cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Cause of death trends among adults with and without cerebral palsy in the United States, 2013–2017

Abstract Background Adults with cerebral palsy (CP) in the United States die much earlier than those without CP, a health inequality likely shaped by causes of death. Existing research has not considered demographic differences in mortality patterns. Objectives To analyze differences in cause of death for adults who did/did not have CP reported on their death certificates and to assess sex and racial-ethnic difference in causes of death among adult decedents with CP. Methods Data are from the 2013–2017 US Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files (N = 13,332,871; n = 13,897 with CP). Multiple logistic regression models were used to compare differences in causes of death between adults with and without CP and to determine sex and racial-ethnic differences in causes of death among adults with CP. Adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated. Results As compared with decedents without CP, those with CP were more likely to die from pneumonitis (aOR 31.14, 95% CI 29.42–32.96), influenza/pneumonia (8.78, 8.30–9.29), respiratory failure (17.24, 15.19–18.69), and choking (20.66, 18.86–22.62) and less likely to die from heart disease (0.61, 0.58–0.65), cancer (0.12, 0.11–0.13), chronic lower respiratory diseases (0.50, 0.44–0.56), and cerebrovascular diseases (0.66, 0.59–0.75). Among adults with CP, female decedents were more likely than males to die from respiratory failure (1.21, 1.03–1.42), and non-Hispanic Black decedents were more likely than non-Hispanic White decedents to die from heart disease (1.24, 1.07–1.45) and cerebrovascular disease (1.77, 1.29–2.49). Conclusions In 2013–2017, heart disease was the leading cause of death for adults with and without CP. However, for people with compared to those without CP, likelihood of death from likely preventable respiratory causes of death was higher. Non-Hispanic Black adults were more likely than non-Hispanic White adults to die from heart and cerebrovascular diseases. Public health, clinical, and rehabilitation efforts must use a multifaceted approach to address respiratory and circulatory health among people with CP. Database United States National Vital Statistics System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files (National Bureau of Economic Research: https://www.nber.org/research/data/vital-statistics-mortality-data-nber )
Urinary Kringle Domain-Containing Protein HGFL: A Validated Biomarker of Early Sickle Cell Anemia-Associated Kidney Disease.

Introduction Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a prevalent complication of sickle cell anemia (SCA). Hyperfiltration that delayed detection of CKD is common in SCA patients. Identification of novel urinary biomarkers correlating with glomerular filtration rates may help to detect and predict progression of renal disease. Methods Reanalysis of mass spectra of urinary samples obtained from University of Illinois at Chicago identified kringle domain-containing protein HGFL. Results HGFL levels correlated with hyperfiltration, were significantly reduced at CKD stage 1 compared to stage 0, negatively correlated with progression of CKD and were suitable for differentiation of stage 1. Better prediction of CKD progression to stage 2 was observed for HGFL-based risk prediction compared to the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)-based prediction. Results from a Howard University patient cohort supported the utility of HGFL-based test for the differentiation of stage 1 of CKD. Conclusion Urinary HGFL may contribute additional information beyond eGFR and improve diagnosis of early-stage CKD in SCA patients.
Security in a Cloud Bazaar

While cloud computing is transforming society, today's public clouds are black boxes, implemented and operated by a single provider that makes all business and technology decisions. In 2013 we launched the Mass Open Cloud (MOC) with the vision of creating a production cloud that would enable innovation by a broad industry and research community. This open cloud has become a laboratory for cloud research and innovation, resulting in hundreds of publications, contributions to open source software, and collaborations between researchers, open source developers, and production operations staff. Recently we launched the Open Research Cloud Initiative (ORCI) to provide a framework to coordinate the bazaar of interrelated projects and initiatives that have evolved since 2013, including the Red Hat Collaboratory@BU, Open Cloud Testbed (OCT), New England Research Cloud (NERC), Northeast Storage Exchange (NESE), Operate First, and OpenInfra Labs. With its launch, the MOC inspired and enabled research in cloud security. For example, the Modular Approach to Cloud Security (MACS) SaTC NSF frontier project, launched in 2014, brought together cryptographers, operating system, database and computer architecture researchers from BU, MIT, UConn and NEU. This security research resulted in new open-source software and products that are today enabling new services in the ORCI bazaar. This talk will discuss the ORCI cloud bazaar, some of the security research and projects it inspired, and some exciting new collaborations happening now to make the cloud both open and secure.
Forest Structure and Productivity along the Oregon Transect

