cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Quality Measurement and Accountability in Cardiovascular Medicine: An Incomplete Revolution.

The rise of quality measurement and the proliferation of programs that require accountability for quality are among the most dramatic developments in cardiovascular medicine in the past 2 decades. The quality revolution now affects the daily practice of virtually every cardiovascular clinician and has influenced national health policy. Over time, however, both the successes and limitations of the quality movement have become apparent. As is often the case with revolutionary changes, quality measurement and the uses of these measures merit reflection and consideration of further change. For years, quality measurement played an insignificant role in medicine. This changed with a growing appreciation of substantial unexplained variation in healthcare practice in parallel with seemingly unrestrained increases in care costs. The actions of the Health Care Financing Administration, now the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, are illustrative of this evolution. Having employed the ineffectual approach of performing individual case review (quality assurance) of negative outliers, the Health Care Financing Administration adopted the relatively radical approach of measuring quality nationally in the hopes of stimulating improvement for all institutions and providers in the early 1990s.1 The Health Care Financing Administration’s Cooperative Cardiovascular Project measured the quality of care for acute myocardial infarction; subsequent efforts expanded to other high-impact conditions, including heart failure. Although these programs focused entirely on measuring processes of care (eg, rates of use of evidence-based therapies for acute myocardial infarction and heart failure) and did not address strategies for quality improvement, they introduced clinicians and hospitals to formal …
The Feasibility and Safety of Surgery in Patients Receiving Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors: A Retrospective Study.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are revolutionizing care for cancer patients. The list of malignancies for which the Food and Drug Administration is granting approval is rapidly increasing. Furthermore, there is a concomitant increase in clinical trials incorporating immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the safety of immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients undergoing surgery remains unclear. Herein, we assessed the safety of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the perioperative setting at a single center. We conducted a retrospective review of patients who underwent planned surgery while receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors in the perioperative setting from 2012-2016. We collected 30-day post-operative morbidity and mortality utilizing the Clavien-Dindo classification system. We identified 17 patients who received perioperative immune checkpoint inhibitors in 22 operations. Patients were diagnosed with melanoma (n=14), renal cell carcinoma (n=2), and urothelial carcinoma (n=1). Therapies included pembrolizumab (n=10), ipilimumab (n=5), atezolizumab (n=5), and ipilimumab/nivolumab (n=2). Procedures included cutaneous/subcutaneous resection (n=6), lymph node resection (n = 5), small bowel resection (n=5), abdominal wall resection (n = 3), other abdominal surgery (n=3), orthopedic surgery (n=1), hepatic resection (n=1), and neurosurgery (n=2). There were no Grade III-IV Clavien-Dindo complications. There was one death secondary to ventricular fibrillation in the setting of coronary artery disease. Immune checkpoint inhibitors appear safe in the perioperative setting, involving multiple different types of surgery, and likely do not need to be stopped in the perioperative setting. Further studies are warranted to confirm these findings.
Abstract 2090: Targeting estrogen receptor negative breast cancer cells using diarylthiourea analogs of SHetA2

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers that occur in women in the United States. Depending on the expression of estrogen receptor α (ERα), breast cancer can be classified as ER-positive or negative. ER-negative (ER-) breast cancers are often more aggressive and have poorer prognosis compared with the ER-positive (ER+) subtype. Consequently, there is a great need to develop more targeted therapeutic options for ER- breast cancer. One such compound is SHetA2, a flexible heteroarotinoid (flex-hets) that has been shown to inhibit growth of multiple cancer types including breast cancer. However, the clinical utility of SHetA2 is limited by its high lipophilicity (LogP). The goal of this study is to screen eleven 2nd generation analogs of SHetA2 with lower LogP values— SL1-22, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40— on different breast cancer cell lines to identify potential lead compounds that show the highest anti-growth activities against ER- breast cancer cells and further delineate the mechanism by which these compounds affect breast cancer cell growth. Results from this study demonstrate that SL1-38 [1-(3-chloro-4-methylphenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)thiourea] and SL1-39 [1-(4-chloro-3-methylphenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)thiourea], inhibit ER-negative breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-453 and MDA-MB-468) effectively at micromolar concentrations. In order to understand the mechanisms of action, we evaluated the effects of SL1-38 and 39 on the expression of key cell cycle regulators. Our results show that these two analogs down-regulate the expression of cyclin A, cyclin B, cyclin D1, cyclin E and cdk2 and block S-phase progression. Taken together, these preliminary results suggest that SL1-38 and 39 may be further developed as anti-cancer agents for treating ER-negative breast cancer. Citation Format: Hongye Zou, Emily Ginn, Sabah M. Francis, Shengquan Liu, Maggie Louie. Targeting estrogen receptor negative breast cancer cells using diarylthiourea analogs of SHetA2 [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2090. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-2090
A chicken on every pot: curious avian ceramic vessels on the Gulf Coast

