cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Potential for Reuse of E-Plastics through Processing by Compression Molding

The amounts of e-waste, consisting of metal (e-metals) and plastic (e-plastics) streams from electronic goods, are increasing in the United States and elsewhere. The e-metals waste streams are being recycled to a reasonable degree due to the value of precious metals. E-plastic waste streams currently are not recycled or reused to a significant extent. As a result, most e-plastics are disposed of by landfilling or thermal treatment, or sent overseas for alleged recycling or reuse, any of which could result in unsafe worker exposure and release into the environment. Two of the major barriers to e-plastics’ reuse or recycling are the mixed plastic content and the presence in the e-plastics of flame retardants (FR), of which two classes in particular, the brominated flame retardants (BFR) and organo-phosphorus flame retardants (OPFR), have associated health concerns. The major goal of this project is to investigate the possibility of direct reuse of e-plastics in compression molding. Preliminary data generated have identified a molding procedure that yields remanufactured e-plastics having a tensile strength of 29.3 MPa. This moderate strength level is suspected to be due to inclusions of plastic bits that did not melt and internal voids from out-gassing. Handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) was utilized to characterize elemental components in the e-plastics tested for compression molding. Several high “hits” for Br were found that could not be predicted visually. The preliminary XRF data for BFR and OPFR in this work are helpful for environmental and occupational hazard assessments of compression molding activities. Additionally, methods are suggested to characterize the metals, BFR, and OPFR content of the e-plastics using several different additional laboratory analytical techniques to determine the suitability for cost-effective and easy-to-use technologies.
The index finger: a unique creature of habit.

The index finger is an essential part of the fine precise motion of pinch and grasp when it is intact, but when injured it is a significant barrier in the same capacity that it functionally aids, and despite reconstructive attempts is sometimes subjected by mutual decision of both the physician and the patient to amputation.
Localization Attacks and Countermeasures

Among the many different viable applications of WASNs, there is a large class of applications intended for use in potentially inhospitable environments, such as military environments or various security systems. For example, WSN could be used very effectively for tracking objects in a battlefield or in securing a perimeter around sensitive industrial sites. In such applications, there is a strong possibility that adversaries could try to obstruct the normal operation of the network.
The Egyptian Sisters Club: negotiating community and identity in a time of conflict

ABSTRACTOn the screens of televisions and computers in their California homes, the women of the Egyptian Sisters Club (ESC) have witnessed the unfolding of political crisis and the unravelling of certainty about the meaning of ‘home’. Drawing from concepts of diaspora and social support, the study explores how the ESC, an informal group of young Egyptian mothers living in Southern California, maintains cohesion in a time of conflict in their home country, and hostility towards visibly Muslim women in their host country. This qualitative study draws from participant observation, interviews and focus groups over a period of 9 months in 2014. Findings, largely expressed in members’ own words, suggest that despite heterogeneous perspectives and subjective motives, participants largely negotiate a prioritization of cultural values over political differences. This case offers insights into how local context and life stages influence how diaspora members adapt to contentious home and host country politics.
Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease and Anti-Retroviral Therapy

In the current era of available therapy for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), life expectancy for persons living with HIV (PLWH) nears that of the general population. Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) has become a particular burden for PLWH and society at large. PLWH have historically been shown to have an excess of cardiovascular risk and subsequent events when compared to the general population. Potential explanations include the increased prevalence of traditional risk factors, direct inflammatory and immunological effects from the HIV virus itself, and metabolic adverse effects of anti-retroviral therapy (ART). Over the past few years, there has been building evidence that chronic inflammation and immune activation independent of virologic suppression contribute significantly to excess ASCVD risk. Although independent agents and combination therapies have varying metabolic effects, the evidence from major randomized controlled trials (RCTs) supports the benefits of early initiation of ART. In this review, we will discuss the epidemiology of ASCVD in HIV-infected patients compared with the general population, give an overview of potential pathogenesis of high-risk plaque in HIV-infected patients, discuss different metabolic effects of individual anti-retrovirals, and discuss the limitations in current screening models for assessing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and future directions for treatment.
Truenorth ecosystem for brain-inspired computing: scalable systems, software, and applications

This paper describes the hardware and software ecosystem encompassing the brain-inspired TrueNorth processor - a 70mW reconfigurable silicon chip with 1 million neurons, 256 million synapses, and 4096 parallel and distributed neural cores. For systems, we present a scale-out system loosely coupling 16 single-chip boards and a scale-up system tightly integrating 16 chips in a 4 × 4 configuration by exploiting TrueNorth's native tiling. For software, we present an end-to-end ecosystem consisting of a simulator, a programming language, an integrated programming environment, a library of algorithms and applications, firmware, tools for deep learning, a teaching curriculum, and cloud enablement. For the scale-up systems we summarize our approach to physical placement of neural network, to reduce intra- and inter-chip network traffic. The ecosystem is in use at over 30 universities and government/corporate labs. Our platform is a substrate for a spectrum of applications from mobile and embedded computing to cloud and supercomputers.
Contribution with Hand-Raising in Graduate Student Self-Selection: Bringing Legitimacy to the Focal Shift of Talk

