cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Gene transfer with poly-melittin peptides

The 26 amino acid hemolytic melittin peptide was converted into a gene transfer peptide that binds to DNA and polymerized through disulfide bond formation. Melittin analogues were synthesized by the addition of one to four Lys repeats at either the C- or the N-subterminal end along with terminal Cys residues. Melittin analogues were able to bind and polymerize on plasmids resulting in the formation of DNA condensates. In the absence of DNA, melittin analogues retained their red blood cell hemolytic potency but were inactive when bound to plasmid DNA. The in vitro gene transfer efficiency mediated by poly-melittin analogues was equivalent to PEI in HepG2 cells. Attempts to truncate portions of either of the two melittin alpha-helices resulted in concurrent loss of hemolytic potency and gene transfer efficiency. The results demonstrate the ability to transform melittin into a gene transfer peptide by transiently masking its membrane lytic activity by the addition of Lys and Cys residues to promote DNA binding and polymerization.
Quantitative Monitoring of Insulin Secretion from Single Islets of Langerhans in Parallel on a Microfluidic Chip

Quantification of insulin release from pancreatic islets of Langerhans is of interest for diabetes research. Typical insulin secretion experiments are performed using offline techniques that are expensive, slow, have low-throughput, and require multiple islets. We have developed a microfluidic device for high-throughput, automated, and online monitoring of insulin secretion from individual islets in parallel. This chip consists of 15 channel networks each capable of superfusing a single islet and mixing superfusate from each islet online with fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled insulin and anti-insulin antibody for a competitive immunoassay. The resulting continuous reaction streams are periodically injected onto parallel electrophoresis channels where the mixtures are separated. The resulting traces are used to quantify relative insulin released from islets. Serial immunoassays were performed at 10 s intervals on all 15 channels, corresponding to 5400 immunoassays per hour, to create temporally resolved i...
Treatment outcomes of endogenous fungal endophthalmitis.

Endogenous fungal endophthalmitis may present in a debilitated or otherwise healthy host, may be increasing in prevalence, and is most commonly caused by Candida albicans. Recognizing the potential for complications with systemic amphotericin B use, recent investigators have developed several newer
Teaching Medical Students How to Break Bad News with Standardized Patients

One of the biggest challenges that a physician will face is conveying difficult news (CDN) to a patient. The ability to provide this information may either strengthen or destroy the patient–physician relationship. Despite the importance of this skill, formal education for medical students has been limited. To improve upon skill building in the medical student experience, fourth year medical students (on their oncology clerkship) spent 3 hours partaking in a CDN session. During this session, each student had a videotaped encounter with a standardized patient, followed by a small group discussion and review of the tape with other students and a clinician. We evaluated the experience with pre- and post-questionnaires assessing overall knowledge, satisfaction, and specific components of the curriculum. The objective of this study was to review our institution’s educational program focused on teaching techniques for CDN.
Interactions after death: plant litter controls priority effects in a successional plant community

We performed a field experiment to test whether the presence of litter produced by the dominant species in the first successional year affects the plant community structure in the following year. We removed the litter of Setaria faberii (the first-year dominant) in midfall, early spring, mid-spring, or late spring. Both the fall and early spring removal increased the biomass of Erigeron annuus, which became dominant, and reduced the biomass of S. faberii. In the fall-removal treatment more plants of E. annuus flowered, while early spring removal increased the biomass of rosettes (non-flowering individuals) at the end of the growing season. In the other treatments and in the control S. faberii retained dominance, but its biomass was the highest in mid-spring removal plots. The removal of litter of S. faberii in the fall and in early spring allowed E. annuus to pre-empt the site and dominate the community. When litter was not removed, it strongly hindered the growth of E. annuus, favoring S. faberii. These results highlight the importance of litter as a historical factor linking interactions across successive generations, and controlling the community structure.
Assessment of the immediate effects of cardiopulmonary bypass on left ventricular performance by on-line pressure-area relations.

BACKGROUNDPressure-volume relations have been established as useful measures of left ventricular (LV) performance. Application of these methods to the intraoperative setting have been limited because of difficulties acquiring LV volume data. Transesophageal echocardiographic automated border detection can measure LV cross-sectional area as an index of volume, which can be coupled with pressure data to construct pressure-area loops on-line. The purpose of this study was to evaluate intraoperative LV performance in patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery before and immediately after cardiopulmonary bypass using on-line pressure-area relations.METHODS AND RESULTSStudies were attempted in 13 consecutive patients. Simultaneous measures of LV cross-sectional area, LV pressure, and electromagnetic flow probe-derived aortic flow recorded on a computer work station interfaced with the ultrasound system. Pressure-area loops were compared with simultaneous pressure-volume loops constructed from pressure and flow...
GIS-Based Spatial Allocation Analysis of Population Growth in Regional Water Resource Planning

