cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Assessing Determinants of Bureaucratic Discretion: An Experiment in Street-Level Decision Making

This article reports findings from an experimental analogue that examined the influence of several potential determinants of bureaucratic discretion in street-level bureaucracies. The findings showed that two factors, the level of organizational control and client characteristics, played an influential role in the awarding of benefits and services to clients seeking public assistance. A third factor, professional field, was also a determinant of award, although the level of its influence was far less than organizational and client-related factors. In contrast to several prior studies, individual decision-maker attributes were found to be among the least influential determinants of award. Together these findings show how factors extraneous to client need contribute to differential judgments and treatment of clients, and they serve to qualify traditional role conceptions of the front line service provider as described in the literature on street-level bureaucracy.
Walter Dill Scott and the Student Personnel Movement

AbstractWalter Dill Scott (1869–1955), tenth president of Northwestern University and pioneer of industrial psychology, is an essential architect of student personnel work. This study of his accomplishments, drawing on records from the Northwestern University archives, tells a story about the people he influenced and his involvement in codifying what was formerly student personnel work, now called student affairs.
Determination of internal energy contribution to the thermoelasticity of natural rubber during compression by use of a thermomechanical analyzer

A method for measuring the internal energy change of elastomers under compression is demonstrated using a conventional thermomechanical analyzer. The method is rapid and convenient and has a major advantage in that only a very small sample is required. Results are reported for natural rubber cured with two different crosslinking agents. The results are compared with previous work on similar materials in tension and torsion.
Direct and indirect responses of tallgrass prairie butterflies to prescribed burning

Fire is an important tool in the conservation and restoration of tallgrass prairie ecosystems. We investigated how both the vegetation composition and butterfly community of tallgrass prairie remnants changed in relation to the elapsed time (in months) since prescribed fire. Butterfly richness and butterfly abundance were positively correlated with the time since burn. Habitat-specialist butterfly richness recovery time was greater than 70 months post-fire and habitat-specialist butterfly abundance recovery time was approximately 50 months post-fire. Thus, recovery times for butterfly populations after prescribed fires in our study were potentially longer than those previously reported. We used Path Analysis to evaluate the relative contributions of the direct effect of time since fire and the indirect effects of time since fire through changes in vegetation composition on butterfly abundance. Path models highlighted the importance of the indirect effects of fire on habitat features, such as increases in the cover of bare ground. Because fire return intervals on managed prairie remnants are often less than 5 years, information on recovery times for habitat-specialist insect species are of great importance.
The Spore-Specific Alanine Racemase of Bacillus anthracis and Its Role in Suppressing Germination during Spore Development

Spores of Bacillus anthracis are enclosed by an exosporium composed of a basal layer and an external hair-like nap. The nap is apparently formed by a single glycoprotein, while the basal layer contains many different structural proteins and several enzymes. One of the enzymes is Alr, an alanine racemase capable of converting the spore germinant l-alanine to the germination inhibitor d-alanine. Unlike other characterized exosporium proteins, Alr is nonuniformly distributed in the exosporium and might have a second spore location. In this study, we demonstrated that expression of the alr gene, which encodes Alr, is restricted to sporulating cells and that the bulk of alr transcription and Alr synthesis occurs during the late stages of sporulation. We also mapped two alr promoters that are differentially active during sporulation and might be involved in the atypical localization of Alr. Finally, we constructed a Δalr mutant of B. anthracis that lacks Alr and examined the properties of the spores produced by this strain. Mature Δalr spores germinate more efficiently in the presence of l-alanine, presumably because of their inability to convert exogenous l-alanine to d-alanine, but they respond normally to other germinants. Surprisingly, the production of mature spores by the Δalr mutant is defective because approximately one-half of the nascent spores germinate and lose their resistance properties before they are released from the mother cell. This phenotype suggests that an important function of Alr is to produce d-alanine during the late stages of sporulation to suppress premature germination of the developing spore.
Rapid implementation of hierarchical integrated simulators using Galaxy

The Galaxy CAD environment provides unique capabilities for rapid implementation and incorporation of tools into an integrated CAD framework. The author discusses in detail how novel hierarchical simulators can be added. Simulators are separated into generic and specific components. Galaxy provides generic functions so that programmers need only implement application-specific details such as data representation. This greatly reduces the quantity of code and expertise required by programmers to add new tools. Galaxy simulators and I/O tools, such as waveform editors, utilize a common communication protocol so that any I/O tool can be used as the front end of any simulator. Arbitrary combinations of tools can cooperate in the interactive multiple window environment. >
Wind Tunnel Application of a Pressure-Sensitive Paint Technique to a Faceted Missile Model at Subsonic and Transonic Speeds

A pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) technique was applied in a wind tunnel experiment in the NASA Langley Research Center 8-Foot Transonic Pressure Tunnel to quantify the vortex-induced surface static pressures on a slender, faceted missile model at subsonic and transonic speeds. Satisfactory global calibrations of the PSP were obtained at =0.70, 0.90, and 1.20, angles of attack from 10 degrees to 20 degrees, and angles of sideslip of 0 and 2.5 degrees using an in-situ method featuring the simultaneous acquisition of electronically-scanned pressures (ESP) at 57 discrete locations on the model. Both techniques clearly revealed the significant influence on the surface pressure distributions of the vortices shed from the sharp, chine-like leading edges. The mean error in the PSP measurements relative to the ESP data was approximately 0.6 percent at M infinity =0.70 and 2.6 percent at M infinity =0.90 and 1.20. The vortex surface pressure signatures obtained from the PSP and ESP techniques were correlated with the off-surface vortex cross-flow structures obtained using a laser vapor screen (LVS) flow visualization technique. The on-surface and off-surface techniques were complementary, since each provided details of the vortex-dominated flow that were not clear or apparent in the other.
NMR studies of simple molecules adsorbed on metal catalysts: acetylene decomposition on Pt

We present the results of an NMR investigation to study the decomposition of acetylene adsorbed on small Pt clusters similar to industrial catalysts. We begin by reviewing some of our earlier results where it was shown that acetylene converts primarily to vinylidene (CCH2) upon room temperature adsorption. It was proposed that the vinylidene gradually dehydrogenates between 450 and 650 K leaving C2 surface species whose carbon-carbon bond breaks at about 670 K. In this work we have shown that ethylidyne (CCH3) plays an important role in providing an alternate decomposition mechanism. In addition, although there is some evidence that CCH surface species are formed upon room temperature adsorption, no C2 surface species were observed in our experiments. Therefore, although dehydrogenation prior to carbon-carbon bond scission may occur, further experiments where the ethylidyne mechanism is eliminated are needed to completely unravel the decomposition mechanism.
The Utility of Problem-solving Training that Emphasises Selfmanagement Principles

Abstract This study examined the usefulness of an 8-week applied problem-solving training program. Specifically, the study examined (a) whether problem-solving training that emphasised self-management principles would be useful, (b) if the effects of training would persist over time, (c) whether an individual difference variable (problem-solving appraisal) would affect training outcomes, and (d) whether the cognitive responses of the subjects during the course of training were related to their problem-solving appraisal or the change process. Results indicated that problem solving training was effective at enhancing students’ problem-solving appraisal, and that the self-report changes were maintained at a 1 year follow-up. In particular, training seemed most useful for students who initially appraised their problem solving very negatively. Finally, the results suggested that the process-oriented cognitive responses were related to students' initial problem-solving self-appraisal as well as the impact of tr...
Conformational preferences of oligopeptides rich in α‐aminoisobutyric acid. II. A model for the 310/α‐helix transition with composition and sequence sensitivity

The analysis of the factors that control the helical folding of Aib-rich peptides is extended to include sensitivity to sequence patterns, and in particular the presence of contiguous non-Aib alpha-mono-alkylated residues. The distinct hydrogen-bonding network of the 3(10)-helix, as contrasted with that of the competing alpha-helical structure, is explicitly incorporated into a theoretical model for the 3(10)-helix/alpha-helix equilibrium constant for a given peptide. Finite length effects and the "extra" intrahelical hydrogen bond of the 3(10) form are expressed naturally as a result of this loop analysis. This semiempirical model captures all the established features of existing empirical rules for helical conformational transitions in Aib-rich sequences, as well as the recently detected helical transition induced solely by sequence permutation.
Chronic total occlusion percutaneous coronary intervention in 2014 beyond the J-CTO score (Japanese Multicenter CTO Registry): chance favors the prepared mind.

Percutaneous coronary intervention of chronic total occlusions (CTOs) represents the most technically challenging procedure in contemporary interventional cardiology [(1,2)][1]. Although large, definitive randomized trials are lacking, a growing body of evidence suggests that successful percutaneous
Establishment of an immortalized fetal intrapulmonary artery endothelial cell line.

The investigation of fetal pulmonary endothelial cell gene expression and function has been limited by the requirement for primary cells. In an effort to establish an immortalized cell line, ovine ...
Psychiatric Medication, African Americans and the Paradox of Mistrust

