cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Distinct Role of Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase and Rho Family GTPases in Vav3-induced Cell Transformation, Cell Motility, and Morphological Changes *

Vav3 is a member of the Vav family of guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) for the Rho family GTPases. Deleting the N-terminal calponin homology (CH) domain to generate Vav3-(5-10) or deleting both the CH and the acidic domain to generate Vav3-(6-10) results in activating the transforming potential of Vav3. Expression of either the full-length Vav3 or its truncation mutants led to activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), focal adhesion kinase (FAK), and Stat3. We investigated the requirement of these signaling molecules for Vav3-induced focus formation and found that PI3K and its downstream signaling molecules, Akt and p70 S6 kinase, are required, albeit to varying degrees. Inhibition of PI3K had a more dramatic effect than inhibition of MAPK on Vav3-(6-10)-induced focus formation. Activated PI3K enhanced the focus-forming activity of Vav3-(6-10). Wild type FAK but not Y397F mutant FAK enhanced Vav3-(6-10)-induced focus formation. Dominant negative (dn) mutant of Stat3 resulted in a 60% inhibition of the focus-forming activity of Vav3-(6-10). Moreover, Rac1, RhoA, and to a lesser extent, Cdc42, are important for Vav3-(6-10)-induced focus formation. Constitutively activated (ca) Rac synergizes with Vav3-(6-10) in focus formation. This synergy requires signaling via Rho-associated kinase (ROK) and p21-activated kinase (PAK), downstream effectors of Rac. Consistently, a ca PAK mutant enhanced, whereas a dn PAK mutant inhibited the focus-forming ability of Vav3-(6-10). Despite having potent focus-forming ability, Vav3-(6-10) has very weak colony-forming ability. This colony-forming ability of Vav3-(6-10) can be enhanced dramatically by co-expressing an activated PI3K and to some extent by co-expressing an activated PAK mutant or c-Myc. Interestingly, inhibition of PI3K and MAPK had no effect on the ability of either wild type or Vav3-(6-10) to induce cytoskeletal changes including formation of lamellipodia and filopodia in NIH 3T3 cells. Over expression of Vav3 or Vav3-(6-10) resulted in an enhancement of cell motility. This enhancement was dependent on PI3K, Rac1, and Cdc42 but not on Rho. Overall, our results show that signaling pathways of PI3K, MAPK, and Rho family GTPases are differentially required for Vav3-induced focus formation, colony formation, morphological changes, and cell motility.
KidCraft: Co-Design within a Game Environment

Co-design research with children is a field that continues to find new ground and expand as it explores new, and more effective ways to design. As children become more enveloped in a world of technology and video games, it follows to leverage these kinds of experiences for use in our design toolbox. In addition, continuing to explore how to include a larger global audience through distributed co-design can advance the design process. The study presented in this paper serves as a preliminary exploration of virtual sandbox game environments as a co-design tool. Utilizing a design inclusive research approach, we discuss what led us to explore this environment as a co-design tool, how it evolved over time, our success in using it to include those who could not attend in-person sessions, and our plans to expand on this research in the future.
Silver impregnation of degenerating axons; comparisons of postoperative intervals, fixatives and staining methods.

By introducing variations in procedures and comparing density and patterns of degeneration exhibited, we found that: (1) in the rat, cat, and monkey, the optimum survival time was about 1 wk; this period yielding the maximum amount of argyrophilic reaction and the most consistent staining among several different parts of the brain. Survival times of up to 3 wk did not seriously impair the interpretation of argyrophilial patterns; (2) some qualitative changes in the nuclear patterns of degeneration suggested that the use of a range of survival times may provide useful data; (3) staining differences and similarities in different neural systems of known connections were about the same in the 3 species of animals; (4) formalin, buffered formalin, and a 4%:1% paraformaldehyde-glutaraldehyde mixture were satisfactory perfusion solutions; however, staining was less intense when the Nauta-Gygax method followed the last fixative mixture; (5) The Fink-Heimer I method yielded more consistent results than did the Fin...
Constitutive activation of PI3K-Akt and NF-κB during prostate cancer progression in autochthonous transgenic mouse model

