cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Photopheresis in the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma: current status.

Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma is the overall name for a group of malignancies in which malignant T-lymphocytes localize at the skin. Of the current 20 recognized subtypes of the disease, the most common are mycosis fungoides and Sezary syndrome. Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP), an immunomodulating procedure that treats pheresed blood with a photoactive agent, received US Food and Drug Administration approval in 1988 as a medical device for the treatment of CTCL patients, one of many treatment options for such patients. This was followed in 2003 by guidelines in the United Kingdom that recommended ECP for patients with advanced CTCL, particularly after skin-directed treatment options have failed. ECP is now under investigation for use in patients with earlier stages of CTCL. This article reviews the evolution of the ECP technique--for example, the most recent generation of the device requires a lower extracorporeal volume of blood than the previous version did, thus making it possible for more patients to be candidates for the procedure. In addition, there has been progress in understanding how ECP works at the cellular level.
Zero-valent metals accelerate the neopentylglycolborylation of aryl halides catalyzed by NiCl2-based mixed-ligand systems.

The highly active mixed-ligand catalytic system NiCl2(dppp)/dppf combined with the reducing effect of zerovalent Zn and of other metals was used to demonstrate a method for the dramatic acceleration of the rate and for the enhancement of the yield of Ni-catalyzed neopentylglycolborylation of aryl halides. A diversity of electron-rich and electron-deficient aryl iodides, bromides, and chlorides were efficiently neopentylglycolborylated, typically in 1 h or less. This acceleration is particularly remarkable for the generally less reactive aryl bromides and chlorides and for all ortho-substituted aryl halides. By accelerating the rate of borylation and reducing its reaction time to complete conversion, pathways leading to protodeborylated or hydrodehalogenated side products have a reduced impact on the outcome of the overall reaction. Although Zn powder was the reducing agent of choice, compatibility of this technique with more readily recoverable Zn chips, as well as other metals such as Mn, Mg, Fe, Al, and...
Coordinating High School and College Mathematics

In the first place, the high schools them selves have not and still do not succeed in teaching their students as much as they are capable of learning if only they would wake up to their responsibilities in the matter. Two reasons may be given for our present failure to teach more mathematics to those who are capable of learning it. They are both related to the general prob lem of organization of content material. 1. Our traditional water-tight compart ment method of teaching algebra, then plane geometry, then intermediate alge bra, and so on, leads to a great deal of unnecessary repetition of subject matter throughout the secondary school period that results in the loss of a great deal of time and energy. We teach algebra in the ninth grade, then plane geometry is taught in the tenth grade. By that time the pupils have forgotten the algebra they knew so that when intermediate algebra (which should be a half year course as such) is presented usually in the eleventh grade, a large part of the time is spent if not wasted in reteaching ninth grade algebra. As a result it often happens that the entire eleventh year is spent on algebra when with better organization at least the ordinary course in trigonometry might have been presented. Then if the pupil
Richness Curves for Evaluating Market Segmentation

Overall evaluation of market segmentation often is based on variance-explained measures, such as R2. However, variance explained measures can be misleading if applied to the managerial problem of selecting target segments. Richness curves are proposed as an alternative way of evaluating market segmentation. Statistical considerations (bias and stability) are addressed.
Surface Energy Effects for Small Holes or Particles in Elastomers

Abstract Expansion of a small spherical hole in a highly elastic solid is treated theoretically. Both elastic and surface energy terms are considered; the corresponding surface forces are assumed to be additive. The surface energy of the elastomer is assumed to be similar to that of simple liquids. Pressures or triaxial tensions required to inflate pre-existing holes to an indefinitely large size are calculated. Small holes require extremely large pressures, of the order of 1000 atm for holes of 10 A˚ radius. These results suggest a means of determining the distribution of hole sizes in elastomers and account, in principle, for experimental observations of cavitation processes. Detachment of the elastomer from a small rigid inclusion is treated in a similar way. The general absence of dilation or cavitation on stretching carbon black filled elastomers is thus accounted for solely in terms of the small size of these filler particles.
Diastereoselective Tin-Free Tandem Radical Additions to 3-Formylchromones

