cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Microbes and Cancer

Commensal microorganisms (the microbiota) live on all the surface barriers of our body and are particularly abundant and diverse in the distal gut. The microbiota and its larger host represent a metaorganism in which the cross talk between microbes and host cells is necessary for health, survival, and regulation of physiological functions locally, at the barrier level, and systemically. The ancestral molecular and cellular mechanisms stemming from the earliest interactions between prokaryotes and eukaryotes have evolved to mediate microbe-dependent host physiology and tissue homeostasis, including innate and adaptive resistance to infections and tissue repair. Mostly because of its effects on metabolism, cellular proliferation, inflammation, and immunity, the microbiota regulates cancer at the level of predisposing conditions, initiation, genetic instability, susceptibility to host immune response, progression, comorbidity, and response to therapy. Here, we review the mechanisms underlying the interaction of the microbiota with cancer and the evidence suggesting that the microbiota could be targeted to improve therapy while attenuating adverse reactions.
Lower Extremity Pain

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), including the back, neck, and upper and lower extremities, are debilitating conditions and, if not treated appropriately, can lead to poor occupational outcomes including reduced productivity, worker absenteeism, and long-term disability. Of these musculoskeletal regions, there is not as much research available on lower extremity injuries and disorders as compared to lumbar and upper extremity musculoskeletal conditions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of all nonfatal work injuries resulting in time away from work, back injuries account for 45.4 %, upper extremity injuries account for 25.5 %, and lower extremity injuries account for 7.2 % (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2011). Given the prevalence of injuries for these musculoskeletal regions, it is understandable why more research on prevalence, risk factors, and treatment outcomes is available for back and upper extremity MSDs. While lower extremity injuries are less prevalent, they are believed to be more debilitating due to the negative impact on mobility and quality of life (Bruchal, 1995).
Faster, smarter computer vision with AI and OpenCL

Learn how to use Intel machine learning and computer vision tools to get from concept to market faster for machine learning applications based on OpenCL and OpenVX. Build a smart camera app using Intel Graphics inference. This presentation will show how a unified set of tools can reduce the complexity of developing heterogeneous machine learning apps - from training a model with input images, to creating a custom classifier, to building an optimized traditional computer vision pipeline around the classifier to create a full computer vision application
Staying the Course: Using Hypnosis to Help Cancer Patients Navigate Their Illness

Although sometimes maligned and often misunderstood, clinical hypnosis can be utilized as a powerful adjunct for the treatment of mind-body conditions, including cancer. Unlike customary medical regimens that treat diseases of the body and psychotherapies that address disorders of the psyche, hypnosis is a uniquely customizable multi-tool that can augment the treatment of both physical and emotional disorders as well as their complex interactions. This article presents a longitudinal, phase-oriented, clinical model that uses hypnosis in a series of sequential interventions that incorporate targeted suggestions to address the unfolding phases of the cancer continuum. Five such phases of the cancer patient's trajectory, along with their associated medical and psychological challenges, are conceptualized. Each phase is illustrated by case examples from the author's clinical practice and by a discussion of relevant hypnotic approaches. On the somatic level, the intrinsic capacities of hypnotic phenomena, paired with suggestions, can be harnessed to effect perceptual and functional changes to offer symptom relief, re-establishment of systemic homeostasis, amelioration of cellular chemistry, and the acceleration of tissue healing. In the psychological realm, hypnotic strategies can be used to provide a much needed continuity of emotional support, a sense of mastery and self-agency, emotional regulation, and behavioral change.
Abstract 2180: Triphenylmethanol conjugates of leuprorelin asanti-cancer prodrugs

Leuprorelin (LEP) is a synthetic analogue of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), first was approved by the FDA for treatment of advanced prostate cancer and endometriosis in 1985. The initial effect of administration LEP is to stimulate the pituitary secretion of FSH and LH. After a prolonged stimulation (constant concentration of LEP in the blood) pituitary becomes insensitive to the action of GnRH. This reduces the level of gonadotropin in the blood, resulting in decreased levels of sex hormones to postcastration or menopausal levels. In addition to the usual side effects of this agonist analogs of LH-RH, other reported adverse effects include transient hypertension, dry mouth, excessive salivation, paraesthesia and increased dysuria. Improving the biological activity of LEP by increasing the cellular uptake and retention is a remedy to this end. In this study, a prodrug strategy has been introduced to optimize the hydrophobicity of LEP by using an appropriate hydrophobic linker attached to tris(4-methoxyphenyl)methanol (TPM) derivatives with the expectation to improve the cellular uptake. In this regard, several LEP conjugates of TPM derivatives with optimized hydrophobicity were synthesized by the reaction of methoxy benzenes (e.g. anisole, 2-fluoroanisole, 2-methylanisole 1,2-dimethoxybenzene or methyl 2-methoxybenzoate and 1,3,5-trioxane, followed by the conjugation with LEP and dodecanedioic acid in the presence of HBTU/DIPEA/DIC in moderate yields. Comparative antiproliferative assays between TPM-LEP conjugates and the corresponding non-covalent physical mixtures of the TPM derivatives and LEP were performed against human Caucasian prostate adenocarcinoma (PC3), human breast cancer cell line (BT549) and mouse pre-adipocytes (3T3-L1) cells and indicated moderare to high inhibition of the cell proliferation at a concentration of 5-100 µM after 24-72 h of incubation. These data suggest that TPM-LEP derivatives with optimized hydrophobicity can be used to improve the biological activity of LEP. Citation Format: Yousef Ahmadibeni, Kaleh Karim, William Boadi. Triphenylmethanol conjugates of leuprorelin asanti-cancer prodrugs [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 2180. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-2180
Seeing the forest beyond the trees: Predicting survival in burn patients with machine learning