The Oregon Transect Ecosystem Research (OTTER) Project, conducted from 1990 to 1992, was an investigation of regional and seasonal variations in forest ecosystem processes involving carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and water. Methods of field ecology, surface meteorology, computer simulation and remote sensing were applied to the study of six primary coniferous forest sites and three fertilization-treatment sites along an environmental gradient across west central Oregon. The objective of the OTTER Project was to address two main questions: (i) can generalized ecosystem models, designed to use mainly variables to be derived from remote sensing data, explain the variation in ecosystem functioning found across the environmentally variable landscape of Oregon? and (ii) do good relationships exist between the regional variation in these driving variables and remotely sensed data? A large team of scientists supported by airborne remote sensing efforts collected a very wide range of ecological, climatological, biophysical and biochemical variables relating to net primary production (NPP), photosynthesis, evapotranspiration and nutrient cycling in these forests. The team used both a light-use efficiency model and a mechanistic ecosystem process model to predict NPP across the transect. The driving variables of each model formed the basis for the remote sensing studies. Correlative analyses and radiative transfer models were used to study the relationships between LAI, specific leaf area, standing biomass, foliar biomass, foliar chemistry, canopy temperature, relative humidity, vapor pressure deficit, incident and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and spectral reflectance from a wide variety of remotely sensed data.
Hash Functions from Sigma Protocols and Improvements to VSH

We present a general way to get a provably collision-resistanthash function from any (suitable) Σ-protocol. This enables usto both get new designs and to unify and improve previous work. Inthe first category, we obtain, via a modified version of theFiat-Shamir protocol, the fastest known hash function that isprovably collision-resistant based on the standard factoring assumption. In the second category, we provide a modifiedversion VSH* of VSH which is faster when hashingshort messages. (Most Internet packets are short.) We also showthat Σ-hash functions are chameleon, thereby obtainingseveral new and efficient chameleon hash functions withapplications to on-line/off-line signing, chameleon signatures anddesignated-verifier signatures.
Coping with Losses, Grief, and Mourning in Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is a highly prevalent disease with a high likelihood of survival. If treated, survivors live with significant and lasting treatment-related side effects. Surgical treatment is associated with urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, and radiation leads to urinary and bowel irritability as well as erectile dysfunction. Patients who undergo hormonal treatment cope with sexual dysfunction, bone density loss, hot flashes, mood symptoms, and cardiac and metabolic disorders. Functional losses have a significant impact on patients and their partners' quality of life and are associated with distress and psychosocial morbidity. Psychosocial treatment is largely unavailable in usual care, but has been shown to reduce distress, to increase positive reappraisal of the illness, and to contribute to the recovery of sexual intimacy. Treatment for grief and mourning, typical reactions to loss, has not been introduced into psychosocial interventions but is increasingly recognized as a path toward a 'new normal' after prostate cancer treatment.
The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court

Writing history is perilously tricky, weighing narratives, presenting facts, and making stories. This is particularly true when the history directly affects the legal rights of a present-day community. When the Supreme Court of the United States writes history, it imbibes the narrative with both cultural and legal authority, and the story the Court creates needs to be both persuasive and perceived as factual. The Court is not a body of historians, obligated to write nuanced history. However, the Court’s opinions and factual reiterations legitimize those facts and history. Once the Court releases an opinion, the history in it achieves a high level of popular authority. As the nation faces cultural divides over the meaning of the “Founding,” the Constitution, and who owns these meanings, the Court’s embrace of originalism is one strand that feeds the divide. The Court’s valuing of the original interpretation of the Constitution has reinforced the Founder fetishism also found in popular culture, specifically within the politics of those identified as the Tea Party. As addressed elsewhere, their strict worship of the Founders has historical implications for both women and African Americans, groups both marginalized and viewed as property in the Constitution. No one, however, has written about how the Court's cobbled historical narrative and their veneration for the Founders has affected American Indian tribes. Tribes barely exist in the Constitution, and the Founders “original” understanding of tribes was that they would inevitably disappear. The “vanishing Indian” stereotype, promulgated in the early Republic, reaching an apex in the 1820’s, continues to influence fundamentally how the Court views tribes. Compressing history from the Founding through the Jacksonian era undermines tribal authority and sovereignty within the Court. In its federal Indian law cases, the Court relies on racial stereotypes, and popular conceptions of American history. As a result of these shortcuts, the Court folds all tribes into one large group, empties the American landscape of tribal peoples, and forces tribes into a past where they only exist to disappear.
Quality of Study Rating Form: An Instrument for Synthesizing Evaluation Studies

Abstract The Quality of Study Rating Form (QSRF) incorporates principles of meta-analysis to rate key features in an evaluation study. An Explanation for Criteria outlines the QSRF's sections regarding study quality, treatment effect size, and identification of treatment and client type. To measure QSRF's reliability, fieldwork methods students independently rated important features of evaluation studies and computed indices of study quality and treatment effect size. Evaluators, who review research, and eclectic practitioners, who weigh evidence regarding potentially useful treatments, may discover useful applications for QSRF.
Program Committee Chairs' message

