cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Echocardiography Derived Valve Area of the Edwards SAPIEN Aortic Valve Prosthesis: New Methodology is Required to Comply with Old Hemodynamic Principles

610 It has been more than 25 years since Hegrenaes and Hatle and Currie et al revolutionized the diagnostic approach to aortic stenosis by demonstrating an excellent correlation between aortic valve systolic gradients determined noninvasively, using continuous wave Doppler and the modified Bernoulli equation, with invasively measured gradients. In 1989, Burstow et al proved a similar correlation between noninvasively and invasively determined systolic gradients across aortic valve prostheses. In each of these investigations a key component of continuous wave Doppler methodology was aligning the Doppler beam as close to parallel as possible with the direction of the systolic jet through the aortic valve. This requires interrogation of the aortic valve from multiple transducer positions, including apical, right parasternal, right supraclavicular, and suprasternal notch. Because the gradient across stenotic aortic valves depends not only on the degree of orifice narrowing but also on the flow across the valve, the assessment of aortic valve stenosis is incomplete without measurement of the aortic valve area (AVA). In 1985, Skjaerpe et al, and later Oh et al, demonstrated clinically acceptable correlation between aortic valve areas determined noninvasively with echocardiography and Doppler, using the continuity equation, and valve areas determined invasively, using the Gorlin equation. In 1990, Rothbart et al demonstrated a similar correlation between these two methods for aortic bioprostheses. For assessment of AVA the now familiar continuity principle is utilized. As a review, let us first consider volume flow through the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) during systole. If we were able to view the aortic annulus just before valve opening we would see it occupied by a disc of blood. With valve opening and ejection more discs would appear at the annulus—an increasing number per unit time during blood flow acceleration and a decreasing number per unit time with flow deceleration. If we could save all the discs that had appeared at the annulus during ejection and pile them up we would have a cylinder. The area of this cylinder is the LVOTarea at the aortic annulus. The number of discs in the pile is determined by the LVOT velocity profile, and if we integrate this velocity profile, calculating the LVOT time velocity integral (TVI), we obtain the length of our cylinder. The volume of this cylinder, which is the stroke volume, is the product of its area and length: the LVOT area times the LVOT TVI. Similarly, if we start our observation with the smaller disc of blood occupying the narrowed aortic valve area just before ejection, and collected all the discs passing through during ejection, we could make a pile of discs whose area is the aortic valve area and whose length
Enterprise Risk Assessment Based on Compliance Reports and Vulnerability Scoring Systems

The risk of cyberattacks have become increasingly daunting as most of our socioeconomic activities have gone cyber-based. Comprehensive automated risk management is becoming necessity in today's dynamic networks. In this paper, we present an objective metric to assess the risk of cyberattacks on organizations' networks based on the security compliance reports. Our model considers various risk factors, including vulnerabilities distribution, dependency between them, and network configuration. We take advantage of Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) languages and measurement and scoring systems to study vulnerabilities and compute the system exposure. We also describe an evaluation plan to validate the presented metric.
300,000,000 Customers: Patient Perspectives on Service and Quality

Radiologists have always been dedicated to service and quality in imaging. In the past few years, many entities, mostly external to the profession itself, have entered the business of defining, measuring, and reporting both service and quality. There is a great deal at stake in how this unfolds, and there are many potential stakeholders in both the process and the outcome. This article addresses the perspectives of patients on service and quality issues. In particular, it is important for those in the profession to understand that their customers often view their services very differently than those within the business. The author addresses several of the most common and important perceptual issues that practitioners need to address in understanding these disparities. Success or failure will determine how satisfied patients are; how they fill out scorecards and report cards; and what they say about practitioners to their family, their neighbors, and perhaps 2 billion of their closest friends on the Web. Ultimately, how well radiologists address these issues will determine a substantial component of pay for performance, their ability to contract, and the individual decisions of patients and their families to come to them at all.
Milk Teeth and Jet Planes: Kin Relations in Families of Sri Lanka's Transnational Domestic Servants

This essay examines the confluence of local and global dynamics, exploring how transnational migration affects and is affected by gender roles, kinship relations, intergenerational obligations, and ideologies of parenthood. Journeying to the Middle East repeated on two-year labor contracts, many of Sri Lanka's migrant housemaids leave behind their husbands and children. Women's long-term absences reorganize and disrupt widely accepted gendered attributions of parenting roles, with fathers and female relatives taking over household tasks. Migrants say that economic difficulties prompt migration, and assess commitment to kin in financial terms. The government also benefits from remittances. Nevertheless, stakeholders (villagers, politicians, and the national media) worry about the social costs born by children. Drawing on interviews with the adult children of migrant mothers in four extended families in the Sri Lankan coastal village of Naeaegama, I examine the long-term effects of transnational labor migration on local households. The case studies do not support media claims that children suffer abuse and neglect in their mothers’ absence, but do in part support survey information on reduced education, shifting marriage patterns, and paternal alcohol consumption.
Cortical aperiodic shutter enabling phase transitions at theta rates