In a recent examination of bird effigy vessels from the north-central coast of the Gulf of Mexico, one remarkable species identified appears to be Gallus gallus domesticus, or the chicken. Examples...
MAPbI3 Solar Cells with Absorber Deposited by Resonant Infrared Matrix-Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation

Resonant infrared, matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (RIR-MAPLE) is a gentle thin-film deposition technique that combines the facile chemical control of solution processing with the growth control of vapor-phase deposition, yet one that has not been widely applied to crystalline organic–inorganic hybrid materials. In this work, we investigate the optoelectronic quality of RIR-MAPLE-deposited CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPbI3) perovskite films and report on the fabrication of perovskite solar cells in which the absorber is deposited by RIR-MAPLE. We find the composition, morphology, and optical properties of these perovskite films to be comparable to those produced by more conventional methods, such as spin coating. The champion device reaches a stabilized power conversion efficiency of over 12%, a high value for perovskite solar cells deposited by a laser ablation process, highlighting the ability of this new technique to produce device-quality films.
20 Years of Cu BEOL in manufacturing, and its future prospects

This year marks the 20th anniversary of IBM's announcement of its impending plans to insert CMOS/Cu BEOL technology into production, and its having shipped the first functional CPU prototypes. The subsequent manufacturing ramp in mid-1998 provided the first commercial IC chips with Cu BEOL. This invited paper covers the timeline of this technology, with its key defining elements, subsequent innovations, and likely future directions. The original, basic features of this technology have endured to this day, though with many evolutionary improvements. But now, in its 10th generation of manufacturing, and 12th in research, we are finally seeing changes beyond evolutionary. The replacement of Cu metal for the finest wiring levels may occur over the next 1–3 nodes.
The impact of impedance matching on channel estimation in compact MIMO receivers

Accurate channel estimates are essential to realize the high capacity of multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) communication channels. In compact receivers, prior work has shown that mutual coupling among antennas can significantly degrade the performance of channel estimation algorithms. However, this work did not consider the impact of coupling on observation noise, or the possible benefits of antenna impedance matching, which can profoundly alter the characteristics of observation noise. In this paper, we revisit the channel estimation problem for compact MIMO receivers. We consider a MIMO front-end that consists of coupled antennas, impedance matching and amplifiers, and includes physical models of antenna and amplifier noise. Using this model, we derive the error covariance of mimimum-mean-squared-error (MMSE) channel estimation and explore how it varies with front-end impedance and noise characteristics. We show the MMSE error covariance is always minimized by one kind of impedance matching, called minimum-noise-factor (MNF) matching. We present numerical results that compare the estimation error achievable with optimal matching to conventional antenna self-matching. These results suggest that, when conventional self-matching is used, estimation error is highly sensitive to amplifier noise in the presence of strong coupling. However, optimal MNF matching completely eliminates this sensitivity and significantly outperforms self-matching when amplifier noise is not negligible.
Carleman Type Estimates and Their Applications

In these lecture notes we derive Carleman type estimates for second order linear partial differential operators and show some of their applications to the uniqueness in the Cauchy problem, approximate and exact controllability, and inverse problems. In section 2 we discuss pseudo-convexity and derive Carleman type estimates with boundary terms. In section 3 we obtain similar estimates with additional large parameter. Section 4 is devoted to uniqueness and stability in the Cauchy problem as well as applications to approximate and exact controllability. Section 5 exposes the Bukhgeim-Klibanov method of proving uniqueness in inverse problems by using Carleman estimates. Concluding section 6 exposes results on sharp uniqueness domains in the Cauchy problem, including recent fundamental theorem of Tataru and its generalizations. We will give complete proofs of some important results and will formulate some other interesting theorems referring for their proofs and other information either to the original papers or to the books [2], [12], [14], [18], [22].
Tumors of the Central Nervous System

Malignant brain tumors are common solid tumors in the pediatric age group, and the importance of their correct diagnoses cannot be over emphasized. In order to understand these tumors, developmental features of the central nervous system (CNS), and clinical imaging, and their relation to hereditary cancer syndromes must be considered and correlated. The World Health Organization (WHO) Classification is perhaps the most widely used classification for tumors of the CNS. Diagnostic criteria in this chapter reflect those according to the 2007 WHO classification Evolving concepts such as embryonal tumor with multilayered rosette (ETMR) have crested a number of new and previously known tumor entities. Some pediatric brain tumors occur only rarely in adults, and vice versa. Tumors in this chapter are grouped according to cell type into those of the developing central nervous system (CNS), those with features of mature glial and neuronal tissues, and those arising from the choroid plexus, pineal region, sellar region, and meninges. Sellar tumors are not considered in depth, as these are rarely malignant in children. Radiological features correlate with pathological anatomy, and knowledge of both is imperative for accurate diagnosis and treatment.
Geoecology of Erratic Lichens of Xanthoparmelia vagans in an equatorial Andean Paramo

