cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Education and Minorities in the Modern Era: Working Civil Rights into Practice, Policy and Procedure (Introduction)

Protecting, asserting, and guaranteeing the education rights of minority students will become even more important in the future. Different education civil rights have, in general, gone through four phases: (1) identification and recognition of the right; (2) strong legislative, judicial, and administrative enforcement of the right; (3) developed opposition to the right and judicial, legislative, and administrative inattention or opposition to dilute or ignore the right; and (4) changes in power and enforcement of the right depending on the approach of the courts and administrative agencies. These phases relate to school finance, Limited English Proficient (“LEP”) student instruction, accent discrimination, and education of gifted and talented students. Further discussion of how to guarantee education rights to minority students is necessary.
On Grassmann Invariants and Almost Zeros of Linear Systems

Abstract The canonical-IR [s]- Grassmann representative, g(X), of a rational vector space is defined as a new complete invariant of X. For the rational vector spaces X c , X b associated with a linear system, g(X c ), g(X b ) are used to define the new concepts of Almost Zeros (AZ) and Almost Decoupling Zeros (ADZ). The AZs and ADZs are natural extensions of the concepts of multivariable zeros and de coupling zeros respectively, and they are defi ned as local minima of a norm function defined on g(X c ), g(X b ) correspondingly. The dis tribution in the complex plane, the invariance properties and the significance for control problems of AZs and ADZs is discussed. The families of Strongly Zero Nonass ignable (SZNA) and Strongly Pole Nonassignable (SPNA) systems are defined. It is shown, that for SPNA (SZNA) systems the ADZs (AZs) define the centres of disks “trapping” closed-loop poles (zeros) of systems under any constant output feedback (squaring down). Criteria for determining upper bounds for the radii of the “trappining” disks are given. These results show that the AZs act as “nearly” fixed zeros under constant squaring down, and that the ADZs act as “nearly” fixed poles under constant output feedback.
Towards Explaining Heuristic Techniques (Such as Fuzzy) in Expert Decision Making

In the previous chapters, we showed that bounded rationality can explain different aspects of human decision making, including seemingly irrational ones.
Hospitality Information Systems: Intuitive, Object- Oriented, and Wireless Technology

Automated information system design and implementation is one of the fastest changing aspects of the hospitality industry. During the past several years nothing has increased the professionalism or improved the productivity within the industry more than the application of computer technology. Intuitive software applications, deemed the first step toward making computers more people-literate, object-oriented programming, intended to more accurately model reality, and wireless communications are expected to play a significant role in future technological advancement. This article is available in Hospitality Review: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/hospitalityreview/vol12/iss1/5 Hospitality Information Systems: Intuitive, Object-Oriented, and Wireless Technology by Michael L. Kasavana Automated information system design and implementation is one of the fastest changing aspects of the hospitality industry. During the past several years nothing has increased the professionalism or improved the productivity within the industry more than the application of computer technology. Intuitive software applications, deemed the first step toward making computers more people-literate, object-oriented programming, intended to more accurately model reality, and wireless communications are expected to play a significant role in future technological advancement. The future of hospitality information systems will be positively impacted by the evolution of intuitive, object-oriented, and wireless technologies. In the past, successful hospitality information system implementation often was a function of the effectiveness and level of training users received. The focus of providing an appropriate level of computer literacy in order to render a more effective utilization of computer technology is changing. The recent shift toward making computers more intuitive (people-literate) through graphical user interfaces, color touchscreen terminals, bar code readers, and pen-based devices offers an opportunity to significantly enhance operational controls with far less formal systems training. Simultaneous to the development of intuitive interfaces, information system technology has begun development of an object-oriented applications framework which enables industry experts to more accurately build computer-based models capable of approximating industry transactions, transitions, and trends. In addition, management can anticipate system networking to be accomplished without cabling (wireless). The ability to configure a hospitality system using open architecture without the physical constraints of walls, floors, other obstacles, or traffic patterns provides optimal flexibility for fitting the computer to operations rather than vice versa.
Determination of the optimum polystyrene parameters using asphalt binder modified with poly(styrene-acrylated epoxidised soybean oil) through response surface modelling

This paper evaluated the modification effects of soybean oil-based block bio-advantaged copolymers, poly(styrene-block-acrylated epoxidised soybean oil) (PS-PAESO) using polymerised AESO (PAESO) married with various polystyrene molecular weights and polystyrene contents, in the base asphalt binder through performance grade testing. Best-fit prediction models were developed through response surface modelling (RSM) using the grading results to maximise the modification effects of PS-PAESO in the base binder by optimising the polystyrene parameters. The optimised formulation of PS-PAESO with 5% polystyrene content and 30 kg/mol polystyrene molecular weight was produced and blended with the base asphalt binder, which modified the base asphalt binder from PG 52-34 to PG 64-28 as estimated by the prediction models that could be used for warm climate regions pavement applications. This result verified the high accuracy of the prediction models, and showed that the optimised PS-PAESO formulation performed superio...
Contemporary Single-Center Experience With Prophylactic Cerebrospinal Fluid Drainage for Thoracic Endovascular Aortic Repair in Patients at High Risk for Ischemic Spinal Cord Injury.