Brains are open thermodynamic systems, continually dissipating metabolic energy as heat in constructing spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity. Here patterns of cortical oscillations are described as Prigogine's 'dissipative structures' formed at a conditionally stable operating point far from equilibrium. Around that point exists a small-signal, near-linear range in which pairs of impulse responses superpose. Piece-wise linearization extends analysis into nonlinear ranges. Resulting root loci are interpreted as projections from a phase plane, in which the three phase boundaries are graphed in the coordinates of rate of change in a dynamic order parameter (negentropy) on the ordinate analogous to static pressure vs. energy dissipation (power) analogous to static temperature on the abscissa. The graph reveals the neural mechanisms that implement phase transitions, which enable the limbic system to repeat the action-perception cycle at 3-7 Hz. Salient among these are null spikes ('vortices') found in background ECoG.
Connecting fabrication defects to fault models and SPICE simulations for DNA self-assembled nanoelectronics

The self-assembly of nanoelectronic devices provide an opportunity to achieve unprecedented density and manufacturing scale in the post-Moore's Law era. Bottom-up DNA self-assembly has emerged as a promising technique towards achieving this vision and it has been used to demonstrate precise patterning and functionalisation at resolutions below 20 nm. However, a lack of understanding of fabrication defects and their impact on circuit behaviour are major obstacles to the eventual application of these substrates to circuit design. The authors present a classification of defects observed in our experimental work on self-assembled nanostructures. Atomic force microscope (AFM) images are used to study these defects and determine their relative frequencies. The authors connect these defects to fault models and predict their likely impact on the behaviour of logic gates. Based on simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis simulation data for proposed layouts, the authors conclude that there is a predictive connection between faulty logic behaviour and physical defects for future DNA self-assembled nanoelectronics. This work will be useful in predicting the potential success of defect-tolerance techniques for DNA self-assembled nanoelectronic substrates.
Nationalism and World Governance:Comment on Warren Wagar's " Praxis"

It is no accident that every political leader in current times is disappointing at best. The decline of state e ff i cacy has its source in the remarkable increase in the pace of world integration, or "globalization," that has occurred over the last two decades. Increased economic and cultural interpenetration across state boundaries is obvious to most observers. The surprise is short lived when wefind such ironies as that both sides in the 1992 Gulf War followed the battles on CNN, that Chinese studentsraised a "Statue of Liberty" during the 1989 protest inTiananmen Square, or that in 1994 the US dollar becamelegal tender in Cuba. With globalization has also comea somewhat less evident decline in a state's ability to manage its share of the world economy.
Retrieval of the Ocean Skin Temperature Profiles From Measurements of Infrared Hyperspectral Radiometers—Part I: Derivation of an Algorithm

The retrieval of vertical profiles of the sea surface temperature through the electromagnetic and thermal skin layers is demonstrated. The inversion equation applied to the high-resolution radiance spectra measurements obtained from hyperspectral infrared spectrometers is introduced and is known to be nonlinear and ill-conditioned. To constrain the solution and reduce the errors in this ill-conditioned retrieval problem, the truncated singular value decomposition regularization technique is adopted. This technique's feasibility is demonstrated on synthetic data with and without the addition of noise. Results sometimes include an unphysical temperature inversion in the solution which was avoided by iteratively adjusting the lower boundary condition. The presence of noise required an additional step of averaging the radiance spectrum into 11 wavenumber intervals to solve the issue of an overconstrained problem and reduce the errors involved.
Reinforced wind turbine blades--an environmental life cycle evaluation.

A fiberglass composite reinforced with carbon nanofibers (CNF) at the resin–fiber interface is being developed for potential use in wind turbine blades. An energy and midpoint impact assessment was performed to gauge impacts of scaling production to blades 40 m and longer. Higher loadings force trade-offs in energy return on investment and midpoint impacts relative to the base case while remaining superior to thermoelectric power generation in these indicators. Energy-intensive production of CNFs forces impacts disproportionate to mass contribution. The polymer nanocomposite increases a 2 MW plant’s global warming potential nearly 100% per kWh electricity generated with 5% CNF by mass in the blades if no increase in electrical output is realized. The relative scale of impact must be compensated by systematic improvements whether by deployment in higher potential zones or by increased life span; the trade-offs are expected to be significantly lessened with CNF manufacturing maturity. Significant challenges...
Renal hyperlipemia in dogs and rats

Summary and Conclusions(1) Unilateral nephrectomy was performed under local anesthesia in 3 dogs and was followed by a transient hyperlipemia involving cholesterol, lecithin, and total lipids. It thus is shown that the general anesthesia used in previous studies had no part in the development of the hyperlipemia following renal ablation.(2) Mercury bichloride given by intravenous injection to 5 dogs produced in all animals a hyperlipemia identical in pattern and intensity with the reaction observed when intramuscular or subcutaneous injections had been used. The local tissue necrosis which occasionally results from intramuscular and subcutaneous administration of mercury bichloride thus cannot be the cause of the hyperlipemia previously described.(3) The same hyperlipemia reaction is observed in rats after intramuscular and intravenous injection of mercury bichloride. However, no immediate rise in serum lipids was observed after the oral administration of mercury bichloride. It remains to be investigated ...
The magnetization transfer effect in cerebral infarction.