Abstract Background This study aims to identify predictors of survival for burn patients at the patient and hospital level using machine learning techniques. Methods The HCUP SID for California, Florida and New York were used to identify patients admitted with a burn diagnosis and merged with hospital data from the AHA Annual Survey. Random forest and stochastic gradient boosting (SGB) were used to identify predictors of survival at the patient and hospital level from the top performing model. Results We analyzed 31,350 patients from 670 hospitals. SGB (AUC 0.93) and random forest (AUC 0.82) best identified patient factors such as age and absence of renal failure (p Conclusions Patient and hospital factors are predictive of survival in burn patients. It is difficult to control patient factors, but hospital factors can inform decisions about where burn patients should be treated.
In suspected PE, 2% of patients with a Wells score > 4 and negative CT pulmonary angiography had VTE at 3 months

Source Citation van der Hulle T, van Es N, den Exter PL, et al. Is a normal computed tomography pulmonary angiography safe to rule out acute pulmonary embolism in patients with a likely clinical pr...
National Patterns of Carotid Revascularization Before and After the Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs Stenting Trial (CREST).

Importance The Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs Stenting Trial (CREST) showed greater safety of carotid artery stenting (CAS) in patients younger than 70 years and carotid endarterectomy (CEA) in those older than 70 years. It is unknown how the result of CREST has influenced carotid revascularization choices in the United States. Objective To evaluate national patterns in CAS performance in patients older than 70 years in the post-CREST (2011-2014) compared with the pre-CREST (2007-2010) era. Design, Setting, and Participants All adults older than 70 years undergoing carotid revascularization in the United States from 2007 to 2014 were retrospectively identified from the 2007-2014 National Inpatient Sample usingInternational Classification of Disease, Ninth Revisionprocedural codes. From 61 324 882 unweighted hospitalizations contained in the 2007-2014 National Inpatient Sample, 494 733 weighted carotid revascularization admissions in adults older than 70 years were identified usingInternational Classification of Disease, Ninth Revisionprocedural codes. Main Outcomes and Measures The proportion of CAS performed in all age groups over time was estimated and multivariable-adjusted models were used to compare the odds of receiving CAS in the pre-CREST with those in the post-CREST era in adults older than 70 years. Results A total of 41.8% of all patients were women, and mean (SE) age at presentation was 78.1 (0.03) years. A total of 16.3% of CAS and 10.1% of CEA procedures were performed in patients with symptomatic stenosis. The proportion of patients older than 70 years receiving CAS increased from 11.9% in the pre-CREST to 13.8% in the post-CREST era (P = .005). In multivariable models, the odds of receiving CAS increased by 13% in all patients older than 70 years in the post-CREST compared with the pre-CREST period (odds ratio [OR], 1.13, 95% CI, 1.00-1.28,P = .04), including symptomatic women (OR, 1.31, 1.05-1.65,P = .02). Symptomatic stenosis (OR 1.39; 95% CI, 1.27-1.52;P Conclusions and Relevance Despite concerns for higher periprocedural complications with CAS in elderly patients, the odds of CAS increased in the post-CREST compared with pre-CREST era in patients older than 70 years, including symptomatic women.
Nature and Human Nature as the Norm in Medical Ethics

A “Catholic perspective on medical morals” should be based in some way on natural law, this being the central theme that underlies most Catholic thought on ethical matters. The expression “natural law,” however, can easily be taken to mean something in the human mind that has no clearly identifiable correlate in the ontological order. In this conference devoted to “foundational issues” I thought it well to redress this impression at the outset. Rather than frame medical ethics in a natural-law context, I focus instead on nature and inquire how it, and more particularly human nature, can function as a norm in medical morals.
SEASONAL PERFORMANCE OF HEAT PUMP WATER HEATERS

ABSTRACT Results are presented for the seasonal performance of two types of heat pump water heaters. First is a heat pump desuperheater in which the heat available in the desuperheater portion of a space heating or cooling heat pump is used to heat water. In winter the desuperheater system converted 11 to 19% of the heat output of the heat pump into hot water at an average coefficient of performance of 1.8. In summer the system recovered 7 to 13% of the electrical energy consumed by the heat pump. Second is a heat pump dedicated solely to making hot water. The heat pump delivered water at 66° and the average coefficient of performance, including tank and cycle losses, winter penalty, and summer cooling effect, was 1.7. A third, new cycle is proposed but not tested, which could improve performance for cases where the water needs to be heated over a wide range of temperatures.
SketchIt: basketball video retrieval using ball motion similarity

