cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Family and Property Amongst the Amhara Nobility

Records of Ethiopian property dealings provide insights into the affairs of Ethiopian families. They suggest further, dynamic links between property and family. Amhara rules of descent and inheritance are ambilineal. Each person reckons their ancestry equally through their father and mother and inherits property the same way. Yet, without abandoning their profession of the principles of ambilineal descent and of equal partible inheritance, the Abyssinian nobility subverted these norms, thereby creating ‘families’ out of a welter of ramifying lineages, and ‘estates’ out of disintegrating holdings. Their devices included wills and marriage endowments which privileged one sibling at the expense of others. Another device was the alaqenat, an office which functioned as the head of a family and its affairs. The alaqenat, previously unreported in the Ethiopian literature, appears in a number of documents in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, and the article uses it to trace the affairs of one noble family over a period of six generations. Further comments are made about the links between public office and notions of property. Finally, two wider spheres are addressed. In spite of its radical ambilineality Abyssinian society reveals tendencies common to other societies based on plough agriculture, tendencies towards greater class differentiation based on the accumulation of landed property. And, unlike most other historic societies professing Christianity, Abyssinian society is marked by frequent divorce and marital instability.
Limitations of Principal Components Analysis for Hyperspectral Target Recognition

Dimensionality reduction is a necessity in most hyperspectral imaging applications. Tradeoffs exist between unsupervised statistical methods, which are typically based on principal components analysis (PCA), and supervised ones, which are often based on Fisher's linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and proponents for each approach exist in the remote sensing community. Recently, a combined approach known as subspace LDA has been proposed, where PCA is employed to recondition ill-posed LDA formulations. The key idea behind this approach is to use a PCA transformation as a preprocessor to discard the null space of rank-deficient scatter matrices, so that LDA can be applied on this reconditioned space. Thus, in theory, the subspace LDA technique benefits from the advantages of both methods. In this letter, we present a theoretical analysis of the effects (often ill effects) of PCA on the discrimination power of the projected subspace. The theoretical analysis is presented from a general pattern classification perspective for two possible scenarios: (1) when PCA is used as a simple dimensionality reduction tool and (2) when it is used to recondition an ill-posed LDA formulation. We also provide experimental evidence of the ineffectiveness of both scenarios for hyperspectral target recognition applications.
Wisdom of artificial crowds algorithm for solving NP-hard problems

The paper describes a novel algorithm, inspired by the phenomenon of wisdom of crowds, for solving instances of NP-hard problems. The proposed approach achieves superior performance compared to the genetic algorithm-based approach and requires modest computational resources. On average, a 6%-9% improvement in quality of solutions has been observed.
Recent Advances in Understanding Integrative Control of Potassium Homeostasis

The potassium homeostatic system is very tightly regulated. Recent studies have shed light on the sensing and molecular mechanisms responsible for this tight control. In addition to classic feedback regulation mediated by a rise in extracellular fluid (ECF) [K(+)], there is evidence for a feedforward mechanism: Dietary K(+) intake is sensed in the gut, and an unidentified gut factor is activated to stimulate renal K(+) excretion. This pathway may explain renal and extrarenal responses to altered K(+) intake that occur independently of changes in ECF [K(+)]. Mechanisms for conserving ECF K(+) during fasting or K(+) deprivation have been described: Kidney NADPH oxidase activation initiates a cascade that provokes the retraction of K(+) channels from the cell membrane, and muscle becomes resistant to insulin stimulation of cellular K(+) uptake. How these mechanisms are triggered by K(+) deprivation remains unclear. Cellular AMP kinase-dependent protein kinase activity provokes the acute transfer of K(+) from the ECF to the ICF, which may be important in exercise or ischemia. These recent advances may shed light on the beneficial effects of a high-K(+) diet for the cardiovascular system.
ALTERATIONS OF MUSCLE PROTEIN FUNCTIONALITY BY OXIDATIVE AND ANTIOXIDATIVE PROCESSES

Oxidation and resulting changes in physical and chemical properties of lipids and proteins occur widely in muscle foods, but oxidatively induced alterations in protein functionality have not been fully assessed. Recent studies have shown that sarcoplasmic, myofibrillar and stromal proteins, whether from red meat, poultry, or fish species, are all susceptible to oxidative damage caused by oxidizing lipids, metal ions, and other prooxidants indigenous to muscle or generated during meat processing. This is demonstrated by changes in protein structure, peptide chain scission, formation of amino acid derivatives and polymers, and decreases in solubility, gelation and hydration properties. However, utilization of antioxidants can minimize functional deteriorations in proteins during processing and storage, thereby assuring the supply of high-quality muscle food products.
Microwave Remote Sensing of Planetary Atmospheres: From Staelin and Barrett to the Nasa Juno Mission

Early seminal contributions by Staelin helped initiate the field of microwave remote sensing as a key tool for the study of planetary atmospheres. Recent studies of the microwave emission from the neutral atmosphere of Venus have been used to identify the abundance and spatial distribution of microwave absorbing constituents such as sulfuric acid vapor and sulfur dioxide. A new mission to Jupiter, called Juno, will employ a six-channel microwave radiometer to measure the abundance and distribution of ammonia and water vapor in the Jovian atmosphere.
SWITCHBOARD: telephone speech corpus for research and development

