cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The role of glutathione in the toxicity of xenobiotic compounds: metabolic activation of 1,2-dibromoethane by glutathione.

Glutathione (GSH) is a ubiquitous tripeptide involved in cellular defense mechanisms and the metabolism of xenobiotic compounds. Detoxification of free radicals and activated oxygen species by direct reaction, as well as that mediated by the enzymic activity of glutathione peroxidase, is a well known and described biochemical function.Equally well known and described is the role of GSH in conjugation. Conjugation with GSH occurs nonenzymatically and through the action of GSH S-transferases. Leukotrienes, active autacoids thought to be involved in inflammatory processes, are formed by the conjugation of GSH with fatty acids derived from arachidonic acid. One important function of GSH S-transferases is the conjugation of GSH with certain xenobiotic compounds, thus enhancing excretion of the xenobiotic. Furthermore, activated metabolites produced from xenobiotic compounds by the action of mixed function oxygenase may also be conjugated with GSH. This occurs both directly and enzymatically. The net result of conjugation with active metabolites is detoxification of these reactive chemical species. In certain cases, the GSH conjugate may ultimately result in toxic reactions. Stepwise, enzymatic degradation of certain GSH conjugates may result in reactive intermediates that result in tissue injury. Some glutathione conjugates, for example, may be enzymatically toxified by the sequential actions of gamma-glutamyl transferase and cysteine conjugate beta-lyase (Dohn and Anders, 1982). Other GSH conjugates may undergo intramolecular rearrangement to unstable intermediates that also result in toxic reactions. For example, the conjugation of vicinaldihaloalkanes may result in an intramolecular rearrangement to a reactive, transitory episulfonium ion (van Bladeren et al., 1980; Schasteen and Reed, 1981; Livesay and Anders, 1982).
The Zimmerman-Graham Debate on Objectivism versus Prospectivism

In Living with Uncertainty Michael Zimmerman argues against the Objective view and for the Prospective view of morality. He claims that the conscientious agent would always choose the act that maximizes projected value, and that this is incompatible with Objectivism. Peter Graham defends Objectivism against Zimmerman’s attack. He argues that a conscientious agent must balance fulfilling obligations against avoiding the worst wrong-doings, and that this stance is consistent with Objectivism and with the agent’s choosing an act she believes to be Objectively wrong. In Ignorance and Moral Obligation Zimmerman argues that Graham’s “Objectivism” is only terminologically distinct from his Prospectivism. I argue that Graham faces a dilemma: if his theory delivers different prescriptions from Zimmerman’s, those prescriptions are implausible. On the other hand, if his theory avoids such implausible recommendations, it now generates exactly the same recommendations as Zimmerman’s theory, and so does not constitute a serious challenge to it.
Proof of the Arnold chord conjecture in three dimensions I

In “Proof of the Arnold chord conjecture in three dimensions, I” [12], we deduced the Arnold chord conjecture in three dimensions from another result, which asserts that an exact symplectic cobordism between contact three-manifolds induces a map on (filtered) embedded contact homology satisfying certain axioms. The present paper proves the latter result, thus completing the proof of the three-dimensional chord conjecture. We also prove that filtered embedded contact homology does not depend on the choice of almost complex structure used to define it. 53D40, 57R58
Modeling allele-specific expression at the gene and SNP levels simultaneously by a Bayesian logistic mixed regression model.

High-throughput sequencing experiments, which can determine allele origins, have been used to assess genome-wide allele-specific expression. Despite the amount of data generated from high-throughput experiments, statistical methods are often too simplistic to understand the complexity of gene expression. Specifically, existing methods do not test allele-specific expression (ASE) of a gene as a whole and variation in ASE within a gene across exons separately and simultaneously. We propose a generalized linear mixed model to close these gaps, incorporating variations due to genes, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and biological replicates. To improve reliability of statistical inferences, we assign priors on each effect in the model so that information is shared across genes in the entire genome. We utilize Bayesian model selection to test the hypothesis of ASE for each gene and variations across SNPs within a gene. We apply our method to four tissue types in a bovine study to de novo detect ASE genes in the bovine genome, and uncover intriguing predictions of regulatory ASEs across gene exons and across tissue types. We compared our method to competing approaches through simulation studies that mimicked the real datasets. The R package, BLMRM, that implements our proposed algorithm, is publicly available for download at https://github.com/JingXieMIZZOU/BLMRM . We will show that the proposed method exhibits improved control of the false discovery rate and improved power over existing methods when SNP variation and biological variation are present. Besides, our method also maintains low computational requirements that allows for whole genome analysis.
Towards a Threat Model for Vehicular Fog Computing