A prototype basketball video retrieval system is presented in this paper. Retrieval is based on the similarity of ball motion in the clip with that in the query. The system uses a query-by-sketch paradigm, where the user provides a sketch of the desired ball trajectory. The video data is pre-processed to make the ball motion invariant to camera translation. The next stage is dimensionality reduction wherein we model the ball motion as a set of parabolic trajectories. An R-tree is used to index these parabolic representations and search for similar trajectories in a low dimension parametric space. The query is processed to obtain its parametric representation, and a nearest neighbor search is performed for similar parabolas. These query results are then post-processed by assigning scores based on various similarity criteria. The system could be extended to other types of videos and moving objects. As a proof of concept, the system was tested for ball trajectories in basketball video.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) projects for computer science

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been integrated in a wide variety of modern applications. Students in computer science can learn a great deal about hardware and software by working on projects involving RFID. This paper discusses these RFID projects and their benefits for student learning.
Arthropod (Cyamus scammoni, Amphipoda) Hemoglobin Structure and Function

Respiratory protein expression in the Arthropoda generally occurs along phylogenetic lines. Hemocyanin, the blue, copper-containing respiratory protein, is found in the Chelicerata, in at least one Uniramia and in most of the Crustacea (1, 2). Hemoglobin, despite its ubiquitous appearance in both plant and animal kingdoms, is more limited in distribution amongst the Arthropoda than is He. The red, iron-containing Hb molecule has been described for only a few insects and four classes of Crustacea: the Branchiopoda, Ostracoda, Copepoda and Cirrepedia (3-7). Thus, the occurrence of Hb in an amphipod, a more advanced crustacean belonging to the class Malacostraca, is an unexpected finding. This paper describes preliminary studies on the structure and function of Hb from Cyamus scammoni, a cyamid amphipod that is an obligate ectosymbiont on the gray whale, Eschrictius robustus.
Prognostic impact of KRAS mutation subtype and concurrent genetic mutations in non-small cell lung cancer.

e21023Background: KRAS mutations occur in ~25% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and concurrent genomic alterations may contribute to differences in patient survival. Therefore, ...
The Effect of Recording Montage and Tone Burst Duration on Cervical and Ocular Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential Latency and Amplitude.

Objectives The objectives of this study were (a) to investigate the optimal tone burst duration when recording the cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) and the ocular vestibular ev...
Systemic sclerosis medications and risk of scleroderma renal crisis

Scleroderma Renal Crisis (SRC) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. While prednisone is strongly associated with SRC, there are no previous large cohort studies that have evaluated ace inhibitor (ACEi) calcium channel blocker (CCB), angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB), endothelin receptor blocker (ERB), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), fluticasone, or mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) use in systemic sclerosis (SSc) and the risk of SRC. In this retrospective cohort study of the entire military electronic medical record between 2005 and 2016, we compared the use of ACEi, ARB, CCB, NSAID, ERB, fluticasone, and MMF after SSc diagnosis for 31 cases who subsequently developed SRC to 322 SSc without SRC disease controls. ACEi was associated with an increased risk for SRC adjusted for age, race, and prednisone use [odds ratio (OR) 4.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.6–10.2, P = 0.003]. On stratified analyses, ACEi was only associated with SRC in the presence [OR 5.3, 95% CI 1.1–29.2, p = 0.03], and not the absence of proteinuria. In addition, a doubling of ACEi dose [61% vs. 12%, p < 0.001) and achieving maximum ACEi dose [45% vs. 4%, p < 0.001] after SSc diagnosis was associated with future SRC. CCB, ARB, NSAIDs, ERB, fluticasone, and MMF use were not significantly associated with SRC. ACEi use at SSC diagnosis was associated with an increased risk for SRC. Results suggest that it may be a passive marker of known SRC risk factors, such as proteinuria, or evolving disease. SSC patients that require ACEi should be more closely monitored for SRC.
Immunobiology of chimeric antigen receptor T cells and novel designs.

Advances in the development of immunotherapies have offered exciting new options for the treatment of malignant diseases that are refractory to conventional cytotoxic chemotherapies. The adoptive transfer of T cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) has demonstrated dramatic results in clinical trials and highlights the promise of novel immune-based approaches to the treatment of cancer. As experience with CAR T cells has expanded with longer follow-up and to a broader range of diseases, new obstacles have been identified which limit the potential lifelong benefits of CAR T cell therapy. These obstacles highlight not only the gaps in knowledge of the optimal clinical application of this "living drug", but also gaps in our understanding of the fundamental biology of CAR T cells themselves. In this review, we discuss the obstacles facing CAR T cell therapy, how these relate to our current understanding of CAR T cell biology and approaches to enhance the clinical efficacy of this therapy.
Bordetella pertussis exhibits specific attachment, invasion, and cytotoxic capabilities toward human cancer cells.