A population of 166 lichens of Xanthoparmelia vagans (Nylander) Hale, an obligatory erratic species, was investigated at 4530 m in the Venezuelan Andes. Lichen size and shape were strongly correlated; larger specimens were less spherical and compact than smaller ones. This was related to a greater frequency of disturbance – mainly by wind and frost – of small lichens, which are transported more easily than larger, heavy ones. Constant movement produces nearly spherical specimens, but as lichens grow larger, they are rotated less frequently and rest on a single side for increasingly longer periods; these immobile lichens become progressively more flattened and lenticular in shape. Many large lichens had two distinctive sides, an ‘upper’ and a ‘lower’ one, with different coloration. The upper face was pale yellowish green to olive gray (Munsell 5Y 8/4–5/2), the lower one black to very dark brown (10YR 2/1–2/2). Small lichens usually showed no differences between sides. Color variation is also induced by lichen movement. In frequently rotating lichens, thalli grow evenly in all directions due to a uniform insolation. In stationary lichens, thalli remain permanently oriented facing upwards, and their upper and lower sides diverge in coloration. The largest lichens break up easily. Some large specimens were in the process of fragmentation; these had a distinctive ‘kidney’-shaped form. Experimental splitting of 16 lichens showed that reduction in size by fragmentation also results in more equant specimens than the original ones. Laboratory experiments on aeolian transport indicated that wind speeds in the paramo are capable of carrying the erratic lichens, but soil areas covered by soil nubbins (miniature mounds produced by needle ice) can trap moving lichens, and greater wind velocities are then needed to re-mobilize them. Lichens were able to quickly absorb and store large amounts of water. Large lichens retained less water than small ones, but lost moisture at much slower rates. Needle-ice growth delivers water to the paramo soil surface, where lichens can readily imbibe it. The water relations of Xanthoparmelia, considered to be ecologically crucial for lichen growth and survival, are discussed in detail.
Characteristics of Secondary Age Students With Intellectual Disability Who Participate in School-Sponsored Extracurricular Activities:

This study investigated the relation between grade level, support needs, and use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and the participation of secondary age students with intellectua...
Design and test of high-speed asynchronous circuits

This chapter explores the design and test of high-speed complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) self -timed circuits. Section 7.1 describes how the properties of CMOS technology itself limit how fast a self -timed circuit can run. Section 7.2 presents our Link and Joint model, a unified point of view of self -timed circuits that allows reasoning about them independently of circuit families and handshake protocols. The model separates communication and storage, done in Links, from computation and fl ow control, done in Joints. The model also separates actions from states. Special go signals enable or disable Joint actions on an individual basis. The individual go signals make it possible to initialize, start, and stop self -timed operations reliably, which is crucial for design as well as for at -speed test, debug, and characterization. Section 7.3 examines design and test aspects of the Weaver, a self -timed nonblocking 8 x 8 crossbar switch designed using the Link and Joint model. We report measured test results from a working Weaver chip in 40 nm CMOS with speeds up to 6 Giga data items per second. With 72 bit wide data items, this amounts to 3.5 Tera bits per second for the full crossbar.
Dynamic spin localization and γ -magnets

We explore an unusual type of quantum matter that can be realized by qubits having different physical origins. Interactions in this matter are described by essentially different coupling operators for all qubits. We show that the simplest such models, which can be realized with localized states in Dirac materials, satisfy integrability conditions that we use to describe pseudospin dynamics in a linearly time-dependent magnetic field. Generalizing to an arbitrary number of qubits, we construct a spin Hamiltonian, which we call the $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-magnet. This system does not conserve polarization of any spin and the net spin polarization. Nevertheless, for arbitrarily strong interactions, nonadiabatic dynamics, and any initial eigenstate, we find that quantum interference suppresses spin flips. This behavior resembles many-body localization but occurs in phase space of many spins rather than real space. This effect may not have a counterpart in classical physics and can be a signature of a new type of spin ordering, which is different from both disordered spin glasses and ordered phases of spin lattices.
The GATA transcription factor GNC plays an important role in photosynthesis and growth in poplar

