cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Integrating Medical and Nonmedical Services — The Promise and Pitfalls of the CHRONIC Care Act

Integrating Medical and Nonmedical Services The CHRONIC Care Act boosts efforts to provide more integrated care for Medicare beneficiaries to better address needs that are not strictly medical, but it may also substantially affect risk selection in Medicare Advantage plans, which would be counterproductive.
Resonance Raman Spectroscopy of the Fe(IV)=O Group in Peroxidase Intermediates

The heme proteins known as peroxidases and catalases catalyze reactions of peroxides. The reaction sequences of peroxidases and catalases involve two colored intermediates, known as compounds I and II. Horseradish peroxidase is one of the most studied peroxidases because of its universal availability from commercial sources, and because its reactions are typical of a large number of peroxidases. Upon reaction with hydrogen peroxide, horseradish peroxidase forms a green colored intermediate known as compound I, which is two oxidation equivalents above the resting enzyme. A one electron reduction of compound I results in a red colored intermediate known as compound II. Compound II is an Fe(IV) heme, one oxidation equivalent above the resting enzyme. While compound I is formally an Fe(V) heme, it is believed to contain an Fe(IV) with another electron removed from the highest occupied molecular orbital of the porphyrin group, resulting in a porphyrin η-radical cation.
Virtue's Domain

If at the end of your life you were told you had fulfilled all your moral duties, you would be proud. If you were told you only fulfilled your moral duties, you would be less proud. We all aim to do more than fulfill our duties. We wish to have been more generous than obligatory, more patient, more wise . . . in short, we wish to be virtuous. This insight, that there is more to moral well-being than either our moral duties or good consequences, is central to modern virtue ethics. In its important neo-Aristotelian strain, virtue ethics advocates that success in life is also determined by living an ethically rich life, showing sound practical reasoning and exhibiting the human virtues. Virtue ethics is also importantly influencing jurisprudence. Understanding the role virtue plays in law reveals the way in which our criminal punishment regimes are based on a view of poor underlying character. When these insights are embedded in law, however, things go horribly awry. Because virtue theories premise blame, in part, on a failing of character within the offender, they alter our view of the offender and create a permanent criminal caste. With our compassion blunted, our ugliest prejudices flourish and we fail to notice that our criminal law has become a powerful tool of racial and class suppression. Equally disturbing, even the most sophisticated character theories cannot be reconciled with our commitment to liberalism, particularly with the central place of autonomy within liberalism. This article argues that only by returning to Kantian and Hegelian Act theories of punishment can we dissolve the view of offenders as permanently tainted and stay true to our liberal commitments.
Lessons Learned about Global Statistical Initiatives from the International Comparison Program

The recent successful completion of the International Comparison Program providing economic statistics for 146 countries provided valuable lessons learned about how to organize, coordinate, and conduct a statistical system involving international, regional, and national statistical Offices. Five necessary elements for a global statistical program and their interaction
ISOLATED SARCOPLASMIC RETICULUM CONVERTS FURA2AM INTO A CALCIUM–INDEPENDENT ANALOG OF FURA2

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on pentaester precursor of fura2, called fura2AM, which is lipophilic and can cross the surface membrane. Once inside, fura2AM is converted by cellular esterases into fura2, which is sensitive to the changes in free calcium. It found that fura2AM is converted by isolated Sarcoplasmic Reticulum (SR) into a highly fluorescent, calcium-insensitive analog it is called fura2′. Typical calcium dependent ATPase activities were 10–12 μmoles Pi/min-mg SR protein at 25°C. 0.2 μM fura2AM was exposed to suspensions containing 0–5 mg /ml of SR. It was found that the fluorescence intensity of each sample increased with the amount of SR and with the duration of the incubation. Both fura2AM and fura2′ peaked at 362 nm, such that both were insensitive to calcium, and that either one could be converted to fura2 when incubated for several hours in the presence of 0.1 mg/ml porcine liver esterase. The consequences of the appearance of fura2′ in the cytoplasm would depend upon its longevity, relative concentration and relative fluorescence intensity with respect to fura2.
Dynamic Assessments of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Models and Modelling

The authors are concerned with identifying and developing preservice teachers’ understandings and use of scientific models related to the nature of science and scientific inquiry. Empirical research suggests that teachers possess uninformed and/or alternative views of aspects of scientific work, in particular of the role of models and modelling in science. In this study we focus on a particular kind of scientific model: models based on mathematical equations and depicting multiple processes. Participants included graduate students and advanced undergraduates in a teacher preparation program for biology, earth and space science, physics, and chemistry in a large university in the U.S.A. The purpose of this paper is to present several assessments used to track our preservice teachers’ understandings, as they engaged in building computer models of pond ecosystems. These assessments, developed for research purposes, include 1) an open-ended questionnaire; 2) a semi-structured interview protocol used in combination with the computer models constructed by preservice teachers, and 3) a process map to track pair conversations and activities. We consider these as dynamic assessments, designed for use with the non-static work of teachers learning to build and test computer models of natural phenomena. Strengths and limitations of these assessments are discussed.
Urinary Bladder Pathology: World Health Organization Classification and American Joint Committee on Cancer Staging Update.