SWITCHBOARD is a large multispeaker corpus of conversational speech and text which should be of interest to researchers in speaker authentication and large vocabulary speech recognition. About 2500 conversations by 500 speakers from around the US were collected automatically over T1 lines at Texas Instruments. Designed for training and testing of a variety of speech processing algorithms, especially in speaker verification, it has over an 1 h of speech from each of 50 speakers, and several minutes each from hundreds of others. A time-aligned word for word transcription accompanies each recording. >
Bacterial Killing Is Enhanced by Expression of Lysozyme in the Lungs of Transgenic Mice

To assess the role of lysozyme in pulmonary host defense in vivo, transgenic mice expressing rat lysozyme cDNA in distal respiratory epithelial cells were generated. Two transgenic mouse lines were established in which the level of lysozyme protein in bronchoalveolar (BAL) lavage fluid was increased 2- or 4-fold relative to that in WT mice. Lung structure and cellular composition of BAL were not altered by the expression of lysozyme. Lysozyme activity in BAL was significantly increased (6.6- and 17-fold) in 5-wk-old animals from each transgenic line. To determine whether killing of bacteria was enhanced by expression of rat lysozyme, 5-wk-old transgenic mice and WT littermates were infected with 10(6) CFU of group B streptococci or 10(7) CFU of a mucoid strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa by intratracheal injection. Killing of group B streptococci was significantly enhanced (2- and 3-fold) in the mouse transgenic lines at 6 h postinfection and was accompanied by a decrease in systemic dissemination of pathogen. Killing of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was also enhanced in the transgenic lines (5- and 30-fold). Twenty-four hours after administration of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, all transgenic mice survived, whereas 20% of the WT mice died. Increased production of lysozyme in respiratory epithelial cells of transgenic mice enhanced bacterial killing in the lung in vivo, and was associated with decreased systemic dissemination of pathogen and increased survival following infection.
Anti-Aging Medicine: The Legal Issues Anti-Aging Quackery: Human Growth Hormone and Tricks of the Trade—More Dangerous Than Ever

To assess the presence of quackery in the anti-aging industry, the Internet was surveyed for web sites marketing anti-aging products as well as those providing consumer advice regarding quackery and hucksterism. The United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and its amendments were reviewed, particularly as they pertain to dietary supplements and human growth hormone. Anti-aging quackery and hucksterism are pervasive on the Internet and in clinics advertising anti-aging treatments. Review of the marketing techniques of the industry revealed 15 common ruses used by many in the industry to market their products. Federal law states that distributing or administering human growth hormone for anti-aging or age-related problems is illegal. Nonetheless, anti-aging clinics thrive, administering human growth hormone to thousands of gullible and oftentimes vulnerable patients. Anti-aging quackery has become a multimillion dollar industry exacting great monetary, health, and social costs. Consumers and health care providers alike are wise to educate themselves on how to recognize quackery. Congress must reassess the wisdom of the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act, which facilitates and, in numerous cases, endangers Americans on a grand scale. In the case of some substances such as human growth hormone, adequate legal safeguards are impotent without adequate resources allocated to enforcement agencies.
Diagnosing Mr. Jefferson: retrospectives on developmental disabilities at Monticello.

For a number of years, I have been intrigued by what might be termed the retrospective diagnosis of developmental disabilities. In my book Minds Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy of the Kallikaks (J. Smith, 1985), I expressed amazement that psychologist Henry Goddard in his study of the “good” and “bad” Kallikak families pronounced that a woman who had an illegitimate child in 1776 was “feebleminded.” This was 136 years after the birth of the child. In fact, Goddard diagnosed entire generations of Kallikaks who neither he nor anyone alive at that time had ever seen, let alone tested with even the most rudimentary of diagnostic techniques. Yet when his study was published in 1912, he asserted with confidence that he had found proof of a genetic basis for intellectual disabilities in these families.
Nanoparticles for Drug and Gene Delivery in Treating Diseases of the Eye

Using biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles as model systems for drug and gene delivery, this chapter describes commonly used methods for preparing and characterizing nanoparticles. This chapter focuses on emulsion solvent evaporation-based methods for encapsulating hydrophilic as well as lipophilic drugs in polymeric nanoparticles. In order to describe methods for preparing nanoparticles, we have chosen poly (lactide) (PLA)/poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) as the carrier materials for nanoparticles intended for drug and gene delivery. Nanoparticles intended for drug and gene delivery can be characterized for various parameters including particle size, size distribution, morphology, zeta potential, drug loading, syringeability and injectability, in vitro drug release, and stability. Methods for the measurement of these parameters, which influence the performance characteristics of nanoparticles in vivo, are also discussed in this chapter.
Associationist Philosophy, Cognitive Literary Studies, and Objective–Subjective Habits of Mind

