cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Indecency and Injustice of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a 1996 law wholly inadequate to address 21st Century problems. The most egregious example of this is online sex trafficking, which was allowed not only to exist, but also to thrive due, in large part, to §230. This Article examines the development of the jurisprudence regarding online advertising of sex-trafficking victims and juxtaposes the forces that created § 230 with those preventing its timely amendment. This Article argues that, although § 230 was never intended to create a regime of absolute immunity for defendant websites, a perverse interpretation of the non-sex trafficking jurisprudence for § 230 created a regime of de facto absolute immunity from civil liability or enforcement of state sex-trafficking laws. This phenomenon occurred despite the legislative intent behind § 230, and despite the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (“TVPA”) and its subsequent reauthorizations. This is the first law review article to examine the new Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act – Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA – SESTA) passed in March 2018, and signed into law in April 2018. The article not only examines this new effort, but also places it within a disturbing historical context concerning the origins and abuse of § 230. The article notes the quick willingness of Congress to respond to the desires of corporate technology interests to create § 230, but its failure to quickly respond to the pleas from victims of sex trafficking, law enforcement, states attorneys general, and the courts to amend § 230 and preclude its abuse by online entities who knowingly partner with sex traffickers to sell victims online. The article analyzes not only why FOSTA-SESTA ultimately succeeded, but also the disturbing decades long obstacles to its common sense adoption. Part I explains the impetus behind § 230, its history, and its text. Part II examines the rise in recognition of sex trafficking in both domestic and international law. It further summarizes the contours of sex trafficking in the modern world and the role online advertisement has played in its emergence. Part III analyzes the intersection of sex trafficking, the Internet, and § 230 and thoroughly assesses the development of jurisprudence culminating in the creation of a regime of de facto immunity. Part IV analyzes recent legislative efforts in both the House and Senate to amend § 230 culminating in the passage of the FOSTA – SESTA. It asserts that such an amendment was necessary to return § 230 to its original purpose of protecting some Internet companies from specific types of liability, without creating absolute immunity. It also cautions against the ability of technology corporations to thwart such important legislation.
BROUWER FIXED POINT THEOREM VERSUS CONTRACTION MAPPING THEOREM IN OPTIMAL CONTROL THEORY

This chapter presents a comparison of the Brouwer fixed point theorem with the contraction mapping theorem in optimal control theory. According to Brouwer fixed point theorem, if f is a continuous function from a compact convex subset K of R into itself, then for some x * ɛ K , there is f ( x *) = x *. While contraction mapping theorem states that if f is a function from a closed subset K of R into itself such that for some k f ( x 2 ) - f ( x 1 )| ≤ k I x 2 - x 1 | for all x 1 , x 2 ɛ K , then for some x * ɛ K , one contains f ( x *) = x *.
Influence of a multistrain probiotic on body composition and mood in female occupational shift workers

This study sought to investigate the effects of a multistrain probiotic on body composition, regional adiposity, and a series of associated metabolic health outcomes. Female health care workers emp...
Light diffusing, down-converting perovskite-on-polymer microspheres

Remote downconverters such as phosphors or quantum dots that are physically separated from blue light-emitting diode (LED) chips can strongly enhance the luminescence efficiency of solid-state lighting (SSL) and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) because of their reduced light reabsorption. However, the high cost of traditional remote downconverters has limited their wide adoption in these applications. Herein, we report a one-step, general synthesis method that can convert commercial light-diffusing polymer microspheres into highly luminescent perovskite-based downconverters at an extremely low cost. Involving quick anti-solvent-induced heterogeneous nucleation, this method creates well-dispersed perovskite nanoparticles anchored onto polymer microspheres and the whole process takes only several seconds at room temperature without any complex experimental setups. Significantly, the as-synthesized perovskite-on-polymer microspheres (PPMs) offer widely tunable, highly saturated colors with light-diffusing capability. The pure green-emitting CsPbBr3 manifests a high PL quantum yield of 70.6% and superior stability in water is also demonstrated. Dispersing these PPMs in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) resin, we further demonstrate a diffusive downconverting sheet, which is capable of turning blue LEDs into homogeneous light sources with a half-value angle (HVA) as high as 50°. These PPMs hold great promise to be adopted as a low-cost, high-quality replacement for the traditional, expensive remote downconverters in energy efficient SSL, LCDs and beyond.
Chemical and physical properties of vacuum-dried red beetroot (Beta vulgaris) powders compared to other drying methods

Beta vulgaris L. powder is commonly used as a source of natural red color in foods. Traditionally, this powder is made by spray-drying or tray-drying, both dehydration methods that involve high tem...
Breastfeeding Practices in Newborns with Cleft Lip and or Palate

