cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Cholesterol methodology for human studies

A classification and review of the methodology involved in the determination of serum cholesterol for human (or animal) studies are presented. The purpose of both is to enable selection of a technique appropriate for the assay intended with a reasonable understanding of its advantages, disadvantages and limitations. The various methods discussed include direct reaction systems, partial isolation systems and complete isolation systems, as well as screening, reference and definitive procedures. The interferences that could occur are considered, especially those caused by hemoglobin, the turbidity in lipidemia, and bilirubin, as well as interferences caused by optical aberrations and chemical reactants. The various instrumental methods used to determine cholesterol or a substitute determinand such as hydrogem peroxide are discussed, including spectrophotometry, electrochemistry and densitometry of electrophoretically separated proteins.
Structure Evolution in Hydrothermally Processed (<100°C) BaTiO3 Films

Thin films of cubic BaTiO3 were processed hydrothermally at 40°–80°C by reacting thin layers of titanium organo metallic liquid precursors in aqueous solutions of either Ba(OH)2 or a mixture of NaOH and BaCl2. All films (thickness ∼1 μm) were polycrystalline with grain sizes ranging from nano- to micrometer dimensions. BaTiO3 formation was facilitated by increasing [OH-], [Ba2+], and the temperature. The film structure was related to the nucleation and growth behavior of the BaTiO3 particles. Films processed at relatively low [OH-], [Ba2+], and temperatures were coarse grain and opaque, but increasing [OH-], [Ba2+], and temperature caused the grain size to decrease, resulting in transparent films.
Novel therapies for recurrent ovarian cancer management

The search for novel therapies has resulted in a number of biologic agents that target cellular processes and molecules involved in ovarian carcinogenesis. These drugs include cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines, protease inhibitors and gene replacement systems. Many of these have been evaluated in Phase I/II trials and are currently being investigated in Phase III trials. This paper will review the progress of and ongoing clinical studies evaluating the potential utility of these new agents in patients affected with ovarian cancer. Further development and investigation of these agents may eventually lead to a combination of treatments that ultimately results in improved survival for patients with ovarian cancer.
Modulation of K-Ras-Dependent Lung Tumorigenesis by MicroRNA-21

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world, and non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for 80% of cases. MicroRNA-21 (miR-21) expression is increased and predicts poor survival in NSCLC. Although miR-21 function has been studied in vitro with cancer cell lines, the role of miR-21 in tumor development in vivo is unknown. We utilize transgenic mice with loss-of-function and gain-of-function miR-21 alleles combined with a model of NSCLC to determine the role of miR-21 in lung cancer. We show that overexpression of miR-21 enhances tumorigenesis and that genetic deletion of miR-21 partially protects against tumor formation. MiR-21 drives tumorigenesis through inhibition of negative regulators of the Ras/MEK/ERK pathway and inhibition of apoptosis.
Blind and nonblind nonnegative impulse response ISI channel demodulation using the Richardson-Lucy algorithm

Both blind and nonblind demodulation algorithms based on the Richardson-Lucy algorithm for the one-dimensional intersymbol interference channel with nonnegative impulse response function are proposed and compared numerically with the Viterbi demodulation algorithm and the demodulation algorithms based on the Wiener filter. Simulation results show that the demodulation algorithms based on the Richardson-Lucy algorithm have better bit error rate performance than the demodulation algorithms based on the Wiener filter. With the progressive thresholding, the bit error rate curves of both blind and nonblind Richardson-Lucy-based algorithms are within 0.3 dB from that of the Viterbi algorithm throughout the entire simulated signal-to-noise ratio range. While the complexity of the Viterbi algorithm depends critically on the length of the channel impulse response function, the complexity of the demodulation algorithms based on the Richardson-Lucy algorithm only weakly depends on it
Lethal and Sublethal Effects of Bendiocarb, Halofenozide, and Imidacloprid on Harpalus pennsylvanicus (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Following Different Modes of Exposure in Turfgrass

Routes by which nontarget predatory insects can be exposed to turfgrass pesticides include topical, residual, and dietary exposure. We used each of these routes to evaluate potential lethal or sublethal effects of two novel turfgrass insecticides, imidacloprid and halofenozide, and a carbamate, bendiocarb, on survival, behavior, and fecundity of the ground beetle Harpalus pennsylvanicus DeGeer. Field-collected carabids were exposed to direct spray applications in turf plots, fed food contaminated by such applications, or exposed to irrigated or nonirrigated residues on turf cores. Halofenozide caused no apparent acute, adverse effects through topical, residual, or dietary exposure. Moreover, the viability of eggs laid by females fed halofenozide-treated food once, or continuously for 30 d, was not reduced. In contrast, topical or dietary exposure of carabids to bendiocarb inevitably was lethal. Exposure to imidacloprid by those routes caused high incidence of sublethal, neurotoxic effects including paralysis, impaired walking, and excessive grooming. Intoxicated beetles usually recovered within a few days in the laboratory, but in the field, they were shown to be highly vulnerable to predation by ants. One-time intoxication by imidacloprid did not reduce females' fecundity or viability of eggs. There was no apparent behavioral avoidance of insecticide residues, or of insecticide-treated food. Carabids exposed to dry residues on turfgrass cores suffered high mortality from bendiocarb, and some intoxication from imidacloprid, but these effects were greatly reduced by posttreatment irrigation. Implications for predicting hazards of insecticides to beneficial invertebrates in turfgrass are discussed.
Deaths: Trauma, Abdominal Cavity – Pathology

