cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Function and Hormonal Regulation of GATA3 in Human First Trimester Placentation

Pregnancies resulting from fresh in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles exposed to supraphysiologic estrogen levels have been associated with higher rates of low birth weight and small for gestational age babies. We identified GATA3, a transcription factor selectively expressed in the trophectoderm during the blastocyst stage of embryo development, in an upstream analysis of genes that were differentially methylated in chorionic villus samples between IVF and non-IVF infertility treatment pregnancies. In this study, we investigate the hypothesis that GATA3 is hormonally regulated and plays an important functional role in trophoblast migration, invasion, and placentation. We found that GATA3 expression was hormonally regulated by estradiol in HTR8/SVneo first trimester trophoblast cells; however, no change in expression was seen with progesterone treatment. Furthermore, GATA3 knockdown resulted in decreased HTR8/SVneo cell migration and invasion compared with controls. RNA sequencing of GATA3 knockdown cells demonstrated 96 differentially regulated genes compared with controls. Genes known to play an important role in cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions, cell invasion, and placentation were identified, including CTGF, CYR61, ADAMTS12, and TIMP3. Our results demonstrate estradiol down-regulates GATA3, and decreased GATA3 expression leads to impaired trophoblast cell migration and invasion, likely through regulation of downstream genes important in placentation. These results are consistent with clinical data suggesting that supraphysiologic estrogen levels seen in IVF pregnancies may play an important role in attenuated trophoblast migration, invasion, and impaired placentation. GATA3 appears to be an important regulator of placentation and may play a role in impaired outcomes associated with fresh IVF cycles.
Food Insecurity among American Indians and Alaska Natives: A National Profile using the Current Population Survey-Food Security Supplement.

Food insecurity increases the risk for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer—conditions highly prevalent among American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs). Using the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, we analyzed the food insecurity trends of AI/ANs compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States from 2000 to 2010. From 2000 to 2010, 25% of AI/ANs remained consistently food insecure and AI/ANs were twice as likely to be food insecure compared to whites. Urban AI/ANs were more likely to experience food insecurity than rural AI/ANs. Our findings highlight the need for national and tribal policies that expand food assistance programs; promote and support increased access to healthy foods and community food security, in both rural and urban areas; and reduce the burden of diet-related disparities on low-income and racial/ethnic minority populations.
H-bridge building block with SiC power MOSFETs for pulsed power applications

This paper presents a H-bridge building block with 1700V SiC MOSFET for a pulsed power application to achieve both high voltage, high current and high switching frequency capability. Both power module level and system level stray inductance is minimized to better utilize the SiC high switching speed capability. Meanwhile, since the large pulsed energy is required to drive the pulsed load, voltage sensing for active DC link voltage compensation is proposed and designed.
Rapid feature space MLLR speaker adaptation for deep neural network acoustic modeling

Bilinear models based feature space Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (FMLLR) speaker adaptation have showed good performance for GMM-HMMs especially when the amount of adaptation data is limited. In this paper, we propose using bilinear models feature as inputs to deep neural networks (DNNs) for rapid speaker adaptation of acoustic modeling to facilitate utterance-level normalization. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with experiments on the Mandarin short message dictation and voice query dataset.
R0 resection of locally advanced pancreatic cancer encasing major visceral arteries using arterial reconstruction: Short- and long-term results.

e14679 Background: Locally advanced disease is found in about 40% of patients with pancreatic cancer at initial presentation. Tumors involving major visceral arteries are commonly deemed unresectab...
Coflourish: An SDN-Assisted Coflow Scheduling Framework for Clouds

Existing coflow scheduling frameworks effectively shorten communication time and completion time of cluster applications. However, existing frameworks only consider available bandwidth on hosts and overlook congestion in the network when making scheduling decisions. Through extensive simulations using the realistic workload probability distribution from Facebook, we observe the performance degradation of the state-of-the-art coflow scheduling framework, Varys, in the cloud environment on a shared data center network (DCN) because of the lack of network congestion information. We propose Coflourish, the first coflow scheduling framework that exploits the congestion feedback assistances from the software-defined-networking(SDN)-enabled switches in the networks for available bandwidth estimation. Our simulation results demonstrate that Coflourish outperforms Varys by up to 75.5% in terms of average coflow completion time under various workload conditions. The proposed work also reveals the potentials of integration with traffic engineering mechanisms in lower levels for further performance optimization.
Values in environmental research: Citizens' views of scientists who acknowledge values