Abstract Adequate water resource management has become increasingly important in Central Texas because of the rapid population growth and the limited water resources in the region. The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) is involved in water resource management in the region. One task in water resource planning at LCRA is to spatially allocate estimated countywide population growth for a given period in the future to sub-county areas and determine the subsequent water demand change in sub-county areas. Currently LCRA uses a spreadsheet model that cannot take into account major factors affecting the spatial distribution of population growth in a county. The author extended existing models to facilitate the spatial allocation of population growth in regional water resource planning based on current practices at LCRA. This paper presents a GIS-based system consisting of a set of mathematical models and analysis procedures that can be used in spatial allocation analysis of population growth in the context o...
Using Creativity to Make Practicum a Transformative Experience

Students enter their practicum experience with the assumption that they will learn the skills needed to help clients. However, growth in counseling can be bidirectional; both the client and the student-counselor can benefit. The purpose of this article is to describe a creative arts assignment that helps students express how a client changed them, not just as counselors but as a person. We start with a review of the literature to elucidate the benefits of using creative arts in counselor education. The instructions for and logic behind the assignment are provided. Feedback and trends from three interviews with students who completed this creative arts project are described. We conclude by connecting the literature with the benefits our students experienced.
Borderline histories: psychoanalysis inside and out.

Argument Sociologists and historians have long favored externalist over internalist accounts of practices in the clinical disciplines. This has been particularly true in the case of the so-called new patient or borderline personality, which a range of commentators have located in culturally resonant narratives of decline. I argue here that these narratives, while pleasing, do not hold up as history; most problematic is their assumption that the appearance of the borderline portends the emergence of altogether novel forms of modal personhood. Internalist accounts of the category's consolidation are equally problematic in asserting a coherence and a stable referent that repeatedly proves elusive. In the end, I suggest that a complex account of disciplinary practice that attends to knowledge production in the clinical encounter supports the conclusion that the new patient was new to psychoanalysis. Whether or not he was altogether new cannot be established, undermining the critics' certitude and prophecies of decline.
Religious Coping and Depression in Young Adulthood: Effects of Global Stress Exposure and Pre-Teenage Religious Service Attendance

This paper builds upon previous research on the association between religiosity and depressive symptomatology in young adults by focusing on the coping aspects of religious involvement (use of beliefs, comfort seeking, and prayer). Data come from a representative sample of Miami-Dade County, Florida, youths interviewed initially at around age 11 and then at age 19 to 21 (N = 1,210). OLS regression models demonstrate an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between religious coping and depression which, in subgroup analyses, applies only to females, and specifically to those young women reporting above-average stress exposure who had attended religious services at least once a week during their middle school years. No association is found among those reporting lower stress exposure or less frequent pre-teenage service attendance. These results provide evidence that early religious exposure on a regular basis and high global stress exposure may be essential preconditions for a relationship at the aggregate level between current religious coping and depressive symptomatology in young adults.
Opportunities for Improved Serodiagnosis of Human Tuberculosis, Bovine Tuberculosis, and Paratuberculosis

Mycobacterial infections-tuberculosis (TB), bovine tuberculosis (bTB), and Johne's disease (JD)-are major infectious diseases of both human and animals. Methods presently in use for diagnosis of mycobacterial infections include bacterial culture, nucleic acid amplification, tuberculin skin test, interferon-γ assay, and serology. Serological tests have several advantages over other methods, including short turn-around time, relatively simple procedures, and low cost. However, current serodiagnostic methods for TB, bTB and JD exhibit low sensitivity and/or specificity. Recent studies that have aimed to develop improved serodiagnostic tests have mostly focused on identifying useful species-specific protein antigens. A review of recent attempts to improve diagnostic test performance indicates that the use of multiple antigens can improve the accuracy of serodiagnosis of these mycobacterial diseases. Mycobacteria also produce a variety of species-specific nonprotein molecules; however, only a few such molecules (e.g., cord factor and lipoarabinomannan) have so far been evaluated for their effectiveness as diagnostic antigens. For TB and bTB, there has been recent progress in developing laboratory-free diagnostic methods. New technologies such as microfluidics and "Lab-on-Chip" are examples of promising new technologies that can underpin development of laboratory-free diagnostic devices for these mycobacterial infections.
Cities and social change

Geographers rarely have held places of honor in the catacombs of disciplinary subdivisions that characterize American universities. This is unfortunate, for geographers have been fundamentally altering our understanding of urban and rural social organization in ways that social historians and sociologists ignore at their peril. It is our good fortune that three historians have produced two brilliant books, based soundly upon a geographic perspective, that refine and advance our understanding of cities and urbanization.
Epigenetic modifications of SOX2 enhancers, SRR1 and SRR2, correlate with in vitro neural differentiation†