Abdominal trauma is relatively common in medicolegal death investigation. Such trauma may be a small or large part of more complex injury patterns that extend to involve non-abdominal locations, or it may be isolated to the abdomen. A variety of mechanisms exist, most commonly involving firearms injuries, sharp force injuries, and blunt force trauma. Other mechanisms may also involve the abdominal organs. In this chapter, an organ-by-organ review of abdominal trauma is followed by a section that deals specifically with abdominal trauma related to various mechanisms of injury.
Religion and Counterterrorism: What Explains the Difference in Counterterrorism Policies between Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates?

In the face of domestic religious activism and close ties between religion and the state, successive Pakistani governments have maintained ties with domestic and international Islamic militants and hesitated to reform domestic institutions that promoted extremist violence. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) presents a compelling contrast to Pakistan. Despite having an equally conservative populace and an official role for Islam in the state’s functioning, under US pressure over counterterrorism the government quickly moved to reform its banking system to disrupt suspected terrorist financing. These differing counterterrorism policies among two conservative and officially Islamic states seem to point to the limits of religion in understanding security issues. I, however, argue that the differing counterterrorism policies are the result of the unique and differing religion-state relationships in the two countries. While both are officially Islamic, they differ in the political ties between religious groups and the state. Due to Pakistan's closer ties to religious groups, it faces strong religious opposition to counterterrorism policies, while the UAE has more freedom of action to implement counterterrorism policies, as the regime keeps religious groups at bay. I use a paired case comparison, which I complement with within-case qualitative methods, to highlight the role of religion and the limited explanatory power of alternative explanations. This paper contributes to the study of religion and politics, contemporary international security issues, and qualitative methods.
Confocal microscopic analysis of fluorescein compartmentation within crab urinary bladder cells

Fluorescein (FL), a fluorescent organic anion, is compartmentalized in cells of organic anion-secreting epithelia, e.g., OK cells, teleost proximal tubule, and crab (Cancer borealis) urinary bladder, a proximal tubule analogue. To further examine the processes involved, FL uptake and distribution were studied in C. borealis urinary bladder cells using epifluorescence and laser confocal microscopy combined with video-image analysis. Intracellular FL was about evenly split between diffuse and punctate compartments after in vitro or in vivo loading. Treatments that affected FL transport into cells (incubation with p-aminohippuric acid or glutarate) altered the FL content of both compartments. However, nocodazole, a microtubule inhibitor, did not affect diffuse FL but significantly reduced punctate FL. Finally, confocal analysis indicated that individual sites of punctate FL accumulation moved in the secretory direction at 0.83 micron/min. Nocodazole nearly abolished this movement and significantly reduced transepithelial organic anion secretion. Thus, in crab urinary bladder, a substantial fraction of total cellular FL is sequestered in vesicles, and these vesicles move in the secretory direction, by a microtubule-dependent process.
Genres of Underemployment: A Dialogical Analysis of College Graduate Underemployment

With more individuals obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees and the job market still recovering from the 2008 recession, the instances of college graduate underemployment (CGU) have increased throughout the United States. College graduate underemployment is an employment condition that is characterized by subjective and objective factors, most prominent of which is an incongruence between one’s education and one’s current job. The intriguing nature of CGU is how both employment and education merge together to influence the individual’s perception of their employment prospects, their educational experiences, and their identity. This study employs a dialogical qualitative analysis to examine CGU in order to ascertain how underemployed college graduates construct narratives of their experiences and define the value of their education. Twenty in-depth interviews of underemployed college graduates from different academic disciplines are analyzed with a dialogical genre analysis developed by Paul Sullivan. Two genre pairsâ€”epic/romance and tragedy/black comedyâ€”are employed to illustrate the correlating modes of experience for these participants, creating new narratives that problematize the dominant education-to-employment progression.
Polymeric nanoparticles for gene delivery