Background: The Surgeon General, AAP, and WHO are all encouraging increases in the exclusive use of breast milk for at least 6 months through direct breastfeeding. The Surgeon General underscores the specific need to empower the medical community to support breastfeeding mothers through education, encouragement, and professional assistance. There is scant literature on the rates of breast milk provision for infants with medical conditions other than very low birth weight and prematurity. One group in which breastfeeding is often discouraged is the cleft lip and palate population. These …
"The age of faith": Everyone in the middle ages believed in God

Ever since the European Renaissance, which largely defi ned itself by denigrating the European Middle Ages, the medieval era has been stigmatized as one of closed-minded credulity-a period of unquestioned superstitions, entrenched religiosity, and a childlike acceptance of received doctrines. History does indeed provide us with examples of societies whose members were intensely religious, and whose communal life was integrally related to its church teachings and spiritual beliefs (some examples that come to mind include the Qumran community who left the Dead Sea scrolls, and the Puritans of early America), but it would be a gross caricature to paint the entire sweep of the European Middle Ages with such broad strokes. Some people were more fervent than others, of course, but life for the vast majority of people in the thousand-year span of the Middle Ages was not demonstrably more of a spiritual enterprise than it is today.
Data-driven Prognostic Model of Li-ion Battery with Deep Learning Algorithm

In this day and age, a battery is a promising electrical power storage system for various engineering applications. The role of prognostic and health management (PHM) in battery application is to ensure that the battery system is reliable and safe through the estimation of State of Health (SoH) and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of the battery. Although there is a growing research trend in predicting the SoH and RUL using various machine learning algorithms, there has not yet been many sophisticated works that employ the deep learning algorithms for PHM in battery analysis.
A Variable VH Combined Power Clamp for System Level ESD/Surge Immunity Enhancement with Low Leakage

An on-chip power clamp which combined RC and static trigger circuits for the system level ESD/EFT/Surge enhancement is proposed. The proposed clamp can achieve the higher immunity against longer pulses such as the surge event compared to the conventional combined clamp without increasing the leakage current of the trigger circuit using a variable holding voltage technique.
The I COUGH Multidisciplinary Perioperative Pulmonary Care Program: One Decade of Experience.

Background Surgical quality improvement programs can provide meaningful benefits for patient outcomes, but sustainability of initial success is rarely described. In response to data that revealed a greater than predicted likelihood of postoperative pulmonary complications in one hospital, the study team designed a standardized program to improve care. This study offers a long-term perspective of the effort, including special challenges and lessons learned about sustaining success. Methods A before-after study was conducted at an academic safety-net hospital. A multidisciplinary team developed tactics to reduce pulmonary complications, designated by the acronym I COUGH: Incentive spirometry, Coughing/deep breathing, Oral care, Understanding (education), Getting out of bed, and Head of bed elevation. Clinical practices were audited and compared to actual and risk-adjusted pulmonary outcomes. Results Improvements in compliance with the I COUGH elements were initially promising, but baseline behaviors eventually returned. Adverse outcomes have inversely correlated with process adherence in "sawtooth" patterns. Rejuvenation efforts have successively extended beyond the literal principles of the acronym to foster broader institutional commitment to perioperative pulmonary care, restoring favorable trends in both process and outcomes. A more comprehensive I COUGH program now extends beyond the acronym, applying numerous concepts to support the original program. Conclusion I COUGH, a standardized perioperative pulmonary care program, initially improved performance and reduced pulmonary complications. However, loss of early program momentum corresponded with a return to baseline outcomes. Fortunately, an overall favorable trend has resulted from a coordinated rededication to I COUGH that requires steadfast commitment and creative responses to numerous cultural barriers.
The current state of parent feeding behavior, child eating behavior, and nutrition intake in young children with type 1 diabetes.

BACKGROUND One integral component of type 1 diabetes (T1D) management is attention to nutrition, which can be particularly challenging in young children. OBJECTIVE The current study reports on parent and child eating/feeding behavior and nutrition intake as compared with current recommendations for pediatric T1D. SUBJECTS Participants were 46 children ages 2 to 5 diagnosed with T1D and one parent. METHODS The Behavioral Pediatrics Feeding Assessment Scale (BPFAS) was used to assess parent feeding and child eating behaviors. The Remote Food Photography Method (RFPM) was used to analyze nutrition intake at breakfast. Demographic and medical information were collected via self-report and medical chart review. RESULTS In the current sample, 37% of BPFAS scores were above the cutoff for problem child eating behavior. Only 28% of participants met the recommended goals for glycemic control (hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c < 7.5). Children who did not meet glycemic control targets reported higher carbohydrate intake than those meeting targets. Protein recommendations were met by 46%; 22.7% met the recommendation for carbohydrate intake, and 45.5% met fat intake recommendations. The majority of the sample did not meet body mass index percentile (BMI%) recommendations with 51% having a BMI% above the 85th percentile. CONCLUSIONS Many parents of young children with T1D report problem child eating behaviors. Further, a significant number of young children are not meeting glycemic, nutritional, or BMI guidelines for T1D. Routine screening for dietary difficulties in young children is warranted. Future research should aim to examine interventions targeting families with young children not meeting nutrition, glycemic, or BMI guidelines.
Cervical Intradural Disc Herniation: Case Report and Operative Video.