3762 In its normal life cycle, B. pertussis attaches to, and invades ciliated epithelia and macrophages of the human airways, using adhesins specialized for certain oligosaccharides and proteins on these cells. Here we report that B. pertussis uses similar mechanisms for invasion of a variety of human cancer cells in vitro, and exhibits potent, invasion-dependent, cytotoxicity. In a 30′ in vitro invasion assay, B. pertussis invaded human SKmel-23 melanoma cells at 20-30 times the rate for normal human melanocytes and fibroblasts. B. pertussis invasion of SKmel-23 cells was inhibited by preincubation of cancer cells with glycosidase F, the plant lectins LPHA and TGP, human antibodies vs CD15 and CD11b, or the RGD tripeptide sequence—implying that the structural requirements for invasion included β1,6-branched N-glycans, Lewis × antigens, CD11b, and the sequence arg-gly-asp respectivelly. Invasion was also inhibited by preincubation of cancer cells with 3-methyladenine (3-MA), indicating a role for phagolysosomal vacuole formation in uptake of B. pertussis by the cancer cells. When fixed, paraffin-embedded sections of human cancers were re-hydrated, incubated with B. pertussis, and then stained with LPHA for β1,6-branched N-glycans, bacteria were seen attached specifically to the sugar-rich regions of the tumors. Exposure of human SKmel-23 melanoma, MCF-7 breast carcinoma, or A549 lung carcinoma cells in culture to Bordetella pertussis caused marked morphological changes and massive lysis of the cells. Lysis was largely prevented by simultaneous treatment with 3-MA. B. pertussis targeted A549 human lung carcinomas growing s.c. in nu/nu mice. Regarding tumor growth, in an on-going experiment with A549 tumors, in the 8 saline-injected control mice, each individual tumor increased in size over 77 days with a mean 15-fold increase in mass. In contrast, of the 16 bacteria-injected mice, each tumor eventually ceased growing or decreased in mass, such that at 77 days after initiation of treatment, the mean tumor size was unchanged from the starting size, with several cases of regression and scarring. Regarding safety, i.v.-injected B. pertussis showed no toxicity toward the mice after repeated injections of the highest dose of bacteria tested (5 × 108 cfu/mouse). Thus for a number of reasons, B. pertussis appears to be a promising new anticancer vector.
The need for nuance: Relationships between EL English proficiency and accountability outcomes

Federal law requires states and school districts to institute accountability systems that report disaggregated student data to ensure that all children make academic progress. However, one of the m...
Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt Creation Using a Radiofrequency Wire: Prospective Clinical Safety and Feasibility Trial in Cirrhosis.

Abstract Purpose To assess the safety and feasibility of using a radiofrequency (RF) wire for portosystemic shunt creation. Materials and Methods Ten patients undergoing elective creation of a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) or a direct intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (DIPS) were prospectively enrolled. Primary outcomes were the safety and feasibility of RF wire used for the creation of TIPS and DIPS. Median age was 66.5 ± 6.1 years. Causes of liver disease included alcohol (n = 5), nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (n = 2), hepatitis C virus (n = 1), primary biliary cirrhosis (n = 1), autoimmune hepatitis (n = 1). The median score for model for end-stage liver disease was 11 ± 4.3. The Rosch-Uchida TIPS set was used with intravascular ultrasonography guidance in all cases. A 0.035-inch RF wire was used in lieu of the trocar needle through the 5-F TIPS set catheter to create a track between the hepatic vein and the portal vein. All shunts were created using stent grafts. Results Technical success rate was 100%. In 7 of 10 patients, portal vein access was achieved with a single pass. A DIPS was created in 2 patients based on anatomic favorability. Median fluoroscopy time was 13.3 ± 3.8 min, and median total procedure time was 102 ± 19 min. The wire passed through parenchyma without subjective deflection. There was 1 case of extracapsular puncture with no clinical consequence. The RF wire was too stiff to curve into the main portal vein, requiring wire exchange in all but 1 case. Mean portosystemic gradient decreased from 13.9 ± 3.3 to 5.9 ± 2.1 mm Hg. No immediate complications were encountered. Shunt patency was 100% at 30 days. Conclusions Creation of TIPS and DIPS using an RF wire was safe and feasible, enabling creation of an intrahepatic track without subjective deflection in cirrhotic patients.
Climate extremes may be more important than climate means when predicting species range shifts