Nucleic acids used to modify the genome or initiate RNA interference (RNAi) including, plasmid DNA (pDNA), messenger RNA (mRNA), short interfering RNA (siRNA), short hairpin RNA (shRNA), microRNA (miRNA), miRNA inhibitors, peptide nucleic acids (PNA), RNA-based adjuvants, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas (CRISPR/Cas) gene-editing systems have powerful therapeutic potential to modulate currently undruggable targets and to provide improved treatment options for the most challenging pathologies. In all cases, the efficacy of these nucleic acid drugs is contingent upon effective delivery to the organ, cell population, and intracellular compartment of interest. Rapid advances in polymer chemistry and materials science have made it possible to rationally design non-viral nucleic acid vectors which can overcome delivery barriers and increase the efficacy and specificity of gene expression, editing, or inhibition. Herein, we review five distinct classes of polymeric nanoparticles which have been heavily investigated for gene delivery: micelles/polyplexes, cross-linked micelles, polymersomes, microgels, and nanogels. These different classes of polymer delivery systems provide virus mimetic functionalities such as nucleic acid protection, increased blood circulation time, active and passive targeting, evasion of immune system, cellular internalization, and endolysosomal escape to varying extents. Recent studies are reviewed in order to showcase the potential for success within each class, and current ongoing clinical trials for RNAi are discussed briefly to highlight the translatability of optimized nanoparticle designs.
A directed set of Sturm–Liouville operators

Asymptotic estimates for the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of a directed set of Sturm–Liouville operators are obtained. Particular attention is paid to the influence of the diffusion coefficient, as it becomes arbitrarily large.
A Comparative Kariometry between Isolated and Intracellular Nuclei

A comparative kariometry between isolated and intracellular nuclei was attempted. The nuclear specimens were obtained from rat liver by the isolation techniques of citric acid, CaCl2-sucrose or glycerol, and, with respect to nuclear size, the effects of enuclation, of fixation and of histological treatments were observed. The nuclear diameters were estimated under a microscope through Ramsden micrometer. Obtained results were summarized as follows:If surrounding media were kept in an adequate condition, isolated nuclei in different media could be arranged on a similar size, and also both isolated and intracellular nuclei samely arranged. As the standard devition of diameter of intracellular nuclei was smaller comparing with that of isolated nuclei, it seemed that the nuclei in cells were sustained a certain restriction with the presence of cytoplasm. The size of isolated nuclei was increased by the treatments of fixatives, while it was decreased after successive histological treatments as a whole. This shrinkage was induced from isolated nuclei as well as intracellular nuclei.From these results, it was suggested the more reasonable representation of nuclear size should be rather aquired from the kariometry of isolated nuclei than that of intracellular nuclei.
Some Aspects of the Pathogenesis of HIV-1-Associated Kaposi's Sarcoma

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a very rare tumor except after human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection when it becomes common. Most investigators assume that the role of HIV-1 is passive, i.e., via inducing immune deficiency, thereby enhancing cancer development, and specifically, in the case of human herpesvirus 8 (KSHV) by enhancing HHV-8 replication. We suggest that the role of HIV-1 is more active in the disease process by at least two events: 1) promoting an increase in inflammatory cytokines, which through sustained release influences early stage KS by inciting local microinflammatory responses, and 2) by the Tat protein that effects growth of the inflammatory cells. Cultures of all activated endothelial spindle cells, whether hyperplastic or neoplastic, are negative for HHV-8; transmission of HHV-8 does not induce cell growth or transformation; monkeys immune suppressed by simian immunodeficiency virus infection and infected also with HHV-8 do not develop KS; polymerase chain reaction analysis of blood cells shows HHV-8 sequences in monocytes and B cells (about 20% of normal donors in Maryland); M. Starzl showed that early KS has few cells (mostly macrophage) positive for HHV-8, increasing and present in endothelial cells only late in the disease; no increase in HHV-8 has been found in association with progressive immune deficiency; and recent studies in Gambia by others showed that HHV-8 is a very common infection, and though HHV-2 is known to be relatively common, HIV-1 is unusual and so is KS. Collectively, these findings lead me to conclude that there is little evidence that HHV-8 is a transforming virus as has been repeatedly suggested and that its role in KS is more likely to be indirect (like HIV-1), perhaps necessary but hardly likely to be sufficient for KS development.
On the use of unpolarized infrared spectroscopy for quantitative analysis of absorbing species in birefringent crystals

There is an understandable desire to use simple unpolarized infrared analysis of unoriented anisotropic samples to extract quantitative information, rather than using more demanding polarized techniques. Owing to the fact that unpolarized infrared absorbance in birefringent media deviates from the Beer-Lambert law, previous studies have either warned against using unpolarized spectroscopy for quantitative purposes, or have used flawed error analysis to justify using simple averages of integrated absorbance of multiple absorbance bands as a proxy for total integrated polarized absorbance in the principal spectra. It is shown here that unpolarized infrared absorbance is correctly calculated by averaging in the transmission domain. The errors in estimates of principal absorbance by averaging of unpolarized absorbance spectra are evaluated using correct theory of unpolarized infrared transmission. Correction schemes for integrated absorbance based on linear-absorbance error calculations are shown to be inappropriate. A theory is developed that allows the sum of the polarized principal absorbance spectra to be estimated from multiple unpolarized measurements of randomly oriented samples. The systematic errors that arise when averaging in the absorbance domain are avoided by use of exact theory rather than an approximation. Numerical simulation shows that applying the new procedure to 10 unpolarized measurements of OH stretching bands in olivine results in convergence of the estimated total integrated principal polarized absorbance to within 10% of the true value for a sample size of 10 measurements, but the technique is limited to spectral regions that do not contain absorption bands that are simultaneously intensely absorbing and strongly anisotropic.
32 STAPHYLOCOCCAL SCALDED SKIN SYNDROME: A RARE COMPLICATION OF A COMMON PATHOGEN.