While sensor network research has made significant strides in the past few years, the literature has relatively few examples of papers that have evaluated and validated a complete experimental system. In this paper, we discuss our deployment experiences and evaluate the performance of a multi-hop wireless data acquisition system (called Wisden) for structural health monitoring (SHM) on a large seismic test structure used by civil engineers. Our experiments indicate that, with the latest sensor network hardware, Wisden can reliably deliver time-synchronized tri-axial structural vibration data reliably across multiple hops with low latencies for sampling rates up to 200 Hz. This performance was achieved by iteratively refining the system design using a series of test deployments. Our experiences suggested the need for careful onset detection in order to preserve the fidelity of the structure's frequency response. Furthermore, the high damping characteristics of large structures motivated an exploration of the processing, sampling, and communication limits of current platforms.
PEMFC Gas Diffusion Media Degradation Determined by Acid-Base Titrations

Surface oxidation of carbon leads to the formation of various oxygen containing groups that are detectable by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) surface sensitive techniques, e.g., Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) or FTIR Attenuated Total Reflectance (FTIR ATR) [2], but frequently an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio in such measurements prevents accurate determination of the surface concentration of those functionalities. Some of them, e.g., carbonyl groups arranged in quinone-like structures (Fig. 1) exhibit electrochemical activity within the double layer region of platinum catalysts and thus can be detected and their surface concentration determined semiquantitatively using e.g., cyclic voltammetry [3].
Venus lightning: Pros and cons

Abstract The evidence concerning the presence of lightning on Venus is summarized. There are several observations of electromagnetic pulses, but the only claimed optical detection is ambiguous. Another optical search, making use of an unusual mode of the Pioneer Venus star sensor, set an upper limit on the flash rate, 1.6% of the corresponding Earth rate. Given these difficulties and the unfavorable environment for charge separation, it is concluded that the presence of lightning at anything like the Earth rate is doubtful.
Transient Simulations of Amorphous Silicon Devices

We have developed a numerical simulation program (MANIFEST) which calculates the time-dependent behaviour of one and two dimensional amorphous silicon devices. Our model solves the complete set of transport equations for both electrons and holes and fully includes the appropriate time dependent occupation functions for the traps in the band gap of the amorphous silicon. These traps are assumed to obey Shockley-Read-Hall kinetics. We have simulated the transient behaviour of pin and nin diodes, both in the dark and under illumination, as well as the characteristics of thin film transistors. Our initial results are in good agreement with experimental data.
Thermoelastic effects on X-ray lithography masks under pulsed irradiation

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to present computer calculations of thermoelastic effects in x-ray lithography masks caused by the absorption of high intensity short x-ray pulses. Several mask structures are considered with different substrate and absorber materials. In particular, substrates materials of Si, SiC, and diamond, and absorber materials including Au, W and Ta will be considered. The powerful analytical capabilities of NASTRAN were combined with the graphic input and output capabilities of CAEDS to perform the calculations using finite element analysis. The calculations were performed for x-ray masks operating in air, and in a He atmosphere with a 40 μm gap between the mask and the wafer. Thermoelastic stress calculations were performed for 8.3 A, and 10 A wavelength x-ray pulses. Results indicate a maximum temperature rise on the mask of the order of 30 °C for a 2 nanosecond exposure with a 10 mJ/cm2 x-ray pulse. The maximum temperature was obtained at the end of the x-ray pulse. The temperature decayed quickly, with a time constant depending on the thermal properties of the absorber and the substrate. The initial ambient temperature was reached after about 10 milliseconds. Mechanical static analysis showed that the maximum stress in the absorber films which was due to maximum temperature differences in the mask layers, also occurred at the end of the pulse. The magnitude of the induced thermoelastic stress was found comparable to the intrinsic stress level of the mask materials. The analysis indicates that when the pulse amplitude reaches 10 mJ/cm2, there is need for experimental study of x-ray mask distortion during exposure to short x-ray pulses (from a laser plasma or similar source). The results also point out directions for the selection of mask materials to minimize mask fatigue and distortion.
Aerobic oxidation of hydrocarbons catalyzed by electronegative iron salen complexes

Abstract A number of salen derivatives bearing electronegative substitutents and their corresponding iron(III) chloro complexes have been prepared. Several of the complexes catalyze aerobic oxidation of cyclohexene, primarily to allylic oxidation products. Evidence supports a radical chain autoxidation mechanism, with the complex functioning to decompose intermediate alkyl hydroperoxides. Activity is observed only for complexes with relatively high Fe ( III II ) reduction potentials, but the incomplete correlation of activity with potential indicates that more subtle structural and electronic effects also play an important role in determining the rates of the catalytic reactions.
Topical or Systemic 16,16 Dm Prostaglandin E2 or WR-2721 (WR-1065) Protects Mice from Alopecia after Fractionated Irradiation

Our previous studies in mice demonstrated that systemic or topical 16,16 dm PGE2 protected against single dose radiation-induced hair loss. We have now investigated prostaglandin, or WR-2721, protection against murine alopecia produced by varying doses and schedules of fractionated radiation. On days one to eight after hair was plucked from the thighs of B6D2F1 mice, groups of 6 animals each were given daily exposures of 4·0 or 4·5 Gy for 5 days; 2·5, 3·5, 4·5 or 5·5 Gy for 10 days; or 2 Gy for 15 days. One hour before irradiation each mouse received 10 µg 16,16 dm PGE2, either by subcutaneous injection into the neck or topical application, 8 mg WR-2721 by injection, or 0·3 mg WR-1065 by topical application. Three weeks later counts of regrowing hairs were recorded from excised skin samples. For the radioprotectors used, hair regrowth was increased 25–100% in the various radiation groups in comparison to irradiated-only control sites. In some studies with the radioprotectors given systematically, WR-2721 ...
Tissue mast cells in breast cancer.