This article discusses the lasting impact of associationist philosophy on studies of Romantic and Victorian literature. Associationism, which involves belief that “mental and moral phenomena may be accounted for by association of ideas” (OED), combines habits of thinking with habits of feeling. The suggestion that detectable patterns of thought impact personal preferences and social decisions has special significance in scholarship about sympathy and distance. The explosion of scholarship within cognitive theory and the arts, spearheaded by Nicholas Dames, Sean O'Toole, Anne Stiles, Laura Otis, Lisa Zunshine, and many others, has offered powerful insights into attention, recollection, and the understanding of the self through literature. Analyses of narrative form and affect by scholars such as Amanda Anderson, Sarah Winter, Catherine Robson, and Suzanne Keen underscore how associations dictate and shape sympathetic interactions. This article argues for productive overlap between these strains of scholarship. Together, the works suggest that insights into habits of mind can and should be applied to the social realm.
Investigation of subsequent deposit growth on pre‐existing lubricant deposits: a substitutional growth model

The Penn State Micro-Oxidation (PSMO) test was used in an inverse manner to pre-cover metallic pan surfaces with polymeric, transitioning and carbonaceous films. These pre-coated pans were then used as the initial test specimen/surface upon which fresh lubricant samples were aged. The effects of pre-deposits of varied ages were gauged against the baseline of a virgin metallic surface to decouple the lubricant-deposit system towards resolving their effect upon further deposit growth. From such data, a uniform deposition model describing deposit formation and aging was developed. Chemical characterisation of PSMO deposits by Fourier transform infrared-attenuated total reflectance and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscope analyses provide additional supporting evidence of changes in chemical bonding (alkyl C–H and carbonyl C=O bond stretching vibrations) and composition (C- and O-atom content) as the deposits undergo deoxygenation and dehydrogenation reactions. Across different aged oils and films, the substitution tests show a declining activity towards mass deposition with film age, interpreted as decline in reactivity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
CUSTOM-SEQ: a prototype for oncology rapid learning in a comprehensive EHR environment.

Background: As targeted cancer therapies and molecular profiling become widespread, the era of “precision oncology” is at hand. However, cancer genomes are complex, making mutation-specific outcomes difficult to track. We created a proof-of-principle, CUSTOM-SEQ: Continuously Updating System for Tracking Outcome by Mutation, to Support Evidence-based Querying, to automatically calculate and display mutation-specific survival statistics from electronic health record data. Methods: Patients with cancer genotyping were included, and clinical data was extracted through a variety of algorithms. Results were refreshed regularly and injected into a standard reporting platform. Significant results were highlighted for visual cueing. A subset was additionally stratified by stage, smoking status, and treatment exposure. Results: By August 2015, 4310 patients with a median follow-up of 17 months had sufficient data for survival calculation. As expected, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in lung cancer were associated with superior overall survival, hazard ratio (HR) = 0.53 ( P < .001), validating the approach. Guanine nucleotide binding protein (G protein), q polypeptide (GNAQ) mutations in melanoma were associated with inferior overall survival, a novel finding (HR = 3.42, P < .001). Smoking status was not prognostic for epidermal growth factor receptor–mutated lung cancer patients, who also lived significantly longer than their counterparts, even with advanced disease (HR = 0.54, P = .001). Interpretation: CUSTOM-SEQ represents a novel rapid learning system for a precision oncology environment. Retrospective studies are often limited by study of specific time periods and can lead to incomplete conclusions. Because data is continuously updated in CUSTOM-SEQ, the evidence base is constantly growing. Future work will allow users to interactively explore populations by demographics and treatment exposure, in order to further investigate significant mutation-specific signals.
Filament-Induced Anisotropic Oxygen Vacancy Diffusion and Charge Trapping Effects in Hafnium Oxide RRAM

The impacts of charge trapping and filament-induced anisotropy on the resistive switching mechanism in hafnia are formulated and quantified. Using ab initio calculations, we find the energetics and kinetics of oxygen vacancies in hafnium oxide resistive random access memory are strongly influenced by charge trapping at vacancy sites as well as the local crystal structure and presence of nearby conductive filaments.
Citizenship and Regret: When Employees Wish They had (or Hadn't) Gone the Extra Mile

Organizations are increasingly reliant on employees who are willing to go the extra mile by engaging in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Studies have found that performing OCBs can be a...
'Recirculating cardiac delivery' method of gene delivery should be called 'non-recirculating' method.