Introduction Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome (SSSS) is caused by an exfoliative toxin-producing strain of Staphylococcus aureus (SA). It is a disorder that is commonly seen in children but rarely found in adults. In recent years, there appears to be an increasing awareness of the diagnostic criteria, and as a result, there are now over 50 documented adult cases reported in the literature. However, only two adult cases have been documented from methicillin-resistant SA (MRSA). This is the first reported case involving communtiy-acquired MRSA meningitis in association with SSSS. Case Report A 45-year-old female with type 2 diabetes mellitus presented to an outside hospital with subjective fevers and progressive lower back pain radiating down her legs, inhibiting ambulation. Lumbar puncture studies were initially consistent with viral meningitis. Multiple blood and CSF cultures returned with MRSA. She received a 21-day course of vancomycin, rifampin, and claforan for MRSA meningitis. One week after discharge, the patient presented to our emergency department with a severe desquamating rash with underlying normal skin from the occiput to knees bilaterally, body aches, and dehydration. The rash began on her right upper extremity and spread globally, only sparing the mucous membranes, soles of the feet, and palms of the hands. Nikolsky9s sign was present. Laboratory upon admission revealed an elevated leukocyte count and BUN/Cr of 136/2.3. Skin biopsy revealed subcorneal splitting along the granular layer without dermal infiltration or organisms. MRSA was found in multiple blood cultures. She was treated with a 21-day course of vancomycin, maxipime, and rifampin; in addition, she was treated with aggressive wound care and intravenous hydration. During her hospital course, the patient9s skin rash resolved without scarring. Antibodies to TSST-1 and staphylococcal enterotoxin B were positive. Exfoliative toxins A and B were negative. MRSA was positive for Panton-Valentine leukocidin. Discussion SSSS occurs secondary to a systemic SA infection that produces bullous lesions that spare the mucous membranes. Nikolsky9s sign is typically positive. Exfoliative toxin A or B frequently causes the syndrome, but in the three reported cases involving MRSA, TSST-1 and circulating enterotoxin likely contribute to SSSS. Diagnostic criteria include SA-positive blood cultures, presence of SA toxins, skin biopsy, and clinical findings. Skin biopsy typically reveals subcorneal splitting along the granular layer without dermal infiltration. Treatment for SSSS includes anti-SA antibiotics, meticulous wound care, and aggressive fluid resuscitation. Despite aggressive therapy, the prognosis in adult cases is poor.
Analysis of impact signal response spectrum of solid rocket motors

Ignition impact signal during ground test of solid rocket motors is analyzed and calculated by using impact response spectrum methodAdvanced and improved recursive filter method is chosen as the calculation programCalculation principle, program verification of impact response spectrum and processing results of test data are introduced 
The Relationship Between Item Context Characteristics and Student Performance: The Case of the 2006 and 2009 PISA Science Items

BackgroundA long-standing premise in test design is that contextualizing test items makes them concrete, less demanding, and more conducive to determining whether students can apply or transfer the...
WE-B-BRC-00: Concepts in Risk-Based Assessment.

Prospective quality management techniques, long used by engineering and industry, have become a growing aspect of efforts to improve quality management and safety in healthcare. These techniques are of particular interest to medical physics as scope and complexity of clinical practice continue to grow, thus making the prescriptive methods we have used harder to apply and potentially less effective for our interconnected and highly complex healthcare enterprise, especially in imaging and radiation oncology. An essential part of most prospective methods is the need to assess the various risks associated with problems, failures, errors, and design flaws in our systems. We therefore begin with an overview of risk assessment methodologies used in healthcare and industry and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. The rationale for use of process mapping, failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and fault tree analysis (FTA) by TG-100 will be described, as well as suggestions for the way forward. This is followed by discussion of radiation oncology specific risk assessment strategies and issues, including the TG-100 effort to evaluate IMRT and other ways to think about risk in the context of radiotherapy. Incident learning systems, local as well as the ASTRO/AAPM ROILS system, can also be useful in the risk assessment process. Finally, risk in the context of medical imaging will be discussed. Radiation (and other) safety considerations, as well as lack of quality and certainty all contribute to the potential risks associated with suboptimal imaging. The goal of this session is to summarize a wide variety of risk analysis methods and issues to give the medical physicist access to tools which can better define risks (and their importance) which we work to mitigate with both prescriptive and prospective risk-based quality management methods. Learning Objectives: 1.Description of risk assessment methodologies used in healthcare and industry 2.Discussion of radiation oncology-specific risk assessment strategies and issues 3.Evaluation of risk in the context of medical imaging and image quality E. Samei: Research grants from Siemens and GE
Adolph F. Bandelier as a Pueblo Ethnologist

