cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography

In his new book, Michael J. Hogan, a leading historian of the American presidency, offers a new perspective on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as seen not from his life and times but from his afterlife in American memory. The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considers how Kennedy constructed a popular image of himself, in effect, a brand, as he played the part of president on the White House stage. The cultural trauma brought on by his assassination further burnished that image and began the process of transporting Kennedy from history to memory. Hogan shows how Jacqueline Kennedy, as the chief guardian of her husband's memory, devoted herself to embedding the image of the slain president in the collective memory of the nation, evident in the many physical and literary monuments dedicated to his memory. Regardless of critics, most Americans continue to see Kennedy as his wife wanted him remembered: the charming war hero, the loving husband and father, and the peacemaker and progressive leader who inspired confidence and hope in the American people.
Urban Development and Rural Poverty in Java: A Challenge for Decentralized Local Government

The Government of Indonesia has pursued the strategy of dispersed development to address the issue of environmental degradation, to reduce the concentration of development in one major center, in order to achieve a sustainable urban form. The effectiveness of this strategy is being questioned, since the “deconcentration” of development fails to achieve its objective due to the absence of sound implementation tools and the market forces. The expansion of urban areas not only has characterized the development of Java in the last couple decades, bitt at the same time the decrease of rural areas and rural lives are also taking place, that spurs the physical integration process of major urban centers, especially on the northern coast of Java. The consequence of this process to the larger area, that is the rural hinterland, highlights the mega urban region hypothesis. Meanwhile, the issue of poverty also highlights the condition of rural Java, where spatially it has corresponding patterns with the formation of extended metropolitan regions. Recognizing the dual ism of development trajectory and the uneven spatial distribution of development in Java, this paper would argue that the focus of local government policies ought to be directed towards the promotion of rural regional development in order to achieve a balanced development towards its lagging regions. A new strategy needs to be invented along with its implementation framework, with a goal to achieve sustainability in both urban and rural areas. The new form of decentralized local governments could be the basis for promoting the regional network strategy as the framework for sustainable regional development. Keywords: decentralization policy, urban development, rural poverty
Kinetics and Mechanism of Vinyl Acetate Monomer Synthesis on Pd(100) Model Catalysts

The reaction between ethylene and acetate species on Pd(100) is explored using reflection–absorption infrared spectroscopy and compared with previous results found for a similar reaction on Pd(111). As a consequence of the lower saturation acetate coverage on Pd(100) than on Pd(111), the reaction is much less selective giving rise to carbon monoxide as the predominant product. Carrying out the titration reaction with C2D4 at ~180 K results in a feature at ~1711 cm−1, which has previously been assigned to an acetoxyethyl intermediate indicting that ethylene reacts with adsorbed ethylene on Pd(100) via the Samanos pathway, which involves a direct coupling between ethylene ad acetate species for form vinyl acetate monomer by a β-hydride elimination reaction. Reactions with various ethylene isotopomers suggest that decomposition of the acetoxyethyl intermediate is responsible for the non-selective, carbon monoxide formation. A kinetic model is developed for the reaction between ethylene and acetate species that includes non-selective carbon monoxide formation that reproduces the experimental titration curves.
Evaluation of the Efficiency of Aglimeand Pelleted Aglime in an Iowa Sandy Soil

The effectiveness of a liming material for neutralizing soil acidity depends mainly on its calcium carbonate (CaCO3) equivalent (CCE) and its fineness. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) rules for agricultural lime (aglime) sales requires measuring Effective CCE (ECCE), which combines CCE and fineness efficiency estimates. Use of pelleted finely ground limestone has increased in recent years, but scarce field research has evaluated how ECCE evaluates the granulation effect on its acid-neutralizing capacity and its efficiency compared with aglime. Therefore, a study was conducted at this farm during 2015 and 2016 to compare the effectiveness of finely ground pure calcium carbonate (CaCO3), calcitic aglime, and pelleted calcitic aglime at increasing soil pH and crop yield.
Osteoporosis: Romosozumab to rebuild the foundations of bone strength.

Biologic agents targeting key proteins involved in bone homeostasis are revolutionizing the management of osteoporosis. New clinical data support the use of these novel therapies to rapidly increase bone mass and decrease the risk of fractures.
Quantitative Study: Relationship Of Project Outcomes And Emotional Intelligence In High Tech Industry From The Diversity Perspective

The purpose of the quantitative correlational research study was to examine if a significant relationship existed between the Emotional Intelligence (EI) competencies, from the diversity perspective, of Hispanic team members and project outcomes within the high technology sector in the United States. Therefore the objective was to explore the degree of association or relationship between the identified predictor and criterion variables. The predictor variables included the EI competencies: Emotional Self‐Awareness (ESA), Emotional Self‐Management (ESM), Emotional Awareness of Others (EAO), Emotional Management of Others (EMO), and the criterion variables: Project Timeliness (PT), In‐Budget Project (PB), and Scope Creep (SC).
Overview of The First Workshop on Knowledge Graphs and Semantics for Text Retrieval and Analysis (KG4IR)

