cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear Spectroscopic Markers of Structural Change during Charge Accumulation in Organic Field-Effect Transistors

Vibrational sum frequency generation (VSFG) is used to characterize the buried polymer–dielectric interface in poly(triarylamine) (PTAA) organic field-effect transistors (oFETs) over a spectral range of more than 1100 cm–1. The FTIR and Raman spectra are presented for the neutral and chemically oxidized thin films of this polymer as a starting point for identifying the potential vibrational changes that are induced by doping. In the VSFG spectra collected as a function of applied gate bias, we find evidence for interfacial electric fields, polaronic absorbances, and a strong VSFG-active band that is a spectral signature of the interfacial molecules that are perturbed by electrical doping. In most cases, the unipolar electrical behavior of PTAA oFETs is directly correlated with intensity changes in this structural perturbation band regardless of the dielectric (SiO2) surface functionalization. However, in a few selected examples, the VSFG measurements demonstrate that accumulation of either holes or electr...
The Beta-Decay of B 12 and Li 8

The electron spectra of ${\mathrm{B}}^{12}$ and ${\mathrm{Li}}^{8}$ have been studied, using a magnetic lens spectrometer. The end point of the ${\mathrm{B}}^{12}$ distribution is 13.43\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.06 Mev, while the ${\mathrm{L}}^{8}$ spectrum tails off gradually with a shape which is consistent with the known broadness of the excited state of ${\mathrm{Be}}^{8}$ to which the decay occurs. Neither distribution corresponds to the shape indicated for simple "allowed" transitions, but it seems probable that more than one state of the residual nuclei may be involved in the decay schemes. The discrepancy between the observed end point of the ${\mathrm{B}}^{12}$ spectrum and the mass differences suggests the existence of an excited state at 0.9 Mev either in ${\mathrm{B}}^{12}$ or ${\mathrm{C}}^{12}$.
The Improvement of The UN Machinery on Human Rights

Important progress has taken place in the last thirty years with respect to the protection of human rights, both as far as international legislation is concerned and in the more difficult field of implementation. But the machinery developed for these purposes by the United Nations is creaky and needs to be repaired. The Commission on Human Rights and the Third Committee of the General Assembly are grossly overworked and, in consequence, several important human rights instruments are languishing in them, without a chance of completion. To remedy this, it is suggested that the functions of both the Commission and the Committee be split and assigned to separate bodies: one commission devoted to the codification of human rights law, and one discussing special situations and communications, and supervising other UN human rights activities; one committee dealing exclusively with human rights, and one dealing with other social, humanitarian and cultural matters. The various UN procedures for implementing human rights instruments should also be streamlined. The several periodic reporting systems need to be consolidated, and might all be put in the hands of the Human Rights Committee (functioning under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but not necessarily limited to supervising reports under it) and a working group on economic and social rights of the Economic and Social Council. As far as violations of human rights are concerned, the General Assembly itself or the Economic and Social Council should directly deal with gross violations of human rights, after a preliminary screening by a working group of five persons, one from each region, and should utilize the glare of publicity to achieve compliance. Some of these steps can be taken through General Assembly decisions. If they appear too drastic, optional protocols might be prepared, through which states could accept the jurisdiction of a designated body of the United Nations to deal with certain problems, reports or complaints.
Evolving Artificial Language through Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning

Computational simulation of language evolution provides valuable insights into the origin of language. Simulating the evolution of language among agents in an artificial world also presents an interesting challenge in evolutionary computation and machine learning. In this paper, a jungle world is constructed where agents must accomplish different tasks such as hunting and mating by evolving their own language to coordinate their actions. In addition, all agents must acquire the language during their lifetime through interaction with other agents. This paper proposes the algorithm of Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning with Potentiation and Memory (ERL-POM) as a computational approach for achieving this goal. Experimental results show that ERL-POM is effective in situated simulation of language evolution, demonstrating that languages can be evolved in the artificial environment when communication is necessary for some or all of the tasks the agents perform.
Connecting energetic nitropyrazole and aminotetrazole moieties with N,N′-ethylene bridges: A promising approach for fine tuning energetic properties

A new approach for fine tuning the properties of energetic compounds through bonding of energetic pyrazoles with tetrazole moieties by means of N,N′-ethylene bridges is described. Reactions of various pyrazole derivatives with 2-haloethylamines, followed by reaction with cyanogen azide resulted in the formation of compounds having ethylene-bridged 5-aminotetrazole and nitropyrazole. Further reactions on this basic framework resulted in various energetic compounds having mono, di or tri nitro-substituted pyrazole moieties, and an amino or nitroimino-substituted tetrazole ring. All the compounds were thoroughly characterized by IR, and NMR [1H, 13C{1H}, 15N] spectra, elemental analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Some of them were also structurally characterized with single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies. Heats of formation and detonation performance for all the energetic compounds were calculated using Gaussian 03 and EXPLO5 v6.01 programs, respectively. Initial studies showed that the properties of energetic compounds can indeed be fine-tuned by careful selection of the number and nature of energetic groups on the pyrazole and tetrazole rings.
Auxiliary signal design for failure detection with initial prior information

