cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
DIFFERENCES IN BODY SIZE AMONG CHUCKWALLA (SAUROMALUS OBESUS) POPULATIONS

I raised juvenile chuckwallas (Sauromalus obesus; Iguanidae) that were collected from six different populations under identical conditions in a laboratory common-garden experiment. This experiment allows partitioning of genetic causes from environmental causes of the differences in adult size found in different populations. Chuckwallas from different home populations showed what appear to be genetic differences in size and patterns of growth. Lizards from populations with small adults grew faster before maturity and slower after maturity than those from populations with larger adults. Size and growth rates were correlated with elevation among sites for chuckwallas both raised in the laboratory and in natural populations. For example, at low-elevation sites, chuckwallas grew comparatively rapidly to reach maturity in a shortened growing season. A high frequency of drought at these hot, dry sites may necessitate storage of energy after maturity as a buffer against the relatively high probability that food will be limited in the following year. Lizards at higher elevation sites, however, are freed from this constraint, allowing them to use energy for growth to reach larger size and therefore to produce larger clutches. Although plant species diversity in the wild showed an increase with increasing elevation, food abundance, measured as the aboveground biomass of annuals, did not. This indicates that the length of time food is available, rather than its abundance, is of primary importance to chuckwallas.
Psychedelic medicine: a re-emerging therapeutic paradigm

In clinical research settings around the world, renewed investigations are taking place on the use of psychedelic substances for treating illnesses such as addiction, depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since the termination of a period of research from the 1950s to the
Negative capacitance in ferroelectric materials and its potential use for transistors with <60 mV/decade subthreshold swing

Owing to the energy barrier that forms during phase transition and separates the two degenerate polarization states, a ferroelectric material could show negative differential capacitance while in non-equilibrium. The state of negative capacitance is unstable, but just as a series resistance can stabilize the negative differential resistance of an Esaki diode, it is also possible to stabilize a ferroelectric in the negative differential capacitance state by placing a series dielectric capacitor. In this configuration, the ferroelectric acts as a ‘transformer’ that boosts up the input voltage. The resulting amplification could lower the voltage needed to operate a transistor below the limit otherwise imposed by the Boltzmann distribution of electrons.
Human/Nature Narratives and Popular Films: Big, Bad, Bold, Beneficent, Bountiful, Beautiful and Bereft

As narrative theorists claim, we are made from the stories we tell. Yet, we may also say that the stories we tell are made from the lives we live. These two versions of narrative analysis summarize the central contention of narrative research.1 Within these boundaries, it is clear that the focus of narrative research has been almost exclusively on the relationships people have with other human beings.2 Overall stories range from the intrapersonal and intimate interpersonal relationships to those of the broader societal groups — clans, communities and nations. The emphasis of philosophers, literary theorists, social scientists, psychotherapists, and other narrative scholars has been on the ways in which narratives create meaning for groups of people in terms of their customs, roles, behavioral expectations, status hierarchies, power relations and moral order. Stories teach people how to act with each other in their social groups. Stories shape people’s identities, provide them with appropriate goals, inform them of their social value, and teach them how to feel and think. Stories tell people what is meaningful, good, and worth caring about. Changing our stories can change how we feel about life (White and Epston 1990). They can frame the way we relate to friends and enemies (Schon and Rein 1994). According to Boje et al. (2006) a story becomes a framework for everything we think and do.
Misunderstanding Ability, Misallocating Liability

In the Anglo-American legal tradition, people are responsible for damage caused by their failure to conform their conduct with that of the "reasonable person." With few exceptions, so long as one's conduct conforms to that of the reasonable person, then even if the conduct harms others, it does not create liability. Courts understand that the "reasonable person" is an idealized legal fiction but believe the construct to be a useful way to identify culpable conduct. For the reasonable-person test to be useful, courts must identify the characteristics of this reasonable person. As to cognitive and perceptual abilities, courts endow this hypothetical reasonable person with what they believe are "ordinary" skills and abilities. Recent cognitive psychological research, however, indicates that intuitions about ordinary skills and abilities vastly overstate the cognitive skills people actually possess. Consequently, reliance on intuition and folk wisdom about ordinary abilities leads courts to overattribute accidents to negligent carelessness, rather than unavoidable misfortune.
Male Prostitution in the Twentieth Century: Pseudohomosexuals, Hoodlum Homosexuals, and Exploited Teens

Male prostitution altered its form dramatically over the course of the twentieth century. While some of these changes relate to economics and general cultural shifts (the Depression of the 1930s, the rise of a counterculture during the 1960s and 70s), some of the most important changes have arisen in response to transformations in the idea of "homosexuality," and the growing influence this idea had within middle-class and then working-class culture. This essay identifies the diverse forms male prostitution has taken since the late-Victorian period, and also examines the way in which male prostitution has been written about by various commentators in different eras.
Continued Powers and a Sufficient Condition for Their Convergence