‘Recirculating cardiac delivery’ method of gene delivery should be called ‘non-recirculating’ method
Analyzing Cell Cycle-Dependent Degradation and Ubiquitination in Budding Yeast

Cell cycle progression is tightly regulated to prevent uncontrolled growth and division. Specific cell cycle factors are responsible for driving the cell from one cell cycle stage to the next. Many of these proteins are targeted for degradation by the ubiquitin proteasome system when their function is no longer required or may disrupt cell cycle progression. Here we describe a series of experiments used to study the ubiquitin-mediated degradation of cell cycle proteins. This collection of assays may be used to determine the requirement for individual proteins in the degradation and ubiquitination of cell cycle proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
A diachronic perspective on Great Basin projectile point morphology from Veratic Rockshelter, Idaho

Abstract Veratic Rockshelter (10CL3), located in the Birch Creek Valley on the northern border of the Snake River Plain, has long been considered among the most significant prehistoric sites in southeastern Idaho. Initially excavated by Earl Swanson in 1961, this site produced over a thousand stone tools from stratified contexts, including hundreds of diagnostic projectile points ranging from the late Paleoindian to the late prehistoric period from 13 cultural horizons. This paper provides a new evaluation of the geochronology of the site using 18 new AMS radiocarbon dates acquired from charcoal features sampled during the original excavation. These new ages are then compared with metric analyses of diagnostic projectile points from the existing assemblage to examine diachronic variability and morphological discreteness in this artifact class to tie them to existing Snake River Plain and Intermountain West projectile-point typologies as well as answer questions about late Paleoindian and Archaic spear- and dart-point variability. Results indicate that: 1) Western Stemmed Tradition points at Veratic date to significantly later than previously thought (9500–10,000 cal B.P.) and have a relatively broad spectrum of morphological variability, 2) Elko and Northern Side Notched points found in a middle-Holocene horizon (∼6000 cal B.P.) are morphologically distinct from each other, supporting the concept of an Elko “long chronology.” 3) Elko Corner Notched and Eared, Northern Side Notched, Stemmed Indented Base (including Gatecliff and possibly Pinto forms), Humboldt, and Salmon River points were found together in multiple middle-Holocene components at Veratic, indicating a period of greater variability that ended with the onset of the late Holocene by 3200 cal B.P., after which only Elko Corner Notched forms continued.
Does Bank Technology Impact Small Business Lending Decisions

I examine the effect that technology has on soft-information lending, and addresses issues within the banking literature on quantifying bank technology. I find that banks engage in less soft-information lending when back-office bank technology is more productive, and that banks engage in less soft-information lending when they own interactive web technology. I find that competition, lending decisions, and bank size are the primary drivers of technological development. I show that these results are robust to econometric tests which account for endogeneity; to an alternative definition of the bank's size; and to the inclusion of lending portfolio controls.
Cardiogenic Shock in Older Adults

Cardiogenic shock, a shock state with underlying cardiovascular insult as the precipitating event, carries a high mortality irrespective of the actual inciting pathology. This remains one disease entity in cardiovascular medicine that has not seen vast improvements over the past several decades. With the exception of the realization of the importance of early revascularization in the setting of acute myocardial infarction, there have been few breakthroughs in the treatment of this devastating condition. How to optimize outcomes for older adults with cardiogenic shock is an even more challenging task as the studies in this field have largely failed to include this patient demographic. Mechanical circulatory support devices hold great promise to improve outcomes for this condition, though their invasive nature and high rate of complications raise concern over their use in older patient populations.
Prolonged Bleeding in a 34-Year-Old Man following Oral Surgery.

A 34-year-old healthy man underwent oral surgery and returned multiple times thereafter with recurrent bleeding from the surgical site. Over the course of 1 month and several visits, the bleeding was stopped temporarily with sutures and cauterization but recurred after each intervention. He had a history of excessive bleeding after dental extractions and developed a hematoma after a vasectomy. There was …
Multigraph visualization for feature classification of brain network data

A Multigraph is a set of graphs with a common set of nodes but different sets of edges. Multigraph visualization has not received much attention so far. In this paper, we introduce a multigraph application in brain network data analysis that has a strong need for multigraph visualization. In this application, multigraph is used to represent brain connectome networks of multiple human subjects. A volumetric data set is constructed from the matrix representation of the multigraph. A volume visualization tool is then developed to assist the user to interactively and iteratively detect network features that may contribute to certain neurological conditions. We apply this technique to a brain connectome dataset for feature detection in the classification of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients. Preliminary results show significant improvements when interactively selected features are used.
Phenomenology and Socialization: Some Comments on the Assumptions Underlying Socialization Theory

This essay is addressed to one of the central problems in sociology, an area in which there is a concrete nexus between theory and empirical research: the process of socialization. This whole area is vague, somewhat muddled, and-according to some sociologists-suffers from an excess of "psychologizing." This essay presents neither new data nor original concepts. Our aims are to bring together some phenomenological strands of thinking on socialization and to make explicit the assumptions underlying much of the current thinking and research in this area. While a great deal of data has been collected on socialization into the professions, especially medicine, nursing and dentistry, little theoretical integration has been attempted since the work of George Herbert Mead (1934). The reader may disagree and perhaps cite the Becker et al. (1961) study of medical students (Boys in White). We believe, however, that sociologists have not attempted to reconcile traditional American socialization literature (mostly in the area of motivation) and the European perspectives of phenomenological reasoning (mostly in the areas of cognition and perception) together with Meadian symbolic interaction.2 Perhaps this paper will suggest some basis for rapprochement. The following section presents a phenomenological framework for understanding the ends or aims of the socialization process. The concepts of the phenomenological philosophy codified by Edmund Husserl (Farber, 1962) are not new to sociology: witness their influence in the works of Litt
Rapamycin prevents cadmium-induced neuronal apoptosis by suppression of MAPK and mTOR pathways