Objective To review rates of permanent paraplegia and lumbar drain-related complications in patients undergoing thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) surgery with prophylactic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage at the authors’ institution. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting Tertiary care, academic medical center. Participants Patients who underwent TEVAR with a high risk for ischemic spinal cord injury and prophylactic lumbar CSF drainage over a 5-year period. Interventions None. Measurements and Main Results One hundred and two patients underwent TEVAR with lumbar CSF drainage. Thirty-day mortality was 5.9%, and the rate of permanent paraplegia was 2%. Drain complications occurred in 4 (3.9%) patients, but no patient experienced permanent injury related to CSF drainage. Two patients in the cohort had complete resolution of paraplegia with increased CSF drainage and mean arterial blood pressure increases aimed to increase spinal cord perfusion pressure by 25%. A third patient experienced improvement in lower extremity strength but remained paraplegic, and a fourth patient demonstrated no improvement in symptoms. The 6 patients taking clopidogrel experienced no bleeding complications, and there were no apparent risk factors for bleeding in the 5 patients who had bloody drain output or in 1 patient who developed an epidural hematoma. Conclusion Prophylactic CSF drainage was associated with low paraplegia and drain-related complication rates. These data further support the safety of prophylactic CSF drainage in patients undergoing TEVAR with a high risk for ischemic spinal cord injury.
Formal models of the political resource curse

By surveying formal models, I demonstrate that the political resource curse is the misallocation of revenues from natural resources and other windfall gains by political agents. I show that the curse always exists if political agents are rent-seeking, since mechanisms of government accountability, e.g. electoral competition, the presence of political challengers, and even the threat of violent conflict, are inherently imperfect. However, the scope for rent-seeking becomes more limited as the competition over political power that threatens the incumbent government becomes more intense.
Sketching Graphs of Trigonometric Functions

This chapter focuses on sketching graphs of trigonometric functions. Sketching of graphs is drawing the graph by transferring to the coordinate system the features of the function and plotting as few key points as are necessary. The key points could be points of intersection with the coordinate axes, points of greatest or least value of the function, and so on. This information can usually be read directly from the function. Any function f ( x ) that has the property f ( x + p ) = f ( x ) is said to be periodic with a period p . If p is the smallest positive number for which this is true, p is called the period of f ( x ). Both the sine and the cosine functions have a characteristic wave form and because of their additional periodic nature, they are useful in the study of any phenomena that exhibits these properties. This chapter also discusses translation, addition of ordinates, and graphs of products.
Influence of concurrence of extreme drought and heat events on carbon and energy fluxes in dominant ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest region

Abstract. The impacts of drought intensities and vapor pressure deficits (VPD) beyond historic norms in Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, are critical in understanding the potential future function and resilience of ecosystems in the region. While ecosystems in this region are adapted to seasonal droughts, June 2015 temperatures were the highest recorded in the region and strongly coupled with relatively low soil moisture. June is usually the best month for growth in the PNW. Here, we examined the impact of the June 2015 climate extremes on carbon and energy fluxes at sagebrush in the high desert, young and mature ponderosa pine in the semi-arid Great Basin, and Douglas-fir in the mesic Coast Range ecoregion compared to an average climate year (2014). We assessed if the ecosystems recover from extreme climate stress within the growing season. The monthly anomalies in temperature and VPD were 3 standard deviations, and precipitation was 1 standard deviation, outside the 30-year mean at all sites. In sagebrush, the carry-over effect of precipitation (i.e., intensive precipitation prior to the drought and heat) mitigated the immediate impact of extreme climate stress, leading to 25–40 % increase in net ecosystem production (NEP) and gross primary production (GPP), with little change in ecosystem respiration (RE) and 65 % increase in latent heat flux, compared to the June 2014. The drought and heat lowered NEP by 35–65 % and GPP by 15–33 % in ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. A greater increase in latent heat flux was observed in Douglas-fir (110 %) than in ponderosa pine (
Physiologic Monitoring in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Research