Objectives To examine race differences in how generalized mistrust, mistrust in physicians, and mistrust in psychiatric medication shape the willingness to utilize psychiatric medication. Methods Data was used from two waves (1998 and 2006) of the U.S. General Social Survey a representative sample of non-institutionalized Americans. We analyzed data for 343 African American and 1,920 white adults, ages 18–89. The data included measures of the respondents’ willingness to utilize psychiatric medication as well as measures of generalized mistrust, mistrust in physicians, and mistrust in psychiatric medication. We employed ordinary least squares regression to test whether these three forms of mistrust reduce the black-white gap in psychiatric drug usage and whether race moderates the association between any type of mistrust and the willingness to endorse psychiatric medication utilization. Results Mistrust in physicians and psychiatric medication is related to less willingness to utilize psychiatric medicines for both African Americans and whites; however, paradoxically, these forms of mistrust decrease psychiatric drug usage more steeply for whites. Conclusions The pattern of findings in this study suggests that trust or low levels of mistrust, rather than high levels of mistrust, actually maintains the black-white difference in the use of psychiatric medication.
Fast and slow ion populations in expanding helicon plasma observed by laser induced fluorescence tomography

Summary form only given. Since first reports, the current-free electric double layer (EDL) that spontaneously forms at the end of a helicon plasma source, in a region of divergent magnetic field and for pressures below a threshold value, has attracted considerable of interest due to its potential application as a plasma thruster. The measurable parameter of interest in studies of EDL physics is the ion velocity (energy) distribution function (ivdf). One method for obtaining ivdf in plasma is laser induced fluorescence (LIF). However, classical LIF can provide only one-dimensional information since the obtained ivdf is the projection of the 3D ivdf on the laser propagation direction kL. By rotating kL and employing filtered backprojection, the complete 2D ion velocity space distribution function can be acquired via optical tomography. Two dimensional ivdfs were obtained with an internal, scanning LIF probe employing the 3 level Aril LIF scheme 3d'2G9/2rarr4p'2F7/2rarr4s'2D5/2. To detect the fast ion population accelerated by passing through the potential drop of the EDL, measurements were taken in the divergent magnetic field region, 19 cm downstream from the helicon source-diffusion chamber junction. It has been found that below a certain value of the magnetic field in the expansion region, the ivdfs change their character: from unimodal to bimodal, showing an almost isotropic slow ion population and a fast ion population. The shape of the fast ion distribution is skewed and distorted. The distortion is a clear signature of the magnetic field divergence. Furthermore, as the helicon source/diffusion chamber magnetic field ratio is increased, the location of the fast group ion population shifts toward higher axial speeds values. A maximum axial speed of ~10.7 km/s, ~2.8 cs (ion sound speed), has been obtained for a magnetic field ratio of 43. The slow ion population location in velocity space is not affected by the change in the magnetic field ratio.
What Happened to Sex Scandals? Politics and Peccadilloes, Jefferson to Kennedy

"Any man familiar with public life realizes the foul gossip which ripples just under the surface about almost every public man, and especially about every President," observed Theodore Roosevelt in 1913. Varieties of "foul gossip" have plagued officeholders from the founding of the Republic to the present day, as Roosevelt suggested. Yet the nature, effects, and reach of gossip have undergone curious and sometimes striking transformations over the years. Think of one especially common topic of discussion: a politician's reputation for sexual rectitude. In the early republic and throughout the nineteenth century, American political culture subjected the sexual character of officeholders to close, steady, and often unflattering scrutiny, as most voters insisted a man of virtue constituted "the only safe depository of public trust."'1 By the beginning of the twentieth century, by contrast, revelations of sexual turpitude among the most prominent elected officials had begun to disappear from public life. Whereas Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, and other members of the nineteenth-century political elite negotiated their reputations among a broad array of publics, in the new era men such as Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy benefited from this more circumspect pattern in political speech. Theodore Roosevelt's remark is doubly useful in this respect. For if "foul gossip" could still circulate in 1913, it had already started to travel, not openly, but rather "just under the surface" of public life. What explains this transformation? Historians regularly observe that during the first decades of the century, gossip, confession, and exposure arose as distinctive attributes of mass communication, corroding Victorian modesty in virtually every
Effectiveness of parent training activities on parents of children and young adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities

ABSTRACTParents of children and young adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities often struggle to become educated about their rights, feel empowered, and ensure their offspring receive...
Indiana's Squared Circle

Revealed yet rational values for π nearly became law in an Indiana bill proposed by a country doctor in 1897.
Adherent and Conformal Zn(S,O,OH) Thin Films by Rapid Chemical Bath Deposition with Hexamethylenetetramine Additive

ZnS is a wide band gap semiconductor whose many applications, such as photovoltaic buffer layers, require uniform and continuous films down to several nanometers thick. Chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a simple, low-cost, and scalable technique to deposit such inorganic films. However, previous attempts at CBD of ZnS have often resulted in nodular noncontinuous films, slow growth rates at low pH, and high ratio of oxygen impurities at high pH. In this work, ZnS thin films were grown by adding hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) to a conventional recipe that uses zinc sulfate, nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt, and thioacetamide. Dynamic bath characterization showed that HMTA helps the bath to maintain near-neutral pH and also acts as a catalyst, which leads to fast nucleation and deposition rates, continuous films, and less oxygen impurities in the films. Films deposited on glass from HMTA-containing bath were uniform, continuous, and 90 nm thick after 1 h, as opposed to films grown without HMTA that were ∼...
Production of fever in rabbits with extracts of tissue culture cells infected with Coxsackie virus.

