cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Context-sensitive decision support (infobuttons) in electronic health records: a systematic review.

Objective Infobuttons appear as small icons adjacent to electronic health record (EHR) data (e.g., medications, diagnoses, or test results) that, when clicked, access online knowledge resources tailored to the patient, care setting, or task. Infobuttons are required for “Meaningful Use” certification of US EHRs. We sought to evaluate infobuttons’ impact on clinical practice and identify features associated with improved outcomes. Methods We conducted a systematic review, searching MEDLINE, EMBASE, and other databases from inception to July 6, 2015. We included and cataloged all original research in any language describing implementation of infobuttons or other context-sensitive links. Studies evaluating clinical implementations with outcomes of usage or impact were reviewed in greater detail. Reviewers worked in duplicate to select articles, evaluate quality, and abstract information. Results Of 599 potential articles, 77 described infobutton implementation. The 17 studies meriting detailed review, including 3 randomized trials, yielded the following findings. Infobutton usage frequency ranged from 0.3 to 7.4 uses per month per potential user. Usage appeared to be influenced by EHR task. Five studies found that infobuttons are used less often than non–context-sensitive links (proportionate usage 0.20–0.34). In 3 studies, users answered their clinical question in > 69% of infobutton sessions. Seven studies evaluated alternative approaches to infobutton design and implementation. No studies isolated the impact of infobuttons on objectively measured patient outcomes. Conclusions Weak evidence suggests that infobuttons can help providers answer clinical questions. Research on optimal infobutton design and implementation, and on the impact on patient outcomes and provider behaviors, is needed.
Extended abstract: Best practices for data visualization

Data visualizations incorporate effective data representation strategies to integrate, unify and standardize data coming from different sources. Well-designed visual representations provide visual access to huge amounts of data in easily ingestible chunks. This promotes increased usage and enhanced learning, and facilitates better task performance. Our goal, therefore, was to provide business analytics stakeholders with a comprehensive report on what constitutes the best practices for data visualizations, so as to inform design strategies that foster insight and sense-making.
Assessing the influence of migration barriers and feeding ecology on total mercury concentrations in Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma) from a glaciated and non-glaciated stream

Assimilation of mercury (Hg) into food webs is directly influenced by ecological factors such as local habitat characteristics, species feeding behavior, and movement patterns. Total Hg concentrations ([THg]) in biota from Subarctic latitudes are driven both by broad spatial processes such as long-range atmospheric transport and more local influences such as biovectors and geology. Thus, even relatively pristine protected lands such as national parks are experiencing Hg accumulation. We analyzed [THg] and stable isotopes of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) in 104 Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma) collected from two rivers in southeastern Alaska, upstream and downstream of apparent anadromous migration barriers in watersheds with and without glacial coverage. To assess the potential magnitude of marine-derived THg returning to freshwater, we analyzed [THg] in ten adult pink salmon from each study system. There were no differences in Dolly Varden mean [THg] between sites after the data were standardized for fork length, but unadjusted [THg] varied relative to fish size and δ15N values. While previous studies generally show that [THg] increases with higher δ15N values, we found that Dolly Varden below migration barriers and foraging on salmon eggs had the highest δ15N values among all sampled individuals, but the lowest [THg]. Dolly Varden residing below anadromous barriers had δ13C values consistent with marine influence. Since salmon eggs typically have low [Hg], our results suggest that abundant salmon populations and the dietary subsidy they provide may reduce the annual exposure to [Hg] in egg-eating stream fishes such as Dolly Varden. In addition to identifying a suitable species for freshwater Hg monitoring in southeastern Alaska, our study more broadly implies that river characteristics, location within a river, fish size, and feeding ecology are important factors influencing Hg accumulation.
Neuroimaging the neural correlates of increased risk for substance use disorders in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-A systematic review.

Background/Objectives Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are nearly three times more likely to develop substance use disorders (SUD) than their typically developing peers. Our objective was to review the existing neuroimaging research on high-risk ADHD (ie, ADHD with disruptive behavior disorders, familial SUD and/or early substance use), focusing on impulsivity as one possible mechanism underlying SUD risk. Methods A PubMed literature search was conducted using combinations of the keywords “ADHD,” “substance use,” “substance use disorder,” “SUD,” “addiction,” “dependence,” “abuse,” “risk,” “brain” “MRI,” “imaging” and “neuroimaging.” Studies had to include cohorts that met diagnostic criteria for ADHD; studies of individuals with ADHD who all met criteria for SUD were excluded. Eight studies met the search criteria. Results Individuals with high-risk ADHD have hyperactivation in the motivation-reward processing brain network during tasks of impulsive choice, emotion processing, and risky decision-making. During response inhibition tasks, they have hypoactivation in the inhibitory control brain network. However, studies focusing on this latter circuit found hypoactivation during inhibitory control tasks, decreased white matter microstructure coherence and reduced cortical thickness in ADHD independent of substance use history. Discussion/Conclusions An exaggerated imbalance between the inhibitory control network and the motivation-reward processing network is theorized to distinguish individuals with high-risk ADHD. Preliminary findings suggest that an exaggerated aberrant reward processing network may be the driving neural correlate of increased SUD risk in ADHD. Scientific Significance Neural biomarkers of increased SUD risk in ADHD could help clinicians identify which patients may benefit most from SUD prevention. Thus, more neuroimaging research on this vulnerable population is needed. (Am J Addict 2017;26:99–111)
Nudges, Autonomy, and Organ Donor Registration Policies: Response to Critics

