cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A phylogenetic hypothesis for Asilidae based on a total evidence analysis of morphological and DNA sequence data (Insecta: Diptera: Brachycera: Asiloidea)

An hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships of Asilidae and its constituent taxa is presented, combining morphological and DNA sequence data in a total evidence framework. It is based on 77 robber fly species, 11 Asiloidea outgroup species, 211 morphological characters of the adult fly, and approximately 7300 bp of nuclear DNA from five genes (18S and 28S rDNA, AATS, CAD, and EF-1a protein-encoding DNA). The equally weighted, simultaneous parsimony analysis under dynamic homology in POY resulted in a single most parsimonious cladogram with a cost of 27,582 (iterative pass optimization; 27,703 under regular direct optimization). Six of the 12 included subfamily taxa are recovered as monophyletic. Trigonomiminae, previously always considered as monophyletic based on morphology, is shown to be non-monophyletic. Two of the three Trigonomiminae genera, Holcocephala Jaennicke, 1867 and Rhipidocephala Hermann, 1926, group unexpectedly as the sister taxon to all other Asilidae. Laphriinae, previously seen in the latter position, is the sister group of the remaining Asilidae. Five other subfamily taxa, i.e. Brachyrhopalinae, Dasypogoninae, Stenopogoninae, Tillobromatinae, and Willistonininae, are also shown to be nonmonophyletic. The phylogenetic relationships among the higher-level taxa are partly at odds with findings of a recently published morphological study based on more extensive taxon sampling. The total evidence hypothesis is considered as the most informative one, but the respective topologies from the total-evidence, morphology-only, and molecular-only analyses are compared and contrasted in order to discuss the signals from morphological versus molecular data, and to analyze whether the molecular data outcompete the fewer morphological characters. A clade Apioceridae+Mydidae is corroborated as the sister taxon to Asilidae.
Semi-Fast Fourier Transforms over GF(2 m ).

An algorithm which computes the Fourier transform of a sequence of length n over GF(2m) using approximately 2nm multiplications and n2+ nm additions is developed. The number of multiplications is thus considerably smaller than the n2multiplications required for a direct evaluation, though the number of additions is slightly larger. Unlike the fast Fourier transform, this method does not depend on the factors of n and can be used when n is not highly composite or is a prime.
Shifting processes model: a conceptual model for sustainable weight management.

Weight-loss maintenance is widely accepted to be a difficult and often elusive process. The transtheoretical model (TTM) provides a useful description of five stages of change. Applied to weight management, weight loss occurs during the action stage and weight-loss maintenance occurs during the maintenance stage. Despite its broad utility, the TTM does not adequately explain the complexity involved with a shift from action to maintenance. Based on Engel’s (G. L. Engel, 1977, The need for a new medical model: A challenge for biomedicine, Science, Vol. 196, pp. 129‐136) biopsychosocial model and family systems theory, a shifting processes model is proposed to describe the potential differences and shift that occurs between weight loss and weight-loss maintenance processes within relational contexts.
Cephalometric Study of Craniofacial Development in Rabbits with Impaired Masticatory Function

This study established that the craniofacial complex of rabbits grew primarily in an anteroposterior direction after obliteration of the coronal portion of posterior and anterior teeth on the right side. Some deviation of the midline toward the functional side was observed in treated rabbits. This deviation was not observed in untreated rabbits.
A STUDY ON THE DURATION OF STRONG EARTHQUAKE GROUND MOTION

A simple definition of the duration of strong earthquake ground motion based on the mean-square integral of motion has been presented. It is closely related to that part of the strong motion which contributes significantly to the seismic energy as recorded at a point and to the related spectral amplitudes. Correlations have been established between the duration of strong-motion acceleration, velocity, and displacement and Modified Mercalli intensity, earthquake magnitude, the type of recording site geology, and epicentral distance. Simple relations have been presented that predict the average trend of the duration and other related parameters as a function of Modified Mercalli intensity, earthquake magnitude, site geology and epicentral distance.
Identification of Patients at Risk for Periprocedural Neurological Deficits Associated With Carotid Angioplasty and Stenting

Background and Purpose —Transient or permanent neurological deficits can occur in the periprocedural period following carotid angioplasty and stenting (CAS), presumably due to distal embolization and/or hemodynamic compromise. We performed this study to identify predictors of neurological deficits associated with carotid angioplasty and stent placement. Methods —We reviewed medical records and angiograms in a consecutive series of patients who underwent CAS for symptomatic or asymptomatic cervical internal carotid artery stenosis from June 1996 through December 1998. Using logistic regression analysis, we evaluated the effect of demographic, clinical, intraprocedural, and angiographic risk factors on subsequent development of periprocedural neurological deficits. Periprocedural neurological deficits were defined as new or worsening transient or permanent neurological deficits that occurred during or within 48 hours of the procedure. Results —A total of 111 patients (mean age 68.2±9.1 years) who underwent CAS for asymptomatic (n=54) or symptomatic (n=57) stenoses were included in this study. A total of 14 periprocedural neurological deficits (13%) were observed either during (n=4) or after (n=10) the procedure. Three identified variables were independently associated with periprocedural neurological deficits: symptomatic lesion (OR 8.3, 95% CI 1.6 to 42.6), length of stenotic segment ≥11.2 mm (OR 5.2, 95% CI 1.2 to 22.5), and absence of hypercholesterolemia (OR 5.4, 95% CI 1.4 to 20.9). Other variables, including age and degree of stenosis (defined by NASCET criteria), were not associated with periprocedural neurological deficits. Conclusions —A combination of clinical and angiographic variables can be used to identify patients at risk for periprocedural neurological deficits after CAS. Such identification may help in selection of patients who may benefit from novel pharmacological and mechanical preventive approaches.
Cultural Adjustment of International Students