The total number of mast cells and the number of such cells observed within and at the periphery of invasive breast cancers from 424 patients enrolled in protocol 4 of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast Project were correlated with 38 other pathologic and 6 clinical features. High total mast cell counts as well as those within and at the periphery of the cancers were found to be significantly (p≤.05) associated with a patient age less than 50 years and the degree of tumor lymphoid cell reaction. The latter has also been found to be related to young age and other pathologic characteristics related to mast cell content. This suggests that the mast cells may simply represent another cell type of this reactive change. No differences in 10 year disease-free survival were detected in patients without mast cells and those exhibiting varying numbers of such cells. This information indicates that identifiable mast cells do not represent a prognostic pathologic discriminant in patients with breast cancer. However, this does not unequivocally exclude a role of mast cell secretory products, since only intact and not degranulated or disrupted forms of these cells can be counted.
Substance-P Is Present in a Subset of Thyrotrophs in the Human Pituitary

Substance-P immunoreactivity and tachykininlike peptides are present in the pituitary gland of several mammalian species. In humans, however, the biochemical nature and cellular localization of pituitary substance-P has not been defined. We report here that substance-P-immunoreactive material is present in low concentrations in both the anterior and posterior lobes of the human pituitary gland. Gel chromatography and reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography indicate that the majority of the substance-P immunoreactivity in human pituitaries elutes as authentic substance-P and its oxidized derivative. Immunohistochemical studies showed substance- P-immunoreactive fibers and terminals in the posterior pituitary gland and occasional substance-P-immunoreactive cell bodies in the anterior lobe. The substance-P-immunoreactive cells were found to colocalize with a small subpopulation of TSHβ-immunoreactive cells (thyrotrophs). Substance-P immunoreactivity was also found in a pituitary microadenoma tha...
Regulation of mitochondrial respiration in senescence

The ADP-stimulated (State 3) respiration of myocardial mitochondria with glutamate-malate, glutamate-pyruvate, palmitylcarnitine and β-hydroxybutyrate as substrates declined in rats after the age of 20 months. There was no significant decline in pyruvate-malate, α-oxoglutarate, palmityl-CoA, succinate and ascorbate cytochrome c oxidation. Skeletal muscle mitochondria from senescent animals showed a similar decline in glutamate-malate oxidation but not in palmityl-CoA, palmitylcarnitine, succinate and ascorbate-cytochrome c oxidation. The controlled oxidation with ADP-limiting (State 4) and the ADP/O ratio were not affected. The results indicate an alteration in the subtle regulatory capacity for mitochondrial oxidation in senescent rats. It is suggested that the alteration may be in certain anion transport and associated functions across the mitochondrial membrane or dehydrogenase activity.
Biochemical characterization of mutant propionyl CoA carboxylases from two minor genetic complementation groups.

We have biochemically characterized several parameters of propionyl CoA carboxylase (PCC) activity in fibroblast extracts from PCC-deficient patients belonging to the two minor genetic complementation groups, pcc B and pcc BC. Comparison of PCCs from these groups with those of the two major complementation groups, pcc A and pcc C, has demonstrated that PCCs from both the pcc B and pcc BC groups closely resemble each other as well as PCC from the pcc C group. These results further support the hypothesis that the pcc B and pcc BC lines are interallelic with respect to pcc C and consequently that the structural mutations in the PCCs from these groups involve the same subunit.
The feasibility of isobaric suppression of 26Mg via post-accelerator foil stripping for the measurement of 26Al

Abstract Most accelerator mass spectrometry measurements of 26Al utilize the Al− ion despite lower source currents compared with AlO− since the stable isobar 26Mg does not form elemental negative ions. A gas-filled magnet allows sufficient suppression of 26Mg thus enabling the use of the more intense 26AlO− ion. However, most AMS systems do not include a gas-filled magnet. We therefore explored the feasibility of suppressing 26Mg by using a post-accelerator stripping foil. With this approach, combined with the use of alternative cathode matrices, we were able to suppress 26Mg by a factor of 20. This suppression was insufficient to enable the use of 26AlO−, however further refinement of our system may permit its use in the future.
The small planets.