It is well known that temperatures across the globe are rising, but climatic conditions are becoming more variable as well. Forecasts of species range shifts, however, often focus on average climatic changes while ignoring increasing climatic variability. In particular, many species distribution models use space-for-time substitution, which focuses exclusively on the effect of average climatic conditions on the target species across a geographic range, and is blind to the possibility of range-wide population collapse with increasing drought frequency, drought severity, or climate effects on other co-occurring species. Relegated to assessments of broad demographic patterns that ignore underlying biological responses to increasing climatic variability, this prevalent method of distribution forecasting may systematically underpredict climate change impacts. We compare six models of survival and abundance of a subcanopy tree species, Taxus brevifolia, over 40 years of past climate change to disentangle multiple sources of uncertainty: model formulation, scale of climate effect, and level of biological organization. We show that drought extremes increased Taxus individual- and population-scale mortality across a wide geographic climate gradient, precluding detection of a monotonic relationship with average climate. Individual-scale climatic extremes models derived from longitudinal data had the highest predictive accuracy (82%), whereas mean climate models had the lowest accuracy (< 65%). Our results highlight that conclusions drawn from forecasts of average warming alone likely underpredict climate change impacts by ignoring indicators of range-wide population declines for species sensitive to increasing climatic variability.
How I learned to stop worrying about user-visible endpoints and love MPI

MPI+threads is gaining prominence as an alternative to the traditional "MPI everywhere" model in order to better handle the disproportionate increase in the number of cores compared with other on-node resources. However, the communication performance of MPI+threads can be 100x slower than that of MPI everywhere. Both MPI users and developers are to blame for this slowdown. MPI users traditionally have not exposed logical communication parallelism. Consequently, MPI libraries have used conservative approaches, such as a global critical section, to maintain MPI's ordering constraints for MPI+threads, thus serializing access to the underlying parallel network resources and limiting performance. To enhance the communication performance of MPI+threads, researchers have proposed MPI Endpoints as a user-visible extension to the MPI-3.1 standard. MPI Endpoints allows a single process to create multiple MPI ranks within a communicator. This could, in theory, allow each thread to have a dedicated communication path to the network, thus avoiding resource contention between threads and improving performance. The onus of mapping threads to endpoints, however, would then be on domain scientists. In this paper we play the role of devil's advocate and question the need for such user-visible endpoints. We certainly agree that dedicated communication channels are critical. To what extent, however, can we hide these channels inside the MPI library without modifying the MPI standard and thus unburden the user? More important, what functionality would we lose through such abstraction? This paper answers these questions through a new implementation of the MPI-3.1 standard that uses multiple virtual communication interfaces (VCIs) inside the MPI library. VCIs abstract underlying network contexts. When users expose parallelism through existing MPI mechanisms, the MPI library maps that parallelism to the VCIs, relieving the domain scientists from worrying about endpoints. We identify cases where user-exposed parallelism on VCIs perform as well as user-visible endpoints, as well as cases where such abstraction hurts performance.
Male Aggregation in Dwarf Tyrant-Manakins and What It Tells Us about the Origin of Leks

Despite considerable research on lek-breeding birds, many aspects of the evolution of the lek social system, including the origin of male aggregation, remain unresolved. Originally, clusters may have formed passively as a by-product of independent but concurrent responses by males to some external stimulus (e.g., a concentration of display sites, prominent food source, or a travel corridor commonly used by females) that drew them at a particular time to a site where they might increase their probabilities of encountering females. In contrast, male aggregation may have been active, with a male purposely seeking to associate with another male (or males) because proximity to that male allowed him to enhance his own reproductive success by improving his ability to attract females (i.e., learning from his associate) or to intercept females attracted to that male. To identify factors important in the formation of male aggregations, I studied these alternatives in the Dwarf Tyrant-Manakin (Tyranneutes stolzmanni), a species in which some breeding males occupy solitary courts where they attempt to attract females for reproduction, whereas other males occupy courts clustered into leks, where they interact to attract females. I compared habitat characteristics and resource availability at courts of grouped and solitary males as well as certain traits of the males in an attempt to distinguish between passive or active lek formation in this species. Little evidence suggests that Dwarf Tyrant-Manakins are passively clustered as a result of common attraction to or use of a limited or unevenly distributed resource. Several observations suggest the contrary. Evidence for the active aggregation of males is more promising, suggesting that males may associate with other males on the basis of their vocal behavior. The issue is confounded, however, by the observation that male call behavior appears to change with a change in social status. A definitive answer for T. stolzmanni will require additional analyses of vocal behavior as well as of the characteristics of the vocalizations themselves. Finally, the behavior and social organization of this species may reflect characteristics of the ancestral manakin line that gave rise to both the Tyrant and Core clades of modern manakins.
HIV Neuroinflammation: The Role of Exosomes in Cell Signaling, Prognostic and Diagnostic Biomarkers and Drug Delivery