Security is a huge challenge in vehicular networks due to the large size of the network, high mobility of nodes, and continuous change of network topology. These challenges are also applicable to the vehicular fog, which is a new computing paradigm in the context of vehicular networks. In vehicular fog computing, the vehicles serve as fog nodes. This is a promising model for latency-sensitive and location-aware services, which also incurs some unique security and privacy issues. However, there is a lack of a systematic approach to design security solutions of the vehicular fog using a comprehensive threat model. Threat modeling is a step-by-step process to analyze, identify, and prioritize all the potential threats and vulnerabilities of a system and solve them with known security solutions. A well-designed threat model can help to understand the security and privacy threats, vulnerabilities, requirements, and challenges along with the attacker model, the attack motives, and attacker capabilities. Threat model analysis in vehicular fog computing is critical because only brainstorming and threat models of other vehicular network paradigms will not provide a complete scenario of potential threats and vulnerabilities. In this paper, we have explored the threat model of vehicular fog computing and identified the threats and vulnerabilities using STRIDE and CIAA threat modeling processes. We posit that this initiative will help to improve the security and privacy system design of vehicular fog computing.
Analysis of free space optical (FSO) communications and networking using adaptive waveforms for LEO satellites

In this paper, we model the use of free space optical (FSO) links that employ adaptive waveforms such as n-PSK in the context of links to and from low earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems. FSO link models are described that can be used to predict dynamic link quality to and from a surface terminal to a LEO terminal. Because the link margin can vary by 10-20 dB in a LEO pass, we consider the use of adaptive waveforms. Higher order waveforms are used when the link margin is high, stepping back down to on-off keying when the margin is low. We also describe the design and development of network emulation and simulation capabilities to help analyze the use of dynamic FSO-LEO link models within existing network experimentation frameworks. We present a network emulation demonstration of the designed FSO-LEO link models involving data transfer between two surface observers and multiple opportunistic LEO satellite events. We discuss both the emerging opportunities and ongoing challenges of effectively using such FSO-LEO capabilities within a larger data network context.
Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Renal Transplantation in Individuals Undergoing Transplant Evaluation

Introduction:The underutilization of kidney transplant as the preferred treatment for end-stage kidney disease is influenced by a lack of knowledge, poor attitudes, and various socio-demographic ch...
Deep Multimodal Brain Network Learning for Joint Analysis of Structural Morphometry and Functional Connectivity

Learning from the multimodal brain imaging data attracts a large amount of attention in medical image analysis due to the proliferation of multimodal data collection. It is widely accepted that multimodal data can provide complementary information than mining from a single modality. However, unifying the image-based knowledge from the multimodal data is very challenging due to different image signals, resolution, data structure, etc.. In this study, we design a supervised deep model to jointly analyze brain morphometry and functional connectivity on the cortical surface and we name it deep multimodal brain network learning (DMBNL). Two graph-based kernels, i.e., geometry-aware surface kernel (GSK) and topology-aware network kernel (TNK), are proposed for processing the cortical surface morphometry and brain functional network. The vertex features on the cortical surface from GSK is pooled and feed into TNK as its initial regional features. In the end, the graph-level feature is computed for each individual and thus can be applied for classification tasks. We test our model on a large autism imaging dataset. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of our model.
CiwGAN and fiwGAN: Encoding information in acoustic data to model lexical learning with Generative Adversarial Networks.

Abstract How can deep neural networks encode information that corresponds to words in human speech into raw acoustic data? This paper proposes two neural network architectures for modeling unsupervised lexical learning from raw acoustic inputs: ciwGAN (Categorical InfoWaveGAN) and fiwGAN (Featural InfoWaveGAN). These combine Deep Convolutional GAN architecture for audio data (WaveGAN; Donahue et al., 2019) with the information theoretic extension of GAN – InfoGAN (Chen et al., 2016) – and propose a new latent space structure that can model featural learning simultaneously with a higher level classification and allows for a very low-dimension vector representation of lexical items. In addition to the Generator and Discriminator networks, the architectures introduce a network that learns to retrieve latent codes from generated audio outputs. Lexical learning is thus modeled as emergent from an architecture that forces a deep neural network to output data such that unique information is retrievable from its acoustic outputs. The networks trained on lexical items from the TIMIT corpus learn to encode unique information corresponding to lexical items in the form of categorical variables in their latent space. By manipulating these variables, the network outputs specific lexical items. The network occasionally outputs innovative lexical items that violate training data, but are linguistically interpretable and highly informative for cognitive modeling and neural network interpretability. Innovative outputs suggest that phonetic and phonological representations learned by the network can be productively recombined and directly paralleled to productivity in human speech: a fiwGAN network trained on suit and dark outputs innovative start, even though it never saw start or even a [st] sequence in the training data. We also argue that setting latent featural codes to values well beyond training range results in almost categorical generation of prototypical lexical items and reveals underlying values of each latent code. Probing deep neural networks trained on well understood dependencies in speech bears implications for latent space interpretability and understanding how deep neural networks learn meaningful representations, as well as potential for unsupervised text-to-speech generation in the GAN framework.
Case report: Minimal change disease and acute interstitial nephritis in a patient with Hodgkin’s lymphoma treated with nivolumab:

