cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Influences on Wildfire Hazard Exposure in Arizona's High Country

Based on the case of wildfire hazards in Arizona forests, this article addresses the question: What influences hazard exposure? Like other locales in the U.S. West, the study area has developed as large wildfires have occurred with increasing frequency. Management interventions have traditionally been based on the hypothesis that unsafe conditions result from inadequate residential knowledge of wildfire hazards. Findings from a household-level multiple regression analysis using structured survey, hazard exposure, and secondary data provide little support for this approach and underlying hypothesis. Results reveal that other variables—corresponding to amenity values, reliance on fire insurance, place dependency, and housing contextual factors—are important predictors of household exposure to wildfire hazards. Findings have implications for theoretical understandings of wildfire hazards and hazard reduction efforts in private community landscapes.
Data Visualization and Feature Selection: New Algorithms for Nongaussian Data

Data visualization and feature selection methods are proposed based on the joint mutual information and ICA. The visualization methods can find many good 2-D projections for high dimensional data interpretation, which cannot be easily found by the other existing methods. The new variable selection method is found to be better in eliminating redundancy in the inputs than other methods based on simple mutual information. The efficacy of the methods is illustrated on a radar signal analysis problem to find 2-D viewing coordinates for data visualization and to select inputs for a neural network classifier.
The Impact of Penicillin Resistance on Short-Term Mortality in Hospitalized Adults with Pneumococcal Pneumonia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background. The clinical impact of penicillin resistance on the outcome of pneumococcal pneumonia has remained controversial. We performed a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies to examine the association between penicillin resistance and short-term all-cause mortality for pneumococcal pneumonia. Methods. We retrieved studies published in any language by a comprehensive search of the Medline, Current Contents, and Embase databases for all appropriate articles published up to January 2005. We also manually reviewed bibliographies of retrieved articles, recent national treatment guidelines, and review articles. We included prospective cohort studies that involved adult subjects, and we examined the association between penicillin resistance and short-term mortality for pneumococcal pneumonia. Two reviewers independently extracted data on crude and adjusted risk estimates of all-cause mortality for pneumococcal infections with different levels of penicillin resistance and assessed the methodological quality of selected studies. We also contacted authors to obtain additional information. We performed meta-analyses using a random-effect model. Results. Of 1152 articles identified in the search, 10 studies that involved 3430 patients (most of whom were hospitalized) were included. The mortality rate was 19.4% in the penicillin-nonsusceptible Streptococcus pneumoniae group and 15.7% in the penicillin-susceptible S. pneumoniae group. The combined relative risks of all-cause mortality for the penicillin-nonsusceptible, -intermediate, and -resistant S. pneumoniae groups, compared with the penicillin-susceptible S. pneumoniae group, were 1.31 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08-1.59), 1.34 (95% CI, 1.13-1.60), and 1.29 (95% CI, 1.01-1.66), respectively. The combined adjusted relative risks of mortality for penicillin-nonsusceptible versus penicillin-susceptible S. pneumoniae group was 1.29 (95% CI, 1.04-1.59) for the 6 studies that adjusted for age, comorbidities, and severity of illness. There was minimal between-study heterogeneity in these analyses. Conclusion. Penicillin resistance is associated with a higher mortality rate than is penicillin susceptibility in hospitalized patients with pneumococcal pneumonia. Additional efforts are needed to understand the mechanisms of this association.
Balanced scorecard: evening the odds of successful BPR

To realize the benefits of costly business process reengineering, companies need a control mechanism that links performance evaluation to strategic objectives. Researchers have long addressed how to control, measure, and evaluate this business process reengineering (BRP), but many so-called solutions continue to focus almost exclusively on the technical aspects of change. In this article, we present a control and evaluation framework, BSC-IS (balanced scoreboard-information system) that integrates BSC and BPR in the context of an IS or ERP (enterprise resource planning) project. BSC-IS is viewed as the roots of a solid evaluation tool for companies struggling to make costly BPR pay off.
Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety: Defining the School‐Shooting Problem Across Public Arenas

Objective. Research in agenda setting has demonstrated that dramatic news events can drive particular issues to the top of the media and governmental agendas. The objective of this study is to analyze how different aspects of an event-driven problem compete for attention in those arenas. Methods. The method is content analysis of media coverage and congressional legislative activity following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Results. The results show that while both agendas converged on the gun-control aspect of the problem, they substantially diverged on other understandings of what kind of problem the Columbine shooting represented and how to address it. Conclusions. We conclude that the differing institutional structure and incentives of the news media and Congress can create or inhibit interinstitutional positive feedback in the problem-defining process. Agenda divergences are amplified when prominent politicians cue the media to follow particular story lines that depart from actual legislative activity.
Evidence-Based Pharmacologic Therapies for Prevention of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia: Application of the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation Methodology

