cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Mechanical Thrombectomy in Wake-Up Strokes: A Case Series Using Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) for Patient Selection

Background There is lack of published studies on mechanical thrombectomy with stent retrievers for wake-up stroke (WUS). Objective To report the outcomes of WUS patients with large vessel occlusions, selected for intervention based on Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) and treated with stent retrievers or primary aspiration thrombectomy. Methods Data were collected retrospectively for each consecutive WUS patient undergoing mechanical thrombectomy with a stent retriever or primary aspiration catheter between February 2015 and September 2016. ASPECTS ≥ 6 was used as the primary imaging criterion for offering thrombectomy in these WUS patients. Main outcomes were the in-hospital improvement in the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) and the occurrence of symptomatic hemorrhage. Results Twelve patients were included in this study; 11 were treated with stent retrievers and 1 was treated with primary aspiration thrombectomy alone. Successful recanalization was achieved in 100% of the patients (33% thrombolysis in cerebral infarction [TICI] 2B and 67% TICI 3). Every patient experienced a reduction in the NIHSS during hospitalization, with a mean NIHSS decrease of 11.1 ± 5.1 points. There was a trend for a larger reduction in the NIHSS in patients with TICI 3 compared to TICI 2B recanalization. There was no symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage in our cohort. Conclusions For patients with WUS, careful selection of patients using ASPECTS may allow for safe interventions, with low risk of clinical deterioration, and no-periprocedural mortality. All our patients demonstrated a reduction in their NIHSS after the thrombectomy and clinical improvement.
Drag’s Double Inversion: Insufficient Language and Gender Performativity in The Well of Loneliness and Nightwood

Contemporary critics often object to the outdated, binary representations of gender and sexuality present in two of the earliest lesbian novels, The Well of Loneliness and Nightwood, arguing they h...
A Methodology for Selecting Auditory Icons for Use in Commercial Motor Vehicles

This paper describes work carried out to investigate the selection of auditory icons within the domain of commercial motor vehicles. Auditory icons are representational sounds in that they have specific, stereotypical meanings. While typical non-verbal sounds are defined by their particular acoustic parameters, auditory icons are defined by the objects or actions that created the sounds. Previously, researchers have relied on expert opinion to assign meaning to auditory icons; however, problems have arisen when the experimenter-selected meanings did not agree with users' opinions. Attention was focused on the auditory icons' perceived meaning and perceived urgency in an attempt to reduce the influence of experimenter bias in the auditory icon selection process.
Conversing about aging and practice

ABSTRACTUsing four open-ended questions, individual conversations were conducted with 20 professionals from 10 fields of practice in aging. Professionals were over 60 years of age, had worked in the field at least 10 years, and personally considered themselves elders. This project found that they were aware of their personal aging process, were knowledgeable about resources, had considered their values, beliefs, and interests, and had developed an “aging plan” that would optimize a meaningful and enjoyable quality of life. They generally viewed themselves positively, had a strong sense of identity, accepted the changes that come with aging, and maintained an active and engaged lifestyle. They understood the commonalities of aging, but also respected and valued the uniqueness of each individual’s experiences. Aging had significantly affected their professional practice as well, primarily by increasing empathy, sensitivity, understanding, and patience, as well as through greater awareness and special attent...
Hospital safety-net burden does not predict differences in rectal cancer treatment and outcomes.

Abstract Background Safety-net hospitals have been shown to have inferior short-term surgical outcomes. The aim of this study was to compare rectal cancer management and survival across hospitals stratified by payer mix. Materials and methods Rectal cancer patients ( n = 296,068) were identified using the 1998-2010 National Cancer Data Base. Hospitals were grouped into safety-net burden categories, according to the proportion of patients with Medicaid or no health insurance, as follows: low-, medium-, and high-burden hospitals (HBHs). Patient and tumor characteristics, processes of care, and outcomes were evaluated, and regression analysis was used to investigate correlations between hospital safety-net burden on patient survival. Results HBH encountered patients with more advanced disease ( P P > 0.05). The 30-day readmissions and mortality were also similar across safety-net groups (all P > 0.05). Multivariate analysis showed no difference in survival between HBH and low-burden hospital ( P = 0.164). Conclusions Hospital payer mix may not adversely influence management of rectal cancer. This study highlights potential areas to improve cancer care for vulnerable patient populations.
Treatment Patterns Among Women Diagnosed With Stage I-III Triple-negative Breast Cancer

Objective:To examine contemporary treatment patterns for women diagnosed with stage I-III triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in the United States.Methods:We identified 48,961 patients diagnosed with stage I-III TNBC from 2010 to 2013 in the National Cancer Data Base and created 3 treatment subcoho
Relational Identification and Forgiveness: Facilitating Relationship Resilience