2281 Cadmium (Cd), one of toxic heavy metals, may be accumulated in the body through long-term exposure to cadmium-polluted environment, which contributes to carcinogenesis, immunodepression and neurodegeneration. Recently, we have demonstrated that rapamycin prevents cadmium-induced neuronal apoptosis. However, the underlying mechanism is not well understood. Here we show that cadmium induced apoptosis of PC12 and SH-SY5Y cells, which is associated with activation of Erk1/2, JNK, p38 MAPK and mTOR pathways. Pre-treatment with rapamycin for 48 h obviously blocked activation of these pathways. Downregulation of mTOR by RNA interference (RNAi) attenuated Cd-induced apoptosis of the neuronal cells. Disruption of mTOR-mLST8-raptor (mTORC1) or mTOR-mLST8-rictor (mTORC2) by RNAi also protected against Cd-induced neuronal apoptosis, indicating crucial roles of both complexes in the regulation of Cd-induced neuronal apoptosis. Furthermore, downregulation of S6K1 by RNAi, but not expression of constitutively hypophosphorylated 4E-BP1 (4E-BP1-5A), suppressed Cd-induced neuronal apoptosis, indicating mTORC1-mediated S6K1 pathway involved in this process. In addition, downregulation of Erk1/2 and c-Jun, but not p38 MAPK, significantly elevated cellular viability in Cd-treated PC12 and SH-SY5Y cells. Pretreatment with rapamycin strengthened the protective effect of shRNA to mTOR, raptor, rictor, S6K1, Erk1/2 or c-Jun against Cd-induced apoptosis. Taken together, rapamycin prevents Cd-induced neuronal apoptosis by co-suppression of MAPK and mTOR pathways. Our findings support the notion that mTOR inhibitors may be exploited for prevention of Cd-induced Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
PrivateGraph: A Cloud-Centric System for Spectral Analysis of Large Encrypted Graphs

Graph datasets have invaluable use in business applications and scientific research. Because of the growing size and dynamically changing nature of graphs, graph data owners may want to use public cloud infrastructures to store, process, and perform graph analytics. However, when outsourcing data and computation, data owners are at burden to develop methods to preserve data privacy and data ownership from curious cloud providers. This demonstration exhibits a prototype system for privacy-preserving spectral analysis framework for large graphs in public clouds (PrivateGraph) that allows data owners to collect graph data from data contributors, and store and conduct secure graph spectral analysis in the cloud with preserved privacy and ownership. This demo system lets its audience interactively learn the major cloud-client interaction protocols: the privacy-preserving data submission, the secure Lanczos and Nystrom approximate eigen-decomposition algorithms that work over encrypted data, and the outcome of an important application of spectral analysis - spectral clustering. In the process of demonstration the audience will understand the intrinsic relationship amongst costs, result quality, privacy, and scalability of the framework.
The effects of political and legal constraints on expropriation in natural resource and manufacturing sectors

Using panel data for up to 86 developing countries from 1960–2006, this paper investigates the effects of political and legal constraints on the tendency of host governments to expropriate in the n...
What Executives Should Know About Technology Trends

This installment of Life in the C-Suite presents a sampling of comments from executives collected by Villanova University over the past few years as part of ongoing research on technology trends, digital transformation, and technology adoption.
Feed aversion learning in cattle with delayed negative consequences.

Two experiments were conducted to study the ingestive behavior of cattle when given a delayed dose of the aversive agent lithium chloride (LiCl) after eating a novel feed. In the first experiment, 20 calves were randomly divided into four groups (n = 5). The control group (G1) received 80 mg/kg BW of sodium chloride (NaCl) 4 h after eating a novel feed. Groups 2 (G2), 3 (G3), and 4 (G4) received 80 mg/kg of LiCl at 4, 8, and 12 h, respectively, after eating the novel feed. When calves were offered the novel feed on subsequent days, G2 and G3 ate less (P .05) in intakes between G1 and G4. In the second experiment, 15 calves were randomly divided into three groups (n = 5). The control group (G1) received 80 mg/kg BW of NaCl 12 h after eating a novel feed, whereas G2 and G3 received 80 and 160 mg/kg BW, respectively, of LiCl 12 h after eating the novel feed. When calves were offered the novel feed on subsequent days, G1 and G2 ate similar (P > .05) amounts, whereas G3 ate much less (P < .05) of it than the other groups. Cattle learned to avoid novel feeds even when they experienced negative postingestive consequences up to 12 h after they ate the feeds. The capacity for long-delay learning seems to be related to the severity of negative consequences experienced.
War and rumours of war, do improvements in space technologies bring space conflict closer?