GATA transcription factors are involved in the regulation of diverse growth processes and environmental responses in Arabidopsis and rice. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive bioinformatic survey of the GATA family in the woody perennial Populus trichocarpa. Thirty-nine Populus GATA genes were classified into four subfamilies based on gene structure and phylogenetic relationships. Predicted cis-elements suggested potential roles of poplar GATA genes in light, phytohormone, development, and stress responses. A poplar GATA gene, PdGATA19/PdGNC (GATA nitrate-inducible carbon-metabolism-involved), was identified from a fast growing poplar clone. PdGNC expression was significantly up-regulated in leaves under both high (50 mM) and low (0.2 mM) nitrate concentrations. The CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutant crispr-GNC showed severely retarded growth and enhanced secondary xylem differentiation. PdGNC-overexpressing transformants exhibited 25-30% faster growth, 20-28% higher biomass accumulation, and ~25% increase in chlorophyll content, photosynthetic rate, and plant height, compared with the wild type. Transcriptomic analysis showed that PdGNC was involved in photosynthetic electron transfer and carbon assimilation in the leaf, cell division and carbohydrate utilization in the stem, and nitrogen uptake in the root. These data indicated that PdGNC plays a crucial role in plant growth and is potentially useful in tree molecular breeding.
Chapter 10: Torts Through the Looking Glass

Students today view the world relative to its representations in digital media. This digital looking glass, or mirror, of reality incorporates fact and fiction and has itself come to define our popular culture. Accordingly, today’s students benefit from the examination and analysis of challenging subject matter in the real world relative to its digital imaginings. Instructors in torts can promote learning by bringing into the classroom popular cultural expressions extracted from the vast audiovisual libraries of the Internet. These demonstrative exhibits can be used to support problem analysis, to explore policy and theory, to bridge study and practice, and to raise issues in professionalism. This chapter demonstrates the range of multimedia material available in popular culture today with relevance to torts. My aim is to encourage instructors to build their own libraries of materials and to enhance student learning by holding up torts to the looking glass.
Teacher Efficacy and Teacher Professional Learning: Implications for School Leaders.

This study examines teachers’ professional development experiences through the lenses of personal teaching efficacy and professional learning. This qualitative study examined the professional devel...
Organic contaminant stable isotope geochemistry, and application to contaminant characterization and remediation

Stable isotope analysis has three possible applications to contaminant characterization and remediation: (1) forensic geochemistry, as a technique to identify contaminant source; (2) subsurface processes, where changes in isotope composition can be related to processes affecting contaminant concentration; and (3) isotope-labeled studies, where isotope-labeled compounds are used as contaminant tracers.
A comparison of California and Texas secondary science teachers’ perceptions of climate change

This study investigates climate change perceptions of secondary science teachers in a Blue state and a Red state. A total of 832 secondary science teachers, 456 from California, and 376 from Texas ...
Geographic distribution of hospice, homecare, and nursing home facilities and access to end-of-life care among persons living with HIV/AIDS in Appalachia.

Background Access to healthcare services, from diagnosis through end of life (EOL), is important among persons living with Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (PLWHA). However, little is known about the availability of hospice services in Appalachian areas. Therefore, the objective of this study is to describe the geographic distribution of hospice, homecare and nursing home facilities in order to demonstrate current existence of and access to resources for EOL care among PLWHA in the Appalachian regions of Tennessee and Alabama. Methods This paper reports on the second aim of a larger sequential, mixed methods qualitative-quantitative (qual→quan) study. Data from advance care planning (ACP) surveys were collected by both electronic (n = 28) and paper copies (n = 201) and, among other things, obtained information on zip codes of residence of PLWHA. This enabled assessment of the geographic distribution of residences of PLWHA in relation to the distribution of healthcare services such as hospice and home healthcare services. Hospice and Home Healthcare data were obtained from the Tennessee and Alabama Departments of Health. The street addresses of these facilities were used to geocode and map the geographic distributions of the facilities using Street Map USA. Travel times to Hospice and Home Healthcare facilities were computed and mapped using ArcGIS 10.3. Results We identified a total of 32 hospice and 69 home healthcare facilities in the Tennessee Appalachian region, while the Alabama Appalachian region had a total of 110 hospice and 86 home healthcare facilities. Most care facilities were located in urban centers. The distribution of care facilities was worse in Tennessee with many counties having no facilities, requiring up to an hour drive time to reach patients. A total of 86% of the PLWHA indicated preference to die at home. Conclusions Persons living with HIV/AIDS in Appalachia face a number of challenges at the end of life that make access to EOL services difficult. Although respondents indicated a preference to die at home, the hospice/homecare infrastructure and resources are overwhelmingly inadequate to meet this need. There is need to improve access to EOL care in the Appalachian regions of both Tennessee and Alabama although the need is greater in Tennessee.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Global Climate Change Projections