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between relational identification, forgiveness, and relationship resilience. We conducted two different studies: study 1 (n = 177) employed the critical incident technique to assess responses to offenses committed by a coworker; study 2 (n = 298) conducted a field study of working professionals to evaluate responses to offenses committed by a supervisor. Within both coworker and supervisor-subordinate relationships, those who identify with the relational other are more likely to forgive. Forgiveness facilitates relationship resilience such that the relationship becomes stronger than it was prior to the offense. We suggest that understanding the influence of relational identification and forgiveness on relationship resilience may be a key to unlocking stronger workplace relationships that become increasingly resistant to the negative effects of workplace offenses. Knowing that offenses can serve as an impetus toward stronger relationships (rather than a thrust toward impoverished relationships) is essential in dynamic work environments where offenses are inevitable. We examined how relationships that endure relational adversity well become stronger as a result of forgiveness. We replicated and extended our findings across methods and contexts, demonstrating the pervasiveness of the proposed relationships.
Gender-Related Effects in Emotional Responding to Resolved and Unresolved Interpersonal Conflict

The current study examines gender differences in affective responding of 58 men and 52 women to various forms of resolved and unresolved interpersonal disputes. The participants were predominantly Caucasians from middle to upper middle class socioeconomic backgrounds. Resolved disputes were perceived as less angry and more okay and happy, and unresolved disputes evoked more anger than resolved disputes did, with continued fighting evoking more anger than did lapsing into the silent treatment. Women reported feeling more angry than did men during both forms of unresolved disputes, and more happy during arguments ending with either apologies or compromises. Men perceived the actors as more sad and reported feeling more okay during arguments than did women. The results extend findings from the children's literature regarding the effect of resolution on emotional responding, and illustrate important gender differences for adults.
Preclinical Models and Experience to Date

In the last decade, therapeutic angiogenesis in cardiovascular diseases has been extensively investigated using a variety of animal models. Recently, there have been great efforts to begin such research in human trials. There is still, however, an ongoing need for continued preclinical investigations to illuminate the complexity of angiogenic agents. Therapeutic modalities including autologous stem cell transplantation, targeted protein delivery, prolonged protein half-life, and various combination therapies are only some of the areas that require further investigation.
Role of cAMP during the Process of Demyelination and Remyelination in Peripheral Nerve

Myelin is a multilamellar structure that surrounds axons to increase axonal conduction velocity and provide trophic support. In the peripheral nervous system, it is formed by the spiral wrapping of the cell membrane of myelinating Schwann cells (SCs) around axons. The SC phenotype is dependent on its association with an axon. Axonal contact Induces the expression of myelin-specific proteins, including P0, myelin basic protein, peripheral myelin protein-22, and myelin associated glycoprotein (Wood and Engel, 1976; Uyemura et al., 1979; Carson et al., 1983; Poduslo, 1984; Gupta et al., 1988; Lemke and Chao, 1988; LeBlanc and Poduslo, 1990). With the onset of myelination, the amount of these myelin proteins and the steady state levels of their mRNAs increases dramatically.
Convexification and Real-Time Optimization for MPC with Aerospace Applications

This chapter gives an overview of recent developments of convexification and real-time convex optimization based control methods, in the context of Model Predictive Control (MPC). Lossless Convexification is a technique that formulates a class of non-convex control constraints as equivalent convex ones, while Successive Convexification gives an algorithm that targets nonlinear dynamics and certain non-convex state constraints. A large class of real-world optimal control problems can be solved with either method or a combination of both. For some time-critical applications, such as autonomous vehicles, it is crucial to have real-time capabilities. The real-time solution to these problems requires highly efficient customized convex programming solvers, which is also discussed as a part of this chapter. The effectiveness of convexification methods and real-time computation is demonstrated by a planetary soft landing problem throughout the chapter.
Cleavage Blastomere Deletion and Transplantation to Test Cell Fate Commitment in Xenopus

Fate maps identify the precursors of an organ, and tracing the members of a blastomere lineage over time shows how its descendants come to populate that organ. The fates of the individual blastomeres of the two- to 32-cell Xenopus embryo have been fully mapped to reveal which cells are the major contributors to various cell types, tissues, and organs. However, because these fate maps were produced in the normal embryo, they do not reveal whether a precursor blastomere is competent to give rise to additional tissues or is already committed to its fate-mapped repertoire of descendants. To identify the mechanisms by which a cell's fate is committed, one needs to expose the cell to different experimental environments. If the cell's fate is determined, it will express its normal fate or gene expression profile in novel environments, whereas if it is not yet determined it will express different fates or gene expression profiles when exposed to novel external factors or neighboring cells. This protocol describes two techniques for testing cell fate commitment: single cell deletion and single cell transplantation. Deleting a blastomere allows one to test whether the deleted cell is required for the remaining cells to produce their normal, specific cell fates. Transplanting a blastomere to a novel location in a host embryo allows one to test whether the transplanted cell is committed to produce its normal fate-mapped repertoire, or whether it is still competent to respond to novel cell-cell interactions.
Periodic event-triggered dynamic output feedback control of switched systems