Abstract The following experiments describe the characteristics of the fever produced in rabbits by Coxsackie virus grown in monkey kidney cells. Viruses grown in tissue culture have not previously been shown to produce fever. The tissue culture system affords the advantage of excluding the possibility of contamination by leukocytic pyrogen which could conceivably occur in the chick embryo. Monkey kidney cells, either whole or disrupted, which had not been inoculated with virus failed to produce fever following injection into rabbits. Consistent fevers were produced, however, by aliquots of disrupted cells containing Coxsackie B-1 virus. The fever regularly followed a latent period of 45 minutes and produced 2 peaks, one at 90 minutes and one at 3 to 4 hours. Identical fevers were produced in rabbits previously made tolerant to the fever-producing effect of bacterial endotoxin. Rabbits injected on consecutive days with Coxsackie virus pyrogen exhibited tolerance by the third day. The pyrogenic activity was not diminished even though aliquots were heated to 70 °C. for 30 minutes, indicating that the fever is not due to active infection. These findings indicate that extracts of monkey kidney cells infected with Coxsackie virus in the absence of leukocytes produce a characteristic fever following intravenous injection into rabbits. Attempts to obtain similar results with adenovirus and vaccinia virus grown in HeLa cells were not successful.
Preventable pediatric intensive care unit admissions over a 13-year period at a level 1 pediatric trauma center ☆

Abstract Background No formal criteria exist to determine the need for admission of injured children to the pediatric intensive care unit. Our objective was to analyze trauma patient admissions to the PICU at a level 1 pediatric trauma center. Methods The trauma registry was analyzed between 2002 and 2015. A preventable PICU admission was defined as a child discharged home or transferred out of the PICU within 30h without surgical intervention, blood transfusion, or ventilator support. Results Of 16,209 children, 19% were admitted to the PICU: mean age 7.3years, median ISS 17, and overall mortality 7%. Per our definition, 36% were preventable PICU admissions of which 83% suffered a head injury. The preventable admissions were younger (6.9 vs. 7.6years, p p p p Conclusions A significant number of children admitted to our PICU were classified as preventable. They carry a substantial economic burden to the health care system with an overutilization of resources. Methods to limit such admissions should be actively pursued.
Rapid Response to the Call for More METs

Rapid response teams (RRTs), also known as medical emergency teams (MET), are used as an effort to avoid “failure to rescue” situations in which patients unknowingly deteriorate in acute care facilities. Particularly in children, deterioration is usually not sudden, and we often have missed opportunities along the way to intervene before emergent resuscitation is needed. In fact, one of the 2008 National Patient Safety Goals was to “improve recognition and response to changes in a patient’s condition,” and several organizations created toolkits to aid institutions in formation of RRTs.1–3 The American Heart Association’s (AHA) Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation (GWTG-R) registry is a database of >300 hospitals including information before, during, and after cardiac arrest.4 In 2000, this began with the AHA’s national registry for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and this transitioned to GWTG-R in 2010. The first publication from the GWTG-R MET module described by Raymond et al contains data from 3647 MET events in 151 hospitals from January 2006 to February 2012, certainly the largest cohort of such events published in …
An Observationally Based Global Band-by-Band Surface Emissivity Dataset for Climate and Weather Simulations

AbstractWhile current atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) still treat the surface as a blackbody in their longwave radiation scheme, recent studies suggest the need for taking realistic surface spectral emissivity into account. There have been few measurements available for the surface emissivity in the far IR (<650 cm−1). Based on first-principle calculation, the authors compute the spectral emissivity over the entire longwave spectrum for a variety of surface types. MODIS-retrieved mid-IR surface emissivity at 0.05° × 0.05° spatial resolution is then regressed against the calculated spectral emissivity to determine the surface type for each grid. The derived spectral emissivity data are then spatially averaged onto 0.5° × 0.5° grids and spectrally integrated onto the bandwidths used by the RRTMG_LW—a longwave radiation scheme widely used in current climate and numerical weather models. The band-by-band surface emissivity dataset is then compared with retrieved surface spectral emissivities fro...
Integrating FFRCT Into Routine Clinical Practice: A Solid PLATFORM or Slippery Slope?