Knowledge graphs have been used throughout the history of information retrieval for a variety of tasks. Advances in knowledge acquisition and alignment technology in the last few years have given rise to a body of new approaches for utilizing knowledge graphs in text retrieval tasks. This report presents the motivation, output, and outlook of the first workshop on Knowledge Graphs and Semantics for Text Retrieval and Analysis which was co-located with SIGIR 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. We aim to assess where we stand today, what future directions are, and which preconditions could lead to further performance increases.
Compounding effects of human development and a natural food shortage on a black bear population along a human development-wildland interface

Abstract Human development and climate change are two stressors that threaten numerous wildlife populations, and their combined effects are likely to be most pronounced along the human development-wildland interface where changes in both natural and anthropogenic conditions interact to affect wildlife. To better understand the compounding influence of these stressors, we investigated the effects of a climate-induced natural food shortage on the dynamics of a black bear population in the vicinity of Durango, Colorado. We integrated 4 years of DNA-based capture-mark-recapture data with GPS-based telemetry data to evaluate the combined effects of human development and the food shortage on the abundance, population growth rate, and spatial distribution of female black bears. We documented a 57% decline in female bear abundance immediately following the natural food shortage coinciding with an increase in human-caused bear mortality (e.g., vehicle collisions, harvest and lethal removals) primarily in developed areas. We also detected a change in the spatial distribution of female bears with fewer bears occurring near human development in years immediately following the food shortage, likely as a consequence of high mortality near human infrastructure during the food shortage. Given expected future increases in human development and climate-induced food shortages, we expect that bear dynamics may be increasingly influenced by human-caused mortality, which will be difficult to detect with current management practices. To ensure long-term sustainability of bear populations, we recommend that wildlife agencies invest in monitoring programs that can accurately track bear populations, incorporate non-harvest human-caused mortality into management models, and work to reduce human-caused mortality, particularly in years with natural food shortages.
Systems Failures in Policing

This Essay, an adaptation of my 2018 Donahue Lecture, argues that acts of police violence and overreach should be viewed as systems failures. Researchers who study error in aviation, medicine, and other complex organizations agree that errors are the product of human failings and poorly designed systems. When tragedies occur, human error almost always plays a role — people misperceive information, process it incorrectly, make careless mistakes, and sometimes act recklessly or maliciously. But faulty systems also play a role — technologies can be confusing, rigorous schedules can fatigue workers, organizational culture can stifle productive communication, and policies can put workers in situations where they have to make difficult decisions under conditions of high stress. A key insight of this body of research is that it is impossible to cure limitations of human perception, cognition, and decisionmaking. Instead of focusing exclusively on training people to change their behavior — and threatening them with criminal, civil, or department sanctions if they fail to do so — the systems approach adjusts equipment, schedules, protocols, and policies in ways that can make it harder for people to err and can reduce the impact of error when it inevitably occurs. A focus on systems contributors to error has been used for decades to improve the safety of aviation, nuclear power, and other complex industries. Over the past thirty or so years, medicine has adopted some of aviation’s strategies. It is time for law enforcement to embrace a systems approach. When a person is shot by the police we must still examine whether the shooting was justified, and officers should continue to be disciplined, sued, and prosecuted when they violate department policy or the law. But then conversation must turn to whether the shooting was preventable, and the ways in which technology, schedules, protocols, and policies could be adjusted to prevent another shooting in the future. The shift in perspective will likely be harder in policing than it has been in medicine or aviation, but is necessary if we want to make policing safer.
Cognitive Functioning in Late-life Depression: A Critical Review of Sociodemographic, Neurobiological, and Treatment Correlates

Both clinical and subthreshold depression in older adults are associated with cognitive dysfunction. This review summarizes the latest literature on patterns of cognitive functioning in late-life depression (LLD), including moderators of the relationship between depression and cognitive functioning and underlying neurobiological mechanisms. LLD is associated with cognitive dysfunction across multiple domains, particularly processing speed and executive functions. This relationship is moderated by demographic and clinical variables such as sex, race, age of onset, and severity of different symptom dimensions of depression. The impact of depression treatment on cognitive deficits in LLD differs across treatment approaches, but overall LLD is associated with persistent cognitive deficits after depression remission. Clarifying treatments with dual mood and cognitive benefits is an important area for future research. Our understanding of and treatment for cognitive deficits in LLD will also benefit from additional work that examines clinical and demographic contributions.
Conformational change due to intramolecular hydrophobic interaction leads to large blue-shifted emission from single molecular cage solutions