I am very grateful to the authors of the open peer commentaries, as well as Cass R. Sunstein, for their challenging and insightful comments on our article “The Ethics of Organ Donor Registration Po...
Regulation of Transporters and Channels by Membrane-Trafficking Complexes in Epithelial Cells

The vectorial secretion and absorption of fluid and solutes by epithelial cells is dependent on the polarized expression of membrane solute transporters and channels at the apical and basolateral membranes. The establishment and maintenance of this polarized expression of transporters and channels are affected by divers protein-trafficking complexes. Moreover, regulation of the magnitude of transport is often under control of physiological stimuli, again through the interaction of transporters and channels with protein-trafficking complexes. This review highlights the value in utilizing transporters and channels as cargo to characterize core trafficking machinery by which epithelial cells establish and maintain their polarized expression, and how this machinery regulates fluid and solute transport in response to physiological stimuli.
On Efficient Packet-Switched Wireless Networking: A Markovian Approach to Trans-Layer Design and Optimization of ROHC

In packet-switched radio links, the little known Robust Header Compression (ROHC) has become an integral part of many wireless and particularly cellular communication networks. To strengthen existing schemes, this paper aims to improve ROHC performance in terms of payload efficiency for U-mode compression under poor wireless channel conditions. We first consider the parameter optimization of current ROHC systems, for which we propose a Markov compressor model suitable for realistic unidirectional (U-mode) ROHC. We present both the steady-state analysis and the transient behavior analysis of the ROHC. More generally, we propose a novel trans-layer ROHC design concept by exploiting lower cellular network layer status information to adaptively control header compression without dedicated feedbacks. Considering practical delay and inaccuracy when acquiring lower layer information, we develop a ROHC control framework in terms of a partially observable Markov decision process. Our results demonstrate the strength of our Markov ROHC compressor model in characterizing both stationary and transient behaviors, and the significant advantage of the proposed trans-layer ROHC design approach.
A Reappraisal of Wetting in the System A1-A12O3from 750–1000°C

Wetting plays an important role in many technological aspects of the aluminum industry including: fluxless brazing,1 the selection of refractories for containment2 or filtration and the fabrication of metal-matrix composites.3 While the importance of the oxide film on aluminum in this context was recognized early,4,5 the extremely low equilibrium oxygen pressure of the Al-Al2O3 system (10−48 atm at 800°C) precluded the study of this system under the conditions of controlled oxygen concentration as has since been done with other metal-oxide systems.6,7Therefore, kinetic factors such as gas flow, metal impurities, heating rates and gas composition all contributed to the structure and thickness of the oxide film on the aluminum, and consequently to disparate results. Early studies of interfacial phenomena in the Al-Al2O3 system made use of high vacuum techniques to clean the metal surface of oxide films by the formation and removal of a volatile suboxide, Al2O5,8,9 Despite various experimental precautions, contact angles reported for this system at temperatures below approximately 1000°C exhibit wide scatter. Little attempt has been made to date to reconcile these cjgflicting data. Recent reevaluation of the surface tension of aluminum,10 and its contact angle with alumina substrates,11 suggests that most prior low-temperature measurements represented the interaction of aluminum with its substrate in the presence of an oxide film at least a monolayer thick and in other cases probably 50–100 Angstroms or more in thickness.
Solvent Based 3D Printing of Biopolymer/Bioactive Glass Composite and Hydrogel for Tissue Engineering Applications

Abstract Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is an emerging technology in which scaffolding materials and cell-laden hydrogels may be deposited in a pre-determined fashion to create 3D porous constructs. A major challenge in 3D bioprinting is the slow degradation of melt deposited biopolymer. In this paper, we describe a new method for printing poly-caprolactone (PCL)/bioactive borate glass composite as a scaffolding material and Pluronic F127 hydrogel as a cell suspension medium. Bioactive borate glass was added to a mixture of PCL and organic solvent to make an extrudable paste using one syringe while hydrogel was extruded and deposited in between the PCL/borate glass filaments using a second syringe. The degradation of the PCL/borate glass composite scaffold with and without the presence of hydrogel was investigated by soaking the scaffold in minimum essential medium. The weight loss of the scaffold together with formation of a hydroxyapatite-like layer on the surface shows the excellent bioactivity of the scaffold.
COMPUTER GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS AND DISCRIMINATION