Fifty to sixty percent of HIV-1 positive patients experience HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) likely due to persistent inflammation and blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction. The role that microglia and astrocytes play in HAND pathogenesis has been well delineated; however, the role of exosomes in HIV neuroinflammation and neuropathogenesis is unclear. Exosomes are 50-150 nm phospholipid bilayer membrane vesicles that are responsible for cell-to-cell communication, cellular signal transduction, and cellular transport. Due to their diverse intracellular content, exosomes, are well poised to provide insight into HIV neuroinflammation as well as provide for diagnostic and predictive information that will greatly enhance the development of new therapeutic interventions for neuroinflammation. Exosomes are also uniquely positioned to be vehicles to delivery therapeutics across the BBB to modulate HIV neuroinflammation. This mini-review will briefly discuss what is known about exosome signaling in the context of HIV in the central nervous system (CNS), their potential for biomarkers as well as their potential for vehicles to deliver various therapeutics to treat HIV neuroinflammation.
Intensified continuous extraction of switchable hydrophilicity solvents triggered by carbon dioxide

Green solvent utilization and recovery enabled by switchable hydrophilicity solvents (SHSs), using carbon dioxide as the switching trigger, offer intriguing advantages in sustainable chemistry. To further elevate SHSs, an intensified continuous flow strategy is presented, providing an accurate in situ reaction monitoring and a scalable green solvent extraction route.
Identifying the Inter-Domain Relations Among ODD, CD, and CU Traits in Preschool Children Using Network Analysis

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) are two of the most common forms of disruptive behavior disorders during childhood. Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are an important factor in understanding the presentation of these externalizing forms of psychopathology. ODD, CD, and CU traits are highly related constructs, yet little work has examined how these externalizing forms of psychopathology are related at the domain level. The current study utilized network analysis to identify the distinct domains that explain the associations among ODD, CD, and CU traits. In a sample of 104 preschoolers (M age = 4.76), results demonstrated that the symptom domains of (a) angry/irritable mood and argumentative/defiant behavior, (b) aggression to people and animals, and (c) callousness were the primary bridge domains for ODD, CD, and CU traits, respectively. Findings of the current study offer a more nuanced insight into the relations amongst ODD, CD, and CU traits. Identification of bridge symptom domains can inform intervention practices by targeting specific symptom domains that are contributing to the maintenance of such aggressive and disruptive behaviors.
A Call to Action for Cultural Humility in Pharmacy Education Student Assessments

An important topic in conversation on the education of pharmacy students has evolved around methods of pedagogy and assessment, and attention to diversity and inclusion. Well-intentioned educators may introduce bias into their teachings and assessment tools by focusing on diseases with a higher rate of presentation in minorities, without engaging in conversations as to why these health disparities may exist. When considering the content and structure of a curriculum, it is also important to review its assessment tools, with attention to cultural humility in multiple-choice examinations, case-based presentations and even observed structured clinical examinations. Disregarding this component of the conversation may lead students to have an unconscious impression that social constructs are biological markers for a disease. Students will recall not only what they learned in a classroom setting, but often the content included in their assessments as well. By writing test items that are culturally responsible, unconscious bias can be reduced and test items can better measure the knowledge that educators intend to assess. As pharmacy educators perform programmatic reviews, attention should be directed towards unconscious bias not only in the curricula but also in its evaluation and assessment tools.
A class of identifiable phylogenetic birth-death models

In a striking result, Louca and Pennell (2020) recently proved that a large class of phylogenetic birth-death models are statistically unidentifiable from lineage-through-time (LTT) data: any pair of sufficiently smooth birth and death rate functions is "congruent99 to an infinite collection of other rate functions, all of which have the same likelihood for any LTT vector of any dimension. As Louca and Pennell argue, this fact has distressing implications for the thousands of studies that have utilized birth-death models to study evolution. In this paper, we qualify their finding by proving that an alternative and widely used class of birth-death models is indeed identifiable. Specifically, we show that piecewise constant birth-death models can, in principle, be consistently estimated and distinguished from one another, given a sufficiently large extant time tree and some knowledge of the present-day population. Subject to mild regularity conditions, we further show that any unidentifiable birth-death model class can be arbitrarily closely approximated by a class of identifiable models. The sampling requirements needed for our results to hold are explicit, and are expected to be satisfied in many contexts such as the phylodynamic analysis of a global pandemic.
9/11 and Social Studies Education: A Critique of Perpetual War and the Possibility of a More Peaceful Future

In this article, the author shares a personal reflection of his military and educational experiences in the aftermath of 9/11. He describes his concerns about the ongoing “War on Terror” and the disengaged militarism of the United States and how this has shaped his approach in the classroom. Expanding on his personal experiences, he calls for social studies educators to employ critical pedagogy and peace education to help students develop as thoughtfully and critically engaged citizens who are capable of creating a more peaceful world.
An exploration of information-seeking behavior in emergency management

Groups in risky, time-constrained situations may be confronted with problems that cannot be solved by following predefined procedures. This study explores the impact of various factors on group information-seeking behavior in such situations. A simulated experiment in emergency scenarios was conducted with both expert and novice groups with or without decision support tools. The results suggest that, while patterns of information-seeking were similar between experts and novices, experts conducted a more efficient search than novices. Efforts of information-seeking made by group members who play different roles are different between supported and unsupported groups, but both groups look for similar information no matter whether they are provided with decision support or not. The paper concludes with a set of observations on group information-seeking behavior, and discusses the possible impact of information-seeking differences on decision making performance.
Permeability Properties of Rickettsia mooseri