Abstract This paper considers the problem of co-design of a dynamic output feedback controller and a periodic event-triggering mechanism for control of switched systems under limited communication resources. The dynamic output feedback controller is designed to utilize quantized output measurements which can reduce the load on communication; a logarithmic quantizer model is assumed. The event-triggering mechanism is designed to detect events periodically which can significantly reduce sampling frequency and preclude the occurrence of Zeno behavior due to continuous-time sampling. The governing equations of the physical system combined with the equations of the dynamic output feedback controller and the event-triggering mechanism are formulated as a switched delay system. For the closed-loop switched delay system, sufficient conditions in terms of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) are obtained to achieve exponential stability with a prescribed L 2 − L ∞ attenuation performance with respect to an exogenous disturbance; both weighted and non-weighted performance can be achieved with the proposed approach. Tools and techniques from delay-dependent Lyapunov theory, free-weighting matrices, Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), and average dwell time for switched systems are used to obtain the main results. A synthesis procedure is provided for obtaining the dynamic output feedback controller gains, event-triggering condition parameters, and a lower bound on the average dwell time of the switching signal. Numerical simulation results on a switched boost converter circuit system are provided to evaluate the proposed design and results.
SMAP Tropical Cyclone Size and Intensity Validation

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission was launched January 31st, 2015. It is designed to measure the soil moisture over land using a combined active / passive L-band system. Due to the Aquarius mission, L-band model functions for ocean winds and salinity are already mature and may be directly applied to the SMAP mission. In contrast to Aquarius, the higher resolution and scanning geometry of SMAP allows for wide-swath ocean winds and salinities to be retrieved. We have found that the SMAP radiometer displays sensitivity all the way up to the most extreme wind speeds, possibly as high as 70 m/s, far beyond what is capable with typical C and Ku-band ocean wind scatterometers. In previous work we have validated the SMAP high wind speeds against Rapid Scatterometer (RapidScat) and Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR). In this work we consider the size of the SMAP cyclones and compare them to the Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting (ATCF) system B-deck files and we update the SFMR analysis with an additional year of data to strengthen the previous conclusions.
Waste Not, Want Not: "Waste" as a Tool of Resource Conservation in the Atlantic Canadian Offshore

As the Atlantic Canadian oil and gas industry continues to mature, offshore regulators face new and varied issues as they work to implement the objectives of the Atlantic Accords. Laws that were largely developed before the Atlantic Canadian offshore contained producing projects are now being applied to a diverse and evolving industry. As is often the case, laws, as expressed on paper, can prove difficult to apply to each unique set of circumstances that arises in practice.Fundamentally, many of the powers of the Atlantic Canadian offshore regulators rely on the concept of “waste.” An offshore regulator can order a company to commence, continue, or increase production of petroleum where it is of the opinion that such an order “would stop waste.” Conversely, the regulators may order a decrease, cessation, or suspension of the production of petroleum for the same reason. In certain situations of “waste,” the Accord Acts provide for a “forced marriage” via compulsory unitization.While “waste” is instrumental to the authority of the offshore regulators, by necessity its definition is open to some interpretation. This article will explore various interpretations of “waste,” and examine the role of waste in the Atlantic Canadian offshore regimes.
Transfer learning using low-dimensional subspaces for EMG-based classification of hand posture

This study proposes a novel approach for evaluating the task invariance of muscle synergies, vital for potential implementation in improving prosthetic hand control. We do this by using a transfer learning paradigm to test for invariance across a relatively small set of hand/forearm muscle synergies, derived from electromyographic (EMG) activation patterns during voluntary behaviors such as finger spelling and grasp mimicking postures and unconstrained exploration. EMG for each task were decomposed using non-negative matrix factorization into synergy and weight matrices, and cross-task weights for each task were then reconstructed by employing the base matrices from different tasks. Support Vector Machine and Extreme Learning Machine classifiers were used to classify the resulting weights in order to compare their performance, as well as their behaviors as a function of synergy rank. Both algorithms showed robust and significantly higher performance, compared to two distinct randomized controls, with lower rank EMG representations, both within and between tasks/postures, supporting hypotheses of functional invariance of multi-muscle synergies. Our results suggest that this invariance could be leveraged to efficiently calibrate postures for prosthetic hand implementation by transferring learned EMG patterns from unconstrained movements to other tasks.
Microenterprise intervention to reduce sexual risk behaviors and increase employment and HIV preventive practices in economically-vulnerable African-American young adults (EMERGE): Protocol for a feasibility randomized clinical trial