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is the most common chronic complication of extreme preterm birth. The authors applied the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology to pharmacologic therapies found to prevent BPD. Caffeine and vitamin A are the only medications shown in high-quality studies to prevent BPD without the risk of clinically important adverse effects. Dexamethasone is effective for the prevention of BPD; but for many infants, the increased risks of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, gastrointestinal perforation, and cerebral palsy outweigh this benefit. Several medications are currently under investigation for the prevention of BPD, but few are novel agents.
Open Secrets and Dirty Hands

Complaints about secretiveness were commonplace throughout the presidency of George W. Bush. Such complaints overestimated the capacity of a contemporary President to maintain secrecy. Moreover, they overlooked the reality that information about the worst abuses of the Bush administration was generally accessible to the public. We professed ignorance about governmental kidnapping, indefinite detention, and prisoner abuse, even though details about such practices were readily available. These facts constituted an category of, "open secrets." Why do open secrets persist? Perhaps because many constituencies have incentives to deny the reality of what we already know. And perhaps because the frank acknowledgment of what we know raises awkward questions about our complicity in governmental wrongdoing. Initially prepared for the Amherst College Seminar on Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought.
Ethnic differences in the risk of type 2 diabetes attributable to differences in abdominal adiposity in American women.

Objective To determine how much of the relative difference in the risk of type 2 diabetes between White and non-White (Black and Hispanic) American women can be explained by differences in the prevalence of abdominal obesity. Methods Data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 1572) were used in this investigation. The risk of type 2 diabetes and the population attributable fraction due to abdominal obesity were estimated using a logistic regression model adjusted for body mass index, age, smoking and alcohol consumption. The contribution of abdominal obesity to the development of diabetes within different ethnic groups and ethnic differences in the risk of diabetes were determined using the population attributable fraction and relative attributable risk, respectively, which compared Hispanic and Black women to White women. Results Abdominal obesity was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes when adjusting for body mass index, age, smoking and alcohol consumption. The population attributable fractions indicated that 24.0, 39.9 and 15.7% of diabetes in White, Black and Hispanic women, respectively, could have been avoided if abdominal obesity was absent. Abdominal obesity accounted for 12.1% and 9.8% of ethnic differences in the risk of diabetes between White and Black women and between White and Hispanic women, respectively. Conclusion A reduction in the risk of diabetes among Black and Hispanic women could be possible by instituting public health measures for reducing waist size to the levels seen in White women. Intervention programmes designed for reducing overall obesity and, consequently, waist size through lifestyle modification, including exercise and diet, may have considerable public health significance in reducing the incidence of type 2 diabetes in these populations.
An Instructional Servomechanisms Laboratory

This article describes a laboratory servomechanism and an associated laboratory sequence which were designed to complement theoretical first courses in servomechanisms at either senior-year undergraduate or first-year graduate level. The primary aims were to provide the student with the means for an experimental verification of theoretical results and, at the same time, to encourage him to establish some feeling for the physical reality of an operating feedback system.
PREVALENCE OF CLINICALLY APPARENT HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY IN 32 PATIENTS WITH THE GLA A143T MUTATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR GENETIC SCREENING FOR FABRY DISEASE IN PATIENTS WITH HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY

Fabry disease is a lysosomal storage disorder caused by mutations in the GLA gene that classically presents with multisystem involvement. One specific mutation, GLA A143T, has been proposed to cause a “cardiac variant” of Fabry disease which presents with isolated cardiac manifestations
Diffusion of penicillinase from Staphylococcus aureus.

Summary and conclusionsThe conflicting reports in the literature concerning production of extracellular penicillinase by Staphylococcus aureus were briefly reviewed and evaluated. Experimental evidence from studies utilizing agar diffusion and millipore filtration was presented from which it is concluded that the enzyme does indeed leave the staphylococcal cell.
Erratum to: Diverging Demography: Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Contributions to U.S. Population Redistribution and Diversity

The substantial growth and geographic dispersion of Hispanics is among the most important demographic trends in recent U.S. demographic history. Our county-level study examines how widespread Hispanic natural increase and net migration has combined with the demographic change among non-Hispanics to produce an increasingly diverse population. This paper uses U.S. Census Bureau data and special tabulations of race/ethnic specific births and deaths from NCHS to highlight the demographic role of Hispanics as an engine of new county population growth and ethnoracial diversity across the U.S. landscape. It highlights key demographic processes—natural increase and net migration—that accounted for 1990–2010 changes in the absolute and relative sizes of the Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations. Hispanics accounted for the majority of all U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2010. Yet, Hispanics represented only 16 % of the U.S. population in 2010. Most previous research has focused on Hispanic immigration; here, we examine how natural increase and net migration among both the Hispanic and non-Hispanic population contribute to the nation’s growing diversity. Indeed, the demographic impact of rapid Hispanic growth has been reinforced by minimal white population growth due to low fertility, fewer women of reproductive age and growing mortality among the aging white population America’s burgeoning Hispanic population has left a large demographic footprint that is magnified by low and declining fertility and increasing mortality among America’s aging non-Hispanic population.
ASSESSING FLOOD IMPACTS IN RURAL COASTAL COMMUNITIES USING LIDAR

