this study will serve as a guidance in designing PSS for high-efficiency mid- and deep-UV LEDs.
Automated program repair with canonical constraints

Automated program repair (APR) seeks to improve the speed and decrease the cost of repairing software bugs. Existing APR approaches use unit tests or constraint solving to find and validate program patches. We propose Canonical Search And Repair (CSAR), a program repair technique based on semantic search which uses a canonical form of the path conditions to characterize buggy and patch code and allows for easy storage and retrieval of software patches, without the need for expensive constraint solving. CSAR uses string metrics over the canonical forms to cheaply measure semantic distance between patches and buggy code and uses a classifier to identify situations in which test suite executions are unnecessary-and to provide a finer-grained means of differentiating between potential patches. We evaluate CSAR on the IntroClass benchmark, and show that CSAR finds more correct patches (96% increase) than previous semantic search approaches, and more correct patches (34% increase) than other previous state-of-the-art in program repair.
Bile Salt Transport Systems

There are three sites where the active transport of bile salts has been described. Two of these, the liver and the ileum, are integral parts of the enterohepatic circulation. The third site is the proximal renal tubule, which can reabsorb bile salts from the glomerular filtrate in those situations where appreciable concentrations of bile salts exist in the peripheral (i.e., non-portal) plasma. In addition to these presumed active transport sites, passive transepithelial movement of bile salts has been described in various regions of the gastrointestinal tract. These passive processes play a recognizable role in the enterohepatic circulation of the total bile salt pool, but the quantitative contribution of these passive processes is not precisely known. A number of fairly extensive reviews on the transport of bile salts and related substances have appeared (1–3).
PerfInsight: A Robust Clustering-Based Abnormal Behavior Detection System for Large-Scale Cloud

Anomalous behaviors of cloud services usually lead to performance degradation or even unplanned outages, which dramatically harms their Quality of Services. Performance monitoring and anomaly detection systems have been widely applied to mitigate these risks. However, huge volume of collected data, prevalence of trends and noises in data distribution, lack of labelled anomalies and unpredictability of various types of anomalies bring great challenges to existing anomaly detection systems in real world. Recently, unsupervised clustering-based anomaly detection approaches become promising solutions due to less dependency on labelled data and adaption to various types of anomalies. To achieve better quality with clustering-based anomaly detection approaches, huge amount of data normalization work is required. In this paper, we present a practical robust anomaly detection system for large-scale cloud called PerfInsight. First, it detects potential trends from these collected data and automatically transforms them to reduce their negative impact to clustering results. Then, an entropy-based feature selection of transformed metrics is designed to improve the detection efficiency. Finally, more robust clustering models can be trained and used based on these well transformed and selected features. Our evaluation results prove that PerfInsight could significantly reduce the cardinality of models.
Assessment of Emergency Medicine Resident Performance in an Adult Simulation Using a Multisource Feedback Approach.

Author(s): Jong, Michael; Elliott, Nicole; Nguyen, Michael; Goyke, Terrence; Johnson, Steven; Cook, Matthew; Lindauer, Lisa; Best, Katie; Gernerd, Doug; Morolla, Louis; Matuzsan, Zachary; Kane, Bryan | Abstract: Introduction: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) specifically notes multisource feedback (MSF) as a recommended means of resident assessment in the emergency medicine (EM) Milestones. High-fidelity simulation is an environment wherein residents can receive MSF from various types of healthcare professionals. Previously, the Queen’s Simulation Assessment Tool (QSAT) has been validated for faculty to assess residents in five categories: assessment; diagnostic actions; therapeutic actions; interpersonal communication, and overall assessment. We sought to determine whether the QSAT could be used to provide MSF using a standardized simulation case.Methods: Prospectively after institutional review board approval, residents from a dual ACGME/osteopathic-approved postgraduate years (PGY) 1-4 EM residency were consented for participation. We developed a standardized resuscitation after overdose case with specific 1-5 Likert anchors used by the QSAT. A PGY 2-4 resident participated in the role of team leader, who completed a QSAT as self-assessment. The team consisted of a PGY-1 peer, an emergency medical services (EMS) provider, and a nurse. Two core faculty were present to administer the simulation case and assess. Demographics were gathered from all participants completing QSATs. We analyzed QSATs by each category and on cumulative score. Hypothesis testing was performed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), with 95% confidence intervals. Interpretation of ICC results was based on previously published definitions.Results: We enrolled 34 team leader residents along with 34 nurses. A single PGY-1, a single EMS provider and two faculty were also enrolled. Faculty provided higher cumulative QSAT scores than the other sources of MSF. QSAT scores did not increase with team leader PGY level. ICC for inter-rater reliability for all sources of MSF was 0.754 (0.572-0.867). Removing the self-evaluation scores increased inter-rater reliability to 0.838 (0.733-0.910). There was lesser agreement between faculty and nurse evaluations than from the EMS or peer evaluation.Conclusion: In this single-site cohort using an internally developed simulation case, the QSAT provided MSF with excellent reliability. Self-assessment decreases the reliability of the MSF, and our data suggest self-assessment should not be a component of MSF. Use of the QSAT for MSF may be considered as a source of data for clinical competency committees.
Regulatory and Reimbursement Issues Related to Genomic Testing Services