There is a rich history of measuring physiologic responses between patient and clinician that has infused psychodynamic psychotherapy research for over half a century. The findings complement research outside of psychotherapy that increasingly supports a significant relationship between physiological, emotional, and psychological states [1]. Indeed, investigations into how physiologic parameters change during psychotherapy offer a unique opportunity to inform clinical practice, improve training of clinicians, and illuminate change processes unique to human dyadic relationships [2]. The goal of this chapter is to review the history of physiologic monitoring during psychodynamic psychotherapy and present recent findings that complement neuroimaging results and support recent advances in interpersonal neurobiology and social neuroscience. A clinical case from a research protocol is described that demonstrates the power of insights derived from physiologic measurement and illustrates the challenges of breaking through unconscious defenses in the process of psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Experimental Quantitative Microscopy with Special Applications to Sintering

Quantitative metallography is a collection of procedures for determining geometric properties of micro-structures from observations made upon two-dimensional microsections produced through the structure. Such studies are conveniently classified into three categories, according to whether the observations are made (1) in reflection microscopy; (2) in transmission microscopy; or (3) by serial sectioning* techniques. The present paper avoids the discussion of transmission quantitative microscopy, because this technique has not been applied broadly to sintered structures, and because the use of transmitted light, which forms a projected image, introduces complications into the quantitative analysis of the structure which require that simplifying geometric assumptions or approximations be introduced. No such assumptions are required for the analysis of images obtained in reflection microscopy, or in serial sectioning.
Expression of Plasma Cell-Associated Non-Light Chain Antigens in Patients with Plasma Cell Dyscrasia and Amyloidosis

In this study, we examined reactivity of the plasma cell-reactive monoclonal antibodies MM4 and PCA-1 with bone marrow and other tissue biopsies from patients with documented amyloidosis. Thirty-six biopsies (bone marrow, GI tract, gall bladder, rectum, peripheral nerve, heart, lung, kidney, liver, spleen, tongue, skin, muscle, and adrenal gland) from 17 patients were evaluated independently by standard histopathology. The presence of tissue amyloid was established by the finding of green birefrigence under polarized light after Congo red staining and/or characteristic fibrillar structure by electron microscopy. Cases studied included 13 patients with plasma cell dyscrasia (PCD) and 4 patients without evidence of an M-protein (non-PCD). Reactivity with MM4 or PCA-1 was established by the immunoperoxidase technique, based on comparison with a negative control (no primary monoclonal antibody) section from the same biopsy. MM4 and PCA-1 reacted with marrow plasma cells from the majority of these amyloid patients. In addition, a number of solid organ biopsies demonstrated positive staining with MMA or both monoclonal antibodies in areas of tissue amyloid deposits. Reactivity of either antibody with plasma cells and/or tissue amyloid was independent of light chain isotype. These observations suggest that plasma cells from patients with amyloidosis commonly express MM4-and PCA-1-reactive antigens, which also may be detected in certain tissue amyloid deposits. Further studies with these or similar reagents may help in understanding the pathogenesis of immunocytic amyloidosis.
Altering Capitation to Reduce the Incentive to Undertreat Patients Inappropriately

Capitation, the payment of a fixed monthly fee for covered people, is being used by insurers to eliminate the financial incentive for over-provision of services that is present in fee-for-service plans. Physicians typically respond by forming groups to manage the financial risk associated with capitation. These groups institute methods of sharing the “cap” dollar among the involved primary care practitioners and specialists. To reduce utilization groups commonly “subcap” each specialty, giving them fixed payments per month regardless of the mount of care they provide to the covered members. Thus, individual physicians are rewarded with a payment per unit of work that rises towards infinity as work declines towards zero. This inappropriate incentive is counterbalanced by the internalized norms we assume all physicians gain as part of their professional education and experience. Unfortunately, it appears that this financial incentive can overwhelm these internalized norms in a number of physicians to the point of not only reducing care below levels associated with what an individual patient would regard as appropriate, but also below levels associated with maximal societal gain. In this paper I present a compensation method that can be adjusted to provide a financial incentive to reduce services when they seem to be excessive, while reducing or eliminating the incentive to reduce services when utilization is already low. It uses a payoff function to adjust fee-for-service payments based on utilization. The function allows maximal incentive (measured as the derivatives ofthe functio fee [utilization]) to be placed where it judged most appropriate, with little additional incentive at already-low untilization levels.
Homomorphic Processing in Ultrasonic NDE

Modern signal processing techniques used in computing flaw impulse response are based on comparative analysis of a reference signal with the signal scattered from flaws. The underlying hypothesis in these techniques is that, in the noise free case, the scattered flaw signal is due to the linear convolution of the ultrasonic reference signal with the flaw impulse response. The flaw characterization problem thus reduces to determining the kernel of the convolution integral given the input and output time signals. The impulse response recovery (system identification) has been carried out both in the frequency and time domains for flaw characterization.1–3
New progress in the treatment of chronic wound of diabetic foot