Cultural adjustment involves both acculturation and assimilation. In the present study cultural adjustment is conceptualized similarly to Mendoza and Martinez's Model of Acculturation (1981). It is suggested that cultural adjustment is a process of multiple interacting factors distinguished by different behavioral, cognitive, affective and demographic attributes and by different levels, varying from cultural assimilation to cultural transmutation. A total of 159 students, 92 international and 67 U.S. students, responded to mailed questionnaires. The main findings suggest that cultural adjustment is simultaneously affected by employment level, language spoken at home, having both American and native friends, internal decision making, and work value. The study supports a native-extinction, host-association model of cultural adjustment.
Joint Learning of Phonetic Units and Word Pronunciations for ASR

The creation of a pronunciation lexicon remains the most inefficient process in developing an Automatic Speech Recognizer (ASR). In this paper, we propose an unsupervised alternative ‐ requiring no language-specific knowledge ‐ to the conventional manual approach for creating pronunciation dictionaries. We present a hierarchical Bayesian model, which jointly discovers the phonetic inventory and the Letter-to-Sound (L2S) mapping rules in a language using only transcribed data. When tested on a corpus of spontaneous queries, the results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed joint learning scheme over its sequential counterpart, in which the latent phonetic inventory and L2S mappings are learned separately. Furthermore, the recognizers built with the automatically induced lexicon consistently outperform grapheme-based recognizers and even approach the performance of recognition systems trained using conventional supervised procedures.
Quantifying regional, time-varying effects of cropland and pasture on vegetation fire

Abstract. The global extent of agriculture demands a thorough understanding of the ways it impacts the Earth system through the modification of both the physical and biological characteristics of the landscape as well as through emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. People use fire to manage cropland and pasture in many parts of the world, impacting both the timing and amount of fire. So far, much previous research into how these land uses affect fire regimes has focused on either individual small regions or global patterns at annual or decadal scales. Moreover, because pasture is not mapped globally at high resolution, the amount of fire associated with pasture has never been quantified as it has for cropland. The work presented here resolves the effects of agriculture – including pasture – on fire on a monthly basis for regions across the world, using globally gridded data on fire activity and land use at 0.25° resolution. The first global estimate of pasture-associated fire reveals that it accounts for over 40 % of annual burned area. Cropland, generally assumed to reduce fire occurrence, is shown to enhance or suppress fire at different times of year within individual regions. These results bridge important gaps in the understanding of how agriculture and associated management practices influence vegetation fire, enabling the next generation of vegetation and Earth system models more realistically incorporate these anthropogenic effects.
Elastic and Inelastic Impact Interaction of Ship Roll Dynamics with Floating Ice

Impact interaction of ships with floating ice or stationary rigid structures is a serious problem that affects the safe operation and navigation in arctic regions. Impact of ship roll dynamics with one-sided ice barrier is studied for elastic and inelastic impact cases. An analytical model of ship roll motion interacting with ice is developed based on Zhuravlev non-smooth coordinate transformation. This transformation has the advantage of converting the vibro-impact oscillator into an oscillator without barriers such that the corresponding equation of motion does not contain any impact term. Extensive numerical simulations are carried out for all initial conditions covered by the ship grazing orbit for different values of excitation amplitude and frequency of external wave roll moment. The basins of attraction of safe operation are obtained and reveal the coexistence of different response regimes such non-impact periodic oscillations, modulation impact motion, period added impact oscillations, chaotic impact motion and unbounded rotational motion. A comparison of the response for inelastic impact and elastic impact revealed that the additional damping associated with inelastic impact is significant than the linear and nonlinear damping terms.
Versatile Synthesis and Fluorescent Labeling of ZIF-90 Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications

We describe a versatile method for the synthesis and fluorescent labeling of ZIF-90 nanoparticles (NPs). Gram-scale quantities of NPs can be produced under mild conditions, circumventing the need for high temperatures and extended reaction periods required by existing procedures. Monitoring the reaction in situ using UV-vis spectroscopy reveals that ZIF-90 NP nucleation in solution starts within seconds. In addition to reporting a method to reproducibly form sub-100 nm ZIF-90 particles, we show that particles of various sizes can be produced, ranging from 30 to 1000 nm, by altering amine chemistry or reaction temperature. The presence of linker aldehyde groups on the NP surface allows for postsynthetic labeling with amine-functionalized fluorescent dyes, providing utility for imaging within biological systems. In vitro cell studies show that ZIF-90 NPs have a high rate of cellular internalization, provide finite degradation periods of the order of several weeks, and are biocompatible with six different cell lines (>90% viable when incubated with NPs for up to 7 days). These features highlight the potential for use of ZIF-90 nanostructures in bioimaging and targeted drug delivery applications.
Heterophil response to intraperitoneal challenge with invasion-deficient salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella-immune lymphokines.