Scientists who perform environmental research on policy-relevant topics face challenges when communicating about how values may have influenced their research. This study examines how citizens view scientists who publicly acknowledge values. Specifically, we investigate whether it matters: if citizens share or oppose a scientist's values, if a scientist's conclusions seem contrary to or consistent with the scientist's values, and if a scientist is assessing the state of the science or making a policy recommendation. We conducted two 3x2 factorial design online experiments. Experiment 1 featured a hypothetical scientist assessing the state of the science on the public-health effects of exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA), and Experiment 2 featured a scientist making a policy recommendation on use of BPA. We manipulated whether or not the scientist expressed values and whether the scientist's conclusion appeared contrary to or consistent with the scientist's values, and we accounted for whether or not subjects' values aligned with the scientist's values. We analyzed our data with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques. Our results provide at least preliminary evidence that acknowledging values may reduce the perceived credibility of scientists within the general public, but this effect differs depending on whether scientists and citizens share values, whether scientists draw conclusions that run contrary to their values, and whether scientists make policy recommendations.
Morphologic changes of diving-related barotrauma lung injury in the setting of Birt-Hogg-Dubé

Manifestations of barotrauma-associated lung injury with scuba diving are rarely reported, aside from anecdotic historical accounts. The pathology of the lung changes has not been adequately characterized. We report the histologic findings of diving-related chronic lung injury in a patient with Birt-Hogg-Dube (BHD). The histologic findings included bullae, chronic pleuritis, edema, vascular and interstitial thickening. In addition, there were multiple necrotizing granulomas containing fungal organisms. BHD is a hereditary condition characterized by skin, lung, and renal lesions. This is to our knowledge the first report of the histologic findings of diving-related pulmonary barotrauma (PBT) injury, albeit in the setting of BHD.
Plant Cost Estimates

Once individual equipment costs are known from either manufacturers’ price quotations or estimating charts as discussed in the previous chapter, they can be utilized to form preliminary total plant cost estimates. A suggested sequence for obtaining such estimates is as follows: 1. Prepare a flow sheet for the process or operation to be estimated, showing all of the major equipment and whatever of the basic auxiliary or general plant facilities that directly affect the process (i.e., boilers for steam; cooling towers; special electric requirements, unusual storage facilities, transportation equipment, etc.). 2. Prepare heat and material balances around each piece of equipment to the degree of accuracy and detail required to size the equipment. 3. Size all of the equipment with the precision required to obtain the parameters needed for manufacturers’ cost quotations or to estimate costs from charts. 4. Analyze the process carefully to determine what “plant cost factors” should be used, and then prepare a detailed breakdown of the total plant cost package. This will be discussed in the following sections.
Up the down path: Power, ambition, and spiritual leadership

Bel Kaufman published Up the Down Staircase (1964/1991) over half a century ago—a book about a teacher, Sylvia, serving a difficult inner city school. She struggles with frustration over an incident in which a student is punished for going up a staircase that was intended for those traveling down. This incident initiates the case that Kaufman makes regarding institutional incompetence and mindlessness. The book doesn’t deal with the possibility that a good and sound reason might exist for why students shouldn’t go up a stairway designed for going down. Strange though it may seem, the biblical model of spiritual leadership deals with a similar question—up or down?
Creating Electrospun Nanofiber-Based Biomimetic Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration

Bone defects due to trauma, congenital deformity, or disease are highly prevalent in today’s society. Some 5–10% of these injuries result in a non-union and need surgical intervention. Currently, the main treatment method for these types of defects is a bone allograft or autograft. The main issues associated with these methods include pain, infection, and donor site morbidity. Bone tissue engineering is a diverse field that focuses on the regeneration of bone by combining cells, scaffolds, growth factors, and dynamic forces. Recently, tissue engineering methods that mimic the natural extracellular matrix (ECM) of bone have been utilized to better serve this need. One such method is the use of electrospinning, which allows for the creation of polymer nanofibers with diameters ranging from a couple microns down to a few nanometers. These nanofibers are very similar in structure and size to those of the natural collagen seen in bone ECM. Further, by combining certain biomimetic techniques along with electrospinning, it is possible to more closely mimic the mechanical properties and morphology of the ECM of bone, as well as enhance cell attachment, alignment, and proliferation. For these reasons, electrospinning is a biomimetic approach that has emerged as a choice candidate for the regeneration of native bone tissue. In this review, we will describe the methods utilized to create biomimetic structures for bone tissue engineering, as well as highlight the advancements made in this field using these methods.
Predictors of pediatric abdominal injury risk.