Diabetic foot is one of the serious complications of diabetic patients. It is caused by diabetes combined with different degrees of lower extremity vascular lesions and neuropathy, and the wound can not heal for a long time. The serious results can cause bone marrow infection, bone destruction, and have high disability and death rate. At present, there are various treatment methods for diabetic foot chronic wound. On the basis of internal medicine controlling blood sugar, anti infection, lowering blood lipid, improving microcirculation and nourishment nerve, the surgical method is adopted, including the debridement of the necrosis in a short time to prevent the infection from spreading; maggot biological debridement and ozone chemical debridement will promote the growth of granulation tissue while controlling infection. Skin grafting, skin flap transplantation, skin distraction closure can be used to repair soft tissue defects, or fat transplantation, platelet-rich plasma, and rich blood are used for the refractory wound after infection control. In patients with diabetic foot, the reconstruction of lower limb blood supply is beneficial to the recovery of chronic ischemic wounds. It is feasible to improve the blood supply of the lower extremities, improve the blood supply of the lower extremity artery bypass grafting, and improve the microcirculation of the peripheral vessels around the lower extremities. Lower extremity vascular bypass pressure perfusion therapy for vascular network expansion, tibia lateral moving technique for lower limb microcirculation reconstruction. For diabetic foot ulcer caused by peripheral neuropathy, such as Charcot foot, while the application of external fixator, total contact cast technology of affected foot for reducing treatment to promote wound healing; the preparation of orthopedic shoes can play a maximum protective effect on the healing of diabetic foot wound healing.
Optical second harmonic generation from silicon with embedded silver nanostructures

We developed an ion beam based processing scheme to synthesize Ag nanoparticles embedded within Si. Such embedded Ag nanostructures are expected to significantly enhance second harmonic generation thus the Pockel's effect in Si owing to the electric dipoles possessed by Ag nanostructures and the strong electric field effects associated with surface plasmon excitation of Ag nanostructures. Preliminary work in this direction has revealed an interesting correlation between the enhancement of second harmonic generation and the Ag nanostructure size/shape. Such nanosystems are capable of enhancing second harmonic generation from Si for on-chip silicon modulator fabrication.
THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN LONELINESS AND ELDER ABUSE: FINDINGS FROM A COMMUNITY-DWELLING CHINESE AGING POPULATION

Elder abuse (EA) is a pervasive human rights issue that affects 2 million older adults in the U.S. However, little has been done to examine the etiology between victim’s psychological distress and specific subtypes of abuse, impeding development of effective intervention and prevention strategies. The study examines the associations between self-perceived loneliness and five EA subtypes among a U.S. Chinese older population. Data were from a representative sample of 3,157 community-dwelling older adults of the Population Study of Chinese Elderly in Chicago (PINE). We tested the associations using multiple logistic regression models to control for potential confounding factors. Dependent variables are EA measured by 56 items in aspects of psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial exploitation, and caregiver neglect. Independent variable is loneliness measured by a validated 3-item R-UCLA scale. Older adults who has felt lonely were more likely to be victims of any EA (odds ratio [OR]:2.06 [1.68, 2.53]). Specifically, the presence of loneliness was associated with increased risks of psychological abuse (OR: 2.61 [2.00, 3.39]), financial exploitation (OR: 1.46 [1.11, 1.92]), and caregiver neglect (OR: 1.67 [1.12, 2.50]), whereas no significant associations were found between loneliness with physical and sexual abuse. The results reinforced the complexity of EA and differences among its subtypes, which call for more longitudinal and close examinations of the etiology of EA subtypes to devise targeted prevention and intervention strategies.
Time-dependent wrinkle formation during tow steering in automated fiber placement

Abstract Out-of-plane buckling at the inside edge of prepreg tows during steering is one of the major drawbacks of the Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) process, limiting the process application and further optimization of the composite layup. This wrinkle formation is significantly influenced by prepreg tack, which is a property of the viscoelastic prepreg-tool interface. In this paper, an experimental AFP study is performed to gain a deeper understanding of the time-dependent growth of wrinkles. Furthermore, a theoretical model accounting for the viscoelastic properties of the interface is presented. For this purpose, a time-dependent buckling model for an orthotropic plate resting on a generalized viscoelastic Pasternak foundation which is subjected to an in-plane loading is developed. Closed-form solutions for the problem representing individual wrinkles are derived. It is shown that the model can capture the growth of wrinkles with time. Finally, important practical implications of the model are discussed.
Addressing 21st-Century Crises through Children's Literature: Picturebooks as Partners for Teacher Educators.

Teacher educators might consider using high-quality picturebooks as partners to help teacher candidates understand and navigate today’s painful world realities. From a critical perspective, these b...
Erenumab in chronic migraine: Patient-reported outcomes in a randomized double-blind study.