Fault detection and the related problem of identification (FDI) play an important role in many modern technological systems and processes. A variety of active and passive approaches have been investigated. Previous work on auxiliary signal design for one active approach used a bound on total uncertainty which included the state at the start of the test as part of a cost function. However, in some applications that may not be the most natural thing to do if there is some information about prior behavior. Using this prior information in a different way leads to several changes in algorithms and software. This paper investigates these changes and their consequences.
Wheat grain consumption and selection by inbred and outbred strains of mice.

Abstract Food selection and avoidance are driven primarily by orosensory cues. Previous studies with C57BL/6J mice indicated marked differences in selection and consumption of individual grains of different wheat varieties when presented in binary mixtures. The present study examined the patterns of mouse grain selection across four strains of laboratory mice: two inbred, BALB/c and C57BL/6J, and two outbred, Swiss-Webster and CD1. Four pairs of wheat varieties that were known to vary a priori for consumption preference or seed coat (‘bran’) color were tested. Two variety pairs were near-isogenic (> 98% similar) with contrasting red and white seed coat coloration/pigmentation. All four mice strains exhibited similar preferences between wheat variety pairs, whereas consumption was not highly related to mouse body weight. This result indicates a more generalized phenomenon regarding how mice select and then consume individual wheat grains. The study supported the continued use of C57BL/6J as an effective strain model system to study food perception.
Employee job satisfaction and customer-oriented behavior: A study of frontline employees in the foodservice industry

ABSTRACTAs the significance of frontline employees increases in the foodservice industry, organizations are paying more attention to internal marketing and customer-oriented behavior for the success of their business. Thus, this study surveys restaurant employees to investigate the impact of development and rewards on job satisfaction and customer-oriented behavior from the perspective of restaurant employees. This study not only supports aspects of previous literature, but also proposes a testable and parsimonious research model by exploring development, rewards, job satisfaction, and customer-oriented behavior simultaneously and revealing how those factors are correlated. Finally, limitations and future research directions are addressed.
Clinical characteristics of latent classes of CO2 hypersensitivity in adolescents and young adults.

Although breathing CO2-enriched air reliably increases anxiety, there is debate concerning the nature and specificity of CO2 hypersensitivity to panic risk and panic disorder versus anxiety disorders and related traits broadly, particularly among adolescents and emerging adults. The present study sought to clarify the association of CO2 hypersensitivity with internalizing conditions and symptoms among adolescents and young adults. Participants (N = 628) self-reported anxiety levels every 2 min while breathing air enriched to 7.5% CO2 for 8 min. Growth mixture models were used to examine the structure of anxiety trajectories during the task and the association of each trajectory with dimensional and diagnostic assessments of internalizing disorders. Three distinct trajectories emerged: overall low (low), overall high (high), and acutely increased anxiety (acute). Compared to the low class, the acute class reported elevated neuroticism, anxiety sensitivity, and stress whereas the high class reported elevated anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, neuroticism, anxiety sensitivity, and increased likelihood of an anxiety disorder diagnosis. Moreover, the acute and high classes reported experiencing a panic-like event at a higher rate than the low class while participants in the high class terminated the task prematurely at a higher rate. The present study clarifies the nature of response to CO2 challenge. Three distinct response profiles emerged, which clarifies the manifestation of CO2 hypersensitivity in anxiety disorders with strong, though not unique, associations with panic-relevant traits.
Opening Keynote: Material Ecology

Neri Oxman is an Architect, Designer and Associate Professor based at the MIT Media Lab where she is the founding director of The Mediated Matter Group. Her team conducts research at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, materials science and synthetic biology, and applies that knowledge to design across disciplines, media and scales from the micro scale to the building scale. Areas of application include architectural design, product design, fashion design, as well as the design of new technologies for digital fabrication and construction. Oxman coined the term and pioneered the field of Material Ecology, which considers computation, fabrication, and the material itself as inseparable dimensions of design. Oxman's work is included in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Centre Georges Pompidou, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK), the FRAC Collection and the Boston Museum of Science, amongst others. Since 2005, Oxman and her team have won numerous awards and has grown in international scope and acclaim at venues such as the World Economic Forum and the White House.
Flipping the classroom in introductory CS courses: panel discussion

Peer-instruction, hybrid, or 'flipped classroom' models have been gaining interest as a way of increasing student learning and engagement as well as improving retention. In this panel, educators with experiences reorienting classroom pedagogy in introductory CS courses and upper-level undergraduate MIS courses will discuss their experiences, and the rewards and challenges of using these models. Technical tools and needed infrastructure will also be discussed.
Systemic lupus erythematosus following meningococcal vaccination.