Economic vulnerability, such as homelessness and unemployment, contributes to the HIV risk among racial minorities in the U.S., who are disproportionately infected. Yet, few economic-strengthening interventions have been adapted for HIV prevention in economically-vulnerable African-American young adults. Engaging Microenterprise for Resource Generation and Health Empowerment (EMERGE) is a feasibility randomized clinical trial of an HIV prevention microenterprise intervention with integrated text messages (“nudges”) that are informed by behavioral economic principles. The trial aims to reduce sexual risk behaviors and increase employment and uptake of HIV preventive behaviors. In total, 40 young adults who are African-American, aged 18–24, live in Baltimore City, have experienced at least one episode of homelessness in the last 12 months, are unemployed or underemployed (fewer than 10 h per week), are not enrolled in school, own a cell phone with text messaging, and report at least one episode of unprotected or unsafe sex in the prior 12 months will be recruited from two community-based organizations providing residential supportive services to urban youth. Participants will undergo a 3-week run-in period and thereafter be randomly assigned to one of two groups with active interventions for 20 weeks. The first group (“comparison”) will receive text messages with information on job openings. The second group (“experimental”) will receive text messages with information on job openings plus information on HIV prevention and business educational sessions, a mentored apprenticeship, and a start-up grant, and business and HIV prevention text messages based on principles from behavioral economics. The two primary outcomes relate to the feasibility of conducting a larger trial. Secondary outcomes relate to employment, sexual risk behaviors, and HIV preventive practices. All participants will be assessed using an in-person questionnaire at pre-intervention (prior to randomization) and at 3 weeks post-intervention. To obtain repeated, longitudinal measures, participants will be assessed weekly using text message surveys from pre-intervention up to 3 weeks post-intervention. This study will be one of the first U.S.-based feasibility randomized clinical trials of an HIV prevention microenterprise intervention for economically-vulnerable African-American young adults. The findings will inform whether and how to conduct a larger efficacy trial for HIV risk reduction in this population. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03766165 . Registered on 4 December 2018.
When the Going Gets Tough, The Tweets Get Going! An Exploratory Analysis of Tweets Sentiments in the Stock Market

Information artifacts in social media can have significant impact on domains and subject matter opinions. Asset prices, stock prices and volumes, and metrics are influenced by turbulence in their information ecosystems. Analyses of digital information networks and social media information events have shown information artifacts to affect stock performance without consistent correlation to fundamentals. Thus it becomes important to dispel ambiguity and gain insights into how the sentiments associated with information artifacts in Twitter (due to its extensive usage in relevant signaling), are associated with equity movements. Using an exploratory analysis to study tweet sentiment, we link stock price variations, and explore associated metrics. Our tweets analytics deploying textual analytics, identifies forms in tweet behavior and sentiment shifts.
Eμ-TCL1xMyc: A Novel Mouse Model for Concurrent CLL and B-Cell Lymphoma.

Purpose: Aberrant Myc expression is a major factor in the pathogenesis of aggressive lymphoma, and these lymphomas, while clinically heterogeneous, often are resistant to currently available treatments and have poor survival. Myc expression can also be seen in aggressive lymphomas that are observed in the context of CLL, and we sought to develop a mouse model that could be used to study therapeutic strategies for aggressive lymphoma in the context of CLL. Experimental Design: We crossed the Eμ-TCL1 mouse model with the Eμ-Myc mouse model to investigate the clinical phenotype associated with B-cell–restricted expression of these oncogenes. The resulting malignancy was then extensively characterized, from both a clinical and biologic perspective. Results: Eμ-TCL1xMyc mice uniformly developed highly aggressive lymphoid disease with histologically, immunophenotypically, and molecularly distinct concurrent CLL and B-cell lymphoma, leading to a significantly reduced lifespan. Injection of cells from diseased Eμ-TCL1xMyc into WT mice established a disease similar to that in the double-transgenic mice. Both Eμ-TCL1xMyc mice and mice with disease after adoptive transfer failed to respond to ibrutinib. Effective and durable disease control was, however, observed by selective inhibition of nuclear export protein exportin-1 (XPO1) using a compound currently in clinical development for relapsed/refractory malignancies, including CLL and lymphoma. Conclusions: The Eμ-TCL1xMyc mouse is a new preclinical tool for testing experimental drugs for aggressive B-cell lymphoma, including in the context of CLL.
Doctoring the Body and Exciting the Soul: Drugs and consumer culture in medieval and early modern Iran