A data analytic approach to discrimination will be presented in which computer graphics is used as an aid in examining the data for possible initial misclassifications and unequal covariance strutures. This is achieved by noting the data (also summarized by ellipses if desired) projected on various planes defined by the centroids of selected triplets of groups. Weighted discriminations are compared for discrimination computed under both linear and non-linear assumptions.
Extended burnup fuel cycle optimization for pressurized water reactors

A fast, yet accurate, fuel cycle analysis methodology was developed to optimize the various options for in-core nuclear fuel management. The methodology encompasses two major parts, a multicycle point reactor model, PUFLAC, and a reload pattern optimization code called DSPWR. The PUFLAC model provides a convenient and reliable survey ability to explore the various fuel cycle scheme possibilities while DSPWR utilizes a direct search scheme to minimize the core power peaking with consideration given to local power-peaking factor variation. A two-dimensional nodal code used in this direct search scheme was developed for the power distribution calculations and is based on the widely used code, EPRI-NODE-P, with very good agreement obtained. This methodology has been demonstrated by considering an extended burnup three-to-four batch transition cycle analysis using Zion Unit 1 as a reference pressurized water reactor plant with realistic power-peaking constraints. The four-batch scheme can yield an increase in uranium utilization of about 5% and a decrease in fuel cycle costs of about 7%. The transition from a three to four-batch scheme can yield an overall increase in uranium utilization of 2.4% and a decrease in fuel cycle costs of about 4%. The transition fuel-loading patterns optimized by DSPWR satisfy themore » core power-peaking constraint with a 2 to 3% margin at beginning-of-cycle.« less
Premature Popularization of Asperger Syndrome

Asperger (1944) described a disorder showing amazing overlap with autism first introduced by Kanner (1943) during the same time period. Since then, some clinicians and researchers have emphasized what they considered important differences between the two sets of descriptions, whereas others believed that Asperger syndrome (AS) was the same as Kanner’s autism when confined to children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Yet, paradoxically, AS appears in the title of an ever-increasing number of professional publications, including this volume, and AS is increasingly being used as a clinical designation, thus adding to the unresolved confusion.
Family Needs of the Autistic Adolescent

The plight of autistic children has long brought forth efforts from the professional and lay communities to understand their needs and to try in some measure to provide treatment and education. It has only been in the last decade that the special needs of the families have been widely recognized. DeMyer (1979) has documented some major needs of families whose children were pre-school and school age, and vignettes of family needs in adolescence and adulthood. A literature review of research during the 1970s (DeMyer, Hingtgen, & Jackson, 1981) uncovered no systematic surveys or studies of family needs when the autistic family member reached adolescence. Reported in this chapter is a pilot survey of family needs and problems as the parents stated them. Because we wished to compare the adolescent period with other life periods, we also inquired about family needs during the autistic person’s preschool, prepuberty, and adult years.
The Grounds for Conflict: Grienberger, Grassi, Galileo, and Posterity

In 1672 John Collins asked Isaac Newton for his opinion on Giovanni Alfonso Borelli’s De motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus. Newton replied that he esteemed Borelli “among the middle sort of Authors,” then added: “I find not that he hath added any thing considerable to the science of motion but onely proved things already evidently known. Nor hath he done that without some Paralogisms ... And some of them are not onely proved parallogistically but are also false ... but yet he may be of good use to young students in Mechanicks.” A decade and a half later, Newton had another occasion to reflect on Borelli’s merit, and now he proved more complimentary, in part because Borelli served as a whip with which to lash out at Hooke. “I am told,” Newton wrote Halley, that Hooke pretended “I had all from him.”
Exposure and Hazard Assessment Working Group

The efforts of the Exposure and Hazard Assessment Working Group were focused on the exchange of information on a variety of topics including research projects, regulations/statutes, analytical laboratories, and methods of exposure/risk assessment involving CDDs and CDFs. It was evident to the leaders of the Working Group that several of the knowledge voids had to be addressed on a fundamental level before expanded efforts could be made. Several questions needed to be answered:
Real-Time Cerebral Hemodynamic Response to Tactile Somatosensory Stimulation.