Although previous research has linked poor seat belt fit to abdominal organ injury for children, few have studied the pattern of pediatric abdominal injuries and its relationship to key characteristics beyond this primary association. In this study, data were obtained from a probability sample of 19,125 children, representing 243,540 children, under age 16 years who were enrolled in an on-going crash surveillance system which links insurance claims data to validated telephone survey and crash investigation data. The risk of AIS2+ abdominal injury was estimated for various crash, restraint, vehicle and child correlates and multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the relative importance of these predictors. Children 4-8 years of age were at the highest risk of abdominal injury: they were 24.5 times and 2.6 times more likely to sustain an AIS2+ abdominal injury than those 0-3 years and 9-15 years, respectively. The injury risk for children 4-8 years of age was 6 and 10 times higher in passenger cars and SUVs, respectively, compared to minivans. No reduction in abdominal injury risk was seen with rear seating. The role of direction of impact on injury risk varied by child age indicating diverse injury sources influenced by developmental differences and changes in restraint practices among the age groups. The data suggested a trade-off between head/face injury and abdominal injury: for those restrained in vehicle seat belts in rear seats, those with an AIS2+ head/face injury were nearly 90% less likely to sustain an abdominal injury than those without a head/face injury. These findings suggest mechanistic hypotheses to be tested with additional in-depth data. Language: en
Rigorous Stochastic Averaging at a Center with Additive Noise

We consider a random perturbation of a two-dimensional Hamiltonian system with an isolated elliptic fixed point; that is, a center. Under an appropriate change of time, we identify a reduced stochastically-averaged model. We give a rigorous proof of averaging at the center. Our main technique is to use the martingale problem. Our formulation of the result is in a sufficiently abstract setting that it agrees with more complicated averaging results.
Physical Illness and the Sexual Equilibrium

Serious physical illness sometimes enhances sexual life. Even when it is diminished, however, the most important causes are often psychological.
Development of a Comprehensive Microkinetic Model for Rh(bis(diazaphospholane))-Catalyzed Hydroformylation

Asymmetric hydroformylation (AHF) of alkenes is a prototypical, complicated catalytic transformation with a mechanism that comprises three concurrent, isomeric catalytic cycles. A persistent challe...
Information Theoretic Lower Bounds on Negative Log Likelihood

In this article we use rate-distortion theory, a branch of information theory devoted to the problem of lossy compression, to shed light on an important problem in latent variable modeling of data: is there room to improve the model? One way to address this question is to find an upper bound on the probability (equivalently a lower bound on the negative log likelihood) that the model can assign to some data as one varies the prior and/or the likelihood function in a latent variable model. The core of our contribution is to formally show that the problem of optimizing priors in latent variable models is exactly an instance of the variational optimization problem that information theorists solve when computing rate-distortion functions, and then to use this to derive a lower bound on negative log likelihood. Moreover, we will show that if changing the prior can improve the log likelihood, then there is a way to change the likelihood function instead and attain the same log likelihood, and thus rate-distortion theory is of relevance to both optimizing priors as well as optimizing likelihood functions. We will experimentally argue for the usefulness of quantities derived from rate-distortion theory in latent variable modeling by applying them to a problem in image modeling.
[n]staffanes with terminal nitrile and isonitrile functionalities and their metal complexes

The synthesis of several bridgehead nitrile and isonitrile derivatives of the first two [n]staffanes, n = 1 and 2, is reported. Both isonitriles were converted into pentacarbonylmolybdenum complexes. [2]Staffane-3-carbonitrile was converted to a complex with rhodium(II) acetate, which was characterized by a single crystal X-ray analysis.
Marker Effects in Pneumococcal Transformation

Genetic markers may be transferred from one pneumococcal strain to another as the result of exposure of competent recipient bacteria to double-stranded DNA isolated from donor bacteria. Several investigators have shown that markers representing single-site mutations can be divided into several classes according to the frequency with which those markers are represented among transformants. These mutations appear to fall into four classes, the distribution of which varies according to the loci analyzed (Lacks, 1966; Sirotnak and Hachtel, 1969; Tiraby and Sicard, 1973a). The two predominant classes of markers are those that yield a high frequency of transformants (HE, for high efficiency of integration) and those that yield a low frequency of transformants (LE, for an efficiency of integration about tenfold lower) (Ephrussi-Taylor et al., 1965; Ephrussi-Taylor and Gray, 1966). When a large number of spontaneous mutations within a given locus are analyzed, two more classes are observed, one corresponding to markers with a very high efficiency of integration (from 1.5- to 2-fold more efficient than HE markers) (VHE) and the other corresponding to markers with an intermediate efficiency (IE). VHE markers are about 20 times more efficient than LE markers.
Low-Loss Gate Driving Techniques of the Cascode GaN/SiC Power Device at High Frequencies