This article focuses on the development of early modern consumerism in a part of the Middle East that historians of consumer culture are yet to fully explore. Making use of a wide variety of unexplored and underexplored original sources, the article contends that early modern consumer culture in Iran was grounded deeply in the ever-widening patterns of exchange and use that had developed slowly over the course of the previous centuries. The discussion below takes the growing popular interest in a few key psychoactive substances as a useful barometer of the dynamics of mass consumption, and chronicles how the slow and ever-expanding use of alcohol, opium, and cannabis (or a cannabis-like product) in the medieval period led to the popularity of coffee, tobacco, older drugs, and still other commodities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The aim here is to use the history of drug culture as an entry point to scrutinize the emergence of early modern consumerism among the elites and the non-elites in both urban and rural areas of the Middle East. In doing so, this article reconstructs the cultural and social history of recreational drugs prior to and during the early modern period, and elucidates the socio-economic context that helped bring about a ‘psychoactive revolution’ in the Safavid state (1501–1736).
Failure of the Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, to serve as an experimental vector of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto

The invasive, human-biting Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, was detected in New Jersey in the eastern United States in August of 2017 and by November of 2018 this tick had been recorded from 45 counties across 9 states, primarily along the Eastern Seaboard. The establishment of H. longicornis in the United States has raised the questions of how commonly it will bite humans and which native pathogens may naturally infect this tick. There also is a need for experimental vector competence studies with native pathogens to determine if H. longicornis can acquire a given pathogen while feeding, pass it transstadially, and then transmit the pathogen in the next life stage. In this experimental study, we evaluated the vector competence of a population of H. longicornis originating from the United States (New York) for a native isolate (B31) of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.). In agreement with a previous experimental study on the vector competence of H. longicornis for Borrelia garinii, we found that uninfected H. longicornis larvae could acquire B. burgdorferi s.s. while feeding on infected Mus musculus mice (infection prevalence >50% in freshly fed larvae) but that the infection was lost during the molt to the nymphal stage. None of 520 tested molted nymphs were found to be infected, indicating that transstadial passage of B. burgdorferi s.s. is absent or rare in H. longicornis; and based on the potential error associated with the number of nymphs testing negative in this study, we estimate that the upper 95% limit for infection prevalence was 0.73%. An Ixodes scapularis process control showed both effective acquisition of B. burgdorferi s.s. from infected mice by uninfected larvae and transstadial passage to the nymphal stage (infection prevalence of 80-82% for both freshly fed larvae and molted nymphs). We also observed that although H. longicornis larvae could be compelled to feed on mice by placing the ticks within feeding capsules, attachment and feeding success was minimal (<0.5%) when larvae were placed freely on the fur of the mice. We conclude that H. longicornis is unlikely to contribute more than minimally, if at all, to transmission of Lyme disease spirochetes in the United States.
Limit on the anisotropy of the one-way maximum attainable speed of the electron

We report here the first experimental result for the anisotropy of the one-way maximum attainable speed of the electron, $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{c}}_{1,e}$, obtained via the study of a sidereal time dependence of the difference between momenta of the counterrotating electron and positron beams in the Cornell Electron Storage Ring at Cornell University. At 95% confidence, an upper limit for the component of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{c}}_{1,e}/c$ perpendicular to Earth's rotational axis is found to be $5.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}15}$.
Geographical influences on the iodine status in pregnant women, neonates, and school-age children in China.

Pregnant women, neonates, and school-age children are vulnerable to iodine deficiency. The iodine contents in the environment (drinking water and household salt for cooking) vary by geographical location in China. The aim of this study was to assess the iodine status in vulnerable groups from different geographical zones and analyze the iodine content in household salt and drinking water from these zones. In coastal and inland regions of Zhejiang Province, China, samples of spot urine, drinking water, and household salt for cooking from both pregnant women and school-age children were determined for iodine concentration between 2017 and 2018. Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels from neonates born between 2014 and 2015 were acquired from the Newborns Screening Information System. The iodine status of the vulnerable populations was assessed according to the criteria recommended by the World Health Organization. The median UIC of pregnant women was significantly lower in the coastal region (113.0 μg/L) than the inland region (134.9 μg/L; p 5 mIU/L) was significantly higher in the coastal region (15.8%) than the inland region (10.5%; p < 0.001). The percentage of neonates with elevated TSH from each region decreased within the range of mild iodine deficiency of 3–19.9%. The median UIC of the coastal school-age children was 156.0 μg/L, and the median UIC of inland children was 181.5 μg/L. Both medians fell within the recommended optimal iodine range of 100–299 μg/L. The iodine concentrations in drinking water varied from 1.0 μg/L in the inland region to 2.0 μg/L in the coastal region. The proportion of households that consumed iodized salt was lower in the coastal region (nearly 65%) than the inland region (approximately 95%). In these two regions with low iodine contents in drinking water, both pregnant women and neonates were iodine-deficient, although school-age children were iodine-sufficient. Urgent efforts are needed to improve the iodine status of pregnant women and neonates.
Purification of Prominin-1+ Stem Cells from Postnatal Mouse Cerebellum