ASTEROIDS HAVE BECOME NOTORIOUS AS CELESTIAL MENACES BUT ARE BEST APPRECIATED IN A POSITIVE LIGHT, AS SURREAL WORLDS BEARING TESTIMONY TO THE ORIGIN OF THE PLANETS
Functorial comparisons of bitopology with topology and the case for redundancy of bitopology in lattice-valued mathematics

This paper studies various functors between (lattice-valued) topology and (lattice-valued) bitopology, including the expected “doubling” functor E d : L-Top → L-BiTop and the “cross” functor E× : L-BiTop → L 2 -Top introduced in this paper, both of which are extremely well-behaved strict, concrete, full embeddings. Given the greater simplicity of lattice-valued topology vis-a-vis lattice-valued bitopology and the fact that the class of L2-Top’s is strictly smaller than the class of L-Top’s encompassing fixed-basis topology, the class of E×’s makes the case that lattice-valued bitopology is categorically redundant. As a special application, traditional bitopology as represented by BiTop is (isomorphic in an extremely well-behaved way to) a strict subcategory of 4-Top, where 4 is the four element Boolean algebra; this makes the case that traditional bitopology is a special case of a much simpler fixed-basis topology.
Effect of nutrient media on axillary shoot proliferation and preconditioning for adventitious shoot regeneration of pears

The influence of the nutrient composition of plant tissue culture media on axillary shoot proliferation and their preconditioning effect on subsequent adventitious shoot regeneration from pear leaves was investigated. The goal was to improve both micropropagation and regeneration of ‘Bartlett’ and ‘Beurre Bosc’ pear cultivars. Driver–Kuniyuki walnut (DKW) and Quoirin and Lepoivre (QL) nutrient media were found to be superior to Murashige and Skoog (MS) and Woody Plant Medium (WPM) for axillary shoot proliferation. Shoots on WPM exhibited some chlorosis. Axillary shoot culture on DKW would be preferred to that on QL due to the production of excessively short thin shoots on the latter medium. DKW also was superior to QL and MS for production of young expanding leaves for use as explants in adventitious regeneration. Leaf explants derived from shoot proliferation cultures grown on DKW or QL media produced more adventitious shoots than leaf explants from MS.
An Interpretation of Cell Growth Curves

It is shown that typical cell elongation curves with time, as reported in the literature, are the consequence of a very simple trend of relative elemental elongation rate with time.
Ultrasonic Vocalization Behavior Differs Between Lines of Ethanol‐Preferring and Nonpreferring Rats

To further understand the relationship between emotional state and alcohol intake in rats, the tendency to emit ultrasonic vocalizations in response to an aversive, but nonpainful, air puff stimulus was tested in several rat lines. Included in this group were Maudsley Reactive (MR) and Non-Reactive (MNR) rats, and several lines of rats with either high ethanol preference or a low ethanol preference: Preferring, (P), Alko-Alcohol (AA), and Fawn-Hooded (FH) animals; and Non-Preferring (NP), Alko-Non-Alcohol (ANA), and Flinders Resistant Line (FRL). MR rats emitted fewer ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) and showed less preference for ethanol than did MNR animals. An overall analysis that included the P, NP, FH, FRL, AA, and ANA groups demonstrated a significant negative correlation between the total number of USVs emitted and ethanol consumption. NP, FRL, and especially ANA rats (low ethanol-preferring) emitted the most USVs--to an extent similar to that typically found for normal rats. The duration of vocalizing was higher only in the NP and the FRL rats the relative to their P and FH comparison groups, respectively. In the ethanol-preferring and nonpreferring lines, the numbers of USVs emitted correlated positively with the duration of vocalizing, but not with the latency to vocalize, which in turn did not correlate strongly with ethanol intake. The latency to vocalize did not correlate significantly with ethanol intake across all drinking lines or MR or MNR rats, but was found to be higher in FH and AA rats relative to their nondrinking comparison groups. These associations suggest that the relationship between emotional state and ethanol drinking is complex and cannot be attributed to a simple elevated state of anxiety or emotionality. Further examination of the central nervous system mechanisms mediating the difference in USVs between paired lines of ethanol-preferring and nonpreferring rats may identify neurochemical factors that predict ethanol preference.
Measurement of the rate of glucose utilization by rat brain in vivo

— A method is described by which the rate of glucose utilization by whole brain of conscious rats may be measured. The basis is the uptake of 14C derived front [2-14C] glucose into the acid-soluble metabolite pool of brain. Catheters are placed in the femoral artery and vein under light ether anesthesia. After full recovery of consciousness a single intravenous injection of [2-14C] glucose is given and arterial blood samples taken at intervals. Simultaneous with the last sample the brain is removed and frozen within 1 s. The accumulation of 14C into the acid-soluble metabilite pool is measured and the rate of glucose utilization is calculated according to the equation: The integral is calculated from the plasma glucose specific activity curve and evidence is presented to justify this procedure. The rate of glucose utilization measured by this method was 0·62 μmol/min per g in conscious rats and 0·28 μmol/min per g in sodium pentobarbital anesthetized rats.
ClassX Detection of Candidate Low-Luminosity Hard X-Ray Binaries