Background Cancer progression is usually facilitated by independent growth signals that may lead to increased cell survival and evasion of apoptosis. Phosphatidylinositol 3'-OH kinase (P I3 K)-Akt and transcription factor NF-kappaB are important signaling molecules and key survival factors involved in the control of cell proliferation, apoptosis, and oncogenesis. Although P I3 K-Akt and NF-kappaB have been implicated in the development and progression of prostate cancer, expression of these molecules during progression of autochthonous disease has not been elucidated. Methods Prostate cancer growth and progression in autochthonous transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) mice and male non-transgenic littermates were observed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Expression patterns of P I3 K-Akt, NF-kappaB, I kappaB, and associated signaling molecules during different stages of cancer progression in these mice were examined by Western blot analysis, electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA), enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay (ELISA), kinase assay, and immunohistochemistry. Results Sequential MRI and gross analysis of prostate gland exhibited increasing prostate volume associated with the development and progression of prostatic adenocarcinoma in TRAMP mice, compared to male non-transgenic littermates. Differential protein expression of P I3 K, phosphorylated-Akt (Ser 473), I kappa Balpha and its phosphorylation, IKK kinase activity, NF-kappaB/p65, p50, DNA binding, and transcriptional-regulated genes, viz., Bc l2, cyclin D1, MMP-9, and VEGF were observed during prostate cancer progression in TRAMP mice, compared to male non-transgenic littermates. Expressions of these molecules were significantly increased during cancer progression observed at 24 and 32 weeks of age. Conclusions Differential expression pattern of P I3 K-Akt, NF-kappaB and I kappaB during prostate cancer progression in TRAMP mice suggest that these molecules represent potential molecular targets for prevention and/or therapeutic intervention.
P(VDF-TrFE) films for high-frequency ultrasonic transducers

The ferroelectric copolymer polyvinylidene fluoride- trifluoroethylene, P(VDF-TrFE), has been shown to possess electrical and acoustic properties of interest for high frequency ultrasonic transducer applications. It has been used successfully in high frequency (10 - 200 MHz) medical imaging and nondestructive testing applications where its inherent properties of low acoustic impedance, high compliance, and broadband acoustic properties outweigh its poorer dielectric and electro-mechanical coupling properties which are lower than electroceramics. This paper briefly reviews successful high frequency P(VDF-TrFE) ultrasonic transducer applications and focuses on the design and testing of ultrasound transducer devices based on new spin- cast P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer films. Particular attention is given to (PVDF-TrFe) materials characterization and selection, ultrasonic transducer design and device packaging for high frequency applications. Ultrasonic testing of such high frequency transducers is also briefly discussed.
Mean-field theory for underdamped Josephson-junction arrays with an offset voltage.

We study a model Hamiltonian for superconductivity in underdamped Josephson-junction arrays in the presence of an offset voltage between the array and the substrate. We develop an approximate zero-temperature ([ital T]=0) phase diagram as a function of Josephson coupling, charging energy, and offset voltage, using a simple Hartree-type mean-field approximation. With diagonal charging energy, the calculated phase diagram is periodic in offset voltage, in agreement with previous results. At a special value of this voltage such that states with [ital n] and [ital n]+1 Cooper pairs per grain are degenerate, only an infinitesimal Josephson coupling is needed to establish long-range phase coherence in this approximation. With both diagonal and nearest-neighbor charging energies, the [ital T]=0 phase diagram has two types of insulating lobes with different kinds of charge order, and two types of superconducting regions. One of these is a supersolid'' in which long-range phase coherence coexists with a frozen charge-density wave. We briefly discuss connections to previous calculations, and possible relevance to experiments.
Interactions among Turbulence, Radiation and Microphysics in Arctic Stratus Clouds

Abstract The Arctic Stratus Experiment, conducted during June 1980 over the Beaufort Sea, produced an extensive set of simultaneous measurements of boundary layer structure, radiation fluxes, and cloud microphysical properties. In this paper these data are used to determine the interactions between mixing, radiative transfer, and cloud microphysics for four cloud decks. The thermodynamic structure and fluxes of the thermodynamic quantities in the cloudy boundary layer are examined, including liquid water fluxes. Net radiative heating profiles are also determined. A detailed analysis of the fine-scale structure of the cloud microphysics is presented, including correlations between the cloud microphysical parameters (droplet concentration, liquid water content, mean radius, spectral dispersion, and the 95% volume liquid water drop radius), which are used to infer the nature of the mixing processes and the local effects of radiative heating/cooling. A comparison is then made with other observations and exist...
Human visual system-based smoking event detection

Human action (e.g. smoking, eating, and phoning) analysis is an important task in various application domains like video surveillance, video retrieval, human-computer interaction systems, and so on. Smoke detection is a crucial task in many video surveillance applications and could have a great impact to raise the level of safety of urban areas, public parks, airplanes, hospitals, schools and others. The detection task is challenging since there is no prior knowledge about the object's shape, texture and color. In addition, its visual features will change under different lighting and weather conditions. This paper presents a new scheme of a system for detecting human smoking events, or small smoke, in a sequence of images. In developed system, motion detection and background subtraction are combined with motion-region-saving, skin-based image segmentation, and smoke-based image segmentation to capture potential smoke regions which are further analyzed to decide on the occurrence of smoking events. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. As well, the developed method is capable of detecting the small smoking events of uncertain actions with various cigarette sizes, colors, and shapes.
A Model of Information Security Awareness for Assessing Information Security Risk for Emerging Technologies