Most cerebellar neurons arise from two embryonic stem niches: a rhombic lip niche, which generates all the cerebellar excitatory glutamatergic neurons, and a ventricular zone niche, which generates the inhibitory GABAergic Purkinje cells, which are neurons that constitute the deep cerebellar nuclei and Bergman glia. Recently, a third stem cell niche has been described that arises as a secondary germinal zone from the ventricular zone niche. The cells of this niche are defined by the cell surface marker prominin-1 and are localized to the developing white matter of the postnatal cerebellum. This niche accounts for the late born molecular layer GABAergic interneurons along with postnatally generated cerebellar astrocytes. In addition to their developmental role, this niche is gaining translational importance in regards to its involvement in neurodegeneration and tumorigenesis. The biology of these cells has been difficult to decipher because of a lack of efficient techniques for their purification. Demonstrated here are efficient methods to purify, culture, and differentiate these postnatal cerebellar stem cells.
Enriched Environment Promotes Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis through FGFRs

The addition of new neurons to existing neural circuits in the adult brain remains of great interest to neurobiology because of its therapeutic implications. The premier model for studying this process has been the hippocampal dentate gyrus in mice, where new neurons are added to mature circuits during adulthood. Notably, external factors such as an enriched environment (EE) and exercise markedly increase hippocampal neurogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that EE acts by increasing fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) function autonomously within neurogenic cells to expand their numbers in adult male and female mice. FGFRs activated by EE signal through their mediators, FGFR substrate (FRS), to induce stem cell proliferation, and through FRS and phospholipase Cγ to increase the number of adult-born neurons, providing a mechanism for how EE promotes adult neurogenesis.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How the environment we live in affects cognition remains poorly understood. In the current study, we explore the mechanism underlying the effects of an enriched environment on the production of new neurons in the adult hippocampal dentate gyrus, a brain area integral in forming new memories. A mechanism is provided for how neural precursor cells in the adult mammalian dentate gyrus respond to an enriched environment to increase their neurogenic output. Namely, an enriched environment acts on stem and progenitor cells by activating fibroblast growth factor receptor signaling through phospholipase Cγ and FGF receptor substrate proteins to expand the pool of precursor cells.
Pursuing Justice-Driven Inclusive Education Research: Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in Early Childhood:

Multiple scholars have argued that early childhood inclusive education research and practice has often retained racialized, ableist notions of normal development, which can undermine efforts to adv...
Induced Neurons for Disease Modeling and Repair: A Focus on Non-fibroblastic Cell Sources in Direct Reprogramming.

Direct cellular reprogramming exhibits distinct advantages over reprogramming from an induced pluripotent stem cell intermediate. These include a reduced risk of tumorigenesis and the likely preservation of epigenetic data. In vitro direct reprogramming approaches primarily aim to model the pathophysiological development of neurological disease and identify therapeutic targets, while in vivo direct reprogramming aims to develop treatments for various neurological disorders, including cerebral injury and cancer. In both approaches, there is progress toward developing increased control of subtype-specific production of induced neurons. A majority of research primarily utilizes fibroblasts as the donor cells. However, there are a variety of other somatic cell types that have demonstrated the potential for reprogramming into induced neurons. This review highlights studies that utilize non-fibroblastic cell sources for reprogramming, such as astrocytes, olfactory ensheathing cells, peripheral blood cells, Muller glia, and more. We will examine benefits and obstructions for translation into therapeutics or disease modeling, as well as efficiency of the conversion. A summary of donor cells, induced neuron types, and methods of induction is also provided.
On Logarithmic Regret for Bandits with Knapsacks

This paper studies bandits with knapsacks (BwK). In a BwK instance, there are a set of $n$ arms and $d$ types of resources with limited budgets. Each pull of an arm returns a noisy reward and consumes some amount of resources in each type according to some latent distribution of this arm. The decision-maker adaptively pulls arms in order to maximize the accumulated reward gained before some type of resources runs out. We investigate logarithmic distribution-dependent regrets for the BwK problem, specifically for the instances with deterministic costs. We propose a new algorithm with regret in the form of O(n log $T$ /Δ) (Δis the gap of rewards similar to that in standard MAB), which to our knowledge, is of the lowest order till now, and has the same order as the standard MAB problem when d = 1. Simulation results also suggest the performance improvements using our algorithms.
The Evolutionary Ecology of Cichlid Vision

The visual ecology of cichlids has contributed greatly to our understanding of mechanisms driving spectacular, colorful cichlid radiations. Interactions between the underwater light environment, the transmission of visual signals, and the visual sensitivity of the signal receiver are integral to the processes driving this diversity. Researchers recognized the importance of vision early in the study of African cichlids, citing the diversity of habitats in which cichlids are found and brilliant male nuptial coloration as potential forces shaping visual differentiation. Later work focused more on visual systems, adapted to the local light environment, as drivers of color pattern diversification. Most recently, researchers have focused on the evolution of visual systems under both ecological and sexual selection and the mechanisms of spectral tuning by investigating opsin gene expression and co-expression across the cichlid phylogeny. In this chapter, I describe the historical context of cichlid vision research, the diversity in cichlid visual ecology, and the current state of our understanding of cichlid visual ecology. Additionally, I discuss the possible consequences of human-induced changes to the underwater visual environment for cichlid diversity and suggest avenues for future research.
OptDebug: Fault-Inducing Operation Isolation for Dataflow Applications