We demonstrate a unique negative solvatochromic emission (NSE) process from a conformational change of a coordination cage in response to solvent composition. The cationic cage contains two tetra-(4-pyridylphenyl)ethylene (TPPE) luminogens on two opposite faces, linked by Pt(PEt3)2 and isophthalate. When the solvent changes from acetone/acetonitrile/methanol to water, the emission of single cages gradually shifts to short wavelength (NSE) with a drastic value of ∼60 nm. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements indicate a molecular conformational change during the process and intramolecular π-π stacking and hydrophobic interaction between the TPPE planes could be the driving forces. As a comparison, a cage with a longer inter-fluorophore distance does not have such strong intramolecular interactions and only shows regular positive solvatochromic emission (PSE) under the same conditions.
Evolution of Dynamic and Thermodynamic Structures before and during Rapid Intensification of Tropical Cyclones: Sensitivity to Vertical Wind Shear

AbstractThis study explores the spatial and temporal changes in tropical cyclone (TC) thermodynamic and dynamic structures before, near, and during rapid intensification (RI) under different vertic...
Racial/ethnic disparities in the use of high-volume centers for hepatobiliary and pancreatic cancer surgery.

457Background: The impact of hospital volume on the outcomes of cancer surgery has been well established. The present studies investigates how race/ethnicity influences the utilization of high-volu...
RoboCup 2014 Humanoid AdultSize League Winner

The RoboCup Soccer Humanoid AdultSize League is a very challenging league that requires fast and reliable locomotion, a robust vision and localization system, and long term planning to score in a limited attack window. As a result, many adult-size robots are now highly optimized for the soccer task, with very lightweight construction that enables nimble locomotion with low power actuators. However, such a soccer optimized humanoid design excludes the possibility of using the humanoid robot for more general tasks that include, for instance, dextrous manipulation and navigating over rugged terrain. In this paper, we describe how we utilize the general purpose and full sized humanoid robot, THOR-OP (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot - Open Platform), which was originally developed to compete at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) for the 2014 RoboCup AdultSize league robotic soccer competition.
Fuel cells hybrid systems for resilient microgrids

Abstract Nowadays, resilient grids meet growing interest for their capability of let survive critical load even in case of power fault coming from grid disturbance and disasters. In particular, telecommunications infrastructures (point-to-point and cell infrastructure) have distributed systems (RBS, DCs) equipped with storage devices used to guarantee continuous operation of the supplied equipment. Since high value services are provided to a wide set of customers, unexpected service unavailability is source of economic losses. This embedded UPS function, despite avoiding service interruption and contract penalties to the service providers, requires batteries whose unused capacity could be fruitfully exploited to provide the grid with valuable and paid energy services (frequency regulation - power and/or energy regulation in time slots - peak smoothing). For this reason, the supply systems of such plants, beside the internal energy storage devices, had better to have redundancy of energy sources (e.g. electrical grid and natural gas network) and tailored power flows control strategies to optimize the equipment utilization and costs, even in the case of external energy shortage. In this work, a combined approach with Fuel Cell (FC) and Fuzzy Logic (FL) is investigated to determine a good compromise between equipment installation, control logic, and availability of the service (downtime probability), even accounting for weather forecast, energy price and storage system exploitation (depth of discharge). For the implemented case studies of the simulation, a landline station located in Italy is analyzed by simulating different functions and power equipment to assess the benefits achievable the presented approach.
A century of gray: A genomic locus found in 2 distinct Pseudomonas spp. is associated with historical and contemporary color defects in dairy products worldwide

Some gram-negative bacteria, including Pseudomonas spp., can grow at refrigeration temperatures and cause flavor, odor, and texture defects in fluid milk. Historical and modern cases exist of gray and blue color defects in fluid milk due to Pseudomonas, and several recent reports have detailed fresh cheese spoilage associated with blue-pigment-forming Pseudomonas. Our goal was to investigate the genomes of pigmented Pseudomonas isolates responsible for historical and modern pigmented spoilage of dairy products in the United States to determine the genetic basis of pigment-forming phenotypes. We performed whole genome sequencing of 9 Pseudomonas isolates: 3 from recent incidents of gray-pigmented fluid milk (Pseudomonas fluorescens group), 1 from blue-pigmented cheese (P. fluorescens group), 2 from a historical blue milk spoilage incident (Pseudomonas putida group), and 3 with no evidence for blue or gray pigment formation (2 from P. fluorescens group and 1 from Pseudomonas chlororaphis group). All 6 isolates collected from products with a gray or blue pigment defect were confirmed to produce pigment using potato dextrose agar or pasteurized milk. A subset of 2 isolates was selected for inoculation into milk and onto the surface of a model cheese for subsequent color measurement. These isolates produced different colors on potato dextrose agar, but produced nearly identical color defects in milk and on model cheese. For the same subset of 2 isolates, the gray color defect in milk was produced only in containers with ample headspace and not in full containers, suggesting that oxygen is vital for pigment formation. This work also demonstrated that a Pseudomonas isolate from cheese can produce a pigment defect in milk, and vice versa. Comparative genomics identified an accessory locus encoding tryptophan biosynthesis genes that was present in all isolates that produced gray or blue pigment under laboratory conditions and was only previously reported in 2 P. fluorescens isolates responsible for blue mozzarella in Italy. Because this locus was found in genetically distant isolates belonging to different Pseudomonas species groups, it may have been acquired via horizontal gene transfer. These data suggest that several past and present gray- or blue-pigmented dairy spoilage events share a common genetic etiology that transcends species-level identification and merits further investigation to determine mechanistic details and modes of prevention.
Asynchronous mixing of kidney progenitor cells potentiates nephrogenesis in organoids