Background and purpose Recent studies in rodents suggest that somatosensory stimulation could provide neuroprotection during ischemic stroke by inducing plasticity in the cortex-vasculature relationship. While functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has shown that somatosensory stimulation increases cerebral blood flow (CBF) over several seconds, subsecond changes in CBF in the basal cerebral arteries have rarely been studied due to temporal resolution limitations. This study characterized hemodynamic changes in the middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) during somatosensory stimulation with high temporal resolution (100 samples/s) using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD). Methods Pneumotactile somatosensory stimulation, consisting of punctate pressure pulses traversing the glabrous skin of the hand at 25 cm/s, was used to induce CBF velocity (CBFV) response curves. Changes in CBFV were measured in the bilateral MCAs using fTCD. All 12 subjects underwent three consecutive trials consisting of 20 seconds of stimulation followed by 5 minutes of rest. Results Sharp, bilateral increases in CBFV of about 20% (left MCA = 20.5%, right MCA = 18.8%) and sharp decreases in pulsatility index of about 8% were observed during stimulation. Left lateralization of up to 3.9% was also observed. The magnitude of the initial increase in CBFV showed significant adaptation between subsequent trials. Conclusions Pneumotactile somatosensory stimulation is a potent stimulus that can evoke large, rapid hemodynamic changes, with adaptation between successive stimulus applications. Due to its high temporal resolution, fTCD is useful for identifying quickly evolving hemodynamic responses, and for correlating changes in hemodynamic parameters such as pulsatility index (PI) and CBFV.
Role of normal sleep and sleep apnea in human memory processing

A fundamental problem in the field of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and memory is that it has historically minimized the basic neurobiology of sleep's role in memory. Memory formation has been classically divided into phases of encoding, processing/consolidation, and retrieval. An abundance of evidence suggests that sleep plays a critical role specifically in the processing/consolidation phase, but may do so differentially for memories that were encoded using particular brain circuits. In this review, we discuss some of the more established evidence for sleep's function in the processing of declarative, spatial navigational, emotional, and motor/procedural memories and more emerging evidence highlighting sleep's importance in higher order functions such as probabilistic learning, transitive inference, and category/gist learning. Furthermore, we discuss sleep's capacity for memory augmentation through targeted/cued memory reactivation. OSA - by virtue of its associated sleep fragmentation, intermittent hypoxia, and potential brain structural effects - is well positioned to specifically impact the processing/consolidation phase, but testing this possibility requires experimental paradigms in which memory encoding and retrieval are separated by a period of sleep with and without the presence of OSA. We argue that such paradigms should focus on the specific types of memory tasks for which sleep has been shown to have a significant effect. We discuss the small number of studies in which this has been done, in which OSA nearly uniformly negatively impacts offline memory processing. When periods of offline processing are minimal or absent and do not contain sleep, as is the case in the broad literature on OSA and memory, the effects of OSA on memory are far less consistent.
Eat, drink, and create content: a multi-method exploration of visual social media marketing content

As visual social media marketing (VSMM) content continues to increase in popularity, it is imperative for marketers to understand the elements of such marketing efforts that capture consumers atten...
PubChem BioAssay: 2017 update

PubChem's BioAssay database (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) has served as a public repository for small-molecule and RNAi screening data since 2004 providing open access of its data content to the community. PubChem accepts data submission from worldwide researchers at academia, industry and government agencies. PubChem also collaborates with other chemical biology database stakeholders with data exchange. With over a decade's development effort, it becomes an important information resource supporting drug discovery and chemical biology research. To facilitate data discovery, PubChem is integrated with all other databases at NCBI. In this work, we provide an update for the PubChem BioAssay database describing several recent development including added sources of research data, redesigned BioAssay record page, new BioAssay classification browser and new features in the Upload system facilitating data sharing.
A Coupled Experiment-finite Element Modeling Methodology for Assessing High Strain Rate Mechanical Response of Soft Biomaterials.

This study offers a combined experimental and finite element (FE) simulation approach for examining the mechanical behavior of soft biomaterials (e.g. brain, liver, tendon, fat, etc.) when exposed to high strain rates. This study utilized a Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) to generate strain rates of 100-1,500 sec-1. The SHPB employed a striker bar consisting of a viscoelastic material (polycarbonate). A sample of the biomaterial was obtained shortly postmortem and prepared for SHPB testing. The specimen was interposed between the incident and transmitted bars, and the pneumatic components of the SHPB were activated to drive the striker bar toward the incident bar. The resulting impact generated a compressive stress wave (i.e. incident wave) that traveled through the incident bar. When the compressive stress wave reached the end of the incident bar, a portion continued forward through the sample and transmitted bar (i.e. transmitted wave) while another portion reversed through the incident bar as a tensile wave (i.e. reflected wave). These waves were measured using strain gages mounted on the incident and transmitted bars. The true stress-strain behavior of the sample was determined from equations based on wave propagation and dynamic force equilibrium. The experimental stress-strain response was three dimensional in nature because the specimen bulged. As such, the hydrostatic stress (first invariant) was used to generate the stress-strain response. In order to extract the uniaxial (one-dimensional) mechanical response of the tissue, an iterative coupled optimization was performed using experimental results and Finite Element Analysis (FEA), which contained an Internal State Variable (ISV) material model used for the tissue. The ISV material model used in the FE simulations of the experimental setup was iteratively calibrated (i.e. optimized) to the experimental data such that the experiment and FEA strain gage values and first invariant of stresses were in good agreement.
Practical Newton-Type Distributed Learning using Gradient Based Approximations.