Cervical intradural disc herniation (CIDH) is a rare presentation of an intradural disc herniation. We present a case of CIDH with associated surgical video depicting an anterior surgical approach to treatment. Patient presentation, relevant radiographic imaging, surgical exposure and technique, and cerebrospinal fluid leak complication and prevention are discussed.
Continuous Ablation Improves Lesion Maturation Compared with Intermittent Ablation Strategies

BACKGROUND Interrupted ablation is increasingly proposed as part of high-power short-duration radiofrequency ablation (RFA) strategies and may also result from loss of contact from respiratory patterns or cardiac motion. To study the extent that ablation interruption affects lesions. METHODS In ex vivo and in vivo experiments, lesion characteristics and tissue temperatures were compared between continuous (group 1) and interrupted (groups 2 and 3) RFA with equal total ablation duration and contact force. Extended duration ablation lesions were also characterized from 1 to 5 minutes. RESULTS In the ex vivo study, continuous RFA (group 1) produced larger total lesion volumes compared with each interrupted ablation lesion group (273.8 ± 36.5 vs 205.1 ± 34.2 vs 174.3 ± 32.3 mm3 , all P < .001). Peak temperatures for group 1 were higher at 3 and 5 mm than groups 2 and 3. In vivo, continuous ablation resulted in larger lesions, greater lesion depths, and higher tissue temperatures. Longer ablation durations created larger lesion volumes and increased lesion depths. However, after 3 minutes of ablation, the rate of lesion volume, and depth formation decreased. CONCLUSIONS Continuous RFA delivery resulted in larger and deeper lesions with higher tissue temperatures compared with interrupted ablation. This study may have implications for high-power short duration ablation strategies, motivates strategies to reduce variations in ablation delivery, and provides an upper limit for ablation duration beyond which power delivery has diminishing returns.
Ruthenium(III) complexes with imidazole ligands that modulate the aggregation of the amyloid-β peptide via hydrophobic interactions

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, characterized by extracellular protein deposits, comprised primarily of the peptide amyloid-beta (Aβ), are a pathological indicator of the disease. Commonly known as Aβ plaques, these deposits contain a relatively high concentration of metals, making metallotherapeutics uniquely suited to target soluble Aβ, thereby limiting its aggregation and cytotoxicity. Ruthenium-based complexes are promising candidates for advancement, as the complex PMRU20 (2-aminothiazolium [trans-RuCl4(2-aminothiazole)2]) and several thiazole-based derivatives were found to prevent the aggregation of Aβ, with hydrogen-bonding functional groups improving their performance. Further investigation into the impact of the heteroatom in the azole ring on the activity of Ru complexes was achieved through the synthesis and evaluation of a small set of imidazole-based compounds. The ability of the complexes to prevent the aggregation of Aβ was determined where the same sample was subjected to analysis by three complementary methods: ThT fluorescence, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was found that hydrophobic interactions, along with hydrogen-bonding via the imidazole nitrogen heteroatom, promoted interactions with the Aβ peptide, thereby limiting its aggregation. Furthermore, it was found that having rapid and sequential exchange proved detrimental as it resulted in a decreased association with Aβ. These results highlight important considerations between a balance of intermolecular interactions and ligand exchange kinetics in the design of further therapeutic candidates.
Grouping Service Chains of Multiple Flows in NFV-Based Networks

In Software Defined Networks (SDNs), flows usually request to be processed by a service chain (an ordered set of virtualized network services). SDN-enabled networks manage the routing and processing of flows by a large number of associated finer-granularity rules. These rules are maintained by switches in their local hardware such as Ternary Content Addressable Memories (TCAMs), which support high-speed parallel lookup on wildcard patterns. However, the capacity of hardware switches is limited to thousands because of their high requirements for cost and power. In order to avoid much slower matching by using software switches or even packet loss, we can group flows so that all matching rules can be placed in hardware switches. In such a grouping, all flows in each group match only one rule and will be forwarded to the same routing path, instead of each flow matching one rule. This will result in a longer delay because of processing by the longer newly-grouped service chain. In this paper, we efficiently group flows to minimize the total cost while satisfying the capacity constraint of the forwarding tables in hardware switches. We first prove the submodularity of our objective function and propose a corresponding performance-guaranteed solution. Additionally, we design an efficient heuristic solution based on the classic $k$ -means algorithm. Furthermore, we include discussions on dynamic network situations (insertion, deletion, and update of flows) and an alternative objective. We also conduct real experiments on our testbed to indicate the practicality of our motivation. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithms.
Areas of Improvement in Suicide Risk Identification, Assessment, and Risk Mitigation Documentation by Mental Health Prescribers at a Veterans Affairs Health Care System