Gallium Nitride (GaN) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) power devices are segmented in the Wide Bandgap (WBG) device market: GaN devices are suitable for high-frequency but low-voltage applications; SiC devices are suitable for low-frequency but high-voltage applications. Cascoding a GaN HEMT and a SiC JFET best utilizes the advantages of both of these WBG power devices. Like GaN devices, the cascode GaN/SiC device is easy to drive at high frequencies and has low gate loss; like SiC devices, it also has relatively high voltage rating and low C oss energy loss at high frequencies. In previous studies, power circuits using the cascode device achieved higher power density than circuits using only a SiC device but efficiency similar to that of a SiC device [1]. In this paper, we present our investigation of the gate loss mechanism of the SiC JFET in the cascode structure and our finding that the loss can be greatly reduced by minimizing the gate resistance of the SiC JFET (R g,Jfet ). Simulation results showed that reducing R g,Jfet from 6 Ω to 1 Ω at 13.56 MHz leads to a 5× loss reduction, and experimental data verified the simulation trend. Here we provide a simple guideline to optimize the cascode GaN/SiC device and achieve better performance in high-frequency and high-voltage applications.
Probing Fabry–Perot Interference in Self-AssembledExcitonic Microcrystals with Subgap Light Emission

Establishing a fundamental understanding of the range of optical effects possible in self-assembled excitonic materials remains crucial to the utility of these materials in future optoelectronic an...
Worldwide Effects on Biochemistry Due to Nazi Persecution

The influx of many brilliant refugees from Nazi Germany led to a great resurgence in atomic physics in the United States, England, and France, as described in Chapter II. However only about 10% of the 1200 or so scientists who left Germany were physicists. A large variety of other fields also benefited from the immigration of so many qualified scientists. The growth of biochemistry in particular was greatly stimulated. As a biochemist who left Germany immediately after the Nazis took over the government, the author has witnessed these effects most closely, especially since many of the scientists were colleagues and friends; thus he is more familiar with the details here than in other branches of science. In the first half of this century the most intellectually exciting area in science was atomic physics, but from the 1940s on it has been biochemistry. The spectacular rise of biochemistry and some of its special branches widely referred to as molecular biology has changed our knowledge in an absolutely fascinating way and has dramatically changed our insight into the understanding of the living organism. Biochemistry has penetrated almost all branches of the biological sciences: anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, immunochemistry, and others. As every layman knows, these advances have revolutionized medicine and agriculture and we are in the midst of continuous new and striking progress. The insights provided by molecular genetics and evolution of life have also begun to influence our philosophical outlook, as mentioned before.
Sulfur Amendment of Soil Improves Establishment and Growth of Firs in a Field Naturally Infested with Phytophthora1

Abstract Acidification of soil from pH 6 to 4 by incorporating elemental sulfur reduced mortality and improved color and initial growth of Fraser fir, Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poir., and Canaan fir, A...
Structure of the human clamp loader reveals an autoinhibited conformation of a substrate-bound AAA+ switch.

DNA replication requires the sliding clamp, a ring-shaped protein complex that encircles DNA, where it acts as an essential cofactor for DNA polymerases and other proteins. The sliding clamp needs to be opened and installed onto DNA by a clamp loader ATPase of the AAA+ family. The human clamp loader replication factor C (RFC) and sliding clamp proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) are both essential and play critical roles in several diseases. Despite decades of study, no structure of human RFC has been resolved. Here, we report the structure of human RFC bound to PCNA by cryogenic electron microscopy to an overall resolution of ∼3.4 A. The active sites of RFC are fully bound to adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) analogs, which is expected to induce opening of the sliding clamp. However, we observe the complex in a conformation before PCNA opening, with the clamp loader ATPase modules forming an overtwisted spiral that is incapable of binding DNA or hydrolyzing ATP. The autoinhibited conformation observed here has many similarities to a previous yeast RFC:PCNA crystal structure, suggesting that eukaryotic clamp loaders adopt a similar autoinhibited state early on in clamp loading. Our results point to a "limited change/induced fit" mechanism in which the clamp first opens, followed by DNA binding, inducing opening of the loader to release autoinhibition. The proposed change from an overtwisted to an active conformation reveals an additional regulatory mechanism for AAA+ ATPases. Finally, our structural analysis of disease mutations leads to a mechanistic explanation for the role of RFC in human health.
Optimization of Multiple Effect Evaporation System via Modelling and Simulation

Abstract The black liquor is concentrated in a multiple evaporation system to achieve steam economy. The focus of this paper is to solve complex mass and energy balance non-linear equations and to reduce them to a simple matrix form using MATLAB. A detailed analysis is done to observe parameters effects on the entire process and on steam consumption according to the increase in the number of effects of evaporation. Complexity of the process is solved using mathematical modelling and simulation with MATLAB and MINITAB using ANOVA Analysis. The process is repeated for three-effect, five-effect and seven-effect evaporator. The comparison is analysed to show the effectiveness of steam economy and to conclude if it is beneficial to increase the number of evaporators to have effective energy conservation. According to the mathematical analysis, the number of effects is important to achieve steam economy, whereas the number of effects has no impact on parameters.
A Broadband Multistage Self-Interference Canceller for Full-Duplex MIMO Radios