We study distributed algorithms for expected loss minimization where the datasets are large and have to be stored on different machines. Often we deal with minimizing the average of a set of convex functions where each function is the empirical risk of the corresponding part of the data. In the distributed setting where the individual data instances can be accessed only on the local machines, there would be a series of rounds of local computations followed by some communication among the machines. Since the cost of the communication is usually higher than the local machine computations, it is important to reduce it as much as possible. However, we should not allow this to make the computation too expensive to become a burden in practice. Using second-order methods could make the algorithms converge faster and decrease the amount of communication needed. There are some successful attempts in developing distributed second-order methods. Although these methods have shown fast convergence, their local computation is expensive and could enjoy more improvement for practical uses. In this study we modify an existing approach, DANE (Distributed Approximate NEwton), in order to improve the computational cost while maintaining the accuracy. We tackle this problem by using iterative methods for solving the local subproblems approximately instead of providing exact solutions for each round of communication. We study how using different iterative methods affect the behavior of the algorithm and try to provide an appropriate tradeoff between the amount of local computation and the required amount of communication. We demonstrate the practicality of our algorithm and compare it to the existing distributed gradient based methods such as SGD.
Room for Improvement: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis on the Informed Consent Process for Emergency Surgery

Abstract Objective To compare recall of complications and surgical details discussed during informed consent and perception of the consent process in patients undergoing emergent vs elective surgery. Methods Studies were identified from PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, and Scopus from January 1, 1966, through April 18, 2018. Included studies compared patient recall and perception regarding informed consent in those undergoing emergent vs elective surgery. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) were calculated for recall of complications and surgical details, patient satisfaction, perception of sufficient information being delivered on surgical risks, report of having read written consent, and factors that interfered with consent. Results Eleven observational studies (3178 patients) were included. The rate of recall of surgical complications (255 of 504 [50.6%] vs 321 of 446 [72.0%]; OR, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.11-0.80) was lower in patients undergoing emergent vs elective surgery. Meta-analysis revealed a decreased rate of patient satisfaction with the consent process (319 of 459 [69.5%] vs 882 of 1064 [82.9%]; OR. 0.53; 95% CI, 0.34-0.83) and fewer patients having read the consent form (130 of 395 [32.9%] vs 424 of 714 [59.4%]; OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.27-0.46) when undergoing emergent compared with elective surgery. Patients undergoing emergent surgery listed pain, analgesic medications, and fatigue as factors likely to interfere with consent. Conclusion Patients undergoing emergent surgery have poor recall of the informed consent process and surgical complications. Furthermore, patients report lower rates of satisfaction, and with fewer patients reading written consent documentation, our findings illuminate problems with the current communication process. There is a need to develop effective tools to improve informed consent in emergency surgery.
Visualization of Food Bank/Agency Distribution:

Food banking generates large amount of structured and unstructured data typically stored and reported in spreadsheet format. The growing scale of data storage limit the effectiveness of traditional...
The Many Lives of Teresa Mendoza: Genre, Gender and Melodrama in La Reina del Sur

This study considers how reality, fiction, and melodrama intersect so that Teresa Mendoza, protagonist of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel, La Reina del Sur, escapes into everyday reality and is imagined into existence. The novel and first iteration of the telenovela based on it have become cultural touchstones that employ melodramatic elements that allow audiences to come to terms with an increasingly complex cultural terrain by situating social, political and familial ideas in easily identifiable and comprehendible dramas. The examples discussed here, which include the novel, telenovela, and news accounts about the relationship between Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who plays Teresa in the telenovela, and drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, illustrate how melodramatic narratives create the circumstances to question the boundaries between reality and fiction, redefine traditional standards of melodrama, challenge normative femininity, and initiate spaces in which transnational communities can understand and interpret social disruption. // Este estudio examina la manera en que la realidad, la ficcion y el melodrama se entrecruzan de modo que Teresa Mendoza, protagonista de la novela de Arturo Perez-Reverte, La Reina del Sur, logre escaparse hacia la realidad cotidiana y cobrar existencia mediante la imaginacion del publico. La novela y la primera serie de la telenovela basada en ella se han convertido en piedras de toque culturales que emplean elementos del genero del melodrama que permiten que el publico aprenda a navegar un terreno cultural cada vez mas complejo al situar sus ideas sociales, politicas y de familia dentro de dramas facilmente reconocibles y comprensibles. Se ofrecen ejemplos de la novela, la telenovela y reportajes sobre la relacion entre la actriz mexicana Kate del Castillo, Teresa Mendoza en la telenovela, y el capo narcotraficante Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, que ilustran las maneras en que las narrativas melodramaticas crean las circunstancias apropiadas para provocar el cuestionamiento de las fronteras entre la realidad y la ficcion, pedir redefiniciones de las normas tradicionales del melodrama, presentar retos a la feminidad normativa e iniciar espacios en los que las comunidades trasnacionales puedan comprender e interpretar las disrupciones sociales.
Deciphering tissue relaxation parameters from a single MR image using deep learning