PURPOSE To estimate the age of cerebral infarcts using magnetization transfer. METHODS Twelve patients with radiographically and clinically documented cortical and subcortical cerebral infarctions underwent MR imaging on a 0.1T magnet. Magnetization transfer contrast images were generated by application of off-resonance pulses to every other repetition time on intermediate-weighted images. The magnetization transfer effect was calculated by obtaining an intensity value in the region of interest within the infarcted area. RESULTS The data show a pattern in which the magnetization transfer effect decreases as the chronicity of the infarct increases. Infarcts less than 1 week old had an average magnetization transfer effect of 0.35. Those more than 1 week and less than 1 month old average 0.30. Infarcts more than 1 month and specifically those more than 1 year old averaged 0.16 or less. CONCLUSION Magnetization transfer offers the potential to estimate the age of cerebral infarcts.
Trunnion Corrosion causing Failure in Metal-on-Polyethylene Total Hip Arthroplasty with Monolithic Femoral Components

We describe nine patients who had total hip arthroplasty failure [titanium alloy monolithic stem, cobalt-chromium head (32 mm or 36 mm), highly cross-linked polyethylene liner, metal socket] related to metal wear debris generated at the trunnion. Symptoms included pain with onset 2.9 years after THA. Preoperative serum cobalt metal ion levels were elevated [mean 8.8 ng/ml (normal < 0.9 ng/ml)] and were higher than chromium levels [mean 1.2 ng/ml (normal < 0.3 ng/ml)]. All patients had debridement of the periarticular soft tissues, stem retention, revision to ceramic head and new liner; two patients had acetabular revision. At early follow-up, 7 of 8 available patients did well, with improved cobalt (0.6 ng/ml) and little change in chromium levels. We recommend heightened awareness regarding this mode of failure.
Comparison of AIDS Prevention Knowledge Between Rural Migrant Workers and Leftover Residents

Objective To understand AIDS prevention knowledge among rural migrant workers and leftover residents,so as to provide a basis for pertinently carrying out publicity and education towards them.Methods Questionnaire survey was conducted among rural migrant workers and leftover residents between 15 and 65 years old in Santai county,Quxian county,Anyue county and Guang'an district of Sichuan province.Results The AIDS prevention knowledge awareness rates of rural migrant workers and leftover residents were respectively: knowing AIDS,91.9% and 86.8%,with statistical difference(χ2= 30.07,P 0.01);harm of AIDS,overall 79.9%,respectively 82.0% and 77.3%;AIDS related knowledge,69.1% and 56.5%,with statistically significant(χ2= 78.64,P 0.01) and disseminating knowledge with friends or relatives,24.1% and 24.4%.The proportion of those who know how to get free HIV testing was 24.1%.Conclusion The awareness rate of AIDS related knowledge is considerably low,thus further pertinent publicity and health education should be both strengthened timely.
Expertise: Broadening the Scope of Participation

The science—society relationships described in Chapter 5 are echoed in miniature in how texts treat expertise. Just as demarcation work at the societal level depicts science as separate from (and nearly always superior to) other forms of knowledge-making, demarcation work at the individual level determines who does and doesn’t have authority to talk about a particular issue. Often this determination is based on claims of expertise, with categorization of knowledge as ‘expert’ setting the ‘scope of participation’ (Nisbet, p. 44). Thus, representations of expertise in popular science texts signal readers about what ‘systems of knowledge and ways of knowing are relevant (or irrelevant)’ (Gee, p. 112) in science-related conversations.
One Degree of Separation

Unlike driving a car, flying a plane, or practicing law or medicine, you don’t actually need a degree to pursue biomedical research. There is no governing body that will only issue a license to conduct biomedical research to card-carrying PhDs or MDs from an accredited program in the United States. In fact, there are, technically, no restrictions whatsoever, and strictly speaking you don’t need even need any kind of degree to pursue clinical research on human subjects, although you may need to work with a licensed medical doctor. You don’t even need a graduate degree or for that matter an undergraduate degree. It is worthwhile to consider that some of the greatest researchers of the nineteenth centuries never even finished college (e.g., Michael Faraday of electricity fame and Gregor Mendel of basic genetics), though admittedly that would be pretty tough today given the huge amount of scientific knowledge out there. So if the research bug has bitten you, you shouldn’t necessarily restrict yourself to any one type of degree. And if you have already finished your training, there is no need to go back and get another degree—you simply don’t need it. And yet these stamps of approval, offered by venerable institutions, seem to hold a special power over us.
Analyze Gauss: optimal bounds for privacy-preserving PCA