ABSTRACTThe activities of Adolph Bandelier in the Southwest during the late 19th century have long been of interest to scholars with a variety of interests. This paper is limited to a consideration, or evaluation, of his ethnological investigations among the Puebloan tribes. In terms of the present day, his work reveals the shortcomings typical of the efforts of most scholarly pioneers; nonetheless, Bandelier's findings have great value in the study of Puebloan peoples.
Zur Untersuchung von Subjektivierungsweisen aus wissenssoziologisch-diskursanalytischer Perspektive

Nach einer in den 1990er Jahren beginnenden und bis heute anhaltenden Konjunktur der sozialwissenschaftlichen und interdisziplinaren Diskursforschung, erfahrt die Analyse von Subjektivierungsweisen in der jungeren Vergangenheit ebenfalls einen ‘Boom’.
Potential Hepatotoxicities of Intravenous Fat Emulsions in Infants and Children

Infants and children who depend on parenteral nutrition are among the most vulnerable to developing potentially devastating intestinal failure–associated liver disease. While the pathogenesis of intestinal failure–associated liver disease remains unclear, evidence for the contribution of fat emulsions to cholestasis and liver injury has rapidly increased in recent years. Data demonstrating the interaction among phytosterols, fatty acids, and antioxidants in cellular pathways that mediate bile flow and hepatic injury have led to the development of newer alternative fat emulsions. This article reviews recent studies that have provided insight into the potential hepatotoxicities of fat emulsions.
A model for the ergosterol biosynthetic pathway in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

ABSTRACTErgosterol and 7-dehydroporiferasterol are the predominant sterols in the membranes of the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Dangeard. Ergosterol is primarily found in most fungi, which produce their end-product sterols by way of the intermediate lanosterol. In contrast, plants rarely make ergosterol and plant sterols are made via the intermediate cycloartenol. The cycloartenol-lanosterol bifurcation has been used as a means to evolutionarily categorize species based on their sterol production. Use of bioinformatics has revealed that the green alga, C. reinhardtii is probably producing sterols using a pathway very similar to that of higher plants. The Chlamydomonas genome was searched for genes that encoded proteins exhibiting high similarity to sterol biosynthetic proteins in the higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana or the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genes with the greatest similarity were chosen and annotated. To establish whether these genes were expressed, the presence of their transcripts was d...
The Suppression of Low-Temperature Intergranular Brittleness in Ferritic Fe-Mn Alloys

In recent years, there have been a number of investigations [1–6] on the cryogenic mechanical properties of Fe—Mn alloys. Such studies showed that martensitic Fe—Mn alloys (6 to 12 wt.% Mn) have excellent cryogenic strength. The cryogenic toughness is poor, however; the alloys exhibit the characteristic ductile-brittle transition near room temperature.
Listening to postcolonial Latin America: Aurality: listening and knowledge in nineteenth-century Colombia, by Ana María Ochoa Gautier

Spanish America in the nineteenth century was a region seeking to identify and define its boundaries, genealogy, and voice. Following the Wars of Independence in the early decades of the century, m...
Molecular basis of the evolution of alternative tyrosine biosynthetic routes in plants

Structural, biochemical, and phylogenetic analyses of plant prephenate and arogenate dehydrogenases reveal a single residue that defines substrate specificity and sensitivity to product inhibition in two divergent tyrosine biosynthetic pathways. L-Tyrosine (Tyr) is essential for protein synthesis and is a precursor of numerous specialized metabolites crucial for plant and human health. Tyr can be synthesized via two alternative routes by different key regulatory TyrA family enzymes, prephenate dehydrogenase (PDH, also known as TyrAp) or arogenate dehydrogenase (ADH, also known as TyrAa), representing a unique divergence of primary metabolic pathways. The molecular foundation underlying the evolution of these alternative Tyr pathways is currently unknown. Here we characterized recently diverged plant PDH and ADH enzymes, obtained the X-ray crystal structure of soybean PDH, and identified a single amino acid residue that defines TyrA substrate specificity and regulation. Structures of mutated PDHs co-crystallized with Tyr indicate that substitutions of Asn222 confer ADH activity and Tyr sensitivity. Reciprocal mutagenesis of the corresponding residue in divergent plant ADHs further introduced PDH activity and relaxed Tyr sensitivity, highlighting the critical role of this residue in TyrA substrate specificity that underlies the evolution of alternative Tyr biosynthetic pathways in plants.
Secure off-path replication in content-centric networks