SUMMARY. The present work compared the accumulation of intraperitoneal heterophils in day-of-hatch chicks following treatment with Salmonella enteritidis-immune lymphokine (ILK) and challenge with various strains of Salmonella enteritidis (SE). Day-of-hatch chicks received ILK by intraperitoneal injection and were challenged 1 hr later by intraperitoneal inoculation with one of the following SE strains: a wild-type, SE 890034-3; a Acya-12 Acrp11 avirulent vaccine strain, x4357; and an invasion-deficient strain, InvA::kan, X4420. Four hours after challenge heterophils were recovered from the peritoneal cavity by lavage. The concentration of heterophils in the recovered lavage fluid was determined. Heterophil concentrations increased in response to challenge with each SE strain but there was a lower response to the invasion-deficient strain. The difference was statistically significant. This diminished heterophil response to challenge with invasion-deficient salmonellae supports existing evidence that the initial defensive reaction occurs at the earliest stages of the Salmonellahost interaction.
Arsenic Content of Largemouth Black Bass (Micropterus Salmoides Lacepede) Fingerlings

Domogalla1 and Surber2 have used sodium arsenite to control vegetation in lakes and in sloughs respectively. Wiebe3 has shown that concentrations of arsenic required to kill the vegetation are not harmful to our warm water fish: bass, bluegill, crappie, bullhead, golden shiner, and the common goldfish. The present investigation was undertaken to ascertain whether or not the fish when exposed to arsenic treated water, will acquire and store sufficient arsenic to make them unfit for human consumption.The investigation shows: (1) That freshwater fish taken from natural waters contain appreciable quantities of arsenic; control fish from the Rock River (Ill.) gave arsenic values ranging from .100 mg. to .425 mg. of As2O3 per kg. (2) That fish acquire a certain amount of arsenic from arsenic treated water: the average amount of As2O3 per kg. from 9 control fish from the Rock River was .390 mg.; the average for 5 exposed fish was .886 mg. Domestic controls (9 fish) gave a negative test for arsenic. The treated f...
Influence of inoculation withAzospirillum brasilense andGlomus fasciculatum on sorghum nutrition

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench cv. Bok 8) plants were inoculated with either the vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungusGlomus fasciculatum, with a strain ofAzospirillum brasilense, or with both endophytes together. Non-inoculated plants were fertilized with quantities of N and P that had been found to compensate for the input of nutrients following azospirillum or glomus colonization. Total plant dry weight in all treatments was statistically indistinguishable at harvest (10 weeks). In general, plants colonized by Glomus contained less P, Mn, starch and sucrose, but more Cu, Zn and proline than P-fertilized plants. Azospirillum-inoculated sorghum contained less N, glucose, threonine and glutamine, but more Fe and glutamate than N-amended plants. Mycorrhizal roots contained five specific fatty acids not found in non-VAM plants. Inoculated plants displayed altered nutrient requirements, membrane composition and metabolite levels, indicating that colonization by these endophytes influenced host physiology, even under conditions where N or P input was negligible.
Coordinated Performance Optimization of a Variable Geometry Compressor With Model Predictive Control for a Turbocharged Diesel Engine

The concept of variable geometry compressor (VGC) has been recently proposed as a future improvement for automotive turbochargers to further increase the efficiency and boosting at low engine speed, and to provide a more direct control over the stability margin at medium–high engine load. This paper presents a control design for the air path system of an automotive diesel engine equipped with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), variable geometry turbine (VGT), and VGC systems. Starting from a validated model, a study of the steady-state and dynamic responses is conducted to understand the influence of the VGC combined with VGT–EGR actuators on the performance of the system. Then, a feedback control strategy that coordinates the VGC actuator with the existing VGT–EGR controller based on model predictive control is proposed to optimize the compressor performance. The new methodology shows how the VGC can be used to increase the stability range of the compressor while providing the opportunity to improve its efficiency, by means of shifting the surge limit and reshaping the peak efficiency region of the machine. Simulation results on a vehicle acceleration profile with gear shift transients are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.
Breeding and Application of Fine Grain Quality Japonica CMS Line Liao 99 A in Rice