We consider the problem of privately releasing a low dimensional approximation to a set of data records, represented as a matrix A in which each row corresponds to an individual and each column to an attribute. Our goal is to compute a subspace that captures the covariance of A as much as possible, classically known as principal component analysis (PCA). We assume that each row of A has L2 norm bounded by one, and the privacy guarantee is defined with respect to addition or removal of any single row. We show that the well-known, but misnamed, randomized response algorithm, with properly tuned parameters, provides nearly optimal additive quality gap compared to the best possible singular subspace of A. We further show that when A’A has a large eigenvalue gap – a reason often cited for PCA – the quality improves significantly. Optimality (up to logarithmic factors) is proved using techniques inspired by the recent work of Bun, Ullman, and Vadhan on applying Tardos’s fingerprinting codes to the construction of hard instances for private mechanisms for 1-way marginal queries. Along the way we define a list culling game which may be of independent interest. By combining the randomized response mechanism with the well-known following the perturbed leader algorithm of Kalai and Vempala we obtain a private online algorithm with nearly optimal regret. The regret of our algorithm even outperforms all the previously known online non-private algorithms of this type. We achieve this better bound by, satisfyingly, borrowing insights and tools from differential privacy!
Women's attitudes toward practicing cytomegalovirus prevention behaviors.

Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection causes severe disabilities and developmental delays. Women's awareness of CMV is low. Only about half of healthcare providers report counseling women about behaviors to reduce CMV risk and public health education is limited. Routine CMV counseling is not recommend. Providers may lack time to counsel women; other conditions may take priority for counseling; there may be a perception that women are reluctant to follow advice. This cross-sectional descriptive study examined women's attitudes toward CMV prevention behaviors. Data were collected from an online panel of 840 U.S. women 18–40 years of age, who had a child < 5 years of age, and were pregnant or planning a pregnancy in the next 12 months. Questions assessed CMV awareness, frequency of past behaviors that transmit CMV, and attitudes toward eight CMV prevention behaviors. Only 15.5% of women were somewhat or very familiar with CMV. Very few women (6.1%) reported hearing from their provider about CMV. Women held positive attitudes toward the CMV prevention behaviors and perceived them as feasible. Least positive attitudes were toward not kissing a child on the lips and not sharing foods. Predictors of positive attitudes were CMV awareness, past behavior, talking to a healthcare provider, and perceived risk reduction. Healthcare providers and public health practitioners should collaborate to increase CMV awareness. Encouraging behaviors to reduce saliva sharing may result in greater gains in reducing CMV infection.
Market Intelligence: Social Media Analytics and Hotel Online Reviews

In order to demonstrate the usefulness of social media analytics, this chapter applies text analytics to classify hotel properties based upon dimensions of guest experiences in association with satisfaction ratings in hotel online reviews. The findings of the study reveal the market structure of the industry; that is, hotel properties can be distinguished based upon words consumers use to describe their experience in combination with the level of satisfaction and to a better understanding of the competitive landscape of the hotel industry. This study contributes to the development of new approaches to identify competitive sets for hotels which, in turn, can help hotels better position themselves based upon eWOM.
Exploiting SPM-aware Scheduling on EPIC architectures for high-performance real-time systems

In contemporary computer architectures, the Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing Architectures (EPIC) permits microprocessors to implement Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) by using the compiler, rather than complex on-die circuitry to control parallel instruction execution like the superscalar architecture. Based on the EPIC, this paper proposes a time predictable two-level scratchpad based memory architecture, and a Scratchpad-aware Scheduling method to improve the performance by optimizing the Load-To-Use Distance.
Ascorbic acid and ascorbate cause disappearance of patulin from buffer solutions and apple juice.

High-performance liquid chromatography was used to measure patulin in studies on the effect of ascorbic acid or ascorbate on stability of the mycotoxin. First, patulin was added to give a final concentration of 5000 μg per liter of buffer at pH 7.5 and 25 C to which 2% (w/v) of sodium ascorbate was added at Day 0 or Day 6. The rate of disappearance of patulin increased immediately after addition of ascorbate. Second, patulin was added to give a final concentration of 5000 μg per liter in a buffer at pH 3.5 and 25 C to which 3, 1, 0.5, 0.15 or 0% (w/v) of an ascorbic acid: ascorbic mixture (Vit C) was added. The amount of patulin decreased at a faster rate in samples which contained the Vit C than in the control samples without Vit C. Rates of disappearance of the mycotoxin increased with an increasing concentration of Vit C. Third, patulin was added to give a final concentration of 300 μg per liter in samples of apple juice to which 5 and 0% Vit C was added. Samples were held at 10 C throughout the experiment. Patulin disappeared from apple juice when Vit C was present, but the mycotoxin was quite stable in its absence.
Oxygen Tolerant and Room Temperature RAFT through Alkylborane Initiation

A reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) process was developed capable of being performed at room temperature and in the presence of oxygen by initiating polymerization through an alkylborane–amine complex. This air-stable alkylborane–amine complex was chemically deblocked with carboxylic acid or isocyanate functionalities to liberate a reactive trialkylborane that consumes oxygen and generates radicals to mediate RAFT. Alkylborane-initiated RAFT (AI-RAFT) was demonstrated to allow the synthesis of a wide range of polymer molecular weights with narrow distributions. Rapid polymerization was also possible within minutes under an ambient environment without any prior deoxygenation. Optimal conditions were investigated revealing that carboxylic acids are required in larger excess to alkylborane versus isocyanates and that deblocker functionality can have an impact on polymerization kinetics, achievable molecular weight, and dispersity. Living chain-ends were confirmed by synthesizing block c...
The TNF Superfamily Molecule LIGHT Promotes the Generation of Circulating and Lung-Resident Memory CD8 T Cells following an Acute Respiratory Virus Infection

The transition of effector T cells or memory precursors into distinct long-lived memory T cell subsets is not well understood. Although many molecules made by APCs can contribute to clonal expansion and effector cell differentiation, it is not clear if clonal contraction and memory development is passive or active. Using respiratory virus infection, we found that CD8 T cells that cannot express the TNF family molecule lymphotoxin-like, exhibits inducible expression, competes with HSV glycoprotein D for herpes virus entry mediator, a receptor expressed by T lymphocytes (LIGHT) are unimpaired in their initial response and clonally expand to form effector cell pools. Thereafter, LIGHT-deficient CD8 T cells undergo strikingly enhanced clonal contraction with resultant compromised accumulation of both circulating and tissue-resident memory cells. LIGHT expression at the peak of the effector response regulates the balance of several pro- and antiapoptotic genes, including Akt, and has a preferential impact on the development of the peripheral memory population. These results underscore the importance of LIGHT activity in programming memory CD8 T cell development, and suggest that CD8 effector T cells can dictate their own fate into becoming memory cells by expressing LIGHT.
Culture and shyness in childhood and adolescence

Abstract Shyness refers to anxious reactivity in challenging social situations. Whereas shyness is believed to be biologically rooted, individual socialization experiences play a role in shaping its development. In this paper, I discuss issues related to culture, different forms of shyness, and adjustment. Cultural beliefs and values, particularly those related to socialization goals, are reflected in adults' and peers' attitudes toward children's shy behavior, which ascribe meaning to the behavior and, at the same time, regulate its development. Culture also determines, in part, the functional significance of shyness in terms of its relations with adjustment. It will be important to investigate the mediating role of social processes, such as evaluations and responses in peer interactions, in cultural influence on the display and developmental patterns of shyness. It will also be important to examine the implications of social and cultural changes for the development of shyness.
Nonperturbative Renormalization of Operators in Near-Conformal Systems Using Gradient Flows.

We propose a continuous real space renormalization group transformation based on gradient flow, allowing for a numerical study of renormalization without the need for costly ensemble matching. We apply our technique in a pilot study of SU(3) gauge theory with ${N}_{f}=12$ fermions in the fundamental representation, finding the mass anomalous dimension to be ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{m}=0.23(6)$, consistent with other perturbative and lattice estimates. We also present the first lattice calculation of the nucleon anomalous dimension in this theory, finding ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{N}=0.05(5)$.
Factors hindering access to abortion services.

Although abortion services are readily available in large urban areas to those able to pay, a 1993 survey of U.S. abortion providers shows that access to service is still problematic for many women because of barriers related to distance, gestation limits, costs and harassment. Among women who have nonhospital abortions, an estimated 24% travel at least 50 miles from their home to the abortion facility. Although 98% of providers will perform abortions at eight weeks after the last menstrual period, only 48% will perform abortions at 13 weeks and 13% at 21 weeks. Half of nonhospital abortion providers estimate that more than four days elapse on average between their patients' first telephone contact and the date of the procedure; one in seven say that more than one week elapses. Most women are able to obtain abortion services in one visit to a clinic. The average woman having a first-trimester nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia paid $296 for the procedure in 1993, up from $251 in 1989. On average, nonhospital facilities charged $604 at 16 weeks of gestation and $1,067 at 20 weeks. Eighty-six percent of nonhospital facilities providing 400 or more abortions in 1992 were the targets of antiabortion harassment. Picketing at facilities and the homes of staff members, vandalism and chemical attacks increased significantly between 1988 and 1992, but the incidence of bomb threats decreased.
Synthesis of polymeric nanomaterials for biomedical applications

Abstract: This chapter focuses on two types of polymeric nanomaterials, nanoparticles and nano scaffolds. The first section will discuss various polymers that have been used to synthesize nanomaterials, their structures, properties, advantages and applications. The second part of this chapter discusses different methods of polymer nanoparticle synthesis such as solvent evaporation, emulsification-diffusion, salting out, supercritical fluid technology, polymerization, ion gelation and nanoprecipitation. Also it further describes the most commonly used methods for the preparation of polymeric nano scaffolds, including electrospinning, molecular self-assembly, phase separation and solvent casting methods. In the final part of the chapter, the techniques used for the detailed characterization of these nanomaterials will be discussed.
Eating Your Way to Health