Full-duplex (FD) antenna arrays are desirable for expanding the channel capacity of wireless systems up to 2, which is particularly important in the crowded sub-6-GHz spectral bands. Conventional FD solutions based on circulators do not scale to antenna arrays due to the presence of significant mutual coupling between antenna elements. This article describes a two-stage self-interference cancellation (SIC) method that is suitable for FD arrays. The first-stage SIC uses a replica-antenna (RA)-based network that is passive and linear and can thus be placed before the low-noise amplifier (LNA) without significantly degrading receiver noise figure (NF) and linearity. The RA-based SIC also simplifies the hardware requirements for the second-stage SIC, which uses an analog tapped delay line (ATDL) network. The proposed two-stage SIC was realized using off-the-shelf components and tested in the 1–3-GHz range using strongly coupled pairs of ultrawideband antennas. Network analyzer measurements show 20–30 dB of SIC using the RA network over the entire frequency range and >20 dB of SIC using a single-stage ATDL SIC over instantaneous bandwidths of 0.53–0.65 GHz. The combined transmit (Tx)–receive isolation is 66.5, 73.5, and 85.8 dB around the center frequencies of 1, 2, and 3 GHz, respectively. The amount of isolation is shown to be sufficient for realizing practical FD wireless links at 2 GHz with reasonable Tx power levels (0 dBm).
Hot Hands in Cold Water

Cross-sectional data from a NCAA Division 1 Men’s and Women’s water polo program is used to investigate the “myth” of the hot hand. Following the pioneering work of Gilovich et al. (Cognitive Psychol 17: 295–314, 1985), analysis of conditional probabilities, serial correlation, and runs reveals partial evidence in support of the hot hand on both individual and aggregate levels. The results are counter to Gilovich et al. and potentially important in light of Wardrop’s (Am Stat 49: 24–28, 1999) critiques and recent work by Arkes (J Q Anal Sports 6(1), 2010) and Stone (Am Stat 66(1):61–66, 2012), indicating these approaches lack power and are subject to measurement error. A probit model of shots is estimated using player fixed effects. The results suggest player position, and experience together with the sequence of the shot in the series all influence the likelihood of successful shots.
The Social Value of FASB

Ramanna (this issue) argues that the FASB’s new Conceptual Framework deemphasizes reliability in favor of representational faithfulness to facilitate the FASB’s promotion of an “asset-liability” approach measured at fair values. More importantly, Ramanna argues that this change is likely to generate costly unintended consequences by reducing reporting quality. We agree and consider more broadly whether FASB standards benefit the investors and creditors whom it anoints as primary beneficiaries, whether FASB creates social value through better accounting knowledge, and whether it is time to sunset the FASB monopoly.
Protein Structure from Solid-State NMR

This article deals with mathematical questions arising from the determination of protein structure from data obtained by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Solid-state NMR holds the promise of revealing the structure of membrane proteins in a lipid bilayer. The derivation of protein structure from NMR data has most often been done using proteins in liquid state, and the mathematical analysis has been done using distance geometry and distance matrices. The mathematical analysis for solid state NMR uses orientational constraints rather than distance constraints, and matrices of inner products rather than distance matrices. Solving the structure from the data requires supplying a sequence of signs, a situation somewhat analogous to the necessity to supply the phases to solve a structure from x-ray crystallographic data. Other problems in solving for the structure arise from the condition that the gram determinants be non-negative, and this is analogous problem in distance geometry that the distance matrix must satisfy the conditions of the Cayley-Menger theorem.
Relation extraction using support vector machine

This paper presents a supervised approach for relation extraction. We apply Support Vector Machines to detect and classify the relations in Automatic Content Extraction (ACE) corpus. We use a set of features including lexical tokens, syntactic structures, and semantic entity types for relation detection and classification problem. Besides these linguistic features, we successfully utilize the distance between two entities to improve the performance. In relation detection, we filter out the negative relation candidates using entity distance threshold. In relation classification, we use the entity distance as a feature for Support Vector Classifier. The system is evaluated in terms of recall, precision, and F-measure, and errors of the system are analyzed with proposed solution.
The Discontinuous Conduction Mode

When the ideal switches of a dc-dc converter are implemented using current-unidirectional and/or voltage-unidirectional semiconductor switches, one or more new modes of operation known as discontinuous conduction modes (DCM) can occur. The discontinuous conduction mode arises when the switching ripple in an inductor current or capacitor voltage is large enough to cause the polarity of the applied switch current or voltage to reverse, such that the current- or voltage-unidirectional assumptions made in realizing the switch with semiconductor devices are violated. The DCM is commonly observed in dc-dc converters and rectifiers, and can also sometimes occur in inverters or in other converters containing two-quadrant switches.
Incidence and distribution of argininosuccinate synthetase deficiency in human cancers: a method for identifying cancers sensitive to arginine deprivation.