Hand-raising is an extremely useful device for classroom self-selection. According to Sahlstrom (2002), it exhibits a student’s willingness to participate, and is a means by which to attract the attention of the teacher. Kawabe, Yamamoto, Aoyagi, and Watanabe (2014) analyzed various situations and student factors to affect hand-raising in the classroom. The practice of hand-raising is generally found to occur at the teacher’s turn transition relevant places, or TRPs (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). The conventional process of self-selection with hand-raising involves a student bidding for a nomination, and the self-selector becoming ratified to speak after the teacher nomination is provided. It was also suggested that later bidders tend to be selected more frequently than the first bidders, who may raise their hands slightly prior to the teacher’s early TRPs. Thus, “teachers may reward the late hand-raisers for sufficient listening” (Sahlstrom, 2002, p. 53-54).
Biomass derived porous nitrogen doped carbon for electrochemical devices

Biomass derived porous nanostructured nitrogen doped carbon (PNC) has been extensively investigated as the electrode material for electrochemical catalytic reactions and rechargeable batteries. Biomass with and without containing nitrogen could be designed and optimized to prepare PNC via hydrothermal carbonization, pyrolysis, and other methods. The presence of nitrogen in carbon can provide more active sites for ion absorption, improve the electronic conductivity, increase the bonding between carbon and sulfur, and enhance the electrochemical catalytic reaction. The synthetic methods of natural biomass derived PNC, heteroatomic co- or tri-doping into biomass derived carbon and the application of biomass derived PNC in rechargeable Li/Na batteries, high energy density Li–S batteries, supercapacitors, metal-air batteries and electrochemical catalytic reaction (oxygen reduction and evolution reactions, hydrogen evolution reaction) are summarized and discussed in this review. Biomass derived PNCs deliver high performance electrochemical storage properties for rechargeable batteries/supercapacitors and superior electrochemical catalytic performance toward hydrogen evolution, oxygen reduction and evolution, as promising electrodes for electrochemical devices including battery technologies, fuel cell and electrolyzer.
Optimizing wireless power transfer with multiple transmitters

We present a simple theoretical model and supporting experimental evidence for a new approach to maximizing the efficiency of wireless power transfer (WPT) to a receiver from multiple transmitters. Specifically, we consider a multiple-input single-output (MISO) WPT system using near-field inductive coupling to transfer power from multiple transmitting coils to a single receiver; the use of multiple transmitters can potentially allow the system to efficiently focus the transmitted power in the direction of the receiver similar to beamforming from a phased array. This idea is not new and such systems have been extensively studied in previous work using lumped RLMC circuit models to analyze their behavior. However, the difficulty of constructing tractable and realistic circuit models has limited our ability to accurately predicting and optimizing the performance of these systems. Our key novelty is to take the more abstract approach of modeling the WPT system as a linear circuit whose input-output relationship is expressed in terms of a small number of unknown parameters that can be thought of equivalent impedances and transconductances. The crucial advantage of this approach is the economy of the representation: the number of unknown parameters can be much smaller than the number of lumped circuit elements required for a complete and accurate RLMC circuit representation. We present a simple derivation of the optimal voltage excitations to be applied at the transmitters to maximize power transfer efficiency, and also some general properties of the optimal solution. This optimal excitation is, of course, a function of the unknown parameters in our abstract circuit model. We describe a simple procedure for estimating these parameters using a small set of direct measurements. We describe a simple experimental setup with two transmitter coils and a receiver designed to illustrate our approach and present results to demonstrate the efficiency increase achieved using the calculated optimal solution from our model.
The Role of Two Kinds of Efficacy Beliefs in Maintaining the Well-Being of Chronically Stressed Older Adults

The loss of autonomy that results from a disabling chronic illness is one of the most difficult and stressful experiences to cope with for an older adult. The ability lost is frequently never regained, and the older adult suffers from both the present loss and anticipation of a future of sustained and even increased confinement, both physical and psychological. As other investigators have found (see Zautra & Hempel, 1984, for a review), our research on older adults indicates that activity limitation has pervasive adverse effects on mental health (Reich & Zautra, 1988; Zautra, Guarnaccia, & Reich, 1988; Zautra, Reich, & Newsom, 1995). In comparison to those without impairment, older adults with functional loss often show more anxiety, more depression, less positive affect, and lower self-esteem (Reich & Zautra, 1988). The loss of autonomy due to chronic illness appears to lower one’s sense of personal control in general. Indeed, chronically ill adults show more fatalism, more helplessness (Smith & Wallston, 1992), and less perceived control over future events than do healthy controls (Lennon, Dohrenwend, Zautra, & Marbach, 1990).
Playacting: A D'Var Torah on Parshat Hukkat