A tin-free tandem radical addition methodology onto 3-formylchromones is presented. This radical process yields functionalized chromone structures via two carbon–carbon bond-forming steps. These products contain up to three contiguous stereocenters with good to excellent dr’s and yields.
Dynamical sequestration of the Moon-forming impactor in co-orbital resonance with Earth

Abstract Recent concerns about the giant impact hypothesis for the origin of the Moon, and an associated “isotope crisis” may be assuaged if the impactor was a local object that formed near Earth. We investigated a scenario that may meet this criterion, with protoplanets assumed to originate in 1:1 co-orbital resonance with Earth. Using N -body numerical simulations we explored the dynamical consequences of placing Mars-mass companions in various co-orbital configurations with a proto-Earth of 0.9 Earth-masses (M ⊕ ). We modeled 162 different configurations, some with just the four terrestrial planets and others that included the four giant planets. In both the 4- and 8-planet models we found that a single Mars-mass companion typically remained a stable co-orbital of Earth for the entire 250 million year (Myr) duration of our simulations (59 of 68 unique simulations). In an effort to destabilize such a system we carried out an additional 94 simulations that included a second Mars-mass co-orbital companion. Even with two Mars-mass companions sharing Earth's orbit about two-thirds of these models (66) also remained stable for the entire 250 Myr duration of the simulations. Of the 28 2-companion models that eventually became unstable 24 impacts were observed between Earth and an escaping co-orbital companion. The average delay we observed for an impact of a Mars-mass companion with Earth was 102 Myr, and the longest delay was 221 Myr. In 40% of the 8-planet models that became unstable (10 out of 25) Earth collided with the nearly equal mass Venus to form a super-Earth (loosely defined here as mass ≥1.7 M ⊕ ). These impacts were typically the final giant impact in the system and often occurred after Earth and/or Venus has accreted one or more of the other large objects. Several of the stable configurations involved unusual 3-planet hierarchical co-orbital systems.
Model County-level Poverty Rate in Georgia Using Spatial Analysis Method

Conditionally Auto-regression is employed to investigate the determinants of countylevel poverty rates in Georgia 2011, and also examine whether those poverty rates are spatial correlated. The results indicate that annual income, white person percent, and elder percent have positive effects, while there is no significant spatial correlation.
Directional Poincaré inequalities along mixing flows

We provide a refinement of the Poincare inequality on the torus $\mathbb{T}^{d}$ : there exists a set $\mathcal{B} \subset \mathbb{T} ^{d}$ of directions such that for every $\alpha \in \mathcal{B}$ there is a $c_{\alpha } > 0$ with $$\begin{aligned} \|\nabla f\|_{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})}^{d-1} \| \langle \nabla f, \alpha \rangle \|_{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})} \geq c_{\alpha }\|f\| _{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})}^{d} \quad \mbox{for all}~f\in H^{1}\bigl( \mathbb{T}^{d}\bigr)~ \mbox{with mean 0.} \end{aligned}$$ The derivative $\langle \nabla f, \alpha \rangle $ does not detect any oscillation in directions orthogonal to $\alpha $ , however, for certain $\alpha $ the geodesic flow in direction $\alpha $ is sufficiently mixing to compensate for that defect. On the two-dimensional torus $\mathbb{T}^{2}$ the inequality holds for $\alpha = (1, \sqrt{2})$ but is not true for $\alpha = (1,e)$ . Similar results should hold at a great level of generality on very general domains.
Araport11: a complete reannotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana reference genome