Context.— Since the publication of the previous World Health Organization (WHO) Classification of Tumours on the Pathology and Genetics of Tumours of the Urinary System and Male Genital Organs in 2...
Wilderness With Honors: Assessing an Extended-Duration Outdoor Orientation Program

Incoming college students are faced with a host of new tasks, environments, and challenges. College orientation programs help prepare students for life after high school by raising awareness of university resources and tools, but the limited time available for traditional orientation and the transactional nature of information exchange curb the amount of preparedness students achieve. One specific type of orientation program, the outdoor orientation program, seeks to augment traditional orientation programs. Subscribe to JOREL
Video mining for facial action unit classification using statistical spatial–temporal feature image and LoG deep convolutional neural network

In this paper, we aim to improve the convolutional deep learning by means of proposed statistical feature image descriptor and Laplacian of Gaussian filtering. We propose a statistical feature image descriptor (SFID) that is composed of spatial and temporal parts for video content classification using convolutional deep neural network. We apply the proposed descriptor to multi-view action unit classification. The SFID is a statistical representation of the raw image based upon K-abstraction levels. It is capable of addressing the fixing input array size of the deep learning model. Further, it eliminates redundancy in representation of the content; hence, it reduces computation cost. The proposed SFID can be in spatial and/or temporal form. The temporal form is particularly important in video content classification. We added a new layer of Laplacian of Gaussian filter (LoG) right before fully connected layer into the regular deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) structure. The parameters of the LoG are adaptively calculated using the Gaussian mixture models. The classification results are compared with regular DCNN, SVM models, and KNN together with feature descriptors of SIFT and SURF. The results show that the proposed feature descriptor and introducing a LoG filter layer give promising performance for deep learning.
Enhanced Electrochemical Stability of TiO2-Protected, Al-doped ZnO Transparent Conducting Oxide Synthesized by Atomic Layer Deposition

Transparent, conductive coatings on porous, three-dimensional materials are often used as the current collector for photoelectrode designs in photoelectrochemical applications. These structures allow for improved light trapping and absorption in chemically synthesized, photoactive overlayers while minimizing parasitic absorption in the current collecting layer. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is particularly useful for fabricating transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) like Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) and Al-doped ZnO (AZO) for structured materials because the deposition is specific to exposed surfaces. Unlike line-of-sight deposition methods (evaporation, spray pyrolysis, sputtering), ALD can access the entire complex interface to make a conformal transparent conductive layer. While ITO and AZO can be grown by ALD, they are intrinsically soluble in the acidic and basic environments common for electrochemical applications like water splitting. To take advantage of the unique characteristics of ALD in these applicati...
Political Prisoners and Environmental Justice

This paper considers the intersections of environmental justice concerns with the U.S. prison system through the experiences of political prisoners and politicized prisoners from high-profile revol...
Burden of Illness, Primary Care Use, and Medication Utilization among US-México Border Children with Wheezing.

Among high-risk, underserved populations, such as children living along the US-Mexico border, suffering from asthma-like symptoms without an asthma diagnosis can result in a high burden of illness. We estimated the prevalence of physician-diagnosed and possible undiagnosed asthma among students with histories of wheezing in the US-Mexico border community of El Paso, Texas, and evaluated their burden of illness, primary care use, and medication utilization. We analyzed cross-sectional survey data collected in May 2012. The survey included validated International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) items. We performed bivariate and logistic regression analyses on data from 307 students who wheezed. Forty-two percent of students had possible undiagnosed asthma and 58% had physician-diagnosed asthma based on primary caretaker reports. Children of Mexican origin were more likely to report undiagnosed vs. diagnosed asthma (p < 0.05). Children with an asthma diagnosis were more likely to report any medication use for wheezing/asthma and to experience a higher burden of illness in the last year compared to students with possible undiagnosed asthma (p < 0.05). The burden of illness among these children was high; however, children with asthma-like symptoms were not faring worse than children with asthma symptoms and a diagnosis. Undiagnosed children were being evaluated and receiving treatment for their symptoms; however, by not receiving a diagnosis, they were eliciting an ameliorative rather than preventive treatment strategy.
Maximizing the impact of new physics in b →c τ ν anomalies