Objective To determine the effect of erenumab, a human monoclonal antibody targeting the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor, on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), headache impact, and disability in patients with chronic migraine (CM). Methods In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 667 adults with CM were randomized (3:2:2) to placebo or erenumab (70 or 140 mg monthly). Exploratory endpoints included migraine-specific HRQoL (Migraine-Specific Quality-of-Life Questionnaire [MSQ]), headache impact (Headache Impact Test–6 [HIT-6]), migraine-related disability (Migraine Disability Assessment [MIDAS] test), and pain interference (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System [PROMIS] Pain Interference Scale short form 6b). Results Improvements were observed for all endpoints in both erenumab groups at month 3, with greater changes relative to placebo observed at month 1 for many outcomes. All 3 MSQ domains were improved from baseline with treatment differences for both doses exceeding minimally important differences established for MSQ–role function-restrictive (≥3.2) and MSQ–emotional functioning (≥7.5) and for MSQ–role function-preventive (≥4.5) for erenumab 140 mg. Changes from baseline in HIT-6 scores at month 3 were −5.6 for both doses vs −3.1 for placebo. MIDAS scores at month 3 improved by −19.4 days for 70 mg and −19.8 days for 140 mg vs −7.5 days for placebo. Individual-level minimally important difference was achieved by larger proportions of erenumab-treated participants than placebo for all MSQ domains and HIT-6. Lower proportions of erenumab-treated participants had MIDAS scores of severe (≥21) or very severe (≥41) or PROMIS scores ≥60 at month 3. Conclusions Erenumab-treated patients with CM experienced clinically relevant improvements across a broad range of patient-reported outcomes. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT02066415. Classification of evidence This study provides Class II evidence that for patients with CM, erenumab treatment improves HRQoL, headache impact, and disability.
Sex, Gender, and the Decline of Dementia

The incidence rate of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has declined in high-income countries over the past 25 years. In this chapter, I provide a narrative review of new ideas and concepts related to the impact of sex and gender differences on the declining risk of dementia. In particular, I discuss three examples of risk factors related to sex and gender that have probably contributed to the trend. Apolipoprotein E genotype is equally common in men and women but has a stronger effect in women. Apolipoprotein E genotype is a biological factor that cannot be modified but interacts with sex- or gender-related factors that have changed over time. Low education is believed to have a similar harmful effect in men and women but has been historically more common in women. Therefore, education is a social factor related to gender that has contributed to the time trends. Bilateral oophorectomy is a surgical practice restricted to one sex that has changed over time. Consideration of risk and protective factors in men and women separately may accelerate etiologic research for neurological diseases in general, and for dementia and AD in particular, and may explain the observed differences in time trends across countries. Similarly, future preventive interventions for dementia should be tailored to men and women separately.
Deciphering of the Genetic Control of Phenology, Yield, and Pellicle Color in Persian Walnut (Juglans regia L.).

Yield, nut quality, and ability to adapt to specific climate conditions, are all important factors to consider in the development and selection of new Persian walnut (Juglans regia L.) varieties. The genetic control of these traits is still unknown in walnut, limiting the accuracy and rapidity of releasing new cultivars for commercial use. We studied the genetic architecture of five traits crucial for either marketing (i.e., yield, lateral fruit-bearing, and pellicle color) or selection of individuals with specific phenology (i.e., leafing and harvest date). By combining over 30 years of phenotypic data with genetic profiles generated using the latest AxiomTM J. regia 700K SNP array, we were able to identify and confirm major loci for all these traits. In particular, we revealed that a genomic region at the beginning of Chr1 controls both leafing and harvest date in walnut, consistent with the observed strong phenotypical correlation between these traits, and including candidate genes involved in plant development, leaf formation, and cell division. In addition, a large genomic region on Chr11 that includes genes with a central role in flowering control and shoot meristem growth underlies both lateral fruit-bearing and yield in walnut. We observed a more complex genetic architecture for pellicle color, strongly influenced by the environment (h2 = 0.43). We identified two marker-trait associations on Chr6 and 7 for pellicle color, where genes encoding a UDP-glycosyltransferase or involved in the response to oxidation were found. In conclusion, by combining classical quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping and genome-wide association mapping, we deciphered, for the first time, the molecular pathways controlling walnut phenology, yield, lateral fruitfulness, and pellicle color. Our findings represent a further milestone in the transition from conventional to genome-assisted breeding in Persian walnut.
Signal Integrity of Submicron InFO Heterogeneous Integration for High Performance Computing Applications

