cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages: Empirical Analyses Using the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts 1992, 1996, and 2001 Data

We analyze thousands of trials from a substantial fraction of the nation's most populous counties. Evidence across ten years and three major datasets suggests that: (1) juries and judges award punitive damages in approximately the same ratio to compensatory damages, (2) the level of punitive damages awards has not increased, and (3) juries' and judges' tendencies to award punitive damages differ in bodily injury and no-bodily-injury cases. Jury trials are associated with a greater rate of punitive damages awards in financial injury cases. Judge trials are associated with a greater rate of punitive damages awards in bodily injury cases.
Dominance, the bidirectional hypothesis, and Pavlovian backward conditioning in the US-US paradigm

Based upon considerations raised by Soviet research, the role of relative stimulus intensity, or dominance, in the unconditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (US-US) paradigm was investigated under circumstances presumed favorable to the backward conditioned response (CR). Using the classically conditioned forelimb response of the cat, a brief shock (USD delivered to one forepaw preceded a shock (US2) to the opposite forepaw in paired conditioning fashion; subjects in the control group received explicitly unpaired presentations of the stimuli. Conditioning in both the forward and backward directions was evaluated by the appearance of contralateral CRs on test trials to each of the USs. In Experiment 1, a ratio of the intensities between US1 and US2 of 100:80 was used to create a relative dominance in favor of the backward CR. In addition, to evaluate the suggestion that the appearance of the backward CR is retarded in the Pavlovian paradigm, overtraining was provided to a forward conditioning criterion of 200%. In Experiment 2, the cats were exposed to successive reductions in the intensity of US2 to verify manipulations of dominance reportedly involved in the reactivation of a latent backward CR. Although forward conditioning was readily established to USl, there was no evidence of back-ward conditioning to US2 under any of the conditions.
EVALUATION OF SOME IMMUNOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC ACTIVE HEPATITIS B TREATED WITH α INTERFERON. 80

EVALUATION OF SOME IMMUNOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC ACTIVE HEPATITIS B TREATED WITH α INTERFERON. 80
Influence of Organic Fertilizer Source on Fatty Acid Composition of Zooplankton and Sunshine Bass Fingerlings

Abstract We evaluated the influence of three organic fertilizers—cottonseed meal, ground rice bran, and ground flaxseed—on the fatty acid composition of zooplankton and fingerling sunshine bass (female white bass Morone chrysops × male striped bass M. saxatilis). Flaxseed contains about 10-fold greater lipid and percent α-linolenic acid (18:3[n-3]); values relative to the other two organic fertilizers. Five 0.04-ha nursery ponds were randomly selected per treatment; 5 d before fish stocking (4 d posthatch; 150,000 fish/ha) and again at day 20 poststocking, ponds were individually fertilized at a rate of 350 kg/ha. After 27 d of culture, zooplankton in the flaxseed treatment contained significantly more 18:3(n-3) than those in the other fertilizer treatments (10.5% versus ∼7.0%). Likewise, after 40 d of culture, sunshine bass fingerlings reared in ponds fertilized with flaxseed possessed almost twofold higher 18:3(n-3) (10.7%) than those reared in rice bran (4.7%) and cottonseed (5.8%) treatment ponds. Fis...
The pulmonary fibrosis-associated MUC5B promoter polymorphism does not influence the development of interstitial pneumonia in systemic sclerosis.

Background More than 80% of patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) develop lung involvement, most commonly interstitial pneumonia (IP). We recently identified a common variant in the promoter region of MUC5B (rs35705950) that has a significant effect on the risk of developing both familial and sporadic forms of IP. We hypothesized that this MUC5B promoter polymorphism is also associated with IP in subjects with SSc. Methods We examined the minor allele frequency of the MUC5B polymorphism among 231 subjects with SSc, 109 with IP, and 122 without IP. IP diagnosis was confirmed by HRCT imaging and defined as the presence of reticular infiltrates and/or honeycomb cysts. FVC and diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (Dlco) were also assessed. Results We found no association between IP and the MUC5B polymorphism among subjects with SSc (OR = 1.1, P = .80). The frequencies of the MUC5B polymorphism among subjects with SSc with IP (10.6%) and without IP (9.4%) were similar to the frequency observed in a population of unaffected control subjects (9.0%). In secondary analyses, we found the MUC5B polymorphism was not significantly associated with either FVC ( P = .42) or Dlco ( P = .06). No association with SSc-associated IP was found even when we used a more conservative definition of IP (FVC ≤ 70% and evidence of reticulations or honeycombing vs SSc FVC > 70% and no evidence of reticulation or honeycombing). Conclusions Although SSc-associated IP is clinically, radiologically, and histologically similar to other forms of IP, it appears to have distinct genetic risk factors. This study highlights the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of IP in general.
From program theory to tests of program theory