Information systems (IS) that interconnect emerging technologies have rendered organizations increasingly vulnerable to emerging information technology (IT) attacks. Drawing on IS concepts such as systems and cybernetic theory, technological threat avoidance theory (TTAT) and general deterrence theory (GDT), this study develops an IS security (ISS) risk model that contributes to an understanding of information security awareness (ISA) and the assessment of ISS risk. Results indicate that technical knowledge, organizational impact and attacker assessment generate significant positive path coefficients with ISA. However, the constructs organizational impact and attacker assessment generated stronger path coefficients with ISA than technical knowledge. Research model results also indicate that ISA is strongly associated with ISS risk.
A rhetorical approach to zones of meaning and organizational prerogatives

Abstract Meaning is essential to the study and practice of public relations. For that reason, a rhetorical perspective on public relations gives the opportunity to address the impact of words and other symbols, and therefore constitutes a worthy candidate to be the dominant paradigm for the study and practice of public relations. This paradigm presses us to realize that public relations entails not just communication, but communication about something.
Developmental increase in the sensitivity to magnesium of NMDA receptors on CA1 hippocampal pyramidal cells.

Abstract The N- methyl- d -aspartate (NMDA) receptor is involved in processes, such as associative learning, that are particularly important during early postnatal development. It has been suggested that the activity and regulation of this receptor changes during development. Activation of the NMDA receptor is normally limited by Mg2+ present in the extracellular fluid of brain. We have found that Mg2+ less potently antagonizes the depolarizing action of NMDA in developing rats than in adults. A grease-gap method was used to record depolarizations evoked in CA1 hippocampal pyramidal cells by the excitants NMDA and AMPA (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate). In the adult CA1 area, Mg2+ shifted the NMDA concentration-response curve to the right in a manner consistent with voltage-dependent open channel block (uncompetitive antagonism) in a preparation with significant receptor reserve. The potency of Mg2+ increased during development; a greater than two-fold change in the EC50 for Mg2+ was observed between 10–15 days of age and adulthood. A concentration of 10 mM reduced the maximum response of CA1 pyramidal cells to NMDA in adult rats, but not in developing rats. In addition, Mg2+ often enhanced the maximum depolarizations evoked by NMDA in 10- to 15-day-old rats, but very seldom in adults. No significant developmental changes in AMPA-induced depolarizations were observed in the presence or absence of Mg2+. These results suggest that synaptically released glutamate will readily activate NMDA receptors during early development and that its ability to do this declines with the maturation of the brain. This may at least partially explain developmental reductions in learning ability, the ability to generate long-term potentiation, the ability to evoke kindling and the sensitivity of CNS neurons to NMDA receptor-dependent excitotoxicity.
Msx2 and p21CIP1/WAF1 mediate the proapoptotic effects of bone morphogenetic protein‐4 on ventricular zone progenitor cells

Treatment of cultured ventricular zone (VZ) progenitor cells with bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP4) promoted cell death in a dose-dependent manner. VZ progenitor cells became progressively more resistant to the proapoptotic effects of BMP4 between E10 and E16, and, by E18 and thereafter, BMP4 treatment no longer led to progenitor cell death. BMP4 treatment of E13 progenitor cells promoted expression of msx2 and p21CIP1/WAF1 (p21) and inhibition of expression of either gene prevented BMP4-mediated apoptosis. Treatment of E18 cells with BMP4 failed to induce apoptosis but still induced expression of low levels of msx2 and p21. Knockout of bax significantly reduced but did not prevent BMP4-mediated death of E13 murine progenitor cells. These observations indicate that msx2 and p21 mediate the proapoptotic effects of BMP4 on VZ progenitor cells and that each gene is necessary but insufficient to promote apoptosis. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
THE SIEGFRIED BERNFELD CONFERENCE: UNCOVERING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS

In his historical account of the psychoanalytic movement, Russell Jacoby (1983) laments the loss of the radical psychoanalytic tradition. It was a tradition shattered by the rise of Nazism in Europe and the trauma of emigrating to a country that was hostile toward European radical ideas. Coming to America brought a certain amnesia about the past for those Central European psychoanalysts whose vision of psychoanalysis was intertwined with radical political commitments. The horrifying realities left behind made them grateful for the haven they had found in America, but it was a haven that demanded silence about the past. As Jacoby has argued, the price of this retreat into the safer and narrower world of affluent clinical practice was to shed their political radicalism, to relinquish subversive ideas that threatened to be maladaptive in the New World. For a significant number of European psychoanalytic practitioners, however, the critical tradition of psychoanalysis is not dead. In this paper, I describe a recent conference I attended in Frankfurt, Germany that was organized by the Siegfried Bernfeld group, a group of left-wing German psychoanalysts who draw inspiration from the radical psychoanalytic tradition. The conference, attended by approximately 250 psychoanalytic clinicians from various European countries, was based on a unifying interest in the critical potential of psychoanalysis and its social emancipatory role within contemporary society. Participants were individual practitioners, as well as members of psychoanalytic societies. Some sought allies in forming new organizations independent of the established psychoanalytic societies. Others felt that there was a necessary tension between their association with these institutes and their need for separate socialization experiences based on common politica] and intellectual interests.
Disparity Convergence Eye Movements Dynamics under Time Varying Stimuli

