cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Envelope gp120-Induced Partial T-Cell Receptor Signaling Creates an F-Actin-Depleted Zone in the Virological Synapse

Cell-to-cell transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) occurs via a virological synapse (VS), a tight cell-cell junction formed between HIV-infected cells and target cells in which the HIV-1-infected cell polarizes and releases virions toward the noninfected target cell in a gp120- and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1)-dependent process. The response of the target cell has been less studied. We utilized supported planar bilayers presenting gp120 and ICAM-1 as a reductionist model for the infected-cell membrane and investigated its effect on the target CD4 T cell. This study shows that HIV-1 gp120 interaction with its receptors is initially organized into microclusters that undergo F-actin-dependent consolidation into a central supramolecular activation complex (cSMAC). Src kinases are active in both gp120 microclusters and in the VS cSMAC. The early T-cell receptor (TCR) signaling machinery is partially activated at the VS, and signaling does not propagate to trigger Ca(2+) elevation or increase CD69 expression. However, these partial TCR signals act locally to create an F-actin-depleted zone. We propose a model in which the F-actin-depleted zone formed within the target CD4 T cell enhances the reception of virions by releasing the physical barrier for HIV-1 entry and facilitating postentry events.
IMMIGRANT RACIALIZATION AND THE NEW SAVAGE SLOT: Race, Migration, and Immigration in the New Europe

This review explores contemporary processes through which immigrants are categorized into shifting racial landscapes in the new Europe. Tracing the racial genealogy of the immigrant through European and Europeanist migration studies, the successive construction of overlapping tropes of the nomad, the laborer, the uprooted victim, the hybrid cosmopolite, and the (Muslim) transmigrant are examined. This history points to the perduring problematization of the immigrant as the object of national integration. If migration studies have effectively tended to racialize migrants into a new savage slot, recent ethnographies of the immigrant experience in Europe point to ways in which immigrant and diasporic groups cross racial frontiers and enact solidarity across class and cultural lines.
Paradox as a Metatheoretical Perspective Sharpening the Focus and Widening the Scope

Organizations are rife with tensions—flexibility versus control, exploration versus exploitation, autocracy versus democracy, social versus financial, global versus local. Researchers have long responded using contingency theory, asking “Under what conditions should managers emphasize either A or B?” Yet increasingly studies apply a paradox perspective, shifting the question to “How can we engage both A and B simultaneously?” Despite accumulating exemplars, commonalities across paradox studies remain unclear, and ties unifying this research community weak. To energize further uses of a paradox perspective, we build from past reviews to explicate its role as a metatheory. Contrasting this lens to contingency theory, we illustrate its metatheoretical nature. We then dive deeper to sharpen the focus and widen the scope of a paradox perspective. Identifying core elements viewed from a paradox perspective—underlying assumptions, central concepts, nature of interrelationships and boundary conditions—offers a guide, informing the practice of paradox research. Next, we illustrate diverse uses of this lens. We conclude by exploring implications and next steps, stressing the rising need for paradox research, as complexity, change, and ambiguity intensify demands for both/and approaches in theory and practice.
High frequency of known copy number abnormalities and maternal duplication 15q11-q13 in patients with combined schizophrenia and epilepsy

Many copy number variants (CNVs) are documented to be associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, including intellectual disability, autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Chromosomal deletions of 1q21.1, 3q29, 15q13.3, 22q11.2, and NRXN1 and duplications of 15q11-q13 (maternal), 16p11, and 16p13.3 have the strongest association with schizophrenia. We hypothesized that cases with both schizophrenia and epilepsy would have a higher frequency of disease-associated CNVs and would represent an enriched sample for detection of other mutations associated with schizophrenia. We used array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) to analyze 235 individuals with both schizophrenia and epilepsy, 80 with bipolar disorder and epilepsy, and 191 controls. We detected 10 schizophrenia plus epilepsy cases in 235 (4.3%) with the above mentioned CNVs compared to 0 in 191 controls (p = 0.003). Other likely pathological findings in schizophrenia plus epilepsy cases included 1 deletion 16p13 and 1 duplication 7q11.23 for a total of 12/235 (5.1%) while a possibly pathogenic duplication of 22q11.2 was found in one control for a total of 1 in 191 (0.5%) controls (p = 0.008). The rate of abnormality in the schizophrenia plus epilepsy of 10/235 for the more definite CNVs compares to a rate of 75/7336 for these same CNVs in a series of unselected schizophrenia cases (p = 0.0004). We found a statistically significant increase in the frequency of CNVs known or likely to be associated with schizophrenia in individuals with both schizophrenia and epilepsy compared to controls. We found an overall 5.1% detection rate of likely pathological findings which is the highest frequency of such findings in a series of schizophrenia patients to date. This evidence suggests that the frequency of disease-associated CNVs in patients with both schizophrenia and epilepsy is significantly higher than for unselected schizophrenia.
Finite-Element Models for Planar Hall Probes of Arbitrary Shape and Composition