We present SCR, a secure content replication protocol for the Content-Centric Networking (CCN) architecture. The goal of SCR is to allow a data producer to cache protected content in off-path semi-trusted caches or replicas. In contrast to the standard “take what you want” model of CCN, SCR ensures that no unauthorized, off-path entity can obtain data from these replicas, even if the content is encrypted. SCR allows a producer to encrypt data under any viable access control scheme, such as group-based access backed by broadcast encryption, and delegate the delivery of said content to distributed replicas in the network. SCR is analogous to “blind caching” in IP-based networks, which aim to provide caching as a service in the presence of end-to-end encryption via TLS. We discuss the design details and security features, e.g., revocation, of SCR. We then compare SCR to the HTTP(S)-based blind caching model. We show that our scheme can outperform blind caching due to (1) less protocol complexity and message overhead, (2) faster session establishment, and (3) the ability to obtain data in parallel from multiple, independent replicas.
Receptive field image modeling through cellular neural networks

In this paper a system based on the use of local schemes of representation is presented in order to model the receptive visual field responses observed in the retinal ganglion cells, lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the primary visual cortex. The use of cellular neural networks (CNN) has been considered in particular as an efficient means to compute the Gabor filtering processes. The CNNs are structures of computation composed of arrays of cells interconnected taking advantage of the parallelism by assigning a processor (cell) to every image pixel. Each cell, having an internal state receives inputs from a predefined neighborhood, evolves in continuous time and assumes a continuum of values. The present scheme implements a logarithmic multiresolution structure of computation (pyramid), and constitutes a biological plausible model for implementing the spatial frequency and orientation selectivity mechanisms observed in early vision processing
Biomechanical comparison of 2 augmented glenoid designs: an integrated kinematic finite element analysis.

Background Augmented glenoid implants are available to help restore the biomechanics of the glenohumeral joint with excessive retroversion. It is imperative to understand their behavior to make a knowledgeable preoperative decision. Therefore, our goal was to identify an optimal augmented glenoid design based on finite element analysis (FEA) under maximum physiological loading. Methods FEA models of 2 augmented glenoid designs—wedge and step—were created per the manufacturers' specifications and virtually implanted in a scapula model to correct 20° of retroversion. Simulation of shoulder abduction was performed using the FEA shoulder model. The glenohumeral force ratio, relative micromotion, and stress levels on the cement mantle, glenoid vault, and backside of the implants were compared between the 2 designs. Results The force ratio was 0.56 for the wedge design and 0.87 for the step design. Micromotion (combination of distraction, translation, and compression) was greater for the step design than the wedge design. Distraction measured 0.05 mm for the wedge design and 0.14 mm for the step component. Both implants showed a similar pattern for translation; however, compression was almost 3 times greater for the step component. Both implants showed high stress levels on the cement mantle. At the glenoid vault and on the implants, the stress levels were 1.65 MPa and 6.62 MPa, respectively, for the wedge design and 3.78 MPa and 13.25 MPa, respectively, for the step design. Conclusion Implant design slightly affects joint stability; however, it plays a major role regarding long-term survival. Overall, the augmented wedge design provides better implant fixation and stress profiles with less micromotion.
Not So Radical After All: Ideological Diversity Among Radical Right Supporters and Its Implications:

Radical right voters and parties are often characterized as conservative and traditionalist on issues of gender, sexuality, and morality. Common wisdom is that they reject the progressive sociopoli...
Remote Two–Qubit Entanglement by Joint Homodyne Detection of Fluorescence

We propose a new method to entangle two qubits in remote cavities, using joint homodyne detetction of their spontaneous emission.
Using Hardware Counters to Predict Vectorization

Vectorization is the process of transforming the scalar implementation of an algorithm into vector form. This transformation aims to benefit from parallelism through the generation of microprocessor vector instructions. Using abstract models and source level information, compilers can identify opportunities for auto-vectorization. However, compilers do not always predict the runtime effects accurately or completely fail to identify vectorization opportunities. This ultimately results in no performance improvement.
Lung Disease Classification using Deep Convolutional Neural Network

The advanced technologies are essential to achieving the improvement of medicine. More specifically, an extensive investigation in a partnership among researchers, health care providers, and patients is integral to bringing precise and customized treatment strategies in taking care of various diseases. This paper aims to assess the degree of accuracy acceptable in the medical field by utilizing deep learning to publicly available data. First, we extracted spectrogram features and labels of the annotated lung sound samples and used them as an input to our 2D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model. Secondly, we normalized the lung sounds to remove the peak values and noise from them. For deep learning classification, publicly available data was not sufficient to conduct the learning process. Finally, we have created a deep learning model called Lung Disease Classification (LDC), combined with advanced data normalization and data augmentation techniques, for high-performance classification in lung disease diagnosis. The final accuracy obtained after the normalization and augmentation was approximately 97%. The proposed model paves the way for adequate assessment of the degree of accuracy acceptable in the medical field and guarantees better performance than other previously reported approaches.
Myosins in the Nucleus