Veterans have a suicide rate 1.5 times higher than the non-veteran population. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implemented suicide risk screening recommendations in 2018. This project assessed the impact of mental health (MH) prescribers on these recommendations and identified areas of improvement. Seventy MH Clinical Pharmacy Specialists (CPS) and 52 other MH prescribers were included. Patients with a positive question nine (from the Patient Health Questionnaire-9) and a same-day Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) between 11/01/18 and 11/01/19 at a VA system were reviewed. Completion of same-day Comprehensive Suicide Risk Evaluation (CSRE), same-day Suicide Prevention Safety Plan (SPSP), number of patients who were not offered naloxone despite access to opioids, and number of patients who were not offered a gunlock despite access to firearms were compared between groups. Time from C-SSRS to suicidal behavior was compared between those who did and did not receive a same-day CSRE. MH CPS were significantly more likely to complete a same-day CSRE (p = 0.0201) and SPSP (p < 0.001) when recommended. Naloxone outcomes were not assessed due to availability of only one data point. Rates of gunlock offers did not differ significantly between groups (Fisher’s exact test, p = 0.3189) however there was no documentation stating why they were not offered when appropriate 40% of the time. Time to suicidal behavior did not vary across patients based on CSRE completion (p = 0.16). MH CPS play an important role in suicide risk screening for veterans. There is a need for improvement regarding the offering and documentation of firearm risk mitigation strategies.
Lessons Learned: Medical Library Pilot Testing of a Virtual Reality Anatomy Lab

In recent years many schools have begun to incorporate virtual reality tools and programs into their curriculum. This paper relates the results of a library pilot project on the usefulness of virtu...
Cardiac risk stratification of breast cancer patients in a cardio-oncology clinic

The field of cardio-oncology aims to optimize the cardiac health of cancer patients. The goals of this study are to (1) describe the demographics of a cardio-oncology clinic and (2) apply the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) cardiac risk stratification guidelines among breast cancer patients to assess the development of cardiovascular events, primarily heart failure (HF). We performed a retrospective chart review on 203 consecutive cardio-oncology patients who were seen between January 2019 and March 2020. Mean follow-up for the cohort was 29.2 ± 3.1 months (range 0–113). We applied the ASCO guidelines to the breast cancer subgroup. The plurality of patients 82/203 (40%) referred to clinic had breast cancer. The most common reason for referral was asymptomatic left ventricular (LV) dysfunction or HF (40%). Only 36/203 (18%) of patients were referred for a pre-chemotherapy evaluation. In breast cancer patients, there was a trend toward significance in up-titrating or initiating beta-blockers in the high vs. low risk ASCO groups [46/69 (67%) vs. 5/13 (38%), p = 0.054]. Approximately 13/82 (16%) of breast cancer patients required alterations to their anti-cancer therapy. HF events occurred in 1/36 (3%) of cancer treatment naive patients and 14/167 (8%) of those with prior therapy, specifically 9% of the breast cancer subset. Our study provides insight into referral practices, interventions, and outcomes at a cardio-oncology clinic. Furthermore, breast cancer patients continue to have high rates of HF. These findings suggest a need to shift referral practices upstream for a pre-chemotherapy evaluation to optimize cardiovascular health.
Control Consciousness

Control consciousness is the awareness or experience of seeming to be in control of one’s actions. One view, which I will be arguing against in the present paper, is that control consciousness is a form of sensory consciousness. In such a view, control consciousness is exhausted by sensory elements such as tactile and proprioceptive information. An opposing view, which I will be arguing for, is that sensory elements cannot be the whole story and must be supplemented by direct contributions of nonsensory, motor elements. More specifically, I will be arguing for the view that the neural basis of control consciousness is constituted by states of recurrent activation in relatively intermediate levels of the motor hierarchy.
Plastic Deformation and Microstructure Evolution in Niobium at Temperatures from 1473 K to 1823 K

Plastic deformation and microstructure evolution are investigated at elevated temperatures in a low-impurity (ASTM B393-18 Type 1) niobium sheet material. Data from tensile tests are reported for temperatures from 1473 K to 1823 K (1200 °C to 1550 °C) at constant true-strain rates of 10−3 and 10−4 s−1. Microstructures produced by static annealing and by tensile deformation at these temperatures are characterized using backscatter electron imaging. Significant static grain growth is observed and increases with increasing temperature. Young’s elastic modulus data for niobium from the literature are reviewed to recommend modulus values from 293 K to 2300 K (20 °C to 2027 °C) for randomly textured polycrystalline niobium. Steady-state creep analysis of data above 1370 K (1097 °C), half the melting temperature, produces a stress exponent of 5.6 and an activation energy for creep of 454 kJ/mol, which is close to that of lattice self-diffusion. Dislocation substructure is observed following elevated temperature deformation. These data are compared with data from the literature to conclude that low-impurity niobium deforms by five-power creep across the conditions examined.
Controller Design to Achieve Covariance Constraints