Previous numerical models of planar Hall probes using finite-difference and finite-element methods were limited to open boundaries parallel to the coordinate axes. This paper derives the finite-element equations on a conformal triangular mesh directly from the law of current conservation. The treatment shows that the Hall condition for general curved boundaries is inherent in the equations and can be implemented in numerical programs with little effort. Results are presented from a code that can handle spatial variations of magnetic field, layer thickness, volume resistivity, and the Hall coefficient in probes of any shape.
Improving Feedback to Students in Online Courses

This article describes evidence-based strategies that are efficient evidence-based strategies that are efficient for providing feedback to students in online courses. Strategies are grouped in categories including course design, faculty roles, and student participation. Integrating diverse feedback methods into course design is a way to promote efficiency in online courses while allowing students to acquire and learn professional skills such as self-reflection and peer review.
Intranasal Insulin Improves Age-Related Cognitive Deficits and Reverses Electrophysiological Correlates of Brain Aging

Peripheral insulin resistance is a key component of metabolic syndrome associated with obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. While the impact of insulin resistance is well recognized in the periphery, it is also becoming apparent in the brain. Recent studies suggest that insulin resistance may be a factor in brain aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) whereby intranasal insulin therapy, which delivers insulin to the brain, improves cognition and memory in AD patients. Here, we tested a clinically relevant delivery method to determine the impact of two forms of insulin, short-acting insulin lispro (Humalog) or long-acting insulin detemir (Levemir), on cognitive functions in aged F344 rats. We also explored insulin effects on the Ca(2+)-dependent hippocampal afterhyperpolarization (AHP), a well-characterized neurophysiological marker of aging which is increased in the aged, memory impaired animal. Low-dose intranasal insulin improved memory recall in aged animals such that their performance was similar to that seen in younger animals. Further, because ex vivo insulin also reduced the AHP, our results suggest that the AHP may be a novel cellular target of insulin in the brain, and improved cognitive performance following intranasal insulin therapy may be the result of insulin actions on the AHP.
Plasma‐assisted MBE growth of ZnO on GaAs substrate with a ZnSe buffer layer

ZnO thin films were grown by plasma-assisted MBE on GaAs substrates with ZnSe buffer layers. GaAs with different orientations: (001), (111) A, and (111) B were investigated. X-ray diffraction measurements showed that ZnO grown on (111) B GaAs substrates have the best structural quality. All the samples showed good optical qualities as indicated by room temperature photoluminescence measurements. (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Certification and Competency in Interventional Cardiology The Changing Landscape

Physician competence is perhaps the most essential part of the many complex components involved in providing optimal heath care. The patient’s trust that their physicians have the appropriate training, fund of knowledge, clinical decision-making, and technical skills to deliver their healthcare services in a caring manner, with the ultimate goal of providing the safest and most efficacious clinical results, is fundamental to the patient–doctor relationship. Healthcare systems and payers also expect optimal care delivered in an efficient and cost-sensitive manner. The only groups with the knowledge and background required to define and evaluate physician competence on a sustained basis are the physicians themselves. The United States has historically been a leader in training clinicians and setting quality standards for healthcare delivery. This has been especially evident in the field of interventional cardiology, a relatively young subspecialty with a history of robust evolution and expansion since the early days of Andreas Gruentzig’s pioneering first coronary balloon angioplasty in 1977. During the past 35 years, the field has rapidly and relentlessly expanded. We are a field that started with a rather simple balloon-based revascularization concept only applicable to a limited number of carefully chosen patients. We have now evolved into an expansive subspecialty treating a wide range of both stable and acutely ill patients presenting with a broad spectrum of not only increasingly complex coronary artery disease, but also other cardiovascular conditions. Notably, during the past decade, further expansion into the areas of peripheral vascular and structural heart disease has occurred.1 This has been accompanied by the proliferation of a voluminous amount of scientific information facilitating our interventional community’s maturation. We have assumed a leadership position in the practice of evidence-based clinical medicine. However, the ever-emerging advances in our field have inevitably led us to another critical challenge in the optimal …
Do Hebbian synapses estimate entropy

Hebbian learning is one of the mainstays of biologically inspired neural processing. Hebb's (1949) rule is biologically plausible, and it has been extensively utilized in both computational neuroscience and in unsupervised training of neural systems. In these fields, Hebbian learning became synonymous for correlation learning. But it is known that correlation is a second order statistic of the data, so it is sub-optimal when the goal is to extract as much information as possible from the sensory data stream. We demonstrate how information learning can be implemented using Hebb's rule. Thus the paper brings a new understanding to how neural systems could, through Hebb's rule, extract information theoretic quantities rather than merely correlation.
Cost and logistics of implementing a tissue-based American College of Surgeons/Association of Program Directors in Surgery surgical skills curriculum for general surgery residents of all clinical years