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are a primary source of climate change data. The peer-review process for IPCC assessments is extensive and the reports are generally taken in the scientific community as objective and authoritative. Within the climate change skeptic or contrarian community, the charge is frequently made that the IPCC reports are exaggerated and overly pessimistic, where on the other side of the spectrum, some scientists claim that the consensus building goal of the IPCC results in a tendency to underplay climate change impacts to avoid appearing too alarmist. The global climate will experience continued warming caused by past anthropogenic emissions as well as from additional future anthropogenic emissions. The CMIP5-based projections in the IPCC Fifth Assessment show that the Mediterranean Basin and North Africa, southern Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, Mexico and the southwestern United States, and much of Australia will likely become drier. Areas simulated to experience greater annual average precipitation include the north and south polar and boreal regions, most of the eastern and central United States and Canada, and South and East Asia.
Assessing the Utility of a Statewide Human Trafficking Screening Tool in Colorado

Background: Human trafficking is a worldwide public health problem that is not easily identified. The state of Colorado has a 33-item checklist used by the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) that reviews risk-factors with individuals at risk for trafficking. Objective: To identify trends in human trafficking in the state of Colorado and the …
Stochastic cusp catastrophe model and its Bayesian computations

This paper revitalizes the investigation of the classical cusp catastrophe model in catastrophe theory and tackles the unsolved statistical inference problem concerning stochastic cusp differential...
Visibility and Indivisibility in Resource Arrangements

Projects like highways, bridges, pipelines, and wildlife corridors exhibit indivisibilities — we need the whole thing to have anything of value. Many environmental and social goals have a similar all-or-nothing character: staying above or below a certain critical threshold can make all the difference. This essay focuses on the role of visibility in addressing resource dilemmas that have this structure. I examine how two kinds of visibility can help avoid catastrophic consequences and advance desirable ones. The first involves recognizing when an indivisibility is present — that is, appreciating the vulnerability of resources to thresholds and cliff effects before it is too late. The second involves seeing how individual decisions about resources stack together to generate outcomes. When a resource problem suffers from poor visibility along these dimensions, finding ways to clear the view can improve the prospects for cooperative solutions.
An Analysis of Financial Performance of Selected Public Sector Banks in India

A bank is a financial intermediary that accepts deposits and channels those deposits into lending activities. Banks are a fundamental component of the financial system, and are also active players in financial markets. The banking sector is the most dominant sector of the financial system in India, and with good valuations and increasing profits, the sector has been among the top performance in the markets. The recent tech-savvy practices and processes adopted have propelled public sector banks out of complacency and given them a competitive edge. PSB`s such as PNB and Bank of Baroda are posting rapid increase in their asset base every year as compared to other public sector banks. The objective of present paper is to analyze the financial performance of the public sector banks on Return on Net Worth, Net Operating Profit per Share, Debt Equity Ratio, and Capital Adequacy Ratio. For this study six Public Sector Banks have been selected. The Indian banking system faces several difficult challenges. The selected public sector banks have performed well on the sources of growth rate and financial efficiency during the study period.
Who controls electricity transitions? Digitization, decarbonization, and local power organizations

Abstract Much of the work on technology transitions and electricity has concentrated on sustainability from the perspective of centralized generation and transmission companies. For example, there is a substantial literature in energy social science on the role that the smart grid plays in the sustainable energy transition, and much of that research assumes continuity with a traditional centralized electric system, modified slightly to admit some distributed energy resources. We start from a different perspective. First, our focus is less on centralized generation and transmission companies and more on organizations that distribute electricity and related services to end customers in a defined geographic area. These entities are described in a variety of ways across countries; we use the term “local power organizations” (LPOs). Second, we focus less directly on the sustainability transition as such and more on the complex sociotechnical changes produced by specific digital tools. We open the black box of digital technologies that underpin the sustainability transition to highlight implicated sociotechnical issues, ranging from individual privacy to control and ownership of electricity. We then outline three central challenges of digitization that suggest new directions in energy social science research as the future control of electricity develops along its digital pathway.
Addiction and Twelve-Step Spirituality

Addictions are among the leading causes of preventable death worldwide and in the United States. Given the morbidity and mortality of alcohol and other substance use disorders, effective treatments are needed. A recent meta-analysis found participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) to be as effective – if not more effective – than other forms of alcohol use disorder treatment. Moreover, the methods used by clinicians to facilitate active AA and other twelve-step (TS) engagement (e.g., twelve-step facilitation, TSF) have been shown to increase the likelihood that individuals struggling with addictions will actively participate in twelve-step groups.
Interfacial acidity on the strontium titanate surface: a scaling paradigm and the role of the hydrogen bond

A fundamental understanding of acidity at an interface, as mediated by structure and molecule-surface interactions, is essential to elucidate the mechanisms of a range of chemical transformations. While the strength of an acid in homogeneous gas and solution phases is conceptually well understood, acid-base chemistry at heterogeneous interfaces is notoriously more complicated. Using density functional theory and nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy, we present a method to determine the interfacial Bronsted-Lowry acidity of aliphatic alcohols adsorbed on the (100) surface of the model perovskite, strontium titanate. While shorter and less branched alkanols are known to be less acidic in the gas phase and more acidic in solution, here we show that shorter alcohols are less acidic whereas less substituted alkanols are more acidic at the gas-oxide interface. Hydrogen bonding plays a critical role in defining acidity, whereas structure-acidity relationships are dominated by van der Waals interactions between the alcohol and the surface.
Radiotherapy alone for pediatric patients with craniopharyngioma.