Coastal communities are vulnerable to floods from storm events which are further exacerbated by storm surges. Additionally, coastal towns provide specific challenges during flood events as many coastal communities are peninsular and vulnerable to inundation of road access points. Publicly available lidar data has been used to model areas of inundation and resulting flood impacts on road networks. However, these models may overestimate areas that are inaccessible as they rely on publicly available Digital Terrain Models. Through incorporation of Digital Surface Models to estimate bridge height, a more accurate model of flood impacts on rural coastal residents can be estimated.
Development of Design Methodologies

In our study of the design process, the goal has been to develop methodologies that will form a foundation for computer design at the architectural and implementation levels. The architecture of a computer system is defined by Blaaw and Brooks to be “its functional appearance to its immediate user; that is, its conceptual structure and functional behavior as seen by one who programs in machine language.” The implementation, on the other hand, is defined by them to be “the logical organization of its data flow and controls.” [1]
Echocardiography in Mechanical Circulatory Support

Echocardiography is the front line modality in the evaluation of advanced heart failure patients requiring mechanical circulatory support. The use of continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) continues to expand across numerous centers in the country, as both a bridge to transplantation and as destination therapy. Patients being evaluated for LVAD therapy require thorough pre-operative cardiac evaluation by echocardiography of biventricular function, the aortic, tricuspid and mitral valves, the ascending aorta, the atria and atrial septum. After LVAD implantation, echocardiography can effectively evaluate flow velocities into the apical inflow cannula and from the ascending aorta outflow cannula, left ventricular decompression, frequency of aortic valve opening, right ventricular function and degree of aortic, mitral and tricuspid regurgitation. Patients with suspected LVAD malfunction should undergo urgent echocardiography to help identify possible causes, including hypovolemia, valvular dysfunction, tamponade, thrombosis and cannula malposition. Echocardiography also plays a key role in the evaluation and management of patients with percutaneous catheter devices that provide temporary mechanical support in cardiogenic shock and during high risk cardiovascular procedures. It is important to become competent in the echocardiographic assessment of patients who are being evaluated for and receiving mechanical circulatory support, as they can develop critical complications that can be managed successfully if promptly diagnosed.
The Objectives of Health Care Facility Protocols

Health facility administrators create policies and guidelines to promote treatment practices that conform to the views and interests to which the facility is accountable. With regard to designing protocols to improve the elective use of life-sustaining treatments, attention has focused on decision making (e.g., affirmations of patient autonomy or the need for advance treatment planning) and treatment implementation (e.g., interstaff communication). Less attention has been paid to how the elective use of life-sustaining treatments affects the totality of responsibilities of health care facilities. In this broader setting, these administrative protocols not only advance a new view of patient-centered decision making, but also mediate a diverse and to some degree conflicting set of institutional duties.
Relief of autoinhibition by conformational switch explains enzyme activation by a catalytically dead paralog

Catalytically inactive enzyme paralogs occur in many genomes. Some regulate their active counterparts but the structural principles of this regulation remain largely unknown. We report X-ray structures of Trypanosoma brucei S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase alone and in functional complex with its catalytically dead paralogous partner, prozyme. We show monomeric TbAdoMetDC is inactive because of autoinhibition by its N-terminal sequence. Heterodimerization with prozyme displaces this sequence from the active site through a complex mechanism involving a cis-to-trans proline isomerization, reorganization of a β-sheet, and insertion of the N-terminal α-helix into the heterodimer interface, leading to enzyme activation. We propose that the evolution of this intricate regulatory mechanism was facilitated by the acquisition of the dimerization domain, a single step that can in principle account for the divergence of regulatory schemes in the AdoMetDC enzyme family. These studies elucidate an allosteric mechanism in an enzyme and a plausible scheme by which such complex cooperativity evolved.
Proteomic profile of African American breast cancer