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) is being used increasingly in patient care despite the highest standard ever set for adoption of a noninvasive imaging test for diagnosing coronary artery disease (CAD). Recent analyses from the SCOT-HEART (Scottish Computed Tomography of the HEART)
Simple dynamical models capturing the key features of the Central Pacific El Niño

The Central Pacific El Nino (CP El Nino) has been frequently observed in recent decades. The phenomenon is characterized by an anomalous warm sea surface temperature (SST) confined to the central Pacific and has different teleconnections from the traditional El Nino. Here, simple models are developed and shown to capture the key mechanisms of the CP El Nino. The starting model involves coupled atmosphere–ocean processes that are deterministic, linear, and stable. Then, systematic strategies are developed for incorporating several major mechanisms of the CP El Nino into the coupled system. First, simple nonlinear zonal advection with no ad hoc parameterization of the background SST gradient is introduced that creates coupled nonlinear advective modes of the SST. Secondly, due to the recent multidecadal strengthening of the easterly trade wind, a stochastic parameterization of the wind bursts including a mean easterly trade wind anomaly is coupled to the simple atmosphere–ocean processes. Effective stochastic noise in the wind burst model facilitates the intermittent occurrence of the CP El Nino with realistic amplitude and duration. In addition to the anomalous warm SST in the central Pacific, other major features of the CP El Nino such as the rising branch of the anomalous Walker circulation being shifted to the central Pacific and the eastern Pacific cooling with a shallow thermocline are all captured by this simple coupled model. Importantly, the coupled model succeeds in simulating a series of CP El Nino that lasts for 5 y, which resembles the two CP El Nino episodes during 1990–1995 and 2002–2006.
Molecular simulation insights on the in vacuo adsorption of amino acids on graphene oxide surfaces with varying surface oxygen densities

In this fundamental study, a series of molecular dynamics simulations were performed in vacuo to investigate the energetics and select geometries of 20 standard amino acids (AAs) on pristine graphene (PG) and graphene oxide (GO) surfaces as a function of graphene surface oxygen density. These interactions are of key interest to graphene/biomolecular systems. Our results indicate that aromatic AAs exhibit the strongest total interactions with the PG surfaces due to π-π stacking. Tryptophan (Trp) has the highest aromaticity due to its indole side chain and, hence, has the strongest interaction among all AAs (−16.66 kcal/mol). Aliphatic, polar, and charged AAs show various levels of affinity to the PG sheets depending on the strength of their side chain hydrophobic interactions. For example, arginine (Arg) with its guanidinium side chain exhibits the strongest interaction with the PG sheets (−13.81 kcal/mol) following aromatic AAs. Also, glycine (Gly; a polar AA) has the weakest interaction with the PG sheets (−7.29 kcal/mol). When oxygen-containing functional groups are added to the graphene sheets, the π-π stacking in aromatic AAs becomes disrupted and perfect parallelism of the aromatic rings is lost. Moreover, hydrogen bonding and/or electrostatic interactions become more pronounced. Charged AAs exhibit the strongest interactions with the GO surfaces. In general, the AA-GO interactions increase with increasing surface oxygen density, and the effect is more pronounced at higher O/C ratios. This study provides a quantitative measure of AA-graphene interactions for the design and tuning of biomolecular systems suitable for biosensing, drug delivery, and gene delivery applications.
Positive Sexual Self-Schemas of Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse:

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of eight women survivors of childhood sexual abuse who view themselves as having a positive sexual self-schema, including their ...
Optimization over directed graphs: Linear convergence rate

This paper considers distributed multi-agents optimization problems where agents collaborate to minimize the sum of locally known convex functions. We focus on the case when the communication between agents is described by a directed graph. The proposed algorithm achieves the best known rate of convergence for this class of problems, O(μk) for 0 < μ < 1, given that the objective functions are strongly-convex, where k is the number of iterations. Moreover, it provides a wider and more realistic range of step-size compared with existing methods.
HORMONES AND GENDER | Neurosteroid Modulation of GABA A Receptor-Mediated Synaptic Transmission in an Animal Model of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is often accompanied by plasticity of hippocampal neurons and their synaptic connectivity. A potential mechanism that may contribute to increased hyperexcitability of these neurons is altered GABAA receptor-mediated synaptic inhibition. Neurosteroids can modulate the GABAA receptors and seizure activity. This article summarizes our observations on neurosteroid modulation of the GABAA receptors in the hippocampal dentate granule cells obtained from an animal model of temporal lobe epilepsy.
Teaching evidence-based practice principles to prepare health professions students for an interprofessional learning experience

Objective: The research assessed online learning modules designed to teach health professions students evidence-based practice (EBP) principles in an interprofessional context across two institutions. Methods: Students from nine health professions at two institutions were recruited to participate in this pilot project consisting of two online learning modules designed to prepare students for an in-person case-based interprofessional activity. Librarians and an instructional designer created two EBP modules. Students’ competence in EBP was assessed before and after the modules as well as after the in-person activity. Students evaluated the online learning modules and their impact on the students’ learning after the in-person session. Results: A total of 39 students from 8 health professions programs participated in the project. Average quiz scores for online EBP module 1 and module 2 were 83% and 76%, respectively. Following completion of the learning modules, adapted Fresno test of competence in EBP scores increased ( p =0.001), indicating that the modules improved EBP skill competence. Student evaluations of the learning modules were positive. Students indicated that they acquired new information skills that contributed to their ability to develop a patient care plan and that they would use these information skills in their future clinical practice. Conclusions: Online EBP learning modules were effective in developing EBP knowledge and skills for health professions students. Using the same modules ensured that students from different health professions at different stages of their professional programs had consistent knowledge and enabled each student to fully engage in an interprofessional evidence-based activity. Student feedback indicated the modules were valued and beneficial.
Homozygous boricua TBCK mutation causes neurodegeneration and aberrant autophagy.