Fault-isolation is extremely challenging in large scale data processing in cloud environments. Data provenance is a dominant existing approach to isolate data records responsible for a given output. However, data provenance concerns fault isolation only in the data-space, as opposed to fault isolation in the code-space---how can we precisely localize operations or APIs responsible for a given suspicious or incorrect result? We present OptDebug that identifies fault-inducing operations in a dataflow application using three insights. First, debugging is easier with a small-scale input than a large-scale input. So it uses data provenance to simplify the original input records to a smaller set leading to test failures and test successes. Second, keeping track of operation provenance is crucial for debugging. Thus, it leverages automated taint analysis to propagate the lineage of operations downstream with individual records. Lastly, each operation may contribute to test failures to a different degree. Thus OptDebug ranks each operation's spectra---the relative participation frequency in failing vs. passing tests. In our experiments, OptDebug achieves 100% recall and 86% precision in terms of detecting faulty operations and reduces the debugging time by 17x compared to a naive approach. Overall, OptDebug shows great promise in improving developer productivity in today's complex data processing pipelines by obviating the need to re-execute the program repetitively with different inputs and manually examine program traces to isolate buggy code.
Divorce-Law Changes, Household Bargaining, and Married Women's Labor Supply Revisited

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the underlying property laws.
Genomics. Annotation of the Drosophila genome.

The publication of the genome of the fruitfly Drosophila by Celera Genomics last year generated considerable excitement1. The initial release predicted 14,226 proteins, including about 550 that arise as the result of alternative splicing1. Here we compare the annotation of the Celera Drosophila genome with known protein sequences lodged in a databank and find that although there is substantial agreement for many gene sequences, there are also numerous and significant discrepancies. These uncertainties call for caution in interpreting predicted Drosophila genes.
Magnesium sulphate treatment decreases blood–brain barrier permeability during acute hypertension in pregnant rats

Eclampsia is associated with increased blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability and formation of cerebral oedema. Magnesium sulphate is used to treat eclampsia despite an unclear mechanism of action. This study was to determine the effect of magnesium sulphate on in vivo BBB permeability and formation of cerebral oedema during acute hypertension and on brain aquaporin-4 (AQP4) protein expression. An in vivo model of hypertensive encephalopathy was used in late-pregnant (LP) rats following magnesium sulphate treatment, 270 mg kg(-1) i.p. injection every 4 h for 24 h. Permeability of the BBB was determined by in situ brain perfusion of Evan's Blue (EB) and sodium fluorescein (NaFl), and dye clearance determined by fluorescence spectrophotometry. Cerebral oedema was determined following acute hypertension by measuring brain water content. The effect of magnesium treatment on AQP4 expression was determined by Western blot analysis. Acute hypertension with autoregulatory breakthrough increased BBB permeability to EB in both brain regions studied (P 0.05). Treatment with magnesium did not change NaFl permeability, cerebral oedema formation or AQP4 expression. In summary, BBB permeability to Evan's Blue was increased by acute hypertension in LP rats, and this was attenuated by treatment with magnesium sulphate. The greatest effect on BBB permeability to EB was in the posterior cerebrum, an area particularly susceptible to oedema formation during eclampsia.
An Investigation of Boundary Theories for the Resonance Probe

A formula for the admittance of a spherical probe in a warm collisional homogeneous plasma is derived using a step ion sheath with complete electron reflection at the sheath-plasma interface. The resulting equations for the perturbations in sheath voltage and number density at the interface are related to the resonance probe phenomenon. Laboratory measurements displayed the effect of sheath thickness on the resonance probe characteristic. The rigid boundary theory is experimentally shown to break down at sheath collapse, comparing a suitable absorptive boundary theory with the experiment.
Monte Carlo study of layer formation and exchange kinetics in polymer adsorption

We have carried out extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the adsorption of both homo- and hetero-polymer chains from semidilute solution onto a solid/liquid interface. We investigate the specific conformations adopted by the adsorbed chains, the kinetics of layer growth and chain exchange, as well as the effects of impurities in the system. We consider the effects of impurities which are either on the surface or within the chains themselves. These impurities may be either repulsive or simply inactive. The deGennes self-similar grid layer, which we directly recover in the pure system, is found to be only slightly perturbed by even large amounts of impurities. In a pure system, we find that the chains comprise two broad groups: a tightly bound group and a loosely bound group. However, in impurity systems, the exchange of polymer with the solution is found to be accelerated, so that this distinction is greatly reduced. While we note close similarities between the static effects of surface impurities and of chain impurities, dramatic differences arise in the kinetic effects of these two cases. In particular, we note the appearance of a large group of chains which are conformationally “frozen” when repulsive impurities are incorporated into the chains, severely restricting their ability to slither along the surface. This yields considerably different behavior of the chains with respect to the layer’s relaxation and exchange.
Optimal detection of M-QAM signal with channel estimation error