The benefits of program theory will not fully accrue unless program theory is tested; alternative approaches to such testing are discussed.
EUROPE AND ITS ORIENTS IN ZIONIST CULTURE BEFORE THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Zionism’s call for a Jewish return to ‘the East’ was rooted in part in a broader European fascination with ‘the Orient’. This interest in ‘the East’ coincided in time and in much of its imagery with a conceptual division of Europe itself into its ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ parts. The Jews were deeply implicated in these twin conceptualizations of ‘the Orient’ and of Europe’s own orient at home (referred to at times as halbasien, or half-Asia). The notion that Jews – particularly those of eastern Europe – constituted a semi-Asiatic, foreign element in European society became a pervasive trope by the latter part of the century, and one to which Zionist thought and praxis sought to respond in a variety of ways. When Zionists in Palestine, mostly eastern European Jews transplanted further east yet to the ‘Orient’, set out to create a new Hebrew national culture there, competing images of occident and Orient – resonating with a wide range of racial, social, political, and cultural overtones – would play defining roles in their praxis and in the cultural institutions, the rituals, and the national liturgy they would fashion.
Multiple Performance Measures in the Selection of a Sequencing Rule

While it is well known that managers make scheduling decisions based on multiple objectives, the majority of sequencing research is directed towards single criterion assessments of scheduling performance. A preference value decision model approach for the selection of job shop sequencing rules using multiple performance criteria is presented. The model is general in nature and may be applied to any of a number of sequencing rules and performance measures. A case example is provided to illustrate the procedure.
A Description of the Integration of Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Competencies in the First 100 Weeks of Medical Student Education

Background and Introduction The practice of medicine, the delivery of health care, and medical school curricula have evolved significantly over the past 100 years. Current societal expectations are that our health care systems offer safe, evidence-based, patient-centered care, provided by cohesive, interprofessional teams within systems that limit error, ensure quality, and maximize benefits. The need to transform medical education to include interprofessional educational opportunities that ensure health professionals learn to work collaboratively is well recognized. The basic sciences and medical knowledge must be integrated with clinical practice. The four newly created goals for medical education include standardization of learning outcomes and individualization of the learning process, integration of formal knowledge and clinical experience, development of habits of inquiry and innovation, and focus on professional identity formation. In the development of our new Hofstra North Shore School of Medicine’s (HSOM) curricula, these goals were considered and are evident throughout the interprofessional educational experiences.
Incremental Sparse Bayesian Method for Online Dialog Strategy Learning

This paper proposes an incremental sparse Bayesian learning method to allow continuous dialog strategy learning from the interactions with real users. Since conventional reinforcement learning (RL) methods require a huge number of dialogs to reach convergence, it has been essential to use a simulated user in training dialog policies. The disadvantage of this approach is that the trained dialog policies always lag behind the optimal one for live users. In order to tackle this problem, a few studies applying online RL methods to dialog management have emerged and showed very promising results. However, these methods are limited to learning online the weight parameters of the basis functions in the model and so need batch learning on a fixed data set or some heuristics to find appropriate values for other meta parameters such as sparsity-controlling thresholds, basis function parameters, and noise parameters. The proposed method attempts to overcome this limitation to achieve fully incremental and fast dialog strategy learning by adopting a sparse Bayesian learning method for value function approximation. In order to verify the proposed method, three different experimental conditions have been used: artificial data, a simulated user, and real users. The experiment on the artificial data showed that the proposed method successfully learns all the parameters in an incremental manner. Also, the experiment on training and evaluating dialog policies with a simulated user clearly demonstrated that the proposed method is much faster than conventional RL methods. A live user study showed that the dialog strategy learned from real users performed as good as the best past systems, although it slightly underperformed the one trained on simulated dialogs due to the difficulty of user feedback elicitation.
Measurements of experimental plasma brush behavior in hybrid armatures

Hybrid armatures used in railguns consist of a conducting link which is commutated to the rails by plasma brushes. The authors describe a set of experiments in which the effects of varying plasma brush parameters including the initial mass of metal foil used to form the plasma as well as the current were studied. The evolution of the plasma brush from a solid metal foil through its melt, vapor, and plasma phase was observed. The resulting brush length and voltage drop were measured. The results of these tests are presented, discussed, and compared to numerical simulations. The experiments have confirmed that a stable plasma can be formed and confined in a hybrid armature brush chamber by magnetic pressure. The experimental results support the numerical simulations which indicate that plasma brushes can be kept short enough to enable reasonably short chambers to be used in hybrid armatures. >
Gravitropism in Higher Plant Shoots V. Changing Sensitivity to Auxin