Abstract The theoretical contribution of this paper is an iterative controller design algorithm whose convergence guarantees the feasibility of inequality constraints on the output covariance matrix while minimizing control power. The important features of these results are: (i) derivation of the necessary conditions to minimize control power subject to the covariance constraints. and (ii) proof of feasibility, of the computational algorithm for the inequality constraints. When the specified upper bound on the output covariance matrix is a constant times identity matrix, i.e. Y ≤ σI, the design algorithm keps the maximum singular value of Y less than a specified value σ, (σ[Y]
Redistricting and Individual Contributions to Congressional Candidates

In this paper, we use redistricting to examine the relationship between representatives and a unique group of the public: individual campaign contributors. Our primary objective is to determine what happens to the contribution behavior of representatives and donors after district boundaries shift and the geographic ties between members and donors are undone. At the member level, we use a continuous measure of district change and examine twenty years of congressional elections. We find that as the geographic constituency changes, members receive larger shares of contributions from outside their districts. At the individual donor level, we match donors and contributions to districts before and after the 2012 round of redistricting. Here, we find donors who are drawn out of districts are less likely to support their “old” representative while contributors drawn into districts are more likely to give. At both levels, we find different results for Democrats and Republicans. Our findings suggest that representa...
Global Dynamics Achievable by Feedback Controls: Some Preliminary Results

Abstract Any control system that uses a feedback control law leads to globally defined control dynamics. To understand control systems, it is therefore important to understand the global dynamics possible through the use of feedback controls. This is a point of view different, in many respects, from that of established aproaches such as that of controllability theory. We are no longer interested in a, single trajectory, or trajectories that originate or terminate in a given point, but in the behaviour of ensembles of trajectories. In this paper, we formulate the basic definitions and prove some theorems that constitute a preliminary treatment of this very difficult problem. After defining our topic and describing the main classes of dynamics, we come to a discussion of 'closeness' and of structural stabilty, adapted to the control problem. Having separated the 'transient' from the 'asymptotic' part of the dynamics, we then turn to a discussion of the elementary kinds of asymptotic behaviour, namely isolated equilibrium points and limit cycles. What makes this treatment possible is the input from dynamical systems theory. It provides a point of view and motivates many of the results.
Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis

Necrotizing enterocolitis is now generally acknowledged to be the most frequent preoperative diagnosis of infants going to surgery from neonatal intensive care units. This article focuses on the etiology and pathogenesis of neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis and emphasizes those aspects of the problem that relate to the prevention of what has become a scourge in facilities for the care of sick and at-risk newborn infants.
Assessing E-Health

While healthcare is the biggest service industry on the globe, it has yet to realize the full potential of the e-business revolution in the form of ehealth. This is due to many reasons, including the fact that the healthcare industry is faced with many complex challenges in trying to deliver costeffective, high-value, accessible healthcare and has traditionally been slow to embrace new business techniques and technologies. Given that ehealth to a great extent is a macro-level concern that has far reaching micro-level implications, this chapter first develops a framework to assess a country’s preparedness with respect to embracing e-health (i.e., the application of e-commerce to healthcare) and from this, an e-health preparedness grid to facilitate the assessment of any e-health initiative. IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, E-Health Systems Diffusion and Use: The Innovation, the User and the USE IT Model edited by Ton A.M. Spil and Roel W. Schuring © 2005, Idea Group Inc. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB11521
The Development of a Thorough Test Plan in the Analysis Phase leading to more Successful Software Development Projects

ABSTRACT A critical problem in many software development projects is missing some important requirements until late in the development life cycle. The impact of a missing or misunderstood requirement can add to the project cost and delay product launch due to rework both of the application code, documentation updates, and addition test passes. Building a thorough test plan very early in the product development cycle has the potential for early discovery of missing requirements with attendant reduction in project costs and schedule improvement. In this paper we discuss some of the causative factors of how and why requirements can be missed in software development projects and show how the early formulation of a test plan can directly address these factors. Key to the success of this approach is the understanding that mature tests often go beyond the documented requirements for applications and into exploring the boundaries of the application domain where missing requirements can often be uncovered. In addition the test methodology of looking at features from multiple users’ perspectives and less common use cases, shed light on misinterpreted and/or misunderstood requirements.
Geometric order parameters derived from the Voronoi tessellation show signatures of the jamming transition