(1995). Continued Powers and a Sufficient Condition for Their Convergence. Mathematics Magazine: Vol. 68, No. 5, pp. 387-392.
Exact Solution of Time History Response for Dynamic Systems With Arbitrary Viscous Damping Using Complex Modal Analysis

A solution method for general, non-proportional damping time history response for piecewise linear loading is generalized to exact solutions which include piecewise quadratic loading. Comparisons are made to Trapezoidal and Simpson’s quadrature rules for approximating the time integral of the weighted generalized forcing function in the exact solution to the decoupled modal equations arising from state-space modal analysis of linear dynamic systems. Closed-form expressions for the weighting parameters in the quadrature formulas in terms of time-step size and complex eigenvalues are derived. The solution is obtained step-by-step from update formulas derived from the piecewise linear and quadratic interpolatory quadrature rules starting from the initial condition. An examination of error estimates for the different force interpolation methods shows convergence rates depend explicitly on the amount of damping in the system as measured by the real-part of the complex eigenvalues of the state-space modal equations and time-step size. Numerical results for a system with general, non-proportional damping, and driven by a continuous loading shows that for systems with light damping, update formulas for standard Trapezoidal and Simpson’s rule integration have comparable accuracy to the weighted piecewise linear and quadratic force interpolation update formulas, while for heavy damping, the update formulas from the weighted force interpolation quadrature rules are more accurate. Using a simple model representing a stiff system with general damping, we show that a two-step modal analysis using real-valued modal reduction followed by state-space modal analysis is shown to be an effective approach for rejecting spurious modes in the spatial discretization of a continuous system.© 2007 ASME
Photosystem II Biogenesis: Roles of Nuclear Gene Products

In vascular plants and green algae, the reaction center complex of Photosystem II (PS II) is composed of five major integral thylakoid membrane proteins encoded by the chloroplast genome. The two largest polypeptides bind chlorophyll a, have molecular sizes of 51 and 48 kDa in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and are designated polypeptides 5 and 6 (1). At least one of the two other major PS II proteins, Dl (32–34 kDa) binds plastoquinone and herbicides of the triazine and phenylurea classes (2). The precise functions of D2 (30 kDa) and cytochrome b559 (3–9 kDa) are unclear although amino acid sequence homology indicates that D2 may also bind quinone (3). In addition, three nuclear-encoded polypeptides, extrinsic components of the PS II water oxidation apChapautus, are located in the thylakoid lumen (4). We have studied biogenesis of the PS II complexes with an aim of understanding the molecular means by which chloroplast and nuclear gene activities are coordinated and apparent stochiometric accumulation of the subunits is achieved.
“Power and Dominance, Loyalty and Conformity”: Family, Gender, Sexuality, and Utopian Scripturalization

If El Plan de Santa Barbara does mandate the community as the higher authority that is imagined and negotiated relationally with the text, then what happens when members of the community diverge sharply over what they need? The years of Anna NietoGomez’s involvement with the Chicanx movement, first as a student, as an activist, and then as a scholar, align with the peak of the classical movement era, ranging from 1967 to1976. In some ways, her family’s background provides a complement to the other California Chicanx stories I have shared in this book. She was born in California to a family of mixed migration history, with the legacies of the Mexican Revolution looming large in her family stories. Yet, more than almost anyone I interviewed, she affirmed a strong sense of connection to the USA rather than Mexico, and she contextualized her Chicana identity and Aztlan in that perspective. She understood “that one reason why we as Indians left Mexico was because we had no rights,” so she did not see her Chicana identity or Aztlan as connecting her to Mexico. Instead, “to me Aztlan meant we were indigenous to this land. Whether we’re here one generation, two generations, three generations, four, we belong here. […] whenever I heard ‘Chicano’ as I was growing up, it was soy Chicano, soy de aqui, meaning not only that we’re from here but this is our land. We are indigenous. We are connected. It’s almost like our roots, physically, our roots, our seeds are here. But that’s what it meant to me.”1 For her, Aztlan as place and Chicana as identity were about an indigenizing ethnic claim to belonging in this place, but she also quickly realized that for many others, those same terms were taken differently.
Dalfampridine in Parkinson's disease related gait dysfunction: A randomized double blind trial.