Some historians have argued that one of the great theological innovations of the early Rabbis was to understand much of halakha as a form of spiritual discipline rather than a reflection of cosmic metaphysical reality. This view of halakhic nominalism has powerfully influenced at least major strains of the Jewish legal imagination writ large. And one possible upshot of that sort of approach is to understand the observant Jewish life as, in some sense, a form of "playacting." But understanding halakhic observance as playacting does not reduce the responsibility of halakhically-committed Jews, it only deepens it. For observant Jews to admit that they are acting in a play is no excuse for them to be sloppy actors. For the Rabbis also insisted that Jews have a duty to follow the script, to be authentic and convincing actors in the drama of Jewish religious life. They need to be actors, but darn serious actors. This short talk further explores the metaphor of playacting. It distinguishes the ritual script and the moral script and emphasizes the importance of navigating their complex relationship. It also widens the lens to a brief discussion of the larger script of human life. In that context, the playacting metaphor must be read to accommodate the divine gift of human free will. In a certain sense, God is the author, or director, or stage manager, or critic, of a single-performance live show, with little in the way of rehearsal and no retakes. It can go well. And it can also go badly. As C.S. Lewis put it, "Of course God knew what would happen if [human beings] used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk."
Democratic Institutions, Political Participation, and Authoritarian Rule in China

The dramatic economic reforms of China’s post-Mao era of the last three decades have brought great changes in the relationship between the non-democratic regime and society. Yet, contrary to many expectations, China’s authoritarian regime has successfully maintained one-party rule while communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed two decades ago. This year, when the world observed democratization movements leading to the collapse of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, China contended that their reform path of the last three decades could be a model to advance market-oriented economic reform without democratization. Interestingly, most citizens of China seem to have come to accept, if not support, authoritarian rule by the Chinese Communist Party. Recent works by China specialists in political science have developed explanations of how each group of Chinese citizens (from entrepreneurs to farmers) has an incentive to accept the authoritarian regime rather than to demand democratization. Like many of non-democratic regimes in the world, China’s authoritarian regime has established at least nominally democratic institutions. Are they a harbinger to future democratization of the nation? This paper argues that the democratic institutions and the political participation scheme are not a harbinger to democratization but have rather helped the resilience and survival of the authoritarian regime. To make this argument, it will explore the following questions. First, how do people articulate their grievance against the state using the limited channels of the authoritarian regime, and how does the state respond, if at all, to the people’s demands? Second, how do people use non-institutionalized means, such as protests, when they find the institutionalized means of little help, and how does the state find formal institutions helpful, if at all, to respond to the people’s grievances? Third, how do the central government and various levels of local governments interact when their interests do not align with each other? Fourth, in state-society relations or inter-governmental relations, how do formal institutions, such as laws, help to solve conflict, and how do ordinary people and governments use informal institutions?
Kinetics of the Reaction of Imidazoles With Iron(III) Porphyrin Chlorides

The reaction of five-coordinate high-spin iron(III) porphyrin chlorides, Fe(Por)C1, with imidazoles, RIm, to produce six-coordinate low-spin complexes according to reaction (1) has recently received attention [1–7]. The monoimidazole $$ Fe({\rm P} or)Cl + 2R{\rm Im} \to Fe(Por)(RIm)_2^{ + },C{l^{ - }} $$ (1) adduct, Fe(Por)(RIm)C1, is generally not seen in thermodynamic studies because the formation constant for the addition of the second imidazole (K2) is greater than that for the first addition (K1). Herein we report a kinetic study of reaction (1), the porphyrins being tetraphenylporphyrin (TPP) and protoporphyrin IX dimethyl ester (PPIXDME). With N-alkyl imidazoles (N-R imidazoles) the unstable six-coordinate intermediates Fe(Por)(RIm)C1 were detected and their optical spectra and formation constants measured. We also report that Fe(Por)Cl reacts with N-R and N-H imidazoles by different mechanisms, the difference being due to the hydrogen bonding capability possessed by N-H but not N-R imidazoles.
White Fathers and Their Black–White Biracial Sons

The purpose of this literature review was to ascertain the concerns of White fathers raising their biological Black–White biracial sons, as well as the concerns of the sons themselves. Nine databas...
Modulation of nonessential amino acid biosynthetic pathways in virulent Hessian fly larvae (Mayetiola destructor), feeding on susceptible host wheat (Triticum aestivum)