Summary The flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana is a dicot model organism for research in many aspects of plant biology. A comprehensive annotation of its genome paves the way for understanding the functions and activities of all types of transcripts, including mRNA, the various classes of non-coding RNA, and small RNA. The TAIR10 annotation update had a profound impact on Arabidopsis research but was released more than 5 years ago. Maintaining the accuracy of the annotation continues to be a prerequisite for future progress. Using an integrative annotation pipeline, we assembled tissue-specific RNA-Seq libraries from 113 datasets and constructed 48 359 transcript models of protein-coding genes in eleven tissues. In addition, we annotated various classes of non-coding RNA including microRNA, long intergenic RNA, small nucleolar RNA, natural antisense transcript, small nuclear RNA, and small RNA using published datasets and in-house analytic results. Altogether, we identified 635 novel protein-coding genes, 508 novel transcribed regions, 5178 non-coding RNAs, and 35 846 small RNA loci that were formerly unannotated. Analysis of the splicing events and RNA-Seq based expression profiles revealed the landscapes of gene structures, untranslated regions, and splicing activities to be more intricate than previously appreciated. Furthermore, we present 692 uniformly expressed housekeeping genes, 43% of whose human orthologs are also housekeeping genes. This updated Arabidopsis genome annotation with a substantially increased resolution of gene models will not only further our understanding of the biological processes of this plant model but also of other species.
Feasibility Investigation of a Hybrid On-Grid Wind Photovoltaic Retrofitting System

This paper investigates the feasibility of wind–photovoltaic (PV) penetration into an existing utility grid system for the city of Ibrahimyya in Jordan. Ibrahimyya is selected because it enjoys both high annual wind speed of 7.27 m/s and high annual solar radiation of $\text{6.05}\;{\text{kWh}}/{\text{m}}^2/{\text{day}}$ . Two sizing methods are presented using MATLAB and hybrid optimization multiple energy resources software. Thousands of iterations have been carried out in order to get the global autonomous sizing solution that is used for economic analysis. Results show that three CS6X-310 PV panels and eight GE1.5sle-77 wind turbines are the optimal choice. A step-by-step analysis of the proposed system is presented. The net present cost (NPC) is 65 069 349$. The cost of energy (COE) is 0.0817$/kWh. A sensitivity analysis on interest rate, inflation rate, wind power law exponent, annual average daily energy demand, and fuel price is implemented to assess the robustness of the system. The results prove the feasibility to apply the proposed hybrid wind–PV system for this city. The same procedure can be applied anywhere.
A MULTI-LAYER TREE MODEL FOR ENTERPRISE VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

Conducting enterprise-wide vulnerability assessment (VA) on a regular basis plays an important role in assessing an enterprise's information system security status. However, an enterprise network is usually very complex, divided into different types of zones, and consisting of hundreds of hosts in the networks. The complexity of IT systems makes VA an extremely time-consuming task for security professionals. They are seeking for an automated tool that helps monitor and manage the overall vulnerability of an enterprise. This paper presents a novel methodology that provides a dashboard solution for managing enterprise level vulnerability. In our methodology, we develop a multi-layer tree based model to describe enterprise vulnerability topology. Then we apply a client/server structure to gather vulnerability information from enterprise resources automatically. Finally a set of well-defined metric formulas is applied to produce a normalized vulnerability score for the whole enterprise. As a prototype, we developed the implementation of our methodology, EVMAT, an Enterprise Vulnerability Management and Assessment Tool, to test our method. Experiments on a small E-commerce company and a small IT company demonstrate the great potentials of our tool for enterprise-level security.
Epidemiology and Demographics of Prostatitis

Abstract This paper reviews the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) classification system for prostatitis and summarizes North American data on the incidence and prevalence of NIH category III chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome, focusing upon a baseline demographic analysis of the US Chronic Prostatitis Cohort Study, a longitudinal study of 488 patients diagnosed with category III prostatitis.
Review of neutrino oscillations with sterile and active neutrinos

Recently neutrino oscillation experiments have shown that it is very likely that there are one or two sterile neutrinos. In this review neutrino oscillations with one, two, three sterile and three active neutrinos, and parameters that are consistent with experiments, are reviewed.
Efficient Synthesis of Diaryl Ketones by Nickel-Catalyzed Negishi Cross-Coupling of Amides by Carbon–Nitrogen Bond Cleavage at Room Temperature Accelerated by a Solvent Effect