An alternative to the Cholodny-Went, auxin-transport hypothesis of gravitropic stem bending was proposed as early as 1958, suggesting that gravistimulation induces changes in sensitivity to auxin, accounting for differential growth and bending. To test the sensitivity hypothesis, we immersed marked, decapitated sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) hypocotyl sections in buffered auxin solutions over a wide concentration range (0, 10−8 to 10−2 molar IAA), photographed them at half-hour intervals, analyzed the negatives with a digitizer/computer, and evaluated surface-length changes in terms of Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics. Bending decreases with increasing auxin concentration; above about 10−4 molar IAA the hypocotyls bend down; increasing auxin inhibits elongation growth of lower surfaces (which is high at zero or relatively low auxin levels) but promotes upper-surface growth (which is low at low auxin levels). Thus, lower surfaces have a greater Km sensitivity to applied auxin than upper surfaces. At optimum auxin levels (maximum growth), growth of bottom surfaces exceeds that of top surfaces, so bottom tissues have a greater Vmax sensitivity. Vmax sensitivity of vertical controls is slightly lower than it is for either horizontal surface; Km sensitivity is intermediate. Clearly, gravistimulation leads to significant changes in tissue sensitivity to applied auxin. Perhaps these changes are also important in normal gravitropism.
Lectins and antibodies as molecular probes of molluscan hemocyte surface membranes

Abstract A variety of carbohydrate-specific lectins and antigen-specific antibodies have been employed to assess the occurrence and topographic distribution of surface membrane determinants on hemocytes of two stocks of the snail, Biomphalaria glabrata , which differ in their susceptibilities to larval blood fluke ( Schistosoma mansoni ) infections. Using fluorescence labeling methods, several “classes” of hemocyte membrane components have been identified. These include (1) macromolecules, primarily glycoproteins, possessing reactive sites for concanavalin A and Ricinus communis agglutinin, (2) snail hemolymph or hemolymph-like determinants, (3) fibronectin-like membrane components, and (4) surface determinants with structural similarities to murine Thy-1 antigen. No qualitative differences in surface molecular composition were observed between hemocytes of the two B . glabrata stocks, although the broad reaction specificity of most of the probe reagents employed preclude the detection of small or minor differences in hemocyte membrane structure. Results of these investigations indicate that snail hemocytes possess a complex array of surface membrane components some of which appear to be shared with higher vertebrate species.
Utilizing multichannel electrical resistivity methods to examine the dynamics of the fresh water–seawater interface in two Hawaiian groundwater systems

[1] Multichannel electrical resistivity (ER) measurements were conducted at two contrasting coastal sites in Hawaii to obtain new information on the spatial scales and dynamics of the fresh water–seawater interface and rates of coastal groundwater exchange. At Kiholo Bay (located on the dry, Kona side of the Big Island) and at a site in Maunalua Bay (Oahu), there is an evidence for abundant submarine groundwater discharge (SGD). However, the hydrologic and geologic controls on coastal groundwater discharge are likely to be different at these two sites. While at Kiholo Bay SGD is predominantly through lava tubes, at the Maunalua Bay site exchange occurs mostly through nearshore submarine springs. In order to calculate SGD fluxes, it is important to understand the spatial and temporal scales of coastal groundwater exchange. From ER time series data, subsurface salinity distributions were calculated using site-specific formation factors. A salinity mass balance box model was then used to calculate rates of point source (i.e., spatially discreet) and total fresh water discharge. From these data, mean SGD rates were calculated for Kiholo Bay (∼9,200 m3/d) and for the Maunalua Bay site (∼5,900 m3/d). While such results are on the same order of magnitude to geochemical tracer-derived SGD rates, the ER SGD rates provide enhanced details of coastal groundwater exchange that can enable a more cohesive whole watershed perspective.
Diabetes Genetic Predisposition Score and Cardiovascular Complications Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between genetic predisposition to type 2 diabetes (T2D) and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among patients with T2D. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The current study included 1,012 men and 1,310 women with T2D from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and Nurses’ Health Study, including 677 patients with CVD and 1,645 non-CVD control subjects. A genetic predisposition score (GPS) was calculated on the basis of 36 established independent diabetes-predisposing variants. RESULTS Each additional diabetes-risk allele in the GPS was associated with a 3% increased risk of CVD (odds ratio [OR] 1.03 [95% CI 1.00–1.06]). The OR was 1.47 (1.11–1.95) for CVD risk by comparing extreme quartiles of the GPS ( P for trend = 0.01). We also found that the GPS was positively associated with hemoglobin A 1c levels ( P = 0.009). CONCLUSIONS Genetic predisposition to T2D is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular complications in patients with T2D.
Model for the kinematics of polymer dissolution

The dissolution of glassy polymers is described by a phenomenological model of the motion of two boundaries: the liquid-gel boundary and the gel-glass boundary. The motion of these boundaries, as well as the concentration profile in the layers of a dissolving polymer, was obtained by numerical solution of the Stefan boundary value problem. Confirmation of the experimental program written to simulate the problem is established by its good agreement with direct observation of the dissolution dynamics of polystyrene in methyl ethyl ketone. A potential application of this model to the study of the dissolution dynamics of other polymer-solvent systems is done by simulating the dissolution of three types of polymer-solvent pairs: 1) swelling of rubber, 2) high glass transition concentration, and 3) low glass transition concentration. Contrasting dissolution characteristics are shown for the effect of different types of polymer-solvent pairs as well as for the effect of different molecular weights for the same type of polymer-solvent pair.
Real-time psychological assessment and evaluation of psychiatric patients