Purpose Radiotherapy alone, without tumor-directed surgery, may be appropriate for selected patients with craniopharyngioma reducing the risks associated with neurosurgery. Understanding outcomes for patients with craniopharyngioma treated with radiotherapy alone will further refine patient selection and treatment options. Methods Since 2002, 13 children, adolescents and young adults, with craniopharyngioma were treated with radiotherapy alone and followed for disease control and functional outcomes at a single institution. The median age at treatment was 13 years (range, 3-21 years). All patients received 54 Gy/54 Gy(RBE) in 30 fractions. Five patients were treated with intensity-modulated photon therapy, four with passively scattered proton therapy, and four with intensity-modulated proton therapy. Results With a median follow-up of 5 years (range 3 months-14 years), all patients were alive. One experienced tumor progression 8.5 years after treatment. No significant changes in vision, hearing or neurologic function attributed to radiotherapy. Hormone deficiencies and body mass index were within the expected range at baseline and 5 years after treatment. There was no evidence of cognitive decline based on assessment of IQ, memory and attention. Unexpected complications included single cases of out-of-field malignancy, white matter changes, large vessel narrowing, and pontine capillary telangiectasia. Six patients had sphenoid bone abnormalities on follow-up imaging attributed to radiotherapy. Conclusion Radiotherapy alone is an important treatment option to consider when radical resection is contraindicated, or surgical intervention is not required to alleviate symptoms. Disease control and functional outcomes are excellent after radiation therapy alone in appropriately selected patients.
Putting TPACK on the Radar: A Visual Quantitative Model for Tracking Growth of Essential Teacher Knowledge

Since Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) description of technological pedagogical content knowledge (also known as TPACK), scholars have analyzed the various paths preservice and in-service teachers can take to develop their knowledge in each of the subdomains. However, the model of the overall framework can be confusing to teachers, as Venn diagrams are generally used for categorization. Furthermore, no representation of TPACK to date has presented a means to accurately reflect a teacher’s growth in knowledge over time. This paper proposes a visual and quantitative representation of TPACK that will help teachers better understand the TPACK framework and track their growth in the knowledge domains over time. A pilot study was conducted with 24 preservice science and mathematics teachers. Quantitative evidence indicated that an explanation of TPACK using a radar diagram was at least as effective as an explanation using a Venn diagram in terms of these students’ understanding of TPACK. Furthermore, the qualitative evidence supported the assertion that teachers would benefit from a way to track their growth in the essential knowledge areas encompassed by the framework. In the 21st century, mastery of instructional technology is a key element of a successful teacher’s skill set. Many students use technology at home, and technological knowledge is now mandatory for productive participation in society, education, and the workforce. Thus, teachers must be responsible for teaching technology skills alongside their content areas. While it would be unfair to demand that teachers incorporate all computer skills in their classes (particularly, skills like computer programming that require deep conceptual knowledge), teachers can and should teach their content through technology and teach technology through their content.
Influence of pH on fluorescent dissolved organic matter photo-degradation.

Abstract A novel semi-continuous excitation emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence and absorbance monitoring system has been developed. Full EEMs were collected simultaneously with absorbance spectra every 20 min during 24 h solar-simulated irradiation experiments, and the kinetic change of fluorescence of Suwannee River natural organic matter IHSS standard material (SRNOM) at various pH values was investigated. Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) was then used to isolate the photo-labile and pH-influenced fluorescent components of SRNOM. Kinetic analysis showed increasing rates of fluorescence loss with increasing pH. This has significant implications for the photo-degradation of dissolved natural organic matter during estuarine mixing, when large increases of pH are common. The influence of pH on fluorescence and photo-degradation kinetics emphasizes the need for pH to be monitored and accurately controlled during laboratory experiments. It is also highly recommended that when constructing PARAFAC models or monitoring changes in fluorescence data between samples of different origins, that the pH be held constant to remove any potential artifacts or misinterpretation of data.
Gravitinos as the cold dark matter in an Ω = 1 universe