B69 Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Though breast cancer is more commonly diagnosed in white women, more African American women die from this disease. Estrogen receptor positive tumor, for which hormone therapy and other treatment options are available and frequently successful, is more common in white women. African American women, on the other hand, are more commonly diagnosed with estrogen receptor negative breast tumor classification. This type of tumor is more aggressive and more difficult to treat. The purpose of this study is to examine the protein profiles of normal adjacent, estrogen receptor positive and estrogen receptor negative breast tumors from white and African American women. Our goal is to identify potential biomarkers for early detection of breast cancer in women with limited treatment options. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by MALDI-TOF-TOF mass spectrometry was used to identify differentially expressed proteins. Such proteins may be useful biomarkers for early detection of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer. Information gathered from this study may be useful in identifying novel therapeutic and preventative agents for women prone to aggressive breast cancer.
Inheritance Customs and Agricultural Investment

This paper examines the connection between widows’ land inheritance rights and land investments in Zambia. We study whether the threat of land expropriation upon widowhood deters households from fallowing, applying fertilizer, and employing labor-intensive tillage techniques. Variation in widow inheritance is based on customary village practices, which we observe in surveys of village leaders. Controlling for possible confounding factors, both OLS and IV estimates show lower levels of land investment by married couples in villages where widows do not inherit. Concern over prospective loss of land by the wives reduces investment in land quality even while the husband is alive.
Inflammation and pharmacokinetics: potential implications for HIV-infection.

ABSTRACTIntroduction: The physiological changes accompanying inflammation may alter the pharmacokinetics (PK) of certain medications. Individuals infected with HIV have chronically elevated inflammatory markers despite viral suppression following effective antiretroviral therapy (ART), as well as age-related inflammation. Understanding the potential clinical implications of inflammation on the PK of medications is important for understanding dose-response relationships and necessitates future research.Areas covered: An extensive literature search was carried out using PubMed and associated bibliographies to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding altered PK in response to inflammation and its application to the field of HIV.Expert opinion: Preclinical and clinical studies show that inflammation leads to a downregulation of certain drug metabolizing enzymes and both up and down regulation of transporters depending on the transporter and cell type. Decreased gastric acidity, fluid shifts, and pla...
How Does a Bubble Chamber Work

A charged particle passing through a bubble chamber produces a track of bubbles. The way in which these bubbles are produced has been a matter of some controversy. We consider the possibility that in helium and hydrogen bubble chambers the production of bubbles is primarily a mechanical process, rather than a thermal process as has often been assumed. The model we propose gives results which are in excellent agreement with experiment.
Non-Coding RNA in the Pathogenesis, Progression and Treatment of Hypertension

Hypertension is a complex, multifactorial disease that involves the coexistence of multiple risk factors, environmental factors and physiological systems. The complexities extend to the treatment and management of hypertension, which are still the pursuit of many researchers. In the last two decades, various genes have emerged as possible biomarkers and have become the target for investigations of specialized drug design based on its risk factors and the primary cause. Owing to the growing technology of microarrays and next-generation sequencing, the non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have increasingly gained attention, and their status of redundancy has flipped to importance in normal cellular processes, as well as in disease progression. The ncRNA molecules make up a significant portion of the human genome, and their role in diseases continues to be uncovered. Specifically, the cellular role of these ncRNAs has played a part in the pathogenesis of hypertension and its progression to heart failure. This review explores the function of the ncRNAs, their types and biology, the current update of their association with hypertension pathology and the potential new therapeutic regime for hypertension.
Development of a 212Pb and 212Bi generator for homolog studies of flerovium and moscovium

A simple generator using AG 50Wx8 cation exchange resin has been developed for continual elution of 212Pb and 212Bi from the parent radionuclide 228Th, derived from 232U. Using 0.4 M HCl as an eluent will elute 212Bi while 212Pb is eluted with 2 M HCl. The generator has shown good reproducibility of elution bands. A generator set-up in 2013 has been in continual use over 4 years demonstrating that this generator system has a long and stable lifetime. The generator system presented here has served as a long-term method for attaining no-carrier-added 212Pb and 212Bi radionuclides for homolog studies of flerovium and moscovium.
Structure-phagostimulatory relationships for amino acids in adult western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera

The effects of 52 amino acids and derivatives on feeding responses of adult western corn rootworm Diabrotica virgifera virgifera (WCR) were investigated. L-Alanine was the most phagostimulatory amino acid, followed by L-serine, and β-alanine. All three amino acids showed a dose–response pattern but at the highest dose (500 nmol/disk) feeding by WCR decreased. In structure–activity relationship studies, four structural features for stimulating WCR feeding were found. First, terminal carboxyl and amino acid groups must be intact since all structural modifications in these groups led to a considerable decrease in feeding. Second, a hydrophobic region sterically limited to a two-saturated-carbon insert between the amino and carboxyl groups is associated with stimulatory effects at the L-alanine taste receptor. Third, L-alanine and L-serine are much more potent stimulants than the D enantiomers of these amino acids. Fourth, the hydrogen domain on the α-carbon of L-alanine is sterically constrained. A β-hydroxyl group on the amino acid side chain, such as in L-serine, does not reduce stimulatory taste, which indicates the presence of another binding domain. Therefore, L-alanine and L-serine either have separate binding sites on the taste cells of WCR or an un-ionized, polar grouping extending from the hydrophobic domain of the L-alanine binding site is permitted. The three most phagostimulatory amino acids (L-alanine, L-serine, and β-alanine) are nonessential amino acids, suggesting that amino acid sensitivity in WCR may be tuned to quantitatively relevant signals rather than just nutritionally important amino acids in a food.
Evidence of Betting Market Intra-Season Efficiency and Inter-Season Over-Reaction to Unexpected NFL Team Performance1988-2006

