cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Strategies for automatic assembly of deformable objects

Strategies for automatic assembly of deformable objects are presented. A flexible beam mating with a rigid hole is taken as the target of investigation. The deflection behavior of a deformable beam is studied. The geometric and force conditions for successful assembly of rigid parts are reviewed. Based on these conditions, strategies for assembling deformable beams are proposed. The strategies are defined by the motion trajectory of the tool which handles the beam. It is found that when the clearance between the beam and the hole is loose, the desired trajectory should be the same as the curve formed by the deformed beam. When the clearance is tight, the position and orientation of the tool should be adjusted, following the involute of the deformed beam curve. >
Methodology for network communication vulnerability analysis

A framework for a developing network vulnerability assessment methodology is described. An original network taxonomy is used to orient the analyst to the new network and to assess the potential vulnerability issues. Four network characteristics are used, as in data link vulnerability analysis susceptibility; interceptability; accessibility; and feasibility. Susceptibility issues are pursued in terms of three perspectives: topology; communication protocols; and management and control. The concept of layers, as in the open systems interconnection reference model, is used to deal with the protocol susceptibilities. Security of network control data, to deny spoofing, is included. >
Can Invasive Species Facilitate Native Species? Evidence of How, When, and Why These Impacts Occur

Although the predatory and competitive impacts of biological invasions are well documented, facilitation of native species by non-indigenous species is frequently overlooked. A search through recent ecological literature found that facilitative interactions between invasive and native species occur in a wide range of habitats, can have cascading effects across trophic levels, can re-structure communities, and can lead to evolutionary changes. These are critical findings that, until now, have been mostly absent from analyses of ecological impacts of biological invasions. Here I present evidence for several mechanisms that exemplify how exotic species can facilitate native species. These mechanisms include habitat modification, trophic subsidy, pollination, competitive release, and predatory release. Habitat modification is the most frequently documented mechanism, reflecting the drastic changes generated by the invasion of functionally novel habitat engineers. Further, I predict that facilitative impacts on native species will be most likely when invasive species provide a limiting resource, increase habitat complexity, functionally replace a native species, or ameliorate predation or competition. Finally, three types of facilitation (novel, substitutive, and indirect) define why exotic species can lead to facilitation of native species. It is evident that understanding biological invasions at the community and ecosystem levels will be more accurate if we integrate facilitative interactions into future ecological research. Since facilitative impacts of biological invasions can occur with native endangered species, and can have wide-ranging impacts, these results also have important implications for management, eradication, and restoration.
The response to September 11: a disaster case study.

Abstract Background The response to 9/11 continues into its 14th year. The World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), a long-term monitoring and treatment program now funded by the Zadroga Act of 2010, includes >60,000 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster responders and community members (“survivors”). The aim of this review is to identify several elements that have had a critical impact on the evolution of the WTC response and, directly or indirectly, the health of the WTC-exposed population. It further explores post-disaster monitoring efforts, recent scientific findings from the WTCHP, and some implications of this experience for ongoing and future environmental disaster response. Findings Transparency and responsiveness, site safety and worker training, assessment of acute and chronic exposure, and development of clinical expertise are interconnected elements determining efficacy of disaster response. Conclusion Even in a relatively well-resourced environment, challenges regarding allocation of appropriate attention to vulnerable populations and integration of treatment response to significant medical and mental health comorbidities remain areas of ongoing programmatic development.
The Relative Effects of Chronological Age on Hispanic Students' School Readiness and Grade 2 Academic Achievement.

This study examined the relations of age, preschool experience, and gender with children’s school readiness levels at kindergarten entry. The sample included 5,512 children of predominantly Hispanic heritage and from families experiencing low socioeconomic circumstances. A series of between-subjects ANOVAs indicated that age (Eta2.019 to.043), preschool experience (Eta2.104 to.204), and gender (Eta2.015 to.022) were significantly related to children’s school readiness as measured by the Kindergarten Student Entrance Profile (KSEP). Logistic regression examined the unique contribution of these variables to predict students’ academic achievement at the end of Grade 2 with a subsample of 980 students. The strongest achievement predictor was school readiness — the odds of students rated in the top 25% on the KSEP having proficient or advanced scores on the English Language Arts portion of the California Standards Test at the end of Grade 2 were 4.51 greater than the odds of students rated in the bottom 75% on the KSEP having proficient or advanced scores. Similar results were found for students’ achievement in mathematics. The key findings of this study showed that formal preschool experiences play an important role in preparing children of Hispanic descent and who live in households experiencing low income for kindergarten entry. However, children’s readiness at entry into kindergarten was more strongly related to later academic achievement than age at kindergarten entry and preschool experience.
Diesel Exhaust Inhalation Increases Cardiac Output, Bradyarrhythmias, and Parasympathetic Tone in Aged Heart Failure–Prone Rats