In attempts to simultaneously have galaxy formation with adiabatic fluctuations, dark galactic halos and a critical ..cap omega.. = 1, recent models have been proposed with a heavy (cold) species which decays and a lighten (hot or warm) one which is stable. Surprisingly enough, these models are very constraining. Independent of the particle physics model, the decay width of the heavy particle must be 0(10/sup -40/) GeV. Such a scale is only natural in theories involving gravity where one expects GAMMA - M/sub H//sup 3//M/sub p//sup 2/, where M/sub H/ is the mass of the heavy particle and M/sub p/ is the planck mass. In this paper, we suggest that the heavy particle might be the gravitino which is present in all supergravity theories. This model would then require that the gravitino decay products not include photons, indicating that the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) must be something other than the photino. An acceptable candidate for the LSP might be the axino, the supersymmetric partner of the axion.
A metamodelling approach to estimate global N2O emissions from agricultural soils

Aim Modelling complex environmental and ecological processes over large geographic areas is challenging, particularly when basic research and model development for such processes has historically been at the local scale. Moving from local toward global analysis brings up numerous issues related to data processing, aggregation, tradeoffs between model quality and data quality, and prioritization of data collection and/or compilation efforts. We studied these issues in the context of modelling emissions of N2O (a potent greenhouse gas) from agricultural soils. Location Global. Methods We developed metamodels of the DeNitrification–DeComposition (DNDC) model, a mechanistic model that simulates greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils, to estimate global N2O emissions from maize and wheat fields. We ran DNDC for a diverse sample of global climate and soil types, and fitted the model output as a function of (sometimes simplified) model input variables, using the random forest machine learning algorithm. We used the metamodels to estimate global N2O emissions from maize and wheat at a very high spatial resolution (c. 1 km2) and examined the effects of different approaches of using soil data as well as the effects of spatial aggregation of soil and climate data. Results The average coefficient of determination (R2) between holdout data (DNDC output not used to construct the metamodel) and metamodel predictions was 0.97 for maize and 0.91 for wheat. The metamodels were sensitive to soil properties, particularly to soil organic carbon content. Global emission estimates with the metamodel were highly sensitive to the spatial aggregation and other forms of generalization of soil data, but much less so to aggregation of climate data. Main conclusions Using a simplified metamodel with data of high spatial resolution could produce results that are more accurate than those obtained with a full mechanistic model and lower-resolution data.
Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe – By Mark Mazower

“No nation belonging to the white race has ever before had such conditions forced upon it,” wrote a contemporary observer during World War II of the nature of the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Mor...
A 3-D reconstruction technique for an electronically collimated camera

A three-dimensional source reconstruction technique has been investigated for a new ring Compton scatter camera based on electronic collimation. The method uses each first detector element to find directions to the source locations, and then intersects these directions from all detector elements to find the intensity and three-dimensional location of the source. The results for a simulated 150-keV point source located on the camera axis and a line source perpendicular to the camera axis are presented. >
Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought

Reviewed Medium: book Authors: Vanda Zajko Year: 2006 Pages: 464 Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019927438X (hard cover). Prices: $99.00 USD(hard cover).
Iron deficiency: assessment during pregnancy and its importance in pregnant adolescents

Precise determination of indicators that have considerable within-subject variability is needed to assess iron deficiency in pregnant women. Within-subject day-to-day variation of serum ferritin levels may fluctuate as much as 25%. The uncertainty of biological variability is accompanied by the uncertainty of concentration-dependent indexes (e.g. ferritin plasma iron and hemoglobin) caused by plasma volume expansion. Physicians should take several measurements to determine iron status in pregnant women. If they cannot do this they should incorporate confidence limits around measurements of women assigned to iron-sufficient or iron-deficient groups. In central Pennsylvania health workers determined the iron status of 88 pregnant adolescents attending the prenatal clinic at Altoona Hospital or the Allegheny Family Physicians Group in Altoona to examine within-subject variability of iron status and the prevalence of iron deficiency in this group. At entry into the pilot study about 70% of the pregnant teenagers had depleted iron stores. Even though the women were prescribed an iron supplement depleted iron stores continued throughout pregnancy. Iron deficiency anemia was found in 7.4% at the end of the 1st trimester of pregnancy. Another 3.6% had anemia but not iron deficiency. At 2 weeks postpartum 55% had iron deficiency anemia. About 20% had anemia with no signs of iron deficiency. When the researchers considered daily variability the prevalence of depleted iron stores rose to 80% from 69%. All low birth weight infants (born to 8% of subjects) were born to mothers who were iron deficient at 11-16 weeks of pregnancy. There is considerable doubt about an absolute diagnosis of iron status during pregnancy.
The association of educational achievement and school dropout with risk of alcoholism: a twenty-five-year prospective study of inner-city children.