A structural model is derived describing the relationship between the probability that the favored team is victorious and the point spread through the use of a "no-arbitrage" condition. A series of probit models are developed which show that NFL wagering markets were efficient within season between 1988-2006 and that the point spread is a statistically-significant indicator of probability of victory. A team-level excess performance metric is estimated, termed "NFL Alphas", which indicates the extent to which a team's on-the-field performance exceeded betting market expectations. Finally, it is shown that there exists a market over-reaction effect for NFL Alphas across seasons.
Decreased abundance of eIF4F subunits predisposes low-birth-weight neonatal pigs to reduced muscle hypertrophy.

We demonstrated that eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF)4E, eIF4G, and eIF4A abundance, and assembly of the active eIF4E-eIF4G complex, were reduced in low birth weight (LBWT) compared with normal b...
Relationship and communication characteristics associated with agreement between heart failure patients and their Carepartners on patient depressive symptoms.

AbstractObjectives: Informal caregivers who recognize patients’ depressive symptoms can better support self-care and encourage patients to seek treatment. We examined patient-caregiver agreement am...
Mild traumatic brain injuries with loss of consciousness are associated with increased inflammation and pain in military personnel.

Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are a pervasive concern for military personnel. Determining the impact of injury severity, including loss of consciousness (LOC) may provide important insights into the risk of psychological symptoms and inflammation commonly witnessed in military personnel and veterans following mTBI. US military personnel and veterans were categorized into three groups; TBI with LOC (n = 36), TBI without LOC (n = 25), Controls (n = 82). Participants reported their history of mTBI, psychological symptoms (post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and depression), health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and underwent a blood draw. ANCOVA models which controlled for insomnia status and combat exposure indicated that both mTBI groups (with/without LOC) reported significantly greater depression and PTSD symptoms compared to controls; however, they did not differ from each other. The mTBI with LOC did report greater pain than both controls and mTBI without LOC. The TBI with LOC group also had significantly elevated IL-6 concentrations than both TBI without LOC and control groups. Within the mTBI groups, increased TNFα concentrations were associated with greater PTSD symptoms. These findings indicate that sustaining an mTBI, with or without LOC is detrimental for psychological wellbeing. However, LOC may be involved in perceptions of pain and concentrations of IL-6.
Barriers to Accessing Acute Care for Newly Arrived Refugees

Author(s): Zeidan, Amy J.; Khatri, Utsha G.; Munyikwa, Michelle; Barden, Aba; Samuels-Kalow, Margaret | Abstract: Introduction: Over the past decade, the number of refugees arriving in the United States (U.S.) has increased dramatically. Refugees arrive with unmet health needs and may face barriers when seeking care. However, little is known about how refugees perceive and access care when acutely ill. The goal of this study was to understand barriers to access of acute care by newly arrived refugees, and identify potential improvements from refugees and resettlement agencies.Methods: This was an in-depth, qualitative interview study of refugees and employees from refugee resettlement and post-resettlement agencies in a city in the Northeast U.S. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded independently by two investigators. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached. We analyzed transcripts using a modified grounded theory approach.Results: Interviews were completed with 16 refugees and 12 employees from refugee resettlement/post-resettlement agencies. Participants reported several barriers to accessing acute care including challenges understanding the U.S. healthcare system, difficulty scheduling timely outpatient acute care visits, significant language barriers in all acute care settings, and confusion over the intricacies of health insurance. The novelty and complexity of the U.S. healthcare system drives refugees to resettlement agencies for assistance. Resettlement agency employees express concern with directing refugees to appropriate levels of care and report challenges obtaining timely access to sick visits. While receiving emergency department (ED) care, refugees experience communication barriers due to limitations in consistent interpretation services.Conclusion: Refugees face multiple barriers when accessing acute care. Interventions in the ED, outpatient settings, and in resettlement agencies, have the potential to reduce barriers to care. Examples could include interpretation services that allow for clinic phone scheduling and easier access to interpreter services within the ED. Additionally, extending the Refugee Medical Assistance program may limit gaps in insurance coverage and avoid insurance-related barriers to seeking care.
Entanglement versus Bell nonlocality of quantum nonequilibrium steady state