The first Negishi cross-coupling of amides for the synthesis of versatile diaryl ketones by selective C−N bond activation under exceedingly mild conditions is reported. The cross-coupling was accomplished with bench-stable, inexpensive precatalyst [Ni(PPh3)2Cl2] that shows high functional-group tolerance and enables the synthesis of highly functionalized diaryl ketone motifs. The coupling occurred with excellent chemoselectivity favoring the ketone (cf. biaryl) products. Notably, this process represents the mildest conditions for amide N−C bond activation accomplished to date (room temperature, <10 min). Considering the versatile role of polyfunctional biaryl ketone linchpins in modern organic synthesis, availability, and excellent functional-group tolerance of organozinc reagents, this strategy provides a new platform for amide N−C bond/organozinc cross-coupling under mild conditions.
Efficient dictionary learning via very sparse random projections

Performing signal processing tasks on compressive measurements of data has received great attention in recent years. In this paper, we extend previous work on compressive dictionary learning by showing that more general random projections may be used, including sparse ones. More precisely, we examine compressive K-means clustering as a special case of compressive dictionary learning and give theoretical guarantees for its performance for a very general class of random projections. We then propose a memory and computation efficient dictionary learning algorithm, specifically designed for analyzing large volumes of high-dimensional data, which learns the dictionary from very sparse random projections. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach allows for reduction of computational complexity and memory/data access, with controllable loss in accuracy.
Leading Socially Attuned, Value-Cohesive Organizations

The reformulated corporate social performance (CSP) model in Chapter 3 provides a blueprint for socially responsible leadership. The present chapter elaborates on this blueprint by modeling some organizational dynamics necessary for responsible social performance, which can now be understood as a quest to balance economic and ecological (sustainability) goals. The executive mind-set needed for this effort is typified as “normative receptivity,” which means that the executive consciously strives to incorporate values in decision making. The importance of this mind-set was underscored in Chapter 4, which identified the ponderous risks to society posed by the lack of it.
The Role of Reciprocity and Directionality of Friendship Ties in Promoting Behavioral Change

Friendship is a fundamental characteristic of human beings and usually assumed to be reciprocal in nature. Despite this common expectation, in reality, not all friendships by default are reciprocal nor created equal. Here, we show that reciprocated friendships are more intimate and they are substantially different from those that are not. We examine the role of reciprocal ties in inducing more effective peer pressure in a cooperative arrangements setting and find that the directionality of friendship ties can significantly limit the ability to persuade others to act. Specifically, we observe a higher behavioral change and more effective peer-influence when subjects shared reciprocal ties with their peers compared to sharing unilateral ones. Moreover, through spreading process simulation, we find that although unilateral ties diffuse behaviors across communities, reciprocal ties play more important role at the early stages of the diffusion process.
Operative management of diverticulitis in a tertiary care center.

Abstract Background Diverticulitis has become a medically managed disease process; the indications and timing of surgical intervention have evolved. Methods We retrospectively reviewed all patients who underwent surgical intervention due to diverticular disease by the Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery from 2012 to 2014. Results Ninety-eight surgeries were performed. Indications included colovesicular fistula, multiple recurrences of diverticulitis, medically refractory diverticulitis, stricture, abscess, colocutaneous fistula, and colovaginal fistula. Average length of stay was 5.7 ± 5.9 days (range, 1 to 51). Eighteen patients (18%) required an ostomy. Postoperative complications occurred in 18% of patients, including anastomotic leak (3.3%), wound infection (7.1%), acute kidney injury (5.1%), and urinary tract infection (2.0%). Thirty-day readmission rate was 7.2%; unplanned 30-day reoperation rate was 3.1%. There were no deaths. Conclusions The type of patient undergoing surgery for diverticulitis has changed, with selection bias toward chronic, advanced disease due to the proliferation of medical management strategies.
Toward early and order-of-magnitude cascade prediction in social networks