A jammed packing of frictionless spheres at zero temperature is perfectly specified by the network of contact forces from which mechanical properties can be derived. However, we can alternatively consider a packing as a geometric structure, characterized by a Voronoi tessellation which encodes the local environment around each particle. We find that this local environment characterizes systems both above and below jamming and changes markedly at the transition. A variety of order parameters derived from this tessellation carry signatures of the jamming transition, complete with scaling exponents. Furthermore, we define a real space geometric correlation function which also displays a signature of jamming. Taken together, these results demonstrate the validity and usefulness of a purely geometric approach to jamming.
Bloomier Filters: A Second Look

A Bloom filter is a space efficient structure for storing static sets, where the space efficiency is gained at the expense of a small probability of false-positives. A Bloomier filtergeneralizes a Bloom filter to compactly store a function with a static support. In this article we give a simple construction of a Bloomier filter. The construction is linear in space and requires constant time to evaluate. The creation of our Bloomier filter takes linear time which is faster than the existing construction. We show how one can improve the space utilization further at the cost of increasing the time for creating the data structure.
Technological Advance and the Growth in Health Care Spending

The second half of the twentieth century recorded a rapid growth in health care spending and a significant increase in life expectancy. This paper hypothesizes that the combination of techno-logical progress in medical treatment and rising incomes is the driving force behind these two trends. Using a stochastic, multi-period overlapping-generations model as the analytical vehicle, this paper argues that the rapid growth in medical spending is not driven by factors associated with market structures or insurance opportunities, but instead by factors underlying the production and accumulation of health. According to this model, improvements in medical treatment and rising incomes can explain all of the increase in medical spending and more than 60% of the increase in life expectancy at age 25 during the second half of the twentieth century.
Shock Wave Interaction with the Magnetopause

The magnetopause is in continuous motion and shock waves and impulsive acceleration events can occur. As an example, we show that the interaction of an interplanetary shock with the bow shock can generate a shock wave that after passing through the magnetosheath can interact with the magnetopause. In fluid dynamics, when a shock wave encounters a fluid discontinuity, the interface may become unstable and form bubbles and spikes. We consider this Richtmyer-Meshkov instability in magnetohydrodynamics. At the dayside magnetopause, the instability tends to be stabilized by the magnetic field. However, the shock wave interaction can initiate magnetic field reconnection for the southward IMF, which may be important in strong interplanetary shock events.
Integrated XML Document Management

XML has become a widely accepted data format for exchange and representation of semi-structured data. Efficiently managing XML as well as traditional business documents and content in an integrated fashion is a necessity for companies to be successful in the e-generation. Many projects [14], [15], [18] have been developed for managing XML documents. Nevertheless, these projects focus mainly on storing, searching, and retrieving XML documents. No solution has been proposed to manage and query both the XML documents and other traditional text and media data in an integrated fashion. In this paper, we present our research effort in building an XML document management system that manages both XML and non-XML content in a uniform way. Our focus is not only on managing XML documents, but also on providing a uniform view of and integrated access to XML and non-XML documents.
Elective cesarean hysterectomy: A 5 year comparison with cesarean section

Elective cesarean sections performed on the obstetric service at the University of Arkansas Medical Center were reviewed for the period January 1, 1970, through December 31, 1974. The purpose of the review was to compare operative and postoperative complications of cesarean section, cesarean section and tubal ligation, and cesarean section and elective hysterectomy. A total of 1,255 cesarean sections were performed of which 207 (17 per cent) were associated with tubal ligation and 242 (18 per cent) with hysterectomy. Elective cesarean hysterectomies were performed for elective sterilization (68 per cent), for medically indicated sterilizations (11 per cent), or for definitive treatment of uterine pathology (21 per cent). All cesarean sections were obstetrically indicated with the exception of 34 primary cesarean hysterectomies performed as definitive treatment of carcinoma in situ of the cervix. The operative procedures were compared in regard to the following characteristics or complications: operating time; incidence of blood transfusions, urinary tract injuries, postoperative bleeding, febrile morbidity, and other postoperative complications; and postoperative hospital days.
Measurement issues in decision support systems

After a brief discussion on the history of decision-making, this chapter focuses on metrics for justifying investment in information systems and technology and for measuring business and management performance. The discussion of metrics is linked to current practices in decision support systems and focuses on the needs for future systems. With several examples drawn from contemporary practice, we introduce implementation guidelines for DSS development incorporating new metrics that go beyond ROI and Balanced Scorecard-like measures. Suggested guidelines include simplicity, selectivity, a focus on research and learning, and benchmarking. These guidelines suggest that future metrics to support decision support systems should be grouped into meaningful categories and tied more closely to system architecture.
Fascin, an actin-bundling protein associated with cell motility, is upregulated in hormone receptor negative breast cancer.