Abstract Background The cost and logistics of deploying the American College of Surgeons (ACS)/Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS) National Technical Skills Curriculum across all training years are not known. This information is essential for residency programs choosing to adopt similar curricula. Methods A task force evaluated the authors' institution's existing simulation curriculum and enhanced it by implementing the ACS/APDS modules. A 35-module curriculum was administered to 35 general surgery residents across all 5 clinical years. The costs and logistics were noted, and resident satisfaction was assessed. Results The annual operational cost was $110,300 ($3,150 per resident). Cost per module, per resident was $940 for the cadaveric module compared with $220 and $240 for dry simulation and animal tissue–based modules, respectively. Resident satisfaction improved from 2.45 to 4.78 on a 5-point, Likert-type scale after implementing the ACS/APDS modules. Conclusions The ACS/APDS skills curriculum was implemented successfully across all clinical years. Cadaveric modules were the most expensive. Animal and dry simulation modules were equivalent in cost. The addition of tissue-based modules was associated with high satisfaction.
What Do We Know About Neuropsychological Aspects Of Schizophrenia

Application of a neuropsychological perspective to the study of schizophrenia has established a number of important facts about this disorder. Some of the key findings from the existing literature are that, while neurocognitive impairment is present in most, if not all, persons with schizophrenia, there is both substantial interpatient heterogeneity and remarkable within-patient stability of cognitive function over the long-term course of the illness. Such findings have contributed to the firm establishment of neurobiologic models of schizophrenia, and thereby help to reduce the social stigma that was sometimes associated with purely psychogenic models popular during parts of the 20th century. Neuropsychological studies in recent decades have established the primacy of cognitive functions over psychopathologic symptoms as determinants of functional capacity and independence in everyday functioning. Although the cognitive benefits of both conventional and even second generation antipsychotic medications appear marginal at best, recognition of the primacy of cognitive deficits as determinants of functional disability in schizophrenia has catalyzed recent efforts to develop targeted treatments for the cognitive deficits of this disorder. Despite these accomplishments, however, some issues remain to be resolved. Efforts to firmly establish the specific neurocognitive/neuropathologic systems responsible for schizophrenia remain elusive, as do efforts to definitively demonstrate the specific cognitive deficits underlying specific forms of functional impairment. Further progress may be fostered by recent initiatives to integrate neuropsychological studies with experimental neuroscience, perhaps leading to measures of deficits in cognitive processes more clearly associated with specific, identifiable brain systems.
Transcription initiation factor DksA has diverse effects on RNA chain elongation

Bacterial transcription factors DksA and GreB belong to a family of coiled-coil proteins that bind within the secondary channel of RNA polymerase (RNAP). These proteins display structural homology but play different regulatory roles. DksA disrupts RNAP interactions with promoter DNA and inhibits formation of initiation complexes, sensitizing rRNA synthesis to changes in concentrations of ppGpp and NTPs. Gre proteins remodel the RNAP active site and facilitate cleavage of the nascent RNA in elongation complexes. However, DksA and GreB were shown to have overlapping effects during initiation, and in vivo studies suggested that DksA may also function at post-initiation steps. Here we show that DksA has many features of an elongation factor: it inhibits both RNA chain extension and RNA shortening by exonucleolytic cleavage or pyrophosphorolysis and increases intrinsic termination in vitro and in vivo. However, DksA has no effect on Rho- or Mfd-mediated RNA release or nascent RNA cleavage in backtracked complexes, the regulatory target of Gre factors. Our results reveal that DksA effects on elongating RNAP are very different from those of GreB, suggesting that these regulators recognize distinct states of the transcription complex.
Climatic effects of 1950–2050 changes in US anthropogenic aerosols – Part 1: Aerosol trends and radiative forcing

We calculate decadal aerosol direct and indi- rect (warm cloud) radiative forcings from US anthropogenic sources over the 1950-2050 period. Past and future aerosol distributions are constructed using GEOS-Chem and histor- ical emission inventories and future projections from the IPCC A1B scenario. Aerosol simulations are evaluated with observed spatial distributions and 1980-2010 trends of aerosol concentrations and wet deposition in the contiguous US. Direct and indirect radiative forcing is calculated us- ing the GISS general circulation model and monthly mean aerosol distributions from GEOS-Chem. The radiative forc- ing from US anthropogenic aerosols is strongly localized over the eastern US. We find that its magnitude peaked in 1970-1990, with values over the eastern US (east of 100 W) of 2.0 W m 2 for direct forcing including contributions from sulfate ( 2.0 W m 2 ), nitrate ( 0.2 W m 2 ), organic carbon ( 0.2 W m 2 ), and black carbon (+0.4 W m 2 ). The uncertainties in radiative forcing due to aerosol radiative properties are estimated to be about 50 %. The aerosol in- direct effect is estimated to be of comparable magnitude to the direct forcing. We find that the magnitude of the forc- ing declined sharply from 1990 to 2010 (by 0.8 W m 2 di- rect and 1.0 W m 2 indirect), mainly reflecting decreases in SO2 emissions, and project that it will continue declining post-2010 but at a much slower rate since US SO2 emis- sions have already declined by almost 60 % from their peak. This suggests that much of the warming effect of reducing US anthropogenic aerosol sources has already been realized. The small positive radiative forcing from US BC emissions (+0.3 W m 2 over the eastern US in 2010; 5 % of the global
Making the connection: antibody responsiveness and MHC genes.