Despite its superior soft tissue contrast, conventional MRI is qualitative in nature and this presents a bottleneck problem in quantitative image analysis and data-driven medicine. Various investigations have been devoted to overcoming this limitation, but practical solutions remain elusive. Leveraging from the unique ability of emerging deep learning in feature extraction, we investigate a data-driven strategy of separating contributions of various contributing factors intertwined in a single T1 weighted image to derive quantitative T1 and ρ maps without any additional image acquisition. Furthermore, in the proposed deep learning framework, compensation for radiofrequency field inhomogeneities is automatically achieved without extra measurement of B1 map. The tasks are accomplished using self-attention deep convolutional neural networks, which make efficient use of both local and non-local information. The premise of the approach is that qualitative and quantitative MRI, named Q2MRI, can be attained simultaneously without changing the existing imaging protocol. Q2MRI lays foundation for next generation of digital medicine and provides a promising quantitative imaging tool for a wide spectrum of biomedical applications, ranging from disease diagnosis, treatment planning, prognosis to assessment of therapeutic response.
A coordinate-oblivious index for high-dimensional distance similarity searches on the GPU

We present COSS, an exact method for high-dimensional distance similarity self-joins using the GPU, which finds all points within a search distance e from each point in a dataset. The similarity self-join can take advantage of the massive parallelism afforded by GPUs, as each point can be searched in parallel. Despite high GPU throughput, distance similarity self-joins exhibit irregular memory access patterns which yield branch divergence and other performance limiting factors. Consequently, we propose several GPU optimizations to improve self-join query throughput, including an index designed for GPU architecture. As data dimensionality increases, the search space increases exponentially. Therefore, to find a reasonable number of neighbors for each point in the dataset, e may need to be large. The majority of indexing strategies that are used to prune the ∈-search focus on a spatial partition of data points based on each point's coordinates. As dimensionality increases, this data partitioning and pruning strategy yields exhaustive searches that eventually degrade to a brute force (quadratic) search, which is the well-known curse of dimensionality problem. To enable pruning the search using an indexing scheme in high-dimensional spaces, we depart from previous indexing approaches, and propose an indexing strategy that does not index based on each point's coordinate values. Instead, we index based on the distances to reference points, which are arbitrary points in the coordinate space. We show that our indexing scheme is able to prune the search for nearby points in high-dimensional spaces where other approaches yield high performance degradation. COSS achieves a speedup over CPU and GPU reference implementations up to 17.7X and 11.8X, respectively.
Talk about micromanaging! Role of microRNAs in intestinal barrier function

Defective intestinal tight-junction (TJ) barrier has been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), and other inflammatory conditions of the gut. The role of microRNAs (miRNA's or miR's) has also been demonstrated in the last two decades in the pathogenesis of IBD and in the regulation of intestinal TJ barrier function. MiRNAs are noncoding regulators of gene expression at the posttranscription level that have an essential role in targeting transcripts encoding proteins of intestinal TJs and their regulators. Many miRNAs have been reported to regulate or deregulate the TJ proteins responsible for the intestinal barrier integrity and intestinal permeability. Many of those miRNAs have been reported to have essential roles in the pathogenesis of IBD. In this mini-review, we summarize the results of studies in the last three years that implicate miRNAs in the defective TJ barrier in relation to IBD. The therapeutic potential of using specific miRNAs to target the intestinal TJ barrier might be of great insight for IBD therapy.
Activation by Cleavage of the Epithelial Na+ Channel α and γ Subunits Independently Coevolved with the Vertebrate Terrestrial Migration

Abstract Vertebrates evolved mechanisms for sodium conservation and gas exchange in conjunction with migration from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. Epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) function is critical to systems responsible for extracellular fluid homeostasis and gas exchange. ENaC is activated by cleavage at multiple specific extracellular polybasic sites, releasing inhibitory tracts from the channel’s α and γ subunits. We found that proximal and distal polybasic tracts in ENaC subunits coevolved, consistent with the dual cleavage requirement for activation observed in mammals. Polybasic tract pairs evolved with the terrestrial migration and the appearance of lungs, coincident with the ENaC activator aldosterone, and appeared independently in the αand γ subunits. In summary, sites within ENaC for protease activation developed in vertebrates when renal Na+ conservation and alveolar gas exchange was required for terrestrial survival.
Feature Extraction for Heroin-Use Classification Using Imbalanced Random Forest Methods.