We report the results of a search for hard X-ray binaries (HXRBs) among previously unidentified sources from ROSAT PSPC pointed observations, using the automated X-ray source classifier ClassX. Twice as many new candidate HXRBs are found as are already known. The new HXRBs are, on average, fainter and have softer X-ray spectra than the previously known objects. The majority of the new HXRBs are located within 2° of the Galactic plane, with substantial concentration within 20° of longitude about the Galactic center. Their large number in the Galactic disk, the lack of association with Galactic globular clusters, and the presence of some of them in the field of nearby regions of star formation allows one to speculate that many of them are low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXRBs) associated with young stars. Some resemble wind-accreting neutron stars. The new ClassX HXRBs also provide support for recent models of formation and evolution of LMXRBs that involve intermediate-mass secondary stars in XRB progenitor systems.
Granulomatous-lymphocytic lung disease shortens survival in common variable immunodeficiency

Abstract Background Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is a primary immunodeficiency characterized by low levels of serum immunoglobulins and an inability to make specific antibodies. Objective We sought to determine the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and effect on survival of noninfectious pulmonary disease in patients with CVID. Methods A retrospective analysis of 69 patients with CVID was performed. Patients were divided into 3 groups on the basis of the type of pulmonary disease present: group 1 (n=29), no pulmonary disease; group 2 (n=23), chronic respiratory symptoms without diffuse radiographic abnormalities; and group 3 (n=18), chronic respiratory symptoms and diffuse radiographic abnormalities. Group 3 patients were divided into 2 subgroups on the basis of the histopathologic pattern seen on biopsy. Group 3A (n=13) included patients with granulomatous lung disease, lymphocytic interstitial pneumonia, follicular bronchiolitis, and lymphoid hyperplasia, a group of syndromes referred to as granulomatous-lymphocytic interstitial lung disease (GLILD). Group 3B (n=5) consisted of patients with all other types of interstitial lung disease (ILD). Results Fifty-eight percent of patients with CVID had noninfectious pulmonary complications. Group 3A (GLILD) patients had worse prognosis than the other groups, with a median survival of 13.7 versus 28.8 years ( P P P + ( P + cell populations ( P Conclusion ILD is common in patients with CVID. The presence of GLILD was associated with a worse prognosis and increased prevalence of lymphoproliferative disorders.
Symmetries of n‐electron wave functions under various spatial groups

A new method is used to arrive at Kotani's formula (vide infra) for the character of the representation of the group of spatial symmetry provided by functions which are eigenfunctions of the total spin operator. An alternative form involving determinants of the symmetric functions is also given. The results are applied to some cases which were untreated before and have particular interest in valence-bond calculations. The problem of the construction of bases functions of the given symmetry is also discussed, and a solution with a wide range of applicability is given.
A highly sensitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for human immunoglobulin E: comparison of microtiter plate and disk methodologies.

Abstract An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been developed for human immunoglobulin E (IgE) using either microtiter plate or disk methodologies. The assay, which can be run in 1 day, is as sensitive as currently used double-antibody radioimmunoassays and can routinely detect IgE levels as low as 250 pg/ml or 50 pg/test. Values obtained for serum IgE levels by the ELISA are comparable to those obtained by radioimmunoassay. Choice of either the microtiter plate or disk methodology depends on the quantity and cost of the assays since IgE levels determined by the two techniques for ELISA are comparable.
Design, Fabrication and Characterization of Nanostructured Fiber Arrays for Fuel Cell Applications

Design, fabrication and characterization of well-aligned porous nanofibers with large electroactive surface areas were performed. Highly ordered nickel-iron alloy nanofiber arrays were fabricated within porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates via electrodeposition. In order to further increase the electroactive surface area, dealloying was performed to extract the less noble metallic element, iron, from the nickel alloy to form porous structures. Electrocatalytic properties of the nanoarchitectured porous Ni nanofiber arrays were characterized by cyclic voltammetry (CV). Comparative studies on the electrochemical activities of the nanoarchitectured porous Ni fiber electrode in pure methanol and methanol sulfuric mixture solution were performed. The potential for methanol oxidation is about 0.4 V. It is found that sulfuric acid facilitates the oxidation of methanol. Preliminary studies on the electrocatalytic behavior of the nanoporous nickel in several other solutions containing sugar, orange juice, soy beam juice, tomato sauce were also performed. The stress state of the nanofiber in the AAO templates was derived as well.Copyright © 2007 by ASME
A Behavior Analysis of Individuals' Use of the Fairness Heuristic when Interacting with Groups and Organizations.