When a piece of information (microblog, photograph, video, link, etc.) starts to spread in a social network, an important question arises: will it spread to “viral” proportions—where “viral” can be defined as an order-of-magnitude increase. However, several previous studies have established that cascade size and frequency are related through a power law—which leads to a severe imbalance in this classification problem. In this paper, we devise a suite of measurements based on “structural diversity”—the variety of social contexts (communities) in which individuals partaking in a given cascade engage. We demonstrate these measures are able to distinguish viral from non-viral cascades, despite the severe imbalance of the data for this problem. Further, we leverage these measurements as features in a classification approach, successfully predicting microblogs that grow from 50 to 500 reposts with precision of 0.69 and recall of 0.52 for the viral class—despite this class comprising under 2 % of samples. This significantly outperforms our baseline approach as well as the current state of the art. We also show this approach also performs well for identifying whether cascades observed for 60 min will grow to 500 reposts as well as demonstrate how we can trade-off between precision and recall.
Covert Communication in the Presence of an Uninformed Jammer

Recent work has established that when transmitter Alice wishes to communicate reliably to recipient Bob without detection by warden Willie, with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels between all parties, communication is limited to $\mathcal {O}(\sqrt {n})$ bits in $n$ channel uses. However, this assumes that Willie has an accurate statistical characterization of the channel. When Willie has uncertainty about such and his receiver is limited to a threshold test on the received power, Alice can transmit covertly with a power that does not decrease with $n$ , thus conveying $\mathcal {O}(n)$ bits covertly and reliably in $n$ uses of an AWGN channel. Here, we consider covert communication of $\mathcal {O}(n)$ bits in $n$ channel uses while generalizing the environment and removing any restrictions on Willie’s receiver. We assume that an uninformed “jammer” is present to help Alice, and we consider AWGN and block fading channels. In some scenarios, Willie’s optimal detector is a threshold test on the received power. When the channel between the jammer and Willie has multiple fading blocks per codeword, a threshold test on the received power is not optimal. However, we establish that Alice can remain covert with a transmit power that does not decrease with $n$ even when Willie employs an optimal detector.
Revisiting salt marsh resilience to sea level rise: Are ponds responsible for permanent land loss?

Ponds are unvegetated rounded depressions commonly present on marsh platforms. The role of ponds on the long-term morphological evolution of tidal marshes is unclear—at times ponds expand but eventually recover the marsh platform, at other times ponds never recover and lead to permanent marsh loss. Existing field observations indicate that episodic disturbances of the marsh vegetation cause the formation of small (1–10 m) isolated ponds, even if the vegetated platform keeps pace with relative sea level rise (RSLR) and that isolated ponds tend to deepen and enlarge until they eventually connect to the channel network. Here I implement a simple model to study the vertical and planform evolution of a single connected pond. A newly connected pond recovers if its bed lies above the limit for marsh plant growth or if the inorganic deposition rate is larger than the RSLR rate. A pond that cannot accrete faster than RSLR will deepen and enlarge, eventually entering a runaway erosion by wave edge retreat. A large tidal range, a large sediment supply, and a low rate of RSLR favor pond recovery. The model suggests that inorganic sediment deposition alone controls pond recovery, even in marshes where organic matter dominates accretion of the vegetated platform. As such, halting permanent marsh loss by pond collapse requires to increase inorganic sediment deposition. Because pond collapse is possible even if the vegetated platform keeps pace with RSLR, I conclude that marsh resilience to RSLR is less than previously quantified.
New life for US housing and urban policy

After a decade of neglect, housing and urban issues in the United States are getting serious attention from the federal government. After 18 months, we can see a very serious urban policy framework emerging from the words and actions of the current administration. This framework isn't just about cities or distressed neighbourhoods. It's about metropolitan regions and the urgent need for city and suburban jurisdictions to start coordinating their planning and investments more systematically. And the new framework looks far beyond housing and HUD to address transportation, energy, environment, labour, and education policy. Knowledge matters to the Obama Administration; many of the initiatives now being launched explicitly reflect lessons from the past 15 years of research. Today, those of us in the research community have an opportunity to contribute hugely to the pursuit of the new urban policy agenda, but only if we are prepared to make our work genuinely useful to policymakers.
Medication‐taking behaviours in chronic kidney disease with multiple chronic conditions: a meta‐ethnographic synthesis of qualitative studies