We develop a rigorous, semianalytical method for maximizing any $b\ensuremath{\rightarrow}c\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\nu}$ observable in the full 20-real-dimensional parameter space of the dimension 6 effective Hamiltonian, given some fixed values of ${R}_{{D}^{(*)}}$. We apply our method to find the maximum allowed values of ${F}_{{D}^{*}}^{L}$ and ${R}_{J/\ensuremath{\psi}}$, two observables which have both come out higher than their Standard Model predictions in recent measurements by the Belle and LHCb Collaborations. While the measurements still have large error bars, they add to the existing ${R}_{{D}^{(*)}}$ anomaly, and it is worthwhile to consider new physics explanations. It has been shown that none of the existing, minimal models in the literature can explain the observed values of ${F}_{{D}^{*}}^{L}$ and ${R}_{J/\ensuremath{\psi}}$. Using our method, we will generalize beyond the minimal models and show that there is no combination of dimension 6 Wilson operators that can come within $1\ensuremath{\sigma}$ of the observed ${R}_{J/\ensuremath{\psi}}$ value. By contrast, we will show that the observed value of ${F}_{{D}^{*}}^{L}$ can be achieved, but only with sizable contributions from tensor and mixed-chirality vector Wilson coefficients.
Topological reduction of 4D SYM to 2D σ-models

Abstract By considering a (partial) topological twisting of supersymmetric Yang-Mills compactified on a 2d space with 't Hooft magnetic flux tumed on we obtain a supersymmetric σ-model in 2 dimensions. For N = 2 SYM this maps Donaldson observables on products of two Riemann surfaces to quantum cohomology ring of moduli space of flat connections on a Riemann surface. For N = 4 SYM it maps S -duality to T -duality for σ-models on moduli space of solutions to Hitchin equations.
Proximity and Networked News Public: Structural Topic Modeling of Global Twitter Conversations about the 2017 Quebec Mosque Shooting

The current study used structural topic modeling to investigate the ways in which news of the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting mobilized global public discourse on Twitter. The resulting globally generated Twitter conversations were divided into 9 relevant topics, the prevalence of which were examined based on geographic and informational proximity to the location of the incident. Tweets posted from locations geographically closer to the shooting location prevalently incorporated individual-oriented and conflict-focused storytelling. Conversely, tweets geographically farther from the incident prevalently featured macro-narratives that pointed to societal implications. This study also explored informational distance, which defines the ability to access to in-depth news sources. Results showed that there were topical differences between journalist/institutional tweets and laymen tweets. This study concludes that proximity influences global conversations related to hate crime news .
Modeling driver behavior in work and nonwork zones: multidimensional psychophysical car-following framework

A new multidimensional framework for modeling car following on the basis of statistical evaluation of driver behavior in work and nonwork zones is presented. The models developed as part of this multidimensional framework use psychophysical concepts for car following that are close in character to the Wiedemann model used in popular traffic simulation software such as VISSIM. The authors hypothesized that with an instrumented research vehicle (IRV) in a living laboratory (LL) along a roadway, the parameters of models developed from the multidimensional framework could be derived statistically and calibrated for driver behavior in work zones. This hypothesis was validated with data collected from a group of 64 random participants who drove the IRV through an LL set up along a work zone on I-95 near Washington, D.C. For this validation, the IRV was equipped with sensors, including radar, and an onboard data collection system to record the vehicle performance. One of the limitations of current car-following models is that they account for only one overall behavioral condition. This study demonstrated that there are four different categories of car-following behavior models, each with different parameter distributions: the four categories are divided by traffic condition (congested versus noncongested) and by roadway condition (work versus nonwork zone). Calibrated threshold values for each of these four categories are presented. Furthermore, this new framework for modeling car-following behavior is described in a multidimensional setting and can be used to enhance vehicle behavior in microsimulation models.
Oblate collectivity in 197Pb.

Evidence for collective behavior in the high-spin region of lead nuclei is provided by the observation of two collective structures in $^{197}\mathrm{Pb}$. One of these bands is interpreted as an oblate collective structure built on oblate proton and possibly neutron states. A second more irregular band is suggested to be most likely a triaxial rotational band. Neutron and proton configurations for these bands are suggested from the results of quasiparticle Routhians and total Routhians surface calculations. A partial level scheme up to I\ensuremath{\approxeq}69/2 and ${\mathit{E}}_{\mathit{x}}$\ensuremath{\approxeq}8 MeV is presented.
On trajectory tracking of control-affine nonlinear systems with unreliable communication

Abstract We consider the problem of trajectory tracking for a control-affine nonlinear system, where the reference trajectory is given by a nonlinear dynamical system that accepts a time-varying exogenous input from an external agent through a communication channel. Owing to communication distortions, real-time information of the input signal is seldom available at the controller end. This necessitates appropriate design of the sending interval (the difference between time instants at which data packets are sent) for the external agent, and suitable update laws for the controller. We assume the availability of a control law, that achieves the desired trajectory tracking when the input signal is available in real-time, and outline some design guidelines such that the same control law can ensure boundedness of the tracking error even when the input signal is subjected to packet drops. In particular, we consider an appropriate model for the packet-drop probability of the channel and derive an upper bound on the sending interval. We also highlight the required conditions for update of the control signal. The idea is illustrated through numerical simulations conducted on a nonlinear model for cruise control with vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
RARE BACTERIAL INFECTIVE ENDOCARDITIS UNMASKING SIGMOID NEOPLASIA