Over a half century ago, Landsteiner ([1][1]) demonstrated that Abs could be produced to nearly any substance (which he termed “hapten”) if it was attached to a proper (i.e., immunogenic) substance (the “carrier”). Carrying the torch, Benacerraf and Gell ([2][2]) demonstrated a major
Analysis of millimeter waveguides on anisotropic substrates using the three-dimensional transmission-line matrix method

A three-dimensional condensed asymmetrical node, variable grid, transmission-line-matrix (TLM) method has been used in analyzing several millimeter waveguides on anisotropic substrates. The dispersion characteristics of image guides together with field and energy confinement properties at millimeter-wave frequencies have been investigated. Edge coupled microstrip line on a uniaxial substrate is analyzed for the even and odd mode dispersion characteristics. The analysis is repeated for bilateral finlines on uniaxial/biaxial substrates. The results obtained using other computational techniques are used in all of these cases to assess the competence of the method. >
Can reputation manipulation boost app sales in Android market

With the big success of the mobile application (app) sales, attackers are also attracted by the potential profits in the app market. In this paper, we survey current app ranking schemes as well as existing app reputation manipulation schemes and raise some interesting while arguable questions. Based on an app installation data set collected from a university campus community, we quantitatively investigate the answers to two questions: (1) what is the impact of app reputation and download number on app sales and (2) will attackers make profits from the manipulation of app reputation or download number. Although the results may not be generalized to the global app market, they provide a new view point for further investigations.
Management of graft-versus-host disease.

The increasing number of allogeneic stem cell transplants, particularly those involving donors other than HLA-identical siblings, has made the management of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) a continuing problem for transplant experts. There have been improvements in the prevention of acute GVHD with cyclosporine- and FK506-based combination therapies, as well as lymphocyte depletion. However, fewer than 50% of patients have durable improvement after initial treatment. FK506 and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) are promising salvage therapies in steroid-resistant GVHD, as are the anti-cytokine antibodies and the purine nucleoside analog, pentostatin. The incidence of chronic GVHD has unfortunately not decreased, despite advances in treatment of acute GVHD. Treatment of chronic GVHD involves treatment of the underlying immunologic process and supportive therapies. Initial therapy has tended to be cyclosporine and prednisone. Refractory patients have hope with combination MMF and FK506, etretinate, plaquenil, and nonpharmacologic approaches, such as PUVA. Supportive care is an integral part of chronic GVHD management with emphasis on infection control and symptom control. Death in chronic GVHD is still largely attributable to infection. The progress in therapies for GVHD has been encouraging, but the future of GVHD management lies in a better understanding of its pathogenesis.
Self-Organized Criticality and the Perception of Large Events

It is usually assumed that catastrophes in large dynamical systems, such as large earthquakes, the extinction of dinosaurs, and collapse of stock prices on Wall Street are caused by special cataclysmic forces working throughout the system. An alternative view is that the systems work at a self-organized critical state where large events occur endogenously. The size of apparent characteristic events depend on the time window for the observation.
A Fork in the Road of Change: A Comparison of Simple and Complex Organizational Change Models

Change has become a vital element in the fabric of organizations to establish and maintain in the competitive global market. Many theories and models across leadership and management literature have emerged to facilitate and drive changes. Though many of these models have been considered to be highly effective in certain settings. Through the review of literature, there has been limited work comprising the different aspects of change models to best fit situations. The focus of the study was to determine the strengths and weaknesses of two change models support leader decisions to identify application opportunities for change model fit.
The Soul of Creativity: Should Intellectual Property Law Protect the Integrity of a Creator's Work - International Norms

This Chapter explores in general terms the treatment accorded authors in foreign jurisdictions. In contrast to the United States, many countries maintain authors' rights protections that enable authors to safeguard the integrity of their texts far more readily than authors in this country. Thus, the United States is out of step with global norms by not recognizing more substantial authors' rights. Moreover, the Internet environment makes the United States' deficiency particularly problematic because violations of textual integrity can occur with unprecedented ease, and the results can be disseminated to countless recipients with the mere press of a key. Yet, these differences cannot be so easily remedied because certain cultural and legal differences preclude the wholesale adoption of another country's approach absent careful consideration of its fit into our existing legal framework.
Ādivāsīs, tribes and other neologisms for erasing precolonial pasts: An example from Northeast India:

This essay engages Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sumit Guha and James C. Scott by arguing that all of them overlook a historically well-evidenced set of subject positions and concepts of space. This was monastic governmentality. Lay and ordained populations attached to monastic teachers and lineages moved and interacted across a vast network of societies till the eighteenth century. The arrival of colonial European armies in the terrain marked by monastic geographicity led to the creation of sites set apart as ‘Nepal’, ‘colonial Assam’, ‘Burma’ and so on. Hitherto pastoralist but Bon-Buddhist monastic subjects were separated from their ‘brothers’ in monastic subjecthood. Such physical separation was reinforced by historical writing as well. In the twentieth century, colonially educated native scribes embraced both geographical and epistemic projects enthusiastically. Bhuyan, the foremost practitioner of this mode of history writing, thus failed to recognise the Buddhist and Bon Tantric cohabitants of the Brahmaputr...
Observation of an Ultrafast Exciton Hopping Channel in Organic Semiconducting Crystals

One of the major challenges in using organic semiconductors for photovoltaics is their extremely short exciton diffusion length. Recently, a number of studies have shown that the exciton transport range within the first few picoseconds after photoexcitation can be comparable to the exciton’s diffusion length over its entire lifetime. The origin of this fast transport channel is often attributed to the large spatial coherent size of the exciton right after photoexcitation. Here we observe an ultrafast exciton hopping channel in titanyl phthalocyanine crystals even though the exciton coherent size is a few times smaller than the transport range. This channel operates only within the first few picoseconds after photoexcitation and has a hopping rate that is an order of magnitude faster than the typical Forster resonance energy transfer rate. Resonant Raman spectroscopy shows that the optically excited exciton is strongly mixed with the macrocycle vibrational mode of the phthalocyanine molecules. A hypothesis...
Optimum electrode configuration selection for electrical resistance change based damage detection in composites using an effective independence measure

Laminated carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite materials are increasingly used in aerospace structures due to their superior mechanical properties and reduced weight. Assessing the health and integrity of these structures requires non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques to detect and measure interlaminar delamination and intralaminar matrix cracking damage. The electrical resistance change (ERC) based NDE technique uses the inherent changes in conductive properties of the composite to characterize internal damage. Several works that have explored the ERC technique have been limited to thin cross-ply laminates with simple linear or circular electrode arrangements. This paper investigates a method of optimum selection of electrode configurations for delamination detection in thick cross-ply laminates using ERC. Inverse identification of damage requires numerical optimization of the measured response with a model predicted response. Here, the electrical voltage field in the CFRP composite laminate is calculated using finite element analysis (FEA) models for different specified delamination size and locations, and location of ground and current electrodes. Reducing the number of sensor locations and measurements is needed to reduce hardware requirements, and computational effort needed for inverse identification. This paper explores the use of effective independence (EI) measure originally proposed for sensor location optimization in experimental vibration modal analysis. The EI measure is used for selecting the minimum set of resistance measurements among all possible combinations of selecting a pair of electrodes among the n electrodes. To enable use of EI to ERC required, it is proposed in this research a singular value decomposition SVD to obtain a spectral representation of the resistance measurements in the laminate. The effectiveness of EI measure in eliminating redundant electrode pairs is demonstrated by performing inverse identification of damage using the full set of resistance measurements and the reduced set of measurements. The investigation shows that the EI measure is effective for optimally selecting the electrode pairs needed for resistance measurements in ERC based damage detection.
288 A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF MOTOR VEHICLE CRASHES AT AN URBAN CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOLLOWING AN EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTION ON CHILD RESTRAINT.

Purpose Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Studies have shown that use of proper safety restraints can improve the rate of death and injuries. Since 1998, Alabama has made significant improvements in MV legislation, educational services, and established car seat-fitting programs. Consequently, significant increases in car seat use have occurred. This study analyzes MVC trauma patient visits at a local pediatric trauma center from 1998 through 2005. The primary study question is do recent improvements in MV safety in Alabama lead to discernible changes in pediatric MVC visits at a hospital trauma center? Methods A trauma database is maintained by the trauma service coordinator at the Children9s Hospital of Alabama. All patients who are activated as trauma patients are entered into the database. MVC data include basic demographic information, type of trauma, if restraints were used, and, if so, what kind. Injury severity scores and disposition information were also noted. After institutional review board approval, the database was accessed for MVA trauma code information. Data were analyzed using Epi Info®. Results Since 1998, the total number of trauma codes has averaged 446 per year. The proportion of MVC codes has decreased from 52.6% of total codes in 1998 to 46.4% in 2005 (z = 1.78, p = 08). The average age of the MVC patient in 1998 was 8.2 years compared with 9.0 years in 2005. The percentage of MVC trauma patients discharged from the hospital has not changed (95.3% in 1998 compared with 95.9% in 2005). The number of MVC trauma patients using some form of restraint increased from 37.6% in 1998 to 51.3% in 2005 (z = 4.05, p Conclusions Statewide MV laws, educational interventions, and car seat-fitting services working in tandem can lead to significant increases in car seat use with corresponding decreases in MVC injury. This research demonstrates that such decreases can be detected at local levels using trauma code patient data sets. These data sets are a useful surveillance method that can help evaluate the effectiveness of statewide interventions.
Analysis of Epidemic Situation of Foot and Mouth Disease in Binchuan County from 2008 to 2011