Aims and Objectives This meta-ethnographic study identified behaviors associated with taking medications and medication adherence reported in qualitative studies of adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and co-existing multiple chronic conditions (MCCs). Background To inform medication adherence interventions, information is needed to clarify the nature of the relationships between behaviors that support medication-taking and medication adherence in MCCs. Study Design Meta-ethnographic review and synthesis. Methods CINAHL Complete, MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases were searched. Five qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. A meta-ethnographic approach was used for synthesis. Medication-taking behaviors were abstracted from study findings and synthesized according to the contexts in which they occur and interpreted within new developing framework named the Medication-taking Across the Care Continuum with adherence-related Outcomes (MACO). Results Twenty categories of medication-taking behaviors occurred in three main contexts: 1) patient-provider clinical encounters, 2) pharmacy encounters, and 3) day-to-day management. These behaviors are distinctly different, multi-level, and interrelated. Together they represent a process occurring across a continuum. Conclusions Future medication adherence research should consider using a multi-level ecological view of medication management. Clinical practice and policy development can benefit from further understanding socio-contextual behaviors that occur across the continuum. Nurses should have greater presence in chronic disease management and be positioned to support the day-to-day home management of patients’ medications. Relevance to Clinical Practice Healthcare professionals can partner with patients to elucidate how these behaviors are enacted across the care continuum and in day-to-day management to identify opportunities to intervene on specific behaviors and promote medication adherence. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
On the dark matter as a geometric effect in $$ f (\mathcal {R})$$ gravity

A mysterious type of matter is supposed to exist because the observed rotational velocity curves of particles moving around the galactic center and the expected rotational velocity curves do not match. This type of matter is called dark matter. There are also a number of proposals in the modified gravity which are alternatives to the dark matter. In this contrast, in 2008, Christian G. Bohmer, Tiberiu Harko and Francisco S.N. Lobo presented an interesting idea in Bohmer et al. (Astropart Phys 29(6):386–392, 2008) where they showed that a \( f (\mathcal {R})\) gravity model could actually explain dark matter to be a geometric effect only. They solved the gravitational field equations in vacuum using generic \( f (\mathcal {R})\) gravity model for constant velocity regions (i.e. dark matter regions around the galaxy). They found that the resulting modifications in the Einstein Hilbert Lagrangian is of the form \(\mathcal {R}^{1+m}\), where \(m=V_{tg}^2/c^2\); \(V_{tg}\) being the tangential velocity of the test particle moving around the galaxy in the dark matter regions and c being the speed of light. From observations it is known that \(m\approx \mathcal {O}(10^{-6})\) (Bohmer et al. 2008; Salucci et al. in Mon Not R Astron Soc 378(1):41–47, 2007; Persic et al. in Mon Not R Astron Soc 281:27–47, 1996; Borriello and Salucci in Mon Not R Astron Soc 323(2):285–292, 2001). In this article, we perform two things (1) We show that the form of \( f (\mathcal {R})\) they claimed is not correct. In doing the calculations, we found that when the radial component of the metric for constant velocity regions is a constant then the exact solutions for \( f (\mathcal {R})\) obtained is of the form of \(\mathcal {R}^{1-\alpha }\) which corresponds to a negative correction rather than positive claimed by the authors of Bohmer et al. (2008), where \(\alpha \) is the function of m. (2) We also show that we can not have an analytic solution of \(f(\mathcal {R})\) for all values of tangential velocity including the observed value of tangential velocity 200–300 km/s (Salucci et al. 2007; Persic et al. 1996; Borriello and Salucci 2001) if the radial coefficient of the metric which describes the dark matter regions is not a constant. Thus, we have to rely on the numerical solutions to get an approximate model for dark matter in \( f (\mathcal {R})\) gravity.
Parallel Evolution of Cold Tolerance Within Drosophila melanogaster