Granulicatella species is a nutritionally variant streptococci (NVS) which is a normal flora of the oral cavity, intestinal tract and genitourinary tract. It accounts for about 5% of all streptococcal endocarditis. However since it is a fastidious organism, these cases are likely misdiagnosed as
Qualitative investigation of cytolytic and noncytolytic immune response in an HBV model

We investigate a mathematical model of infection by the hepatitis B virus (HBV) that includes cytolytic and noncytolytic immune response. The model exhibits a variety of steady-state solutions depending on parameter values, including nonunique and unique equilibrium solutions and periodic behavior. The disease-free equilibrium Ef and the positive-disease equilibrium Ed are examined. The basic reproduction ratio R0 is computed in order to examine the uniqueness and local asymptotic stability of equilibria and to understand the model’s biological implications for HBV dynamics.
Coinfection of HIV and hepatitis C increases complication rates after total joint arthroplasty.

Introduction : As advances in efficacy of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis-C virus (HCV) anti-viral medications increase, patients are able to maintain higher quality of lives than ever before. While these patients live longer lives, the unique patient population of those co-infected with both HIV and HCV increases. As these older patients seek orthopaedic care, it is important to understand their unique outcome profile. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the complication rate after total joint arthroplasty (TJA) in patients with HIV and HCV coinfection compared with patients with HIV or HCV only. Methods : A retrospective review of patients undergoing primary total joint arthroplasty (TJA) at our urban, academic hospital between April 2016 and April 2019 was conducted. Patients were stratified into three groups according to viral status: HIV only, HCV only, or HIV and HCV coinfection. Baseline demographics, intravenous drug (IV) use, surgery type, CD4+ count, follow-up and complications were analysed. Results : Of the 133 patients included in the study, 28 had HIV, 88 had HCV and 17 were coinfected with both HIV and HCV. Coinfected patients were more likely to have a lower BMI (p : Patients coinfected with HIV and HCV undergoing TJA have a higher complication rate than patients with either infection alone. As this unique population of coinfected patients continues to expand, increasingly they will be under the care of arthroplasty surgeons. Improved awareness and understanding of the baseline demographic differences between these patients is paramount. Recognition of the increased complication rates grants the opportunity to improve their orthopaedic care through preoperative and multidisciplinary management.
Orders-of-magnitude larger force demonstrated for dielectrophoresis of proteins enabling high-resolution separations based on new mechanisms

Proteins are perhaps the most important yet frustratingly complicated and difficult class of compounds to analyze, manipulate, and use. One very attractive option to characterize and differentially...
Prostate Cancer: Community Education and Disparities in Diagnosis and Treatment

Prostate cancer remains the leading diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of death among American men. Despite improvements in screening modalities, diagnostics, and treatment, disparities exist among Black men in this country. The primary objective of this systematic review is to describe the reported disparities in screening, diagnostics, and treatments as well as efforts to alleviate these disparities through community and educational outreach efforts. Critical review took place of retrospective, prospective, and socially descriptive data of English language publications in the PubMed database. Despite more advanced presentation, lower rates of screening and diagnostic procedures, and low rates of trial inclusion, subanalyses have shown that various modalities of therapy are quite effective in Black populations. Moreover, patients treated on prospective clinical trials and within equal-access care environments have shown similar outcomes regardless of race. Additional prospective studies and enhanced participation in screening, diagnostic and genetic testing, clinical trials, and community-based educational endeavors are important to ensure equitable progress in prostate cancer for all patients. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Notable progress has been made with therapeutic advances for prostate cancer, but racial disparities continue to exist. Differing rates in screening and utility in diagnostic procedures play a role in these disparities. Black patients often present with more advanced disease, higher prostate-specific antigen, and other adverse factors, but outcomes can be attenuated in trials or in equal-access care environments. Recent data have shown that multiple modalities of therapy are quite effective in Black populations. Novel and bold hypotheses to increase inclusion in clinical trial, enhance decentralized trial efforts, and enact successful models of patient navigation and community partnership are vital to ensure continued progress in prostate cancer disparities.
Madam Yoko: A Woman Chief of the Mende of Sierra Leone, 1882-1906