The utility of an on-line computer system for psychiatric patient evaluations is discussed. The on-line system implemented at the Psychiatric Service of the Salt Lake City VA Hospital is functionally described. Hardware and systems programming are specified.
David Armstrong on instantiation : A difference that makes a difference

Etude de la conception realiste non-relationnelle des universaux developpee par D. Armstrong a partir du rejet de la relation traditionnelle d'actualisation qui unit la substance a ses attributs. Observant une difference de traitement de la relation d'actualisation dans les deux ouvrages de Armstrong, «Nominalism and realism» (1978) et «A world of states of affairs» (1997), l'A. montre que le premier se refere au formalisme de Duns Scot, alors que le second utilise la notion d'objet incomplet definie par Frege. Selon l'A., cette substitution de l'un a l'autre a son importance: elle marque chez Armstrong le passage d'une theorie conceptualiste a une position realiste concernant l'ontologie des universaux
Dual-mode Imaging of Cutaneous Tissue Oxygenation and Vascular Function

Accurate assessment of cutaneous tissue oxygenation and vascular function is important for appropriate detection, staging, and treatment of many health disorders such as chronic wounds. We report the development of a dual-mode imaging system for non-invasive and non-contact imaging of cutaneous tissue oxygenation and vascular function. The imaging system integrated an infrared camera, a CCD camera, a liquid crystal tunable filter and a high intensity fiber light source. A Labview interface was programmed for equipment control, synchronization, image acquisition, processing, and visualization. Multispectral images captured by the CCD camera were used to reconstruct the tissue oxygenation map. Dynamic thermographic images captured by the infrared camera were used to reconstruct the vascular function map. Cutaneous tissue oxygenation and vascular function images were co-registered through fiduciary markers. The performance characteristics of the dual-mode image system were tested in humans.
p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Pathways in Asthma and COPD

The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family includes the p38 kinases, which consist of highly conserved proline-directed serine-threonine protein kinases that are activated in response to inflammatory signals. Of the four isoforms, p38α is the most abundant in inflammatory cells and has been the most studied through mainly the availability of small molecule inhibitors. The p38 substrates include transcription factors; other protein kinases, which in turn phosphorylate transcription factors; cytoskeletal proteins and translational components; and other enzymes. Both asthma and COPD are characterized by chronic airflow obstruction, airway and lung remodeling, and chronic inflammation. p38 is involved in the inflammatory responses induced by cigarette smoke exposure, endotoxin, and oxidative stress through activation and release of proinflammatory cytokines/chemokines, posttranslational regulation of these genes, and activation of inflammatory cell migration. Inhibition of p38 MAPK prevented allergen-induced pulmonary eosinophilia, mucus hypersecretion, and airway hyperresponsiveness, effects that may partly result from p38 activation on eosinophil apoptosis and on airway smooth muscle cell production of cytokines/chemokines. In addition, p38 regulates the augmented contractile response induced by oxidative stress. The activation of p38 observed in epithelial cells and macrophages also may underlie corticosteroid insensitivity of severe asthma and COPD. Therefore, p38 inhibitors present a potential attractive treatment of these conditions. Second-generation p38 inhibitors have been disappointing in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. In two 6-week studies in patients with COPD, the results were encouraging. Side effects such as liver toxicity remain a possibility, and whether the beneficial effects of p38 inhibitors are clinically significant and sustained need to be determined.
Strong Absorption Of Light By Multilayer Dielectric-Metal Structures

We present here an analysis of plane-wave absorption by a slightly lossy two-layer dielectric structure backed by a metal plate. It is shown first that there exists a close relationship between the guiding characteristics of the two-layer dielectric structure and the total absorption of a plane wave coupled by a prism into the lossy dielectric waveguide. On the basis of known surface-wave characteristics, a parametric study on the plane-wave absorption by the waveguide is carried out and the results show that such a waveguide structure can be used for the design of angularly selective polarization-independent optical absorbers or TM-polarized optical absorbers with a relatively large range of incident angle.
Optimal locally repairable codes with local minimum storage regeneration via rank-metric codes

This paper presents a new explicit construction for locally repairable codes (LRCs) for distributed storage systems. The codes possess all-symbols locality and maximal possible minimum distance, or equivalently, can tolerate the maximal number of node failures. This construction, based on maximum rank distance (MRD) Gabidulin codes, provides minimum distance optimal vector and scalar LRCs for a wide range of parameters. In addition, vector LRCs that allow for efficient local repair of failed nodes are considered. Towards this, the paper derives an upper bound on the amount of data that can be stored on DSS employing minimum distance optimal LRCs with given repair bandwidth, and presents codes which attain this bound by combining MRD and minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes.
On the geometry of null cones in Einstein-vacuum spacetimes