Combat in near-Earth orbit is emerging as a more realistic possibility. The argument here is that changes in space technologies combined with a sea change in political rhetoric is bringing the poss...
Rapid Evolution of Sperm Produces Diverse Centriole Structures that Reveal the Most Rudimentary Structure Needed for Function

Centrioles are ancient subcellular protein-based organelles that maintain a conserved number and structure across many groups of eukaryotes. Centriole number (two per cells) is tightly regulated; each pre-existing centriole nucleates only one centriole as the cell prepares for division. The structure of centrioles is barrel-shaped, with a nine-fold symmetry of microtubules. This organization of microtubules is essential for the ancestral function of centriole–cilium nucleation. In animal cells, centrioles have gained an additional role: recruiting pericentriolar material (PCM) to form a centrosome. Therefore, it is striking that in animal spermatozoa, the centrioles have a remarkable diversity of structures, where some are so anomalous that they are referred to as atypical centrioles and are barely recognizable. The atypical centriole maintains the ability to form a centrosome and nucleate a new centriole, and therefore reveals the most rudimentary structure that is needed for centriole function. However, the atypical centriole appears to be incapable of forming a cilium. Here, we propose that the diversity in sperm centriole structure is due to rapid evolution in the shape of the spermatozoa head and neck. The enhanced diversity may be driven by a combination of direct selection for novel centriole functions and pleiotropy, which eliminates centriole properties that are dispensable in the spermatozoa function.
Anharmonic resonance in the C−O stretch band of cyclopentanone

Quantitative aspects of the anharmonic vibrational resonance of triatomic molecules are extended by analogy to large polyatomic systems. They indicate that such resonances are not likely to occur sufficiently commonly to invalidate the use of simplified quadratic selective valence force fields in the normal coordinate analysis of complex polyatomic molecules of low symmetry.
Duality Theory in Nonlinear Buckling Analysis for von Kármán Equations

The nonlinear eigenvalue problem in buckling analysis is studied for von Karman plates. By using the general duality theory developed by Gao-Strang [1, 2] it is proved that the stability criterion for the bifurcated state depends on a reduced complementary gap function. The duality theory is established for nonlinear bifurcation problems. This theory shows that the nonlinear eigenvalue problem is eventually equivalent to a coupled quadratic dual optimization problem. A series of equivalent variational principles are constructed and a lower bound theorem for the first eigenvalue of the buckling factor is proved.
Frequenzanalyse des signalgemittelten Elektrokardiogramms zur Erkennung von Patienten mit anhaltenden ventrikulären Tachykardien

Herkommliche EKG-Ableitungen wahrend Sinusrhythmus sind nicht geeignet, Patienten mit anhaltenden ventrikularen Tachykardien (VT) zu identifizieren. In den letzten Jahren haben mehrere Arbeitsgruppen Signalmittelungstechniken in der Zeitdarstellung verwandt, um niederamplitudige Potentiale im terminalen QRS-Komplex und ST-Segment bei Patienten mit anhaltenden ventrikularen Tachykardien und in tierexperimentellen Modellen festzustellen (2,4, 8,11–13). Diese niederamplitudigen Potentiale von der Korperoberflache konnten verzogerter oder ungeordneter ventrikularer Erregung entsprechen (14); die bisher eingesetzten analytischen Methoden basierten jedoch alle auf hoher Verstarkung und komplexer Filterung und sind daher unvermeidbar Fehlerquellen wie Signal Verzerrung unterworfen. Um einige dieser Beschrankungen zu umgehen, haben wir eine Analysemethode mittels schneller Fourier-Transformation (FFT) entwickelt (1, 6, 7, 10). Die FFT- Analyse ist ein leistungsstarker Algorithmus zur Bestimmung des Frequenzspektrums eines Signals unabhangig von der Signalamplitude. Jedes periodische Signal, wie z. B. der QRS- Komplex, kann als die mathematische Summe von Sinus wellen unterschiedlicher Frequenzen und Amplituden dargestellt werden. Die sinusoidale Komponente mit der niedrigsten Frequenz wird die Grundfrequenz genannt, die Frequenzen aller hoheren sinusoidalen Komponenten sind ganzzahlige Vielfache dieser Grundfrequenz. Die FFT-Analyse ist ein computergestutzter mathematischer Algorithmus, bei dem die Amplituden der verschiedenen harmonischen Schwingungen, die das Signal enthalt, bestimmt werden. Fur jedes Zeitsignal wird durch die Fouriertransformation ein — und nur ein — definiertes Frequenzspektrum erzeugt.
Reduction of Excess Abdominal Skin via Liposuction and Surgical Excision

Since the inception of liposuction by Ilouz in 1977, 1 many modifications have been done to liposuction to increase its margin of safety and improve upon the cosmetic results, including the Klein technique of tumescent anesthesia.2 For many patients who have good skin tone, abdominal liposuction alone can give good to excellent results.3 However, there is a subset of patients who have small amounts of skin laxity of the lower abdomen that can benefit from a skin tightening procedure.4 These patients have excess lower abdominal skin while still maintaining good abdominal muscle tone underneath making them excellent candidates for a “miniabdominoplasty” using a combination of tumescent liposuction and limited skin resection.4 The good underlying muscle tone and minimal diastasis of the musculoaponeurotic wall obviate the need for a more extensive abdominoplasty.2–13 For example, a young multiparous woman who has lower abdominal skin laxity and striae but still maintains minimal or mild lower abdominal musculofascial looseness is an excellent candidate for this procedure.
Deep Learning and Networks for Integrative Analysis of Multi-Omic Data