Acute air pollutant inhalation is linked to adverse cardiac events and death, and hospitalizations for heart failure. Diesel engine exhaust (DE) is a major air pollutant suspected to exacerbate preexisting cardiac conditions, in part, through autonomic and electrophysiologic disturbance of normal cardiac function. To explore this putative mechanism, we examined cardiophysiologic responses to DE inhalation in a model of aged heart failure-prone rats without signs or symptoms of overt heart failure. We hypothesized that acute DE exposure would alter heart rhythm, cardiac electrophysiology, and ventricular performance and dimensions consistent with autonomic imbalance while increasing biochemical markers of toxicity. Spontaneously hypertensive heart failure rats (16 months) were exposed once to whole DE (4h, target PM(2.5) concentration: 500 µg/m(3)) or filtered air. DE increased multiple heart rate variability (HRV) parameters during exposure. In the 4h after exposure, DE increased cardiac output, left ventricular volume (end diastolic and systolic), stroke volume, HRV, and atrioventricular block arrhythmias while increasing electrocardiographic measures of ventricular repolarization (i.e., ST and T amplitudes, ST area, T-peak to T-end duration). DE did not affect heart rate relative to air. Changes in HRV positively correlated with postexposure changes in bradyarrhythmia frequency, repolarization, and echocardiographic parameters. At 24h postexposure, DE-exposed rats had increased serum C-reactive protein and pulmonary eosinophils. This study demonstrates that cardiac effects of DE inhalation are likely to occur through changes in autonomic balance associated with modulation of cardiac electrophysiology and mechanical function and may offer insights into the adverse health effects of traffic-related air pollutants.
Agrin-Induced Acetylcholine Receptor Clustering Is Mediated by the Small Guanosine Triphosphatases Rac and Cdc42

During neuromuscular junction formation, agrin secreted from motor neurons causes muscle cell surface acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) to cluster at synaptic sites by mechanisms that are insufficiently understood. The Rho family of small guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases), including Rac and Cdc42, can mediate focal reorganization of the cell periphery in response to extracellular signals. Here, we investigated the role of Rac and Cdc42 in coupling agrin signaling to AChR clustering. We found that agrin causes marked muscle-specific activation of Rac and Cdc42 in differentiated myotubes, as detected by biochemical measurements. Moreover, this activation is crucial for AChR clustering, since the expression of dominant interfering mutants of either Rac or Cdc42 in myotubes blocks agrin-induced AChR clustering. In contrast, constitutively active Rac and Cdc42 mutants cause AChR to aggregate in the absence of agrin. By indicating that agrin-dependent activation of Rac and Cdc42 constitutes a critical step in the signaling pathway leading to AChR clustering, these findings suggest a novel role for these Rho-GTPases: the coupling of neuronal signaling to a key step in neuromuscular synaptogenesis.
Comparative Effectiveness of Revascularization Strategies

Among patients 65 years of age or older who had two-vessel or three-vessel coronary artery disease without acute myocardial infarction, 86,244 underwent CABG and 103,549 underwent PCI. The median follow-up period was 2.67 years. At 1 year, there was no significant difference in adjusted mortality between the groups (6.24% in the CABG group as compared with 6.55% in the PCI group; risk ratio, 0.95; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.90 to 1.00). At 4 years, there was lower mortality with CABG than with PCI (16.4% vs. 20.8%; risk ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.76 to 0.82). Similar results were noted in multiple subgroups and with the use of several different analytic methods. Residual confounding was assessed by means of a sensitivity analysis. Conclusions In this observational study, we found that, among older patients with multivessel coronary disease that did not require emergency treatment, there was a long-term survival advantage among patients who underwent CABG as compared with patients who underwent PCI. (Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.)
Regulation of the Anaphase-promoting Complex–Separase Cascade by Transforming Growth Factor-β Modulates Mitotic Progression in Bone Marrow Stromal Cells

Alteration of the tumor microenvironment by aberrant stromal cells influences many aspects of cell biology, including differentiation of stem cells and tumor metastasis. The role of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β signaling in stromal cells of the tissue microenvironment is critical to both pathways. We examined murine marrow stromal cells with deletion of Smad3 and found that they have an altered cell cycle profile, with a higher fraction of cells in G2/M phase. Deletion of Smad3 significantly abrogates TGF-β signaling and suppresses phosphorylation of CDC27–anaphase-promoting complex (APC) during mitosis, thereby resulting in elevated cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)1 activity via increased levels of cyclin B. Enhanced CDK1 activity due to deregulation of APC leads in turn to hyperphosphorylation of separase, impeding chromatid separation. A residue Ser1126Ala mutation in separase specifically abolished separase hyperphosphorylation in Smad3-deficient cells. The present results unveil a new function for the TGF-β pathway in the regulation of APC to mediate chromatid separation during mitosis.
Sakhalin earthquake renews concerns about seismic safety in the former Soviet Union