SOX2 is a key neurodevelopmental gene involved in maintaining the pluripotency of stem cells and proliferation of neural progenitors and astroglia. Two evolutionally conserved enhancers, SRR1 and SRR2, are involved in controlling SOX2 expression during neurodevelopment; however, the molecular mechanisms regulating their activity are not known. We have examined DNA methylation and histone H3 acetylation at both enhancers in NT2-D1 progenitors, neurons and astrocytes, to establish the role of epigenetic mechanisms in cell-type-specific SOX2 expression. This study showed that 1) unmethylated DNA and acetylated histones at both enhancers correlated with a high level of SOX2 expression in proliferating neural progenitors and 2) reversible modifications of the SRR1 element were observed during gene reexpression in astrocytes, whereas permanent epigenetic marks on the SRR2 enhancer were seen in neurons where the gene was silenced. Taken together, these results are clear illustrations of cell-type-specific epigenomes and suggest mechanisms by which they may be created and maintained.
Programmed cell death in the Drosophila central nervous system midline

Abstract Background: During the development of the central nervous system, large numbers of cells die by programmed cell death. This process requires the activity of specific gene products and subserves functions that include regulating the sizes of interacting cell populations and removing cells that provide transient functions. Resolution of programmed cell death often involves the elimination of dying cell corpses by phagocytic macrophages. In Drosophila, the reaper gene plays a crucial role in mediating programmed cell death; chromosomal deficiencies which remove reaper result in an absence of programmed cell death. We have used a reaper -deficiency mutant strain Df(3R)H99 (or H99 ), in conjunction with strains containing cell-type-specific markers, to examine the role of programmed cell death in differentiation of the embryonic central nervous system midline. Results Midline cell death was identified both by the presence of excess midline cells in H99 mutants and by the engulfment of dying midline cells by macrophages in wild-type embryos. These developmental deaths are lineage-specific: prominent midline glial death was observed, while little if any death was detected among the ventral unpaired median neurons. Examination of H99 mutants indicates that cell death is not required for the formation of macrophage precursors, or for their subsequent migration throughout the embryo; however, in the absence of dying cells, macrophage precursors do not exhibit morphological differentiation or phagocytosis. In both wild-type and H99 mutant embryos, a subset of macrophages migrate along the ventral midline. This midline migration is not observed in single-minded mutants, in which ventral midline cells fail to develop. Conclusion Programmed cell death plays a crucial role in the development of the central nervous system midline, and dying midline cells are rapidly eliminated by phagocytic macrophages. It seems that the generation of engulfment signals in cells undergoing programmed cell death is downstream of reaper gene function, and that central nervous system midline and/or ventral epidermal cells provide directional cues for migrating macrophages.
Research methodology for AI and design

Perspectives on research methodology in the field of “AI and design” are discussed. This perspective is based on a view of a “science of design” focusing on methods of design and on characteristics of design tasks that affect what methods are relevant for a given task. Two methodological issues are discussed: the need to try applying a design method on multiple tasks and domains, and the need to work with collaborators who are experts in the task domain of each research system you build.
Monoclonal antibodies to bull sperm surface antigens

Abstract Four monoclonal antibodies were generated during the present investigation. Mice were immunized with washed ejaculated bull spermatozoa. Spleen cells from the immunized mice were fused with myeloma cells (SP2/0) and four different hybridoma clones were obtained, producing specific monoclonal antibodies. These antibodies were designated as SP 2 A 5 , SP 1 A 2 , SP 1 C 4 and SP 1 C 6 respectively. All belonged to the IgG sub-class 1. The specificity of these monoclonal antibodies was tested using both ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) and indirect immunofluorescence staining techniques. Quantitative estimation of antibody-antigen reaction was done by optical density measurements. Ejaculated bull spermatozoa were always reactive for each ELISA procedure. Other test cells including spleen, testicular, ovarian, uterine and pancreatic cells from both bull and rabbit were non-reactive. Bull testicular spermatozoa were also non-reactive. However, seminal fluid (without sperm) was reactive. All four monoclonal antibodies were reactive to the midpiece of the ejaculated bull spermatozoa. In addition, SP 2 A 5 was also reactive to the acrosomal area and SP 1 A 2 was reactive to the acrosomal and the post-acrosomal area. Cytoplasmic droplets of ejaculated spermatozoa from bull and human were also possibly reactive to one antibody (SP 1 C 6 ). The results clearly suggest the heterogeneous nature of the sperm cell plasma membrane and precise molecular alteration in the plasma membrane components (antigens) as the sperm cells differentiate and mature during their transit through the epididymis.
Power benefit study for ultra-high density transistor-level monolithic 3D ICs