In the present analysis the author utilizes the groups as patches model (Goltz, 2009, 2010) to extend fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001) in which the concept of fairness is thought to be a heuristic that allows individuals to match responses to consequences they receive from groups. In this model, individuals who are reviewing possible groups to join use stimuli they associate with fairness as screens to select groups with whom they will initiate contact. During initial contact, as well as after individuals have joined the group, individuals look for confirmation or disconfirmation of initial impressions of fairness, consistent with tracking, in which rules are followed because of a history of correspondence between the rule and the natural contingencies. These modified fairness assessments then serve to match the individual's responses to the rate of reinforcement being obtained from the group. In the case of unfairness, these responses may include lowered rates of responding, threats of punishment f...
Do autoantigens define autoimmunity or vice versa

The basic function of the adaptive immune system is to distinguish self from foreign. The failure of self tolerance can result in autoimmunity, which comes in many forms but still targets a limited selection of the total available autologous determinants. This selectivity must reflect the underlying mechanisms of the autoimmune reaction, as well as the particular features of the autoantigens that are targeted. Here I discuss the overall paradigm of autoimmunity, and what kinds of mechanisms might play a role. It is likely that multiple different pathways are critical in various diseases, and even in a single condition.
Toxicity screening by electrochemical detection of DNA damage by metabolites generated in situ in ultrathin DNA-enzyme films.

Rapid detection of DNA damage could serve as a basis for in vitro genotoxicity screening for new organic compounds. Ultrathin films (20−40 nm) containing myoglobin or cytochrome P450cam and DNA grown layer-by-layer on electrodes were activated by hydrogen peroxide, and the enzyme in the film generated metabolite styrene oxide from styrene. This styrene oxide reacted with double stranded (ds)-DNA in the same film, mimicking metabolism and DNA damage in human liver. DNA damage was detected by square wave voltammetry (SWV) by using catalytic oxidation with Ru(bpy)32+ (bpy = 2,2‘-bipyridine) and by monitoring the binding of Co(bpy)33+. Damaged DNA reacts more rapidly than intact ds-DNA with Ru(bpy)33+, giving SWV peaks at ∼1 V versus SCE that grow larger with reaction time. Co(bpy)33+ binds more strongly to intact ds-DNA, and its SWV peaks at 0.04 V decreased as DNA was damaged. Little change in SWV signals was found for incubations of DNA/enzyme films with unreactive organic controls or hydrogen peroxide. Ca...
DARPA February 1992 pilot corpus CSR dry run benchmark test results

Continuous speech recognition research activities within the DARPA Spoken Language community have, within the past several years, been focussed on the Resource Management (RM) and Air Travel Information System (ATIS) corpora. Within the past year, plans have been developed for a large, multi-component "general-purpose English, large vocabulary, natural language, high perplexity corpus" known as the DARPA [Wall Street Journal-based] Continuous speech Recognition (CSR) Corpus [1]. Doug Paul, of MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL), and Janet Baker, of Dragon Systems, are responsible for many of the details of these plans. This corpus is intended to supplant the RM corpora and to supplement the ATIS corpora as resources for the DARPA speech recognition research community.
Multilayer Kohonen image codebooks with a logarithmic search complexity

A multilayer Kohonen feature map is introduced with a logarithmic search complexity to design image codebooks for memoryless vector quantization at bit rates below 0.75 bit/pixel. The images encoded by the feature map codebooks with both the logarithmic and the exhaustive searches provide the same perceptual quality. The effectiveness of the design is demonstrated by comparing the codebooks with those designed by the pairwise nearest neighbor algorithm. >
A nanoengineering approach to regulate the lateral heterogeneity of self-assembled monolayers.

Using a scanning probe lithography method known as nanografting in conjunction with knowledge of self-assembly chemistry, regulation of the heterogeneity of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) is demonstrated. While nanografting in single-component thiols produces areas of SAMs with designed geometry and size, nanofabrication in mixed thiol solution yields segregated domains. The reaction mechanism in nanografting differs significantly from self-assembly in mix-and-grow methods, as proven in systematic studies reported in this article and a companion paper of theoretical calculations of the nanografting process. Knowledge of the reaction pathways enables development of methods for shifting the interplay between the kinetics and thermodynamics in SAM formation, and thus the heterogeneity of mixed SAMs. By varying fabrication parameters, such as shaving speed, and reaction conditions, such as concentration and ratio of the components, the lateral heterogeneity can be adjusted ranging from near molecular mixing...
The influence of 3TC resistance mutation M184I on the fidelity and error specificity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase

A common target for therapies against human immuno-deficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is the viral reverse transcriptase (RT). Treatment with the widely used nucleoside analog (-)-2', 3'-deoxy-3'-thiacytidine (3TC) leads to the development of resistance-conferring mutations at residue M184 within the YMDD motif of RT. First, variants of HIV with the M184I substitution appear transiently, followed by viruses containing the M184V substitution, which persist and become the dominant variant for the duration of therapy. In the three-dimensional crystal structure of HIV-1 RT complexed with double-stranded DNA, the M184 residue lies in the vicinity of the primer terminus, near the incoming dNTP substrate. Recent studies have shown that 3TC resistance mutations, including M184I, increase the nucleotide insertion and mispair extension fidelity. Therefore, we have examined the effects of the M184I mutation on the overall polymerase fidelity of HIV-1 RT via an M13-based forward mutation assay. We found the overall error rate of the M184I variant of HIV-1 RT to be 1.7 x 10(-5) per nucleotide. This represents a 4-fold increase in fidelity over wild-type HIV-1Hxb2RT (7.0 x 10(-5) per nucleotide) and a 2.5-fold increase in fidelity over the M184V variant (4.3 x 10(-5) per nucleotide). Of the nucleoside analog resistance mutations studied using the forward assay, the M184I variant has shown the greatest increase in fidelity observed to date. Interestingly, the M184I variant RT displays significantly altered error specificity, both in terms of error rate at specific sites and in the overall ratio of substitution to frameshift mutations in the entire target.
Content-based searching of multimedia databases using approximate digital signatures