Heterogeneous integration has attracted much attention for high performance computing (HPC) since artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators surged. The technologies for heterogeneous integration, such as silicon interposer (2.5D), fan-out wafer-level-packaging (FOWLP), and organic substrate, have been proposed to integrate logic-logic or logic-HBM chips in the AI system for performance and cost benefits. However, the tremendous data flow in 5G era requires higher data rate and bandwidth for the extensive die-to-die communication. Therefore, a BEOL-scale re-distributed layer (RDL) technology should be developed to satisfy the requirements. In this paper, a novel ultra-high-density InFO (InFO_UHD) technology with submicron RDL is developed to provide high interconnect density and bandwidth for logic-logic system. The bandwidth density can achieve record high 10 Tbps/mm at line width and spacing (L/S) of 0.8/0.8 um and length of 500 um, for a logic-logic system using simplified IO driver. Using the technology in logic-memory system, we found that the scaling of RDL thickness, L/S, and dielectric thickness can mitigate ring-back problems in the eye diagram of organic substrate. Given HBM2 specification, the bandwidth density can achieve more than 0.4 Tbps/mm from dramatically improved signal integrity. Finally, power efficiency, in the metric of energy per bit, of the interconnect technology under simplified IO driver and HBM2 driver condition was calculated and compared with other technology, respectively.
Generation ’68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective): Introduction:

This article is part of the special cluster titled Generation ’68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective).This is the introduction to a special section “Generation ’68 in Poland (wi...
Achalasia Management: Botox, Dilation, Peroral Esophageal Myotomy (POEM), Peroral Pyloromyotomy (POP)

Achalasia is an esophageal motility disorder characterized by a non-relaxing lower esophageal sphincter and absent or significantly altered peristalsis. The underlying cause of most cases is unknown, with a small minority secondary to infectious, genetic, or obstructive etiologies. There is no cure. Palliative treatments include medical therapies and disruption of the lower esophageal sphincter. Botulinum toxin injection provides effective short-term relief but often lacks durability, thus lending itself to highly comorbid patients or in select diagnostic scenarios. Serial pneumatic dilations offer excellent symptom relief and durability, with rates comparable to surgical myotomy in appropriately selected patients. Peroral esophageal myotomy (POEM) is an established endoscopic therapy that offers robust dysphagia relief with minimized surgical morbidity. Patients who require reoperative achalasia surgery are at high risk for vagal nerve injury and gastroparesis. Emerging endoscopic therapies, such peroral pyloromyotomy (POP), may be an effective tool in this challenging patient population.
G472(P) The chameleon project: a children’s end of life care quality improvement project: preliminary results

Background As there was no specialist paediatric palliative care team in the region, we made a successful bid to NHS England’s Marginal rate Emergency Threshold (MRET) and Readmission Fund for the Chameleon Project1 in 2018. The project has been funded for 12 months to audit and improve children’s end of life care across the region. It provides a regional specialist team: consultant paediatrician 2 days a week, clinical nurse specialist 3 days, clinical academic researcher 2 days, network administrator 2 days, 3 paediatricians with expertise in palliative care in each of 3 district general hospitals 0.5 days. Methods The team developed tools to aid identification of children with end of life care needs. These were embedded by weekly attendances by the team at ward rounds and board rounds in the region’s hospitals. We also delivered lectures and case based teaching sessions to clinical teams and at regional study days. A bereaved family feedback tool was adapted from ones used by the London Neonatal Network. Children with life limiting conditions who died an expected death in the 12 months of the project were identified from the child death review databases. Numbers of specialist hospital admissions, bed days, and costs were identified. Quality of care will be evaluated from documentation of care plans and post bereavement family feedback questionnaires. Results Compared to the year before the project started, the mean number of non-elective admissions reduced from 2.3 to 1.9; the number of non-elective bed days reduced from 51 to 32; and the number of non-elective bed days on neonatal and paediatric intensive care units reduced from 28 to 20, in the last 12 months of life per child. Quality of care is currently being assessed against NICE Quality Standards QS160.2 Conclusions These preliminary results indicate that a dedicated paediatric palliative care team can reduce admissions and bed days for children in their last year of life. We hope that further analyses will demonstrate improved family experience and cost savings for local NHS providers. References Twitter account: @chameleonproje1 NICE Quality Standards: www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs160
State of acoustics in Nova Scotia

The current level of activity in acoustics research in the province of Nova Scotia is briefly reviewed, including a discussion of per capita concentration of professional membership. This paper is an adaptation of an invited talk presented to the 1996 Annual General Meeting of the Institute of Acoustics of Atlantic Canada, held at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, 1996/05/31.
EIGHTEEN – DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONS OF TWO AND THREE VARIABLES

Publisher Summary In a great variety of applications, it is necessary to write the quantity of interest in terms of two or more variables. Very few physical, biological, or economic quantities can be properly expressed in terms of one variable alone. Often, these quantities are written in terms of one variable simply because functions of only one variable are the easiest functions to handle. This chapter discusses how many of the operations of the one-variable calculus can be extended to functions of several variables and illustrates functions of two and three variables. It discusses the fundamental concepts of limits and continuity for functions of two and three variables. The chapter discusses one of the ways a function of several variables can be differentiated and the calculation of partial derivatives and higher-order partial derivatives. It discusses the notion of the differentiability of a function of several variables. The chapter discusses how to derive the chain rule for functions of two and three variables. It further reviews maxima and minima for a function of two variables.
Analyzing programming languages by community characteristics on Github and StackOverflow.