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen rapid advances in directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) to kidney cells. However, a fundamental difficulty in emulating kidney tissue formation is that kidney development is iterative. Recent studies argue that the human nephron forms through gradual contribution of nephron progenitor cells whose differentiation fates depend on the time at which they are recruited. We show that the majority of PSC-derived nephron progenitor cells differentiated in a short wave in organoid formation and to improve fidelity of PSC-derived organoids, we emulated the asynchronous mix found in the fetal kidney by combining cells differentiated at different times in the same organoid. Asynchronous mixing promoted nephrogenesis, and lineage marking data showed that proximal and distal nephron components preferentially derive from cell populations differentiated at distinct times. When engrafted under the kidney capsule these heterochronic organoids were vascularized and displayed essential features of kidney tissue. Micro-CT and injection of a circulating vascular marker demonstrated that engrafted kidney tissue was connected to the systemic circulation by 2 weeks after engraftment. Proximal tubule glucose uptake was confirmed using intravenous injection of fluorescent dextran. Despite these promising measures of graft function, overgrowth of stromal cells prevented long-term study, and we propose that this is a technical feature of the engraftment procedure rather than a specific shortcoming of the directed differentiation because kidney organoids derived from primary cells and whole embryonic kidneys develop the same stromal overgrowth when engrafted under the kidney capsule.
Noisy corruption detection

Abstract We answer a question of Alon, Mossel, and Pemantle about the corruption detection model on graphs in the noisy setting.
Nondynamical modeling of resonances in a Quantum Field formalism

Well-defined nonlinear deformations of free quantum fields are introduced as manifestly Poincare invariant scaling and resonance properties of non-dynamical scale models in Minkowski space, instead of introducing nonlinear dynamical deformations of free quantum fields that require the various truncations and scaling corrections of regularization and renormalization. With the given algebraic construction, energy and momentum operators can be constructed \emph{ex post facto} as the generators of translations. A weakened version of microcausality emerges naturally, "convex hull microcausality" ---that operators associated with two regions of space--time must commute if \emph{the convex hulls of} those regions are space-like separated---, which is enough for us to be able to construct an abundant class of interacting quantum fields.
Arousal Effects on Cognition: New Strategy Which Isolates Movement and Heart Rate Effects Inherent in Physical Work

Most experiments which have sought to determine the effects of arousal, exercise and/or physical work on psychomotor performance have been tainted by methodological problems. This paper presents a strategy that was developed to overcome one methodological shortcoming inherent in many such studies: the confounding of movement and heart rate. The technique involves administering mental tests during both movement and non-movement intervals, at pre-selected exercise states. Results of a validation experiment, in which 11 subjects performed numerous psychomotor tasks with and without movement at four work intensities (rest, 30% VO2max, 60% VO2max, and post-exercise) on two testing days indicate that this method was sufficiently sensitive to identify previously undetected effects, e.g., movement slows index finger tapping rate and may impair an individual's ability to stabilize speed-accuracy tradeoff strategies in serial choice reaction time tasks. Inverted-U effects were also found, replicating some previous ...
Ethical Considerations for Telepsychotherapy and the Management of High-Risk Patients During Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19): Challenges and Practice Considerations

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a widespread cultural change to the provision of psychotherapy with patients rapidly converted to a virtual format. During this unprecedented time, therapists can b...
Designing to Stop Live Streaming Cyberbullying: A case study of Twitch Live Streaming Platform

Cyberbullying is widespread in online communities. The ability to protect users and platforms from the dangers of cyberbullying has become essential. In this work, we conducted a qualitative study of Twitch community to explore the design elements that can influence cyberbullying behavior and the reaction to it on a live-streaming platform. Our study involved interviewing 11 Twitch streamers and six months of Reddit posts from a Twitch sub-reddit community about Cyberbullying. The results of the study illustrate a number of design themes unique to live streaming platform that can promote or inhibit cyberbullying, including most importantly the information asymmetry between broadcaster and viewers. Based on our analysis results, we propose design guidelines for the live streaming platform to better support their users in intervening cases of cyberbullying.
Turret Lock-on in an Engage or Retreat Game