Abstract Systemic erythematosus lupus (SLE) affects multiple organs and involves complex immune dysfunction. Because vaccinations are inherently designed to stimulate the immune response, they have been linked with increased risk for flare of SLE and other autoimmune disorders, and their association with new-onset autoimmune disease has been postulated in several case reports. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of the meningococcal vaccine precipitating SLE in a previously undiagnosed patient. We present a case of a previously healthy, 17 year old Asian female who presented to the ED with 14 days of fever and fatigue after administration of the meningococcal vaccine, as well as 5 days of facial rash. Initial labs showed pancytopenia, bandemia, proteinuria, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and elevated d-dimer. Both the antinuclear antibodies (ANA) and anti-double stranded DNA were positive and cervical lymphadenopathy was present. This case highlights the importance of considering acute autoimmune reactions such as SLE in the differential diagnosis when assessing previously healthy patients presenting with systemic symptoms such as fever and rash in the setting of recent vaccination.
The harassment tax

A senior faculty member asked me into his office. I assumed it was to talk about agricultural data. It was the fall of 1991 and I was untenured, 32 years old, and 7 months pregnant. He was in his 60s and one of many men who were going to vote on my tenure. He showed me the recent issue of Vanity
Regulating Tactical Nuclear Weapons

In the coming months and years, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies will discuss, and U.S. and Russian Federation negotiators may enter the next frontier in nuclear arms control: regulating small, “tactical” nuclear weapons. This framework Article is the first squarely on the subject in the legal literature.My core arguments are that (1) to date the bilateral Washington-Moscow arms control legal regime has primarily regulated strategic (long-range) nuclear delivery vehicles (bombers, missiles, and submarines) rather than warheads; (2) contrary to common assumption, the legal regime has regulated a small number of tactical delivery vehicles (jet fighters and other short-range systems) with arguable strategic relevance, providing a regulatory precedent; (3) the nuclear tactical versus strategic distinction in Cold War policy and the legal architecture is eroding and should be abolished; (4) and now that all nuclear weapons have “strategic” (i.e., major) significance, and in view of the enduring “loose nuke” threat and other risks, the arms control legal regime should be expanded to regulate and reduce what we now consider tactical nuclear arms. Non-legal steps – confidence building measures and parallel unilateral reductions – may pave the way, but tactical nuclear weapons ultimately ought to be regulated via the new treaty I outline.Extension of the legal regime to regulate all tactical delivery vehicles and warheads would be revolutionary. Warheads are much smaller than nuclear delivery vehicles, which can be readily observed from space. Warheads are therefore easier to conceal or steal, and present unique verification challenges. Resolution of the verification problem in a new treaty will be tough. But it also presents an opportunity: creation of what I term Nuclear Information Stability (NIS) between the United States and Russia, a condition characterized by continual communication and common understanding of the number, location, and operational status of nuclear hardware. The superpowers built 100,000 nuclear warheads in the Cold War and retain thousands of warheads today to mitigate uncertainty and reduce risk of a successful surprise attack – rationales for large stockpiles that would be challenged by NIS. Ultimately, I argue, NIS could allow the United States and Russia – and other nuclear states to which the concept could be exported – to see a realistic path from Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to a day-to-day state of Mutually Assured Security (MAS).
Land Development and Traffic Composition at Rural Interstate Highway Interchanges in Ohio

AbstractHighway interchanges, particularly those in rural areas, offer fertile opportunities for highway-oriented land development such as gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, and hotels....
Roll, Jenny Jenkins, Roll

The sexual patterns of woman’s life from birth to early maturity are not only illustrated in folksongs but influenced by them as reflectors of cultural attitudes and norms. Handed down from generation to generation and traditionally anonymous, folksongs are conservative and perpetuate by both inclusion and omission what a society holds valid and proper.
The Problems of Language Identification within Hugely Multilingual Data Sets.

As the data for more and more languages is finding its way into digital form, with an increasing amount of this data being posted to the Web, it has become possible to collect language data from the Web and create large multilingual resources, covering hundreds or even thousands of languages. ODIN, the Online Database of INterlinear text (Lewis, 2006), is such a resource. It currently consists of nearly 200,000 data points for over 1,000 languages, the data for which was harvested from linguistic documents on the Web. We identify a number of issues with language identification for such broad-coverage resources including the lack of training data, ambiguous language names, incomplete language code sets, and incorrect uses of language names and codes. After providing a short overview of existing language code sets maintained by the linguistic community, we discuss what linguists and the linguistic community can do to make the process of language identification easier.
The Study on The Relationship Between Privacy Concerns and Information Systems Effectiveness.