The nano-scale 3D interconnects available in monolithic 3D IC technology enable ultra-high density device integration at the individual transistor-level. In this paper we demonstrate the power benefits of transistor-level monolithic 3D designs. We first build a cell library that consists of 3D gates and model their timing/power characteristics. Next, we build timing-closed, full-chip GDSII layouts and perform sign-off iso-performance power comparisons with 2D IC designs. We also study the characteristics of benchmark circuits that maximize the power benefits in monolithic 3D designs. Lastly, our study is extended to predict the power benefits of monolithic 3D designs built with future devices.
Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology

Neurotheological approaches provide an important bridge between scientific and religious perspectives. These approaches have, however, generally neglected the implications of a primordial form of spiritual healing—shamanism. Cross-cultural studies estab- lish the universality of shamanic practices in hunter-gatherer societ- ies around the world and across time. These universal principles of shamanism reflect underlying neurological processes and provide a basis for an evolutionary theology. The shamanic paradigm involves basic brain processes, neurognostic structures, and innate brain mod- ules. This approach reveals that universals of shamanism such as animism, totemism, soul flight, animal spirits, and death-and-rebirth experiences reflect fundamental brain operations and structures of consciousness. The shamanic paradigm can contribute to a recon- ciliation of scientific and religious perspectives by providing a uni- versalistic biopsychosocial framework that explicates the biological underpinnings of spiritual experiences and practices and provides a basis for neurotheology and evolutionary theology approaches.
Relative anti-inflammatory effect of oral dexamethasone-β-D-glucoside and dexamethasone in experimental inflammatory bowel disease in guinea-pigs

The relative anti-inflammatory effect of dexamethasone and a prodrug, dexamethasone-beta-D-glucoside, has been assessed in guinea-pigs with experimentally-induced inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The glucoside prodrug is designed to reach the large intestine following oral administration. The active agent is liberated when the prodrug is hydrolysed by glycosidases of colonic bacteria. Guinea-pigs were administered degraded carrageenan in their drinking water to produce experimental IBD. Starting on day 15, dexamethasone (1.3 mumol kg-1) or dexamethasone-beta-D-glucoside (1.3 or 0.65 mumol kg-1) was administered by gastric intubation once daily for 5 days. Relative to control animals, the drug and prodrug treatments significantly (P less than 0.05) reduced the total number of caecal ulcers. While there was no difference statistically between the drug and prodrug treatments, the data suggest that a lower dose of dexamethasone, administered as its glucoside prodrug, could reduce side-effects without reduced efficacy. These results support the hypothesis that localized delivery of dexamethasone to the large bowel can improve pharmacotherapy of IBD by reducing the side-effects associated with corticosteroids.
The Resolution of Discordant Results

Experiments often disagree. How then can scientific knowledge be based on experimental evidence? In this paper I will examine four episodes from the history of recent physics: (1) the suggestion of a Fifth Force, a modification of Newton’s Law of Gravitation; (2) the early attempts to detect gravitational radiation (gravity waves); (3) the claim that a 17-keV neutrino exists; and (4) experiments on atomic parity violation and on the scattering of polarized electrons and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. In each of these episodes discordant results were reported, and a consensus was later reached that one result--or set of results- was incorrect. I will examine the process of reaching that consensus. I will show that the decision was reached by reasoned discussion based on epistemological and methodological criteria. It then follows that we may use experimental evidence as the basis of scientific knowledge.
Quantifying intracellular radioresponse diversity in irradiated sandwich cultures via micronucleus expression

Determining the degree of diversity in therapeutic sensitivity exhibited by a tumour population is of considerable clinical importance. In addition to being a contributor to radiation resistance, diversity is the basis for variation in sensitivity over the course of treatment. To study intrapopulation diversity in radiosensitivity following γ-irradiation (2 Gy), distributions of the number of micronuclei/binucleate cell were obtained for human cervix carcinoma sandwich populations. Cell-to-cell diversity in radioresponse (micronucleus expression) was quantified using the overdispersion index ((variance/mean) − 1). As measured by this index, the radioresponse diversity of sandwich cultures sharply increased after introduction of oxygen/nutrients to the cultures, mimicking tumour reperfusion. In addition, a strong correlation was found between this measure of diversity and the extent to which the fraction of cells without micronuclei exceeds that expected from a Poisson distribution. This correlation indica...
Translating related words to videos and back through latent topics

Documents containing video and text are becoming more and more widespread and yet content analysis of those documents depends primarily on the text. Although automated discovery of semantically related words from text improves free text query understanding, translating videos into text summaries facilitates better video search particularly in the absence of accompanying text. In this paper, we propose a multimedia topic modeling framework suitable for providing a basis for automatically discovering and translating semantically related words obtained from textual metadata of multimedia documents to semantically related videos or frames from videos.The framework jointly models video and text and is flexible enough to handle different types of document features in their constituent domains such as discrete and real valued features from videos representing actions, objects, colors and scenes as well as discrete features from text. Our proposed models show much better fit to the multimedia data in terms of held-out data log likelihoods. For a given query video, our models translate low level vision features into bag of keyword summaries which can be further translated using simple natural language generation techniques into human readable paragraphs. We quantitatively compare the results of video to bag of words translation against a state-of-the-art baseline object recognition model from computer vision. We show that text translations from multimodal topic models vastly outperform the baseline on a multimedia dataset downloaded from the Internet.
Is the world really flat? a look at offshoring in an online programming marketplace