This paper will summarize my current research for a biography of the most prominent woman chief of Sierra Leone in the late nineteenth century, Madam Yoko of Senehun. This woman oversaw the largest pre-colonial state in hinterland of Sierra Leone for a period of nearly 25 years. In my paper I propose to lay out the parameters of Yoko's career that will reconfigure her life story as the embodiment of an intentional embrace of modernity in this late nineteenth century African setting. My analysis of Yoko challenges the binary opposition of resistance/collaboration so often used in earlier scholarship to undermine the legitimacy of women political figures who engaged with colonial authorities, and offers a more nuanced, more gendered history of early colonial history. I will argue that in the early years of the colonial project, British imperial agents introduced state-sponsored patriarchal hegemonic relations, but that Yoko manipulated them to maximize her own personal power, agency and efficacy. Thus, her biography disrupts the thinking which regards African women in the colonial era as either victims of exploitation or as collaborators in their own oppression, and offers a re-interpretation of earlier work, one that uses new documentary sources, new readings of old sources and a more consciously feminist framework.
Modeling and Performance Comparison of GaN HEMT and SiC MOSFET for Onboard Charging Application

This paper presents a comprehensive performance comparison of Wide Band Gap (WBG) devices based on improved DC and RF numerical models of Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistor (GaN HEMT) and Silicon Carbide Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor (SiC MOSFET) using On-board Fast Charger (OBC) as a case study. The battery capacity of modern Electric Vehicles (EV) has risen above the charging capability of Silicon(Si)-based OBC due to its limited power density and charging efficiency. In light of the above and advances made in WBG device fabrication technology, SiC MOSFET and GaN HEMT have emerged as proven candidates for high power density OBCs. Eventhough both power semiconductors have better performance than Si, the models presented in this manuscript details their operational differences coupled with their Radio Frequency (RF) and Direct Current (DC) performance limitations for OBC applications. Numerical simulations were performed in Matlab. Simulation results were analyzed and they validated theoretical expectations. The results showed that GaN-HEMT demonstrated higher switching frequency, low operational voltage compared to SiC MOSFET, and is best fit for use in low power charging applications.
A deeper dive into the reminiscence bump: further evidence for the life script hypothesis.

When older adults are asked to recall personal events that occurred at any point in their lives, memories from late adolescence and early adulthood are overrepresented, forming a reminiscence bump. Thematic analyses have indicated that the bump memories that emerge in response to such prompts frequently represent milestone events that are consistent with cultural life scripts. This study employed a novel method that explicitly targeted only memories of events occurring during late adolescence and early adulthood, allowing in-depth exploration of the contents and potential organising principles associated with these memories. Older adults (N = 197) completed an on-line survey in which they described 7 memories of personal events that had occurred at any time between the ages of 19 and 34. Content analyses indicated that memories frequently portrayed landmark events, consistent with cultural life script theory. After completing the memory task, participants who had been married or had their first child between ages 19 and 34 provided their age at the time of these events. Temporal distributions of memory ages centred on participants' ages at the time of their first marriage or childbirth also were consistent with the life script explanation for the reminiscence bump.
An indirect measure of the implicit level of presence in virtual environments

Virtual Environments (VEs) are a common occurrence for many computer users. Considering their spreading usage and speedy development it is ever more important to develop methods that capture and measure key aspects of a VE, like presence. One of the main problems with measuring the level of presence in VEs is that the users may not be consciously aware of its affect. This is a problem especially for direct measures that rely on questionnaires and only measure the perceived level of presence explicitly. In this paper we develop and validate an indirect measure for the implicit level of presence of users, based on the physical reaction of users to events in the VE. The addition of an implicit measure will enable us to evaluate and compare VEs more effectively, especially with regard to their main function as immersive environments. Our approach is practical, cost-effective and delivers reliable results.
Patterns and rates of protein synthesis in sea urchin embryos: II. The calculation of absolute rates

Abstract During the early cleavage stage of development the sea urchin embryo uses amino acids present in the soluble pool to synthesize proteins. The size of these pools (e.g., 4.1 × 10−8 μmoles per embryo for leucine in A. punctulata, or enough to support protein synthesis for 5 minutes) is the same in unfertilized eggs and during the first several hours of development although the addition of exogenous amino acid expands them up to severalfold. Leucine added to the pool is converted very quickly into glutamic acid and other amino acids (up to 80% in 1 hour). A. punctulata embryos synthesize proteins at a rate of 12 × 10−6 μg of protein per embryo per minute during early cleavage. If this rate were maintained during 24 hours of development, a turnover of 45% of the total proteins would occur. There is more than enough yolk to support such a synthesis. The newly synthesized proteins are quite stable during development.
Periodic Operation of Continuous Fermentations Subject to Periodic Variation of Dilution Rate

The possibility of improvement in performance of continuous bioprocesses by cycling of the dilution rate is analyzed using the pi-criterion. The analysis is concerned with bioprocesses the static behavior of which can be described completely in terms of one state variable, viz., concentration of the limiting substrate. Some widely applicable conditions for superiority of periodic control vis-a-vis the optimal stationary control and expressions for optimum cycling frequencies are derived analytically. The applications considered include fermentations for production of a variety of biochemicals.
Self-induced Orbital Compression Injury: Saturday Night Retinopathy