On May 28,1995, a shallow, Ms = 7.6 earthquake struck the northeastern portion of Sakhalin Island, which lies north of Japan in the western part of the Sea of Okhotsk. Most of the oil town of Neftegorsk (Figure 1) was leveled; of its 3000 inhabitants, as many as 2000 may have died. This earthquake is the worst natural disaster to strike the former Soviet Union since 1988, when an Ms = 6.8 earthquake occurred in a populated region of Armenia, killing more than 25,000. Building damage was reported as far north as Okha, 125 kilometers north of Neftegorsk. Ground shaking ruptured the main oil pipeline in at least twelve places between the epicentral area and Okha, and caused the spillage of oil from a storage tank.
Canonicalization of database records using adaptive similarity measures

It is becoming increasingly common to construct databases from information automatically culled from many heterogeneous sources. For example, a research publication database can be constructed by automatically extracting titles, authors, and conference information from online papers. A common difficulty in consolidating data from multiple sources is that records are referenced in a variety of ways (e.g. abbreviations, aliases, and misspellings). Therefore, it can be difficult to construct a single, standard representation to present to the user. We refer to the task of constructing this representation as canonicalization. Despite its importance, there is little existing work on canonicalization.In this paper, we explore the use of edit distance measures to construct a canonical representation that is "central" in the sense that it is most similar to each of the disparate records. This approach reduces the impact of noisy records on the canonical representation. Furthermore, because the user may prefer different styles of canonicalization, we show how different edit distance costs can result in different forms of canonicalization. For example, reducing the cost of character deletions can result in representations that favor abbreviated forms over expanded forms (e.g. KDD versus Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining). We describe how to learn these costs from a small amount of manually annotated data using stochastic hill-climbing. Additionally, we investigate feature-based methods to learn ranking preferences over canonicalizations. These approaches can incorporate arbitrary textual evidence to select a canonical record. We evaluate our approach on a real-world publications database and show that our learning method results in a canonicalization solution that is robust to errors and easily customizable to user preferences.
Eliciting Business Architecture Information in Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Using VMOST

Enterprise architectures (EA) aim to provide a cohesive information technology (IT) infrastructure by tightly aligning with an enterprise's business environment. To facilitate this, enterprise architecture frameworks (EAF) have been used to understand an enterprise's strategy and business architecture to synthesize a supporting IT strategy. This understanding is critical to the success of an EA. This process is not as simple as consulting an enterprise's strategic plan or mission statement in that they may not capture the tacit strategies and missions of an enterprise's stakeholders. Further, existing EAFs do not provide the necessary guidance to elicit this information. This paper proposes the use of a systematic elicitation approach, VMOST, to understand an enterprise's vision, objectives and processes directly from the perspective of its stakeholders. We assess our approach through interviews with a number of employees across several departments within a University library.
Absorbability and Cost Effectiveness in Calcium Supplementation

Background: Cost-effectiveness of calcium supplementation depends not only on the cost of the product but on the efficiency of its absorption. Published cost-benefit analyses assume equal bioavailability for all calcium sources. Some published studies have suggested that there are differences in both the bioavailability and cost of the major calcium supplements.Design: Randomized four period, three-way cross-over comparing single doses of off-the-shelf commercial calcium supplements containing either calcium carbonate or calcium citrate compared with a no-load blank and with encapsulated calcium carbonate devoid of other ingredients; subjects rendered fully vitamin D-replete with 10 μg/day 25(OH)D by mouth, starting one week prior to the first test.Subjects: 24 postmenopausal womenMethods: Pharmacokinetic analysis of the increment in serum total and ionized calcium and the decrement in serum iPTH induced by an oral calcium load, based upon multiple blood samples over a 24-hour period; measurement of the r...
Higgs boson decays to CP-odd scalars at the Fermilab Tevatron and beyond

In extended Higgs models, the Higgs boson may decay into a pair of light $\mathrm{CP}$-odd scalars, with distinctive collider signatures. We study the ensuing Higgs signals at the upgraded Fermilab Tevatron, considering the subsequent decays of the scalars into pairs of gluons or photons. For $\mathrm{CP}$-odd scalars lighter than a few GeV, the Higgs boson manifests itself as a diphoton resonance and can be discovered up to masses of a few hundred GeV. For heavier $\mathrm{CP}$-odd scalars the reach extends at most up to ${M}_{h}\ensuremath{\sim}120\mathrm{GeV}.$ We also discuss the capabilities of the CERN LHC and lepton colliders in these channels.
Potential impacts of the Affordable Care Act on the clinical practice of hepatology