We examined the impact of users’ information privacy concerns on information systems (IS) effectiveness in organizations. Specifically, we investigated system users’ psychological mechanisms that may involve in the relationship between privacy concerns and IS effectiveness (i.e., perceived usefulness and IS satisfaction) via information systems reactance (ISR) on systems and procedural justice (PJ) toward their Information systems. The results supported our hypotheses in that: (1) Privacy concerns were negatively related to system users’ perceived usefulness and IS satisfaction, (2) Both ISR and PJ of the system users mediated the relationships between privacy concerns and IS effectiveness. We discuss the implications of the findings for theory and practice, and their limitations and the directions that future research in this area might explore.
Mixing Bricks and Clicks: Organization Designs for Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce in Incumbent Retailers

Researchers disagree over the extent to which organizations can introduce innovations such as electronic commerce within existing organizational structures. Some argue that such innovations require completely autonomous innovating units. Yet, such autonomous units may have difficulty making use of scale, skills, and infrastructure in the established organization. This paper attempts to resolve the apparent conflict by building and testing a new theoretical model of organizing to adopt a discontinuous innovation. Using concepts from technology strategy and organization theory, it builds a hybrid model in which organizations simultaneously build new subunits and leverage existing ones to adopt the innovation. Two characteristics of each component in the innovation translate to two aspects of subunit-level organization design. The theoretical model is tested using a novel database of organizational structure and financial performance for the e-businesses launched by 36 incumbent retailers. The study contributes to theory by helping to resolve a long-standing debate, and contributes to practice by providing guidelines to help managers in organizing to adopt innovations.
Measurement of elastic. nu. /sub. mu. / and nu-bar/sub. mu. / scattering on protons

We have measured elastic ..nu../sub ..mu../ and nu-bar/sub ..mu../ scattering on protons at the Brookhaven National Laboratory Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. We find R/sub NC/ = sigma(nu-bar/sub ..mu../p..-->..nu-bar/sub ..mu../p) / sigma(..nu../sub ..mu../p..--> nu../sub ..mu../p) = 0.44 +- 0.12 and R/sub numu/ = sigma(..nu../sub ..mu../p..--> nu../sub ..mu../p)/sigma(..nu../sub ..mu../n..--> mu../sup -/p) = 0.11 +- 0.03. The elastic Q/sup 2/ distribution is in good agreement with present knowledge of form factors and the Weinberg-Salam model. We find sin/sup 2/theta/sub W/ = 0.26 +- 0.06.
A conversation including 39 questions with Anirban Basu

At the 2018 International Conference on Health Policy Statistics (ICHPS) held in Charleston, South Carolina, Anirban Basu was awarded the Mid-Career Excellence Award from the American Statistical Association Section on Health Policy Statistics (HPSS). Anirban was exceptionally and uniquely qualified for this award. Highlights include his providing outstanding service to the HPSS, advancing statistical methodology, advancing methodology in other domains of health policy, and performing extensive and highly impactful applied work in medicine and health care. In this interview, we trace Anirban’s upbringing, schooling, early career, and mid-career phases to gain insights into his success. We also sought his opinions on salient topics or issues.
Religion Does Matter: Alternative Measures and Contextual Effects

In this chapter, we explore the possibility that religious beliefs and contextual variables (e.g. congregational environment and clergy cues) are central to understanding differences in immigration perspectives, arguing that orthodox evangelical beliefs (in a literal or inerrant Bible, in a literal Heaven and Hell, as examples) will be associated with conservative positions on immigration. With the use of the Pew Landscape Survey (Religious landscape survey, 2014) and the Henry Institute Cooperative Clergy Study (2017), we examine the importance of some key church and clergy contextual effects that could not be measured in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) 2016 data. In addition, we argue that evangelical churches that have embraced immigrant outreach and service initiatives are likely to have laity that are more favorable to progressive immigration policies than where this is not the case. We also examine the immigration perspectives of Protestant clergy and the difference they make in the perspectives of their congregants.
Synthesis and characterization of a holmium 2,2′-bipyridine-5,5′-dicarboxylate MOF: Towards the construction of a suitable holmium carrier

Abstract Based on the 2,2′-bipyridine-5,5′-dicarboxylic acid ligand (H2bpdc), a new metal–organic framework using holmium as the coordinating metal site was synthesized through a solvothermal reaction. The 3D compound {[Ho2(bpdc)3(DMF)2]·2(DMF)}n (1) was characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction, FTIR, TGA and PXRD. The coordination between H2bpdc, the solvent, and holmium (CN = 7) allows for the construction of a MOF containing potentially free metal sites and uncoordinated N-donor sites. These features make this MOF an attractive holmium carrier for radiotherapeutic applications.
SLC1A5 glutamine transporter is a target of MYC and mediates reduced mTORC1 signaling and increased fatty acid oxidation in long-lived Myc hypomorphic mice