In this paper we model and analyze a scenario in the two dimensional plane involving a mobile Attacker and stationary Defender. There are two possibilities for termination: the Attacker can collide with the Defender (engagement) or maneuver to a safe zone away from the Defender (retreat). The Defender is equipped with a directional turret which it can rotate with a bounded rate. If the turret is aligned with the Attacker's position, the Defender has a lock on the Attacker and may choose to fire on the Attacker. Thus, whether engaging or retreating, the Attacker has incentive to evade the turret's line of sight and thereby avoid being locked-on. In the case of retreat, if lock-on occurs the Defender cooperates with the Attacker by withholding fire to allow the Attacker to retreat. However, if the Attacker chooses to engage and lock-on occurs, the Defender will open fire on the Attacker. We model the scenario as a set of differential games with different cost functionals depending on the type of termination. The agents are assumed to have full state information. In the case that the Defender can align with the Attacker the pre-and post-lock portions of the game are solved individually and stitched together. The equilibrium strategies are derived in each case, and a partitioning of the state space wherein a particular termination condition is optimal is constructed.
Gesture-SNN: co-optimizing accuracy, latency and energy of SNNs for neuromorphic vision sensors

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are recently gaining popularity due to their low-power, spatio-temporal computing paradigm as opposed to more conventional deep learning approaches that mainly focus on spatial characteristics of data. When paired with biologically-inspired asynchronous event sensors, they can create energy-efficient near-sensor systems that are ideal for mobile, resource-constrained and embedded-computing scenarios. Training deep SNNs, however, is challenging due to their discrete nature. The most successful method so far involves training deep artificial neural networks (ANNs) using Gradient-Descent and then converting them to SNNs. The ANN-to-SNN conversion technique has mostly been evaluated on standard static image datasets using rate-based encoding of spikes. In this work, we find that a direct application of the ANN-to-SNN conversion technique to process event data via SNNs leads to arbitrary accuracy losses. Through insights gained from theoretical analyses as well as empirical observations, we propose three novel techniques to restore the conversion accuracy on event data and show proof-of-concept results, comparable to the state-of-the-art, on the IBM DVS Gesture dataset. Further exploration of the SNN design space reveals additional insights to fine-tune the accuracy-latency-peak power trade-off. Finally, we evaluate our proposed schemes on an existing neuromorphic accelerator and show that our best-performing model is $\sim 38$% more accurate with $\sim 35$% lower energy and $\sim 55$% lower EDP compared to its traditional SNN counterpart.
Longitudinal progression of diabetes mellitus in Wolfram syndrome: the Washington University Wolfram Research Clinic experience.

OBJECTIVE 1) Describe the progression of diabetes mellitus over time in an observational study of Wolfram syndrome, a rare, genetic, neurodegenerative disorder which often includes diabetes mellitus and is typically diagnosed during childhood or adolescence. 2) Determine whether C-peptide could be used as a marker of diabetes progression in interventional trials for Wolfram syndrome. METHODS N=44 (25F/19M) participants with genetically-confirmed Wolfram syndrome attended the Washington University Wolfram Research Clinic annually from 2010-2019. Medical history, physical examinations, blood sampling, and questionnaires were used to collect data about diabetes mellitus and other components of Wolfram syndrome. Beta-cell function was assessed by determination of C-peptide during a mixed meal tolerance test. Random coefficients models evaluated the rate of progression of C-peptide over time, and power analyses were used to estimate the number of subjects needed to detect a change in C-peptide decline during an intervention trial. RESULTS 93.2% of patients had diabetes mellitus. Mean HbA1c across all study visits was 7.9%. C-peptide significantly decreased with increasing duration of diabetes mellitus (p<0.0001); an optimal break point in C-peptide decline was identified to occur between 0.1 and 2.3 years after diabetes mellitus diagnosis. Twenty patients per group (active vs. control) were estimated to be needed to detect a 60% slowing of C-peptide decline during the first 2.3 years following diabetes diagnosis. CONCLUSION C-peptide declines over time in Wolfram syndrome and could potentially be used as a marker of diabetes progression in interventional studies for Wolfram syndrome, especially within the first 2 years after diabetes diagnosis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
ON THE STABILITY OF SHIP MOTION IN REGULAR OBLIQUE WAVES.

The nonlinear equations of motion of a ship sailing in regular oblique waves are formulated and an analytical method is developed to obtain an approximate solution for them. The stability of the steady-state solution is investigated by examining the behavior of the solution of the equations of the first variation of the equations of motion. This study shows that the existence of unstable motion is predicted for certain cases if we take account of nonlinearities in the equations of motion. This instability is very sensitive to variations in the nonlinear damping coefficient in roll.
Data-Driven Method to Estimate Nonlinear Chemical Equivalence.