In a world that is flat, where all clients and providers can easily transact with one another, offshoring represents the proposition that information technology providers from low-wage nations can now underbid providers from high-wage nations and win contracts. We examined a particularly flat "world"-an online programming marketplace-and found that this profound tilt to low-wage nations is overstated. We analyzed the entire history of transactions at one of the major online programming marketplaces, a marketplace for outsourcing small IT projects. The data spanned 38 months and included over 263,000 bids by over 31,000 providers from 70 countries on over 20,000 small IT projects requested by over 7,900 clients from 59 countries. Contrary to the world-is-flat proposition, the data in this particular site show some client preference for domestic providers. However, the largest group of clients, the American clients, are a marked exception to clients in the rest of the world: they give relatively less preference to domestic providers. In a sense, the American clients have a higher preference for offshore providers. Among non-American clients the preference for domestic providers is mitigated when both client and provider are from an English-speaking nation. Relative bid price, often very low already, also determines the winning bid, as does the ratio of purchasing power parity (PPP) between the country of the client and the country of the provider. Nonetheless, the strongest determinant of the winning bid is client loyalty: the client gives very strong preference to a provider with whom there has been a previous relationship, regardless of whether the provider is offshore or domestic.
Genetic Ablation of CaV3.2 Channels Enhances the Arterial Myogenic Response by Modulating the RyR-BKCa Axis

Objective— In resistance arteries, there is an emerging view that smooth muscle Ca V 3.2 channels restrain arterial constriction through a feedback response involving the large-conductance Ca 2+ -activated K + channel (BK Ca ). Here, we used wild-type and Ca V 3.2 knockout (Ca V 3.2 −/− ) mice to definitively test whether Ca V 3.2 moderates myogenic tone in mesenteric arteries via the Ca V 3.2-ryanodine receptor-BK Ca axis and whether this regulatory mechanism influences blood pressure regulation. Approach and Results— Using pressurized vessel myography, Ca V 3.2 −/− mesenteric arteries displayed enhanced myogenic constriction to pressure but similar K + -induced vasoconstriction compared with wild-type C57BL/6 arteries. Electrophysiological and myography experiments subsequently confirmed the inability of micromolar Ni 2+ , a Ca V 3.2 blocker, to either constrict arteries or suppress T-type currents in Ca V 3.2 −/− smooth muscle cells. The frequency of BK Ca -induced spontaneous transient outward K + currents dropped in wild-type but not in knockout arterial smooth muscle cells upon the pharmacological suppression of Ca V 3.2 channel. Line scan analysis performed on en face arteries loaded with Fluo-4 revealed the presence of Ca 2+ sparks in all arteries, with the subsequent application of Ni 2+ only affecting wild-type arteries. Although Ca V 3.2 channel moderated myogenic constriction of resistance arteries, the blood pressure measurements of Ca V 3.2 −/− and wild-type animals were similar. Conclusions— Overall, our findings establish a negative feedback mechanism of the myogenic response in which Ca V 3.2 channel modulates downstream ryanodine receptor-BK Ca to hyperpolarize and relax arteries.
Chemotherapeutic drug susceptibility associated SNPs are enriched in expression quantitative trait loci.

Pharmacogenomics has employed candidate gene studies and, more recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in efforts to identify loci associated with drug response and/or toxicity. The advantage of GWAS is the simultaneous, unbiased testing of millions of SNPs; the challenge is that functional information is absent for the vast majority of loci that are implicated. In the present study, we systematically evaluated SNPs associated with chemotherapeutic agent–induced cytotoxicity for six different anticancer agents and evaluated whether these SNPs were disproportionately likely to be within a functional class such as coding (consisting of missense, nonsense, or frameshift polymorphisms), noncoding (such as 3′UTRs or splice sites), or expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs; indicating that a SNP genotype is associated with the transcript abundance level of a gene). We found that the chemotherapeutic drug susceptibility–associated SNPs are more likely to be eQTLs, and, in fact, more likely to be associated with the transcriptional expression level of multiple genes (n ≥ 10) as potential master regulators, than a random set of SNPs in the genome, conditional on minor allele frequency. Furthermore, we observed that this enrichment compared with random expectation is not present for other traditionally important coding and noncoding SNP functional categories. This research therefore has significant implications as a general approach for the identification of genetic predictors of drug response and provides important insights into the likely function of SNPs identified in GWAS analysis of pharmacologic studies.
Repatriation Adjustment: Literature Review