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, was signed into law and upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year. The ACA contains a variety of reforms that, if implemented, will significantly affect current models of healthcare delivery for patients with acute and chronic hepatobiliary diseases. One of the Act's central reforms is the creation of accountable care organizations (ACOs) whose mission will be to integrate different levels of care to improve the quality of services delivered and outcomes among populations while maintaining, or preferably reducing, the overall costs of care. Currently, there are clinical practice areas within hepatology, such as liver transplantation, that already have many of the desired features attributed to ACOs. The ACA is sure to affect all fields of medicine, including the practice of clinical hepatology. This article describes the components of the ACA that have the greatest potential to influence the clinical practice of hepatology. Conclusion: Ultimately, it will be the responsibility of our profession to identify optimal healthcare delivery models for providing high-value, patient-centered care. (Hepatology 2014;59:1681–1687)
Strategic Note-Taking for Inclusive Middle School Science Classrooms

To be successful in inclusive classrooms, middle school students need effective note-taking skills to learn lecture content. Unfortunately, students with disabilities perform poorly at recording critical lecture content in notes and perform poorly on subsequent tests. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a note-taking technique, called strategic note-taking, on the note-taking and achievement of students with and without learning disabilities. The Results showed that students who were trained to use strategic note-taking performed better than students who used conventional note-taking on measures of immediate recall and comprehension. The limitations of the research and the implications for future research are discussed.
Cereblon binding molecules in multiple myeloma

Immunomodulation is an established treatment strategy in multiple myeloma with thalidomide and its derivatives lenalidomide and pomalidomide as its FDA approved representatives. Just recently the method of action of these cereblon binding molecules was deciphered and results from large phase 3 trials confirmed the backbone function of this drug family in various combination therapies. This review details the to-date knowledge concerning mechanism of IMiD action, clinical applications and plausible escape mechanisms in which cells may become resistant/refractory to cereblon binding molecule based treatment.
Bleeding Avoidance in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement: A Call to ACTion?∗

Bleeding complications after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) are common. Reported rates of major bleeding at 30 days include 9.3% and 16.8% in the high- and extreme-risk cohorts of the PARTNER (Placement of Aortic Transcatheter Valve) trial [(1,2)][1], 24.1% in the extreme-risk cohort
Unraveled Yarns: Dress, Consumption, and Women's Bodies in Ghanaian Culture

(2003). Unraveled Yarns: Dress, Consumption, and Women's Bodies in Ghanaian Culture. Fashion Theory: Vol. 7, No. 3-4, pp. 377-395.
A Richard Aoki Forum: What Does It Take to Destroy a Legend?

Organized by UCLA Asian American Studies Center Publications Manager Mary Kao, this Amerasia Forum addresses the recent controversy over the claim that Richard Aoki worked as a FBI informant. Gathered here are a collection of short essays from personal friends and colleagues of Richard Aoki: Douglas Daniels, Harvey Dong, Wayie Ly. The pieces offer personal portraits of Aoki as the contributors consider his legacy and achievements in light of recent events.
Protein myristoylation as an intermediate step during signal transduction in macrophages: its role in arachidonic acid metabolism and in responses to interferon γ

The role of macrophages in the regulation of inflamation and immunity is, in part, due to their secretory repertoire. Among the important mediators released by macrophages are the products of both the cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase pathways of arachidonic acid (20:4) metabolism. The principal focus of this paper is the mechanism by which bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) regulate 20:4 metabolism in macrophages. LPS has the capacity to prime macrophages for greatly enhanced 20:4 metabolism when the cells are subsequently challenged with a spectrum of triggers. Concomitant with priming, LPS also promotes the covalent attachment of myristic acid to a set of macrophage proteins. The time and concentration dependence of LPS-induced protein myristoylation is consistent with a role for myristoylation in LPS priming of the 20:4 cascade. One of the myristoylated proteins is a 68K (K = 103 M r) protein kinase C substrate which associates with membranes upon myristoylation. LPS-primed macrophages show greatly increased phosphorylation of the 68K protein when the cells are subsequently treated with protein kinase C activating phorbol esters. It is proposed that the myristoylation of the 68K protein promotes its attachment to the membrane where it is more closely associated with activated protein kinase C (PKC), an association which would ensure more efficient catalysis during the mobilization and oxygenation of 20:4. This paper also examines protein myristoylation during T-cell-mediated activation of macrophages. Immune-activated macrophages have an enhanced capacity to kill several infectious agents by oxidative mechanisms. The lymphokine y-interferon (IFN γ ) rapidly induces the myristoylation of a 48K protein. This 48K protein is also myristoylated in murine macrophages that have been activated in vivo by intraperitoneal injection of Corynebacterium parvum , suggesting that it may be an important intermediate in the activation of macrophages for enhanced microbicidal capacity.
HETEROGENEITY OF ANTINUCLEAR FACTORS IN LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS AND RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS.