Liao 99 A is a new BT-type japonica CMS line,which is developed with multiple crosses and successive backcrosses by Northern China Hybrid Rice Engineering and Technology Center. It is characteristic of stable and complete male sterility,high stigma exsertion rate,good plant type,fine grain quality,disease resistances and high combining ability. Liao 99 A was technically identified by the Seed Administrative Bureau of Liaoning Province in September,2008,and its hybrid Liaoyou 9573 (Liao 99 A/C73) was certified for release to commercial production by Liaoning Provincial Crop Variety Appraisal Committee in January,2009.
Abstract IA24: A stem cell program in early human metastatic breast cancer cells

Abstracts: AACR Special Conference: Advances in Breast Cancer; October 17-20, 2015; Bellevue, WA Metastasis is the process that leads to the poor prognosis in breast cancer. Understanding the processes involved in the initiation and progression of metastasis is critical for developing new preventative and therapeutic strategies. One hypothesis states that metastases arise from rare tumor cells that resemble stem cells in their ability to initiate and propagate tumors. In this study we used single-cell analysis to demonstrate that the initial disseminating metastatic cells resemble stem cells in their gene expression. We exploited patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of human breast cancer to analyze metastatic cells in peripheral tissues. We developed a highly sensitive FACS-based assay to isolate and enumerate these metastatic cells. The primary tumor cells were heterogeneous and expressed high levels of luminal differentiation genes The metastatic cells from tissues with a low metastatic burden showed increased expression of stem cell, EMT, pro-survival, and dormancy-associated genes and differential expression of genes depending on the peripheral tissue. In contrast, in macrometastases, the cells were similar to primary tumor cells. The stem cell-like metastatic cells from low-burden tissues had significant tumor-initiating capacity upon transplantation, and differentiated to produce cancer cells with luminal gene expression. As the metastases progressed to a high metastatic burden the tumor cells showed increased expression of cMYC and proliferation-related genes. Our studies suggest that metastases are initiated by cells with stem cell character that upon proliferation and differentiation produce advanced metastatic disease and a poor outcome. References: Cheung, K.J., E. Gabrielson, Z. Werb & A. J. Ewald (2013). Collective invasion in breast cancer requires a conserved basal epithelial program. Cell. 155: 1639-1651. Plaks, V., N. Kong & Z. Werb (2015). The cancer stem cell niche: How essential is the niche in regulating stemness of tumor cells? Cell Stem Cell 16: 225-238. Lawson, D. A., N. Bhakta, K. Kessenbrock, K. Prummel, Y. Yu, K. Takai, A. Zhou, H. Eyob, S. Balakrishnan, C.-Y. Wang, P. Yaswen, A. Goga & Z. Werb (2015). Single-cell analysis reveals a stem cell program in early human metastatic breast cancer cells. Nature. In press. Citation Format: Devon Lawson, Kai Kessenbrock, Zena Werb. A stem cell program in early human metastatic breast cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Breast Cancer Research; Oct 17-20, 2015; Bellevue, WA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Res 2016;14(2_Suppl):Abstract nr IA24.
The Statocysts of Squid

Cephalopods, especially squids, are the most swift-moving of all the aquatic invertebrates. Any such swift-moving animal requires sensory devices for proper spatial control. No wonder then that cephalopods — during the course of evolution and probably in competition with fish (Packard, 1972) — developed sophisticated sense organs, the statocysts, that provide the animals with information about their attitudes and movements in space. Among all aquatic invertebrates, these sense organs reach the highest level of complexity in octopod and decapod cephalopods, with receptor systems for the detection of both linear (gravity) and angular accelerations (Budelmann, 1980, 1988).
Improving Performance via Blocking Layers in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Nanowire Photoanodes.

Electron recombination in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) results in significant electron loss and performance degradation. However, the reduction of electron recombination via blocking layers in nanowire-based DSSCs has rarely been investigated. In this study, HfO2 or TiO2 blocking layers are deposited on nanowire surfaces via atomic layer deposition (ALD) to reduce electron recombination in nanowire-based DSSCs. The control cell consisting of ITO nanowires coated with a porous shell of TiO2 by TiCl4 treatment yields an efficiency of 2.82%. The efficiency increases dramatically to 5.38% upon the insertion of a 1.3 nm TiO2 compact layer between the nanowire surface and porous TiO2 shell. This efficiency enhancement implies that porous sol–gel coatings on nanowires (e.g., via TiCl4 treatment) result in significant electron recombination in nanowire-based DSSCs, while compact coatings formed by ALD are more advantageous because of their ability to act as a blocking layer. By comparing nanowire-based DSSC...
Title: Temperature-dependent behavior of InAsSb and InAs/GaSb strained layer superlattice infared photodetectors