In this paper we study the slow and fast dynamics of the disparity convergence of the eye movements dynamic model under time varying stimuli. It has been observed that the fast component displays abrupt changes to the two-second-period target stimuli whose magnitude changes from 30 to 10 degrees.
Counterpoint: Is Technology Overemphasized?

The pacemaker is celebrated as an outstanding achievement for the advance of health care. There are hopes for similar results with an artificial heart. Many serious questions, both technical and societal, have been raised about the artificial heart program. In a recent interview, Barton Berstein, Professor of History at Stanford University, addresses his concerns with public policy for this program. Read his statements carefully; some points are well taken. On the other hand, imagine what he might have said twenty years ago about the pacemaker.
Cuticular Proteins in Insects and Crustaceans

Comparisons between crustacean and insect cuticles are hampered by the paucity of cuticular protein sequences for the former. Sufficient complete sequences are available for insect cuticular proteins to allow recognition of conserved motifs and relationships among proteins that reflect the type of cuticle from which they have been extracted. All five sequences from an arachnid and two of 14 from crustaceans have a motif found in the largest group of insect cuticular proteins. Numerous insights have been gained from studying insect cuticular proteins and their genes. These insights have been summarized in hopes of encouraging interest in building on the foundations laid by Dorothy Skinner with the exoskeleton of Gecarcinus .
Discriminative Stimulus Effects of l -α-Acetylmethadol (LAAM), Buprenorphine and Methadone in Morphine-Treated Rhesus Monkeys

The discriminative stimulus effects of l -α-acetylmethadol (LAAM), l -α-acetylnormethadol (nor-LAAM), l -α-acetyldinormethadol (dinor-LAAM), buprenorphine and methadone were investigated in morphine-treated (3.2 mg/kg/day) rhesus monkeys ( n = 3–6) discriminating between saline and naltrexone (0.01 mg/kg) and responding under a fixed ratio (FR) schedule of stimulus-shock termination. Monkeys responded on the naltrexone lever after either the administration of 0.01 mg/kg of naltrexone or the substitution of saline for the daily dose of morphine ( i.e. , 27-hr morphine deprived). Morphine dose-dependently reversed naltrexone lever responding in morphine-deprived monkeys. Methadone, LAAM, nor-LAAM and dinor-LAAM had morphine-like discriminative stimulus effects in all monkeys, whereas, buprenorphine had naltrexone-like discriminative stimulus effects in three monkeys and morphine-like effects in two monkeys; 24 hr after administration, buprenorphine antagonized the effects of morphine in the former and antagonized the effects of naltrexone in the latter. The agonist and antagonist effects of buprenorphine persisted for more than 6 days. The relative duration of action was: buprenorphine > LAAM > nor-LAAM = methadone = dinor-LAAM = morphine. That buprenorphine had markedly different discriminative stimulus effects in monkeys treated identically with morphine is likely due to the low efficacy of buprenorphine and emphasizes the difficulty in predicting the behavioral effects of buprenorphine in opioid-dependent individuals. The considerably longer duration of LAAM, than either nor-LAAM or dinor-LAAM, indicates that the rate of metabolite formation is important for the long duration of LAAM and further suggests that variations in metabolic activity among individuals might result in differences in the behavioral effects of LAAM.
Practice Makes Perfect: Improving Students' Skills in Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism With a Themed Methods Course

To address the issue of plagiarism, students in two undergraduate Research Methods and Analysis courses conducted, analyzed, and wrote up original research on the topic of plagiarism. Students in a...
Nanostructural and Chemical Characterization of Supported Metal Oxide Catalysts by Aberration Corrected Analytical Electron Microscopy

The performance of catalyst materials are usually governed by the precise atomic structure and composition of very specific catalytically active sites. Therefore, structural and chemical characterization at the atomic scale becomes a vital requirement in order to identify any structure–performance relationships existing in heterogeneous catalyst systems. Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) represents an ideal means to probe the atomic scale structural and chemical information via a combination of various imaging and spectroscopy techniques. In particular, high-angle annular darkfield (HAADF) imaging provides directly interpretable atomic number (Z) contrast information; while X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) spectrum imaging can be used to identify the chemical composition and oxidation state. Here we review some applications of aberration-corrected STEM to catalyst research, firstly in the context of supported metal catalysts, which serve as ideal material systems to illustrate the power of these techniques. Then we focus our attention on more recent progress relating to the characterization of supported metal oxide catalysts using aberration-corrected STEM. We demonstrate that it is now possible to directly image supported surface oxide species, study oxide wetting characteristics, identify the catalytic active sites and develop new insights into the structure–activity relationships for complex double supported oxide catalysts. Future possibilities for in situ and gentle low voltage electron microscopy studies of oxide-on-oxide materials are also discussed.
It's not a black and white issue.