The development of advanced genetic sequencing technologies and genomic testing services challenges the existing regulatory framework for clinical laboratory testing. These challenges will demand a refinement and adaptation on the part of laboratories, professional and accrediting organizations, vendors and manufacturers, and regulatory agencies of existing standards and practices to accommodate novel genomic technologies and clinical applications. The value of existing concepts of laboratory-developed tests and companion diagnostics will need revision in order to accommodate genomic sequencing assays. This chapter addresses these issues and the notion that, to some extent, these novel technologies will challenge established definitions of disease and the foundations of medical practice.
A Review of Pediatric Nonpharmacological Sleep Interventions: Effects on Sleep, Secondary Outcomes, and Populations With Co-occurring Mental Health Conditions

Abstract Sleep problems are common in school-age children and linked to numerous negative outcomes. Sleep disturbances are particularly common in children with mental health disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, and anxiety. Despite frequent use of nonpharmacological pediatric sleep interventions to treat common sleep problems, there is a paucity of research on whether these interventions are effective. Further, it is unclear whether by targeting sleep, these interventions lead to broader improvements in the domains of functioning that are commonly affected by poor sleep. The present review includes 20 studies that evaluated nonpharmacological sleep treatments for school-aged youth, including 5 studies specifically focused on youth with externalizing or internalizing problems. Multimodal approaches consisting of psychoeducation and sleep hygiene in combination with other components were effective at treating insomnia and general sleep problems in typically developing samples. The addition of behavioral parent training to sleep interventions was effective for youth with externalizing problems, whereas incorporating cognitive strategies into sleep interventions for youth with internalizing problems was found to be ineffective. A variety of secondary outcomes were examined, with the strongest support emerging for improvement in anxiety and behavioral problems. Implications for clinical practice and future research directions are discussed.
Inhibitor of apoptosis is an effective target gene for RNAi‐mediated control of Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata

The Colorado potato beetle (CPB; Leptinotarsa decemlineata) is one of the most notorious and difficult to control pests of potato and other solanaceous crops in North America. This insect has evolved a remarkable ability to detoxify both plant and synthetic toxins, allowing it to feed on solanaceous plants containing toxic alkaloids and to develop resistance to synthetic chemicals used for its control. RNA interference (RNAi) is a natural mechanism that evolved as an immune response to double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses where dsRNA triggers silencing of target gene expression. RNAi is being developed as a method to control CPB. Here, we evaluated four CPB-specific genes to identify targets for RNAi-mediated control of this insect. Out of the four dsRNAs evaluated in CPB larvae and adults, dsIAP (dsRNA targeting inhibitor of apoptosis, iap gene) performed better than dsActin, dsHSP70, and dsDynamin in inducing larval mortality. However, in adults, the mortality induced by dsActin is significantly higher than the mortality induced by dsIAP, dsHSP70, and dsDynamin. Interestingly, a combination of dsIAP and dsActin performed better than either dsIAP or dsActin alone by inducing feeding inhibition in 24 hr and mortality in 48 hr in larvae. When the dsIAP and dsActin were expressed in the Escherichia coli HT115 strain and applied as a heat-killed bacterial spray on potato plants, it protected the plants from CPB damage. These studies show that the combination of dsIAP and dsActin shows promise as an insecticide to control CPB.
Planning for robust visibility-based pursuit-evasion