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) contains a large number of responses and many features. This study aims to identify features from within NSDUH that are important in classifying h...
Development of specialized sensory neurons engages a nuclear receptor required for functional plasticity

During development, the nervous system generates neurons that serve highly specialized roles and, accordingly, possess unique functional attributes. The chemosensory BAG neurons of C. elegans are striking exemplars of this. BAGs sense the respiratory gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and, in a context-dependent manner, switch from mediating avoidance of CO2 to supporting CO2 attraction. To determine mechanisms that support the physiology and plasticity of BAG neurons, we used tandem ChIP-seq and cell targeted RNA-seq to identify gene targets of the transcription factor ETS-5, which is required for BAG development. A functional screen of ETS-5 targets revealed that NHR-6, the sole C. elegans NR4A-type nuclear receptor, is required for BAG-mediated avoidance of CO2 and regulates expression of a subset of BAG-specific genes. Unlike ets-5 mutants, which are defective for both attraction to and avoidance of CO2, nhr-6 mutants are fully competent for attraction. These data indicate that the remarkable ability of BAGs to adaptively assign positive or negative valence to a chemosensory stimulus requires a gene-regulatory program supported by an evolutionarily conserved type of nuclear receptor. We suggest that NHR-6 might be an example of a developmental mechanism for modular encoding of functional plasticity in the nervous system.
Experimental analysis of the measurement precision of spectral water-leaving radiance in different water types

The on-water radiometric approach employs a unique provision to obtain water-leaving radiance from nadir (Lw(λ)) which can be used for the calibration of ocean color satellites. In this effort, we address the measurement precision associated with Lw(λ) from a single on-water instrument, which is an important aspect of measurement uncertainty. First, we estimated the precision as the ratio of the standard deviation of the means of repeated measurements to the mean of these measurements. We show that the measurement precision for Lw(λ) is within 2.7–3.7% over 360–700 nm. The corresponding remote sensing reflectance spectra (Rrs(λ)) from the same instrument also exhibit a high precision of 1.9–2.8% in the same spectral domain. These measured precisions of radiance and reflectance over the 360–700 nm range are independent of the optical water type. Second, we quantified the consistency of on-water Lw(λ) and Rrs(λ) from two collocated systems for further insight into their measurement repeatability. The comparison reveals that Lw(λ) measurements in the 360–700 nm agree with each other with an absolute percentage difference of less than 3.5%. The corresponding Rrs(λ) data pairs are subjected to increased differences of up to 8.5%, partly due to variable irradiance measurements (Es(λ)). The evaluation of measurement precision corroborates the reliability of the on-water acquisition of radiometric data for supporting satellite calibration and validation.
A randomized controlled trial of a brief behavioral intervention to reduce skin and soft tissue infections among people who inject drugs

Abstract Background People who inject drugs (PWID) are at high risk for skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs), but few interventions have targeted their reduction. The goal of the current study was to test the effects of a brief skin and needle hygiene behavioral intervention (SKIN) in a two-group randomized controlled trial with 12-month follow-up. Method PWID (N = 252) were recruited from inpatient hospital units at a single urban medical center site and randomly assigned to an assessment-only (AO) condition or SKIN, which was a two-session intervention that included psychoeducation, behavioral skills demonstrations, and motivational interviewing. Mixed effects generalized linear models assessed the impact of the intervention on frequency of: 1) self-reported SSTIs, 2) uncleaned skin injections, and 3) injection. Results Participants were 58.3 % male, 59.5 % White, and averaged 38 years of age. SKIN participants had 35 % fewer SSTIs compared to AO (p = .179), a difference of nearly one infection per year. The mean rate of uncleaned skin injections was about 66 % lower (IRR = 0.34, 95 % CI 0.20; 0.59, p Conclusions The SKIN intervention reduced uncleaned skin injections but did not reduce SSTIs significantly more than a control condition. Brief interventions can improve high-risk practices among PWID and lead to clinically meaningful outcomes.
Institutional Variation, Professionalization, and State Implementation Choices: An Examination of Investment in Water Quality Across the 50 States:

The question of the effect of administrative arrangements on program administration and program outcomes is a central question for those interested in policy implementation. In the implementation o...
Comparing Partitions: Metric Characterizations, Mean Partition, and Distortion

Measures for quantifying the distance between two partitions are involved in many current applications, including machine vision, image processing and understanding, image and video segmentation, biology and genetics, among others. This article investigates three fundamental aspects of the comparison of partitions: the characterization of metrics for comparing partitions; their role in average-based consensus of partitions; and how the different metrics distort the spatial organization of the partitions of a finite data set. In particular, we significantly reduce number of properties in the existing characterizations of metrics for comparing partitions such as Variation of Information and Mirkin metric. Moreover, we compile the main results describing the impact of these metrics on the construction of average-based consensus functions, as well as we compute the exact reduction of the search space that the different pruning criteria (quota rules) provide. Finally, we compute the distortion value for different \(\beta \)-entropy metrics.
Morphological switch is associated with increase in cell-cell contacts, ALP, and confluence above a minimum island area to perimeter ratio.