Integrative analysis of multi-omic data is crucial to elucidate the molecular underpinning of disease etiology. Underneath multi-omic data is molecular networks, many of which have been documented in various knowledge bases. In this talk, I will discuss how the multi-view learning, graph theory, and deep learning can be integrated with biological knowledge for multi-omic data fusion and analysis.
Successful Collaborations at the Local and National Level Build Teenagers' Skills to Advocate for Improved Health: Project SHARE

Abstract Initiatives to improve community health often involve showing community members how to access information or providing them with health information. The Project SHARE (Student Health Advocates Redefining Empowerment) Team (the Team) at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at University of Maryland, Baltimore, expanded upon this approach by empowering students with the skills to advocate for improved health for themselves and for their communities. Local and national partnerships contributed to the success of this multiyear project. In 2012, the Team collaborated with a local high school to deliver more than 300 hours of instruction. The Team then developed a web-based modular curriculum selected by the National Area Health Education Center Organization for a national teen health information literacy project. This chapter reports on how the collaborative process was key to the success of this project to reduce health disparities and encourage health equity.
CXCR4 allows T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia to escape from JAK1/2 and BCL2 inhibition through CNS infiltration

Relapsed/refractory T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is difficult to salvage especially in heavily pretreated patients, thus novel targeted agents are sorely needed. Hyperactivated JAK/STAT and BCL2 overexpression promote increased T-ALL proliferation and survival, and targeting these pathways with small molecule inhibitors like ruxolitinib and venetoclax may provide an alternative therapeutic approach to re-induce clinical remissions. Ruxolitinib and venetoclax show a dose-dependent effect individually, but combination treatment synergistically reduces survival and proliferation of Jurkat and Loucy cells in vitro. Using a xenograft CXCR4+ Jurkat model, the combination of ruxolitinib and venetoclax fails to improve survival, with the primary cause of death from hind limb paralysis. Despite on-target inhibition of the drugs on total STAT1, pSTAT1, total STAT3, total STAT5 and pSTAT5 as well as BCL2, histopathologic analysis demonstrates increased leukemic infiltration into the central nervous system (CNS), which expresses CXCL12, as compared to the liver or bone marrow. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectroscopy shows that neither ruxolitinib nor venetoclax can effectively cross the blood-brain barrier, limiting efficacy against CNS T-ALL. Deletion of CXCR4 on Jurkat cells by CRISPR/Cas9 results in prolonged survival and a reduction in overall and neurologic clinical scores. While combination therapy with ruxolitinib and venetoclax shows promise for treating T-ALL, additional inhibition of the CXCR4-CXCL12 axis will be needed to eliminate both systemic and CNS T-ALL burden and maximize the possibility of complete remission.nnKey PointsO_LIRuxolitinib & venetoclax treat T-ALL in vitro; fail to treat CNS burden in vivo.nC_LIO_LICXCR4-CXCL12 recruits T-ALL to CNS and accelerates lethality.nC_LI
Another Way of Finding Prime Numbers.

Mersenne numbers are prime or composite. A number is called perfect if it is equal to the sum of its divisors, not including itself. As an example, 6 is a perfect number, since its only divisors are 1, 2, and 3 (besides 6) and these sum to 6. Similarly, the divisors of 28, excluding 28 itself, are 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14, and these sum to 28. These numbers were considered perfect, substantiated by the creation of the universe in 6 days and of the lunar cycle in 28 days. Over 2 000 years ago, Euclid proved that every number of the form 2P-1(2P 1), where is a prime and 2P ? 1 is also a prime, must be an even perfect number. As an example, take = 2. Since 22 ? 1 = 4 ? 1 = 3 is a prime, = 2 may be used in the formula to yield a perfect number. Sub stituting, we obtain 22_1(22 1) = 2 X 3 = 6, the first even perfect number. In the eighteenth century, Euler proved that Euclid's formula gives all even perfect numbers. The first five perfect numbers given by Euclid's formula are 6, 28, 496, 8 128, and 33 550 336. According to Euclid's formula, we are only allowed to substitute primes such that 2P 1 is also prime. Let Mp stand for the number 2P 1; thus Mz = 23 1 = 7, M5 = 2s 1 = 31, and so on. If Mp is a prime, we call that particular Mp a Mer senne prime, named after the seventeenth century mathematician Marin Mersenne. As an example, Mz = 23 1 = 7, a prime; hence 7 is a Mersenne prime. Up to the present time the only known values of the prime that yield Mersenne primes are 2,3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 61, 89, 107, 127, 521, 607, 1 279, 2 203, 2 281, 3 217, 4 253, 4 423, 9 689, 9 941, 11 213, 19 937 (24 values). It is to be understood that the omitted primes between these do not yield Mersenne primes; for example, for = 11, Mn = 211 1 = 2 047 = 89 23. In addi tion, if is composite, it is clear that Mn is composite; in fact, 2ab 1 (a and b greater than 1) is divisible by Ia 1. In particular then, if is even and larger than 2, Mn is composite. In 1772, Euler proved that Mzl = 2 147 483 647 is a prime, and this number became the largest known prime for more than 100 years. E. V. Lucas (1877, pp. 184-239, 289-321) developed a beautiful test to determine, for a given prime /?, whether Mp is prime or not. The result was later modified and the proof simplified by D. H. Lehmer (1930, pp. 419-48). Consider the following sequence of numbers, which is called the Lucas-Lehmer sequence: 4, 14, 194, 37 634, 1 416 317 954, and so on. This sequence satisfies the recurrence relation Si = 4, Sk+1 = Sk2 2, k = 1, 2, 3,. ... Thus 14 = 42 2, 194 = 142 2, and so on. The following statement can be proved:
Visualizing electron storage capacity distribution in biochar through silver tagging.