BACKGROUND Argininosuccinate synthetase (ASS) was the first of two enzymes to convert citrulline to arginine. This pathway allowed cells to synthesize arginine from citrulline, making this amino acid nonessential for the growth of most mammalian cells. Previous studies demonstrated that several human tumor cell lines were auxotrophic for arginine due to an inability to express ASS. Selective elimination of arginine from the circulation of animals with these tumors is a potentially effective anticancer treatment. The purpose of these experiments was to determine the frequency of ASS deficiency and arginine auxotrophy in a variety of human malignant tumors. METHODS The authors analyzed the expression of ASS by immunohistochemistry with a monoclonal antibody in a variety of human tumor biopsies. They found that the incidence of ASS deficiency varied greatly with the tumor type and tissue of origin. RESULTS Melanoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, and prostate carcinoma were most frequently deficient in ASS. Some human cancers were almost always positive for ASS (e.g., lung and colon carcinomas). However, other human cancers, including sarcomas, invasive breast carcinoma, and renal cell carcinoma, also were sometimes ASS deficient. CONCLUSIONS These data indicated that immunohistochemical detection of ASS may prove an effective means for determining ASS deficiency in malignant human tumors and for identifying patients most likely to respond to arginine deprivation therapy. Based on these results, human clinical trials using arginine-degrading enzyme therapy to treat patients with advanced melanoma or hepatocellular carcinoma have been initiated. Cancer 2004;100:826–33. © 2004 American Cancer Society.
A Call for Considering Color Vision Deficiency When Creating Graphics for Psychology Reports

Although color vision deficiency (CVD) is fairly common, it is often not adequately considered when data is presented in color graphics. This study found that CVD tends to be mentioned neither in the author guidelines of psychology journals nor in the standard publication manuals of the field (e.g., the publication manuals of the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association). To illustrate the relevance of this problem, a panel of scholars with CVD was used to evaluate the color figures in three respected psychological science journals. Results suggested that a substantial proportion of those figures were needlessly confusing for viewers with CVD and could have been easily improved through simple adjustments. Based on prior literature and on feedback from the panelists, recommendations are made for improving the accessibility of graphics in psychology reports.
Emerging treatment options to improve cardiovascular outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndrome: focus on losmapimod

Each year, despite optimal use of recommended acute and secondary prevention therapies, 4%-5% of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) experience relapse of ACS or other cardiovascular events including stroke, heart failure, or sudden cardiac death after the index ACS. The sudden atherosclerotic plaque rupture leading to an ACS event is often accompanied by inflammation, which is thought to be a key pathogenic pathway to these excess cardiovascular events. Losmapimod is a novel, oral p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) inhibitor that targets MAPKs activated in macrophages, myocardium, and endothelial cells that occur as a part of global coronary vascular inflammation following plaque rupture. This review aims to 1) discuss the pathophysiological pathways through which p38 MAPKs may play key roles in initiation and progression of inflammatory disease and how losmapimod is thought to counteract these p38 MAPKs, and 2) to describe the efficacy and safety data for losmapimod obtained from preclinical studies and randomized controlled trials that support the hypothesis that it has promise as a treatment for patients with ACS.
Configuring sessions in programmable networks with capacity constraints

The provision of advanced computational services within networks is rapidly becoming both feasible and economical. As computational services become popular, it is important to have effective methods for configuring application sessions so that they use resources efficiently. In this paper, we discuss the problem of configuring application sessions that require intermediate processing. The problem was introduced in an earlier paper, where we showed how to optimally configure sessions in programmable networks by reducing the session configuration problem to the problem of finding a shortest path in a special graph constructed for the particular problem. This layered graph method is quite flexible and can handle a variety of specific session configuration problems. However, it does not explicitly model limits on link bandwidth or processing capacity. In this paper, we show that the optimal session configuration problem is NP-hard when capacity is constrained. Nevertheless, we have found efficient heuristics for which the network performance closely approximates the performance that can be achieved with optimal session configurations.
Diversity and critical forces in dental education