Abstract In this paper we study the geometry of null cones in smooth Einstein vacuum spacetimes. We provide the L ∞ estimate for the trace of the null second fundamental form, as well as estimates for other geometric quantities. This paper is based on the work of Klainerman and Rodnianski [S. Klainerman, I. Rodnianski, Causal geometry of Einstein-vacuum spacetimes with finite curvature flux, Invent. Math. 159 (3) (2005) 437–529; S. Klainerman, I. Rodnianski, Sharp trace theorems for null hypersurfaces on Einstein metrics with finite curvature flux, Geom. Funct. Anal. 16 (1) (2006) 164–229; S. Klainerman, I. Rodnianski, A geometric Littlewood–Paley theory, Geom. Funct. Anal. 16 (1) (2006) 126–163].
Regulation of emotions during experimental stress in alexithymia.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine whether deficits in emotion regulation manifest as a relative lack of congruence between subjective reports of emotion and autonomic activity when confronted with stressors. Methods: A pool of 830 university students was screened using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-Revised for deficits in emotion regulation associated with alexithymia. Those meeting a criterion floor cutoff and other inclusion criteria composed the experimental group and were matched on age, gender, and race to those in the control group. A final sample size of 94 students (47 in each group) was presented with experimental stressor tasks (the Stroop task and a conversation task) in counterbalanced order while autonomic activity data (heart rate and skin conductance) and subjective reports of negative affect were continuously collected during baseline, stressor exposure, and recovery periods. Data were analyzed to determine relative differences in congruence between the autonomic and subjective measures. Results: Data suggested that participants high in emotion regulation deficits reported consistently higher subjective negative affect relative to those without such deficits throughout baseline, stressor exposure, and recovery periods. However, autonomic activity remained nearly identical in both groups across phases. Explicit tests of group differences in congruence between autonomic and subjective emotion measures also partly supported evidence of subjective hyperarousal. Conclusions: Deficits in emotion regulation, as evidenced in those with high levels of the alexithymic trait, appear to manifest as chronically elevated subjective negative affect relative to autonomic activity regardless of the level of environmental demands. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
Data-driven matched field processing for Lamb wave structural health monitoring

Matched field processing is a model-based framework for localizing targets in complex propagation environments. In underwater acoustics, it has been extensively studied for improving localization performance in multimodal and multipath media. For guided wave structural health monitoring problems, matched field processing has not been widely applied but is an attractive option for damage localization due to equally complex propagation environments. Although effective, matched field processing is often challenging to implement because it requires accurate models of the propagation environment, and the optimization methods used to generate these models are often unreliable and computationally expensive. To address these obstacles, this paper introduces data-driven matched field processing, a framework to build models of multimodal propagation environments directly from measured data, and then use these models for localization. This paper presents the data-driven framework, analyzes its behavior under unmodeled multipath interference, and demonstrates its localization performance by distinguishing two nearby scatterers from experimental measurements of an aluminum plate. Compared with delay-based models that are commonly used in structural health monitoring, the data-driven matched field processing framework is shown to successfully localize two nearby scatterers with significantly smaller localization errors and finer resolutions.
Emerging concepts in periventricular white matter injury

Approximately 10% of newborns are born prematurely. Of these children, more than 10% will sustain neurological injuries leading to significant learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, or mental retardation, with very low birth weight infants having an even higher incidence of brain injury. Whereas intraventricular hemorrhage was the most common form of serious neurological injury a decade ago, periventricular white matter injury (PWMI) is now the most common cause of brain injury in preterm infants. The spectrum of chronic PWMI includes focal cystic necrotic lesions (periventricular leukomalacia; PVL) and diffuse myelination disturbances. Recent neuroimaging studies support that the incidence of PVL is declining, whereas diffuse cerebral white matter injury is emerging as the predominant lesion. Factors that predispose to PVL include prematurity, hypoxia, ischemia, and inflammation. It is believed that injury to oligodendrocyte (OL) progenitors contributes to the pathogenesis of myelination disturbances in PWMI by disrupting the maturation of myelin-myelin-forming oligodendrocytes. Other potential mechanisms of injury include activation of microglia and axonal damage. Chemical mediators that may contribute to white matter injury include reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS), glutamate, cytokines, and adenosine. As our understanding of the pathogenesis of PWMI improves, it is anticipated that new strategies for directly preventing brain injury in premature infants will evolve.
New Records of Freshwater Sponges (Porifera) for Southern Lake Michigan