Abstract Compatible interactions between wheat (Triticum aestivum), and its dipteran pest Hessian fly (Hf, Mayetiola destructor) result in successful establishment of larval feeding sites rendering the host plant susceptible. Virulent larvae employ an effector-based feeding strategy to reprogram the host physiology resulting in formation of a protein- and sugar-rich nutritive tissue beneficial to developing larvae. Previous studies documented increased levels of nonessential amino acids (NAA; that need not be received through insect diet) in the susceptible wheat in response to larval feeding, suggesting importance of plant-derived NAA in larval nutrition. Here, we investigated the modulation of genes from NAA biosynthetic pathways (NAABP) in virulent Hf larvae. Transcript profiling for 16 NAABP genes, annotated from the recently assembled Hf genome, was carried out in the feeding first-, and second-instars and compared with that of the first-instar neonate (newly hatched, migrating, assumed to be non-feeding) larvae. While Tyr, Gln, Glu, and Pro NAABP genes transcript abundance declined in the feeding instars as compared to the neonates, those for Ala, and Ser increased in the feeding larval instars, despite higher levels of these NAA in the susceptible host plant. Asp, Asn, Gly and Cys NAABP genes exhibited variable expression profiles in the feeding first- and second-instars. Our results indicate that while Hf larvae utilize the plant-derived NAA, de novo synthesis of several NAA may be necessary to: (i) provide larvae with the requisite amount for sustaining growth before nutritive tissue formation and, (ii) overcome any inadequate amounts in the host plant, post-nutritive tissue formation.
Using Homemade Algebra Tiles To Develop Algebra and Prealgebra Concepts.

lgebra for all really is possible. Unfortunately, too many students attempt to learn algebra by using memorization, and too many teachers use instructional methods that encourage memorization. Students struggle to learn algebra, and teachers struggle with how to best teach algebra so that it makes sense to their students and so that students will remember it beyond next week’s test. We must change our thinking about what it means not only to learn mathematics but also to teach it. As teachers, we do not need to be convinced of the importance of the subject, but we may need to be convinced that algebra for all is attainable. How can we structure our classrooms and lessons to foster an environment that is conducive to meeting the goal of successful algebra learning for all students? One way to teach for understanding is to use concrete models to introduce concepts rather than concentrate only on the abstract or symbolic (Lawson 1990; NCTM 1991). The method with which we have had success uses algebra tiles as concrete models in classrooms of middle school and secondary school students, with college-level introductory algebra students, and with prison inmates studying for General Educational Development (GED) tests. These students encompass a full range of intellectual and motivational levels. They come from both advantaged and disadvantaged homes. We have seen their successes in learning algebraic topics with which many of them had previously been unsuccessful.
FEED INGREDIENTS | Feed Concentrates: Cereal Grains

The primary energy source for livestock production is cereal grains, with corn, barley, sorghum, wheat, and oats being the most common cereal grains fed. These cereal grains primarily provide energy to animals by their concentration of starch. Although the starch in the typical hybrids of these cereal grains contains about 25% amylose and 75% amylopectin, the site and extent of their digestion vary because of the differences in the structural nature of the endosperm. Reduction of particle size and processing with heat and moisture increase the digestibility of the cereal grains in the rumen and total tract, thus resulting in increased energy availability. The amount of cereal grains used in diets should depend on cost, production level of animals, dietary concentration of forage neutral detergent fiber (NDF), and the nature of the grain processing. Adequate forage NDF is needed to stimulate ruminal fermentation, a minimum amount of nonfiber carbohydrates (NFCs) is needed to support microbial protein synthesis, and maximum NFC is necessary to reduce the risk of ruminal acidosis. Because of the agronomic conditions for their production, ease of distribution, and the comparative low costs of energy provided by grains, the cereal grains and their corresponding by-products will remain as staple ingredients in diets for dairy cattle.
Learning long-term temporal features in LVCSR using neural networks.

Incorporating long-term (500-1000 ms) temporal information using multi-layered perceptrons (MLPs) has improved performance on ASR tasks, especially when used to complement traditional short-term (25-100 ms) features. This paper further studies techniques for incorporating long-term temporal information in the acoustic model by presenting experiments showing: 1) that simply widening acoustic context by using more frames of full band speech energies as input to the MLP is suboptimal compared to a more constrained two-stage approach that first focuses on long-term temporal patterns in each critical band separately and then combines them, 2) that the best two-stage approach studied utilizes hidden activation values of MLPs trained on the log critical band energies (LCBEs) of 51 consecutive frames, and 3) that combining the best two-stage approach with conventional short-term features significantly reduces word error rates on the 2001 NIST Hub-5 conversational telephone speech (CTS) evaluation set with models trained using the Switchboard Corpus.
Ada Solutions to the Salishan Problems