Programmed cell death receptor-1 blocking antibodies and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated antigen-4 blocking antibodies are referred to as checkpoint inhibitors and are used in cancer immunotherap...
Mixed displacement and couple stress finite element method for anisotropic centrosymmetric materials

Abstract The classical theory of elasticity is an idealized model of a continuum, which works well for many engineering applications. However, with careful experiments one finds that it may fail in describing behavior in fatigue, at small scales and in structures having high stress concentration factors. Many size-dependent theories have been developed to capture these effects, one of which is the consistent couple stress theory. In this theory, couple stress μ i j is present in addition to force stress σ i j and its tensor form is shown to have skew symmetry. The mean curvature κ i j , which is defined as the skew-symmetric part of the gradient of rotations, is the correct energy conjugate of the couple stress. This mean curvature κ i j and strain e i j together contribute to the elastic energy. The scope of this paper is to extend the work to study anisotropic materials and present a corresponding finite element method. A fully displacement based finite element method for couple stress elasticity requires C 1 continuity. To avoid this, a mixed formulation is presented with primary variables of displacements u i and couple stress μ i vectors, both of which require only C 0 continuity. Centrosymmetric classes of materials are considered here for which force stress and strain are decoupled from couple stress and mean curvature in the constitutive relations. Details regarding the numerical implementation are discussed and the effect of couple stress elasticity on anisotropic materials is examined through several computational examples.
Transportation Transformation: Is Micromobility Making a Macro Impact on Sustainability?:

The transportation landscape is ever-evolving in the face of new technologies, including the emergence of micromobility—a new classification given to lightweight human-powered or electric vehicles ...
DNAJB12 and Hsp70 triage arrested intermediates of N1303K-CFTR for endoplasmic reticulum-associated autophagy

Transmembrane Hsp40s and cytosolic Hsp70 cooperate on the endoplasmic reticulum’s (ER) cytoplasmic face to facilitate the triage of nascent polytopic membrane proteins. DNAJB12 is reported to opera...
Parallel processing on supercomputers: a set of computational experiments

The three types of parallelism currently available on the Cray are considered, namely, vectorization, microtasking, and macrotasking. Experiences with all three constructs are presented to show the improvements possible with each of them. While a particular machine, the Cray X-MP/48, has been used, many of the observations, comments, and conclusions derived can be generalized to other shared-memory multiprocessor systems.
Spectro-Temporal RF Identification using Deep Learning.

RF emissions detection, classification, and spectro-temporal localization are crucial not only for tasks relating to understanding, managing, and protecting the RF spectrum, but also for safety and security applications such as detecting intruding drones or jammers. Achieving this goal for wideband spectrum and in real-time performance is a challenging problem. We present WRIST, a Wideband, Real-time RF Identification system with Spectro-Temporal detection, framework and system. Our resulting deep learning model is capable to detect, classify, and precisely locate RF emissions in time and frequency using RF samples of 100 MHz spectrum in real-time (over 6Gbps incoming I&Q streams). Such capabilities are made feasible by leveraging a deep-learning based one-stage object detection framework, and transfer learning to a multi-channel image-based RF signals representation. We also introduce an iterative training approach which leverages synthesized and augmented RF data to efficiently build large labelled datasets of RF emissions (SPREAD). WRIST detector achieves 90 mean Average Precision even in extremely congested environment in the wild. WRIST model classifies five technologies (Bluetooth, Lightbridge, Wi-Fi, XPD, and ZigBee) and is easily extendable to others. We are making our curated and annotated dataset available to the whole community. It consists of nearly 1 million fully labelled RF emissions collected from various off-the-shelf wireless radios in a range of environments and spanning the five classes of emissions.
Endorphins and Affective Illness

The discovery of specific opiate receptors (Simon et al., 1973; Pert and Snyder, 1973) and the identification of naturally occurring peptides possessing opiatelike activity (endorphins) (Hughes et al., 1975; Li and Chung, 1976; Li et al., 1976; Bradbury et al., 1976; Chretien et al., 1976) have led to considerable research and speculation regarding the relationship of the endorphin system to psychiatric illness (Usdin et al., 1979; Verebey et al., 1978). The mood-altering and calming effects of exogenous opiates (Jaffe and Martin, 1975), the regional brain distribution of opiate receptors (Goldstein, 1976; Goldstein and Cox, 1977), and the behavioral effects of administered endorphins to rats (Bloom et al., 1976) suggested potential relationships between the endogenous opioid systems and emotional behavior. Although initial endorphin-behavioral hypotheses focused on etiologic relevance to schizophrenia (Bloom et al., 1976; Segal et al., 1977), alterations in endorphin function have been hypothesized to be reflected in disorders of mood (Byck, 1976; Belluzzi and Stein, 1977; Gold and Byck, 1978).
Impacts of historic morphology and sea level rise on tidal hydrodynamics in a microtidal estuary (Grand Bay, Mississippi)