Abstract Background Disease-related gait dysfunction causes extensive disability for persons with Parkinson's disease (PD), with no effective therapies currently available. The potassium channel blocker dalfampridine has been used in multiple neurological conditions and improves walking in persons with multiple sclerosis. Objectives We aimed to evaluate the effect of dalfampridine extended release (D-ER) 10 mg tablets twice daily on different domains of walking in participants with PD. Methods Twenty-two participants with PD and gait dysfunction were randomized to receive D-ER 10 mg twice daily or placebo for 4 weeks in a crossover design with a 2-week washout period. The primary outcomes were change in the gait velocity and stride length. Results At 4 weeks, gait velocity was not significantly different between D-ER (0.89 m/s ± 0.33) and placebo (0.93 m/s ± 0.27) conditions. The stride length was also similar between conditions: 0.96 m ± 0.38 for D-ER versus 1.06 m ± 0.33 for placebo. D-ER was generally well tolerated with the most frequent side effects being dizziness, nausea and balance problems. Conclusions D-ER is well tolerated in PD patients, however it did not show significant benefit for gait impairment.
Fusing motion-capture and inertial measurements for improved joint state recovery: An application for sit-to-stand actions

The estimate of joint angles, velocities, and accelerations is a key component of biomechanical modelling. The literature presents a variety of sensing modalities and algorithms to recover the full joint state, with tuning parameters varying between different applications, actions, and limbs. Comparisons between these methods are frequently limited to angles only, without comparison between the joint velocities and accelerations. This paper introduces an algorithm to fuse motion-capture and inertial measurements to recover the full state during a sit-to-stand task. This algorithm is then compared to three other methods: Kalman filtering on motion-capture or inertial measurements alone and the standard angular recovery/differentiation method. It is shown that the fusion of both optical and inertial measurements reduce the ripple and offset artefacts which become pronounced in high acceleration human motions.
Measurement and modeling of CO2 mass transfer in brine at reservoir conditions

Abstract In this work, we combine measurements and modeling to investigate the application of pressure-decay experiments towards delineation and interpretation of CO2 solubility, uptake and mass transfer in water/brine systems at elevated pressures of relevance to CO2 storage operations in saline aquifers. Accurate measurements and modeling of mass transfer in this context are crucial to an improved understanding of the longer-term fate of CO2 that is injected into the subsurface for storage purposes. Pressure-decay experiments are presented for CO2/water and CO2/brine systems with and without the presence of unconsolidated porous media. We demonstrate, via high-resolution numerical calculations in 2-D, that natural convection will complicate the interpretation of the experimental observations if the particle size is not sufficiently small. In such settings, we demonstrate that simple 1-D interpretations can result in an overestimation of the uptake (diffusivity) by two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, we demonstrate that high-resolution numerical calculations agree well with the experimental observations for settings where natural convection contributes substantially to the overall mass transfer process.
'A Beacon on Our Coast': The First Freedom at Home and Abroad

This essay defends the idea of religious freedom as the "First Freedom." Not because it sits "atop" the Bill of Rights – if that were the reason, it would be little more than a “parchment barrier,” to use Madison’s famous phrase. Rather, religious freedom is "First" because it sits at the proverbial bottom, at the very bedrock of human rights – a truth borne out by history, philosophy, and practical experience. The reasons for prioritizing religious freedom help to shape, and even reframe, how we think about religious freedom abroad. The essay closes with two lessons for U.S. foreign policy.
Early neighborhood conditions and trajectories of depressive symptoms across adolescence and into adulthood

Abstract Early life conditions, including childhood socioeconomic status (SES) or exposure to adverse conditions, can have long-term consequences on mental health. However, relatively little has examined the long-term influence of exposure to adverse neighborhood conditions in early life. Both neighborhood disadvantage and neighborhood disorder have been consistently linked to mental health outcomes, especially depression. The current analysis uses data from all waves of the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to determine the influence of neighborhood context on trajectories of depressive symptoms from adolescence into adulthood. We find that neighborhood disadvantage has no influence on initial levels or change over time in depressive symptoms after adjusting for individual level covariates. However, neighborhood disorder is associated with greater initial levels of depressive symptoms during adolescence and this difference persists throughout the early life course. Additionally, while female respondents had greater levels of depressive symptoms across time, the effect of neighborhood conditions did not vary by sex. Our results demonstrate that early neighborhood conditions are an important risk factor for long-term patterns of depressive symptoms, above and beyond important proximal factors such as family SES, family composition, and race-ethnicity.
Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labor in US Gulf Coast Oil Refining

This essay analyzes the rise and decline of organized labor in the oil refining industry along the U.S. Gulf Coast and explains how union organizing in the American South was not quite the abject failure southern labor historians that have portrayed it to be. As was the case across this racially segregated region, labor organizing in refining, beginning in the Great Depression, consisted of a dual struggle, by all workers for dignity, job security, and workplace control, and by racial minorities for workplace equality. During 1945–1955, the Oil Workers International Union (OWIU) and its successor, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union, built on it organizing success to obtain concessions on wages and job security in most of the major Gulf Coast plants. Although Gulf Coast refineries remained segregated and simmered with racial tensions, they also had lower racial barriers to employment than in other southern industries, thanks in part to the union movement. OCAW, however, was not able to cling to industrial power long. In the 1950s, management discovered another way to divide and conquer workers, not so much through the manipulation of racial divisions, but through the contracting out of jobs and other manpower reductions made possible by advances in technology. These developments undermined organized labor’s main source of workplace control: the strike. OCAW remained a large union with national clout through the 1970s, but the focus of bargaining narrowed to compensation and occupational health and safety issues. The transformation of refinery work thus foreshadowed labor market trends not only in the South but also across the United States.
Working Memory Modulates Glutamate Levels in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex during 1H fMRS