In lieu of an abstract, below is the first paragraph of the paper. Nutrition is a factor that affects an individual throughout the course of his or her life, beginning in the prenatal form and continuing through childhood and into adulthood. Infants and children are very susceptible and vulnerable to the nutritional choices made primarily by their parents, which may affect them for the remainder of their lives. Various studies have been done to show that incorporating a nutritious diet, including breast milk, has a positive effect on the physical, cognitive, and social development of a child. Mothers are ultimately in total control of what their child comes in contact with and should be aware of how important nutrition and breastfeeding are to the overall health of their child. In my opinion, most women in today's society aren't handling this factor as seriously as they should, which is one of the reasons for the alarming statistics in the overall well-being of our children. This article is available in The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/ur/vol10/iss1/8 Eating Your Way to Health
Discovery: Legal Aspects

Discovery is the legal process used in common law systems to compel production of information relevant to disputed factual issues in litigation. This article outlines the purposes of discovery, briefly summarizes the law in the leading common law jurisdictions, reviews the empirical and theoretical work on discovery's effectiveness, and offers a brief comparison to analogous civil law approaches.
Measures of state self-control and its causes for trackable activities

Abstract Researchers have developed measures of trait self-control, or one's general tendency to have self-control. However, measures that provide insight into state self-control, or self-control for specific behaviors, are lacking. The current research addresses this gap for trackable activities, or behaviors an actor monitors over time with the goal of engaging in an acceptable amount of the behavior (e.g., eating, shopping). The authors develop multi-item perceptual measures of standards, monitoring capacity, and monitoring, three factors that contribute to self-control for these types of behaviors, as well as a measure of state self-control that can be used in conjunction with these measures. Seven studies support the measures' reliability and validity and demonstrate the measures' adaptability to a variety of trackable activities, including eating, shopping, drinking, smoking, and gambling. The measures provide a tool for researchers seeking to gain insight into self-control for specific behaviors, with practical implications for policymakers, marketers, and managers.
Anterior Versus Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion: Perioperative Risk Factors and 30-Day Outcomes

ABSTRACT Background: Operative management of lower back pain often necessitates anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF) or transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF). Specific pathoanatomic advantages and indications exist for both approaches, and few studies to date have characterized comparative early outcomes. Methods: Adult patients undergoing elective ALIF or TLIF operations were abstracted from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) years 2011–2014. Univariate analyses were performed by surgery cohort for each outcome and adjusted for demographic/clinical variables (age ≥ 65, sex, race, body mass index, American Society of Anesthesiologists physical classification score, functional status, inpatient/outpatient status, smoking, hypertension, Charlson Comorbidity Index) using multivariable regression. Means, standard errors, mean differences (B), odds ratios (ORs), and associated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) are reported. Significance was assessed at P Results: Of 8263 subjects (ALIF: 4325, TLIF: 3938), ALIF subjects were younger, less obese, less physically impaired, and had significantly lower rates of hypertension, diabetes, coagulopathy, and previous cardiac surgery. On multivariable analysis, ALIF associated with shorter operative time (B = −11.80 minutes, 95% CI [−16.48, −7.12]; P Conclusions: Comparatively, ALIF patients experienced decreased operative time and decreased incidence of postoperative UTIs and blood transfusions. Anterior lumbar interbody fusion patients were more likely to suffer postoperative pulmonary complications and longer hospital stays. Our data support the notion that both anterior and transforaminal surgical approaches perform comparably in context of 30-day perioperative outcomes.
The Action Is Everywhere, But Greater at More Localized Spatial Scales: Comparing Concentrations of Crime across Addresses, Streets, and Neighborhoods:

Objectives:Recent work has debated which geographic scale is most relevant to understanding the clustering of crime and disorder across a city. This study introduces nested Gini coefficients that h...
Performing the Blessing: Revisiting Lucille Clifton’s BLESSING THE BOATS (AT ST. MARY’S)

The first track in Bill Murray and Jan Vogler’s hybrid album New Worlds (2017) features Lucille Clifton’s poem “blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s),” bringing attention not only to the relationship ...
Tolerance Under Siege: African Principles of Conflict Resolution

Dispute settlement mechanisms through grassroots courts are widely popular in Darfur, Oromia, and the Tana Delta. Community leaders, respected elders, religious leaders, and village chiefs have played a significant role in promoting traditions, handling conflicts, and maintaining peace and stability. Political manipulation by governments and the proliferation of modern weapons have significantly affected those courts’ ability to continue their traditional peace-building role and contributed to a major escalation of armed violence in all three countries. The Judiya and Native Administration in Darfur, the Mangama and Michu in Benishangul-Gumuz and western Oromia, and the Ibisa, the Gasa, and Matadheda councils in the Tana Delta are fundamental community-based dispute-solving mechanisms. Their decline due to government manipulation and easy access to arms hugely contributed to conflict.
Marginalized Denoising Autoencoders for Domain Adaptation