Abstract This study evaluates the geophysical influence of the combined effects of historic sea level rise (SLR) and morphology on tidal hydrodynamics in the Grand Bay estuary, located in the Mississippi Sound. Since 1848, the landscape of the Mississippi Sound has been significantly altered as a result of natural and anthropogenic factors including the migration of the offshore Mississippi–Alabama (MSAL) barrier islands and the construction of navigational channels. As a result, the Grand Bay estuary has undergone extensive erosion resulting in the submergence of its protective barrier island, Grand Batture. A large-domain hydrodynamic model was used to simulate present (circa 2005) and past conditions (circa 1848, 1917, and 1960) with unique sea levels, bathymetry, topography and shorelines representative of each time period. Additionally, a hypothetical scenario was performed in which Grand Batture Island exists under 2005 conditions in order to observe the influence of the island on tidal hydrodynamics within the Grand Bay estuary. Changes in tidal amplitudes from the historic conditions varied. Within the Sound, tidal amplitudes were unaltered due to the open exposed shoreline; however, in semi-enclosed embayments outside of the Sound, tidal amplitudes increased. In addition, harmonic constituent phases were slower historically. The position of the MSAL barrier island inlets influenced tidal currents within the Sound; the westward migration of Petit Bois Island allowed stronger tidal velocities to be centered on the Grand Batture Island. Maximum tidal velocities within the Grand Bay estuary were 5 cm/s faster historically, and reversed from being flood dominant in 1848 to ebb dominant in 2005. If the Grand Batture Island was reconstructed under 2005 conditions, tidal amplitudes and phases would not be altered, indicating that the offshore MSAL barrier islands and SLR have a greater influence on these tidal parameters within the estuary. However, maximum tidal velocities would increase by as much as 5 cm/s (63%) and currents would become more ebb dominant. Results of this study illustrate the hydrodynamic response of the system to SLR and the changing landscape, and provide insight into potential future changes under SLR and barrier island evolution.
Klüver-Bucy syndrome as a result of minor head trauma

Kluver-Bucy syndrome (KBS) has been described as a disconnection of the temporal lobes from the remainder of the brain. Its presence in minor head trauma has not been previously reported. We therefore report what we believe to be the first case of KBS due to mild head trauma and unilateral injury to a temporal lobe.
‘Imagining Ourselves’: Cultural Activism for Women through Technology and New Media.

The article reviews the "Imagining Ourselves" art exhibition at the International Museum of Women which was launched in March 2006.
Citizenship and Civil Society: The Framing of Citizenship Rights: Expansion, Clarification, and Meaning

What are we like? We are rights-conscious and individualistic, at least as compared to people in the past. There is a central concern with the development of the self and the molding of unique individuals. The core mechanism for constituting the self, according to the prevailing point of view, is through free and unrestrained choice, exercised with regard to many and competitive options. Lawrence Friedman (1990, p. 5) Strong democracy … rests on the idea of a self-governing community of citizens who are united less by homogenous interests than by civic education and who are made capable of common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their civic attitudes and participatory institutions rather than their altruism or their good nature. Benjamin Barber (1984, p. 117) Citizenship rights are at the same time indisputable and subject to extension, and controversial and an object of curtailment. Some see freedom as maximized through market choices made by individuals (Friedman 1990), while others see freedom requiring the community to combine peoples' efforts through discourse in common purpose (Barber 1984). To understand citizenship rights within this broad range of opinion, this chapter surveys, analyzes, and frames rights under citizenship as universalistic rights enacted into law, and not informal, unenacted, or particularistic rights. This chapter will establish the logic of citizenship rights through five points. First, it establishes the range of rights in T. H. Marshall's theory. Second, Marshall and Bendix use citizenship rights in an implied cross-classification of action (active and passive) and arenas (political and economic), which undergirds their theory.
A Note on Learning from Multiple-Instance Examples

We describe a simple reduction from the problem of PAC-learning from multiple-instance examples to that of PAC-learning with one-sided random classification noise. Thus, all concept classes learnable with one-sided noise, which includes all concepts learnable in the usual 2-sided random noise model plus others such as the parity function, are learnable from multiple-instance examples. We also describe a more efficient (and somewhat technically more involved) reduction to the Statistical-Query model that results in a polynomial-time algorithm for learning axis-parallel rectangles with sample complexityO(d^2r/e^2) , saving roughly a factor of r over the results of Auer et al. (1997).
Selective etching and photoetching of GaAs in CrO3-HF aqueous solutions: III. Interpretation of defect-related etch figures