Publisher Summary This chapter presents Ada solutions to the Salishan problems. Ada is a high-level procedural language, with strong typing and other features common in languages of its genre as well as with several innovations. The language has had an influence in such related areas as program development environments and software life-cycle design methodology, so that in a broad sense one can talk about the Ada movement. It focuses on the tasking features that support concurrency and some of those supporting data structuring and abstraction. The language features described and used in the problem solutions are those of Ada as standardized in 1983. The language was created in response to the software crisis in the U. S. Department of Defense, a crisis characterized by rapid escalation of the cost of developing, maintaining, and adapting software while hardware costs were decreasing. A part of the problem lay in the programming languages being used by the defense services, and especially the number of those languages and the lack of interoperability among them. Another major part of the problem was the inadequate support for modern principles of software engineering, both in the languages themselves and in the programming environments surrounding them. By mandating a single high-level language designed to support such principles as data abstraction, information hiding, both top-down and bottom-up design, secure programming, and reusability, the DoD expected to reduce the cost of software and increase its reliability, significantly.
FAROS: Illuminating In-memory Injection Attacks via Provenance-Based Whole-System Dynamic Information Flow Tracking

In-memory injection attacks are extremely challenging to reverse engineer because they operate stealthily without leaving artifacts in the system or in any easily observable events from outside of a virtual machine. Because these attacks perform their actions in memory only, current malware analysis solutions cannot expose their behavior. This paper introduces FAROS^1 a reverse engineering tool for Windows malware analysis based on dynamic information flow tracking (DIFT), which can flag stealthy in-memory-only malware injection attacks by leveraging the synergy of: (i) whole-system taint analysis; (ii) per security policy-based handling of the challenge of indirect flows via the application of tags of different types, and (iii) the use of tags with fine-grained provenance information. We evaluated FAROS with six advanced in-memory-injecting malware and it flagged the attacks for all samples. We also analyzed FAROS' false positive rate with 90 non-injecting malware samples and 14 benign software from various categories. FAROS presented a very low false positive rate of 2%, which shows its potential towards practical solutions against advanced in-memory-only anti-reverse-engineering attacks.
Case 4: Persistent Lung Lesion in a 6-year old Boy with Sickle Cell Disease.

1. Ahmar U. Zaidi, MD* 2. Meret Henry, MD, MS* 3. Michael U. Callaghan, MD* 1. *Department of Hematology/Oncology, Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI A 6-year-old boy with sickle cell disease (hemoglobin SS), who is on a long-term exchange transfusion program for repeated splenic sequestration and abnormal transcranial Doppler findings, presents to the emergency department with upper respiratory symptoms and a sore throat. On physical examination he appears well. His temperature is 99.3°F (37.4°C), heart rate is 100 beats/min, respiratory rate is 18 breaths/min, blood pressure is 110/65 mm Hg, and oxygen saturation is 100% on room air. A chest radiograph shows a lesion in the left upper lobe (Fig 1), thought to be round pneumonia, and the child is started on cefepime and azithromycin. It is noted that a very similar lesion was seen on …
Pyridinyl Aminohydantoins as Small Molecule BACE1 Inhibitors.

Design and synthesis of the title aminohydantoins as highly potent BACE1 inhibitors are described.
Using Peer-Shared Intervention Strategies for Promoting Math Explorations and Critical Thinking in Early Childhood Inclusive Classrooms

Inclusive early childhood settings invite children with and without disabilities to play, learn, and work together in one classroom. Teachers can take advantage of children’s curiosity for math when they organize creative learning environments and develop meaningful critical thinking experiences to increase children’s interactions with peers. Peer-shared activities, including math helpmates and math chats, can offer a hopeful approach for supporting higher order and critical thinking math experiences for young children in inclusive classroom settings. Inviting a math helpmate to explain to a peer how or why they arrived at an answer or to show a different way to find an answer during math activities can promote critical math thinking and communication skills. To maximize success when using peer-shared strategies, teachers should be actively involved in monitoring math progress, providing feedback to children, and supporting peer interactions. This article will explore a variety of strategies for creating math discoveries and critical thinking using peer-shared activities at school and home. Practical strategies to be discussed will include math helpmates, math chats, and incidental teaching for increasing for supporting children’s natural interest in math concepts.
From black hole entropy to energy-minimizing states in QFT

Behind certain marginally trapped surfaces one can construct a geometry containing an extremal surface of equal, but not larger area. This construction underlies the Engelhardt-Wall proposal for explaining the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy as a coarse-grained entropy. The construction can be proven to exist classically but fails if the null energy condition is violated. Here we extend the coarse-graining construction to semiclassical gravity. Its validity is conjectural, but we are able to extract an interesting nongravitational limit. Our proposal implies Wall's ant conjecture on the minimum energy of a completion of a quantum field theory state on a half-space. It further constrains the properties of the minimum energy state; for example, the minimum completion energy must be localized as a shock at the cut. We verify that the predicted properties hold in a recent explicit construction of Ceyhan and Faulkner, which proves our conjecture in the nongravitational limit.
Diastereoselective Manipulations of Bicyclo[m.1.0]alkane Derivatives. 4. Reactions of Nucleophiles with Bicyclo[m.1.0]alk-3-en-2-ones.