The development of uncooled infrared (IR) detectors operating in the mid-wave IR (MWIR, 3–5 µm) and long-wave IR (LWIR, 8–12 µm) ranges is important for a variety of potential applications. Present IR technology dominating in this wavelength range is mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT) detectors characterized by large tunneling currents and sensitivity to variation of composition. InAs/GaSb Type II strain-layer superlattices (SLS) and InAsSb bulk material are good candidates for the development of room temperature detectors. SLSs are characterized by larger electron effective mass (∼ 0.04m 0 ) which leads to a reduction of tunneling currents and lower sensitivity to compositional non-uniformities. InAs 1−x Sb x also provides band engineering flexibility due to the availability of lattice matched semiconductors with various band offsets. In addition, InAs 1−x Sb x offers the advantage of higher electron and hole mobilities compared to MCT alloys.
Using the ADI-FDTD Method to Simulate Graphene-Based FSS at Terahertz Frequency

The alternating-direction-implicit finite-difference time-domain (ADI-FDTD) method is modified to simulate a graphene-based frequency selective surface. By using the auxiliary differential equation and Pade fitting method, both the interband and intraband conductivity of the graphene are incorporated into the ADI-FDTD method. The ADI-FDTD method has excellent computational accuracy and its computational efficiency is considerably improved from that of the conventional FDTD method. By using the proposed ADI-FDTD method, a graphene-based frequency selective surface is simulated and analyzed at terahertz frequency. The numerical results show that the graphene can achieve a tunable frequency selective surface through controlling its chemical potential, and the interband conductivity of the graphene has important effect on the performance of the frequency selective surface.
The Changing Role of the Ford Foundation in International Development, 1951–2001

While US private philanthropic foundations are small in comparison with other international donors, the Ford Foundation was an important international actor and the biggest player within international philanthropy for almost 50 years. US-funded think tanks and research centers articulated various iterations of a development paradigm, but these paradigms shifted over the same 50 years. What are the driving forces behind these shifts? Why, for instance, were US foundations working directly with government officials in the 1950s while in the 1990s working mostly through non-governmental organizations? This article seeks first to trace the major shifts in the way the Ford Foundation engaged in international development and second aims to explain how and why these shifts took place. In order to conduct this research, I relied on archival research, such as annual reports, minutes from congressional hearings, and internal unpublished reports, and interviews with former high-level employees at Ford Foundation. In addition, I coded and analyzed a database of more than 40,000 grants from the Ford Foundation from 1951 to 2001. The article analyzes the Ford Foundation through four mechanisms of change: internal leadership, external regulation, displacement by competitors, and domestic pressures. These four factors are set against the backdrop of wider shifts in international politics.
Counting-Based Reliability Estimation for Power-Transmission Grids.

Modern society is increasingly reliant on the functionality of infrastructure facilities and utility services. Consequently, there has been surge of interest in the problem of quantification of system reliability, which is known to be #P-complete. Reliability also contributes to the resilience of systems, so as to effectively make them bounce back after contingencies. Despite diverse progress, most techniques to estimate system reliability and resilience remain computationally expensive. In this paper, we investigate how recent advances in hashing-based approaches to counting can be exploited to improve computational techniques for system reliability.The primary contribution of this paper is a novel framework, RelNet, that reduces the problem of computing reliability for a given network to counting the number of satisfying assignments of a Σ11 formula, which is amenable to recent hashing-based techniques developed for counting satisfying assignments of SAT formula. We then apply RelNet to ten real world power-transmission grids across different cities in the U.S. and are able to obtain, to the best of our knowledge, the first theoretically sound a priori estimates of reliability between several pairs of nodes of interest. Such estimates will help managing uncertainty and support rational decision making for community resilience.
Method to Predict Tempering of Steels Under Non-isothermal Conditions

A common way of representing the tempering responses of steels is with a “tempering parameter” that includes the effect of temperature and time on hardness after hardening. Such functions, usually in graphical form, are available for many steels and have been applied for isothermal tempering. In this article, we demonstrate that the method can be extended to non-isothermal conditions. Controlled heating experiments were done on three grades in order to verify the method.
#wheresRey: feminism, protest, and merchandising sexism in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The blockbuster film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) earned over $2 billion dollars at the box-office worldwide and became a cultural phenomenon. Produced by media giant Disney, The Force Awake...
Evaluation of the 235U prompt fission neutron spectrum including a detailed analysis of experimental data and improved model information

We present an evaluation of the 235 U prompt fission neutron spectrum (PFNS) induced by thermal to 20-MeV neutrons. Experimental data and associated covariances were analyzed in detail. The incident energy dependence of the PFNS was modeled with an extended Los Alamos model combined with the Hauser-Feshbach and the exciton models. These models describe prompt fission, pre-fission compound nucleus and pre-equilibrium neutron emissions. The evaluated PFNS agree well with the experimental data included in this evaluation, preliminary data of the LANL and LLNL Chi-Nu measurement and recent evaluations by Capote et al. and Rising et al. However, they are softer than the ENDF/B-VII.1 (VII.1) and JENDL-4.0 PFNS for incident neutron energies up to 2 MeV. Simulated effective multiplication factors k eff of the Godiva and Flattop-25 critical assemblies are further from the measured k eff if the current data are used within VII.1 compared to using only VII.1 data. However, if this work is used with ENDF/B-VIII.0β2 data, simulated values of k eff agree well with the measured ones.
Informed Asymptotically Near-Optimal Planning for Field Robots with Dynamics.