The passive permeability properties of Rickettsia mooseri to both inorganic and organic solutes have been examined. Visual observations by phase-contrast microscopy of rickettsiae in macerated yolk sacs taken directly from heavily infected eggs revealed plasmolysis with hypertonic NaCl and KCl as well as with sucrose solutions. In contrast, similar visual studies of rickettsiae which had been subjected to freezing or to a purification process, or both, were plasmolyzed by hypertonic sucrose but not by hypertonic NaCl and KCl. These primary observations were extended to a variety of solutes and were placed on a quantitative basis by use of optical density and radioisotope dilution methods. Intracellular Na+ and K+ concentrations in processed rickettsiae, measured by flame photometry, closely paralleled the concentration of these ions in the suspending medium. It was concluded that R. mooseri appears to possess an osmotically active, functional, and structural membrane distinct from the cell wall, located at the surface of a structure analogous to the bacterial protoplast. In the intact organism, this membrane is passively impermeable to sucrose, NaCl, and KCl. However, altered permeability properties, especially to inorganic electrolytes, may be expected in rickettsiae which have been stored in the frozen state and subjected to a lengthy purification process.
Infantile spasms: criteria for an animal model.

Abstract Infantile spasms is an epilepsy syndrome with several distinctive features, including age specificity during infancy, characteristic semiology (epileptic spasms), specific electroencephalographic patterns (interictal hypsarrhythmia and ictal voltage suppression), and responsiveness to the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). There is no adequate animal model of infantile spasms, perhaps due to these clinically unique features, that is specific for the developing human brain. An informative animal model would provide insights into the pathophysiology of this syndrome and form the basis for the development of innovative therapies. This chapter considers criteria for an “ideal” animal model of infantile spasms, as well as “minimal” criteria that we consider essential to yield useful information. Two animal models of infantile spasms have been described in rodents: seizures induced by corticotropin-releasing factor and N -methyl- d -aspartic acid. Neither of these models conforms exactly to the human analog, but each possesses intriguing similarities that provide testable hypotheses for future investigations.
An Assessment of Constraint-Based Tutors: A Response to Mitrovic and Ohlsson's Critique of A Comparison of Model-Tracing and Constraint-Based Intelligent Tutoring Paradigms

Model tracing and constraint-based modeling are two prominent paradigms on which intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) have been based. We Kodaganallur, Weitz and Rosenthal (2005), have written a paper comparing the two paradigms, and offering guidance based on this comparison to prospective authors of ITSs. In a detailed critique of our paper, Mitrovic and Ohlsson (2006) have taken issue with many of our observations and conclusions. In this work we refute their critique and provide a more general, critical assessment of constraint-based modeling.
Do government purchases crowd out investment

The objective of this study is to determine whether federal government purchases negatively impact private investment using times series regression analysis. This study uses quarterly data from the years 1986.1 to 2004.4 in order to provide a relatively contemporary evaluation of the effects of federal purchases on private investment. The empirical results in this study reveal that increases in federal urchases, expressed as a percent of GDP, act to reduce new investment, which provides further support for the theory that government expenditures crowd out private investment. (JEL: E22, E62)
Recreational waterslide injuries

Recreational waterslide facilities are a growing phenomenon in the United States, and injuries associated with their use are beginning to appear. Although there have been fatalities, the vast majority of injuries are minor, and occur over a large denominator of slide rides. The overall incidence of injuries is low, though the incidence varies from one facility to another. If safety practices and design features are implemented, waterslide use may become safer. Epidemiologic data will be required to clearly identify the optimal features of injury prevention.
Studies of light charged particle emission from fission and ER reactions in the system 344 MeV 28Si+121Sb→149Tb (E∗=240 MeV)

Abstract Light charged particles (LCP) have been measured for the reaction 344 MeV 28 Si + 121 Sb in singles and in coincidence with evaporation residues (ER), fusion–fission fragments (FF), and other LCP. A major feature of this experiment was the use of a gas-filled magnetic spectrometer in the forward direction to separate ER from the much more abundant yield of elastically scattered projectiles and projectile-like fragments. The dominant sources of evaporative 1 H and 4 He emission are the ER (approximately 75%), with the remainder being largely associated with fission reactions. For these latter reactions, most of the 1 H and 4 He can be well accounted for by evaporation from the composite system prior to fission and by evaporation from the postfission fragments. LCP emission cross sections were determined for each identified source, and a comparison has been made to previous studies. From this comparison, indications were found for significant entrance channel effects, with the more asymmetric channels exhibiting much larger LCP cross sections. Statistical model predictions for ER emissions are in good agreement with observed LCP energy spectra, angular distributions, and integrated inclusive and exclusive cross sections, with all calculations using the same unique set of model parameters. This result contrasts strongly with recent reports for light mass systems, where model calculations were unable to simultaneously reproduce all observables.
New Atmospheres for Modelling Binaries and Disks