There is great need to express the impacts of chemicals found in the environment in terms of effects from alternative chemicals of interest. Methods currently employed in fields such as life-cycle assessment, risk assessment, mixtures toxicology, and pharmacology rely mostly on heuristic arguments to justify the use of linear relationships in the construction of “equivalency factors,” which aim to model these concentration-concentration correlations. However, the use of linear models, even at low concentrations, oversimplifies the nonlinear nature of the concentration-response curve, therefore introducing error into calculations involving these factors. We address this problem by reporting a method to determine a concentration-concentration relationship between two chemicals based on the full extent of experimentally derived concentration-response curves. Although this method can be easily generalized, we develop and illustrate it from the perspective of toxicology, in which we provide equations relating the sigmoid and non-monotone, or “biphasic,” responses typical of the field. The resulting concentration-concentration relationships are manifestly nonlinear for nearly any chemical level, even at the very low concentrations common to environmental measurements. We demonstrate the method using real-world examples of toxicological data which may exhibit sigmoid and biphasic mortality curves. Finally, we use our models to calculate equivalency factors, and show that traditional results are recovered only when the concentration-response curves are “parallel,” which has been noted before, but we make formal here by providing mathematical conditions on the validity of this approach.
Differentiation and Enumeration of Somatic Cells in Goat Milk.

Non-leukocytic cell-like particles commonly observed in goat milk were examined ultrastructurally and cytochemically. Transmission electron microscopy indicated that these particles were generally membrane-bound and anucleate. They contained granular material in the dilated cisternae of the endoplasmic reticulum and homogeneous electron translucent inclusions that resembled lipid. Histochemical and fluorescent staining indicated that the particles contained large amounts of protein, some lipid, but no deoxyribonucleic acid. Several methods routinely used for estimating somatic cell counts in cow milk were compared to determine which one would give accurate estimates of somatic cell counts in goat milk. No significant difference was found (P> .05) among methods which specifically measure deoxyribonucleic acid. These included Membrane Filter-DNA, direct microscopic somatic cell counts using Pyron in Y-methyl green stain, and Fossomatic cell counts. Results of the Wisconsin Mastitis Test did not differ significantly from Fossomatic cell counts. Because Coulter electronic counts and direct microscopic somatic cell counts using Levowitz-Weber stain could not differentiate between the cell-like particles and the actual leukocytes, these methods resulted in elevated cell counts that were highly variable. Results indicate that only those counting methods that are specific for deoxyribonucleic acid can distinguish cell-like particles from somatic cells, and thereby give reliable estimates of somatic cell numbers in goat milk.
Failure Modes of Aerospace Materials

Understanding and interpreting aircraft structural and engine failure modes at a material level is important from the standpoint of employing superior fracture-resistant materials and predicting remaining useful life based on the micromechanics of materials. Failure modes can be understood by observing the fracture surface of a component from a low magnification to several orders of magnitude of magnification. It is also important to know the chemical composition of the material, primary, and secondary processing methods used to fabricate the product form. To predict the fracture modes, knowledge of operational environment and loads is required. Recently, there has been an increasing interest and need to design structural health monitoring systems to maintain systems based on the system condition. Instead of time-based maintenance, the new paradigm is to perform condition-based maintenance. Therefore, knowledge of material and structural failure modes is essential to incorporate this new approach. To perform the system health diagnosis, collaborative work between nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring researchers is critical to build new health monitoring systems in the future. This article broadly discusses and summarizes failure modes of a few structural metallic alloys and polymer-based composites used in aerospace structures. Keywords: metals; ceramics; composites; laminate; deformation; fracture; failure; creep; fatigue; corrosion; oxidation; aluminum
Tecton: A Language for Manipulating Generic Objects

abstract constructs define new classes of objects. The abstract construct is roughly the inverse of the refine construct. The instantiate, e, -, and infotm serve to include more knowledge about a class of objects, while ~SUZQ.~ is used to represent a class of objects in terms of another class. The instantiate construct records the information that a class of objects can be refined to another class; or, stated another way, a class of objects can be abstracted to another class. The latter could be obtained from the former by reversinq the arguments to instantiate. The use of these constructs is illustrated on structures (see below), a class of objects definable in Tecton, in 151. (Except that abstract was not discussed and refine was called enrich in that paper.) In the next section, we will give examples of some of these constructs; their use is also illustrated in the discussion of the communication network example. We discuss four different types of objects in Tecton which we have found useful in describing different kinds of activities of a complex software system: structures, entities, events, and environ- ments. Some of these types of objects have appeared previously in
Weighted geometric grammars for object detection in context