Inadvertent compression of ocular tissues is an exceedingly rare cause of vision loss. Herein, we describe the second reported case, to our knowledge, of a self-induced orbital compression syndrome and the first set of images obtained with optical coherence tomography and fluorescein angiography in this condition. Language: en
Borderline personality features and associated difficulty in emotion perception: An examination of accuracy and bias

Research on borderline personality disorder (BPD) has consistently found that those with the disorder often experience volatile interpersonal interactions, and several areas of research have been dedicated to the understanding of the mechanisms behind these interpersonal struggles. One of the most common theories is that the emotional dysregulation that is characteristic of BPD may adversely impact these interpersonal interactions, perhaps through a resulting misperception of emotional states in others. The purpose of the current study was to examine perception of negative affect in those with borderline personality features using a signal detection paradigm, a modified version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task. Results support the hypothesis of atypical perception of negative emotions in BPD, but with disinhibitory aspects of the disorder demonstrating the largest potential influence. This finding was obtained even after controlling for gender differences that were also observed on this task. These results suggest that an examination of trait components of BPD may be necessary for a complete understanding of the emotion perception abilities of those with the disorder.
Reoxidized nitric oxide (ReoxNO) process and its effect on the dielectric reliability of the LOCOS edge

Reoxidation of an oxynitride gate dielectric grown by NO anneal of thermal oxide has been studied for the first time. This process results in a striking enhancement of both gate and substrate injection Q/sub BD/ by /spl sim/3-5X for active edge intensive capacitors in comparison to thermal oxide, N/sub 2/O and NO oxynitride. This improvement is attributed to reduction of mechanical stress at the active edge which leads to less local thinning of gate oxide at the field oxide edge and reduction of the local build-up of positive charge near the gate electrode at the isolation edges. Drive current of n- and p-MOSFETs with ReoxNO oxynitride is also compared to other dielectrics.
Live demonstration: A 1300 × 800, 700 mW, 30 fps spectral polarization imager

We have designed, fabricated, and tested a division-of-focal-plane polarimeter capable of simultaneously imaging both spectral and polarization information at 30 frames per second. The imaging sensor, composed of 1300 by 800 imaging elements, each containing three vertically stacked photodetectors, is covered by pixelated nanowire polarization filters at four different orientations offset by 45o. The polarimeter has a dynamic range of 62 dB and captures intensity, angle, and degree of linear polarization in three visible spectrum bands while consuming 700 mW of power.
The relation between maternal and fetal oxygen tensions in sheep

Abstract The relation between maternal and fetal oxygen tensions was studied in 114 ewes. It was shown that in the hypoxemic ewe (Po 2 2 > 100 mm. Hg) it has a limited egect. Previously published data have emphasized the important effect of pH on the transfer of oxygen to the fetus. In the present study, when the maternal pH was controlled, it was found that, although an increased concentration of inspired oxygen produced a significant rise in umbilical vein Po 2 , this effect on the fetus was limited and, in some cases, counterbalanced by decreases in umbilical blood flow.
Surface modification of PLGA microspheres for targeting

RGD peptide was conjugated to hollow microspheres to develop PLGA ultrasound contrast agents that enhance ultrasound imaging. The microcapsules were coated with an RGD peptide that targets integrins specific to angiogenesis, /spl alpha/v/spl beta/3 and /spl alpha/v/spl beta/5. The microcapsules were then bound to rat neuroblastoma cells in vitro within 6 hours. The RGD peptide modified microcapsules makes them ideal candidates for targeted therapeutic imaging and drug delivery vehicles.
Timing and power simulation for deep sub-micron ICs

Due to the performance limitations of electrical-level circuit simulators like SPICE, gate- and transistor-level timing and power simulation tools are becoming increasingly important to the IC design community. Industry trends in circuit density, operating speed, and power supply voltage demand higher and higher levels of modeling sophistication to reliably and accurately predict circuit functionality and performance. This paper compares and contrasts the latest modeling and timing simulation strategies from the point-of-view of accuracy and efficiency. We assess the usefulness of various simulation techniques with respect to their ability to accommodate important second-order phenomena like short and narrow channel effects, charge sharing, sub-threshold conduction, etc. These effects can impose serious limitations on the usefulness of design tools for increasingly common submicron fabrication technologies. ADM, a transistor-level simulation strategy based on efficient analytic solution of partitioned channel-connected components, is shown to address these concerns directly and automatically. An industry benchmark summary of an assortment of microprocessor, memory, and communication designs is presented to demonstrate the viability of this method.
Electron affinities of 6p electrons in Pr