Stacked denoising autoencoders (SDAs) have been successfully used to learn new representations for domain adaptation. Recently, they have attained record accuracy on standard benchmark tasks of sentiment analysis across different text domains. SDAs learn robust data representations by reconstruction, recovering original features from data that are artificially corrupted with noise. In this paper, we propose marginalized SDA (mSDA) that addresses two crucial limitations of SDAs: high computational cost and lack of scalability to high-dimensional features. In contrast to SDAs, our approach of mSDA marginalizes noise and thus does not require stochastic gradient descent or other optimization algorithms to learn parameters ? in fact, they are computed in closed-form. Consequently, mSDA, which can be implemented in only 20 lines of MATLAB^{TM}, significantly speeds up SDAs by two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the representations learnt by mSDA are as effective as the traditional SDAs, attaining almost identical accuracies in benchmark tasks.
Enhancing droplet transition capabilities using sloped microfluidic channel geometry for stable droplet operation

Droplet-based microfluidics technology allows for the generation and control of droplets that function as independent chemical and biological reactors, enabling broad ranges of high-throughput assays. As more complex multi-step assays are being realized in droplet format, maintaining droplet stability throughout the assay becomes a critical requirement. Unfortunately, as droplets go through multiple manipulation steps, droplet breakage is commonly seen, especially where droplets have to go through sharp transitions in direction and shape. Standard microfabrication techniques typically result in inherent sharp geometry in Z-direction due to their two-dimensional fabrication nature. Recent advancement in micro- and nano- fabrication technology using two-photon polymerization (2PP) is enabling complex 3D microstructures with sub-micrometer resolution to be readily fabricated. Here, utilizing this microfabrication technique, we present a simple solution to the droplet stability challenge by utilizing sloped-geometry microfluidic channels to enable microdroplets to smoothly transition between microfluidic channels having two different heights without breakage. The technique and innovation demonstrated here have the potential to replace conventional droplet microfluidic device fabrication approaches and enable droplet microfluidic platforms to achieve significantly higher level of efficiency, accuracy, and stability never realized before.
Internationalization in Higher Education: Global Trends and Recommendations for Its Future.

Internationalization as a concept and strategic agenda is a relatively new, broad, and varied phenomenon in tertiary education. During the past half-century, internationalization has evolved from a...
Fluid-Structure Interaction with Incompressible Fluids

These lecture notes cover a series of three two-hour lectures on fluid-structure interaction involving incompressible, viscous fluids, presented as the CIME Summer Workshop entitled “Progress in Mathematical Fluid Dynamics”, held in Cetraro, Italy, in June 2019. They are intended for graduate students and postdocs with interest in mathematical fluid dynamics. The goal was to present certain mathematical techniques, developed within the past 6 years, to study existence of weak solutions for a class of fluid-structure interaction problems between viscous, incompressible fluids and elastic, viscoelastic, or composite structures. The resulting problem is a nonlinear moving-boundary problem with a strong geometric nonlinearity associated with the fluid domain motion. The existence proof is constructive. It is based on semidiscretizing the coupled problem in time, also known as Rothe’s method, and then using a Lie operator splitting strategy to define fluid and structure subproblems, which communicate via the initial data. The Lie operator splitting is designed in just the right way so that the energy balance at the discrete level approximates well that of the coupled, continuous problem. To prove convergence of approximating sequences to a weak solution of the coupled problem, a recent generalization of the Aubin–Lions–Simon compactness lemma to problems on moving domains is used. The methodology presented here served as a basis for the construction of several loosely coupled partitioned schemes for solving fluid-structure interaction problems.
823 CD4 T cells are essential for an anti-tumor effect in a B78 murine melanoma tumor model