Glutamate is involved in excitatory neurotransmission and metabolic processes related to brain function. Previous studies using proton functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H fMRS) have demonstrated elevated cortical glutamate levels by 2-4% during visual and motor stimulation, relative to periods of no stimulation. Here, we extended this approach to working memory cognitive task performance, which has been consistently associated with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activation. Sixteen healthy adult volunteers completed a continuous visual fixation 'rest' task followed by a letter 2-back working memory task during 1H fMRS acquisition of the left dlPFC, which encompassed Brodmann areas 45 and 46 over a 4.5cm3 volume. Using a 100% automated fitting procedure integrated with LCModel, raw spectra were eddy current-, phase-, and shift-corrected prior to quantification resulting in a 32s temporal resolution or 8 averages per spectra. Task compliance was high (95% ± 11% correct) and the mean Cramer-Rao Lower Bound of glutamate was 6.9% ± 0.9%. Relative to continuous passive visual fixation, left dlPFC glutamate levels were significantly higher by 2.7% (0.32 mmol/kg wet weight) during letter 2-back performance. Elevated dlPFC glutamate levels reflect increased metabolic activity and excitatory neurotransmission driven by working memory-related cognitive demands. These results provide the first in vivo demonstration of elevated dlPFC glutamate levels during working memory.
Neutrophil localization in acute and chronic experimental abscesses

Abdominal abscesses are associated with a high mortality, and usually require surgical drainage for cure. A potential mechanism explaining the inability of the host to clear this infection may be in part a result of the inability of the neutrophil to localize at the site of an established infection. To study this question, either acute (4 hours old) or chronic (2 weeks old) abscesses caused by Staphylococcus aureus were created in perforated capsules implanted in the peritoneal cavity of rabbits. Homologous neutrophils were obtained from donor rabbits 4 hours after peritoneal glycogen stimulation and labeled with indium 111 oxine. Only 0.71% of injected 111In-labeled neutrophils localized in the chronic abscesses, compared with 1.77% in acute abscesses (P less than or equal to 0.01). Animals with chronic infections had a lower intravascular recovery of injected neutrophils (P less than 0.002). Failure of neutrophil localization was not associated with less chemotactic activity within the abscess, as measured by a chemotaxis-under-agarose assay, or caused by a barrier surrounding the abscess as detected by radionuclide imaging. Only 0.07% of injected neutrophils localized into acute abdominal abscesses in animals with a concomitant chronic subcutaneous abscess. These chronically infected animals also demonstrated a low peak intravascular recovery of injected neutrophils when compared with animals with only an acute infection (P less than 0.002). These data reveal that neutrophils localize to abscesses poorly in animals with chronic infections. The mechanism is possibly related to a systemic factor(s) associated with a lower intravascular recovery of injected neutrophils in chronically infected animals.
"I Love My Work But..." The Professionalization of Early Childhood Education.

There are two separate but related issues that have challenged advocates, researchers and practitioners in the field of early education and care work for decades: improving the quality of children’s programs and increasing the wages and benefits of the workers. The solution has been framed as a need for professionalizing the workforce – professional development training, higher education and enhanced skills. While seeking professional status is expected to improve the quality of childcare programs and worker compensation, the relationship between quality, compensation and professional development training has not been fully explored. Through indepth interviews with 32 early childhood educators I explored the relationship between educational qualifications and experience, with teacher pay and conditions of employment. Although the majority saw their work as “valuable and meaningful” they did not intend to remain in early childhood education. They experienced poverty wages, few benefits, high work related expenses and job insecurity. Their narratives highlight a crisis in early childhood education that requires radical change within the profession of early education. To retain the most qualified and motivated early childhood educators, pay and working conditions must be improved. Obtaining professional status and credentials for early education and care workers is not enough. Substantial increases in wages and benefits must be central to this movement; anything less suggests exploitation not professionalization. Keywords: Early Childhood Educators, Preschool Teachers, Professionalization, Professional Development Training, Compensation, Teacher Narratives
Classical Trajectory Studies of the Formation and Unimolecular Decay of Rare Gas Clusters