Four species of freshwater sponge were identified in southern Lake Michigan: Spongilla lacustris (Linneaus), Eunapius fragilis (Leidy), Ephydatia fluviatilis (Linneaus), and Ephydatia muelleri (Lieberkuhn). Samples were collected from artificial substrates in Calumet (IL), Hammond (IN), and Michigan City (IN) harbors and represent the first reports of sponges in these waters. Numerical densities for all species combined were as high as 698 sponge colonies/m2 on the iron hull of the permanently moored 110-m-long ship Milwaukee Clipper in Hammond Harbor. These densities were lowest at 1-m depth and greater at 2- and 3-m depths. A positive correlation (r2 = 0.74) was found between the density of sponge colonies and the angle of the hull as it changed from near vertical at the water line to overhanging at greater depth (toward the keel). Ephydatia muelleri was the most common species based on frequency of occurrence and percent surface area covered. Observations of epizoic growth of sponges on live zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha Pallas) suggest that an ecological interaction exists between these two groups of organisms on these artificial substrates.
Early responses of plankton and turbidity to biomanipulation in a shallow prairie lake

We evaluated the effect of a fish removal from a shallow, turbid, eutrophic lake. By late May (following an October fish removal), the cladoceran community shifted from small-bodied Bosmina and Chydorus (less than 1001−1) to larger Daphnia (over 1001−1). During the periods of peak daphnid abundance (late May-June) chlorophyll-a concentrations and edible diatoms were reduced and water transparency improved dramatically. Total phosphorus was not significantly lowered during this period. Although this clear-water phase was short-lived (May, June and early July), it corresponded to the critical period of plant growth and allowed dramatic increases in submergent macrophytes.
Integration of treatment innovation planning and implementation: strategic process models and organizational challenges

Sustained and effective use of evidence-based practices in substance abuse treatment services faces both clinical and contextual challenges. Implementation approaches are reviewed that rely on variations of plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles, but most emphasize conceptual identification of core components for system change strategies. A two-phase procedural approach is therefore presented based on the integration of Texas Christian University (TCU) models and related resources for improving treatment process and program change. Phase 1 focuses on the dynamics of clinical services, including stages of client recovery (cross-linked with targeted assessments and interventions), as the foundations for identifying and planning appropriate innovations to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Phase 2 shifts to the operational and organizational dynamics involved in implementing and sustaining innovations (including the stages of training, adoption, implementation, and practice). A comprehensive system of TCU assessments and interventions for client and program-level needs and functioning are summarized as well, with descriptions and guidelines for applications in practical settings.
The effects of adrenal demedullation on conditioned fear*1

Abstract The effects of bilateral adrenal demedullation on the acquisition of a conditioned fear response were investigated. There was no effect of this manipulation on the degree of suppression of an ongoing licking response for water by a fear-provoking conditioned stimulus. Females showed greater suppression of drinking following the CS presentation than did males and took more trials to adapt to this stimulus than did males.
Simulating fermions on a quantum computer

Abstract The real-time probabilistic simulation of quantum systems in classical computers is known to be limited by the so-called dynamical sign problem, a problem leading to exponential complexity. In 1981 Richard Feynman raised some provocative questions in connection to the “exact imitation” of such systems using a special device named a “quantum computer”. Feynman hesitated about the possibility of imitating fermion systems using such a device. Here we address some of his concerns and, in particular, investigate the simulation of fermionic systems. We show how quantum computers avoid the sign problem in some cases by reducing the complexity from exponential to polynomial. Our demonstration is based upon the use of isomorphisms of algebras. We present specific quantum algorithms that illustrate the main points of our algebraic approach.
Cooperative breeding by the Galápagos mockingbird, Nesomimus parvulus

The costs and benefits of helping behavior were analyzed for 36 pairs of the Galapagos mockingbird, Nesomimus parvulus, and their associates. Helping at the nest is usually done by sons or males suspected to be offspring of the breeders. Costs and benefits to breeders were assessed by comparison of pairs with and without helpers, and costs and benefits to helpers were assessed by comparison of birds which help and those which establish themselves as novice breeders.
Serre's contribution to the development of algebraic topology

Abstract We describe in detail Serre's application of spectral sequence theory to the study of the relations between the homology of total space, base space and fibre in a Serre fibration; and we apply the results to establish that a 1-connected space X has homology groups (in positive dimension) in a Serre class C if and only if its homotopy groups are in C . We include in this paper some personal reflections on the contact the author had with Serre during the decade of the 1950's when Serre's revolutionary work in homotopy theory was completely changing the face of algebraic topology.
IMMUNIZATION IS INEFFECTIVE AT PREVENTING INFECTION AND MORTALITY DUE TO THE AMPHIBIAN CHYTRID FUNGUS BATRACHOCHYTRIUM DENDROBATIDIS