The choice of programming language is a very important decision as it not only affects the performance and maintainability of the software but also dictates the talent pool and community support available. To better understand the trade-offs involved in making such a decision, we define and compute popularity, demand, availability and community engagement of programming languages through online collaboration platforms. We perform our analysis using data from Github and StackOverflow, two of the most popular programming communities. We get data related projects, languages and developer engagement from Github and programming questions with answers along with language tags from StackOverflow. We compute metrics separately for the two data sources and then combine the metrics to provide a holistic and robust picture of the communities for the most popular programming languages.
Citizen scientists documenting hazardous materials shipments on American railroads

Abstract Economic development is powered by access to energy and industrial chemical inputs. Many of these energy forms and chemicals are harmful to human health and the environment. North American sourced petroleum crude oil has grown in volume in the past decade. Transporting this oil from its sources to refineries and export markets requires railroads. Unfortunately, there have been serious accidents involving the transportation of oil and some have questioned the conventional risk analysis used to permit its shipment by rail. At the same time climate change is being fueled by the use of hydrocarbons. A group of concerned citizens, skeptical of official information channels, began monitoring railroad rights-of-way for hazardous materials and recorded their findings. Railroad shipping data are otherwise unavailable to the general public. While energy related chemicals such as petroleum crude oil, alcohol, and butane constitute most of the observed shipments, a great deal of miscellaneous hazardous materials are present as well. Many of these hazardous materials are distributed through densely populated urban areas and ecologically sensitive places. The results of these observations are presented in this paper, followed by a discussion of the present situation and view toward future trends.
Living the eighth day online: liturgies, sacramental life, and building human relationships

Online human relationships can exacerbate some of the worst of our tendencies toward each other, including deception, selfishness, apathy and disembodiment, and sexual harassment. Yet Christians ca...
Dystrophic muscle distribution in late-stage muscular dystrophy.

There is scant information about the comprehensive distribution of dystrophic muscles in muscular dystrophy. Despite different clinical presentations of muscular dystrophy, a recent multi-center study concluded that phenotypic distribution of dystrophic muscles is independent of clinical phenotype and suggested that there is a common pattern of involved muscles. To evaluate this possibility, the present case report used cadaveric dissection to determine the whole-body distribution of fat-infiltrated, dystrophic muscles from a 72-year-old white male cadaver with adult-onset, late-stage muscular dystrophy. Severely dystrophic muscles occupied the pectoral, gluteal and pelvic regions, as well as the arm, thigh and posterior leg. In contrast, muscles of the head, neck, hands and feet largely appeared unaffected. Histopathology and a CT-scan supported these observations. This pattern of dystrophic muscles generally conformed with that described in the multi-center study, and provides prognostic insight for patients and the physicians treating them.
A Vehicle Activity-based Windowing approach to evaluate real-world NOx emissions from Modern Heavy-duty Diesel Trucks

Abstract The Not-to-Exceed (NTE) protocol developed in 2004 is currently used for verification of emissions compliance during in-fleet operation. However, the NTE protocol has come under scrutiny for assessment of test activity only under specific modes of in-use operation (i.e., favorable to NOx reduction aftertreatment system), therefore resulting in a limited amount of in-use activity being utilized for evaluation of the engine's compliance. This paper presents the application of an alternative concept, i.e., Vehicle Activity-based Windowing (ABW) approach to assess in-use NOx emissions rates while segregating engine and aftertreatment dependent modes of operating conditions. To this aim, in-use gaseous emissions were measured using a portable emissions measurement system (PEMS) from four modern heavy-duty (HD) trucks that were operated along four distinctive routes in Southern California. All the four trucks were equipped with diesel-fueled engines certified to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) 2010 emissions standards and were equipped with a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC), diesel particulate filter (DPF), and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) aftertreatment configuration. Results of the study indicate that the ABW approach provides a unique opportunity of utilizing more than 90% of test activity acquired from valid ABW trips while demonstrating a characteristic comparison of NOx emissions levels from low versus medium/high power engine operation that are within as well as outside the bounds of efficient SCR operating conditions.
MedAug: Contrastive learning leveraging patient metadata improves representations for chest X-ray interpretation.