Drosophila melanogaster originated in tropical Africa before expanding into strikingly different temperate climates in Eurasia and beyond. Here, we find elevated cold tolerance in three distinct geographic regions: beyond the well-studied non-African case, we show that populations from the highlands of Ethiopia and South Africa have significantly increased cold tolerance as well. We observe greater cold tolerance in outbred versus inbred flies, but only in populations with higher inversion frequencies. Each cold-adapted population shows lower inversion frequencies than a closely-related warm-adapted population, suggesting that inversion frequencies may decrease with altitude in addition to latitude. Using the FST-based "Population Branch Excess" statistic (PBE), we found only limited evidence for parallel genetic differentiation at the scale of ∼4 kb windows, specifically between Ethiopian and South African cold-adapted populations. And yet, when we looked for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with codirectional frequency change in two or three cold-adapted populations, strong genomic enrichments were observed from all comparisons. These findings could reflect an important role for selection on standing genetic variation leading to "soft sweeps". One SNP showed sufficient codirectional frequency change in all cold-adapted populations to achieve experiment-wide significance: an intronic variant in the synaptic gene Prosap. Another codirectional outlier SNP, at senseless-2, had a strong association with our cold trait measurements, but in the opposite direction as predicted. More generally, proteins involved in neurotransmission were enriched as potential targets of parallel adaptation. The ability to study cold tolerance evolution in a parallel framework will enhance this classic study system for climate adaptation.
Importing biological materials.

Scientific cooperation between laboratories in the United States is no longer confined to those at the same institution, nor even within the boundaries of the country. More than ever, scientists are forming collaborations with their peers outside the U.S., leading not only to the exchange of knowledge and ideas, but also to the exchange of biological reagents. This unit discusses issues involved with international transfer of these reagents, such as packaging and import restrictions.
Parallel and Vector Programming Languages

A parallel programming language is a formal notation for expressing algoriths. This article covers lock-step synchronous parallel languages, bulk synchronous parallel languages, fine-grain synchronous parallel lenguages, and implicitly parallel programming languages. Keywords: parallel programming language; share-memory model; SIMD; FORTRAN; SIMD; HPF; BSP; OpenMP; Java; MIMD
Unsupervised Learning for Lexicon-Based Classification

To be presented at the Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17), February 4–9, 2017, San Francisco, California, USA.
What can the microstructure of stones tell us

How stones are retained within the kidney while small in size is still not fully understood. In this paper, we show two examples of how stones are retained during early growth: one is growth on Randall’s (interstitial) plaque, and the other is growth on mineral that has formed as a luminal plug in a terminal collecting duct. These two mechanisms of stone retention during early growth have distinctive morphologic features that can be seen by methods that show the microscopic structure of the stones. Stones growing on Randall’s plaque display an apatite region that is typically not large in size ( 1 mm long and >0.5 mm wide), and they are solid, without spaces running through them. We propose that knowing the mechanisms of stone retention during early stone formation could allow for better treatment of stone diseases.
The Metallicity Distribution and Hot Jupiter Rate of the Kepler Field: Hectochelle High-Resolution Spectroscopy for 776 Kepler Target Stars

The occurrence rate of hot Jupiters from the Kepler transit survey is roughly half that of radial velocity surveys targeting solar neighborhood stars. One hypothesis to explain this difference is that the two surveys target stars with different stellar metallicity distributions. To test this hypothesis, we measure the metallicity distribution of the Kepler targets using the Hectochelle multi-fiber, high-resolution spectrograph. Limiting our spectroscopic analysis to 610 dwarf stars in our sample with log(g)>3.5, we measure a metallicity distribution characterized by a mean of [M/H]_{mean} = -0.045 +/- 0.00, in agreement with previous studies of the Kepler field target stars. In comparison, the metallicity distribution of the California Planet Search radial velocity sample has a mean of [M/H]_{CPS, mean} = -0.005 +/- 0.006, and the samples come from different parent populations according to a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We refit the exponential relation between the fraction of stars hosting a close-in giant planet and the host star metallicity using a sample of dwarf stars from the California Planet Search with updated metallicities. The best-fit relation tells us that the difference in metallicity between the two samples is insufficient to explain the discrepant Hot Jupiter occurrence rates; the metallicity difference would need to be $\simeq$0.2-0.3 dex for perfect agreement. We also show that (sub)giant contamination in the Kepler sample cannot reconcile the two occurrence calculations. We conclude that other factors, such as binary contamination and imperfect stellar properties, must also be at play.
Dynamic Effects of Information Disclosure on Investment Efficiency