During osteogenic differentiation in vitro, stem-like cells seeded at a low-density spread and are isolated. As the cells proliferate and mature, they become more cuboidal in shape with more cell-cell contacts. However, the coordination of this switch in cell morphology from elongated to cuboidal, cell-cell contacts, and differentiation is not known. In this work, we present results from experiments and a simulation of cell proliferation on protein-micropatterned islands that, independent of island size (25-1,000 μm) or shape (circles, squares, and hollow squares), shows a distinct morphological switch that is better described as a function of island confluence than time in culture, the standard measure in cell culture experiments. The simulation and experiments show cell morphology and island cell density versus confluence collapse to a single curve for all islands if the island area to perimeter ratio is ≥25 μm. Cell-cell contacts in the simulation and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) expression in experiments, a common marker for osteogenic differentiation, show exponential growth with confluence, rapidly increasing after the switch at ≈0.5 confluence. Furthermore, cell morphology, density, contacts, and ALP are better predicted by confluence than time in culture. The variability with time in culture leads to challenges in not only interpreting data but also in comparing data across research laboratories. This simulation can be used to predict cell behavior on different size and shape islands and to plan and optimize experiments that explore cell behavior as a function of a wide range of island geometries.
Sex-based differences in loss of independence after lower extremity bypass surgery.

INTRODUCTION This study analyzes sex-based differences in the risk of discharge to a nonhome facility (loss of independence) after lower extremity revascularization and resultant outcomes. METHODS Data from the NSQIP database for years 2015-2017 was utilized to assess sex-based differences in loss of independence and associated unplanned readmission and 30-day amputation using chi-square, student t-test, and multivariate logistic regression analyses where appropriate. RESULTS There was increased loss of independence in women (34.9% vs. 26.1 %, p < .01) and associated increase in unplanned readmission (18.4% vs. 13.6 %, p = .01) and length of stay (12.1 days vs 6.5 days, p < .01). Endovascular revascularization was associated with decreased likelihood of loss of independence (OR 0.43, CI 0.36-0.50). CONCLUSION Loss of independence after lower extremity bypass surgery affects women more than men and it is associated with worse postoperative outcomes.
Clinical Applications of Ultrasound Skills

The following chapter elaborates on how ultrasound can be applied as a tool to evaluate the hypotensive patient. The previous chapters have described in detail the technique for vascular, abdominal, lung, pleura and cardiac ultrasound as well as the basic principles of this technology. This chapter integrates that knowledge into clinical practice specifically directed to guide therapy in the hypotensive patient.
From bell tower to cell tower [base stations]

White church steeples generally house nothing more exotic than church bells, but cellular service providers in many areas have been trying to subject these towers to multitasking by installing base stations within.
Chapter 1 Temporal resolution in visual perception

Publisher Summary A complete spatial model that can account for contrast perception is necessarily complex. However, it is simple to specify the minimal retinal anatomy needed to suppress the uniform areas of light and enhance contrast: it is to subtract from the output of a receptor the mean outputs of its nearest neighbors (a so-called “center-surround” anatomy). In the fovea, the photoreceptors (all cones) are arranged on an exact hexagonal matrix. Such a matrix represents an ideal packing geometry, in that it results when circular elements (here, cones) are packed as tightly as possible in a finite plane area. To be sensitive to light and to provide the enormous magnification needed to convert light energy to an electrical signal, photoreceptors must contain very many photo-sensitive molecules. “Increment threshold” means the threshold of visibility for a small test light flashed briefly on a large, steadily illuminated background field of light to which the observer is well adapted.
A calorimetric study of fatigue induced microstructural changes in aluminum alloy 7050

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to detect microstructural changes resulting from strain-controlled fatigue of aluminum alloy 7050. Two starting conditions were investigated: a GP zone T6X temper and an overaged T73651. The calorimetric signature of the microstructure was determined for samples that had been cycled either to failure or to preselected percentages of their expected lifetime at various strain amplitudes. Thermodynamic and kinetic analyses of the calorimetric results revealed a pronounced effect of plastic strain during fatigue on the reaction enthalpy and reaction kinetics of the GP zone dissolution peak of T6X, and a lesser effect on theη′ dissolution peak of T73651. No microstructural changes after fatigue to failure in the nominally elastic strain regime were detected by DSC. The calorimetric results were uniform throughout the cross-section of the fatigue specimens. Based upon these results, it is concluded that approximately 75 pct of the GP zones initially present can be affected during low cycle fatigue, and that overaging of the GP zone microstructure does not occur. The results from the T73651 temper show that low cycle fatigue affects this overaged microstructure in a different manner. Reversion or disordering ofη′ does not occur, but some overaging was detected. It is suggested that theη′ precipitate in this alloy is not shearable.