Expatriation is a widely studied area of research in work and organizational psychology. After expatriates accomplish their missions in host countries, they return to their countries and this process is called repatriation. Adjustment constitutes a crucial part in repatriation research. In the present literature review, research about repatriation adjustment was reviewed with the aim of defining the whole picture in this phenomenon. Present research was classified on the basis of a theoretical model of repatriation adjustment. Basic frame consisted of antecedents, adjustment, outcomes as main variables and personal characteristics/coping strategies and organizational strategies as moderating variables.
Scale-invariant random spatial networks

Real-world road networks have an approximate scale-invariance property; can one devise mathematical models of random networks whose distributions are exactly invariant under Euclidean scaling? This requires working in the continuum plane. We introduce an axiomatization of a class of processes we call "scale-invariant random spatial networks", whose primitives are routes between each pair of points in the plane. We prove that one concrete model, based on minimum-time routes in a binary hierarchy of roads with different speed limits, satisfies the axioms, and note informally that two other constructions (based on Poisson line processes and on dynamic proximity graphs) are expected also to satisfy the axioms. We initiate study of structure theory and summary statistics for general processes in this class.
Acid mucopolysaccharide alterations in experimental exophthalmos.

Injections of thyrotropin in guinea pigs induced an experimental exophthalmos which was associated with increased concentrations of acid mucopolysaccharides in the retrobulbar tissues. Hyaluronic acid (HA) was the acid mucopolysaccharide component affected, and the response to thyrotropin in thyroidectomized animals was log-dose in form. There was a lesser increment in tissue HA with a more purified thyrotropin when related to the thyroid stimulating effect. Other anterior pituitary hormones were without effect. Thyroxine produced a decrease in the hyaluronic acid concentrations of all tissues examined. It was in the most internal structures of the guinea pig orbit, i.e., harderian gland and extraocular muscles, that the acid mucopolysaccharide metabolism was responsive to thyrotropin. Although this effect appeared by histochemical methods to be localized to the connective tissue elements of these structures, other tissues (eyelids and skin) with abundant connective tissue had no augmentation of HA by thy...
Divacon: a parallel language for scientific computing based on divide-and-conquer

An overview of the language, covering Divacon primitives and simple programming constructs that are referred to as functional forms, is given. Two divide-and-conquer programming constructs are discussed. Divacon style programming is demonstrated for a number of scientific applications. Some interesting equivalences and transformations between Divacon programs are examined. Implementation and performance are briefly considered. >
What is the Clinical Role of Aerosolized Ribavirin

Aerosolized ribavirin is the first approved agent for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. However, the clinical use of ribavirin is controversial. Although ribavirin-treated patients appear to be subjectively improved, the benefit in terms of decreased morbidity and mortality is not well established. Furthermore, the drug has been found to be teratogenic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic, depending upon the scientific model. Because of its unique mode of administration, environmental exposure of healthcare personnel and other patients may occur. Although administration in mechanically ventilated patients decreases the amount of ribavirin liberated into the atmosphere, the drug crystallizes in the endotracheal tube, occasionally resulting in reduced ventilation. The lack of data documenting efficacy and the above environmental concerns result in difficult decisions for hospitals. Further studies are necessary to clarify the value and safety of ribavirin in the treatment of RSV infection.
Intersymbol interference effects on BPSK and QPSK carrier tracking loops

The tracking performance of three conventional carrier tracking loops in the presence of intersymbol interference (ISI) is analyzed. The closed-form expressions for the squaring losses of BPSK (binary phase-shift-keyed) low-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), BPSK high-SNR, and QPSK (quaternary phase-shift-keyed) low-SNR loops are derived. ISI is shown to affect the BPSK high-SNR loop as much as the I-Q loop despite the nonlinear effect of the hard-limiter. For the QPSK carrier tracking loop, the degradation is shown to be greater due to the modulation of both components of the carrier. In this case, ISI, in addition to modifying the coefficients in the squaring loss, adds a new term not present in wideband channels. In all cases, a unity squaring loss could not be achieved because of the irreducible error due to pattern noise. This noise is only present in band-limited channels and is dependent on the data model used. >
Survivability of high-T/sub c/ microwave devices in space radiation environments

In order to investigate the suitability of high-T/sub c/ devices for satellite applications, a High Temperature Superconductivity Space Experiment (HTSSE I) is due for launch in 1993. The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of nonionizing radiation on the performance of high-T/sub c/ devices intended for deployment on HTSSE I. A low-temperature radiation damage study of first-generation passive microwave devices fabricated from high-temperature cuprate superconductors has been performed in order to examine the effects of nonionizing radiation damage. Changes in performance due to radiation-induced shifts in the transition temperature and to film erosion are discussed. The results show that if these relatively simple passive devices are reasonably well shielded, they should survive in typical five-year space applications. >
Influence of timescale ratio on scalar flux relaxation: modelling Sirivat & Warhaft's homogeneous passive scalar fluctuations