Abstract CrO3-HF aqueous solutions have been applied to reveal and analyse defects in a large number of bulk and epitaxial GaAs crystals. This etching system has been used both in the dark (so-called DS method) and with light (so-called DSL method). The most important feature of the DS(L) system which distinguishes it advantageously from orthodox etchants such as molten KOH, Schell and RC solutions, is its ability to reveal a wide variety of defects, both crystallographic and chemical in nature. By a number of examples, proof is given that different defects which have been recognized by other methods in GaAs crystals previously, i.e. dislocations, stacking faults, twins, complex defects (streamers), precipitates, growth striations and recombinative impurity atmospheres, can be revealed and analyzed by a properly selected DS(L) procedure. In contrast with the orthodox etchants which form etch pits on defect sites, CrO3-HF aqueous solutions reveal almost all defects in the form of ridges and hillocks. The shape of these etch figures depends not only on the crystallography and geometry of the defects, but also on the nature of the related impurity atmospheres. An important feature of the present system is its sensitivity to light. For n-type and SI GaAs, both etch rates and defect sensitivity are strongly increased under illumination. The mechanisms of defect-revealing are also different: in the dark the shape of etch hillocks is mainly determined by lattice deformation around the defects, whereas under illumination the distribution of impurities plays a more important role. Using these concepts, it has been possible to make an inventory of different types of defects and to discriminate between different types of dislocations. With respect to the latter group of defects, the most important feature of the DS(L) system is its ability to distinguish (i) grown-in dislocations, (ii) glide dislocations, (iii) grown-in dislocations which glided after formation of impurity atmospheres and (iv) dislocations with a complex distribution of recombinative defects (for instance EL2). It is shown that with the DS/DSL method the slip planes of glide dislocations can also be determined. The DS(L) method is critically compared and/or calibrated with (i) other etching techniques used for defect studies in GaAs, such as AB, molten KOH, Schell and RC etchants, (ii) other characterization techniques, such as TEM and photoluminescence and (iii) numerous data from literature.
Archaeologies of mobility and movement

The rich documentary and material data presented in Mary Beaudry and Trevor Parno's edited volume, Archaeologies of Mobility and Movement (2013), should persuade social scientists engaged in critic...
Development, calculation and research of semi-conducting system for capacitive currents routing in high power turbogenerator high voltage air-gap armature winding

Different variants of locating and fastening the high voltage stator winding in the air-gap of a high power generator have been analyzed, and anti-corona protection and capacitive current routing systems for those variants have been classified. The variant having a multilayer air-gap winding with semi-conductive coating in an active zone has been studied. Capacitive currents from the upper layers of that winding reach the iron core of the stator only through the semiconductive layers of the fastening system and the semiconductive coating of the bottom winding layer. A fastening system components with semi-conductive structures have been designed. The method of calculating currents through semiconductive layers of winding and fastening system parts, and solutions for limiting those currents have been developed. The nomogram and the method for calculating the optimum parameters for semi-conductive layers have been developed. Air-gap winding and fastening systems with semiconductive layers have been tested on a full-scale model and evaluated under conditions of increased voltage and continuous aging.
Diffusion tensor imaging of the cervical spinal cord in children

Obtaining fast, reliable, high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the pediatric cervical spinal cord (CSC) is challenging, given the multitude of technical limitations involved. Overcoming these limitations may further potentiate DTI as a valuable quantitative tool in evaluating the pediatric CSC. Sixteen patients (9 girls and 7 boys) with hypoxic brain injury, craniocervical junction malformations, and head trauma were included in this retrospective study. Region of interests were placed from C1–C2 through C7–T1 consecutively at the cervical intervertebral disc levels. DTI metrics were compared with a pediatric DTI database of healthy controls. Clinical background and outcomes were tabulated. Patients with hypoxic brain injury, Chiari I and II malformations, and head trauma demonstrated lower fractional anisotropy values than that of healthy controls at certain cervical intervertebral disc levels. DTI may be a promising modality for providing additional information beyond that of conventional magnetic resonance imaging in pediatric central nervous system disorders.
COGNITIVE RADIOS FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM ACCESS - Dynamic Spectrum Access in the Time Domain: Modeling and Exploiting White Space

Dynamic spectrum access is a promising approach to alleviate the spectrum scarcity that wireless communications face today. In short, it aims at reusing sparsely occupied frequency bands while causing no (or insignificant) interference to the actual licensees. This article focuses on applying this concept in the time domain by exploiting idle periods between bursty transmissions of multi-access communication channels and addresses WLAN as an example of practical importance. A statistical model based on empirical data is presented, and it is shown how to use this model for deriving access strategies. The coexistence of Bluetooth and WLAN is considered as a concrete example
ON APPROXIMATION OF CONTINUOUSLY DIFFERENTIABLE FUNCTIONS BY POSITIVE LINEAR OPERATORS