My mother was a piano teacher, so at an early age I was taught that a keyboard consisted of white keys and black keys. That’s all there were, 88 of them, and by striking them in the right order, one could make music – at least, she could. In fact, if one struck certain keys at the same time, one could make beautiful harmonic tones, while striking the wrong keys at once created dissonant noise. It all depended on how the frequencies of the corresponding notes were related. I was taught early on that when used skillfully, a series of tones could create a musical masterpiece. Many of us are musically inclined and listen carefully to the subtleties of what we hear, but I suspect that more of us are ‘‘visual’’, and pay more careful attention to what we see than to what we hear, or smell, taste or touch. Perhaps it is fitting that while my mother was a musician, my father worked for the Eastman Kodak Company, so I was also introduced to ‘‘imaging’’ at an early age. Of course, for years ‘‘tones’’ in imaging meant gradations of black and white. I am old enough to remember that years ago it was not just piano keyboards that came in ‘‘black and white’’. Images on television were in black and white. Cameras recorded images on a material known as ‘‘film’’ (does anybody remember that?) and prints were then made on photographic paper, in black and white. Back then, we did not go online to learn what was going on in the world – we read it in the daily newspaper, which was printed in black and white. A young child knows how to color with both black and white crayons, but scientists argue over whether black or white are ‘‘colors’’. It seems fair to observe that from the perspective of simple physics (the kind I understand), white represents a synthesis of all of the colors in the spectrum of light, while black represents the absence of light. According to the ‘‘additive color theory’’, white is a color and black is not. On the other hand, painters know that by mixing pigments, one can create black – or at least a very dark color. It is not possible, however, to create white by mixing a series of pigments. According to this alternate ‘‘subtractive color theory’’, black is a color while white is not. Metaphorically, black and white are often used to denote opposites. In some cultures, white is used to depict ‘‘good’’ and black to depict ‘‘evil’’; remember that Darth Vader was dressed in black in Star Wars. In some other cultures, white is used to depict death and black is considered to represent life. Fortunately, for those of us who are visually inclined, the world we see is not black and white, but rather appears in color. The science of color image production has advanced rapidly. Piano keyboards may still be black and white, but almost everything else has moved on. We now see television, newspaper articles, photographs, and images on our cell phones and computer screens in color. If you have been paying attention, the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography (JASE) has, slowly but surely, been using colors to enhance the presen-
Economic model predictive control of nonlinear two-time-scale systems

We focus on the development of a Lyapunov-based economic model predictive control (LEMPC) method for nonlinear singularly perturbed systems in standard form arising naturally in the modeling of two-time-scale chemical processes. A composite control structure is proposed in which, a “fast” Lyapunov-based model predictive controller (LMPC) using a quadratic cost function which penalizes the deviation of the fast states from their equilibrium slow manifold and the corresponding manipulated inputs, is used to stabilize the fast dynamics while a two-mode “slow” LEMPC design is used on the slow subsystem that addresses economic considerations as well as desired closed-loop stability properties by utilizing an economic (typically non-quadratic) cost function in its formulation and possibly dictating a time-varying process operation. Through a multirate measurement sampling scheme, fast sampling of the fast state variables is used in the fast LMPC while slow-sampling of the slow state variables is used in the slow LEMPC. Appropriate stabilizability assumptions are made and suitable constraints are imposed on the proposed control scheme to guarantee the closed-loop stability and singular perturbation theory is used to analyze the closed-loop system.
Widely-tunable transmitters and photonic integrated circuits

Widely-tunable lasers and single-chip transmitters, in which such lasers are integrated with modulators and semiconductor-optical-amplifiers, have recently become the core of practical modules that are gaining wide-spread use in new wavelength-division-multiplexed systems. More-photonic advanced ICs have been demonstrated for use it advanced communication and sensor system
Gendered War and Gendered Peace: Truth Commissions and Postconflict Gender Violence: Lessons From South Africa

That war is profoundly gendered has long been recognized by feminist international relations scholars. What is less recognized is that the postwar period is equally gendered. Currently undertheorized is how truth-seeking exercises in the aftermath of conflict should respond to this fact. What happens to women victims of war violence? The difficulties of foregrounding gendered wartime violence in truth telling are illustrated by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The article explores some consequences of the failure to uncover gendered truth, including its impact on the government's reparations policy, and continued "peacetime" violence perpetrated against women in South Africa.
Facial allograft transplantation, personal identity and subjectivity