Objective Autosomal recessive mutations in TBCK cause intellectual disability of variable severity. Although the physiologic function of TBCK remains unclear, loss-of-function mutations are associated with inhibition of mTORC1 signaling. As mTORC1 signaling is known to regulate autophagy, we hypothesized that TBCK-encephalopathy patients with a neurodegenerative course have defects in autophagic-lysosomal dysfunction.
Instrumentation and measurement in a first-year engineering program

The First-Year Engineering (FYE) program at the University of Kentucky (UK) is a three course sequence intended to recruit and retain engineering and computer science students by engaging them in exploration and design experiences. Transfer students are also welcomed into the College of Engineering through a course developed specifically for students entering the College with a previous degree or more than 30 credits in another major. FYE program development started in 2014, a Director was selected in 2015, six faculty were hired in 2016 and the first cohort of students enrolled in Fall 2016. All nine undergraduate degree programs changed their curricula to accommodate the new courses which replaced the individual departmental "101" courses, the introductory computer science course and the UK Core Intellectual Inquiry into Arts and Creativity requirement. In order to appeal to all disciplines, the courses address multidisciplinary global issues and pair computer programming with hands-on sensor and motor circuits. All types of engineers collect data from sensors, analyze the data to make decisions and then command an action as a result. By introducing students to basic sensor, data and actuator circuits and programs, they will be prepared for lab courses and research opportunities in their major with some ability to design new measurement systems.
Acute hypercapnia does not alter voluntary drive to the diaphragm in healthy humans.

Abstract Although systemic hypercapnia is a common outcome of pulmonary disease, the relationship between hypercapnia and voluntary diaphragmatic activation (VAdi) is unclear. To examine whether hypercapnia independent of ventilatory work contributes to reduced central motor drive to the diaphragm in healthy humans, 14 subjects spontaneously breathed room air (NN) or a hypercapnic gas mixture (HH; 7% CO2 with air) while at rest. Thereafter, subjects volitionally hyperventilated room air (NH) matching the minute ventilation recorded during HH while maintained at eucapnic levels. Twitch interpolation with bilateral magnetic stimulation of phrenic nerves at functional residual capacity was used to assess VAdi during the three trials. Although PETCO2 was elevated during HH compared with NN and NH (52 vs 36 mmHg), VAdi was not altered across the trials (HH = 93.3 ± 7.0%, NN = 94.4 ± 5.0%, NH = 94.9 ± 4.6%, p = 0.48). Our findings indicate that the magnitude of hypercapnia acutely imposed may not be effective in inhibiting voluntary neural drives to the diaphragm in normal resting individuals.
The Microbiology of Freeze-Dried Foods

Publisher Summary In this chapter, the microbiology of freeze-dried foods is discussed in detail. The refrigeration of freeze-dried foods is unnecessary; rehydration is rapid; shrinkage is minimal; chemical activity is appreciably deterred (especially if stored at 20°C. or lower); since most of the water is removed a considerable savings in weight is achieved; and, if properly processed and packaged, microbial multiplication is virtually eliminated during storage. At the present time, these advantages must be balanced against the additional increment of cost incurred by this process and a loss in certain quality characteristics. It can be expected that both of these factors will receive greater attention from the food industry, and, as product improvement is achieved and cost lowered, the application of freeze-drying as a technique for food preservation will be increased. Although one cannot presume that freeze-drying will be a major method of food preservation, the volume of freeze-dried foods should be appreciable and the microbiological aspects of freeze-dried foods must be properly evaluated so that standards might be promulgated.
Transformation by plasmid and chromosomal DNAs in Haemophilusparainfluenzae

Abstract An efficient procedure for transformation of H. parainfluenzae by plasmid DNA is described. The procedure involved a new technique for preparation of competent cells that increased the transforming efficiency of a chromosomal strr marker about 20 fold and that of the plasmid ampr about 100 fold. The addition of either Mg2+ or Ca2+ promoted the stimulation of plasmid ampr by another factor of 50, however, the chromosomal strr marker was not further affected. The total stimulation of plasmid transformation was a factor of 5000 and the final ratio of ampr to strr activity was 1 to 100. These results suggested that plasmid and chromosomal DNAs have different specific requirements for transformation.
Biological Methods for Cell-Cycle Synchronization of Mammalian Cells