The aim of this note is to prove a theorem on the pointwise degree of approximation of continuously differentiable functions by positive linear operators. As can be seen from the applications to Bernstein and Hermite-Fejer operators, our inequality yields better constants and sometimes even a higher degree of approximation than the known general results.
Decellularized Allogeneic and Xenogeneic Tissue as a Bioscaffold for Regenerative Medicine: Factors that Influence the Host Response

Biologic scaffold materials composed of mammalian extracellular matrix (ECM) are prepared by decellularization of source tissues harvested from either humans (allogeneic) or a variety of other (xenogeneic) species. These matrix scaffold materials are commonly regulated and used as surgical mesh materials for applications such as ventral hernia repair, musculotendinous tissue reconstruction, dura mater replacement, reconstructive breast surgery, pelvic floor reconstruction, and the treatment of cutaneous ulcers, among others. The clinical results for these applications vary widely for reasons which include characteristics of the source tissue, methods and efficacy of tissue decellularization, and methods of processing/manufacturing. However, the primary determinant of success or failure in the clinical setting is the response of the host to these implanted biologic scaffold materials. It is logical to question why any non-self biologic material, particularly a xenogeneic material, would not elicit an early and aggressive adverse immune response. The present manuscript briefly describes the known mechanisms by which these biologic scaffold materials can facilitate a constructive remodeling response, the known causative factors of an adverse response, and provides a general discussion of the role of the macrophage in determining outcome.
Modeling regulatory policies associated with offshore structure removal requirements in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract Federal regulations require that a lease in the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico be cleared of all structures within one year after production on the lease ceases, but in recent years, the Minerals Management Service has begun to encourage operators to remove idle (non-producing) structures on producing leases that are no longer “economically viable”. At the end of 2003, there were 2175 producing structures, 898 idle (non-producing) structures, and 440 auxiliary (never-producing) structures on 1356 active leases; and 329 idle structures and 65 auxiliary structures on 273 inactive leases. The purpose of this paper is to model the impact of alternative regulatory policies on the removal trends of structures and the inventory of idle iron, and to provide first-order estimates of the cost of each regulatory option. A description of the modeling framework and implementation results is presented.
THE VACUOLATING CYTOTOXIN OF HELICOBACTER PYLORI

Helicobacter pylori, the causative agent of chronic superficial gastritis and duodenal ulcer disease in humans, produces a unique cytotoxin (VacA) that induces cytoplasmic vacuolation in eukaryotic cells. The structural organization and processing of the vacuolating cytotoxin are characteristic of a family of proteins exemplified by Neisseria gonorrhoeae IgA protease. Although only 50% of H. pylori isolates produce detectable cytotoxin activity in vitro, vacA homologues are present in virtually all isolates. Several families of vacA alleles have been identified, and there is a strong correlation between presence of specific vacA genotypes, cytotoxin activity, and peptic ulceration. Experiments in a mouse model of H. pylori-induced gastric damage indicate that the cytotoxin plays an important role in inducing gastric epithelial necrosis.
Optimum Effort and Rent Distribution in the Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Fishery

Traditional methods used to estimate fishing effort that maximizes rent to an open access resource have almost universally assumed all costs are directly proportional to effort. When crews receive a fixed share of gross returns, labor costs are proportional to catch; hence, rent accrues to crews as well as vessel owners under limited entry. A model that allowed costs to be proportional to effort and catch was applied to the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery. This study indicates that traditional analysis would result in management schemes that overtax vessels and ignore rent accruing to crews.
Building good relationships between self-instructional language programs and departments of foreign languages

Recently at a seminar of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages held’at the State University of New York at Albany, there was a discussion of the less commonly taught languages and the implications of the role of Asian languages in United States education in the 1980’s. During this discussion one department chairperson asked the question: “But aren’t we promoting these other languages at our own peril?” The idea that students must choose between the commonly taught languages (French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish) and the less commonly taught ones (such as Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian) is one which frightens many faculty members in traditional language departments. This idea of a choice either/or on the part of the students is one which language teachers must resist, however, for it behooves us all to become more linguistically oriented and to encourage the study of foreign languages in general and on all levels, without being prescriptive about which languages are being studied. In other words, we must leave our linguistic provincialism and call for a language awakening on the part of the American people. The MLA Task Force on the Less Commonly Taught Languages has prepared a report on the status of such languages. These uncommonly taught include those “spoken by over 80% of the world’s population, and several of them have for many years been classified as ‘strategic’ or ‘critical’ from the point of view of the national interest of the United States.“’ Rather than less commonly taught, they should be termed “neglected languages” languages that have in fact been neglected by language teachers themselves that is those who teach the traditional languages. In the realization that the study of foreign languages will grow to meet the needs of the future, the MLA task forces have prepared the MLA/ACLS Task Forces Five-Year Pfan. Among the proposals in this plan is the development of Self-Instructional Language Programs (SILP). Advocates of SILP offerings hope to see courses given in 100 different languages. Support of this report requires that we change our attitudes and that language teachers realize that we will all flourish together or sink together. When one notes that there are 100,000 teachers of English in the Soviet Union and only 27,000 students of Russian in the United States, it becomes immediately apparent that our language programs are not meeting our national needs. Although many schools can offer some of the less commonly taught languages in regular classroom settings, small schools may be unable to set up regular classes in any of these
Resistance from the flanks: a role for telomere repeat factor 2 in chemotherapeutic drug resistance.