Mice that express reduced levels of the c-Myc gene (Myc+/- heterozygotes) are long-lived. Myc hypomorphic mice display reduced rates of protein translation and decreased activity of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) complex 1 (mTORC1). Given the prominent effect of mTOR on aging, lower mTORC1 activity could contribute to the exceptional longevity and enhanced healthspan of Myc+/- animals. However, given the downstream position of MYC in these signaling cascades, the mechanism through which mTORC1 activity is downregulated in Myc+/- mice is not understood. We report that the high-affinity glutamine transporter SLC1A5, which is critical for activation of mTORC1 activity by amino acids, is a transcriptional target of MYC. Myc+/- cells display decreased Slc1a5 gene expression that leads to lower glutamine uptake and consequently reduced mTORC1 activity. Decreased mTORC1 activity in turn mediates an elevation of fatty acid oxidation (FAO) by indirectly upregulating the expression of carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1a (Cpt1a) that mediates the rate-limiting step of β-oxidation. Increased FAO has been noted in a number of long-lived mouse models. Taken together, our results show that transcriptional feedback loops regulated by MYC modulate upstream signaling pathways such as mTOR and impact FAO on an organismal level.
Quality Improvement Project in Congenital Cardiothoracic Surgery Patients: Reducing Surgical Site Infections.

Background Healthcare-associated infections are a major focus for quality improvement in hospitals today. Surgical site infections (SSIs), a postoperative complication in cardiac surgery, are associated with increased morbidity, mortality, hospital length of stay, and financial burden. Methods A recent increase in cardiothoracic surgery SSIs (CT-SSIs) at our institution instigated a multidisciplinary team to explore infection prevention, bundle element compliance, and to identify interventions to reduce the CT-SSI rate. Key interventions included preoperative screening and decolonization of methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant S. aureus with repeated intranasal applications of mupirocin, universal skin prep with chlorhexidine for all patients, and additional antibiotic dosing upon initiating cardiopulmonary bypass. Results In 2014, the CT-SSI rate at our institution was 1.9/100 cases, which increased during the "intervention period" to 3.6 infections/100 cases in 2015 (16 total infections). Postinterventions, the CT-SSI rate decreased to 0.3 infections/100 cases (2 total infections), which was significantly lower than our baseline before the spike in infection rate. Conclusions A comprehensive interdisciplinary approach with multiple interventions was successful in significantly reducing the CT-SSI rate in cardiothoracic surgery at a tertiary care pediatric hospital.
Characterization of stoker ash from the combustion of high-lanthanide coal at a Kentucky bourbon distillery

Abstract Lanthanide- and yttrium-bearing minerals were examined by transmission electron microscopy - energy-dispersive spectroscopy (TEM-EDS) and related diffraction techniques in the combustion ash produced from the burning of an eastern Kentucky coal in a stoker boiler. The feed coal has nearly 2000 ppm and the stoker ash has over 1400-ppm lanthanides + Y + Sc In one section, zircon with trace amounts of Y was noted. Hafnium was noted in the preliminary scanning electron microscopy - EDS examination of a zircon. In the TEM procedure, the Hf peaks overlap with other peaks and, thus, the presence of Hf could not be confirmed. Both La-, Ce-, Nd-monazite and a La-, Ce-bearing Ti-Fe mineral were observed in the ash. The latter mineral corresponds both in composition and in aspects of the diffraction pattern to crichtonite or davidite or loveringite, all minerals within the Dana-class crichtonite group.
A Measure of Synergy, Redundancy, and Unique Information using Information Geometry

It is well known that joint interactions between agents can be described qualitatively as having synergistic, unique, and redundant components. In recent years, there have been renewed efforts to decompose mutual information, a general, non-parametric measure of joint interactions, into constituent parts. We propose a novel, non-negative decomposition of mutual information between two sources and a target variable. The decomposition is for the exponential family, and thus can be applied to a broad range of distributions. We also show that values from our decomposition arise naturally from testing hypotheses of conditional dependence. We demonstrate the method numerically using standard binary logic gates and Gaussian channels, as well as apply the method to investigate redundancy between brain regions using an fMRI-based image classification data-set.
Social mobilisation in post-industrial China: the case of rural urbanisation

This is a book about “social mobilization” in China. The book is organized into eight chapters. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 provide some background and an overview of the decision-making process of the Chi...
School Achievement as Moderated by Sociodemographic Status: The US Case

School achievement is greatly moderated by sociodemographic factors, such as socioeconomic status, minority status, students' gender and grade level as well as the location of schools. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, the effect of socioeconomic status on school achievement is illustrated with empirical evidence.
Towards enabling peer-to-peer Grids: Research Articles

In this paper we propose a peer-to-peer (P2P) Grid comprising resources such as relatively static clients, high-end resources and a dynamic collection of multiple P2P subsystems. We investigate the architecture of the messaging and event service that will support such a hybrid environment. We designed a distributed publish–subscribe system NaradaBrokering for XML-specified messages. NaradaBrokering provides support for centralized, distributed and P2P (via JXTA) interactions. Here we investigate and present our strategy for the integration of JXTA into NaradaBrokering. The resultant system naturally scales with multiple Peer Groups linked by NaradaBrokering. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Diurnal Physical Activity Patterns across Ages in a Large UK Based Cohort: The UK Biobank Study.