Valence shell relativistic configuration-interaction calculations for 6p attachments to the Pr ground state yield two bound states for the configuration 4${\mathit{f}}^{3}$6${\mathit{s}}^{2}$6p. The two levels (J) and their electron affinities (EA) are (J, EA (eV))=(4, 0.110) and (5, 0.128). We were unable to find any evidence for 5d or 4f attachments. These results are consistent with the relatively modest experimental yields obtained for ${\mathrm{Pr}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$.
GPP-Grep: high-speed regular expression processing engine on general purpose processors

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) serves as a major tool for Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) for matching datagram payloads to a set of known patterns that indicate suspicious or malicious behavior. Regular expressions offer rich context for describing these patterns. Unfortunately, large rule sets containing thousands of patterns coupled with high link-speeds leave most regular expression matching methods incapable of matching at real-time without specialized hardware. We present GPP-grep, an NFA-based regular expression processing engine designed for maximum performance on General Purpose Processors. The primary contribution of GPP-grep is the utilization of the data-level parallelism available in modern CPUs to reduce the overhead incurred when tracking multiple states in NFA. In essence, we build and store the NFA in an architecture-friendly manner that exploits locality and then traverse the NFA maximizing the parallelism available and minimizing cache-misses and long-latency memory lookups. GPPgrep demonstrates 24---57× improvement in throughput over standard finite automata techniques on a set of up to 1200 regular-expressions culled from the NIDS Snort, and is within 1.3× of FPGA hardware-based techniques. GPP-grep achieves 2Gbps throughput on a dual-socket commodity CPU system allowing for line-speed evaluation on commodity hardware.
Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals

Does living with a pet really make people happier and healthier? What can we learn from biomedical research with mice? Who enjoys a better quality of life - the chicken on a dinner plate or a rooster who dies in a Saturday night cockfight? Why is it wrong to eat the family dog? Drawing on over two decades of research in the emerging field of anthrozoology, the science of human-animal relations, Hal Herzog offers surprising answers to these and other questions related to the moral conundrums we face day in and day out regarding the creatures with whom we share our world. "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat" is a highly entertaining and illuminating journey through the full spectrum of human-animal relations, based on Dr. Herzog's groundbreaking research on animal rights activists, cockfighters, professional dog show handlers, veterinary students, and biomedical researchers. Blending anthropology, history, brain science, behavioural economics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy, Herzog carefully crafts a seamless narrative enriched with real life anecdotes, scientific research, and his own sense of moral ambivalence. Alternately poignant, challenging, and laugh-out-loud funny, his enlightening and provocative book will forever change the way we look at our relationships with other creatures and, ultimately, how we see ourselves.
Mitochondrial DNA phylogeny of the woodpecker genus Veniliornis (Picidae, Picinae) and related genera implies convergent evolution of plumage patterns

The woodpecker genus Veniliornis comprises 12 species, all restricted to the New World tropics. The seemingly distantly related genus Picoides is broadly distributed in Eurasia and North America with two putative species, P. lignarius and P. mixtus , occurring in South America. The two genera are clearly distinct with respect to general plumage colouration and patterning as well as habitat utilization and thus traditionally have been placed in different tribes. Phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA sequences from the COI and cyt b genes indicated that both genera are reciprocally paraphyletic. The two South American species of Picoides belong to a clade comprising most species of Veniliornis , but V. fumigatus of Central and north-western South America belongs to a clade comprising species of Picoides . The mtDNA tree also indicated that Veniliornis is not closely related to the genus Piculus, as is implicit in current classifications. Misclassifications involving Veniliornis at both the generic and tribal levels appear to result from convergent evolution of plumage traits in specific forest types. We infer that the common ancestor of Veniliornis entered South America approximately at the time the Isthmus of Panama was formed, and diversification within South America was rapid. © 2006 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2006, 87 , 611‐624.
Association between proton pump inhibitors and spontaneous bacterial peritonitis in cirrhotic patients - a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Summary Acid suppressive therapy, in the form of proton pump inhibitor (PPI), is widely used in cirrhotic patients, often in indications which are not clearly justified. PPI facilitates enteric bacterial colonisation, overgrowth and translocation, which might predispose to spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. However, observational studies evaluating the association of PPI and SBP in cirrhotic patients have yielded inconsistent results. We therefore conducted a meta-analysis of relevant clinical studies to determine the nature of this association. Observational studies assessing the association between SBP and PPI in cirrhosis, conducted in adult population and published in all languages, were identified through systematic search in the MEDLINE, EMBASE and manual reviews of all major gastroenterology meeting proceedings up to May 2010. The relevant studies were pooled using traditional meta-analytic techniques with a random-effects model. Four studies were identified and included in the meta-analysis. The pooled analysis, involving a total of 772 patients, found a significant association between the use of PPI and the development of SBP (OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.82–4.23). There was very little degree of heterogeneity as reflected by an I2 value of 22% and the visual inspection of the funnel plot. There is a potential association between use of PPI and development of SBP. Therefore, PPIs should be used judiciously and only when clearly indicated in cirrhotics. Further studies are essential to clarify this relationship and elucidate the underlying mechanisms.
Beyond Theological Rationalism: The Contemporary Relevance of Herder's Psychology of Religion

J.G. Herder (1744-1804) is acknowledged as a pioneer in philosophy, theology, history, anthropology, and allied disciplines. This paper explores Herder's development of a psychogenetic account of religion through a critical confrontation with the dominant theological rationalism of the age. Herder's view undercuts various false dilemmas posed by the rationalists by situating religion within a reconfigured account of the “lower faculties” of the soul, thereby effecting an important, if somewhat overlooked, revolution in the modern science of religion.
The toxicity of car exhaust and its use as a method for suicide.