SummaryTwenty-six sera from adults and children with lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, or chronic active hepatitis were tested in a 3-layer immunofluorescence test on human white cell nuclei. Rabbit antisera against human type I and type II Bence Jones protein were used to determine whether the antinuclear factors contained type I or type II L chains. Twenty-four of the sera were shown to contain ANF with both types of L chains. In the remaining 2 cases quantitative considerations limited the study. Both type I and type II ANF were also found in isolated fractions of γ2 and γ1M globulins in 4 lupus sera.
Activating stereotypes with brand imagery: The role of viewer political identity

Abstract The use of ethnic imagery in visual identities of brands, such as those used by professional sports franchises, has long been a contentious issue in American society. This research investigates the oft-voiced argument that ethnic brand imagery perpetuates negative stereotypes (a claim that has been subject to very little empirical scrutiny) and identifies conditions under which encountering such brand imagery strengthens both positive and negative implicit stereotypes. Within the context of American Indian brand imagery, two laboratory experiments (Studies 1 and 2) and a quasi-experimental field study (Study 3) revealed that the effects of ethnic brand imagery on stereotypes depend on the viewer's political identity. Exposure to ethnic brand imagery strengthened implicit stereotypes only among more liberal individuals, consistent with the idea that liberals tend to hold more malleable views. These findings demonstrate measurable negative effects of ethnic brand imagery on implicit stereotypes and support the view that the use of such imagery can carry detrimental societal consequences.
Beautification for Female in Bangladesh: Exploring the Service Gap Through SERVQUAL Model

With the intensifying effect of globalization, females of a country like Bangladesh become more beauty conscious. Women of different age groups, occupation and socio-economic background are now regularly visiting the beauty parlors of the country. As a result the beauty salons have become one of the flourishing industries of the country. Like any other service industries, service quality is the source of profitability in the beauty parlors too. That’s why an initiative is made in the current study to explore the service quality by identifying service gap in the female segment of beauty care industry. Data were collected through structured questionnaire survey conducted on 100 regular customers of five beauty parlors. The questionnaire was designed on the basis of popular SERVQUAL model of service quality. Results revealed significant gaps in terms of all the dimensions of service quality. The highest level of gap was found in responsiveness and empathy dimension. Reliability and, assurance showed comparatively less gap while tangibles scored the lowest gap.
The relationship between respiratory threshold of acetylcholine and clinical course of asthma in children

The relationship between the respiratory threshold of acetylcholine (Rt-Ach) and the clinical course of asthma was studied in 70 asthmatic patients. RT-Ach was examined by the standard method in Japan. The clinical course of asthma was evaluated according to the daily record of asthmatic symptoms. The observations periods were 1, 6, and 12 months before, and 6 and 12 months after the inhalation test. There was a significant negative correlation between RT-Ach and the total number of days of asthmatic attacks before the inhalation test. However there was no such relationship between the RT-Ach and attacks after the inhalation test. We concluded that RT-Ach might depend on the clinical course of asthma, especially total days of asthmatic attacks before the inhalation test.
"Ecologic niche" of undetected hypertensives at increased risk.

The "ecologic niche" where large numbers of young black hypertensive males can be found is in the emergency clinics of our public general hospitals. Unfortunately, present medical practices in these clinics do not adequately identify the hypertensive patient. Because educational measures are unlikely to change this deficiency, the present organization and management of the emergency clinics must be changed to give these hypertensive patients effective treatment. As the public becomes more aware of the successes in treating mild hypertension, we can anticipate that health care practices of both hypertensive patients and their physicians will improve.
Quantile Regression Analysis of Asymmetrically Distributed Residuals

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the phenomenon noted in Chapter 3 of a marked tendency toward asymmetrical distributions of residuals from equations estimated with data from the CES quarterly consumption surveys. Fig. 9.1 provides yet another display of this tendency, this time for the residuals from the model for shelter for 1996 Q1 in Table 6.2. Again, we see that the (kernel-smoothed) distribution of residuals is not symmetrical, but is left-skewed, and has peak density well to the right of the OLS mean of 0.1 As noted in Chapter 3, error distributions with such characteristics have ominous implications for least squares estimation. In this chapter, we shall illustrate, in the context of the additive double-logarithmic model of the last chapter, our procedure for dealing with this asymmetry using quantile regression.
Defensins in Enteric Mucosal Immunity

Abstract The mammalian defensins are composed of three families of cationic, Cys-rich, broad-spectrum microbicides known as α-, β-, and θ-defensins. The α- and β-defensins are ∼4.5 kDa cationic peptides with six cysteine residues that form distinctive tridisulfide arrays, and both subfamilies have widespread roles in mucosal immunity. θ-Defensins, ∼2 kDa and the only macrocyclic peptides known in the animal kingdom, are potent microbicidal and anti-inflammatory peptides. In the small intestine, α-defensins secreted by Paneth cells in response to cholinergic or infectious stimuli constitute the majority of enteric bactericidal activity. Their roles in providing immunity to oral Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium infection and in modulating the composition of the ileal microbiota have been confirmed in vivo in mice. Disruption of Paneth cell homeostasis, with subsequent induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress, autophagy, or apoptosis, contributes to inflammation and dysbiosis, and impairs innate mucosal immunity. In the small intestine, α-defensins secreted by Paneth cells constitute a major source of antimicrobial peptide activity in the small intestine, and analyses of Paneth cell α-defensins have provided compelling and extensive evidence for defensin-mediated mucosal immunity.
FACID: A trust-based collaborative decision framework for intrusion detection networks