Objective: To understand foot and mouth disease distribution of Binchuan County from May 2008 to June 2011,so as to provide a scientific basis for the formulation of corresponding control measures.Methods: Analyze the foot and mouth disease case from the management system of national disease surveillance information reporting from May 2008 to June 2011 in Binchuan County.Results: From May 2008 to June 2011,it was reported that there were 861 HFMD cases in the county;501 were male;360 female;sex ratio of 1.39: 1.738 cases which mainly involved in 0-4 years old children made up 85.71% of the total cases.There were 681 cases that were scattered children(79.09%),followed by preschool children 148 cases(17.19% of the total).Among 13 stool specimens of clinically diagnosed cases in 2011,there were 3 enterovirus EV71+ and 2 CoxA16 +.Conclusion: Foot and mouth disease in Binchuan County mainly focuses on the children aged 0-4,304 cases in age group(2 years old).The key to the prevention and control is to pay more attention to scattered children and kindergarten children.
Coexistence and B(E2)'s in 98Sr

Abstract I have used a simple two-state model to fit E2 strengths connecting the first two 0 + states to the first two 2 + states in 98 Sr. Results for mixing parameters are in excellent agreement with those from a recent analysis. Perhaps surprisingly, they are also in remarkable agreement with results from 1980, despite the wide variation reported in the intervening years.
Systems Biology: Negotiating Between Holism and Reductionism

“New tools such as graph theory, mathematical modeling, and dynamical systems theory provide holists with a research program that they previously lacked. Beyond merely criticizing extant mechanistic accounts for failing to take into account the context of the system in which mechanisms operate, they can represent and analyze the behavior of complex systems. The new challenge, though, is to integrate systems-level theorizing with accounts of the underlying mechanism. The need for this stems from the fact that for systems theorists to go beyond describing possible systems they need to demonstrate that the system they identify is actually realized in the biological system in question.”
Are All Tests Equal? A Comparison of Emulator and Device Testing for Mobile Usability Evaluation:

As technology becomes increasingly mobile-focused, usability techniques must evolve to support users in this next era of computing. Usability testing of mobile applications and websites can be cond...
Feasibility of assessing bone matrix and mineral properties in vivo by combined solid-state 1H and 31P MRI.

PURPOSE To develop and evaluate an integrated imaging protocol for bone water and phosphorus quantification in vivo by solid-state 1H and 31P MRI. MATERIALS AND METHODS All studies were HIPAA-compliant and were performed with institutional review board approval and written informed consent. Proton (1H) ultra-short echo-time (UTE) and phosphorus (31P) zero echo-time (ZTE) sequences were designed and implemented on a 3 T clinical MR scanner to quantify bone water and mineral in vivo. The left tibia of ten healthy subjects (including both genders, 49±15 y/o) was examined with a custom-built 1H/31P dual-frequency extremity RF coil. Total bone water (TW), water bound to the collagen matrix (BW) and bone 31P were quantified from MR images with respect to reference samples of known 1H or 31P concentration, and pore water (PW) was subsequently determined from TW and BW. Porosity index (PI) was calculated as the ratio between UTE images acquired at two echo times. MRI parameters were compared with bone density measures obtained by high-resolution peripheral quantitative CT (HR-pQCT). RESULTS The total scan time for the bone water and 31P quantification protocol was about 50 minutes. Average TW, BW, PW and 31P concentrations were 13.99±1.26, 10.39±0.80, 3.34±1.41 mol/L and 7.06±1.53 mol/L for the studied cohort, respectively, in good agreement with previous results conducted ex vivo. Average intra-subject coefficients of variation were 3.47%, 2.60% and 7.50% for TW, BW and PW and 5.60% for 31P. Negative correlations were observed between PW and vBMD (p<0.05) as well as between PI and 31P (p<0.05), while bone mineral content (BMC) estimated from 31P MRI and HR-pQCT were strongly positively correlated (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION This work demonstrates the feasibility of quantifying bone water and mineral phosphorus in human subjects in a single MRI session with a clinically practical imaging protocol.
Addressing Minority Representation in Dermatology: Answering a Call to Action Through Structured Mentorship and Instruction.