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), the causative agent of chytridiomycosis, has been implicated in amphibian declines worldwide. It has been hypothesized that low inherent immunogenicity in Bd may be related to the high rates of morbidity and mortality that are associated with Bd-infected anuran populations. To test this idea, juvenile Rana muscosa (mountain yellow-legged frogs) were immunized with adjuvants in combination with a formalin-killed Bd culture to determine if it is possible to stimulate a protective immune response when challenged with a live inoculum of B. dendrobatidis. Three groups of juvenile R. muscosa (6 mo postmetamorphosis) were immunized with saline, Freunds Complete (FCA) and Incomplete Adjuvant (FIA), or the adjuvants in combination with a formalin-killed culture of B. dendrobatidis. The effects of immunization were modeled using survival analysis and a proportional hazards model. No significant differences were found between the groups in overall mortality, time to infection, infection prevalence, or intensity. While this study suggests that immunizing anurans against chytridiomycosis will not alter rates of infection or mortality among individuals, it does raise several questions regarding the attenuation and efficacy of anuran adaptive immune responses and whether they may be protective against this disease.
Analyzing crosstalk in the presence of weak bridge defects

An extensive simulation study of various combinations of resistive bridges and crosstalk has been performed and several notable properties that have significant implications for test development have been discovered. Scenarios have been identified where a combination of a bridge at one site and a crosstalk at a separate site in its transitive fanout (or vice versa) can cause slowdown/speed-up whose magnitude significantly exceeds the sum of the slow-down/speed-up, caused by each effect in isolation. It has also been identified that a test vector generated for crosstalk may in fact be invalidated due to the presence of a weak bridge at the crosstalk site. The properties discovered, provide the motivation for a more analytical study that will eventually lead to the proposed framework for test development.
Novel promoter sequence required for manganese regulation of manganese peroxidase isozyme 1 gene expression in Phanerochaete chrysosporium.

Manganese peroxidase (MnP) is a major, extracellular component of the lignin-degrading system produced by the wood-rotting basidiomycetous fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium. The transcription of MnP-encoding genes (mnps) in P. chrysosporium occurs as a secondary metabolic event, triggered by nutrient-nitrogen limitation. In addition, mnp expression occurs only under Mn2+ supplementation. Using a reporter system based on the enhanced green fluorescent protein gene (egfp), we have characterized the P. chrysosporium mnp1 promoter by examining the effects of deletion, replacement, and translocation mutations on mnp1 promoter-directed egfp expression. The 1,528-bp mnp1 promoter fragment drives egfp expression only under Mn2+-sufficient, nitrogen-limiting conditions, as required for endogenous MnP production. However, deletion of a 48-bp fragment, residing 521 bp upstream of the translation start codon in the mnp1 promoter, or replacement of this fragment with an unrelated sequence resulted in egfp expression under nitrogen limitation, both in the absence and presence of exogenous Mn2+. Translocation of the 48-bp fragment to a site 120 bp downstream of its original location resulted in Mn2+-dependent egfp expression under conditions similar to those observed with the wild-type mnp1 promoter. These results suggest that the 48-bp fragment contains at least one Mn2+-responsive cis element. Additional promoter-deletion experiments suggested that the Mn2+ element(s) is located within the 33-bp sequence at the 3′ end of the 48-bp fragment. This is the first promoter sequence containing a Mn2+-responsive element(s) to be characterized in any eukaryotic organism.
Writability enhancement using exchange spring media

We have investigated the magnetic reversal and recording properties of layered ferromagnetically exchange coupled (or exchange spring) structures made of a hard layer and a soft layer. The hard layer is a longitudinal antiferromagnetically-coupled (AFC) media which is exchange coupled to a soft CoCrX layer via a CoRu interlayer. We find that optimizing the CoCrX and CoRu layer thicknesses is critical to achieve optimum improved writability while maintaining the media signal to noise ratio (SNR). Furthermore although we successfully decrease substantially the media coercive field (Hc) of these exchange spring structures, the energy barrier K/sub u/V appears unchanged. Finally, we show that these structures have the potential of improved SNR.
Short-period AlGaN based superlattices for deep UV light emitting diodes grown by gas source molecular beam epitaxy

We report the results of two studies of the growth and physical properties of AlGaN-based short-period superlattices (SPSLs), each aimed at improving light emission. In the first experiment, we grow structures on bulk AlN substrates. We observe ~ 3 times higher luminescence efficiency than identically grown structures on sapphire. In the second experiment, we grow structures on sapphire while controlling the growth mode. We observe a significant improvement in the room temperature cathodoluminescence efficiency (at least by factor of 10) of AlGaN quantum wells when the 3D growth mode is induced by reduced flux of ammonia over identically prepared structures grown in the 2D mode.
‘Wet Reads’ in the Age of PACS: Technical and Workflow Considerations for a Preliminary Report System