Enantiomerically enriched bicyclo[m.1.0]alk-3-en-2-ones possessing 8-, 12-, and 15-membered rings were prepared and subjected to additions of nucleophiles. 1,2-Additions of n-butyllithium were highly diastereoselective for all cyclopropyl enones examined. Reactions of (Z)-bicyclo[6.1.0]non-3-en-2-one and (E)-bicyclo[13.1.0]hexadec-3-en-2-one with dimethyloxosulfonium methylide were highly diastereoselective, while reaction of (E)-bicyclo[10.1.0]tridec-3-en-2-one with this reagent was not diastereoselective. In contrast, 1,4-additions of lithium diorganocuprates were highly diastereoselective for the 8- and 12-membered enones but were not diastereoselective for the 15-membered enone. All reactions were chemically efficient. The diastereoselectivities observed for 1,2-additions, which are thought to involve early transition states, can be rationalized by consideration of the low-energy conformations of each cyclopropyl enone. The diastereoselectivities observed for 1,4-additions, which may involve late tran...
Novel Positive Allosteric Modulators of Glutamate Transport Have Neuroprotective Properties in an in Vitro Excitotoxic Model

Dysfunction of excitatory amino acid transporters (EAATs) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of various neurological disorders, such as stroke, brain trauma, epilepsy, and several neurodegener...
Inorganic nitrogen wet deposition gradients in the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area and Colorado Front Range - Preliminary implications for Rocky Mountain National Park and interpolated deposition maps.

Abstract For the first time in the 40-year history of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program/National Trends Network (NADP/NTN), a unique urban-to-rural transect of wet deposition monitoring stations was operated as part of the NTN in 2017 to quantify reactive inorganic nitrogen wet deposition for adjacent urban and rural, montane regions. The transect of NADP stations (sites) was used to collect continuous precipitation depth and weekly wet-deposition samples in the Denver – Boulder, Colorado, urban corridor. Gradients in reactive inorganic nitrogen (Nr) concentrations and wet deposition were identified along the transect, which included Rocky Mountain National Park. Back trajectory modeling and stable isotopes suggested contribution of agricultural ammonia (NH3) to urban Nr wet deposition in Denver, but apportionment of wet-deposited Nr to agricultural versus urban mobile sources was not possible for this study. The results demonstrate the importance of multiple monitoring sites across an urban area in defining fine-scale geographic patterns in atmospheric deposition and its sources. Data from new sites located within 50 km of the urban area demonstrate that the urban influence does not extend as far as the inverse distance weighting would have suggested without such empirical monitoring data. It is important to determine the radius of influence of urban emissions and associated deposition on the interpolated deposition raster, which is constrained by a paucity of monitoring sites east of Denver.
A Distributed Reconfiguration Planning Algorithm for Modular Robots

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are usually composed of multiple modules with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations by themselves. The reconfiguration planning problem is finding what sequence of reconfiguration actions are required for one arrangement of modules to transform into another. We present a novel reconfiguration planning algorithm for the SMORES form of modular robots. The algorithm compares the initial configuration with the goal configuration efficiently. The reconfiguration actions can be executed in a distributed manner so that each module can efficiently finish its reconfiguration task which results in a global reconfiguration for the system. In the end, the algorithm is demonstrated on the SMORES-EP self-reconfigurable modular robot hardware and some reconfiguration task examples are provided.
Alcohol Problems, Jealousy, and Cyber Dating Abuse Perpetration Among Men and Women: Toward a Conceptual Model:

Investigations of alcohol use in relation to cyber dating abuse (CDA) remain underdeveloped relative to alcohol-related face-to-face dating abuse research. A critical step toward advancing this area of research would include examining the applicability of alcohol-related partner abuse models to CDA perpetration. Existing models of alcohol-related partner abuse suggested that alcohol and partner abuse are more likely to co-occur in the presence of aggressogenic distal traits. We propose that this model may extend to CDA perpetration. Toward this end, the present study collected cross-sectional data from college students (N = 258; 56.2% male) to investigate whether trait romantic jealousy moderated the association between alcohol problems and CDA perpetration, controlling for face-to-face dating abuse perpetration. We hypothesized that alcohol problems would positively relate to CDA perpetration among college students with high, but not low, romantic jealousy. We explored whether the interactive effect varied by sex. Results revealed a significant three-way interaction; the moderating role of romantic jealousy in the relation between alcohol problems and CDA perpetration varied by sex. Alcohol problems positively related to CDA perpetration for women with high, but not low, romantic jealousy. Alcohol problems did not relate to CDA perpetration regardless of men's level of romantic jealousy. These preliminary results suggested that alcohol-related partner abuse models may be useful for conceptualizing CDA perpetration and identifying CDA intervention components.
The Dynamics of Unsteady Bifurcation Flows