This study uses course evaluation responses and anecdotal feedback to assess a pilot program that includes direct mentorship to encourage inner-city high school students from populations underrepresented in medicine to consider careers in dermatology.
Endoscopy of the Forehead: A Simple, Effective and Lasting Procedure

The development of endoscopy of the forehead has provided a simple, lasting and effective procedure to improve the upper third of the face [1]. While the traditional coronal forehead lift invariably results in a long scalp scar, scalp dysesthesia, and alopecia, the endoscopic approach avoids these problematic outcomes. Because endoscopy is a minimally invasive technique and the length of the procedure is short, it can be safely combined with other facial aesthetic surgery procedures to produce a harmonious aesthetic result. With appropriate application, the endoscopic forehead lift has a low rate of complications and beneficial longterm results [2].
Introduction: National Regulations and Guidelines

Frameworks to guide the ethics of research are instrumental in enhancing the rights and welfare of research participants, thus promoting the public trust. Countries have issued some combination of legal regulations, guidelines, and codes governing human subject research. For countries that have not issued legal regulations, research ethics committees usually rely on the Declaration of Helsinki; CIOMS guidelines; and the International Conference on Harmonisation’s (ICH) Good Clinical Practices (GCP) guidelines. Reliance on international guidelines are not necessarily problematic and can be useful in providing a rich source of information. But international guidelines may not be applicable to the local context. There has been scarce analytical focus on the existence, substance, and operation of research regulations in individual countries in the Arab region.
The skull of the gerrhonotine lizard Elgaria panamintina (Squamata: Anguidae)

We provide the first description of the skull, osteoderms, and hyoid apparatus of the poorly known alligator lizard Elgaria panamintina, and compare the cranial osteology of that species to the widespread and well-studied taxon Elgaria multicarinata. Patterns of morphological variation resulting from ontogenetic transformations and pathology are discussed. We employed x-ray computed tomography (CT) scans to examine two adult specimens of Elgaria panamintina and two adult specimens of Elgaria multicarinata, in addition to examining multiple traditionally prepared skeletal specimens of the latter species. CT scans provide simultaneous study of both articulated and disarticulated elements, allowing us to describe and document the morphology of the skull with exceptional precision and detail. The description of the skull of Elgaria panamintina serves as a generalization for all Elgaria; here we provide the first complete description of the skull of this genus for future uses in morphological and phylogenetic studies of both extant species and fossils.
Regulation of Ca2+ Channels in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells by Cyclic Nucleotides and by G-Protein Gating

In myocardial cells, cyclic AMP (cAMP) and cyclic GMP-dependent protein kinase (PK-A) stimulate slow Ca2+ channel activity, whereas cyclic GMP (cGMP) and cGMP-dependent protein kinase (cG-PK) inhibit channel activity (reviewed in 18). Phosphorylation by protein kinase C (PK-C) also stimulates activity of the myocardial slow Ca2+ channels (5). Intracellular ATP also modulates slow Ca2+ channel activity in myocardial cells, ATP being obligatory for channel activity (7, 14). Gating of myocardial Ca2+ slow channels by Gs-protein (GTP-activated alpha subunit) has also been demonstrated (19).
Small animal imaging: current technology and perspectives for oncological imaging

Advances in the biomedical sciences have been accelerated by the introduction of many new imaging technologies in recent years. With animal models widely used in the basic and pre-clinical sciences, finding ways to conduct animal experiments more accurately and efficiently becomes a key factor in the success and timeliness of research. Non-invasive imaging technologies prove to be extremely valuable tools in performing such studies and have created the recent surge in small animal imaging. This review is focused on three modalities, PET, MR and optical imaging which are available to the scientist for oncological investigations in animals.
Design of a surrogate for evaluation of methods to predict bone bending stiffness

Abstract The high incidence of osteoporosis and related fractures demands for the use and development of methods capable of detecting changes in bone mechanical properties. The most common clinical and laboratory methods used to detect changes in bone mechanical properties, such as stiffness, strength, or flexural rigidity, include: mechanical testing, medical imaging, medical image-based analytical calculations, and medical image-based finite element analysis. However, the innate complexity of bone makes validation of the results from each method difficult. The current study presents the design, fabrication, and functional testing of a bi-material and computed tomography scan compatible bone-surrogate which provides consistent reproducible mechanical properties for methodological evaluation of experimental, analytical, and computational bone bending stiffness prediction methods.
Surgery for Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Liver Metastases

Gastroenteropancreatic-neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) arise from endocrine cell types along the luminal gastrointestinal tract and pancreas. Stage and grade are dominant predictors of outcome. Optimal management of localized, lower-grade GEP-NETs involves surgical resection, which is associated with excellent long-term survival. While high-grade disease is almost always associated with rapid disseminated progression, metastatic, well-differentiated GEP-NETs can progress slowly and are compatible with prolonged survival. Management of patients with an advanced spectrum of lower grade disease can include a range of systemic and local therapies and requires multidisciplinary collaboration. While controversy persists regarding the optimal scope and sequencing of therapy, surgical management can have a substantial impact alone or in combination with other therapies.
Northernmost record of the Metatheria: a new Late Cretaceous pediomyid from the North Slope of Alaska