A second-order modelling technique is used to investigate the behaviour of homogeneous scalar turbulence. Special attention is paid to the influence of timescale ratio on scalar flux relaxation. We develop a model for the scalar flux equation in a homogeneous turbulence and consider both a scalar field without mean-scalar gradients and one with constant mean-scalar gradients based on Sirivat & Warhaft (1981) experiments. Good agreement with experiment in all the cases is obtained.
Imaging gravity waves in lower stratospheric AMSU-A radiances, Part 1: Simple forward model

Abstract. Using a simplified model of in-orbit radiance acquisition by the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A), we derive three-dimensional temperature weighting functions for Channel 9 measurements (peaking at ~60–90 hPa) at all 30 cross-track beam positions and use them to investigate the sensitivity of these radiances to gravity waves. The vertical widths of the weighting functions limit detection to waves with vertical wavelengths of ≳10 km, with slightly better vertical wavelength sensitivity at the outermost scan angles due to the limb effect. Fourier Transforms of two-dimensional cross-track weighting functions reveal optimal sensitivity to cross-track wavelengths at the near-nadir scan angles, where horizontal measurement footprints are smallest. This sensitivity is greater for the AMSU-A on the Aqua satellite than for the identical instruments on the NOAA meteorological satellites, due to a lower orbit altitude and thus smaller horizontal footprints from antenna spreading. Small cross-track asymmetries in the radiance response to gravity waves are found that peak at the mid-range scan angles, with more symmetric responses at near-nadir and far off-nadir scan angles. Three-dimensional simulations show gravity wave oscillations imaged in horizontal AMSU-A radiance maps swept out by the scan pattern and satellite motion. A distorting curvature is added to imaged wave phase lines due to vertical variations in weighting function peaks with cross-track scan angle. This wave distortion is analogous to the well-known "limb darkening" and "limb brightening" of microwave radiances acquired from purely vertical background temperature profiles by cross-track scanners. Waves propagating along track are more visible in these images at the outermost scan angles than those propagating cross track, due to oversampling and narrower widths of the horizontal measurement footprints in the along track direction. Based on nominal noise floors and representative lower stratospheric wave temperature amplitudes, our modeling indicates that Channel 9 AMSU-A radiances can resolve and horizontally image gravity waves with horizontal wavelengths of ≳150 km and vertical wavelengths of ≳10 km.
Problems of the Origin of the Anodic Part of Cerebrospinal Fluid Gamma-G-globulins in Inflammatory Affections of the Central Nervous System

IMMUNOELECTROPHORETIC investigation of the cerebrospinal fluid in inflammatory affections of the central nervous system (CNS) reveals an elongation and thickening of the anodic part of the cerebrospinal fluid gamma-G-globulins* especially in the inflammatory or demyelinizing processes of the course from subacute to chronic.
Static communication scheduling for minimizing collisions in application specific parallel systems

In applications requiring very high throughput or which have real-time deadlines, the use of parallel processing techniques has become widespread. Although there exists potential for vast performance gains, the communication overhead inherent in such systems can significantly lessen these gains. In this paper, with tightly-coupled architectures as the platform, the static communication scheduling of messages in the network is addressed. The compile time determination of when nodes should send their messages to other nodes is what is termed static communication scheduling. In parallel systems the static scheduling of computational tasks has been studied for some time, however an in depth analysis of our problem is very new. This paper builds a framework based on the newly developed collision graph model. Using this model, the determination of an optimal schedule is proven to be NP-Complete. Several efficient algorithms are designed to deal with a general case model of message traffic, and experiments show a significant improvement over baseline approaches.
Increased default mode network activity in socially anxious individuals during reward processing

Social anxiety has been associated with potentiated negative affect and, more recently, with diminished positive affect. It is unclear how these alterations in negative and positive affect are represented neurally in socially anxious individuals and, further, whether they generalize to non-social stimuli. To explore this, we used a monetary incentive paradigm to explore the association between social anxiety and both the anticipation and consumption of non-social incentives. Eighty-four individuals from a longitudinal community sample underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participating in a monetary incentive delay (MID) task. The MID task consisted of alternating cues indicating the potential to win or prevent losing varying amounts of money based on the speed of the participant’s response. We examined whether self-reported levels of social anxiety, averaged across approximately 7 years of data, moderated brain activity when contrasting gain or loss cues with neutral cues during the anticipation and outcome phases of incentive processing. Whole brain analyses and analyses restricted to the ventral striatum for the anticipation phase and the medial prefrontal cortex for the outcome phase were conducted. Social anxiety did not associate with differences in hit rates or reaction times when responding to cues. Further, socially anxious individuals did not exhibit decreased ventral striatum activity during anticipation of gains or decreased MPFC activity during the outcome of gain trials, contrary to expectations based on literature indicating blunted positive affect in social anxiety. Instead, social anxiety showed positive associations with extensive regions implicated in default mode network activity (for example, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and parietal lobe) during anticipation and receipt of monetary gain. Social anxiety was further linked with decreased activity in the ventral striatum during anticipation of monetary loss. Socially anxious individuals may increase default mode network activity during reward processing, suggesting high self-focused attention even in relation to potentially rewarding stimuli lacking explicit social connotations. Additionally, social anxiety may relate to decreased ventral striatum reactivity when anticipating potential losses.
Some Integration-by-Parts Formulas Involving 2-Copulas