Since arterial bifurcations are susceptible to disease, it is important to understand the hemodynamics associated with this common cardiovascular non-uniformity. This paper seeks to extend our understanding of bifurcation flows by using a symmetrical geometry and comparing balanced and unbalanced flows in the branches. Finite difference methods are employed in the vorticity transport-stream function formulation and are aided by a coordinate transform. The basic characteristics of unsteady flow are amply portrayed using the simple oscillatory forcing function. The particular flow division ratios used in this study were QR = 1/2 and 2/3; these values were held constant throughout the period of oscillation. The Karman number and Stokes number of the trunk flow, the basic flow similarity parameters, were taken as 1000 and 10π, respectively. Kinematic results are presented and compared in terms of stream function and vorticity contour plots. Kinetic results are summarized in the form of shear distributions over the regions of interest both in time and space.
147 The promises and challenges of place-based solutions to violence prevention

Statement of Purpose Place-based interventions affect social and physical environmental conditions in neighborhoods and are policy-relevant opportunities for violence prevention that can also promote population health equity. This presentation discusses study design challenges and novel data integration methods relevant to such interventions. Methods/Approach We examine the impact of vacant land and abandoned building remediation on crime and violence, including family violence, through observational and quasi-experimental research and discuss methodology for an ongoing cluster randomized trial aimed at reducing blighted properties in a southern U.S. city known for elevated rates of violence and neighborhood inequities. Results Strong spatial correlations between the rate of vacant land and both violent crime and domestic violence call rates, as well as in the rates of child abuse and neglect, were evident. Cluster analysis of data on potential vacant land and abandoned houses was used to detect and select approximately 200 geographic clusters with a high density of vacant properties. Clusters were block randomized into five intervention arms based on the two cluster types, those with only vacant land and those with both vacant land and abandoned homes. Challenges were found in terms of assignment of properties within a reasonable timeline that satisfied research goals and municipal realities. Data integration software is a promising tool for examination and monitoring of trends in vacant land and resultant health and social outcomes. Conclusion Testing the efficacy of such straightforward, inexpensive, and scalable methods is challenging but can be addressed through innovative methods and adaptive trial designs. Significance and Contributions to Injury and Violence Prevention Science This presentation will discuss development of and preliminary results from a neighborhood-level cluster randomized trial that advances the science of violence prevention, as well as potential measurement tools to understand place-based disparities that can also be used to monitor progress toward neighborhood equity.
The Inverse OARSI-OMERACT Criteria Is a Valid Indicator of the Clinical Worsening of Knee Osteoarthritis: Data From the Osteoarthritis Initiative.

Objective We assessed if the inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria relate to concurrent radiographic knee osteoarthritis (KOA) progression and decline in walking speed as well as future knee replacement. Methods We conducted knee-based analyses of data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative. All knees had symptomatic osteoarthritis: at least doubtful radiographic KOA (Kellgren-Lawrence Grade≥1) and knee pain≥10/100 (WOMAC pain) at the 12-month visit. The inverse of the OARSI-OMERACT responder criteria depended on knee pain and function, and global assessment of knee impact. We used generalized linear mixed models to assess the relationship of the inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria over 2 years (i.e.,12 and 36-month visits) with worsening radiographic severity (any increase in Kellgren-Lawrence Grade from 12- to 36-months) and decline in self-selected 20-m walking speed of >0.1m/s (from 12- to 36-months). We used a Cox model to assess time to knee replacement during the 6 years after the 36-month visit as an outcome. Results Among the 1,746 analyzed, 19% met the inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria. Meeting the inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria was associated with almost double the odds of experiencing concurrent worsening in radiographic KOA severity (odds ratio [OR]=1.89 (95% confidence interval [CI]=1.32 to 2.70)) or decline in walking speed (OR=1.82 (95%CI=1.37 to 2.40)). A knee meeting the inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria was more likely to receive a knee replacement after the 36-month visit (23%) compared with a non-responder (10%; hazard ratio=2.54, 95%CI=1.89 to 3.41). Conclusion The inverse OARSI-OMERACT criteria for worsening among people with KOA had good construct validity in relation to clinically relevant outcomes.
The Domain Structure of the Human Ceruloplasmin Molecule

Ceruloplasmin is a blue α2-glycoprotein that binds 90-95% of plasma copper and has multiple functions due to its six copper atoms of several different types. Although the single-chain protein contains about 1040 residues, amino acid sequence analysis has revealed that the protein's primary structure consists of three homologous segments, each of about 350 residues in length. Furthermore, each of these “homology units” appears to contain two (or three) domains, based on studies of limited proteolysis of the undenatured molecule. Secondary structure and hydropathy calculations also support a domain structure for the protein, and these results have been used to develop a structural model of the ceruloplasmin molecule. This model can be further expanded upon by incorporating (a) the location of the missing oligosaccharide moiety in type II ceruloplasmin, and (b) the proposed type 1 Cu(II) ion binding sites.
Black-White Differences in the Reciprocal Relationship Between Perceived Discrimination and Psychological Distress