The northernmost record of Metatheria, Unnuakomys hutchisoni gen. et sp. nov., is described from the Pediomys Point locality in Upper Cretaceous (lower Maastrichtian) strata of the Prince Creek For...
SoundSemantics: exploiting semantic knowledge in text for embedded acoustic event classification

In this paper, we propose a fundamentally different approach to acoustic event classification that exploits knowledge from the textual domain to deal with a well-known pain point in audio event classification---i.e., the lack of adequate training examples. We show that by exploiting existing context-aware semantic representation of English words (e.g., Google's word-to-vector [33]) that is generated from a massive amount of English texts on the Internet, it is possible to classify acoustic events even when there are a few or no training examples for a wide variety of sounds. Our approach works in application scenarios where a system wants to learn a number of predefined categories of acoustic events, but it does not have enough training examples per category, and/or for some categories, it does not have any training examples at all. We solve this problem by combining a robust audio representation step, followed by a cross-modal projection of the audio representation onto textual representation. Our approach is different from techniques such as one-shot and data augmentation that do not consider the cross-domain knowledge transfers. We develop a generic mobile application for audio event detection where a user can input a list of desired sound types, along with training audio clips for some of those sound types, and the system is able to recognize all types of sounds (at varying level of accuracy depending on the number of classes that do not have any training examples), which is not achievable by any existing audio classifier that we are aware of. We evaluate the performance of the proposed system on an empirical dataset [41] as well as by deploying the application in two real-world scenarios. The accuracy of the classifier lies between 60%-90% for a 6--10 class problem when the number of classes that do not have any training examples is varied between 2--5.
Chinese Contract Labor in the Wake of the Abolition of Slavery in the Americas: A New Form of Slavery or Transition to Free Labor in the Case of Cuba?

ABSTRACTUsing Cuban archival material (including many documents acquired by private U.S. collectors), this article examines the lives of Chinese contract laborers in Cuba—“coolies”—in the second ha...
The pessimistic origin of Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence

ABSTRACTIn this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not w...
From the Borderland to the Midland: A Latina’s Journey into Academia

AbstractIn this paper, I trace my professional journey and highlight two major themes in relation to my path into a wholly unexpected career as a university faculty member: (a) contextual influence...
Learning visual variation for object recognition

Abstract We propose visual variation learning to improve object recognition with convolutional neural networks (CNN). While a typical CNN regards visual variations as nuisances and marginalizes them from the data, we speculate that some variations are informative. We study the impact of visual variation as an auxiliary task, during training only, on classification and similarity embedding problems. To train the network, we introduce the iLab-20M dataset, a large-scale controlled parametric dataset of toy vehicle objects under systematic annotated variations of viewpoint, lighting, focal setting, and background. After training, we strip out the network components related to visual variations, and test classification accuracy on images with no visual variation labels. Our experiments on 1.75 million images from iLab-20M show significant improvement in object recognition accuracy, i.e., AlexNet: 84.49% to 91.15%; ResNet: 86.14% to 90.70%; and DenseNet: 85.56% to 91.55%. Our key contribution is that, at the cost of visual variation annotation during training only, CNN enhanced with visual variation learning is able to focus its attention on distinctive features and learn better object representations, reducing classification error rate of Alexnet by 42%, ResNet by 32%, and DenseNet by 41%, without significant sacrificing of training time and model complexity.
Heritage tourism, historic roadside markers and “just representation” in Tennessee, USA

The American landscape is increasingly populated with memorial tourist sites showing a devotion to the past. In the last published statewide study of Tennessee historical roadside markers, Jones (1...
I-PASS Mentored Implementation Handoff Curriculum: Frontline Provider Training Materials.

Introduction The I-PASS Handoff Program is a comprehensive handoff curriculum that has been shown to decrease rates of medical errors and adverse events during patient handoffs. Frontline providers...
Appearance of an unusual ring enhancing brain capillary telangiectasia on 3.0T MRI with dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion

We present the appearance of brain capillary telangiectasia on 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) perfusion. A 42-year-old female presented with intermittent left arm weakness and paresthesia. Initial 1.5T MRI obtained 2 months after presentation demonstrated a 6 mm right caudate head lesion with ring-like enhancement, and no significant surrounding edema or mass effect. On gradient echo there was mild associated susceptibility artifact. Follow-up 3.0T MRI demonstrated increased blooming on 3.0T imaging relative to prior 1.5T imaging. The lesion also demonstrated increased blood volume on dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion. Given these imaging findings and interval stability, a definitive imaging diagnosis of capillary telangiectasia was made. Recognition of the MRI findings of capillary telangiectasia is imperative to avoid misdiagnosis and prevent unnecessary intervention.