Although originally characterized as a cytoplasmic protein, myosin of various classes also performs key functions in the nucleus. We review the data concerning the nuclear localization, mechanism of entry, and functional interactions of myosin I, II, V, VI, X, XVI, and XVIII. To date, the first-characterized “nuclear myosin I” (or, in the prevailing nomenclature, myosin IC isoform B) remains the best-studied nuclear myosin, although results are rapidly accumulating that illuminate the roles of other myosin classes, and an outline of a unified picture of myosin functions in the nucleus is beginning to emerge. Reflecting the state of knowledge in this field, the review concentrates on the mechanisms mediating and regulating import of myosin IC into the nucleus and its role, alongside myosin V and VI, in transcription. Myosin functions in chromatin dynamics, epigenetic mechanisms, intranuclear motility, and nuclear export of RNA and protein are also addressed. Partners and regulators of myosin, such as nuclear actin, kinases, and phosphatases are briefly covered. Problem areas are identified and testable hypotheses are offered with an aim of focusing the research efforts on overcoming the gaps on the way toward a systems-level understanding of processes involving nuclear myosins and their place in cell physiology as a whole.
Trust Considerations in the Coordination of Computational Design Teams

Design of complex systems requires a team and a significant coordination effort to produce a coherent whole that can achieve the desired system-level characteristics. Trust plays a critical role in group interactions with a significant impact on the efficacy of teamwork. Methods to make effective team coordination decisions based on proper trust relationships are not well studied in the literature. Here, we present a notional case study to quantitatively analyze the impact of trust in team coordination on the overall team performance when the team members make design decisions using uncertain information sources. The analysis is based on computational teams where a system-level problem is decomposed into subproblems solved by individual computational agents. In this case study, we model the design decisions of the individual agents with deterministic or Bayesian optimization depending on whether the models used for decision-making contains uncertainty. We use analytical target cascading to coordinate the team decisions where trust is a simple static quantity that determines the importance of the response coming from individual subsystems in the system-level problem. The results show that maximum trust in a team does not always yield the best teaming performance and that trust indeed should be a design variable to be determined based on the quality of the decisions that a team member makes. This study demonstrates these results on a notional problem for simplicity and interpretability while the approach can be generalized to more practical design problems.
CD56 at the human NK cell lytic immunological synapse

CD56 is the main identifying cell surface molecule of NK cells and has been recently identified as a regulator of cytotoxic function in NK cell lines. Despite its newly defined role in lytic granule polarization and exocytosis, biological questions remain involving the localization and function of CD56 at the immunological synapse. Here we use confocal and structured illumination microscopy to demonstrate recruitment of CD56 to the peripheral supramolecular activating cluster (pSMAC) of the immunological synapse of lytic effector cells. We provide additional data demonstrating that cell lines that are less dependent on CD56 for function are not utilizing alternative pathways of cytotoxicity, and that those that are dependent on CD56 have normal expression of activating and adhesion receptors. Finally, we use actin reporter (LifeAct) expressing NK92 cell lines and live cell confocal microscopy to visualize live cell killing events with WT and CD56-KO cells. This work further characterizes the novel role for CD56 in cytotoxic function of NK cells and provides deeper insight into the role of CD56 at the NK cell immunological synapse.
Data Samples and Event Selection

The analyses presented in this document make use of the majority of the data collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2010, as well as using a number of simulated data samples used to study both signal and background processes. This chapter reviews the samples and event selection criteria used for the analyses.
Evolution and trends of HDTV

The evolution of scientific activity related to HDTV is summarized from its first steps to the present and future situation. The problems connected to the definition of HDTV standards are examined, and an overview of the programs of the main international standards bodies (CCIR, CCITT) is given. The HDTV systems already realized and the most important projects regarding HDTV, which include MUSE, HD-MAC, SMPTE, and various Eureka projects, are discussed. A brief overview of Italian activity concerning HDTV is reported, focusing on the CNR-Telecommunicazioni project. The HDTV coding scheme realized by CSTV-CNR is presented, and its performance on two test sequences is evaluated. >
Factor V: Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.