We study the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality of a coupled two-qubit system, in which each qubit is coupled with one individual environment. We study how the nonequilibrium environments (with different temperatures or chemical potentials) influence the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality. Dependent on the inter-qubit coupling strength (relatively weak or strong compared to local qubits' frequencies) or the environmental nature (bosonic or fermionic), the two-qubit steady state can have strong correlations and violate the Bell inequalities with two or three measurements per party. Equilibrium environments compared to the nonequilibrium environments (with fixed mean temperatures or chemical potentials) do not give the maximal entanglement or the maximal violation of Bell inequalities if the two qubits are not identical, such as the two qubits having an energy detuning or coupling to the environment with unbalanced weights. The nonequilibrium conditions (characterized by the temperature differences) which give the maximal violation of Bell inequalities are different from the nonequilibrium conditions which give the maximal entanglement. The entanglement and the Bell nonlocality have different responses to the nonequilibrium environments. The spatial asymmetric two-qubit system coupled with nonequilibrium bosonic environments shows the thermal rectification effect, which can be witnessed by the Bell nonlocality. Our study demonstrates that the nonequilibrium environments are both valuable for the entanglement and Bell nonlocality resources, based on different optimal nonequilibrium conditions though.
Animal aggregations promote emergent aquatic plant production at the aquatic-terrestrial interface.

The roles mobile animals and abiotic processes play as vectors for resource transfers between ecosystems ("subsidies") are well studied, but the idea that resources from animals with limited mobility may be transported across boundaries through intermediate taxa remains unexplored. Aquatic plants ("macrophytes") are globally distributed and may mediate transfers of aquatic-derived nutrients from aggregations of aquatic animals to terrestrial ecosystems when consumed by terrestrial herbivores. We used mesocosms (94 × 44 cm) to test whether aquatic animal-generated biogeochemical hotspots increase growth and nutrient content in macrophytes using the macrophyte Justicia americana and freshwater mussels. Justicia americana biomass production increased and belowground biomass allocation changed with increasing mussel density. At high mussel density, water-column phosphorus increased and carbon:phosphorus ratios in J. americana tissues decreased. We deployed motion-sensing cameras to explore herbivory on J. americana growing along the margins of the Kiamichi River, Oklahoma, and documented feeding by large mammals (Odocoileus virginianus, Sus scrofa, and Bos taurus). Thus, biogeochemical hotspots generated by aquatic animal aggregations can promote macrophyte production that subsequently is transferred to terrestrial animals. More broadly, this suggests that reductions in aquatic animal biomass may have bottom-up impacts that indirectly affect terrestrial ecosystems via plant-animal interactions bridging ecosystem boundaries.
A geometric construction of semistable extensions of crystalline representations

We study unipotent fundamental groups for open varieties over p-adic fields with base point degenerating to the boundary. In particular, we show that the Galois representations associated to the etale unipotent fundamental group are semistable.
Trauma-Informed Courts: A Review and Integration of Justice Perspectives and Gender Responsiveness

As researchers and practitioners begin to understand the complex relationship between victimization and offending, there is an increased need to address prior trauma in the court context. This includes in court processes themselves, as well as through offender supervision conditions in the form of treatment referrals. While not all offenders have been victims themselves, trauma-informed practices recognize the possibility of trauma history in the lives of court-involved individuals. Trauma-informed practices seek to address abuse and trauma and respond in a person-centered and supportive manner. When implemented in juvenile courts, there is potential for disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. This review seeks to understand how trauma-informed processes—already in use in juvenile courts—can be incorporated into adult courts to better address offender risks and needs, with the goal of facilitating rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the extent to which extant justice perspectives (i.e., procedural justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and restorative justice) and principles of gender-responsiveness are compatible with trauma-informed practices in adult courts. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are discussed.
High Value Care in Cancer Surveillance and Screening: Evaluating an e-Curriculum for Primary Care Providers