Loss of hormone receptor (HR) status in breast carcinomas is associated with increased tumour cell motility and invasiveness. In an immunohistological study of 58 primary breast cancers, oestrogen (ER) and progesterone (PR) receptor levels were inversely correlated with the expression of fascin, an actin-bundling protein associated with cell motility (P< 0.0001 and P = 0.0019, respectively). In addition, fascin was preferentially expressed in non-diploid tumours (P = 0.03). In summary, the upregulation of fascin in HR-negative breast cancers may contribute to their more aggressive behaviour. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Carcinoma of the uterine cervix at the Rhode Island Hospital: A comparative study

Abstract 1. 1. One hundred eighty-five cases of primary, untreated carcinoma of the cervix, seen and treated at the Rhode Island Hospital between January, 1952, and December, 1957, were reviewed. 2. 2. Methods and results of treatment were compared with a similar series of 210 cases of carcinoma of the cervix seen and treated at Roswell Park Memorial Institute from January, 1955, to July, 1956. 3. 3. The relative 5 year survival rates were 50 per cent for patients in Rhode Island and 58 per cent for those in Buffalo. 4. 4. It was noted that the Rhode Island patients were significantly older and had more advanced disease than the Roswell Park Memorial Institute patients. 5. 5. The relative effectiveness of the methods of treatment used in the two clinics was about the same. 6. 6. The necessity of aggressiveness in obtaining follow-up data was emphasized.
The Effectiveness of Customer Service Policies on Intentions in Business-To-Consumer E-Commerce: A Psychological Contract Perspective

This study examines the influence of customer service policies on consumer purchase intentions in business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce. Prior research findings proposed that practitioners could utilize these policies to influence their customers’ purchase intentions. Based on the psychological contract theory, this study conducted an experiment to examine whether customer service policies could influence consumers’ intentions through their perceived psychological contract with the vendors. The experiment found that a customer can form psychological contract beliefs with a vendor based on the vendor’s customer service policies, and these psychological contract beliefs may influence purchase intentions through trusting beliefs. These research results should help web vendors realize the importance of customer service policies and improve their website design.
A unified construction of the glushkov, follow, and antimirov automata

A number of different techniques have been introduced in the last few decades to create e-free automata representing regular expressions such as the Glushkov automata, follow automata, or Antimirov automata. This paper presents a simple and unified view of all these construction methods both for unweighted and weighted regular expressions. It describes simpler algorithms with time complexities at least as favorable as that of the best previously known techniques, and provides a concise proof of their correctness. Our algorithms are all based on two standard automata operations: epsilon-removal and minimization. This contrasts with the multitude of complicated and special-purpose techniques previously described in the literature, and makes it straightforward to generalize these algorithms to the weighted case. In particular, we extend the definition and construction of follow automata to the case of weighted regular expressions over a closed semiring and present the first algorithm to compute weighted Antimirov automata.
A Routh-Like Test for the Stability of Families of Polynomials with Linear Uncertainty

The stability of a polynomial can be deduced from a Routh Table. In this paper we show that such tabular tests can also be developed for the robust stability of polynomials whose coefficients depend linearly on real parameters.
A new scoring function for top-down spectral deconvolution

Top-down mass spectrometry plays an important role in intact protein identification and characterization. Top-down mass spectra are more complex than bottom-up mass spectra because they often contain many isotopomer envelopes from highly charged ions, which may overlap with one another. As a result, spectral deconvolution, which converts a complex top-down mass spectrum into a monoisotopic mass list, is a key step in top-down spectral interpretation. In this paper, we propose a new scoring function, L-score, for evaluating isotopomer envelopes. By combining L-score with MS-Deconv, a new software tool, MS-Deconv+, was developed for top-down spectral deconvolution. Experimental results showed that MS-Deconv+ outperformed existing software tools in top-down spectral deconvolution. L-score shows high discriminative ability in identification of isotopomer envelopes. Using L-score, MS-Deconv+ reports many correct monoisotopic masses missed by other software tools, which are valuable for proteoform identification and characterization.
Path Dependence, Uneven Industrialization and Special Interests

This paper puts forth a theory to explainwhy special interest groups are more prevelant in some countries. Its thesis is that uneven industrialization facilitates the formation of special interest groups with monopoly control over factor supplies. An uneven industrial structure is both an artifact of underdevelopment in a country due to a history of high innovation costs, and a feature of society that further impeded development via its effect on the creation of special interest groups. In this sense, slow development sows a seed for slower development. We argue that the theory is potentially useful for explaining the fall in the median growth rate of developing nations since 1980
The Classification of Universes

We define a universe as the contents of a spacetime box with comoving walls, large enough to contain measurable phenomena, but not much larger. This allows the construction of a local ensemble of such universes, given modest extrapolations of the observed properties of the cosmos. We then assume that further out similar universes can be constructed, but with different standard model parameters, strongly correlated with the size in a definite way, where by size is meant the Hubble scale at late times. This allows an estimate of the range of sizes supporting life as we know it. The result allows some understanding of the hierarchy problems of particle physics. Other possible implications of the assumptions made will be discussed, including a possible connection between the QCD vacuum structure and cosmological horizon structure. In all cases, our approach is as bottoms-up and as phenomenological as possible, suggesting that theories of the multiverse may eventually lay some claim of being scientific.
Inspection of sheet materials--model and data.