Within a classical macroscopic picture the stability of a super-saturated vapor is a consequence of the surface related activation barrier associated with the growth of small clusters. As indicated in Fig. 1 the free energy change for the formation of small clusters from a vapor is positive and increases with cluster size until a “critical” cluster size is attained. Beyond the critical cluster size subsequent cluster growth results in a decrease in the free energy and the process occurs spontaneously. Because the growth up to the critical cluster size is responsible for the stability of the supersaturated vapor, it is important that it be well understood.
Postharvest flavor deployment and degradation in fruits and vegetables.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents an overview of post-harvest physiology and technology, and how they relate to changes in flavor of fruits and vegetables. The increase in and changing profile of aroma volatiles during the late stages of fruit ripening is a major focus of the chapter and the scope is limited to products of fatty acid and isopentenoid metabolism. The three subjects considered in the chapter are: (1) flavor changes with fruit ripening, (2) the influence of storage conditions and pre-storage treatments, and (3) the influence of ethylene and its recently discovered antagonist 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) on flavor and texture. The chapter gives special attention to the gene expression and enzymes involved in aroma volatile production in ripening fruits. Use of molecular genetics tools has resulted in rapid and exciting progress in this area. The discussion of the second subject is centered on the effects of refrigeration, controlled or modified atmospheres, and pre-storage treatments administered to retard ripening and senescence or to kill insect pests that restrict fruit exports, focusing mainly on the negative impact these technologies can have on flavor and aroma. The chapter also reviews the crucial roles of ethylene in post-harvest ripening and senescence, and the rapidly increasing utilization of 1-MCP treatments to delay the deterioration of fresh produce and extend storage life.
Racial and Ethnic Patterning of Low Birth Weight, Normal Birth Weight, and Macrosomia

Both low birthweight ( 4000 g) are considered adverse birth outcomes and are associated with later poor health conditions, yet the social determinants of macrosomia are understudied. In this study, we explore patterning of LBW, normal birthweight, and macrosomia by race/ethnicity and nativity. We examined data from all live births between 1999 and 2014 in New Jersey with a non-missing, plausible value of birthweight (n = 1,609,516). We compared the risk for LBW and macrosomia among non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Asian mothers, and between the US- and native-born. For Hispanics and Asians, we also examined differences by country of origin. The racial/ethnic patterns for macrosomia mirrored those of LBW, suggesting that the factors underlying LBW shift birthweight distributions. For example, non-Hispanic White mothers had the lowest risk for LBW and the highest risk for macrosomia. Nativity patterns differed by subgroup, however, with unique risks for macrosomia among some origin groups, such as foreign-born Cubans. The racial/ethnic and nativity patterns of macrosomia do not completely mirror those of LBW, suggesting some distinct social risk factors for macrosomia. Our findings raise questions about whether and how racial/ethnic and nativity patterning in both low and excess birthweight is retained in later conditions, such as childhood obesity.
Objective Assessment of Surgical Skill with fNIRS

We present an advanced optical neuroimaging methodology that can objectively and successfully classify subjects with different expertise levels associated with surgical skills. The methodology was tested by assessing laparoscopic surgery skills within the framework of the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery program, which is a pre-requisite for certification in general surgery. We demonstrate that optical-based metrics outperformed current metrics for surgical certification in classifying subjects with varying surgical expertise. Moreover, we report that optical neuroimaging allows for the successful classification of subjects during the acquisition of such skills.
Association between telomere length and cognitive ability in a community-based sample.

Abstract Prior research suggests that telomere length is a biomarker of cognitive aging; however, literature has demonstrated conflicting findings to date. The present study uses data from the Dallas Heart Study, N = 2606, to assess the association between telomere length and cognitive ability on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The data do not support a relationship between telomere length and general cognitive functioning, (β = 0.016, SE = 0.31, p = 0.407). The data further replicate the negative findings within current literature.
Divergent Cytotoxic and Metabolically Stimulative Functions of Sigma-2 Receptors: Structure-activity Relationships of 6-acetyl-3-(4-(4-(4-fluorophenyl)piperazin-1-yl)butyl)benzo[d]oxazol-2(3H)-one (SN79) Derivatives

Sigma-2 receptors, recently identified as TMEM97, have been implicated in cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Structurally distinct sigma-2 receptor ligands induce cell death in tumor cells, linking sigma-2 receptors to apoptotic pathways. Recently, we reported that sigma-2 receptors can also stimulate glycolytic hallmarks, effects consistent with a prosurvival function and upregulation in cancer cells. Both apoptotic and metabolically stimulative effects were observed with compounds related to the canonical sigma-2 antagonist SN79. Here we investigate a series of 6-substituted SN79 analogs to assess the structural determinants governing these divergent effects. Substitutions on the benzoxazolone ring of the core SN79 structure resulted in high-affinity sigma-2 receptor ligands (Ki = 0.56–17.9 nM), with replacement of the heterocyclic oxygen by N-methyl (producing N-methylbenzimidazolones) generally decreasing sigma-1 affinity and a sulfur substitution (producing benzothiazolones) imparting high affinity at both subtypes, lowering subtype selectivity. Substitution at the 6-position with COCH3, NO2, NH2, or F resulted in ligands that were not cytotoxic. Five of these ligands induced an increase in metabolic activity, as measured by increased reduction of MTT (3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) in human SK-N-SH neuroblastoma cells, further supporting a role for sigma-2 receptors in metabolism. Substitution with 6-isothiocyanate resulted in ligands that were sigma-2 selective and that irreversibly bound to the sigma-2 receptor, but not to the sigma-1 receptor. These ligands induced cell death upon both acute and continuous treatment (EC50 = 7.6–32.8 μM), suggesting that irreversible receptor binding plays a role in cytotoxicity. These ligands will be useful for further study of these divergent roles of sigma-2 receptors.
QoS for SDN-Based Fat-Tree Networks