Commentary to:TRF2 Promotes Multidrug Resistance in Gastric Cancer CellsHanbing Ning, Tingting Li, Lina Zhao, Ting Li, Jichang Li, Jie Liu, Zhiguo Liu and Daiming Fan
Communication between Physicians and Patients in the Era of E-Medicine

With the growing acceptance of e-medicine by third-party payers, a quiet revolution has begun. Dr. John Stone writes that the emerging model will improve the practice of medicine but will also bring new challenges.
Fair electronic exchange using biometrics

Fair exchange between two parties can be defined as where: either both parties acquire what they expected or neither does. Protocols that facilitate such transactions are known as "fair exchange protocols". We analyze one such protocol for contract signing that was presented by Micali. In this paper we show that Micali's protocol is not completely fair and demonstrate the possibilities for one party to cheat by obtaining the other party's commitment and not offer his. A revised version of this protocol by Bao et al. provides improved fairness by handling the above mentioned attack but does not handle replay attacks. Our proposed protocol improves upon the revised protocol by addressing replay attacks and removing redundant information from signatures thus making the overall transmission smaller. Our protocol also provides client authentication using a finger print based authentication technique and our use of hybrid encryption using Elliptic Curves instead of first generation techniques further improves efficiency.
High toughness ceramics and ceramic composites

Abstract Relationships that govern trends in the toughness of ceramics and ceramic composites with microstructure are well-developed. The status of present understanding is reviewed. Two principal mechanistic classes are described: process and bridging zone mechanisms. Process zone mechanisms, which include transformation, microcrack and twin toughning are shown to be governed by the size of the zone and by the non-linear strain provided by the mechanism. Bridging zone mechanisms exhibit toughness dictated by a coupled measure of the strength of the reinforcement and a rupture displacement: toughning by fibers, whiskers and ductile networks are mechanisms of this type. Both types of mechanisms demontrate resistance curve behavior, dominated by crack wake effects. Interactions between mechanisms are briefly addressed.
Characteristics of Sulfur in OMVPE Grown Indium Phosphide

Doping of indium phosphide, grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE), has been carried out using hydrogen sulfide. For low partial pressures of H 2 S, the carrier concentration in the epitaxial layers is found to increase linearly. However, for higher partial pressures a region of superlinear doping is seen. For still higher partial pressures, a rapid decrease in carrier concentration is seen. In the linear region, the doping has a weak dependence on phosphine pressure, however, peak carrier concentration is higher for lower phosphine pressures. The layers were studied using Hall Effect and Double Crystal X-Ray Diffraction, in order to elucidate the nature of impurities and compensating centers introduced. A model which explains the above characteristics is proposed for S incorporation in MOVPE grown InP.
Role of immunoglobulin class in mediation of experimental mesangial glomerulonephritis.

Abstract The contribution of immunoglobulin class to the histology and ultrastructure of renal lesions was examined in an experimental model of glomerulonephritis in which the glomerular deposits were selected to be predominantly IgM or IgG. The selection was accomplished by immunizing and then injecting rabbits with a carrier preparation plus heat-denatured (HD) DNA (n = 11) or ultraviolet-irradiated (uv) DNA ((n = 11). It has been shown previously that HD DNA gives rise to an IgM antibody response and uv DNA to an IgG response. Groups of rabbits immunized with each preparation produced largely IgM (HD DNA) or IgG (uv DNA) anti-DNA antibody. After 10 and 20 weeks of injections, animals receiving both antigens developed diffuse mesangial hypercellularity with either IgM or IgG deposits accompanied by C3; by ultrastructural analysis all deposits were confined to the mesangium. By 28 weeks, heavy mesangial IgM and IgG deposits were noted but no quantitative or qualitative differences in the renal histology was observed. Individual animals developed sporadic hematuria and azotemia but proteinuria was not found. These results show that both IgM and IgG can mediate experimental mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis and that the immunoglobulin class of the glomerular deposits does not influence the appearance of the renal lesion.
Nucleation of intragranular ferrite in Fe-Ni-P alloys