In the inspection of sheet materials in industry, two interrelated tasks are involved: Visual search and decisionmaking. When these tasks have been studied separately, it has been found that both e...
Comparing completeness properties of static analyses and their logics

Static analyses calculate abstract states, and their logics validate properties of the abstract states. We place into perspective the variety of forwards, backwards, functional, and logical completeness used in abstract-interpretation-based static analysis by giving examples and by proving equivalences, implications, and independences. We expose two fundamental Galois connections that underlie the logics for static analyses and reveal a new completeness variant, O-completeness. We also show that the key concept underlying logical completeness is covering, which we use to relate the various forms of completeness.
Reversing the trend of large scale and centralization in manufacturing: the case of distributed manufacturing of customizable 3-D-printable self-adjustable glasses

Although the trend in manufacturing has been towards centralization to leverage economies of scale, the recent rapid technical development of open-source 3-D printers enables low-cost distributed bespoke production. This paper explores the potential advantages of a distributed manufacturing model of high-value products by investigating the application of 3-D printing to self-refraction eyeglasses. A series of parametric 3-D printable designs is developed, fabricated and tested to overcome limitations identified with mass-manufactured self-correcting eyeglasses designed for the developing world's poor. By utilizing 3-D printable self-adjustable glasses, communities not only gain access to far more diversity in product design, as the glasses can be customized for the individual, but 3-D printing also offers the potential for significant cost reductions. The results show that distributed manufacturing with open-source 3-D printing can empower developing world communities through the ability to print less expensive and customized self-adjusting eyeglasses. This offers the potential to displace both centrally manufactured conventional and self-adjusting glasses while completely eliminating the costs of the conventional optics correction experience, including those of highly-trained optometrists and ophthalmologists and their associated equipment. Although, this study only analyzed a single product, it is clear that other products would benefit from the same approach in isolated regions of the developing world.
Political Economy Determinants of Technical Barriers to U.S. Agricultural Exports

Political economy determinants of questionable technical barriers applied to U.S. agricultural exports are evaluated using PROBIT and Poisson regression techniques. Results indicate the incidence of such barriers can increase when domestic agriculture is large relative to consumption, when producers are less competitive in international markets, and when the anticipated future level of protection through other forms of government intervention decreases.
Accurate decoding of pooled sequenced data using compressed sensing

In order to overcome the limitations imposed by DNA barcoding when multiplexing a large number of samples in the current generation of high-throughput sequencing instruments, we have recently proposed a new protocol that leverages advances in combinatorial pooling design (group testing) [9]. We have also demonstrated how this new protocol would enable de novo selective sequencing and assembly of large, highly-repetitive genomes. Here we address the problem of decoding pooled sequenced data obtained from such a protocol. Our algorithm employs a synergistic combination of ideas from compressed sensing and the decoding of error-correcting codes. Experimental results on synthetic data for the rice genome and real data for the barley genome show that our novel decoding algorithm enables significantly higher quality assemblies than the previous approach.
DUNE FIELDS | Low Latitudes

Low-latitude sand seas (also called ergs) are extensive areas of sand dunes located in the tropical and subtropical deserts of the world, where they occupy as much as a third of the area classified as arid. Sand seas contain large volumes of sand and have accumulated episodically during the Quaternary. Their construction has therefore been determined by climatic, tectonic, and sea-level changes that have affected sand supply, availability, and mobility. The understanding of the history of sand seas and dunes has been revolutionized in recent years by the application of luminescence techniques to directly date periods of dune formation and/or reactivation. Compilations of information on directly dated periods of dune construction and/or reactivation indicate widespread dune activity in low-latitude deserts in the period 100–120, 35–10, and since 5 ka.
Some Properties of an Empirical Mode Type Signal Decomposition Algorithm

The empirical mode decomposition (EMD) has seen widespread use for analysis of nonlinear and nonstationary time-series. Despite some practical success, it lacks a firm theoretical foundation. This work addresses two important theoretical properties. The original EMD algorithm is slightly modified, in a way that facilitates this analysis. For periodic, band-limited, signals the convergence and time scale separation of the algorithm are proved.