Recent progress in sampling-based planning has provided performance guarantees in terms of optimizing trajectory cost even in the presence of significant dynamics. The STABLE_SPARSE_RRT (SST) algorithm has these desirable path quality properties and achieves computational efficiency by maintaining a sparse set of state-space samples. The current paper focuses on field robotics, where workspace information can be used to effectively guide the search process of a planner. In particular, the computational performance of SST is improved by utilizing appropriate heuristics. The workspace information guides the exploration process of the planner and focuses it on the useful subset of the state space. The resulting Informed- SST is evaluated in scenarios involving either ground vehicles or quadrotors. This includes testing for a physically-simulated vehicle over uneven terrain, which is a computationally expensive planning problem.
Teacher Immediacy as a Predictor of Teaching Effectiveness

This investigation examined teacher immediacy as a potential predictor of teaching effectiveness. Teacher immediacy was conceptualized as those nonverbal behaviors that reduce physical and/or psych...
Carcinosarcomas and Related Cancers: Tumors Caught in the Act of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition.

In this review, we outline the biology and management of patients with carcinosarcomas and related malignancies, which are often included under the broader concept of sarcomatoid carcinomas. Carcinosarcomas are unusual tumors that are commonly gynecologic in origin, where they are referred to as malignant mixed Mullerian tumors, but may appear in any anatomic site. Although a variety of hypotheses have been presented as to the biphasic nature of these tumors, carcinosarcomas seem to represent the best example in human cancers of the concept of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), in which the two parts of the tumor are genomically related to one another, as opposed to the mesenchymal component that represents a second neoplasm or (benign) reactive process. In general, patients with carcinosarcomas fare worse than patients with carcinomas of the same anatomic site. Treatment paradigms for carcinosarcomas generally follow those of carcinomas of the same organ site, except where clinical trials provide more specific options. Agents that block or reverse EMT are worth examination in patients with carcinosarcoma and arguably may be even more effective in carcinomas, given evidence of dependence on EMT to generate successful metastases. Information about EMT may also inform other phase transitions in cancer, such as those between prostate or lung carcinoma and more aggressive tumors with neuroendocrine differentiation.
The Ethics of Using Complementary Medicine in Pediatric Oncology Trials: Reconciling Challenges.

Medication reconciliation for pediatric oncology patientparticipants enrolled in clinical trials often reveals the use of chemical complementary medicine alongside protocol therapeutic agents. Considering the blurry delineation between clinical ethics and research ethics, this paper demonstrates how complementary medicine-related protocol violations introduce ethical questions of who should be included and excluded from clinical trials and offers recommendations on how to manage physician-patient-family interactions around these challenging issues.
Role of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Inhibitors and Radiation in the Management of Brain Metastases from EGFR Mutant Lung Cancers

The growth of genotype-directed targeted therapies, such as inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), has revolutionized treatment for some patients with oncogene-addicted lung cancer. However, as systemic control for these patients has improved, brain metastases remain an important source of morbidity and mortality. Traditional treatment for brain metastases has been radiotherapy, either whole-brain radiation or stereotactic radiosurgery. The growing availability of drugs that can cross the blood-brain barrier and have activity in the central nervous system (CNS) has led to many studies investigating whether targeted therapy can be used in combination with or in lieu of radiation. In this review, we summarize the key literature about the incidence and nature of EGFR-mutant brain metastases (EGFR BMs), the data about the activity of EGFR inhibitors in the CNS, and whether they can be used as front-line therapy for brain metastases. Although initial use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors for EGFR BMs can often be an effective treatment strategy, multidisciplinary evaluation is critical, and prospective studies are needed to clarify which patients may benefit from early radiotherapy. Implications for practice Management of brain metastases in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutant lung cancer is a common clinical problem. The question of whether to start initial therapy with an EGFR inhibitor or radiotherapy (either whole-brain radiotherapy or stereotactic radiosurgery) is controversial. The development of novel EGFR inhibitors with enhanced central nervous system (CNS) penetration is an important advance in the treatment of CNS disease. Multidisciplinary evaluation and evaluation of extracranial disease status are critical to choosing the best treatment option for each patient.
A new THz technology: artificial dielectrics