Abstract Electron storage capacity (ESC) is the capacity of a black carbon to store and reversibly donate and accept electrons in redox processes. Electrochemical and chemical analyses have shown the ESC of black carbon (e.g., plant-based biochars) was on the order of a few mmol/g. However, it remains unknown where ESC is located. The spatial distribution of ESC is important because it controls the bioaccessibility of ESC and the rates of biochar redox reactions. Here we used silver to tag the ESC of a wood-derived biochar. Ag+ was allowed to diffuse into the pores of reduced biochar at a constant pH. Up to 2.49 mmol Ag+/g biochar (corresponding to 62% of its ESC) was reduced to Ago nanoparticles (nAg), which served as an ESC marker and was visualized by electron microscopy. Abundant and dense nAg were observed on the biochar surface. In addition, microtomed samples showed ubiquitous and well-dispersed nAg in the interior of biochar, which explains pore diffusion-limited redox reactions and the partial bioaccessibility of its ESC. In addition to probing ESC distribution in black carbon, this method represents a new, ESC-based approach to incorporate large quantities of Ag and other redox-active elements into carbon media for potential environmental applications.
What's the Harm in Getting High? Evaluating Associations Between Marijuana and Harm as Predictors of Concurrent and Prospective Marijuana Use and Misuse.

Objective:Substantial research has demonstrated the importance of implicit cognitive processes underlying substance use. However, there is a scarcity of research on implicit processes related to ma...
Techniques to Aid Analysis

Abstract This chapter presents a number of techniques that may help in finalizing or supplementing statistical analysis. Included are ways to assure that the question being asked, the data being collected, and the method of data analysis are mutually consistent; comments on the interpretation of significance; examination of post hoc power analysis; data requiring a high number of statistical tests; interim analyses; bootstrapping, resampling, and simulation; and Bland-Altman plots.
Calculating Sensitivity, Specificity, and Predictive Values for Correlated Eye Data.

Purpose To describe and demonstrate appropriate statistical approaches for estimating sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for correlated eye data. Methods We described generalized estimating equations (GEE) and cluster bootstrap to account for inter-eye correlation and applied them for analyzing the data from a clinical study of telemedicine for the detection of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Results Among 100 infants (200 eyes) selected for analysis, 20 infants had referral-warranted ROP (RW-ROP) in both eyes and 9 infants with RW-ROP only in one eye based on clinical eye examination. In the per-eye analysis that included both eyes of an infant, the image evaluation for RW-ROP had sensitivity of 83.7% and specificity of 86.8%. The 95% CI's from the naive approach that ignored the inter-eye correlation were narrower than those of the GEE approach and cluster bootstrap for both sensitivity (width of 95% CI: 22.4% vs. 23.2% vs. 23.9%) and specificity (11.4% vs. 12.5% vs. 11.6%). The 95% CIs for sensitivity and specificity calculated from left eyes and right eyes separately were wider (35.2% and 30.8% respectively for sensitivity, 25.4% and 17.3% respectively for specificity). Conclusions When an ocular test is performed in both eyes of some or all of the study subjects, the statistical analyses are best performed at the eye-level and account for the inter-eye correlation by using either the GEE or cluster bootstrap. Ignoring the inter-eye correlation results in 95% CIs that are inappropriately narrow and analyzing data from two eyes separately are not efficient.
Nucleation of high-quality GaP on Si through v-groove Si substrates

High quality III-Vs on Si are a promising candidate for high efficiency, cost-effective tandem solar cells due to the superior optoelectronic properties of III-Vs and low cost of Si. In recent years, progress towards the integration of high-quality, monolithically-grown III-Vs on Si has been made through careful control of the GaP on Si nucleation step [1]. A variety of pretreatments have successfully been used to modify the surface reconstruction of the Si to prevent the formation of antiphase domains (APDs) [2]– [5]. This has led to promising III-V/Si multijuction solar cell results, with efficiencies now exceeding 20% [6], [7].