This paper addresses the problem of planning for visibility-based pursuit evasion, in con-texts where the pursuer robot may experience some positioning errors as it moves in search of the evader. Specifically, we consider the case in which a pursuer with an omnidirectional sensor searches a known environment to locate an evader that may move arbitrarily quickly. Known algorithms for this problem are based on decompositions of the environment into regions, followed by a search for a sequence of those regions through which the pursuer should pass. In this paper, we note that these regions can be arbitrarily small, and thus that the movement accuracy required of the pursuer may be arbitrarily high.To resolve this limitation, we introduce the notion of an e-robust solution strategy, in which e is an upper bound on the positioning error that the pursuer may experience. We establish sufficient conditions under which a solution strategy is e-robust, and introduce an algorithm that determines, for a given environment, the largest value of e for which a solution strategy satisfying those sufficient conditions exists. We de-scribe an implementation and show simulated results demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach.
Student perceptions of leadership skills necessary for digital transformation

Digital transformations help organizations revitalize business processes and customer relationships. Industry professionals and academicians recognize that leadership skills and technology skills a...
Power Law Distributions, Municipal Budgeting, and the Police: A Practical Guide

Advocates for “police defunding” argue that police department budgets should be reformed. In this paper I demonstrate that there is a mathematically-based argument that police departments often receive too large a share of municipal budgets. But while police departments do not always—though they often do—receive the largest share of many American municipal budgets, the argument may not be embraced by police defunders.
Timing Offset and Timing Stability for a Dual-Clock Channel Sounder

We describe a mathematical framework for evaluating timing offset and timing noise in channel sounders based on a second-order deterministic model and a stochastic metric based on the Allan deviation. Using this framework, we analyze the timing offset and noise for a 1–6-GHz correlation-based channel sounder that uses rubidium (Rb) clocks to provide a common timebase between the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx). We study timing behavior in three clock-distribution configurations. In the “untethered” configuration, the Tx and Rx each have an Rb clock, and no physical timing cable is connected between the clocks. In the “tethered” configuration, a coaxial cable synchronizes timing between the two separate clocks. Finally, a benchmark “single-clock” configuration is used where a single Rb clock drives the Tx and Rx.
Learn and Share to Control Your Household Pests: Designing a Communication Based App to Bridge the Gap Between Local Guides and the New Users Looking for a Reliable and Affordable Pest Control Solutions

One of the most crucial steps to becoming independent for young people is leaving their parents’ homes to study or get a decent job. Based on the current population reports, 4,208,601 young people from 20–24 leave their parents’ house to live independently. When Young adults start their higher education or employment by living independently, they face many challenges with housekeeping specialty pest control. In this study, researchers tried to help young adults who move to a new place to start their higher education or employment to share their pest control experiences, access updated local information, and communicate better by designing a communication-based platform application. Community-based applications consist of one or many forums in which each member could be involved in the community.
EXTENDED ABSORPTION OF LIOTHYRONINE FROM POLY-ZINC-LIOTHYRONINE (PZL): RESULTS FROM A PHASE 1, DOUBLE-BLIND, RANDOMIZED, AND CONTROLLED STUDY IN HUMANS.

Background: Liothyronine (LT3) has been increasingly used in combination with levothyroxine (LT4) in the treatment of hypothyroidism. A metal coordinated form of LT3, known as poly-zinc-liothyronin...
Presence of Spontaneous Echo Contrast on Point-of-Care Vascular Ultrasound and the Development of Major Clotting Events in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients

The presence of spontaneous echo contrast on ultrasonography is a predisposition to increased thromboembolic risk. The purpose of this study was to assess for the prevalence and consequences of spontaneous echo contrast on point-of-care vascular ultrasound in coronavirus disease 2019. Design setting and patients This was a retrospective cohort study of 39 adult patients admitted to the ICU with a confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 diagnosis at a large tertiary-care academic medical center. Patients were included if they had undergone a vascular ultrasound examination during their ICU admission. Overall, 48 venous ultrasound studies among the 39 patients were reviewed in blinded fashion by two reviewers for the presence of venous spontaneous echo contrast, and charts were analyzed for laboratory data and outcomes. Measurements and main results s pontaneous echo contrast correlated with serum viscosity (mean values of 2.64, 2.54, and 2.04 cP for dense spontaneous echo contrast, spontaneous echo contrast , and no spontaneous echo contrast, respectively, with a p value of 0.0056 for spontaneous echo contrast compared with negative spontaneous echo contrast) and hyperfibrinogenemia (mean values of 726.6, 668.5, and 566.6 mg/dL for dense spontaneous echo contrast, positive spontaneous echo contrast, and negative spontaneous echo contrast, respectively, with a p value of 0.0045 for dense spontaneous echo contrast compared with negative spontaneous echo contrast). About 36% of patients with dense spontaneous echo contrast and 33% of individuals with positive spontaneous echo contrast experienced significant clotting events compared with 17% of those with negative spontaneous echo contrast. A total of 19% of patients with spontaneous echo contrast suffered a cardiac arrest following a major clotting event, and there were no cardiac arrests from clotting events in the negative spontaneous echo contrast group. There was no association with the presence of spontaneous echo contrast and right or left cardiac function or other laboratory values such as d-dimer, external thromboelastometry - maximum lysis, platelet counts, C-reactive protein, or interleukin-6. Conclusions Point-of-care venous ultrasonography is easily performed and reliably interpreted for visualization of spontaneous echo contrast. The presence of spontaneous echo contrast in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 is associated with hyperviscosity and increased rates of thrombotic events and complications.
Cratering of a particle bed by a subsonic turbulent jet: Effect of particle shape, size and density