Software-defined Networks (SDNs) are the new network paradigm providing, programmability, agility, and centralized management. In this paper, we show how to leverage the SDN centralized controller to improve the network utilization and the traffic performance. On top of the SDN controller, new modules are added to help finding single and multi-path routes between communicating devices. Flow rules are automatically installed into the designated switches to provide the required paths. The behavior and performance of different types of traffic, namely, UDP, TCP, VOIP, and a Big-data application traffic are investigated. The traffic forwarding is based on either the controller built in layer 2 switching “odl-l2switch” feature or single/multi-path selection based on the supplemented modules. Experimental results based on metrics such as delay, jitter and packet drops are presented for each forwarding option. The results disclosed the advantage of having the developed modules on top of the controller for all traffic types. The OpenDaylight controller for OpenFlow switches, in a fat-tree network, is used for experiments. For a fair comparison of different traffic types, a monitoring module is built on top of the controller for collecting ports statistics, analyzing and monitoring.
The decline and fall of the law of delict

Tort losses can frequently be absorbed like other production expenses as overheads of the particular enterprise in which they were incurred, and that the cost would be passed on and spread among the customers of that enterprise. Thus from the point of view of loss distribution there was no difference, in case of an industrial accident, between the cost of temporary disruption of the assembly line and the cost of medical services or disability pay to the injured worker. Both were passed on alike to the customer.
Phenomenological Consulting: Long-Term Mental Training With an Elite College Football Place Kicker

This case study depicts the approach taken by a sport psychology consultant who worked with an elite college football place kicker from the beginning of the individual’s freshman year to the end of...
Hysteretic Model of Single-Bolted Angle Connections for Lattice Steel Towers

AbstractSingle-bolted angle joints are widely used on secondary bracings of lattice steel towers due to their low cost and ease of construction. It has been observed that the hysteretic behavior of...
Ontology-Based Interactive Visualization of Patient-Generated Research Questions.

Background Crohn's disease and colitis are chronic conditions that affect every facet of patients' lives (e.g., social interaction, family, work, diet, and sleep). Thus, treatment consists largely of disease management. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation—IBD Partners—has created an interactive website that, in addition to providing helpful information and disease management tools, provides a discussion forum for patients to talk about their experiences and suggest new lines of research into Crohn's disease and colitis. Objectives The primary objective of this work is to enable researchers to more effectively browse the forum content. Researchers wish to identify important/popular patient-suggested research topics, appreciate the full breadth of the research topics, and see connections between them, in order to more effectively prioritize research agendas. Methods To help structure the forum content we have developed an ontology describing the major themes in the discussion forum. We have also created a prototype interactive visualization tool that leverages the ontology to help researchers identify common themes and related patient-generated research topics via linked views of (1) the ontology, (2) a research topic overview clustered by relevant ontology terms, and (3) a detailed view of the discussion forum content. Results We discuss visualizations and interactions enabled by the visualization tool, provide an example scenario using the tool, and discuss limitations and future work based on feedback from potential users. Conclusion The integration of a user-community specific ontology with an interactive visualization tool is a promising approach for enabling researchers to more effectively study user-generated research questions.
Theoretical Study of Primary and Secondary Deuterium Equilibrium Isotope Effects for H2 and CH4 Addition to trans-Ir(PR3)2(CO)X

Deuterium equilibrium isotope effects (EIE) for H[sub 2] and H-CH[sub 3] addition to Vaska-type complexes, trans-Ir(PH[sub 3])[sub 2](CO)X (XM), have been determined using vibrational frequencies obtained from ab initio calculations on XM and on cis, trans-H[sub 2]Ir(PH[sub 3])[sub 2](CO)X (XMH[sub 2]). Inverse primary EIE values for H[sub 2]/D[sub 2] addition to XM are computed to be 0.46 (X = Cl), 0.57 (X = CH[sub 3]), and 0.33 (X = H; 0.66 after statistical normalization) at 300 K. The EIE values and the computed enthalpy and entropy terms are consistent with several experimental studies. Secondary thermodynamic deuterium isotope effects for H[sub 2] addition to XM are computed for X = H/D ([alpha]-EIE = 0.44; 0.88 after statistical normalization) and for X = CH[sub 3]/CD[sub 3] ([beta]-EIE = 0.86). Computations on the addition of CH[sub 4]/CH[sub 3]D or CH[sub 4]/CD[sub 4] to HM reveal EIEs of 7.77 (1.94 per bond) and 3.64, respectively. These results are analyzed and discussed using equilibrium statistical mechanics. 38 refs., 3 tabs.
'Lamentable and True': Remediations of True Crime in Domestic Tragedies