Abstract Computer systems evolve to be more complex and vulnerable. Cyber attacks have also grown to be more sophisticated and harder to detect. Intrusion detection is the process of monitoring and identifying unauthorized system access or manipulation. It becomes increasingly difficult for a single intrusion detection system (IDS) to detect all attacks due to limited knowledge about attacks. Collaboration among intrusion detection devices can be used to gain higher detection accuracy and cost efficiency as compared to its traditional single host-based counterpart. Through cooperation, a local IDS can detect new attacks that may be known to other IDSs, which may be from different vendors. However, how to utilize the diagnosis from different IDSs to perform intrusion detection is the key challenge. This paper proposes a system architecture of a collaborative intrusion detection network (CIDN), in which trustworthy and efficient feedback aggregation is a key component. To achieve a reliable and trustworthy CIDN, we present a framework called FACID, which leverages data analytical models and hypothesis testing methods for efficient, distributed and sequential feedback aggregations. FACID provides an inherent trust evaluation mechanism and reduces communication overhead needed for IDSs as well as the computational resources and memory needed to achieve satisfactory feedback aggregation results when the number of collaborators of an IDS is large. Our simulation results corroborate our theoretical results and demonstrate the properties of cost efficiency and accuracy compared to other heuristic methods. The analytical result on the lower-bound of the average number of acquaintances for consultation is essential for the design and configuration of IDSs in a collaborative environment.
The Clinical Value of Intraoperative Mobile Computed Tomography in Managing High-Risk Surgical Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury-A Single Tertiary Trauma Center Experience.

Objective A subset of surgically treated patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) cannot be stabilized by initial surgery. Mobile computed tomography (CT) provides real-time information for diagnosis in these TBI surgically high-risk (TBI-SHR) patients. The objective of this study was to analyze a 5-year series of TBI-SHR patients to evaluate the impact of intraoperative mobile CT (imCT) on prognosis. Methods Of 1017 surgically treated patients with TBI retrospectively reviewed over a 5-year period (2009–2013), 59 patients required second operations within 72 hours of their initial surgery because of progressive or delayed hematomas (TBI-SHR group). Their clinical, radiographic, and intraoperative findings were compared among 19 patients who received imCT versus 40 patients who received fixed-unit CT. Results Our TBI-SHR group accounted for 5.8% of all surgically treated patients with TBI. The use of imCT led to a change in surgical plan in 56% of patients with TBI intraoperatively. Younger patients (≤55 years; P P = 0.033) and with an intraoperative unexpected event such as intraoperative intracranial pressure >20 mm Hg or acute brain swelling after adequate decompression ( P = 0.003 and 0.004, respectively) significantly benefited from imCT in the TBI-SHR group. imCT also provided a quicker diagnosis ( P P = 0.077), and was associated with better neurologic outcomes at discharge days ( P = 0.044). Conclusions The use of imCT is associated with better neurologic outcomes at discharge days compared with the use of fixed-unit CT in TBI-SHR patients.
Associations of baseline depressed mood and happiness with subsequent well-being in cardiac patients.

Abstract Rationale The relationship between depressive symptoms and adverse outcomes for patients with cardiac problems has been well established for several decades. However, less is known about other factors that may influence psychosocial outcomes for cardiac patients. Objective To evaluate the association between baseline happiness and depressed mood on later psychosocial functioning among cardiac patients. Method Participants ( N = 250) were patients who had received medical treatment at an academic medical center for a cardiac event. Participants completed questionnaires at two time points: Approximately 2 weeks after they had been discharged from the hospital (baseline) and again 12 weeks later. Participants completed validated measures of depressed mood, happiness, health distress, expectations about health, and quality of life. Results Baseline depressed mood and happiness both significantly predicted health-related distress and depressive symptoms at follow up. Happiness ratings were associated with lower distress and depressed mood, whereas scores for depressive symptoms showed the opposite pattern. Happiness, but not depressed mood, was a significant predictor of more positive quality of life ratings. Conversely, only depressed mood was a significant predictor of less positive expectations about health. Conclusion The results of this study suggest that investigating positive baseline affect in addition to depressed mood provides additional useful information that may help explain why some patients have more negative outcomes following cardiac events.
Kinetic and radiative power from optically thin accretion flows