The nucleation of intragranular ferrite from austenite in Fe-Ni-P alloys was investigated in order to understand the development of the Widmanstatten pattern in iron meteorites. Alloys containing 5 to 10 wt pct Ni and 0 to 1 wt pct P were used to simulate iron meteorite compositions. In the isothermal and controlled cooling experiments the reaction path γ → α+ γ serves only to nucleate ferrite along austenite grain boundaries. It is necessary for (FeNi)3P to be present within y grains in order to nucleate intragranular ferrite. The reaction path γ → γ+ phosphide → α + γ + phosphide yields rod shaped ferrite nuclei that bear a near Kurdjumov-Sachs orientation relationship with the surrounding matrix. The precipitation of ferrite, both along grain boundaries and within the austenite grains, is suppressed in the absence of P.
A novel hybrid numerical technique to model 3-D fountain flow in injection molding processes

Abstract A novel hybrid two-dimensional (2-D)/three-dimensional (3-D) numerical technique is presented to model 3-D fountain flows in thin cavities as encountered in injection molding processes. At the fountain flow region, where all three velocity components are significant, the governing 3-D fluid flow equations are solved by using a pressure Poisson formulation. Behind the flow front, where out of plane flows are negligible, the 2-D Hele-Shaw formulation is employed, largely reducing the number of unknowns in comparison to a fully-three-dimensional formulation. Boundary fitted coordinate systems (BFCS) together with the finite difference method (FDM) are used to solve the governing equations on a non-staggered grid. The formulation is capable of handling non-linearities in the material behavior due to the shear-thinning characteristics of typical resin systems. Results are presented for isothermal flow of Newtonian and shear-thinning fluids through diverging and converging flow sections.
Rent-seeking in higher education: Voting on academic requirements*

Research on U.S. college athletics suggests that voting on academic eligibility rules is motivated by rent-seeking behavior. Furthermore, academic eligibility rules have been criticized as being racially biased — more blacks than whites fail to meet the requirements. This paper examines whether the potential racial bias impacted voting on a specific academic eligibility rule known as Proposition 42. Evidence of customer discrimination suggests revenue generating differentials between black and white college basketball players. If rent-seeking behavior motivates voting on academic eligibility rules, then the racial composition of recruits and fans may be determinants of Proposition 42 voting. The results show that schools with more black fans were more likely to oppose Proposition 42; however, schools with a larger pool of potential black recruits tended to favor it, perhaps due to a comparative advantage in recruiting black student-athletes.
Occlusion and levodopa-carbidopa treatment for childhood amblyopia

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to compare the effects of levodopa-carbidopa with and without part-time occlusion on visual function in older amblyopic children. Methods: Thirteen older amblyopic children were randomly assigned to receive or not receive part-time occlusion (3 h/day) combined with 7 weeks of oral dosing with levodopa-carbidopa (1.02 mg/0.25 mg/kg body weight three times daily). Visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and fusion were measured at baseline; 1, 3, 5, and 7 weeks during the treatment regimen; and 4 weeks after termination of all treatment. At these same times health status was assessed with standard laboratory blood tests, physical examination, and subjective questionnaire. Results: From baseline to the follow-up test trial, both groups improved in visual acuity in the amblyopic eyes (occlusion group 20116 to 2076, P .05; no occlusion group 2020 to 2016, P < .01). The occlusion group exhibited a significant decrease in the difference in acuity between the dominant and amblyopic eyes of 1.3 lines (P < .02), whereas the no occlusion group revealed no significant effect. A comparison between groups revealed a significantly greater improvement in visual acuity in the amblyopic eye in the occlusion group compared with the no occlusion group (P = .01). In contrast, there was no significant difference between groups in terms of the change in visual acuity in the dominant eye (P = .15). Mean log contrast sensitivity in the amblyopic eye significantly improved in the occlusion group and did not significantly change in the no occlusion group. Fusion changed similarly in both groups. The improvements in visual function were maintained 4 weeks after the termination of all treatment. Adverse side effects were minimal in both groups. Conclusion: The combination of levodopa-carbidopa and occlusion improves visual function more than levodopa-carbidopa alone in older amblyopic children.
Sliding Mode Control of a Hydraulically Actuated Load Application Unit With Application to Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing

This paper presents a sliding mode control strategy for a load application unit (LAU) found at Clemson University’s Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing Facility in North Charleston, SC, USA. The LAU is a multiinput, multioutput, overactuated, nonlinear, dynamic system and is part of a 7.5-MW wind turbine nacelle test bench. First, a plant model of the system is developed. Second, a sliding mode control strategy is developed. This control strategy uses a pseudoinverse of the input influence matrix to account for the system being overactuated. The resulting reference signals are inputs to a sliding controller responsible for controlling the system’s 24 hydraulic actuators. The results show that the proposed control strategy performs well and that the LAU may be suitable for replicating full-scale time-varying wind loads on the main shaft of a test nacelle. Also discussed are key areas for improvement and future research directions.