The phrase "if it bleeds, it leads," was as true in early modern England as it is today, and—in many plays adapted from murder narratives—the domestic tragedy genre catered to audiences' desires for authentic stories of violent, true crime. Though these domestic murder tragedies traded on growing interests in authenticity and fact in early modern culture (Barbara Shapiro, A Culture of Fact ; Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact ), they were adapted through the non -factual genres of drama and poetry. These plays, therefore, highlight a tension between the "authenticity" of true crime and the inventive nature of theater. I argue in this essay that the desire to adapt such narratives into drama ushered in a new kind of dramatic storytelling: the concept "based on a true story." Though fidelity to accepted facts was greatly valued in early murder plays, such as Arden of Faversham , these plays nevertheless relied on speculation and invention to adequately dramatize the characters involved, and the addition of fabricated elements to truth-based stories changed the ways in which these stories came to be "known." The interplay of differing perspectives and sympathetic connections, only available through speculative invention, allowed these narratives to act as a kind of alternative truth—one not based on the concept of fidelity to "reality." In this paper, I examine two domestic crime adaptations, Arden of Faversham and The Miseries of Enforced Marriage , and I argue that, as fictional elements became increasingly acceptable in reality-based plays, playwrights would eventually modify the meaning of "truth" in true drama.
Novel K-Means Clustering-based Undersampling and Feature Selection for Drug Discovery Applications

Drug discovery refers to the process of identification of specific-disease causing proteins and underscores the research efforts to derive a new medication that targets these proteins. As such the drug discovery process entails significant challenges as it is time consuming, data intensive, and involves an expensive developmental process which demands rigorous lab testing with high rates of uncertainty that the given drug will succeed. Therefore, it highlights the crucial need for machine learning methods to automate and hasten the drug discovery pipeline for improved healthcare and assist clinicians to make informed decisions for in-vitro testing. However, most real-world biomedical datasets suffer from statistical ill-conditioning issues such as the class imbalance problem where the fewer class of potential drug candidate protein conformations are overshadowed by the larger protein-pool of non-drug candidates. Hence, this leads to erroneous conclusions when machine learning techniques are directly employed for data-learning and classification purposes. Therefore, this work takes a revolutionary stance to counter the class imbalance problem through advanced machine learning techniques that maximize the prediction rate of potential drug candidate molecular conformations for the target proteins ADORA2A and OPRK1 and subsequently reduces the failure rates of the drug discovery process. Experimental evaluation of the proposed machine learning methodologies further substantiates the effectiveness of our approach for drug discovery process.
Operationalization, implementation, and evaluation of Collaboration Planning: A pilot interventional study of nascent translational teams.

Background: The University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research hub supports multiple pilot award programs that engage cross-disciplinary Translational Teams. To support those teams, our Team Science group aims to offer a learning experience that is accessible, active, and actionable. We identified Collaboration Planning as a high-impact intervention to stimulate team-building activities that provide Translational Team members with the skills to lead and participate in high-impact teams. Methods: We adapted the published materials on Collaboration Planning to develop a 90-minute facilitated intervention with questions in 10 areas, presuming no previous knowledge of Science of Team Science (SciTS) or team-science best practices. Attendees received a short follow-up survey and submitted a written collaboration plan with their first quarterly progress report. Results: Thirty-nine participants from 13 pilot teams from a wide range of disciplines engaged in these sessions. We found that teams struggled to know who to invite, that some of our questions were confusing and too grounded in the language of SciTS, and groups lacked plans for managing their information and communications. We identified several areas for improvement including ensuring that the process is flexible to meet the needs of different teams, continuing to evolve the questions so they resonate with teams, and the need to provide resources for areas where teams needed additional guidance, including information and data management, authorship policies, and conflict management. Conclusions: With further development and testing, Collaboration Planning has the potential to support Translational Teams in developing strong team dynamics and team functioning.
Towards Knowledge Maintenance in Scientific Digital Libraries with the Keystone Framework

Scientific digital libraries speed dissemination of scientific publications, but also the propagation of invalid or unreliable knowledge. Although many papers with known validity problems are highly cited, no auditing process is currently available to determine whether a citing paper's findings fundamentally depend on invalid or unreliable knowledge. To address this, we introduce a new framework, the keystone framework, designed to identify when and how citing unreliable findings impacts a paper, using argumentation theory and citation context analysis. Through two pilot case studies, we demonstrate how the keystone framework can be applied to knowledge maintenance tasks for digital libraries, including addressing citations of a non-reproducible paper and identifying statements most needing validation in a high-impact paper. We identify roles for librarians, database maintainers, knowledgebase curators, and research software engineers in applying the framework to scientific digital libraries.
R 2 IM- Robust and Resilient Intersection Management of Connected Autonomous Vehicles