Understanding the molecular and biochemical basis of cellular growth and division involves the investigation of regulatory events that most often occur in a cell-cycle phase-dependent fashion. Studies examining cell-cycle regulatory mechanisms and progression invariably require cell-cycle synchronization of cell populations. Thus, many methods have been established to synchronize cells at specific phases of the cell cycle. Several of the common methods involve pharmacological agents, which act at various points throughout the cell cycle. Because of adverse cellular perturbations resulting from many of the synchronizing drugs used, other synchrony methods that involve less perturbation of biological systems, such as serum deprivation, contact inhibition, and centrifugal elutriation have a significant advantage. The advantages and disadvantages of these cell synchronization methods are discussed in this review.
The Contemporary Family and its Representations

An exemplary ideological representation of the “new” family is the film Under the Tuscan Sun (2003). The film traces the emergence of a multicultural, polysexual and multirelational family in contemporary Tuscany that has as its core a heterosexual American woman who purchases a run-down villa while on vacation with a gay tour. The very fact that this single heterosexual woman is vacationing on a gay tour is of course itself a sign of the shifts in the common sense and the “acceptable” that the film will portray. The main character, who is recently divorced, starts out alone and in a more “traditional” and “familiar” context, but by the end of the film she is hosting a wedding and surrounded by her new family.
Multiscale Computations for Flow and Transport in Heterogeneous Media

Many problems of fundamental and practical importance have multiple scale solutions. The direct numerical solution of multiple scale problems is difficult to obtain even with modern supercomputers. The major difficulty of direct solutions is due to disparity of scales. From an engineering perspective, it is often sufficient to predict macroscopic properties of the multiple-scale systems, such as the effective conductivity, elastic moduli, permeability, and eddy diffusivity. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a method that captures the small scale effect on the large scales, but does not require resolving all the small scale features. The purpose of this lecture note is to review some recent advances in developing multiscale finite element (finite volume) methods for flow and transport in strongly heterogeneous porous media. Extra effort is made in developing a multiscale computational method that can be potentially used for practical multiscale for problems with a large range of nonseparable scales. Some recent theoretical and computational developments in designing global upscaling methods will be reviewed. The lectures can be roughly divided into four parts. In part 1, we review some homogenization theory for elliptic and hyperbolic equations. This homogenization theory provides a guideline for designing effective multiscale methods. In part 2, we review some recent developments of multiscale finite element (finite volume) methods. We also discuss the issue of upscaling one-phase, two-phase flows through heterogeneous porous media and the use of limited global information in multiscale finite element (volume) methods. In part 4, we will consider multiscale simulations of two-phase flow immiscible flows using a flow-based adaptive coordinate, and introduce a theoretical framework which enables us to perform global upscaling for heterogeneous media with long range connectivity.
Utilizing Flood Inundation Observations to Obtain Floodplain Topography in Data-Scarce Regions

Flood models predict inundation extents, and can be an important source of information for flood risk studies. Accurate flood models require high resolution and high accuracy digital elevation models (DEM); current global DEMs do not capture the topographic details in floodplains, and this often leads to inaccurate prediction of flood extents by flood models. Flood extents obtained from remotely sensed data provide indirect information about topography. Here, we attempt to use this information along with model predictions to produce better floodplain topography. The algorithm we describe is a two-step process: first, we reduce the noise along the observed flood boundaries for all particles. Then, the model predictions from these modified DEMs are assimilated with observations using a particle batch smoother. We implemented the algorithm for a synthetic test case. For the nominal case, we observed a significant improvement in accuracy in terms of RMSE (35% reduction), bias (20%) and standard deviation (40%). We conducted sensitivity analysis by using priors of varying bias (0.5 m, 1 m, 2 m) and standard deviation (1 m, 2 m, 4 m). The bias reduced to ~0.5 m or below in all the cases: the reduction in bias varied from 11% to 76%. The standard deviation of errors in the final estimate was almost half of the prior: the reduction varied from 40% to 49%. The reduction in RMSE ranged between 35% and 67%. For the case with 2 m bias and 4 m standard deviation (SRTM-like error levels), bias went down to 0.48 m (76% reduction), and standard deviation reduced to 2.24 m (44% reduction). Flood inundation maps produced from the final estimate DEMs also improved on its prior. For the 2 m bias cases, true positive rate (TPR) for peak inundation went from ~30% to more than 57% in all three cases. The algorithm produces promising results, and this type of analysis can be performed in data-poor floodplains where high resolution DEMs do not exist.
Brilliant or Bad: The Gendered Social Construction of Exceptionalism in Early Adolescence:

From kindergarten through college, students perceive boys as more intelligent than girls, yet few sociological studies have identified how school processes shape students’ gender status beliefs. Dr...
Geographical Concentration of Funding of Academic Research