The ability of individuals to engage in physical activity is a critical component of overall health and quality of life. However, there is a natural decline in physical activity associated with the aging process. Establishing normative trends of physical activity in aging populations is essential to developing public health guidelines and informing clinical perspectives regarding individuals’ levels of physical activity. Beyond overall quantity of physical activity, patterns regarding the timing of activity provide additional insights into latent health status. Wearable accelerometers, paired with statistical methods from functional data analysis, provide the means to estimate diurnal patterns in physical activity. To date, these methods have been only applied to study aging trends in populations based in the United States. Here, we apply curve registration and functional regression to 24 h activity profiles for 88,793 men (N = 39,255) and women (N = 49,538) ages 42–78 from the UK Biobank accelerometer study to understand how physical activity patterns vary across ages and by gender. Our analysis finds that daily patterns in both the volume of physical activity and probability of being active change with age, and that there are marked gender differences in these trends. This work represents the largest-ever population analyzed using tools of this kind, and suggest that aging trends in physical activity are reproducible in different populations across countries.
Improved delivery policies for future drone-based delivery systems

Abstract It is expected that commercial use of drones in the near future will involve delivery service operations by e-commerce companies. We consider relevant strategic and tactical decisions that these retailers will face in drone-based delivery operations, and derive policies on when to offer drone delivery, what delivery capacity to maintain, and what amount to charge for such deliveries. To this end, we develop a Markov decision process (MDP) framework, and introduce two heuristic procedures, through which near-optimal closed-form solutions can be obtained. The results are aimed at helping online retailers to determine in real time whether and to what extent to offer drone-based delivery for given product categories in different service zones. In addition, we study delivery fee structures and identify drone-based delivery pricing strategies under two widely used delivery pricing schemes. For capacity planning decisions, we describe an algorithm to identify the fleet size to utilize to fulfill uncertain demand in a given service region. We also identify structural characteristics on how these decisions and the expected profit are affected by changes in various problem parameters, which can generate generic insights on drone-based delivery operations for e-commerce companies. We find that retailers should prioritize more profitable items when allocating drone delivery capacity, and invest in adding more drones when per order opportunity costs are higher and promised delivery time thresholds are shorter. Retailers can potentially boost their net profits by increasing the effective promised delivery time threshold and/or decreasing the effective delivery delay costs and per order opportunity costs.
Postpartum sleep loss and accelerated epigenetic aging.

Abstract Background Insufficient sleep has been linked to accelerated biological aging in adults, providing a possible mechanism through which sleep may influence disease risk. In the current paper, we test the hypothesis that short sleep in postpartum would predict older biological age in women one year post birth, as indicated by accelerated epigenetic aging. Methods As part of a larger study of pregnancy and postpartum health (Healthy Babies Before Birth, HB3), 33 mothers provided blood samples for epigenetic aging clock estimates. intrinsic epigenetic age acceleration (IEAA), extrinsic apigenetic age acceleration, phenotypic epigenetic age acceleration (PEAA), GrimAge, DNAmPAI-1, and DNAm telomere length (TL) were calculated using established protocols. Sleep duration was categorized as insufficient sleep ( 5). Results Maternal postpartum sleep duration at 6 months, but not 12 months, following a birth was predictive of older 12-month IEAA, B (SE) = 3.0 (1.2), P = .02, PEAA, B (SE) = 7.3 (2.0), P = .002, and DNAmTL, B (SE) = −0.18 (0.07), P = .01, but not other indices, all P> .127. Self-reported poor sleep quality at 6 and 12 months was not significantly related to epigenetic age. Conclusions These findings suggest that insufficient sleep duration during the early postpartum period is associated with accelerated biological aging. As the sample size is small, additional research is warranted with a larger sample size to replicate these findings.
Epitaxial Ferrimagnetic Mn4N Thin Films on GaN by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Direct epitaxial integration of magnetic layers with wide bandgap nitride semiconductors will enable spin-controlled transport and photonic phenomena, seeding ideas for functional spintronic devices. Using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) in a previously unexplored window, significantly improved ferrimagnetic Mn4N layers are successfully grown on GaN with ~ 1 nm surface roughness. Distinct from earlier reports, the Mn4N layers grown on GaN are found to be 001 oriented with 12-fold in-plane symmetry in the diffraction pattern. This unique epitaxial registry originates from three equivalent rotational domains. The ferrimagnetic magnetotransport properties of low growth temperature Mn4N layers on GaN are comparable to those reported on cubic substrates such as MgO. However, a sign-flip of the Hall resistance is discovered for Mn4N layers grown above 300 °C.
“The Great Equalizer of the Conditions of Men”: Marcus Foster, African American Education Reform, and Shared Accountability

This critical book review analyzes Spencer’s (2012) In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform in an attempt to connect the text to Horace Mann’s ideology of education as a force and source of liberation. Perhaps more than ever, Spencer’s recollection of Marcus Foster’s school leadership and community activism is relevant in modern U.S. society, where the intersection of race and socioeconomic status continues to divide us and render the education landscape less equitable than Foster imagined decades ago.
Nonparametric Heterogeneous Treatment Effect Estimation in Repeated Cross Sectional Designs.