In recent years, the THz field has gained considerable interest in the scientific community due to a multitude of potential applications, ranging from spectroscopy to communications. However, there is a lack of fundamental device components that are needed to propel the field from mere scientific curiosities to real-world applications. And, the quest for high performance, energy efficient, and low cost device architectures that could manipulate THz radiation is an on-going endeavor. Here, we review recent work on how to fabricate several fundamental THz devices by revitalizing an age old, little known, and unconventional material-design technology called artificial dielectrics. These are man-made media that mimic the properties of naturally occurring dielectric media, or even manifest properties that cannot generally occur in nature. For example, the well-known dielectric property, the refractive index, which usually has a value greater than unity, can have a value less than unity in an artificial dielectric. Using artificial dielectrics, we demonstrate a lens that can focus THz radiation, a polarizing-beamsplitter that can split an arbitrarily polarized beam into two linearly polarized orthogonal components, a quarter-waveplate that can change a linearly polarized beam into a circularly polarized one, and an isolator that can minimize harmful back-reflections. These artificial-dielectric devices exhibit remarkable performance characteristics, exceeding what has been reported in the literature, in some cases by several orders of magnitude. Indeed, our device specifications rival those of similar functional devices commercially available for optical wavelengths. Furthermore, the inherent simplicity of the device geometry makes these devices inexpensive to fabricate.
Nuclear Spin Relaxation Formalism for Liquid Crystals

The background required for characterising molecular dynamics in liquid crystals by NMR spectroscopy and nuclear spin relaxation is outlined. The need for multiple Euler angle transformations to describe the complex molecular motion is discussed, and illustrated by a description of deuterium relaxation in the presence of rotational diffusion of deuteriated spin probes. By selecting deuteriated solutes with and without internal degrees of motion and with very different rotational correlation times we illustrate the complexity of analysing relaxation behaviour in mesogenic molecules compared with that of small rigid solutes. The relaxation of the latter is much more sensitive to contributions from director fluctuations in the radio frequency region compared with that of the mesogenic molecules themselves for which multiple relaxation pathways exist.
Integrating effects of contaminants across levels of biological organization: an overview

Effects of contaminants may occur at all levels oforganization, from molecular to ecosystem-levelresponses. While biochemical and physiologicalalterations in organisms may occur rapidly and areoften stressor-specific, the ecological relevance ofthese suborganismal indicators is uncertain.Alterations in populations and communities havegreater ecological relevance, but a firm mechanisticunderstanding of these responses is often lacking.Developing mechanistic linkages across levels ofbiological organization would greatly improve ourunderstanding of how organisms are affected bycontaminants in nature. The papers in this seriespresent several innovative approaches for integratingeffects of contaminants across levels of biologicalorganization. Authors were asked to describe theecological consequences of responses at lower levelsof organization (biochemical, physiological,individual) and to speculate on the underlyingmechanisms associated with population and communityalterations. The most consistent finding of the fivepapers in this series is that there is no singlespatiotemporal scale or level of biologicalorganization at which ecotoxicological investigationsshould be conducted.
Promising anti-HIV compounds in preclinical or early clinical development.

In the past several years the focus of drug discovery and development for HIV infection has shifted from nucleoside inhibitors of reverse transcriptase (RT) to non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (NNRTI) and most recently to protease inhibitors, all of which already have been discussed at this meeting. Among the other virus-specific targets for therapeutic intervention, several are recognized as having potential for clinical success and thus are the focus of extensive preclinical and/or clinical investigations. The compounds to be discussed here were selected because of similarities in viral target or because of ongoing clinical interest as indicated by clinical trials in progress. Selection for discussion in this paper does not imply endorsement or support by the Division of AIDS, NIAID.
SECTION 5.11 – Physically Based Rate- and Temperature-Dependent Constitutive Models for Metals

This chapter deals with the explanation of physically based rate and temperature-dependent constitutive models for metals. Guided by the concept of dislocation kinetics and accompanied by systematic experimental investigation, a physically based model is developed for several polycrystalline metals. The model addresses the plastic deformation of metals in the range of temperatures and strain rates where diffusion and creep are not dominant, and plastic deformation occurs basically by the motion of dislocations. This chapter summarizes this model, provides a table of typical values of the constitutive parameters, which are experimentally evaluated, presents a few typical comparative results, and highlights how the model can be used for three-dimensional computations. When the model is used in a three-dimensional setting the stress and the corresponding strain rate are the effective stress and the effective plastic strain rate, respectively.
Unfocused Altruism: The Impact of Iconography on Charitable Activity

Over the past generation much attention has been paid to the disadvantaged in our society. Public and private programs have been developed to alleviate poverty and allow the underprivileged into the mainstream of society. While much more needs to be done, many of these programs have been highly successful.
ConfChem Conference on Mathematics in Undergraduate Chemistry Instruction: MUST-Know Pilot Study—Math Preparation Study from Texas

This report summarizes one of the invited papers to the ConfChem online conference on Mathematics in Undergraduate Chemistry Instruction, held from October 23 to November 27, 2017, and hosted by the ACS DivCHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE). Combining data collected by a team of nine instructors from six Texas institutions for an IRB-approved investigation, this research correlated the arithmetic skills of first-year general chemistry students (n = 2127) to final course grades. The validated, highly reliable (KR-21 = 0.821) instrument, named the Math-Up Skills Test (MUST), evaluated the following topics using 16 questions: multiplication, division, fractions, scientific notation, exponential notation, logarithms, square roots, and balancing chemical equations. The MUST was given twice to each student: first without the use of a calculator followed by a similar, modified version with the use of a calculator. Outcomes suggest that general chemistry students’ arithmetic skills are more ...
Navion: A Fully Integrated Energy-Efficient Visual-Inertial Odometry Accelerator for Autonomous Navigation of Nano Drones