Communication between clinicians, technologists, and radi ologists has become more complex, with Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) now allowing the radiologist to be removed from the physical location of the patients and the site of imaging. With these changes, effective communication becomes an ongoing challenge. Efficient communication of study interpretations has also become a priority for radiologists as they struggle to maintain relevance and provide added value to patient care when clinicians have ready access to radiology images. The purpose of this paper is to share our experience in developing and implementing the Collaborative Notification System (CNS), a communication tool used to inform referring clinicians of urgent findings—a.k.a. “wet reads.” The system utilizes a system of web pages integrated into PACS for the sending and receiving of succinct messages to provide clinical information at the point of need. A second system of pager alerts provides notification of the need for such communication through a relatively unintrusive, one-way, acknowledged alert system. The CNS provides asynchronous, integrated communication for the reporting of urgent and emergent radiology findings in a complex, geographically distributed medical environment.
Unsupervised discovery of opposing opinion networks from forum discussions

With more and more people freely express opinions as well as actively interact with each other in discussion threads, online forums are becoming a gold mine with rich information about people's opinions and social behaviors. In this paper, we study an interesting new problem of automatically discovering opposing opinion networks of users from forum discussions, which are subset of users who are strongly against each other on some topic. Toward this goal, we propose to use signals from both textual content (e.g., who says what) and social interactions (e.g., who talks to whom) which are both abundant in online forums. We also design an optimization formulation to combine all the signals in an unsupervised way. We created a data set by manually annotating forum data on five controversial topics and our experimental results show that the proposed optimization method outperforms several baselines and existing approaches, demonstrating the power of combining both text analysis and social network analysis in analyzing and generating the opposing opinion networks.
Thermoregulatory, behavioral, and metabolic responses to heatstroke in a conscious mouse model.

The typical core temperature (Tc) profile displayed during heatstroke (HS) recovery consists of initial hypothermia followed by delayed hyperthermia. Anecdotal observations led to the conclusion th...
RrgA and RrgB Are Components of a Multisubunit Pilus Encoded by the Streptococcus pneumoniae rlrA Pathogenicity Islet

The rlrA pathogenicity islet in Streptococcus pneumoniae TIGR4 encodes three surface proteins, RrgA, RrgB, and RrgC, and three sortase enzymes. Using transmission electron microscopy, cell fractionation, cell wall sorting signal domain swapping, and Western blotting, we show that RrgA and RrgB are incorporated into a multisubunit pilus in S. pneumoniae.
A particle-in-cell simulation of dust charging and shielding in low pressure glow discharges

The transport of particles ("dust") in low pressure electrical glow discharges is being studied in regard to its role in contaminating silicon wafers during plasma etching and deposition. Particles (10 s nm-/spl mu/m) negatively charge in glow discharges and, to first order, appear to be massively large negative ions around which sheaths develop. The forces on particles in plasmas include electrostatic (drift of charged particles in electric fields) and viscous ion drag. The latter force is momentum transfer from ions to particles by either collisions or orbital motion. This force critically depends on the charge on the particle and the shape of the sheath surrounding the particle. In this work, we report on a pseudoparticle-in-cell (PIC) simulation of the transport of electrons and ions in the vicinity of dust particles in low pressure glow discharges. The simulation produces the electrical charge on the dust particle, the sheath structure around the dust particle and the orbital dynamics of the ions. A companion molecular dynamics simulation uses these parameters to produce ion-dust and electron-dust particle cross sections for momentum transfer and collection. Results will be discussed for charge, sheath thickness, cross sections and viscous ion drag forces on dust particles as a function of radius and plasma parameters. >
The simplest explanation: passive DNA demethylation in PGCs

Primordial germ cell (PGC) specification is one of two major developmental windows where modifications associated with global heterochromatin maintenance are erased. One of the most intriguing and confounding dynamics to rectify has been the apparent global depletion of cytosine methylation, which has been intensely scrutinized for nearly two decades. While numerous reports have suggested active catalytic removal as the primary mechanism, work by Saitou and colleagues presented in this issue of The EMBO Journal provide support for a simpler model whereby the downregulation of essential recruitment factors appears sufficient to erase this mark passively during a phase of rapid proliferation. During mammalian development, transitions in cellular programs are predominantly accompanied by focal changes to chromatin that reflects local activities of transcriptional activators or repressors. As such, the fraction of the genome that is targeted for remodelling during any given transcription factor driven programming event is comparatively small (Dunham et al , 2012). Two exceptions to this general paradigm occur upon specification of the PGC lineage within the developing embryo and upon fertilization within the protamine‐compacted paternal genome (Saitou et al , 2012). In these contexts, dramatic global epigenetic modification appears to restructure the majority of the genome and does so in a rapid and coordinated fashion (Seki et al , 2005). As part of either process, the mechanism behind the apparent global erasure of DNA methylation has posed a particularly vexing problem. In PGCs, this global demethylation is considered essential to erase somatic methylation signatures as well as parental imprints while simultaneously reactivating transcriptional programs associated with pluripotency and gametogenesis. Until recently, the rapidity of DNA demethylation during PGC specification appeared to support numerous mechanisms that largely centred on an active catalytic step, including strategies employing deamination or oxidation followed by base excision repair (Wu and Zhang, 2010). While these proposed mechanisms appeared …