Identifying heterogeneity in a population's response to a health or policy intervention is crucial for evaluating and informing policy decisions. We propose a novel heterogeneous treatment effect estimator in the difference-in-differences design with repeated cross sectional data, where we observe different samples of a population at two time periods separated by the onset of a policy intervention, as well as samples of a population that serves as the control. Our estimator has orthogonality properties that enable fast rates on learning the treatment effect while allowing slower rates for estimating nuisance components. Our proposal shows promising empirical performance across a variety of simulation setups.
What's not music, but feels like music to you?

The category “music” as used in this area of science is inconsistent and unstable, and its logical relationship to the word “musicality” – used by scientists to denote the human capacity for music – is circular. Therefore, rather than pursue the question, “Why did music(ality) evolve?” let us ask more inclusively, “What experiences in humankind's deep past might have felt like music?”
Looking Beyond the Allograft Survival: Long-Term, 5-Year Renal Outcome in Lung Transplant Recipients.

ABSTRACT With the increased incidence and survival of lung transplant (LTx) recipients, the risk for chronic sequelae such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) is on the rise. Data on the long-term renal outcome are scarce. We performed a retrospective chart review of 171 adults with LTx from January 1, 2014, to January 1, 2019. Primary outcomes were prevalence of CKD/end-stage renal disease, acute kidney injury (AKI) as a risk factor for future CKD, and all-cause mortality in recipients with CKD compared with the non-CKD group. Secondary outcomes were frequency of utilization of modalities for CKD (urinalysis, imaging, biopsy, nephrology consultations). Baseline median creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were 0.8 mg/dL and 90 mL/min/1.73 m2, respectively. Of the participants, 60% (96 of 161), 67% (102 of 153), 79% (37 of 47), 86% (10 of 12) had CKD at the end of 6, 12, 36, and 60 months, respectively, and 16% were on dialysis at the end of the study period; 3% received a subsequent renal transplant, and 27% mortality was noted over a 5-year follow-up period. The odds of CKD development in patients with an AKI during index hospitalization vs no AKI was 6.22 (2.87 to 13.06, P
The Age of Discovery

We found the wash-tub along the R?kos stream. It was during a botany field trip organized by Mrs. B?tki, our teacher. We visited her apple orchard on the outskirts of Budapest. She said first we should pick the apples from her trees then for an hour we could do whatever we wanted to and after that, we'd rush back to school so our parents wouldn't worry. Her apple orchard wasn't far from the tram terminal and we finished picking apples very quickly as it was a poor harvest. During our free time we went roaming along the stream and suddenly?wow!?a wash-tub. It was made of wood, its inside covered with sheet-iron. "Just like a ship." Sz?sz said. "There's a hole in the bottom." I said, after inspecting it. "It could be stopped up," he answered with an expert expression on his face. We stuffed some cloth into the hole and now the tub really looked like a ship. "What about going?" he said. "Where?" "The Oceans." (It was as if he said "to the tram terminal.") "Why not?" "But I'm Captain." Well that's what I always hated about him. I protested but he was firm. In the end he agreed I could be the helmsman as a ship needs one of those, too. I accepted but then I realized there was nothing to steer. "And now? Where?" I asked at last because even if we didn't have a helm, the helmsman is supposed to know the direction to go. "First we go down the R?kos stream, that takes us to the Danube that rims in the sea and then to the Oceans."
Formation of bile acids in man. Metabolism of 7alpha-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one in normal subjects with an intact enterohepatic circulation.

Abstract The formation of bile acids in man is thought to involve a series of reactions in which the initial steps are the same for both cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid. The point of bifurcation of the pathway is postulated to occur after the formation of 7α-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one. To test the hypothesis that the entire synthesis of both bile acids proceeds through this intermediate we studied the metabolism of labeled 7α-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one in eight normal subjects with an intact enterohepatic circulation. If all the production of cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid takes place via 7α-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one, the areas under the specific decay curves of cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid should be identical following a single injection of this labeled intermediate. However, in 6 of the 8 subjects studied the area under the cholic acid specific activity decay curve was significantly less than the area under the chenodeoxycholic acid specific activity decay curve. These results that the production of cholic acid in man may not always involve the intermediate 7α-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one.
Adsorption studies based on thermionic emission measurements: II. Oxygen on single-crystal tungsten☆☆☆