With an expected shortage of oncologists, primary care providers (PCPs) may need to manage more cancer surveillance and screening, areas where educational resources for PCPs have been limited. The goal of this e-curriculum was for PCPs to learn surveillance and screening for several common cancers. The e-curriculum covered breast and colorectal cancer surveillance and lung cancer screening with (1) a pre-test assessing knowledge, attitudes, practice patterns, and confidence; (2) case vignette-based teaching; and (3) an immediate post-test (with knowledge and confidence items identical to the pre-test) providing feedback. A delayed post-test was administered several months later. The curriculum and test items were developed by content experts and evaluated in a primary care group practice. Of 167 community PCPs, 152 completed the pre-test (91%), 145 completed the immediate post-test (87%), and 63 completed the delayed post-test (37%); 62 PCPs completed all three tests (37%). The median score on the pre-test was 43%, immediate post-test was 93%, and delayed post-test was 70%. For PCPs completing all three tests, the median scores were 50%, 90%, and 70%, respectively (p < 0.0001). The percentage of PCPs confident in their knowledge 4 to 6 months after module completion compared to the pre-test baseline was statistically significant for lung cancer screening but not for cancer surveillance. This curriculum provided concise, effective education for PCPs on 3 common cancers. Limitations include content breadth and lack of data reflecting physician ordering patterns. Curricular strengths include its accessibility, immediate feedback, and effectiveness, with a significant improvement in immediate and delayed post-test knowledge. Given a lack of increased confidence to provide cancer surveillance, PCPs should rely on electronic medical record tools and other resources to guide appropriate surveillance care.
Reinforcement learning abnormalities in the attenuated psychosis syndrome and first episode psychosis.

Prior studies indicate that chronic schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with a specific profile of reinforcement learning abnormalities. These impairments are characterized by: 1) reductions in learning rate, and 2) impaired Go learning and intact NoGo learning. Furthermore, each of these deficits are associated with greater severity of negative symptoms, consistent with theoretical perspectives positing that avolition and anhedonia are associated with impaired value representation. However, it is unclear whether these deficits extend to earlier phases of psychotic illness and when individuals are unmedicated. Two studies were conducted to examine reinforcement learning deficits in earlier phases of psychosis and in high risk patients. In study 1, participants included 35 participants with first episode psychosis (FEP) with limited antipsychotic medication exposure and 25 healthy controls (HC). Study 2 included 17 antipsychotic naive individuals who were at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR) (i.e., attenuated psychosis syndrome) and 18 matched healthy controls (HC). In both studies, participants completed the Temporal Utility Integration Task, a measure of probabilistic reinforcement learning that contained Go and NoGo learning blocks. FEP displayed impaired Go and NoGo learning. In contrast, CHR did not display impairments in Go or NoGo learning. Impaired Go learning was not significantly associated with clinical outcomes in the CHR or FEP samples. Findings provide new evidence for areas of spared and impaired reinforcement learning in early phases of psychosis.
A marginalized two-part model for longitudinal semicontinuous data:

In health services research, it is common to encounter semicontinuous data, characterized by a point mass at zero followed by a right-skewed continuous distribution with positive support. Examples include health expenditures, in which the zeros represent a subpopulation of patients who do not use health services, while the continuous distribution describes the level of expenditures among health services users. Longitudinal semicontinuous data are typically analyzed using two-part random-effect mixtures with one component that models the probability of health services use, and a second component that models the distribution of log-scale positive expenditures among users. However, because the second part conditions on a non-zero response, obtaining interpretable effects of covariates on the combined population of health services users and non-users is not straightforward, even though this is often of greatest interest to investigators. Here, we propose a marginalized two-part model for longitudinal data that allows investigators to obtain the effect of covariates on the overall population mean. The model additionally provides estimates of the overall population mean on the original, untransformed scale, and many covariates take a dual population average and subject-specific interpretation. Using a Bayesian estimation approach, this model maintains the flexibility to include complex random-effect structures and easily estimate functions of the overall mean. We illustrate this approach by evaluating the effect of a copayment increase on health care expenditures in the Veterans Affairs health care system over a four-year period.
Revolution in Latin American Legal Education: The Colombian Experience

The most striking feature of higher education in Colombia is the proliferation of universities and other institutions.1 After the foundation of the University of Saint Thomas in 1580, two other institutions were founded by religious orders in the 17th century and one in the 18th century. Several more appeared in the 19th century, the National University being founded in 1867. By the end of the 19th century only five of these institutions were in operation, but between 1900 and 1940 four new ones emerged. The proliferation commenced after 1940. From that date until the present over 30 have been established.2 Today there are forty-three universities and other institutions of higher learning.3 These vary considerably in terms of student numbers,4 course offerings and quality, but show some marked similarities in terms of usual absence of full-time teaching staff,5 location6 and lack of much post-graduate education or original research.
The Subjective Workload Assessment Technique: A Scaling Procedure for Measuring Mental Workload

Mental workload is proposed to be a multidimensional construct that can be largely explained by three component factors: Time Load, Mental Effort Load, and Psychological Stress Load. In this paper, we describe a subjective scaling approach, the Subjective Workload Assessment Technique (SWAT), that captures this multidimensional nature of mental workload. We describe the SWAT procedure as a two-phased method that includes (a) a scale development phase based on conjoint measurement and nonmetric scaling, and (b) an event scoring phase. The development of SWAT and its measurement foundations are discussed. Recent research illustrating SWAT's widespread utility and its sensitivity as a measure of perceived mental workload is summarized.
The Rate Hypothesis and Agonist Substitution Approaches to Cocaine Abuse Treatment