This chapter focuses on the measurement of geographic concentration of federal funding for academic research. Besides conventional descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, a concentration index is introduced to describe the extent of concentration of academic research funding from several federal agencies. The chapter also discusses the underlying causes and major ramifications of geographic concentration of federal funding for academic research.
Nrf2 Plays an Essential Role in Long-Term Brain Damage and Neuroprotection of Korean Red Ginseng in a Permanent Cerebral Ischemia Model

Cerebral ischemia is a devastating disease with a high incidence of death and disability; however, effective therapeutics remain limited. The transcriptional factor Nrf2 has been shown to play a pivotal role in the endogenous defense against brain oxidative stress and inflammation and therefore represents a promising target for stroke intervention. However, the long-term effects of Nrf2 and the standardized Korean red ginseng (ginseng), a potent Nrf2 natural inducer, on permanent cerebral ischemic damage have not yet been reported. Wildtype (WT) and Nrf2−/− adult mice were pretreated with either vehicle or ginseng and were subjected to permanent distal middle cerebral artery occlusion (pdMCAO). The infarct volume, the reactive astrocytes and microglia, and the water regulatory protein aquaporin 4 (AQP4) were examined at 28 days after stroke. When compared with the WT matched controls, the Nrf2 disruption significantly enlarged the infarct volume (40.4 ± 10.1%) and exacerbated the progression of reactive gliosis and AQP4 protein levels after pdMCAO. In contrast, ginseng significantly reduced the infarct volume and attenuated the reactive gliosis and AQP4 in the ischemic WT mice (47.3 ± 6.9%), but not in the Nrf2−/− mice (25.5 ± 5.6%). In conclusion, Nrf2 plays an important role in the long-term recovery of permanent cerebral ischemic damage and the neuroprotection of ginseng.
Age disparities among cancer clinical trial participants: The role of industry sponsorship.

11527Background: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in oncology, which often establish the standard of care for cancer patients, do not necessarily enroll trial participants representative of the ...
Smart charging management for shared autonomous electric vehicle fleets: A Puget Sound case study

Abstract Increasingly, experts are forecasting the future of transportation to be shared, autonomous and electric. As shared autonomous electric vehicle (SAEV) fleets roll out to the market, the electricity consumed by the fleet will have significant impacts on energy demand and, in turn, drive variation in energy cost and reliability, especially if the charging is unmanaged. This research proposes a smart charging (SC) framework to identify benefits of active SAEV charging management that strategically shifts electricity demand away from high-priced peak hours or towards renewable generation periods. Time of use (TOU), real time pricing (RTP), and solar generation electricity scenarios are tested using an agent-based simulation to study (1) the impact of battery capacity and charging infrastructure type on SAEV fleet performance and operational costs under SC management; (2) the cost reduction potential of SC considering energy price fluctuation, uncertainty, and seasonal variation; (3) the charging infrastructure requirements; and (4) the system efficiency of powering SAEVs with solar generation. A case study from the Puget Sound region demonstrates the proposed SC algorithm using trip patterns from the regional travel demand model and local energy prices. Results suggest that in the absence of electricity price signals, SAEV charging demand is likely to peak the evening, when regional electricity use patterns already indicate high demand. Under SC management, EVs with larger battery sizes are more responsive to low-electricity cost charging opportunities, and have greater potential to reduce total energy related costs (electricity plus charging infrastructure) for a SAEV fleet, especially under RTP structure.
Bodyminds reimagined: (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women’s speculative fiction

Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined is an impressive first book, filling an important gap in cultural studies scholarship at the interface between Black feminism and disability studies. The book und...
Impact of the Entry Time Model on Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Platoon Formation

One of the most important characteristics of a microsimulation is the ability to model the temporal and spatial nature of traffic demand. The majority of microsimulation packages use the exponential time headway model to introduce the driver-vehicle units in the network because it is easy to code, has low processing demand, and if there is no platooning effects in the network, it fits standard traffic flow theory. However, various empirical studies have shown that time headways can follow different statistical distributions depending on traffic conditions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of the entry time model used in the vehicle generation on connected and automated vehicle (CAV) platoon formation on highways. A comparison between the exponential and lognormal models was performed in which the stochastic attributes of the driver-vehicle units were controlled using the component object model (COM) interface of VISSIM 20. It was found that the effect that the entry time model had on platoon formation dissipated after a relatively short travel distance. In addition, it was found that the CAV platoon size and frequency is a function of underlying traffic conditions. Modelers may have to use longer than normal input links to achieve the appropriate platoon size and frequency metrics necessary to model CAV technology. This paper emphasizes the need to have a deep understanding of the underlying logic of traffic microsimulation models, and the effect of this logic on the reliability of the results when modeling traffic and disruptive technologies such as CAV platoons.