We perform a set of general relativistic, radiative, magneto-hydrodynamical simulations (GR-RMHD) to study the transition from radiatively inefficient to efficient state of accretion on a non-rotating black hole. We study ion to electron temperature ratios ranging from $T_{\rm i}/T_{\rm e}=10$ to $100$, and simulate flows corresponding to accretion rates as low as $10^{-6}\dot M_{\rm Edd}$, and as high as $10^{-2}\dot M_{\rm Edd}$. We have found that the radiative output of accretion flows increases with accretion rate, and that the transition occurs earlier for hotter electrons (lower $T_{\rm i}/T_{\rm e}$ ratio). At the same time, the mechanical efficiency hardly changes and accounts to ${\approx}\,3\%$ of the accreted rest mass energy flux, even at the highest simulated accretion rates. This is particularly important for the mechanical AGN feedback regulating massive galaxies, groups, and clusters. Comparison with recent observations of radiative and mechanical AGN luminosities suggests that the ion to electron temperature ratio in the inner, collisionless accretion flow should fall within $10<T_{\rm i}/T_{\rm e}<30$, i.e., the electron temperature should be several percent of the ion temperature.
IMPLANTABLE CARDIOVERTER DEFIBRILLATOR FOR THE PREVENTION OF MORTALITY IN NON-ISCHEMIC CARDIOMYOPATHY: A META-ANALYSIS OF RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS

Background: The survival benefit of Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in ischemic cardiomyopathy with an ejection fraction (EF) of ≤35% is well established. However, there remains controversy regarding its benefit in non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM). We performed a meta-analysis
The Role of Stress as a Risk Factor for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

Author(s): Kelley, Kristen D; Peavy, Guerry; Edland, Steven; Rogers, Whitney; Riley, David E; Bordelon, Yvette; Standaert, David; Reich, Stephen G; Litvan, Irene | Abstract: BackgroundPSP, like Alzheimer's disease (AD), is a tauopathy. The etiopathogenesis of PSP is not well known and the role of stress has not yet been examined. Recent studies have shown that stress increases the risk for developing AD. This study investigates the role of stress as a risk factor for PSP.ObjectiveB To examine the association between the development of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and self-reported life stressors.Methods76 patients diagnosed with PSP according to the NINDS-SPSP criteria and 68 age-matched unrelated controls were administered a life stressor questionnaire. Stress was quantified as total number of events, number of life changing events, and number of events characterized by self-rated severity. Conditional odds ratio (OR) was calculated for each measure, with participants in the highest quartile of each measure being defined as high-exposure in relation to all other participants.ResultsThere were no significant differences between the reported number of total events or life-changing events in cases and controls. However, we found 24.4% of cases (N = 11) and 9.1% of controls (N = 5) had a higher exposure to high severity events, yielding an OR of 3.2 (p = 0.04).ConclusionsWe found that cases have over a three times greater odds of high exposure to high-severity events than controls prior to the clinical development of PSP, while there were no differences in overall number of reported events. Our findings suggest that high exposure to highly stressful events may be associated with the development of PSP.
Fluids of hard convex molecules: I. Basic theory

We consider the excess Helmholtz free energy ΔA for a system of hard convex molecules without additional soft interactions. The starting point is the expansion of -ΔA in irreducible graphs of Mayer f bonds. For such a system, differential and integral geometry can be used to obtain a reformulation in which the use of two-body geometry, as implicit in the f function, is replaced by one-body geometry. A graph point with n incident bonds (n-point) requires a set of n-point measures of one-body geometry. An example is an old (1936) result of Santalo and Blaschke, which expresses the second virial coefficient in terms of the 1-point measures volume, surface, and integral mean curvature. We obtain the corresponding result for the next simplest class of graphs, the rings, which contain only 2-points. This results in an enormous reduction in complexity, especially for mixtures. We define the set of 2-point measures required to compute the ring graphs. For graphs which contain n-points with n > 2, the added comple...
The Human Rights Obligations of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs): Emerging Conceptual Structures and Principles in National and International Law and Policy