I have used my newly calculated iron group line list together with my earlier atomic and molecular line data, 58,000,000 lines total, to compute new opacities for the temperature range 2000K to 200000K. Calculations have been completed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center for 56 temperatures, for 21 pressures, for microturbulent velocities 0, 1, 2, 4, and 8 km/s, for 3,500,000 wavelength points divided into 1221 intervals from 10 to 10000 nm, for scaled solar abundances [+1.0], [+0.5], [+0.3], [+0.2], [+0.1], [+0.0], [−0.1], [−0.2], [−0.3], [−0.5], [4.0], [−1.5], [−2.0], [−2.5], [−3.0], [−3.5], [−4.0], [−4.5], and [−5.0]. I have rewritten my model atmosphere program to use the new line opacities, additional continuous opacities, and an approximate treatment of convective overshooting. The opacity calculation was checked by computing a new theoretical solar model that matches the observed irradiance. Thus far I have completed a grid of 7000 model atmospheres at 2 km/s for all the abundances, for the temperature range 3500K to 50000K, and for log g from 0.0 to 5.0. This grid will allow a consistent theoretical treatment of photometry from K stars to B stars. Fluxes and intensities are tabulated from.09 to 160 micrometers. Preliminary results are reported for many photometric systems. Work is underway on grids for other microturbulent velocities. Microturbulent velocity strongly affects the interpretation of Cepheid and RR Lyrae photometry. The models, fluxes, intensities, and colors are available on magnetic tape and will also be distributed on CD-ROMs.
Structural Vulnerability Among Migrating Women and Children Fleeing Central America and Mexico: The Public Health Impact of "Humanitarian Parole".

Since October 2013, US Customs and Border Patrol (USCBP) has apprehended 15,979 families on the Southwest Border of the United States. Daily, migrating women and children from Mexico and Central America that qualify for humanitarian parole are released from immigration detention to a humanitarian aid organization in Southern Arizona. After several days in detention facilities, these families arrive tired, hungry, dehydrated, and with minimal direction regarding their final destination, and adherence to the parameters of their parole. Project Helping Hands (PHH) utilizes a network of volunteers to provide the women and children with food, water, clothing, hygiene products, hospitality, and legal orientation. The aim of this assessment was to document the experiences of families granted humanitarian parole through the lens of structural vulnerability. Here we apply qualitative methods to elicit PHH lead volunteer perspectives regarding the migration experience of migrating families. Using inductive analysis, we found six major themes emerged from the qualitative data: reasons for leaving, experience on the journey, dehumanization in detention, family separation, vulnerability, and resiliency. These findings elucidate the different physical and psychological distresses that migrating families from Mexico and Central America experience before, during and after their arrival at the US-Mexico border. We posit that these distresses are a result of, or exacerbated by, structural vulnerability. Structural vulnerability has life-long health implications for a sub-population of young mothers and their children. The number of migrating families who have experienced traumatic events before, and during their migration experience continues to expand and thus warrants consideration of mental health surveillance and intervention efforts for these families. More public health research is needed to better understand and combat the health challenges of this growing population.
Pathogenesis of experimental skin infections induced by drug-resistant herpes simplex virus mutants.

The comparative analysis of the pathogenicity of a parental herpes simplex virus type 1 strain and its phosphonoacetic acid (PAA)-resistant and acyclovir (ACV)-resistant mutants showed marked differences among them. After orofacial skin inoculation of hairless mice the parental and PAA-resistant viruses were detected during the first 4 days after infection at high and increasing titers in the trigeminal ganglia; the ACV-resistant mutant was present at low and decreasing titers in the ganglia. Severe and slow-healing skin lesions were produced by the parental and PAA-resistant viruses; mild and rapidly healing lesions were produced by the ACV-resistant mutant. Virus titers in ganglia and the intensity of skin lesions were related to the virus dose used in the primary infection. Latent infections became established in trigeminal ganglia of mice inoculated with 106.0 plaque-forming units of the parental or PAA-resistant virus; no latent infections were detected in ganglia of mice inoculated with 107.0 plaque-forming units of the ACV-resistant mutant. Serum antibody titers attained similar values 4 weeks after primary infection with both mutants and the parental virus. Mice infected with the ACV-resistant mutant were reinfected with the parental and PAA-resistant viruses; the degree of protection against development of skin lesions, mortality, and latency was related to the dose of ACV-resistant virus used in the primary infection. Mortality was prevented by a dose of 106.0 plaque-forming units, skin lesions were prevented by a dose of 106.5 plaque-forming units, and latency was prevented by a dose of 107.0 plaque-forming units of the ACV-resistant mutant. Protection against reinfection with the PAA-resistant mutant was achieved with lower doses than protection against the parental virus. Serum antibody titers showed a 4- to 15-fold increase after reinfection. The results suggest that the ACV-resistant, latency-negative mutant has many attributes of a live attenuated herpes simplex virus vaccine.