We formulate a MIDUS longitudinal data-based multi-population LISREL model to gauge variation among Black and White Americans in the reciprocal relationship across time between perceived major and ...
Funding and Finance Analysis of Public–Private Partnership Highway Projects: Exploratory Study

AbstractPublic–private partnership (PPP) agreement as a response to funding shortage and population increase has been adopted and employed slowly in the United States with its aging infrastructure....
Racial Capitalism and Race Massacres: Tulsa's Black Wall Street and Elaine's Sharecroppers

United States history is marked and checkered with grievous race massacres dating back to the end of slavery. These race “riots,” as they are benignly referred to in some quarters, occurred infamously in Tulsa, Elaine, Rosewood, Chicago, Detroit, and so many other lesser remembered cities. The starkest period of race massacres in the United States, including each of those just mentioned, occurred in the early 1900s, between 1919 and 1923 when Black Americans, newly empowered by service in a world war and having gained available land grants in territories where indigenous peoples were forced to abandon, began finding economic and political footholds. When in 1919 and 1921, African American citizens were becoming successful and independent economically, race massacres annihilated these fledgling successes. At a time when economic independence was becoming a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel for Black Americans, white supremacy and racial capitalism worked to ensure that this light and hope was quashed. This quashing of early African American economic success, particularly on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and in the fields of Elaine, Arkansas, sent shock-waves of oppression that still reverberate today. This article will examine the role of racial capitalism in the race massacres of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 and Elaine, Arkansas in 1919. This piece begins with an introduction to racial capitalism. Next, it describes the race massacres in the Greenwood District of Tulsa and the evisceration of Black Wall Street before examining the race massacre in Elaine and the destruction of the lives and fortunes of Black sharecroppers there. Thereafter, the article describes the role that racial capitalism and the economic exploitation of Black Americans played in carrying out that massive destruction of Black human capital. Finally, the article describes how the echoes of these race massacres continues to sound today in a white supremacist refrain that is quintessentially the song that accompanies the founding and growth of the American economy.
Low power CMOS power amplifier design for RFID and the Internet of Things

Designing power amplifiers with low power consumption, high efficiency and integration is an important topic with significant impact on communication and circuit research areas. In order to make transceivers more powerful with lower cost and higher integration, a CMOS power amplifier working from 3.5GHz to 4.5GHz is proposed. Cascode driver stage is adopted to give the power amplifier high output gain ability. The output stage is designed as Class A, which makes the proposed power amplifier in a significantly high linearity level. Furthermore, this paper gives a comparative study of the performance of different power amplifier classes. Simulation results show that the proposed power amplifier has 31.2% more power added efficiency (PAE) and 12.6dB output power gain, respectively. The proposed power amplifier has high linearity and efficiency, which are suitable for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
Novel Anti-Inflammatory and Proresolution Lipid Mediators in Induction and Modulation of Phagocyte Function

Several novel enzymatic pathways were recently identified that are activated during the resolution phase and initiated from precursors eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The protectin family name signifies their formation, potent anti-inflammatory, as well as protective actions demonstrated for the novel and potent DHA-derived 10,17-docasatriene in animal models of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. Both families, the resolvins and protectins, are potent local-acting agonists of endogenous anti-inflammation and promote resolution-specific processes. The connection(s) of these new lipid mediators to the control of an acute inflammation and its timely resolution are illustrated in this chapter. The chapter focuses on biosynthesis of proresolving mediators via cyclooxygenases and lipoxygenases. COX-2 also plays a key role in the biosynthesis of PGD2, which is a precursor to the cyclopentenones. Precursors are transformed via enzymatic mechanisms to bioactive compounds such as lipoxins, resolvins, and protectins that regulate the duration and magnitude of inflammation. The most likely human cell types and pathways that biosynthesize the bioactive mediators within the resolving exudates were reconstructed in vitro, which involved cell-cell interactions in vivo within the exudates. Emerging evidence indicates that the immunomodulatory actions of several lipid mediators are exploited by pathogens, including fungi and helminths. In such cases, it seems that modulation of immunity by suppressing host proinflammatory responses is the aim. The interplay between these mediators, the induction of 5-LO, and the control of immune responses in vivo await further investigation.
Sectoral innovation system and technology policy development in China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status quo of China's innovation systems and contribute to the development of effective innovation policies.Design/methodology/approach – The construct of this paper is based on a comprehensive case study in China's transportation sector. Detailed discussions and analyses follow to give implications in policy making.Findings – Sectoral innovation capability can be enhanced in a learning environment that balances domestic innovation and international technology transfer. Government should strategically leverage various resources for innovation.Originality/value – Through the analysis of case study, a conceptual framework to support sectoral innovation is proposed. The research gives insight on how to improve and prepare the conditions for future innovation.