The toxicity of car exhaust in the USA, as inferred from the accidental death rate from car exhaust, was not related to the use of car exhaust for suicide.
Public versus Private Education in Hawaii

This study presents a time-series evidence on the timing and degree of feedback relationship between participation in education and income growth in Hawaii. Using the unrestricted vector autoregression approach and two related measures of linear dependence and feedback, the results suggest that across all educational levels, i.e., K-12 and tertiary, participation in public education could be a good predictor of income growth in Hawaii. However, decomposing the feedback effect by frequency suggests that the dominance of public education over private education in explaining the variation in income growth to be concentrated mainly on the short-run to medium-run for tertiary level and long-run to permanent effect for K-12 level. Hawaii state legislature and educators should perhaps take these results as a motivation not to ignore the problems plaguing Hawaii's public schools but should work towards greater improvement and support for public education given its predicted significant overall contribution to the Hawaiian economy.
An explanation for the unusual phase behaviour of microemulsions

Abstract A thermodynamic treatment of microemulsions is developed which discriminates between micropressures and macro (thermodynamic) pressures. The former are
Transforming growth factor-β increases Escherichia coli K1 adherence, invasion, and transcytosis in human brain microvascular endothelial cells

Escherichia coli K1 traversal of the human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC) that constitute the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a complex process involving E. coli adherence to and invasion of HBMEC. In this study, we demonstrated that human transforming growth factor-beta-1 (TGF-β1) increases E. coli K1 adherence, invasion, and transcytosis in HBMEC. In addition, TGF-β1 increases RhoA activation and enhances actin condensation in HBMEC. We have previously shown that E. coli K1 invasion of HBMEC requires phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) and RhoA activation. TGF-β1 increases E. coli K1 invasion in PI3K dominant-negative HBMEC, but not in RhoA dominant-negative HBMEC, indicating that TGF-β1-mediated increase in E. coli K1 invasion is RhoA-dependent, but not PI3K-dependent. Our findings suggest that TGF-β1 treatment of HBMEC increases E. coli K1 adherence, invasion, and transcytosis, which are probably dependent on RhoA.
Field studies on the breakdown of Nuphar lutea (L.)SM. (Nymphaeaceae), and a comparison of three mathematical models for organic weight loss

Aspects of the decomposition of the aquatic macrophyte Nuphar lutea (L.)Sm. were studied using the litter bag method in the field. The organic weight loss during breakdown was described by means of 1 simple and 2 composite exponential models. The nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium concentrations of the remaining detritus were analysed. The composite exponential models fitted the decay data better than the “simple exponential function”. However, it was difficult to interpret the individual estimates of the composite exponential models in terms of overall decay. The patterns of organic weight loss and nutrient dynamics of decomposing Nuphar lutea depended on which part of the plant was being studied. In general, the aboveground plant parts showed a faster organic weight loss and a faster nutrient release than the underground structures. The breakdown of Nuphar lutea leaves was considerably faster in summer than in autumn. The organic weight loss and nutrient dynamics of the decomposing leaves were influenced by the trophic status of the system. Particularly in acid moorland pool the breakdown of the leaves was relatively slow when compared to that of an eutrophicated system and an alkaline oxbow lake. The effect of the litter bag mesh size (0.27 and 0.78 mm) on the breakdown of the leaves was relatively small.
Equivalent weights for lexicographic multi-objective programs: Characterizations and computations

Abstract A recent paper [19] demonstrated the existence of a set of equivalent weights for which the optimal solution set of a preemptive priority multi-objective program is precisely equal to the set of optimal solutions to the resulting nonpreemptive program with the objective function given as a linear weighting of the multiple objectives. This paper addresses two further issues. Firstly, for some important special cases or applications, it is demonstrated that not only is the computation of a set of equivalent weights feasible, but it is also highly desirable. Two algorithms are presented to compute a set of equivalent weights. One method is a direct specialization of the approach adopted in [19], whereas the second approach is an alternative technique. The latter method is shown to yield weights of uniformly smaller values than the former method, while being of the same computational complexity, and is hence preferable. Secondly, as opposed to constructing one vector of equivalent weights, a characterization is provided for the entire set of equivalent weights.