Abstract The effect of particle properties on scour hole or crater formation, which occurs when a localized jet impinges on a bed of particles, is explored. Individual particle properties, such as particle density, size, and shape, are isolated and a parametric study is performed demonstrating the transient and steady crater growth for several particles. By keeping the particle diameter constant and changing the particle shape, this work shows that the effects of shape are significant. Uniform non-spherical (e.g. cylinders) and irregular frit shaped (e.g. crushed glass) particles are investigated. Non-spherical particles generally have higher friction, and the resulting decrease in recirculation rate of particles along the crater walls generally produces a narrower but deeper crater relative to spheres of the same size. A modification to the densimetric Froude number, which scales the steady crater depth to jet and particle properties is developed that accounts for particle shape. A new description of particle size called the erosion diameter is introduced, which is the average of the longest dimension a particle will align in a shear flow with its orthogonal, and results in the best scaling. The short-term crater depth grows faster for larger particles, which is counter to the long-term growth, and is explained by the early behavior being dominated by the number of particles that can be eroded. The transient crater depth growth is fit by an arctangent fitting function, which predicts the steady crater depth, and is compared to the logarithmic growth function that is generally used for early crater growth. For very large spherical particles, a high velocity is necessary for cratering and a newly identified particle–particle based cratering mechanism dominates. Additionally, cohesion reduces the crater depth and width and the steady crater depth does not scale with non-cohesive particles, but a further modification to the densimetric Froude number to account for cohesion is proposed.
On Virginia Woolf on the Essay

WHEN I FIRST ENCOUNTERED this haunting passage from Virginia Woolf 's "The Modern Essay," some thirty-seven years ago, I took no more note of it than I did of any other passage in the essay. To tell the truth, I didn't pay much attention to anything in that piece, compared to the time I spent on her other essays in The Common Reader. They were as signed reading for an undergraduate survey of modern British literature, and I made my way through them, as I did through the essays of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and George Bernard Shaw?to discover Woolf 's ideas about literature, especially about great authors, great books, and the great literary forms. Essays, of course, didn't belong anywhere in that pantheon. They were about literature and therefore couldn't be literature too. So, it didn't seem especially important to hear what she had to say about the modern essay. Never mind that three out of twenty essays in The Common Reader were about essayists and the essay. Never mind that she, the doyenne of the Bloomsbury Group, had achieved her reputation as much for her essays as for her novels. Never mind that her reflections on the modern essay resonated with so vivid a play of personality that I might well have taken the piece for a dramatic monologue. I was one and twenty, no use to talk to me:
Optical generation of high spin polarization in GaSe nanoslabs

We report nearly complete preservation of “spin memory” between optical absorption and photoluminescence under excitation >0.2 eV above the band gap in nanometer GaSe slabs.
Advanced Regulatory Topics

Although much of the discussion to this point has dealt with regulation, the regulation has been of a relatively simple type. There has been a single operon, one or two promoters, and a single repressor or activator complex. In many instances cells need to be able to coordinate and/or to sequence the activities of a wide variety of diverse functions in order to achieve an appropriate response to an environmental stimulus. This chapter deals primarily with some methods used by Bacteria to accomplish these goals, although some Archaea are included.
Metabolic Activity of Fatty Acid-Oxidizing Bacteria and the Contribution of Acetate, Propionate, Butyrate, and CO2 to Methanogenesis in Cattle Waste at 40 and 60°C