Intersection management of Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) has the potential to significantly improve safety and mobility. While numerous intersection management designs have been proposed in the past few decades, most of them assume that the CAVs will precisely follow the directions of the Intersection Manager (IM) and prove the safety and demonstrate the efficiency based on this assumption. In real life, however, a CAV that is crossing the intersection may break down, accelerate out-of-control or lie about its information (e.g. intended outgoing lane) and cause an accident. In this paper, we first define a fault model called “rogue vehicle”, which is essentially a CAV that either is dishonest or does not follow the IM’s directions and then, propose a novel management algorithm $(R^{2}IM)$ that will ensure safe operation, even if a CAV becomes “rogue” at any point in time. We prove that there can be no accidents inside the intersection, as long as there is no more than one “rogue vehicle” at a time. We demonstrate the safety of $R^{2}IM$ by performing experiments on 1/10 scale model CAVs and in simulation. We also show that our approach can recover after the rogue vehicle leaves/is removed.
Stelio Maria Martini, ‘Schemi’, and the Po(i)etics of Collage

The paper explores the transgressive poetics of collage envisioned by Italian visual poet Stelio Maria Martini in his masterpiece Schemi (1962), one of the most complex artists’ books of the twentieth century: a catalog of composing techniques for a total art, achieved through an aesthetic manipulation of the most diverse materials across different media (newspaper clippings, drawings, photos, cultural debris). An unprecedented close reading of Schemi will prove how collage is for Martini much more than an experimental juxtaposition of signifiers (as in early Avant-Garde artists), or a political subversion of advertising slogans (as in other visual poets of his time). It is, instead, the necessary basis of a futurable poetry: a poietic gesture (from poieo = to make), in which words, images, and matter drawn from the collective imagery of contemporary society are pulled together to retrieve feeble schemes of an otherwise alienated human sensitivity. The analysis will ultimately bring to light several cornerstones of this original po(i)etics of collage, able to redefine the medium of poetry in its own right: the substitution of the linear deductive logic with a circular one, which accepts contradictions as consubstantial to life and art; the radical subversion of the concepts of Time and History; the transformation of the values and uses of writing, alongside the pivotal distinction between sense and meaning; and the importance of a cosmic vision as a privileged access to the real.
Regional Agreements and Trade in Services: Policy Issues

Every major regional trade agreement now has a services dimension. Is trade in services so different that we need to modify the conclusions on preferential agreements reached so far in the realm of goods? This paper examines, first, the implications of unilateral policy choices in a particular services market. It then explores the economics of international cooperation and identifies the circumstances in which a country is more likely to benefit from cooperation in a regional rather than multilateral forum.
Pre-Steady-State Kinetics and Reverse Transport in Rat Glutamate Transporter EAAC1 with an Immobilized Transport Domain

Plasma membrane glutamate transporters move glutamate across the cell membrane in a process that is thought to involve elevator-like movement of the transport domain relative to the static trimerization domain. Conformational changes associated with this elevator-like movement have been blocked by covalent crosslinking of cysteine pairs inserted strategically in several positions in the transporter structure, resulting in inhibition of steady-state transport activity. However, it is not known how these crosslinking restraints affect other partial reactions of the transporter that were identified based on pre-steady-state kinetic analysis. Here, we re-examine two different introduced cysteine pairs in the rat glutamate transporter EAAC1 recombinantely expressed in HEK293 cells, W440C/K268C and K64C/V419C, with respect to the molecular mechanism of their impairment of transporter function. Pre-steady-state kinetic studies of glutamate-induced partial reactions were performed using laser photolysis of caged glutamate to achieve sub-millisecond time resolution. Crosslinking of both cysteine pairs abolished steady-state transport current, as well as the majority of pre-steady-state glutamate-induced charge movements, in both forward and reverse transport mode, suggesting that it is not only the elevator-like movement associated with translocation, but also other transporter partial reactions that are inhibited. In contrast, sodium binding to the empty transporter, and glutamate-induced anion conductance were still intact after the W440C/K268C crosslink. Our results add to the previous mechanistic view of how covalent restraints of the transporter affect function and structural changes linked to individual steps in the transport cycle.
Acute Coronary Syndrome

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a clinical diagnosis that is made based on the suspicion of cardiac ischemia due to coronary obstruction. Subsequent confirmatory testing with electrocardiography and cardiac biomarkers will differentiate ACS subtypes, but these are not always necessary to make the initial diagnosis. Management focuses on relief of ischemic symptoms, salvaging viable myocardium with revascularization, and prevention of long-term sequelae.