An analysis of the identity issues involved in facial allograft transplantation is provided in this paper. The identity issues involved in organ transplantation in general, under both theoretical accounts of personal identity and subjective accounts provided by organ recipients, are examined. It is argued that the identity issues involved in facial allograft transplantation are similar to those involved in organ transplantation in general, but much stronger because the face is so closely linked with personal identity. Recipients of facial allograft transplantation have the potential to feel that their identity is a mix between their own and the donor's, and the donor's family is potentially likely to feel that their loved one "lives on". It is also argued that facial allograft transplantation allows the recipients to regain an identity, because they can now be seen in the social world. Moreover, they may regain expressivity, allowing for them to be seen even more by others, and to regain an identity to an even greater extent. Informing both recipients and donors about the role that identity plays in facial allograft transplantation could enhance the consent process for facial allograft transplantation and donation.
Interferon-Gamma Induces Prolyl Hydroxylase (PHD)3 Through a STAT1-Dependent Mechanism in Human Endothelial Cells

Objective— We previously reported that interferons (IFNs) regulate transcription of HIF-1α in human endothelial cells (ECs), linking immunity and hypoxia. Prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) regulate expression of HIF-1α in response to hypoxia. We examined whether IFNs affect PHD expression and whether PHDs regulate the EC response to IFNs. Methods and Results— Human cell cultures were treated with various cytokines, and PHD expression was examined using qRT-PCR and immunoblotting. IFNγ and, to a lesser extent, IFNα significantly induced PHD3, but not PHD1 or 2, mRNA, and protein expression selectively in ECs directly via a JAK/STAT1 pathway as demonstrated by pharmacological inhibition, siRNA knockdown, and chromatin immunoprecipitation. Inhibition of PHD activity with dimethyloxallyl glycine or desferroxamine reduced IFNg-dependent responses in these same cells. Conclusions— IFNγ induces PHD3 through a JAK/STAT1-dependent mechanism in human ECs. Induction is independent of HIF-1α and may contribute to expression...
Dinucleoside monophosphates. I. Optical properties and conformation in solution with one base charged

A least squares analysis of the titration properties of several dinucleoside monophosphates enables calculation of the pK's for protonation. These pK's are used to resolve the spectral properties of dinucleoside monophosphates with one base charged from the apparent spectral properties of a dinucleoside monophosphate in aqueous solution. This method is applied to dinucleoside monophosphates containing adenosine and/or cytidine. Results of CD, nmr, and CD-temperature dependence measurements are presented. The results indicate that singly protonated dimers of these nucleosides stack as do their unprotonated analogs. It is suggested that this is true for all dimers with one base charged.
Relemed: sentence-level search engine with relevance score for the MEDLINE database of biomedical articles

Receiving extraneous articles in response to a query submitted to MEDLINE/PubMed is common. When submitting a multi-word query (which is the majority of queries submitted), the presence of all query words within each article may be a necessary condition for retrieving relevant articles, but not sufficient. Ideally a relationship between the query words in the article is also required. We propose that if two words occur within an article, the probability that a relation between them is explained is higher when the words occur within adjacent sentences versus remote sentences. Therefore, sentence-level concurrence can be used as a surrogate for existence of the relationship between the words. In order to avoid the irrelevant articles, one solution would be to increase the search specificity. Another solution is to estimate a relevance score to sort the retrieved articles. However among the >30 retrieval services available for MEDLINE, only a few estimate a relevance score, and none detects and incorporates the relation between the query words as part of the relevance score. We have developed "Relemed", a search engine for MEDLINE. Relemed increases specificity and precision of retrieval by searching for query words within sentences rather than the whole article. It uses sentence-level concurrence as a statistical surrogate for the existence of relationship between the words. It also estimates a relevance score and sorts the results on this basis, thus shifting irrelevant articles lower down the list. In two case studies, we demonstrate that the most relevant articles appear at the top of the Relemed results, while this is not necessarily the case with a PubMed search. We have also shown that a Relemed search includes not only all the articles retrieved by PubMed, but potentially additional relevant articles, due to the extended 'automatic term mapping' and text-word searching features implemented in Relemed. By using sentence-level matching, Relemed can deliver higher specificity, thus eliminating more false-positive articles. By introducing an appropriate relevance metric, the most relevant articles on which the user wishes to focus are listed first. Relemed also shrinks the displayed text, and hence the time spent scanning the articles.
A molecular approach to discerning the phylogenetic placement of the enigmatic snake Xenophidion schaeferi among the Alethinophidia

Maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) analyses of the complete nucleotide sequences of the cytochrome b gene (cytb) were used to examine the phylogenetic position of the rare snake Xenophidionschaeferi within the alethinophidian snakes. The cytochrome b sequence of this representative of the poorly known family Xenophiidae was compared with those of a large and comprehensive suite of alethinophidian taxa. The research presented here represents the first time all families of alethinophidian and caenophidian snakes have been included in a single molecular phylogenetic study. Results from ML and BI analyses suggest a possible sister taxon relationship between Xenophidion schaeferi and the Bolyeridae. Moreover, strong statistical support also indicates that Xenophiidae is a member of a clade that contains Pythonidae, Loxocemidae, Uropeltidae, Xenopeltidae and Bolyeriidae. Additionally, maximum parsimony and BI analyses of previously published morphological data revealed that these anatomical character states and potentially low taxonomic sampling produced little phylogenetic information valuable to understanding the relationship of Xenophiidae among the Alethinophidia.
On micrometeorological observations of surface-air exchange over tall vegetation

Abstract It is shown from the mass conservation and the continuity equations that the net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of a scalar constituent with the atmosphere should be NEE =∫ z r 0 ∂ c ∂t d z+( w′c′ ) r + w r c r − 1 z r ∫ z r 0 c d z where the first term on RHS is the storage below the height of observation (zr), the second term is the eddy flux, and the third term is a mass flow component arising from horizontal flow convergence/divergence or a non-zero mean vertical velocity ( w r ) at height zr. The last term, unaccounted for in previous studies of surface-air exchanges, becomes important over tall vegetation and at times when the vertical gradient of the atmospheric constituent ( c r −(1/z r )∫ z r 0 c d z) is large, as is the case with CO2 in forests at night. Experimental evidence is presented to support the postulation that the mass flow component is in large part responsible for the large run-to-run variations in eddy fluxes, the lack of energy balance closure and the apparent low eddy fluxes at night under stable stratifications. Three mechanisms causing the non-zero mean vertical velocity are discussed. Of these, drainage flow on undulating terrain is the most important one for long-term flux observations because only a small terrain slope is needed to trigger its occurrence. It is suggested from the data obtained at a boreal deciduous forest that without proper account of the mass flow component, the assessment of annual uptake of CO2 could be biased significantly towards higher values. It is argued that quantifying the mass flow component is a major challenge facing the micrometeorological community.
Band-limited fractal model of atmospheric refractivity fluctuation

We propose that fluctuations of the atmospheric refractive index be modeled by an appropriate band-limited Weierstrass function that has fractal characteristics. In one dimension, the average Weierstrass spectrum approaches the Kolmogorov spectrum when the fractal dimension of the former becomes 5/3. The intermittent characteristic of the atmospheric refractivity fluctuations is also taken into account by modifying this Weierstrass function. Three-dimensional extensions of this model with a fractal dimension of 11/3 are described briefly. This model is particularly attractive for the problem of wave propagation in the atmosphere because it expresses the atmospheric fluctuation in terms of an almost-periodic function or a generalized Fourier series.
Small Water Systems: Role of Technology

Over 90% of the nation's water supplies serve fewer than 10,000 people, less than 25% of the total population. Many of these small systems have problems. One of the major problems is their lack of operating revenues. They cannot benefit from economies of scale as do large urban systems because they are small in terms of the number of connections served. Recent epidemiological evidence has shown that the majority of the recent waterborne disease outbreaks occurred in small systems. There are, however, technological and management systems being developed that may aid small utilities in solving their problems at reasonable cost. These technological systems include package treatment plants and reverse osmosis plants. Management systems include cost accounting systems.
Parallel algorithms for time and frequency domain circuit simulation

As a most critical form of pre-silicon verification, transistor-level circuit simulation is an indispensable step before committing to an expensive manufacturing process. However, considering the nature of circuit simulation, it can be computationally expensive, especially for ever-larger transistor circuits with more complex device models. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly desirable to accelerate circuit simulation. On the other hand, the emergence of multi-core machines offers a promising solution to circuit simulation besides the known application of distributed-memory clustered computing platforms, which provides abundant hardware computing resources. This research addresses the limitations of traditional serial circuit simulations and proposes new techniques for both time-domain and frequency-domain parallel circuit simulations. For time-domain simulation, this dissertation presents a parallel transient simulation methodology. This new approach, called WavePipe, exploits coarse-grained application-level parallelism by simultaneously computing circuit solutions at multiple adjacent time points in a way resembling hardware pipelining. There are two embodiments in WavePipe: backward and forward pipelining schemes. While the former creates independent computing tasks that contribute to a larger future time step, the latter performs predictive computing along the forward direction. Unlike existing relaxation methods, WavePipe facilitates parallel circuit simulation without jeopardizing convergence and accuracy. As a coarse-grained parallel approach, it requires low parallel programming effort, furthermore it creates new avenues to have a full utilization of increasingly parallel hardware by going beyond conventional finer grained parallel device model evaluation and matrix solutions. This dissertation also exploits the recently developed explicit telescopic projective integration method for efficient parallel transient circuit simulation by addressing the stability limitation of explicit numerical integration. The new method allows the effective time step controlled by accuracy requirement instead of stability limitation. Therefore, it not only leads to noticeable efficiency improvement, but also lends itself to straightforward parallelization due to its explicit nature. For frequency-domain simulation, this dissertation presents a parallel harmonic balance approach, applicable to the steady-state and envelope-following analyses of both driven and autonomous circuits. The new approach is centered on a naturally-parallelizable preconditioning technique that speeds up the core computation in harmonic balance based analysis. The proposed method facilitates parallel computing via the use of domain knowledge and simplifies parallel programming compared with fine-grained strategies. As a result, favorable runtime speedups are achieved.
Sociology's Relevance for Casework Research