Self-supervised contrastive learning between pairs of multiple views of the same image has been shown to successfully leverage unlabeled data to produce meaningful visual representations for both natural and medical images. However, there has been limited work on determining how to select pairs for medical images, where availability of patient metadata can be leveraged to improve representations. In this work, we develop a method to select positive pairs coming from views of possibly different images through the use of patient metadata. We compare strategies for selecting positive pairs for chest X-ray interpretation including requiring them to be from the same patient, imaging study or laterality. We evaluate downstream task performance by fine-tuning the linear layer on 1% of the labeled dataset for pleural effusion classification. Our best performing positive pair selection strategy, which involves using images from the same patient from the same study across all lateralities, achieves a performance increase of 3.4% and 14.4% in mean AUC from both a previous contrastive method and ImageNet pretrained baseline respectively. Our controlled experiments show that the keys to improving downstream performance on disease classification are (1) using patient metadata to appropriately create positive pairs from different images with the same underlying pathologies, and (2) maximizing the number of different images used in query pairing. In addition, we explore leveraging patient metadata to select hard negative pairs for contrastive learning, but do not find improvement over baselines that do not use metadata. Our method is broadly applicable to medical image interpretation and allows flexibility for incorporating medical insights in choosing pairs for contrastive learning.
OPEB Accounting and Teacher Diversity

Despite extensive literatures documenting the importance of teacher diversity and teacher compensation, few studies explore relationships between the two. Fewer still examine effects of governmenta...
Robotic Cystotomy Repair and Ureteral Dissection Techniques

Study Objective The objective of this video is two-fold. First, to demonstrate the steps of cystotomy repair and highlight tips for post-operative management of cystotomies. Second, to review the anatomy and vascular supply of the ureter in order to describe safe ureteral dissection techniques. Design N/A. Setting The video presents clips of robotic-assisted cystotomy repair and ureteral dissection. Patients or Participants N/A. Interventions N/A. Measurements and Main Results N/A. Conclusion Understanding the steps of both repair and post-operative management of cystotomies is important for minimally invasive surgeons. Additionally, knowledge of the anatomy of the ureter in the pelvis can both aid in ureteral dissection and avoid ureteral damage at the common sites of injury.
SU‐E‐J‐255: Automatic Segmentation Refined, Multiple Slice‐Wise Voting Based Classification of Tumors From MRI

Purpose: Development of technical methods to optimally classify tumors via magnetic resonance imaging. Methods: The methods were developed and tested on unusual appearing leiomyomas (ULM) from leiomyosarcomas (LMS). We developed a fully automated method for distinguishing between ULM and LMS from T2-w MR images. Data consisted of 39 patients with histologically proven ULM(=22) and LMS(=17) who underwent preoperative ≥1.5 MRI. 13 MR images were obtained at our institution and rest from elsewhere. Our method consists of several steps. First, all the images were histogram matched, following which the manually segmented tumors were refined through automatic volumetric image segmentation. Next, several image features consisting of 5 Haralick textures, 4 Gabor edges at (0°,45°,90°,135°) and bandwidth 1.414 and Haralick textures computed on each Gabor image resulting in 25 different features was computed from inside the segmented tumors. The features were preweighted by their relevance determined using a paired t-test and trained using a random forest classifier. We improved the generalization performance of the classifier by boosting the number of samples by using slice-wise computed textures resulting in a total of 604 samples with ULM (n=351) and LMS (n=253). In the slice-wise method, classifier is built that applies to individual slices; the slice results are then combined using voting to determine an overall per-patient classification. Results: We evaluated the performance of the classifier for volumetric texture-based classification with Leave One Out Cross Validation and slice-wise textures-based classification with K=5 fold classification. The volumetric method achieved a classification accuracy of 72% in comparison to 87% using slice-wise texture-based classification. Gabor textures were more relevant than intensity-based textures for distinguishing the ULM from LMS. Conclusion: We have demonstrated that a classifier method using automatic refinement of human drawn contours, along with voting on slice-based classification, results in an effective tumor image classifier.
People in Organizations

Abstract This article offers a critical review of research in organizational behavior from an interactionist perspective: we consider the reciprocal influence between personal characteristics and the organizational context. Specifically, some situations are stronger than others, some people's behavior is more consistent across situations, some people can influence situations more than others, and people select themselves into situations that suit their preferences. We illustrate the value of this perspective by identifying person–situation interactions that are relevant to a set of currently vibrant theories: organizational culture, demography, leadership, and creativity. Emerging from this review is a greater appreciation for the richness of behavior in organizations and the challenge of understanding and managing its complexities.
Exponential Inequalities in Nonparametric Estimation

We derive exponential inequalities for the oscillation of functions of random variables about their mean. This is illustrated on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, the total variation distance for empirical measures, the Vapnik-Chervonenkis distance, and various performance criteria in nonparametric density estimation. We also derive bounds for the variances of these quantities.