This thesis addresses the problem of detecting objects in images of complex scenes. Strong patterns exist in the types and spatial arrangements of objects that occur in scenes, and we seek to exploit these patterns to improve detection performance. We introduce a novel formalism—weighted geometric grammars (WGGs)—for flexibly representing and recognizing combinations of objects and their spatial relationships in scenes. We adapt the structured perceptron algorithm to parameter learning in WGG models, and develop a set of original clustering-based algorithms for structure learning. We then demonstrate empirically that WGG models, with parameters and structure learned automatically from data, can outperform a standard object detector. This thesis also contributes three new fully-labeled datasets, in two domains, to the scene understanding community. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)
Hierarchical placement for macrocells: a 'meet in the middle' approach

Placement and related aspects of the BEAR macrocell layout system are described. A combination of top-down and bottom-up heuristics is used to make best use of a hierarchical description. The interdependency of placement and routing is considered explicitly. Experimental results show a considerable improvement over previous approaches. >
On Good Faith and the Future of Scienter in Delaware Corporate Law

In 2006 the Delaware Supreme Court handed down a set of opinions, In re Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation and Stone v. Ritter, which were intended to clarify the often invoked, but rarely defined, notion of corporate good faith. In doing so, the Court introduced scienter as a key element in determining corporate fiduciary duties. Far from being a mere clarification of the law, this new element has undermined the rationale for many of the Delaware Supreme Court's most famous precedents. This note analyzes the current state of corporate fiduciary duties in Delaware, and the possible effects stemming from this new element of scienter. It also proposes that the Delaware Supreme Court has introduced considerable uncertainty into the law by not clearly explaining what facts plaintiffs must allege in order to establish scienter.
Abstract W MP13: Missed Imaging Diagnosis Without CT Perfusion May Affect Clinical Decision for TPA and Thrombectomy in Acute Stroke

Purpose: In a previous study, we found higher detection rate of 2nd and 3rd order vascular thrombosis when CT Perfusion (CTP) was performed as compared to non-contrast CT (NCCT) and CT angiography (CTA) alone. Additionally, a significant number of patients with acute infarct were reported as negative without CTP. In this study, we sought to determine whether missed imaging diagnosis without CTP might affect clinical decision making. Methods: A total of 758 cases were included in our previous study, with CTP deficits reported in all 71 cases with final infarct volume of 2.8 ml or above. Conversely, 23 of 96 (24%) cases without CTP were reported as negative. In the group without CTP, 7 of 10 patients who had 2nd or 3rd order vascular thromboses with a final infarct > 30cc were reported negative, whereas only 1 of 10 cases were missed in patients who had CTP but a negative NCCT. The treatment decisions at the time of stroke were reviewed for these patients. Results: In 10 cases with final infarct volume > 30ml reported negative without CTP, zero received TPA or thrombectomy. Conversely, in the same category, 5 of 10 cases with positive CTP received TPA (p = 0.041). There was also a higher rate of TPA or thrombectomy treatment in patients with a positive imaging diagnosis, both with CTP (13 of 71, 18.3%) and without CTP (28 of 73, 38.4%), as compared to the group reported negative without CTP (3 of 23, 13%, p = 0.059). Fewer cases in the CTP group received treatment as compared to cases reported positive without CTP. A possible reason is that the cases with CTP were from an earlier phase of our acute stroke program, when treatment tended to be more conservative. Conclusions: Our study finds discrepancies in decision making for TPA and thrombectomy in stroke cases with positive versus negative imaging diagnosis. The cases reported negative were less likely to receive treatment, including those with relatively large final infarct size (>30ml). We speculate that a negative imaging diagnosis may create doubt for clinical diagnosis in some cases. Adding CTP in the acute stroke imaging protocol will increase imaging diagnostic accuracy and exclude stroke mimics, therefore providing valuable information for treatment.
Geochemical differentiation of Silurian from Devonian crude oils in eastern Algeria