This paper presents Navion, an energy-efficient accelerator for visual-inertial odometry (VIO) that enables autonomous navigation of miniaturized robots (e.g., nano drones), and virtual/augmented reality on portable devices. The chip uses inertial measurements and mono/stereo images to estimate the drone's trajectory and a 3D map of the environment. This estimate is obtained by running a state-of-the-art algorithm based on non-linear factor graph optimization, which requires large irregularly structured memories and heterogeneous computation flow. To reduce the energy consumption and footprint, the entire VIO system is fully integrated on chip to eliminate costly off-chip processing and storage. This work uses compression and exploits both structured and unstructured sparsity to reduce on-chip memory size by 4.1x. Parallelism is used under tight area constraints to increase throughput by 43%. The chip is fabricated in 65nm CMOS, and can process 752×480 stereo images at up to 171 fps and inertial measurements at up to 52 kHz, while consuming an average of 24mW. The chip is configurable to maximize accuracy, throughput and energy-efficiency across different environments. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully integrated VIO system in an ASIC.
Footprint-scale cloud type mixtures and their impacts on Atmospheric Infrared Sounder cloud property retrievals

Abstract. A method is described to classify cloud mixtures of cloud top types, termed cloud scenes, using cloud type classification derived from the CloudSat radar (2B-CLDCLASS). The scale dependence of the cloud scenes is quantified. For spatial scales at 45 km (15 km), only 18 (10) out of 256 possible cloud scenes account for 90 % of all observations and contain one, two, or three cloud types. The number of possible cloud scenes is shown to depend on spatial scale with a maximum number of 210 out of 256 possible scenes at a scale of 105 km and fewer cloud scenes at smaller and larger scales. The cloud scenes are used to assess the characteristics of spatially collocated Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) thermodynamic-phase and ice cloud property retrievals within scenes of varying cloud type complexity. The likelihood of ice and liquid-phase detection strongly depends on the CloudSat-identified cloud scene type collocated with the AIRS footprint. Cloud scenes primarily consisting of cirrus, nimbostratus, altostratus, and deep convection are dominated by ice-phase detection, while stratocumulus, cumulus, and altocumulus are dominated by liquid- and undetermined-phase detection. Ice cloud particle size and optical thickness are largest for cloud scenes containing deep convection and cumulus and are smallest for cirrus. Cloud scenes with multiple cloud types have small reductions in information content and slightly higher residuals of observed and modeled radiance compared to cloud scenes with single cloud types. These results will help advance the development of temperature, specific humidity, and cloud property retrievals from hyperspectral infrared sounders that include cloud microphysics in forward radiative transfer models.
Design Considerations of a Flying Capacitor Multilevel Flyback Converter for DC-DC and Pulsed Power Applications

This paper presents the development of a Flying Capacitor Multilevel Flyback Converter (FCMFC) that provides easily scalable peak output voltage for pulsed power. Based on a combination of the flyback and flying capacitor multilevel (FCML) boost converter topologies, the FCMFC achieves faster slew rates and peak power than previous pulsed power converters. FCMFC distributes the high voltage gain across the switch-diode-capacitor (SDC) stages, lowering device stresses and reducing the required magnetic component size compared to existing architectures. Two applications are addressed in this work: one for DC-DC boosting and one for pulsed power conversion. The FCMFC achieved a 100V to 1000V step-up while only utilizing half of the electrical hardware compared to existing topologies. Another FCMFC was developed to produce 36kV pulses at $8\mathbf{kV}/\mathbf{\mu s}$ , with a 50% decrease in the magnetic component size compared to an existing architecture from the literature.
Certification for minimally invasive thoracic surgery: is your surgeon ready?

The introduction of minimally invasive approaches in thoracic surgery has shown continued promise through a myriad of quality and oncology metrics. Studies have shown favorable comparative effectiveness between minimally invasive approaches and open resection of both benign and malignant pathology.
Detecting Systemic Data Quality Issues in Electronic Health Records

Secondary analysis of electronic health records for clinical research faces significant challenges due to known data quality issues in health data observationally collected for clinical care and the data biases caused by standard healthcare processes. In this manuscript, we contribute methodology for data quality assessment by plotting domain-level (conditions (diagnoses), drugs, and procedures) aggregate statistics and concept-level temporal frequencies (i.e., annual prevalence rates of clinical concepts). We detect common temporal patterns in concept frequencies by normalizing and clustering annual concept frequencies using K-means clustering. We apply these methods to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership database. The resulting domain-aggregate and cluster plots show a variety of patterns. We review the patterns found in the condition domain and investigate the processes that shape them. We find that these patterns suggest data quality issues influenced by system-wide factors that affect individual concept frequencies.