Abstract We note examples of probabilistic interpretations of integrals involving 2-copulas. We then use the theory of strong convergence of copulas to justify an integration-by-parts formula involving 2-copulas, $$ \int_{{I^2}} {f\left( A \right)dB = \int_0^1 {f\left( t \right)dt - \int_{{I^2}} {f'\left( A \right){D_1}A\,{D_2}B = \int_0^1 {f\left( t \right)dt - \int_{{I^2}} {f'\left( A \right){D_2}A\,{D_1}B.} } } } } $$ where A and B are arbitrary 2-copulas and f is continuously differentiable.
Some Reactions of Isolated Corn Mitochondria Influenced by Juglone

The effects of juglone on the uptake of O2 by excised corn roots (Zea mays L., Wf9 cms- T × M14) and isolated corn mitochondria arc reported. The O2 uptake by excised corn roots, as measured by an O2 electrode, was inhibited more than 90% after a one-hour treatment of 500 μM juglone. Lesser inhibitions were observed with 50 μM and 250 μM juglone. In a KC1 reaction medium in the absence of inorganic phosphate (Pi), juglone stimulated the rate of O2 uptake by isolated mitochondria oxidizing NADH, succinate, or malate + pyruvate. In the presence of Pi, juglone concentrations of 3 μM and greater inhibited the state 3 oxidation rates of succinate and malate + pyruvate, lowered respiratory control and ADP/O ratios obtained from the oxidation of NADH, malate + pyruvate, or succinate, and reduced the coupled deposition of calcium phosphate within isolated mitochondria driven, by the oxidation of malate + pyruvate. The inhibition of state 3 O2 uptake by isolated mitochondria, an oxidative state in which electron transfer is coupled to ATP production, is seen to correlate with the inhibition affected by juglone when applied to tissues in vivo.
Oral health status of a long‐term‐care, veteran population

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates the largest, integrated health care system in the United States of America. The projected need for long-term-care in the VA health care system parallels an expected increase in need for care in the United States, but precedes the need for care in the general population by 25-30 yr. The VA's Office of Dentistry, in an effort to estimate the resource requirements of this swelling group of veterans, initiated in 1986-7 an oral health survey of long-term care patients. The overall goals were to describe the oral health status of VA nursing home care units (NHCU) residents and to develop a methodology for estimating future dental health services utilization. This study describes the oral health status of the study population. Demographic and oral health data were collected for 650 long-term care residents of six VA NHCUs between October 1986 and July 1987. Data were collected on sociodemographic status, medical history, dental caries, periodontal diseases, oral soft tissue pathology, and the presence of dental prostheses. Caries and periodontal disease were evaluated using the United States National Institute of Dental Research Survey of Employed Adults and Seniors protocols. The oral health status of the population is described using DMF and ESI indices, the prevalence of oral lesions, levels of tooth loss, oral hygiene scores, and the status of existing dentures. Findings show moderate levels of untreated dental caries and periodontal disease and significant tooth loss which increased with age. A need for preventive therapy, restorative dentistry, conservative periodontal therapy, and prosthodontic care was evident.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Through-Space Interaction Mediated by a Sulfoxide

Two new bisferrocenylphenylsulfoxides were synthesized and studied to determine the effect of the polar sulfoxide bond on through-space interaction between ferrocene moieties. The electronic and re...
A simplified approach to reconstruction of hemipelvectomy defects with lower extremity free fillet flaps to minimize ischemia time

External hemipelvectomy associated with trauma or during the operative management of musculoskeletal sarcomas may yield a soft tissue defect that can only be sufficiently covered by free tissue transfers. The application of "spare-parts surgery," such as a fillet of leg or thigh flap, uses distal uninvolved parts that are otherwise viable tissues as donor tissues to cover defects. This concept has great utility to achieve soft tissue coverage in challenging cases, such as hemipelvectomy. However, during such complicated and time-consuming cases, prolonged ischemia time of the proposed donor tissues can be problematic. We describe a technique developed by the senior author (SJK) that minimizes the ischemia time of donor free tissues during external hemipelvectomy. This technique is applicable to other surgeries where filleted spare parts are the donor-site source for free tissue transfer.