The regulation of the delicate balance between the procoagulant and anticoagulant mechanisms is of extreme importance for survival. The procoagulant enzymatic complexes (i.e. prothrombinase, intrinsic tenase and extrinsic tenase) are similar in structure and composed of an enzyme, a cofactor, and the substrate associated on a cell surface in the presence of divalent metal ions. Factor Va and factor VIIIa, which are very similar in structure and function, are required for prothrombinase and intrinsic tenase activities respectively because both cofactors express a dual function in their respective complexes, acting as an enzyme receptor and catalytic effector on the cell surface. The cofactors derive from inactive plasma precursors by regulatory proteolytic events, which involve a-thrombin. In general bleeding tendencies are usually associated with defects in the activation of one of the zymogens or the cofactors of the procoagulant complexes. a-Thrombin, participates in its own down-regulation by binding to the endothelial cell receptor thrombomodulin, and initiating the protein C pathway, which in turn leads to the formation of activated protein C (APC). APC is required for efficient neutralization of factor Va cofactor activity which results in the inactivation of the prothrombinactivating complex. This inactivation can only occur in the presence of the appropriate membrane surface. APC down-regulates the prothrombinase complex by cleaving specific peptide bonds on the heavy chain of factor Va which results in the dissociation of the A2 domain of factor Va from the rest of the molecule. Irregularities in the mechanism of inactivation of factor Va by APC, are associated with thrombotic risk, presumably due to sustained prothrombin activation.
Variations on a theme by Ziv and Lempel (data compression)

The data compression methods of J. Ziv and A. Lempel (1976) are modified and augmented in three ways in order to improve the compression ratio and hold the size of the encoding tables to a fixed size. The improvements are in the area of dispensing with any uncompressed output, ability to use fixed size encoding tables by using a replacement strategy, and more rapid adaptation by widening the class of strings which may be added to the dictionary. It is shown how these improvements also provide an adaptive probabilistic model for the input data. The issue of data structures for efficient implementation is also addressed. >
Pulsar Magnetosphere: The Incredible Machine

I review the progress in understanding the structure of pulsar magnetospheres, including the questions of plasma supply, spin down energy loss and magnetospheric reconnection. While some persistent questions about pulsars are getting answered, new questions invariably appear, such as the physics of intense current layers and its connection to pulsar emission processes and particle acceleration. New observations of transient pulsars are providing a direct probe of the magnetospheric current system. I outline how together with numerical simulations they help to constrain the physics of the incredible magnetospheric machine.
Amyloid-like pulmonary nodules, including localized light-chain deposition: clinicopathologic analysis of three cases.

Amyloid-like pulmonary nodules have been described in patients with systemic light-chain deposition disease, but their significance in other clinical contexts is unknown. We examined biopsy specimens of amyloid-like pulmonary nodules from 3 women without systemic light-chain deposition disease. Patient 1 (aged 62 years) had multiple pulmonary nodules and underwent 2 separate lung biopsies, the first showing nodules composed of κ light-chain deposits accompanied by low-grade lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma limited to the lung and the second, obtained after chemotherapy 9 months later, showing only residual nodules without persistent lymphoma. Patients 2 (aged 65 years) and 3 (aged 69 years) had asymptomatic solitary pulmonary nodules. In all cases, electron microscopic examination showed dense granular extracellular deposits without the fibrillary characteristics of amyloid. Amyloid-like nodules should be distinguished from nodular amyloidosis and, in some patients, might represent a localized form of light-chain deposition.
Multimodality Imaging for Epilepsy Diagnosis and Surgical Focus Localization: Three-Cimensional Image Correlation and Dual Isotope SPECT

Peri-ictal SPECT is a potentially powerful tool to study changes in regional cerebral blood flow during a partial seizure and to localize the seizure focus for pre-surgical evaluation. Recently we have developed and validated a method for co-registering and normalizing 3D interictal SPECT images to 3D ictal SPECT images and deriving a difference image co-registered to the patient’s 3D MRI. This method has been shown to significantly improve clinical outcomes in surgery patients. In order to improve the method’s sensitivity and specificity a number of enhancements have been added to the basic technique, including using voxel-based registration to better align ictal and interictal images, dual isotope (Tc-99m and I-123) SPECT for effective tissue discrimination, and a custom software interface written to facilitate the entire process. We report results that show significant improvement over the original method, and we discuss future work which should continue to improve the method as a clinical tool.
Development of a Modular Home Construction Kit using the Rammed Earth Building Technique

In developing countries where resources are limited, the task of providing shelter for poverty stricken communities that are already in dire need of basic amenities can be a daunting one. This paper proposes a solution to this housing issue in the form of a modular home construction kit. These kits will provide such communities with a tool for sustainably constructing their own dwellings using local manpower combined with the natural resources available on site. The technique is based on the rammed earth principle in which the raw material for the construction process is primarily the natural soil present at the targeted location. This result in considerable savings in terms of sourcing and transporting costs of building materials typically used in traditional constructions methods. In addition, heavy or powered equipment is not needed for this construction technique making it a viable option for places where an electrical power supply or fuel source is not available. The project is part of a service-learning program, recently introduced at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to afford students an opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary team while using their engineering knowledge to provide solutions to real world problems. The student team working on the project has been involved in developing all the necessary procedures for assessment of the location’s soil type as well as the design and sourcing of the kit components. They will also be required to develop the necessary instructional and training material to allow for assembly of the kit components and the implementation of the technique to produce a finished structure (excluding the roof).