The ability to distinguish crude oils generated from prolific Silurian and Devonian source rocks provides a means to map their petroleum systems and thereby reduce exploration risk in North Africa. Routine geochemical analyses commonly fail to reliably separate these oils. This study demonstrates that non-routine analyses, such as compound-specific isotopes of light hydrocarbons and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry of diamondoids, can distinguish Silurian from Devonian oils in Algeria. Oil samples from Zemlet field and the giant Hassi Messaoud field were obtained from the northern part of the study area in Algeria where the Devonian source rock is absent. These oils originated from thermally mature Silurian source rock and migrated updip to fractured Cambro-Ordovician quartzite reservoirs below the Hercynian unconformity. Oil samples from the Assekaifaf, Oued Zenani, Zarzaitine, and Dome fields occur in the southern part of the study area, where both source rocks exist, but migration paths indicate input mainly from Devonian source rock. Despite higher maturity, the Silurian oil samples have diamondoid isomer concentrations 2–3 times lower than the Devonian samples. Because diamondoids form in source rocks by clay-catalyzed reactions and increase relative to other compounds during thermal cracking of oils, the diamondoid concentrations in the oil samples suggest that the Silurian source rock had less clay than the Devonian source rock. Higher dibenzothiophene/2-methylnaphthalene and generally higher sulfur in the Silurian oil samples support a source rock with less clay. For the Devonian oil samples, slightly more iron in clays reacted with sulfides to form pyrite, thus limiting sulfur incorporation into the kerogen and the generated crude oil. Light hydrocarbons, such as n-hexane, methylcyclopentane, cyclopentane, and methylcyclohexane, are depleted in 13C in the Silurian compared to Devonian oil samples (> 1.1,0.6, 1.0, and 0.2 respectively). Patterns of isotopic ratios among these compounds also differ (e.g. cyclohexane is more depleted in 13C than methylcyclopentane and methylcyclohexane in Silurian, but not Devonian oil samples). The Silurian oil samples have smaller differences in δ 13C between pristane and the C17n-alkane and between phytane and the C18n-alkane than the Devonian samples. Different assemblages of organisms likely contributed to the acyclic isoprenoids versus n-alkanes in the source rocks for these two oil families.
Characterization of New Glycosides from the Fermentation Broths of Streptomyces hygroscopicus

Abstract Four new glycosides, hygromycin C, and Compounds D, E, and F, isolated from the fermentation broths of Streptomyces hygroscopicus, have been partially characterized. Adsorption spectra in the infrared and ultraviolet regions and isolation of components after acid and basic hydrolysis indicated that the glycosides have a similar aglycon, composed of 3,4-dihydroxy-α-methylcinnamic acid or an isomer of this compound and neoinosamine-2, linked via an amide bond. An unusual feature was the dioxymethylene bridge previously reported to exist on the inosamine portion of hygromycin A, evidence for which was obtained for hygromycin C but not for Compounds D, E, or F. The carbohydrate component of Compound F was identified as D-glucose, and that of hygromycin C as L-fucose. The carbohydrate component of Compounds D and E was determined to be a 5-keto-6-deoxyarabohexose; it was not determined if this was the D or L form. A number of free phenolic compounds were found in the ether-soluble extract of acidified broths and two of these were identified as p-hydroxybenzoic acid and 3,4-dihydroxy-α-methylcinnamic acid.
Comment on ``Cluster methods for strongly correlated electron systems''

We comment on the article by Biroli and Kotliar [Phys. Rev. B 65, 155112 (2002)] in which they make a comparison between two cluster techniques, the cellular dynamical mean field theory (CDMFT) and the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA). Based upon an incorrect implementation of the DCA technique in their work, they conclude that the CDMFT is a faster converging technique than the DCA. We present the correct DCA prescription for the particular model Hamiltonian studied in their article and conclude that the DCA, once implemented correctly, is a faster converging technique for the quantities averaged over the cluster.
Quest for a quantum search algorithm for testing stuck-at faults in digital circuits

It is colloquially known that searching for test vectors to test the last few hard to detect stuck-at faults is computationally most expensive and mathematically NP-complete. Due to the complex nature of this problem, attempts made to successfully test a digital circuit for all faults in computational linear time start becoming exponential with an increase in circuit size and complexity. Various algorithms have been proposed where new vectors are generated by using previous successful vectors with similar properties. However, this leads to a bottleneck when trying to find hard to detect stuck-at faults which have only one or two unique tests and their properties may not match other previously successful tests. We propose a new unique algorithm that attempts to vastly improve the test search time for these few hard to detect faults by classifying all test vectors in the vector space in three categories: Category I vectors that activate the desired stuck-at fault but may not propagate it to the primary outputs (POs), Category II vectors that propagate the fault site value to the POs, and Category III vectors that neither activate nor propagate the fault. By bounding our search to vectors in categories I and II, and avoiding category III vectors, it is easier to arrive at the solution faster than other algorithmic implementations. The final solution itself lies in the intersection of categories I and II vectors, and it is easier to search for a test vector in a smaller subset of the large vector space. We have demonstrated the proof of concept and detailed working of our algorithm by comparing it with a random test generator.
Bruises and child abuse.

It was gratifying to see the article on hypersensitivity vasculitis seen as suspected child abuse by Waskerwitz et al.1 As the pediatrician member of a multidisciplinary child abuse team we have seen several cases that initially seemed to be child abuse and subsequently were determined to be a nontraumatic medical problem. One such case was a 6-week-old infant who had hyperpigmented bands on each forearm that were initially diagnosed as post-traumatic hyperpigmentation by the first dermatologist consulted.