In this paper, we study the optimal detection of QAM signaling with channel estimation error. Optimal detectors, maximum likelihood (MaxLike) detector and a modified minimum distance (ModDist) detector, are derived for the case a known Gaussian channel distribution and unknown channel distribution, respectively. These detectors differ from the traditional minimum distance detector, which ignores the effect of channel estimation error. Soft decision metrics for coded performance are also generated using the soft output of these detectors based on generalized likelihood ratio (GLR). Numerical results are given to compare the performance of these detectors. Although only marginal improvement is observed when using the proposed detectors without coding, while significant gains are obtained when used together with coding.
Mycophenolate mofetil treatment reduces atherosclerosis in the cholesterol-fed rabbit.

Immune/inflammatory responses of arterial vessel wall constituents to lipid metabolic disturbances have been postulated to contribute to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF), an antiproliferative agent used in clinical transplantation, has been shown to inhibit smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation and decrease the recruitment of monocytes into sites of chronic inflammation. This study was conducted to determine the effect of MMF on atherosclerotic plaque development after cholesterol-induced injury. New Zealand white rabbits were fed a high-cholesterol diet containing 0.5% cholesterol and 8% peanut oil. The experimental group (n = 10) was given MMF (80 mg/kg/day subcutaneously); the control group (n = 10) received placebo injections. The aortas were harvested at 12 weeks for immunohistochemical analyses. SMCs were identified by reactivity with a monoclonal antibody (mAb) to α smooth muscle actin. Monocytes/macrophages were detected with mAb RAM 11. Cross-sectional areas of the media and neointima were measured using computer-assisted image analysis. The density of SMCs and macrophage/foam cells within the neointima was calculated by dividing the number of cells by the area of the plaque. Total cholesterol, triglyceride, high density lipoprotein, and low density lipoprotein were significantly increased compared with levels before the initiation of a high-cholesterol diet, but there were no significant differences between the MMF-treated and untreated groups. Neointimal area in aortic tissue sections of the MMF-treated group (0.586 ± 0.602 mm2) was significantly lower when compared with that in control animals (1.082 ± 0.621 mm2) (P < 0.05). The densities of neointimal SMCs and monocytes/macrophages in the control group were 778 ± 293 and 341 ± 90 cells/mm2, respectively. MMF treatment significantly reduced the number of neointimal SMCs (506 ± 185 cells/mm2) (P < 0.05). The number of monocytes/macrophages was also reduced after MMF treatment (260 ± 124 cells/mm2) but not significantly. Our results demonstrate that the administration of MMF significantly reduced neointimal SMC accumulation and plaque development in a hypercholesterolemic model of atherosclerosis.
In Vitro And In Vivo Activity of 5-Fluorocytosine on Acanthamoeba

The results of our studies indicated that the avirulent Neff strain of Acanthamoeba was more susceptible to the activity of the anti-metabolite 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC) than was the virulent A-1 strain or a mouse brain reisolate of this strain, designated A-3. Results of competition experiments in which cultures were exposed simultaneously to 5-FC and either uracil, thymidine, or both uracil and thymidine demonstrated that the drug was directed against both deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid in the avirulent strain, whereas ribonucleic acid was mainly affected in the virulent amebas. Concentrations >10 μg of 5-FC per ml were amebicidal to the avirulent strain; lower concentrations of the drug, which only affected growth slightly, significantly impaired the capacity of the cells to spontaneously encyst in stationary-phase cultures. On the other hand, the virulent strains were capable of growing in the presence of 5-FC (40 μg/ml) after an initial period of susceptibility. After a few transfers in growth medium lacking the drug, 5-FC-treated virulent amebas exhibited growth parameters typical of untreated cells. However, after successive subcultures in drug-free medium, 5-FC-treated cells lost their resistance and were again susceptible to the drug. This result suggested that the capacity of the cells to develop resistance resulted from a drug-induced mechanism. Spontaneous encystment, which was normally minimal in stationary-phase A-1 or A-3 cultures, was enhanced in A-3 but not A-1 cultures treated with 5-FC (>30 μg/ml). Results obtained from experiments to determine the effectiveness of 5-FC in protecting mice experimentally infected with either A-1 or A-3 amebas indicated that the clinical usefulness of 5-FC may be limited by the capacity of the amebas to develop resistance.