JOHN f. MAYtR, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. He was formerly a research sociologist at the In stitute of Welfare Research, Community Service Society, New York, New York. This paper is a revised version of one that was presented at the Annual Forum of the National Conference on Social Welfare, Dallas, Texas, May 1967. casework research and sociology, the ques tion is more specifically: To what extent does casework research exploit the perspec tives and concepts that sociology has to offer?
The Thirteenth Amendment and Interest Convergence

The Thirteenth Amendment was intended to eliminate the institution of slavery and to eliminate the legacy of slavery. Having accomplished the former, the Amendment has only rarely been extended to the latter. The Thirteenth Amendment’s great promise therefore remains unrealized. This Article explores the gap between the Thirteenth Amendment’s promise and its implementation. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, this Article argues that the relative underdevelopment of Thirteenth Amendment doctrine is due in part to a lack of perceived interest convergence in eliminating what the Amendment’s Framers called the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The theory of interest convergence, in its strongest form, suggests that civil rights gains seldom happen unless they are perceived as advancing, or at least not hindering, the material interests of dominant groups.
Don't ask, don't tell: a systematic review of the extent to which participant characteristics are reported in social anxiety treatment studies

ABSTRACTBackground and Objectives: This study examined the extent to which social anxiety treatment studies report the demographic characteristics of their participants. One hundred and 56 treatment studies published in English between 2001 and 2012 articles were collected. Methods: Each study was evaluated on whether or not it reported information on gender, age, race, relationship status, education, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and disability and also the extent to which the racial composition of the sample was described. Results: The majority of studies reported information on age (96.2%) and gender (94.2%), but the percentage of studies that reported anything else is much lower: race (50.0%), education (42.3%), relationship status (37.8%), socioeconomic status (5.1%), disability (2.6%), and sexual orientation (1.3%). One third (34.0%) of studies reported the race of all participants in their samples, while the remaining reported no information or information for only a subset of participa...
B+ ---> D*+(s) gamma and B+ ---> D*+ gamma as probes of V(ub)

The decays B{sup +}{r_arrow}D{sub s}{sup {asterisk}+}{gamma} and B{sup +}{r_arrow}D{sup {asterisk}+}{gamma} can be used for an extraction of {vert_bar}V{sub ub}{vert_bar}. When the {ital b} and {ital c} quarks are nearly degenerate, the rate for these modes can be determined in terms of other observed rates, namely B{bar B} mixing and D{sup {asterisk}}{r_arrow}D{gamma} decay. To this end, we introduce a novel application of heavy quark and flavor symmetries. Although somewhat unrealistic, this limit provides us with a first estimate of these rates. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}
Isotretinoin therapy for the treatment of acne in patients with cystic fibrosis: a case series and review of the literature

Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common severe autosomal recessive disorder in Caucasians. Viscous secretionstypically obstruct the lungs, pancreas, and gastrointestinal tract. As disease management improves, patients will increasingly seek care for conditions such as acne. Isotretinoin therapy for acne in patients with CF is controversial owing to concerns that the medication may exacerbate CF-related hepatic, pulmonary, and ocular complications.Purpose: We describe two patients with CF treated with isotretinoin from our clinic and also provide a literature review of 11 similar cases. We describe patient outcomes, common complications, and the risks for severe adverse effects.Materials and methods: The clinical courses of two patients with CF who were treated with isotretinoin for moderate-severe acne are presented. Using PubMed, we analyzed previous case reports of patients with CF who were prescribed isotretinoin and review complications associated with systemic retinoids.Results: Based on a synthesis of the literature and our own experience, it appears that isotretinoin therapy for CF patients with moderate-severe acne may be an appropriate option when clinically indi ated. If dermatologists monitor lab values and adverseeffects carefully, patients with CF can benefit from isotretinoin therapy.