Oxygen adsorption and desorption on single crystal W filament from thermionic emission microscope measurements, discussing gas pressure and filament temperature effects
Work in progress - case study of a technological literacy and non-majors engineering course

Since 1995, engineering faculty at Hope College have taught a course for non-engineering students called: "Science and Technology of Everyday Life". The course examines the science and engineering underlying modern consumer technological devices. Distinguishing features are study of a broad sample of familiar technological devices, construction by students of working devices, and writing assignments on technological topics. For over nine years, the total enrollment of more than 1000 students has averaged 60% women and 26% pre-service teachers. To evaluate student outcomes, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was applied. Statistically significant increases were found in intrinsic motivation, task value, and self-efficacy. A decrease in test anxiety was also found. The results are consistent across all semesters analyzed. The case study shows that non-engineering students can have increased motivation for learning science and technology, increased perceived value for science and technology, increased self-confidence about learning science and technology
Reflection and Transmission of Acoustic Waves by a Locally-Layered Random Slab

We consider acoustic propagation through a slab in which rapidlyvarying random plane layering has been subjected to smooth small amplitude undulations. The reflection and transmission properties of such a locally-layered slab are studied. Of principal interest is the question of the robustness of the plane layered theory. Do phenomena such as localization and the results of O’Doherty-Anstey theory persist under perturbations of plane layering? We establish some results affirming the robustness of these phenomena.
Warm, Warm on the Range

Global warming is a very real phenomenon and most agree that human activities have contributed to an increase in the minimum daily temperature. In this issue, Alward et al. demonstrate that this increase in minimum temperature causes a distinct change in the mix of plants found in a prairie grassland in the Midwestern United States. In his Perspective, Mellilo describes other examples of warming9s effect on ecological systems and explains how we can best study these changes.
The assessment of stat laboratory test ordering practice and impact of targeted individual feedback in an urban teaching hospital.

BACKGROUND Overuse of inpatient stat laboratory orders (“stat” is an abbreviation of the Latin word “statim,” meaning immediately, without delay) is a major problem in the modern healthcare system. OBJECTIVE To understand patterns of stat laboratory ordering practices at our institution and to assess the effectiveness of individual feedback in reducing these orders. INTERVENTION Medicine and General Surgery residents were given a teaching session about appropriate stat ordering practice in January 2010. Individual feedback was given to providers who were the highest utilizers of stat laboratory orders by their direct supervisors from February through June of 2010. MEASUREMENTS The proportion of stat orders out of total laboratory orders per provider was the main outcome measure. All inpatient laboratory orders from September 2009 to June 2010 were analyzed. RESULTS The median proportion of stat orders out of total laboratory orders was 41.6% for nontrainee providers (N = 500), 38.7% for Medicine residents (N = 125), 80.2% for General Surgery residents (N = 32), and 24.2% for other trainee providers (N = 150). Among 27 providers who received feedback (7 nontrainees, 16 Medicine residents, and 4 General Surgery residents), the proportion of stat laboratory orders per provider decreased by 15.7% (95% confidence interval: 5.6%-25.9%, P = 0.004) after feedback, whereas the decrease among providers who were high utilizers but did not receive feedback (N = 39) was not significant (4.5%; 95% confidence interval: 2.1%-11.0%, P = 0.18). Monthly trends showed reduction in the proportion of stat orders among Medicine and General Surgery residents, but not among other trainee providers. CONCLUSIONS The frequency of stat ordering was highly variable among providers. Individual feedback to the highest utilizers of stat orders was effective in decreasing these orders. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2014;9:13–18. © 2013 Society of Hospital Medicine
Chemotaxis Toward Amino Acids in Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli cells are shown to be attracted to the l-amino acids alanine, asparagine, aspartate, cysteine, glutamate, glycine, methionine, serine, and threonine, but not to arginine, cystine, glutamine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, or valine. Bacteria grown in a proline-containing medium were, in addition, attracted to proline. Chemotaxis toward amino acids is shown to be mediated by at least two detection systems, the aspartate and serine chemoreceptors. The aspartate chemoreceptor was nonfunctional in the aspartate taxis mutant, which showed virtually no chemotaxis toward aspartate, glutamate, or methionine, and reduced taxis toward alanine, asparagine, cysteine, glycine, and serine. The serine chemoreceptor was nonfunctional in the serine taxis mutant, which was defective in taxis toward alanine, asparagine, cysteine, glycine, and serine, and which showed no chemotaxis toward threonine. Additional data concerning the specificities of the amino acid chemoreceptors with regard to amino acid analogues are also presented. Finally, two essentially nonoxidizable amino acid analogues, α-aminoisobutyrate and α-methylaspartate, are shown to be attractants for E. coli, demonstrating that extensive metabolism of attractants is not required for amino acid taxis.