The quantitative contribution of fatty acids and CO2 to methanogenesis was studied by using stirred, 3-liter bench-top digestors fed on a semicontinuous basis with cattle waste. The fermentations were carried out at 40 and 60°C under identical loading conditions (6 g of volatile solids per liter of reactor volume per day, 10-day retention time). In the thermophilic digestor, acetate turnover increased from a prefeeding level of 16 μM/min to a peak (49 μM/min) 1 h after feeding and then gradually decreased. Acetate turnover in the mesophilic digestor increased from 15 to 40 μM/min. Propionate turnover ranged from 2 to 5.2 and 1.5 to 4.5 μM/min in the thermophilic and mesophilic digestors, respectively. Butyrate turnover (0.7 to 1.2 μM/min) was similar in both digestors. The proportion of CH4 produced via the methyl group of acetate varied with time after feeding and ranged from 72 to 75% in the mesophilic digestor and 75 to 86% in the thermophilic digestor. The contribution from CO2 reduction was 24 to 29% and 19 to 27%, respectively. Propionate and butyrate turnover accounted for 20% of the total CH4 produced. Acetate synthesis from CO2 was greatest shortly after feeding and was higher in the thermophilic digestor (0.5 to 2.4 μM/min) than the mesophilic digestor (0.3 to 0.5 μM/min). Counts of fatty acid-degrading bacteria were related to their turnover activity.
Systematic review of the biology and medical management of respiratory syncytial virus infection.

Respiratory syncytial virus, the leading cause of serious upper and lower respiratory tract infection in infants and children, accounts for 125,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths annually in the United States. It also may predispose to development of asthma later in life. Annual epidemics occur from November to April, and virtually all infants are infected by age 2. Immunity is not durable; hence, reinfection occurs throughout life, although subsequent infections are nearly always mild. Certain populations (eg, premature infants, infants with chronic lung disease, and immunocompromised individuals) are at risk for severe morbidity and have higher risk of mortality. Infection is spread to the nose and eyes by large droplets and direct contact with secretions, and fomites may remain infectious for up to 12 hours. Nosocomial infection is common. The virus infects airway ciliated epithelial cells, spreading by the formation of syncytia. Cellular debris and inflammation cause airway obstruction, hyperinflation, localized atelectasis, wheezing, and impaired gas exchange. Both humoral and cellular immune response are critical to ending the acute infection, but wheezing and reactive airways may persist for as long as 5-10 years after acute infection. No cure exists for respiratory syncytial virus infection, but commonly employed palliative treatments include oxygen, inhaled β 2 agonists, racemic epinephrine, dornase alfa, systemic and inhaled corticosteroids, inhaled ribavirin, and nasopharyngeal suctioning. Infants suffering severe lower airways disease may require mechanical ventilation. Prophylactic measures include rigorous infection control and administration of polyclonal (RSV-IGIV [respiratory syncytial virus - immunoglobulin intravenous]) and monoclonal (palivizumab) antibodies. The cost of the prophylactic antibody treatment is high; it is cost-effective for only the highest risk patients. Development of a vaccine remains far in the future. Application of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines is making both out-patient and in-patient therapy as effective and economical as possible.
Difficulties in the neuroscience of creativity: jazz improvisation and the scientific method

Creativity is a fundamental and remarkable human capacity, yet the scientific study of creativity has been limited by the difficulty of reconciling the scientific method and creative processes. We outline several hurdles and considerations that should be addressed when studying the cognitive neuroscience of creativity and suggest that jazz improvisation may be one of the most useful experimental models for the study of spontaneous creativity. More broadly, we argue that studying creativity in a way that is both scientifically and ecologically valid requires collaboration between neuroscientists and artists.
Environmental enrichment and neurogenesis: from mice to humans

The brain is a dynamic structure that constantly undergoes cellular and molecular changes in response to the environment. Ultimately, these experience-dependent changes modify and shape behavior. One example of this neuroplasticity is the robust and continuous generation of new neurons that occurs in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. These new neurons are thought to play a fundamental role in hippocampus-dependent behavior and are modulated by experience and changes in the environment. In this review, we will focus on the cognitive and molecular relationship between environmental enrichment and adult neurogenesis. In addition, we discuss some of the similarities between the human and animal literature in regards to neurogenesis, hippocampus-dependent behavior, and environmental enrichment.