The distinction between the obligations of public and private entities, and their relation to law, is well known in classical political and legal theory. States have a duty which is undertaken through law; enterprises have a responsibility which is embedded in their governance. These fundamental divisions form part of the current international efforts to institutionalize human rights related norms on and through states and enterprises, and most notably through the U.N. Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGP). The problems of conforming to evolving norms becomes more difficult where states project their authority through commercial enterprises. These state owned enterprises (SOEs) operate where state duty and enterprise responsibility meet. This essay takes a close look at the issue of the human rights duties of states as owners of SOEs, and of the responsibilities of SOEs for their own human rights related conduct. The form and substance of these duties and responsibilities are considered in light of two recent developments. The first is the substantial change in the direction of U.S. policy in trade and globalization. The other is the maturation of Chinese outbound economic and investment policy, where its construction of an outbound nationalist globalization - the One Belt One Road policy - relies to some extent on the projection of commercial power through Chinese SOEs. After After an Introduction, Part II, “Challenging Engagement and Engagement Challenges,” closely examines the emerging structures and principles of the debate through a deep analysis of the 2016 Report of the U.N. Working Group on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises, interrogating its conceptual framework and its implementation programs. Part III then briefly considers the consequences of these approaches and work left to be done: from conceptual lacunae to implementation. It offers a set of ten (10) challenges and recommendations for further development. These recommendations and challenges suggest that issues of corporate personality, of sovereign immunity, of asset partition, and of the mania for compartmentalization that marks certain approaches to global economic and financial regulation may well hobble the work of embedding human rights within the operation of states as owners and SOEs as public enterprises. To embed human rights more effectively in accordance with evolving international standards, it may be necessary to substantially change contemporary and backwards looking legal frameworks within which SOEs now operate. More importantly it suggests the difficulty of the current strongly held consensus that the focus of regulatory governance must be a formally constituted enterprise, the SOE, rather than economic activity irrespective of the form in which it is undertaken. Until these conceptual issues are considered the regulation of economic activates - SOEs, supply chains, multinational corporations, will remain elusive.
Pediatric mitochondrial diseases and the heart.

Purpose of review Mitochondrial disorders are an increasingly recognized cause of heart dysfunction, with the primary manifestations being cardiomyopathy and conduction defects. This review focuses on the complex genetics of mitochondrial disease and recently discovered conditions that affect mitochondrial function. Recent findings Next-generation sequencing techniques, especially whole-exome sequencing, have led to the discovery of a number of conditions that cause mitochondrial dysfunction and subsequent cardiac abnormalities. Nuclear DNA defects are the main cause of mitochondrial disease in children, with disease pathogenesis being related to either abnormalities in specific mitochondrial electron transport chain subunits or in proteins related to subunit or mitochondrial DNA maintenance, mitochondrial protein translation, lipid bilayer structure, or other aspects of mitochondrial function. Summary Currently, symptomatic therapy using standard medications targeting relief of complications is the primary approach to treatment. There are no US Food and Drug Administration-approved therapies for the specific treatment of mitochondrial disease. However, on the basis of recent advances in understanding of the pathophysiology of these complex disorders, various novel approaches are either in clinical trials or in development.
Energy-efficient mapping of large-scale workflows under deadline constraints in big data computing systems

Abstract Large-scale workflows for big data analytics have become a main consumer of energy in data centers where moldable parallel computing models such as MapReduce are widely applied to meet high computational demands with time-varying computing resources. The granularity of task partitioning in each moldable job of such big data workflows has a significant impact on energy efficiency, which remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we analyze the properties of moldable jobs and formulate a workflow mapping problem to minimize the dynamic energy consumption of a given workflow request under a deadline constraint in big data systems. Since this problem is strongly NP-hard, we design a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for a special case with a pipeline-structured workflow on a homogeneous cluster and a heuristic for the generalized problem with an arbitrary workflow on a heterogeneous cluster. The performance superiority of the proposed solution in terms of dynamic energy saving and deadline missing rate is illustrated by extensive simulation results in comparison with existing algorithms, and further validated by real-life workflow implementation and experimental results in Hadoop/YARN systems.
Both Ways at Once: Keeping Small Airways Clean

The small airways of the lungs are under constant assault from the pathogens and debris in the air that they must conduct to alveoli. Although hygiene is of paramount importance for respiratory health, the underlying principles of airway clearance have not been well integrated or established. Newly emerging concepts of simultaneous absorption and secretion of airway surface liquid (ASL) and the role of [Formula: see text] in the maturation of mucins have advanced from experimental evidence as well as observations from the congenital disease cystic fibrosis (CF) to present a novel model that integrates microanatomy with organ physiology to meet the constant challenge of cleaning small airways.
The Underworlds Project and the “Collective Microbiome”: Mining Biovalue from Sewage

This chapter explores an attempt to mine biovalue from sewage , drawing from interviews and ethnographic data with researchers of the Underworlds Project at MIT, USA. The chapter discusses how sewage samples are transformed into epidemiological data from the neighborhood by screening for viruses, bacterial pathogens, and biomarkers. Underworld researchers argue that the constant tracking of the sewage could alert public health officials even before a significant number of people were sick, promising insights into epidemics yet to happen. Sewage becomes not just a proxy for the above-world; it becomes a glimpse into its future . The data collected would inform what the Underworlds team calls the “collective microbiome, ” which could also feed back into studies of the human microbiome . Reis-Castro probes the “collective microbiome ” category to discuss how sewage is made to stand as a proxy for human body/bodies. The chapter also outlines how the Underworld project is situated within historical attempts to transform waste into something valuable and recent tendencies to define human bodies through microbes.