Objective: This prospective study is focused on the characteristics leading to alcohol use disorders in early adulthood among a cohort of black children. The principal aim of this work is to examine the impact of educational attainment, school dropout and early school adaptation on the development of alcohol abuse and dependence in adulthood. Method: From a population that consisted of 1,242 first graders in 1966-67, a total of 953 were interviewed at age 32-33 about their current alcohol and drug use, educational attainment, employment and family situation. Results: Diagnoses of alcohol abuse and dependence were defined according to DSM-III-R criteria resulting in identification of 13.5% as having a lifetime alcohol use disorder. Early predictions of an alcohol use disorder in adulthood included early reports of underachievement in first grade by the child's teacher, dropping out of high school, whether the family set definite rules about school during adolescence, and how often the adolescent worked on ...
Effects of methylphenidate on hyperactive children's sleep.

EEG sleep patterns recorded from 6 hyperactive boys taking methylphenidate daily were compared to those of 6 normal boys. For these hyperactive subjects significant increases in latency to both sleep onset and the first REM period were obtained. Other sleep measures were normal. The hypothesis that the therapeutic effects of stimulants upon hyperactive children are independent of any pathological disruption of sleep was supported.
The quenched Eguchi-Kawai model

Abstract It is argued that spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs in the recently proposed Eguchi-Kawai model. The argument is based on an analytic investigation and on Monte Carlo simulations. A quenched version of the model is proposed which gives good behavior at weak couplings.
POTENTIAL INSOLATION AS A TOPOCLIMATIC CHARACTERISTIC OF DRAINAGE BASINS

Abstract A method is derived for characterizing drainage basins and other land areas in terms of their “average” exposure and potential irradiation by the sun. The most efficient trigonometric and graphical procedures for evaluating potential insolation upon sloping surfaces are selected, and the concept of a “theoretical intercepting surface” is employed to describe terrain elements in terms of a single-valued facet. Applications with secondary experimental data indicate that there is a strong positive correlation between derived “radiation indexes”, and evapotranspiration as measured by the precipitation-runoff difference.
DIRECT AND INDIRECT FITNESS CONSEQUENCES OF FEMALE CHOICE IN A CRUSTACEAN

Understanding the evolution and maintenance of female mate choice requires information on both the benefits (the sum of direct and indirect benefits) and costs of selective mating. In this study, I assessed the fitness consequences of female mate choice in a freshwater crustacean. In Hyalella amphipods, males attempt to form precopulatory pairs with females. Large males, bearing large posterior gnathopods, tend to be over-represented in precopulatory pairs. I show that females receive both direct (reduced risk of predation while paired) and indirect (sexy sons) benefits from mating with these males. Furthermore, the behavioral mechanisms used to filter male phenotypes carry no detectable energetic cost for females. Thus, females that choose males with successful phenotypes are expected to have higher Darwinian fitness than females that mate at random. This study shows that direct and indirect selection act together to favor large male size, which explains the sexual size dimorphism and size-based mating biases observed in this species.
Lack of association between intrachromosomal gene conversion and reciprocal exchange.

The association of reciprocal exchange with intrachromosomal gene conversion has been examined using an inverted repeat at the HIS3 locus of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Intrachromosomal gene conversions between the duplicated inverted sequences are frequent In contrast to gene conversion events between homologous chromosomes, intrachromosomal gene conversion is not associated with reciprocal exchange in flanking sequences. This observation has important consequences for the role of gene conversion in the maintenance of multigene families.
Investigations of solar plasma in the interior and corona from solar dynamics observatory

The Sun is a plasma laboratory for astrophysics, which allows us to investigate many important phenomena in turbulent magnetized plasma in detail. Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launched in February 2010 provides unique information about plasma processes from the interior to the corona. The primary processes of magnetic field generation and formation of magnetic structures are hidden beneath the visible surface. Helioseismic diagnostics, based on observations and analysis of solar oscillations and waves, give insights into the physical processes in the solar interior and mechanisms of solar magnetic activity. In addition, simultaneous highresolution multi-wavelength observations of the solar corona provide opportunity to investigate in unprecedented detail the coronal dynamics and links to the interior processes. These capabilities are illustrated by initial results on the large-scale dynamics of the Sun, the subsurface structure and dynamics of a sunspot and observations of a X-class solar flare.
Automated theorem proving: mapping logic into AI

Logic can be defined as the formal study of reasoning; if we replace “formal” by “mechanical” we can place almost the entire set of methodologies used in the field of automated theorem proving (ATP) within the scope of logic. Because of the goals of ATP, if not always the methodologies, ATP has been considered to be within the domain of AI. We explore the methodologies of ATP, including the logics that underlie the theorem provers, and discuss some of the mechanisms that utilize these logics. These include term rewriting systems, mathematical induction, inductionless induction and even mixed integer programming. The ATP field, via resolution, has even provided the foundation for an exciting AI and database programming language, PROLOG. We conclude with a new method for extending the PROLOG system to work with non-Horn clause sets within a positive logic format, particularly simple for “slightly non-Horn” clause sets.