We propose the use of approximate digital signatures of selected multimedia feature vectors for fast content based retrieval in very large multimedia databases. We adapt and extend the Approximate Message Authentication Code (AMAC), introduced by some of the authors recently in the area of message authentication, to the multimedia searching problem. An AMAC is a binary signature with the ability to reflect changes in the message it represents. The hamming distance between two AMACs is used to measure the degree of the similarity between multimedia objects. We develop a method to compress AMAC signatures to create a direct lookup table that allows fast searching of a database. The color histogram is used as the example feature space to show how the signature is applied. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method is comparable with existing methods based on other popular metrics, but significantly decreases search time.
Evidence for nonmuscle myosin in bovine ejaculated spermatozoa

Mammalian spermatozoa contain nonmuscle actin and many of the components of regulatory systems thought to be involved in nonmuscle actin-myosin function. An actin-stimulated adenosine triphosphate hydrolase (ATPase) activity has been fractionated from bovine ejaculated spermatozoa by immobilized-actin affinity chromatography. The actinstimulated ATPase activity has a specific activity (0.04 ± 0.02 mM phosphate released/min/mg protein) similar to nonmuscle myosins from other mammalian cells and tissues, but it does not have appreciable K+-EDTA ATPase activity. The sperm actin-myosin may function in sperm morphogenesis in the seminiferous tubule, in capacitated spermatozoa undergoing an acrosome reaction, or in decondensation of the sperm nucleus after fertilization.
Executing Optimized Irregular Applications Using Task Graphs within Existing Parallel Models

Many sparse or irregular scientific computations are memory bound and benefit from locality improving optimizations such as blocking or tiling. These optimizations result in asynchronous parallelism that can be represented by arbitrary task graphs. Unfortunately, most popular parallel programming models with the exception of Threading Building Blocks (TBB) do not directly execute arbitrary task graphs. In this paper, we compare the programming and execution of arbitrary task graphs qualitatively and quantitatively in TBB, the OpenMP doall model, the OpenMP 3.0 task model, and Cilk Plus. We present performance and scalability results for 8 and 40 core shared memory systems on a sparse matrix iterative solver and a molecular dynamics benchmark.
Reproductive effects of herbicide exposure in Vietnam: recent studies by the Vietnamese and others.

Description detaillee des sequelles de l'exposition des vietnamiens a l'agent orange, herbe, herbicide utilise comme gaz de combat: malformations et mole hydatiforme
Release of vancomycin from multilayer coated absorbent gelatin sponges.

Abstract Wounds have the potential to become infected during any surgical procedure. Gelatin sponges that are commonly used to absorb blood during invasive surgeries would benefit tremendously if they released antibiotics. In this work, we have examined coating a commercial gelatin sponge with degradable polymer multilayer films containing vancomycin. The effect of the film on sponge absorption capabilities and the effect of the sponge on drug release kinetics were both examined. Application of vancomycin containing layer-by-layer assembled films to this highly porous substrate greatly increased drug loading up to approximately 880% compared to a flat substrate. Vancomycin drug release was extended out to 6 days compared to 2 days for film coated flat substrates. Additionally, the absorbent properties of the gelatin sponge were actually enhanced by up to 170% due to the presence of the vancomycin film coating. A comparison of film coated sponges with sponges soaked directly in vancomycin demonstrated the ability of the multilayer films to control drug release. Film released vancomycin was also found to remain highly therapeutic with unchanged antimicrobial properties compared to the neat drug, demonstrated by quantifying vancomycin activity against Staphylococcus aureus in vitro.
Heterogeneous organ models.

A theoretical study is made of three organ flow models with heterogeneity of capillary transit times. A new parametrization of Rose and Goresky's Model III facilitates in many cases a reduction to Goresky's Model II, accomplished by a special time shift. The shift parameter\(\tau _{c_z } = \tau _{c_m } - t_{APP} /b\) defined here is critical in this analysis of Model III. A new expression of the series for outflow concentration in Model III is given and proves useful in examining the model as an operator and in relating it to Models I and II. A result on parameter optimization is given: if\(\tau _{c_z } \geqslant 0\) then Model III cannot fit better than Model II. This is applied to some data from Rose and Goresky [Circulation Res.39, 541–544 (1976)] and raises a new question about their model. A heart model of Levin and Bassingthwaighte based on regional flow measurement is shown to be a discretized generalization of Model II.