Critical issues that affect dental education and the connection between science and practice include the community, managed patient care, public skepticism and fiscal support, and shifting demography in patterns of oral disease as well as the background of students entering the dental profession. During the past several decades, there have been major shifts in the patterns of oral disease, most recently described in results of the NHANES III dental survey. The diversity and background of students entering the dental profession have changed dramatically as well, and present estimates of change in U.S. population are no less volatile. Funding for dental education in constant dollars is decreasing nationally, with declining support from state and federal sources and a much greater reliance on clinical and development income. Recent recommendations by the Institute of Medicine and Pew Health Commission and reactions to those recommendations by representative dental organizations-particularly the American Dental Association, American Association of Dental Schools, and the American Association of Dental Examiners-have significant implications for the structure of dental education. All of these factors are tempered by the emergence of managed patient care and the implications of that environment to increasing the level of academic excellence of students, improving the quality of care delivered to patients, and enhancing the scholarly contributions of faculty. These forces may represent an opportunity to maintain a well-documented national excellence in oral health care, expand the educational options to meet student demand and interest, increase the biological and behavioral background of our graduates, and explore new educational approaches to preclinical and clinical training.
Diamond growth with locally supplied methane and acetylene

Experiments have been conducted to examine the relative importance of different gas feed geometries and molecular species in the hot filament assisted vapor phase deposition of diamond. Remote and local (relative to the substrate) gas feeds of methane and acetylene were tested and it was found that although dramatic effects on uniformity and rate of deposition can be observed using a gas feed of methane local to the substrate surface, little or no variation in growth rate or deposition uniformity was produced by feeding acetylene locally. The growth rate observed on a defined area of the substrate using a local gas feed of methane was 0.50 mgms/h versus 0.17 mgms/h for a local feed of acetylene. These results, as well as the patterns of deposition observed, suggest that the major species contributing to growth in the hot filament assisted CVD of diamond is the methyl radical. This species is readily formed in the gas phase from methane and atomic hydrogen by hydrogen abstraction. It is, however, further suggested that numerous different hydrocarbon species may be of importance, with the nature of the species contributing most to the growth dependent on the method used.
Tentorial dural arteriovenous fistulae: operative strategies and microsurgical results for six types.

Objective Tentorial dural arteriovenous fistulae (DAVF) are rare, have a high risk of hemorrhage, often cannot be obliterated endovascularly, and frequently require microsurgical interruption of the draining vein. We differentiated these fistulae into six types and developed specific operative strategies on the basis of these types. Methods During a 9-year period, 31 patients underwent microsurgical treatment for tentorial fistulae: seven galenic DAVF, eight straight sinus DAVF, three torcular DAVF, three tentorial sinus DAVF, eight superior petrosal sinus DAVF, and two incisural DAVF. Results The posterior interhemispheric approach was used with galenic DAVF; the supracerebellar-infratentorial approach was used with straight sinus DAVF; a torcular craniotomy was used with torcular DAVF; the supratentorial-infraoccipital approach was used with tentorial sinus DAVF; the extended retrosigmoid approach was used with superior petrosal sinus DAVF; and a pterional or subtemporal approach was used with incisural DAVF. Angiographically, 94% of the fistulae were obliterated completely. Four patients had transient neurological morbidity, none had permanent neurological morbidity; and there was no operative mortality (mean follow-up, 4.2 yr). Conclusion Tentorial DAVF can be differentiated on the basis of fistula location, dural base, associated sinus, and direction of venous drainage. The operative strategy for each type is almost algorithmic, with each type having an optimum surgical approach and an optimum patient position that allows gravity to retract the brain, open subarachnoid planes, and shorten dissection times. No matter the type, the fistula is treated microsurgically by simple interruption of the draining vein.
Belief Space Planning For Linear, Gaussian Systems In Uncertain Environments

Abstract This paper introduces a new formulation for solving the planning problem for linear, Gaussian stochastic systems through uncertain environments. Due to the imperfect knowledge of the system state caused by motion uncertainty, sensor noise and environment uncertainty, the system constraints cannot be guaranteed to be satisfied and consequently must be considered probabilistically. For a known environment, the constraints can be modeled as conjunctions, unions of convex expressions of univariate Gaussian random variables. However, for uncertain environments the constraints transform into the sums of products of random variables which do not have a closed-form analytical expression. In general, to calculate the probability of constraint violation a sampling method would have to be used to evaluate the multivariate integrals; this sampling strategy would be computationally expensive and possibly intractable for higher dimensional systems. Fortunately, even for low-dimensional systems the constraints are shown to be very well approximated by a univariate Gaussian distribution and can be evaluated efficiently. The violation probability of all the constraints is guaranteed to be below a threshold that trades off the performance of the system and the conservativeness of the solution. In contrast to similar methods, the proposed framework considers the specific estimator and controller used in the closed-loop system in order to fully characterize the a priori distribution of the closed-loop system state. Using this distribution, an optimization program is formulated to solve for a locally optimal solution for the closed-loop system. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated through an example.
Practical Significance in Early Intervention Research From Affect to Empirical Effect