Publisher Summary A drug with slower onset of action would have less abuse liability. In principle, these two favorable characteristics could be achieved either pharmacokinetically, such as by giving the drug via a slowly absorbed route of administration or pharmacodynamically, such as by giving an analogue with slow, long-lasting binding to the site of action. Evidence in humans for the rate hypothesis of cocaine effects is largely circumstantial, based on pharmacokinetic differences among routes of administration. The agents with slow onset of effect, including possibly the abused drug itself by another route of administration, may be useful in implementing the agonist-substitution approach to treatment of cocaine abuse, consistent with the rate hypothesis of psychoactive drug effect. In this chapter several medications that bind to the presumed major site of action for cocaine's psychoactive effects have been studied as possible agonist substitution agents. These agents have some mild stimulant-like agonist properties, with little apparent human abuse potential when taken in slow-onset form. Both mazindol, an appetite suppressant, and bupropion, an antidepressant, have been ineffective in double-blind clinical trials. This may be related to dose-limiting side effects that have kept doses in the range that probably occupies less than half of brain presynaptic dopamine transporters (DAT) sites. In animal studies, it has reduced the increased brain extracellular dopamine concentration produced by cocaine administration and reduced cocaine selfadministration at doses that do not influence food intake.
Detection of small abnormal B-Lymphoblast populations at diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia, BCR-ABL1+: Incidence, phenotypic features, and clinical implications.

Background According to the 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) Classification of Tumors of the Haematopoietic and Lymphoid Tissues, the finding of B lymphoblasts in the blood or bone marrow of a patient with chronic myelogenous leukemia, BCR-ABL1+ (CML) should raise a concern for progression of the disease to B-lymphoblastic blast phase. Data addressing the incidence and phenotypic features of abnormal B lymphoblasts in CML, and whether the detection of B lymphoblasts inexorably heralds blast phase in CML, though, are limited. Methods We reviewed a consecutive series of patients with newly diagnosed CML who had undergone bone marrow examination with flow cytometric immunophenotyping. Polychromatic immunophenotyping data were reviewed, and clinical follow-up data were obtained. Results A precursor B-cell population with an abnormal composite immunophenotype was detected in 4 of 36 (11.1%) diagnostic bone marrow samples, at levels ranging from 0.01% to 0.30% of viable single cells acquired. The most common phenotypic aberrations were abnormally bright expression of CD10 and CD19 (seen in four and three cases, respectively), and abnormally dim expression of CD38 (seen in four cases). All three patients with adequate clinical follow-up have achieved and maintained a deep or major molecular response with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, and none has progressed to B-lymphoblastic blast phase (follow-up duration: 17–46 months). Conclusions In chronic-phase CML, a small (<0.5%) abnormal B-lymphoblast population is present in a significant minority of diagnostic bone marrow samples, but does not inevitably herald progression to B-lymphoblastic blast phase. © 2015 International Clinical Cytometry Society
Lessons from Katrina: Crisis Communication and Rhetorical Protocol.

Widely misunderstood and often maligned, rhetoric in the simplest sense is the effective use of language in speech or writing. Much as law and medicine have well considered standards of conduct, so too does the field of communication. Experts in this area look at “patterns” of discourse in relation to specific kinds of events – tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, airline or mining disasters, for example. Close study of such phenomenon reveals which communication approaches to crisis are successful and which are not. As a profession, rhetoricians study the structure and consequences of communication events. Applying rhetorical analysis to situations as significant in scope as Katrina allows us to determine what business, media, and government can learn from that unprecedented day in the Summer of 2005. This paper concludes with a practical communication model, (R.E.S.P.O.N.D.), which can be applied in any crisis situation real or anticipated.
Getting a Head Start: The Importance of Personal Genetics Education in High Schools

With advances in sequencing technology, widespread and affordable genome sequencing will soon be a reality. However, studies suggest that "genetic literacy" of the general public is inadequate to prepare our society for this unprecedented access to our genetic information. As the current generation of high school students will come of age in an era when personal genetic information is increasingly utilized in health care, it is of vital importance to ensure these students understand the genetic concepts necessary to make informed medical decisions. These concepts include not only basic scientific knowledge, but also considerations of the ethical, legal, and social issues that will arise in the age of personal genomics. In this article, we review the current state of genetics education, highlight issues that we believe need to be addressed in a comprehensive genetics education curriculum, and describe our education efforts at the Harvard Medical School-based Personal Genetics Education Project.