Background Mice bearing B78 melanoma tumors can be cured using an in situ vaccine (ISV) regimen that includes radiation (RT) together with immunocytokine (tumor-targeting mAb conjugated to IL-2). B78 melanoma cells, derived from B16 cells, express minimal to no MHC-I but express MHC-II upon IFN-g/TNF-a stimulation. Although B78 cells are primarily MHC-I-deficient, an increased CD8 T cell infiltration into the tumor microenvironment (TME) has been shown following ISV.1 To further investigate the potential role of specific immune cell lineages in the B78 anti-tumor response to ISV, immune subset depletion studies and flow cytometric analyses were performed. Methods C57BL/6 mice bearing B78 tumors were depleted of immune cell subsets with mAbs (anti-CD4, anti-CD8, anti-NK1.1, or Rat IgG control) for 3 weeks during the course of treatment. Treatment groups included no treatment, RT (12 Gy), or ISV (RT D0 and immunocytokine D5-D9). 6 mice/group (repeated three times) were followed for survival/tumor growth, and flow cytometry studies included 4 mice/group, sacrificed on D8 and D13 following the start of ISV. Results Mice depleted of CD4 T cells during the course of ISV showed a significant reduction of anti-tumor effect as compared to mice treated with ISV/Rat IgG (p Conclusions These studies suggest that CD4 T cells are essential for an anti-tumor response in the B78 melanoma model. In vivo depletion data show that CD4 T cells, but not CD8 or NK cells, are required for a decrease in tumor growth via ISV. Flow cytometric analyses suggest an interplay between CD4 and CD8 T cells as indicated by a decrease in CD8/IFN-g expression following ISV in the absence of CD4 T cells. The role that MHC-I and MHC-II expression plays in this CD4/CD8 T cell anti-tumor response is under investigation. In future studies, B78 melanoma may serve as a critical syngeneic model for development of more effective immunotherapy treatment regimens. Ethics Approval All animal experiments were performed in accordance with protocols approved by Animal Care and Use Committees of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Reference Morris Z, Guy E, Francis D, et al. In situ tumor vaccination by combining local radiation and tumor-specific antibody or immunocytokine treatments. Cancer Res 2016;76(13):3929-3941.
Combined Approach to Multi-Informant Data Using Latent Factors and Latent Classes: Trifactor Mixture Model:

Although collecting data from multiple informants is highly recommended, methods to model the congruence and incongruence between informants are limited. Bauer and colleagues suggested the trifacto...
Interleukin-20 exacerbates acute hepatitis and bacterial infection by downregulating IκBζ target genes in hepatocytes.

Background & Aims Interleukin (IL)-20 and IL-22 belong to the IL-10 family. IL-10 is a well-documented anti-inflammatory cytokine while IL-22 is well known for epithelial protection and its antibacterial function, showing great therapeutic potential for organ damage; however, the function of IL-20 remains largely unknown. Methods Il20 knockout (Il20−/−) mice and wild-type littermates were generated and injected with Concanavalin A (ConA) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (K.P.) to induce acute hepatitis and bacterial infection, respectively. Results Il20−/− mice were resistant to acute hepatitis and exhibited selectively elevated levels of the hepatoprotective cytokine IL-6. Such selective inhibition of IL-6 by IL-20 was due to IL-20 targeting hepatocytes that produce high levels of IL-6 but a limited number of other cytokines. Mechanistically, IL-20 upregulated NAD(P)H: quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) expression and subsequently promoted the protein degradation of transcription factor IκBζ, resulting in selective downregulation of the IκBζ-dependent gene Il6 as well several other IκBζ-dependent genes including lipocalin-2 (Lcn2). Given the important role of IL-6 and LCN2 in limiting bacterial infection, we examined the effect of IL-20 on bacterial infection and found Il20−/− mice were resistant to K.P. infection and exhibited elevated levels of hepatic IκBζ-dependent antibacterial genes. Moreover, IL-20 upregulated hepatic NQO1 by binding to IL-22R1/IL-20R2 and activating ERK/p38MAPK/NRF2 signaling pathways. Finally, the levels of hepatic IL1B, IL20, and IκBζ target genes were elevated, and correlated with each other, in patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis. Conclusions IL-20 selectively inhibits hepatic IL-6 production rather than exerting IL-10-like broad anti-inflammatory properties. Unlike IL-22, IL-20 aggravates acute hepatitis and bacterial infection. Thus, anti-IL-20 therapy could be a promising option to control acute hepatitis and bacterial infection. Lay summary Several interleukin (IL)-20 family cytokines have been shown to play important roles in controllimg inflammatory responses, infection and tissue damage, but the role of IL-20 remains unclear. Herein, we elucidated the role of IL-20 in liver disease and bacterial infection. We show that IL-20 can aggravate hepatitis and bacterial infection; thus, targeting IL-20 holds promise for the treatment of patients with liver disease.
Third-trimester repeat HIV testing: it is time we make it universal.

Since the 1990s, perinatal transmission of HIV has decreased substantially, largely as a result of improved detection secondary to routine HIV screening in pregnancy and the use of antiretroviral therapy. However, despite reductions in HIV transmission, elimination of perinatal transmission, defined as an incidence of perinatal HIV infection of 1 per 1000 per year; or have signs or symptoms of acute HIV). However, among reproductive-age women, heterosexual intercourse is the most common mode of HIV transmission, and the risk of HIV seroconversion is greater during pregnancy than outside of pregnancy. Furthermore, state statutes for HIV testing in pregnancy are largely lacking. In this clinical opinion, we reviewed the evidence in support of universal third-trimester repeat HIV testing in pregnancy using a successful state-mandated testing program in Illinois. In addition, we provided clinical recommendations to further reduce missed perinatal transmission cases by implementing universal third-trimester repeat testing, obtaining hospital buy-in, monitoring testing adherence, bridging communications across multidisciplinary teams, and engaging clinicians in advocacy work.