The practical significance of early intervention and developmental research was examined by computing measures of effect size for 237 statistical tests from 59 early intervention studies. Analysis of the data revealed that the average (median) treatment effect across the studies was in the range Cohen (1977) defines as a medium effect size (d index = .68). The distribution of treatment effect sizes was positively skewed with a large portion of treatment effects in the medium and small categories. The interpretation of measures of magnitude strength is discussed in relation to statistical significance testing. The argument is made that the evolving nature of early intervention research requires the use of analytic procedures sensitive to the degree of change expected in field-based dependent variables. Reporting measures of effect size along with traditional quantitative results will enhance the interpretation of statistical findings in early intervention and developmental research.
“Coyote May Carry You off on His Tail”: A Shoshoni Perspective on Ethics

SUMMARY In this article, we present a Shoshoni perspective on ethics and discuss examples of the ethical key concepts embedded in Deniwape, the traditional knowledge that has been transmitted orally within family lines. Deniwape represents a set of principles that delineate traditional connections between landscape, family, customary practices, and cultural values. We focus specifically on the semantic meanings and cultural usages of ethical key concepts to offer new insights into the understanding of traditional Shoshoni ethics.
Power Management of an Ultracapacitor/Battery Hybrid Energy Storage System in an HEV

To overcome the power delivery limitations of batteries and energy storage limitations of ultracapacitors, hybrid energy storage systems, which combine the two energy sources, have been proposed. A comprehensive review of the state of the art is presented. In addition, a method of optimizing the operation of a battery/ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is presented. The goal is to set the state of charge of the ultracapacitor and the battery in a way which ensures that the available power and energy is sufficient to supply the drivetrain. By utilizing an algorithm where the states of charge of both systems are tightly controlled, we allow for the overall system size to reduce since more power is available from a smaller energy storage system.
Intra-familial dispersion patterns in white-footed mice, Peromyscus leucopus

Spatial relationships of white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) dams and their offspring and of littermates post-weaning were determined to evaluate if their dispersion was sufficient to prevent inbreeding. Mothers tended to leave their first nest site and establish another nest site within or near their original home range. Daughters inherited part of the maternal home range but sons dispersed. During the following breeding season, sons were not in proximity to their mothers or sisters. Daughters, however, frequently attained sexual maturity and bred within the home range of males that could have been their fathers. Differential dispersal of male and female juveniles reduces the probability of mother-son and brother-sister matings, but there is no obvious dispersal-related mechanism to prevent father-daughter matings.
Femur/stature ratio and estimates of stature in mid- and late-pleistocene fossil hominids

In previous limited investigations of the human femur/stature ratio we (Feldesman and Lundy: Journal of Human Evolution 17:583–596, 1988; Feldesman et al.: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 79:219–220, 1989) have shown it to be remarkably stable across ethnic and gender boundaries. In this study we evaluate the femur/stature ratio in 51 different “populations” of contemporary humans (n = 13,149) sampled from all over the world. We find that the mean ratio of femur length to stature in these populations is 26.74%, with a very restricted range of variation. When we compare mean femur/stature ratios of males and females, there are no statistically significant differences. ANOVA performed on a naive grouping of samples into “whites,” “blacks,” and “Asians” indicates that there are significant racial differences (P < 0.001). When we subject these groups to Tukey's HSD procedure (a post-hoc test), we find that “blacks” are responsible for the significant ANOVA, being significantly (P < 0.005) different from the other ethnic groups. “Whites” and “Asians” are not significantly different (P = 0.067) under the conditions of this analysis, although all these racial comparisons may be suspect given the small sample sizes. We tested the efficacy of the ratio in three situations: predicting stature of repatriated white Vietnam veterans; predicting stature in a random sample of South African blacks (of known stature), and predicting the stature of a single Akka pygmy. In the first and third cases, the femur/stature ratio does better than the traditionally recommended regression equation, while in the second case the predictions from the femur/stature ratio are less accurate than from the appropriate regression equation. These results encouraged us to apply this ratio to mid- and late-Pleistocene fossil hominids, where the choice of reference population for stature estimates continues to trouble workers. We estimated stature for a sizeable number of Homo erectus (HE), early Neanderthal (EN), Near Eastern Neanderthal (NEN), and early anatomically modern Homo sapiens (EAMHS) by using the simple relationship: stature (cm) = femur length (cm) * 100 / 26.74. Our results show that HE fossils are slightly taller on average than either EN or NEN samples, which do not differ significantly in stature, while EAMHS fossils are significantly taller than all three earlier groups. While these results are not surprising, our stature estimates for these fossils differ from currently published estimates based on sample-specific regression-based formulae. We compare the results, discuss the differences, and highlight potential sources of error in both regression and ratio-based estimates of stature. We conclude that in estimating stature of hominid fossils the femur/stature ratio, which is gender- and ethnic-group neutral and simpler to calculate, may provide more satisfactory results than the group-specific regression formulae.