This paper studies how information disclosure affects investment efficiency and investor welfare in a dynamic setting in which a firm makes sequential investments to adjust its capital stock over time. We show that the effects of accounting disclosures on investment efficiency and investor welfare crucially depend on whether such disclosures convey information about the firm's future capital stock (i.e., balance sheet) or about its future operating cash flows (i.e., earnings). Specifically, investment efficiency and investor welfare unambiguously increase in the precision of disclosures that convey information about the future capital stock, since such disclosures mitigate the current owners' incentives to underinvest. In contrast, when accounting reports provide information about future cash flows, the firm can have incentives to either under- or overinvest depending on the precision of accounting reports and the expected growth in demand. For such disclosures, investment efficiency and investor welfare are maximized by an intermediate level of precision. The two types of accounting disclosures act as substitutes in that the precision of capital stock disclosures that maximizes investment efficiency (and investor welfare) decreases as cash flow disclosures become more informative and vice versa.
Dynamic minimum bichromatic separating circle

Abstract In the Minimum Bichromatic Separating Circle problem, given a set R of n red points and a set B of m blue points, the goal is to find the smallest radius circle C that contains all red points and the smallest possible number of blue points. In this paper we study the dynamic version of the problem, which we call the Dynamic Minimum Bichromatic Separating Circle problem, and present data structures that allow to perform efficient reporting and updates under insertion and removal of blue points. We first describe a unified, linear size data structure that allows both insertions and deletions of blue points. Then, we present a data structure that allows to report an optimal circle in O ( log ⁡ ( m n ) ) time when only insertions of blue points are allowed, at the expense of an increase in update time and storage. Finally, we give a data structure that achieves O ( log 2 ⁡ ( m n ) ) reporting time when only deletions of blue points are allowed, with the same update time and storage as the insertions only data structure. Our results are the first known for the Dynamic Minimum Bichromatic Separating Circle problem.
Navier-Stokes methods to predict circulation control airfoil performance

Abstract : The predictive capability of the two-dimensional compressible mass- averaged Navier-Stokes equations was investigated for a typical circulation control air-foil. The governing equations were solved using the implicit approximate factorization algorithm of Beam-Warming with the turbulence model of Baldwin-Lomax. To account for the unique characteristics of circulation control airfoils, an empirical turbulence model correction due to Bradshaw was used. This thesis is unique in that the predictive capability of the computational method is explored by examining the importance of the empirical Bradshaw curvature correction constant on the computed results. Using a generic value of the curvature constant at various blowing coefficient levels, the computational method was able to accurately predict airfoil pitching moment and lift curve slope due to blowing. Predicted levels of airfoil lift coefficient, although reasonable, were found to be consistently low compared with experiment due to the generic curvature constant providing premature jet detachment from the Coanda surface. Computed and measured airfoil drag results followed the same trends, but lack of overall drag coefficient agreement was disappointing. Lift coefficient was found to be quite sensitive, pitching moment not sensitive, and drag coefficient moderately sensitive to the value of the curvature constant used. For the highest blowing coefficient case considered, the value of curvature constant required for the computational lift coefficient to match the experimental lift coefficient was also determined.
Improving the Nutritional Impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program:: Perspectives From the Participants.

Introduction The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal food assistance program designed to alleviate food insecurity and improve dietary intake. This study assessed the opinions of SNAP participants and food-insufficient nonparticipants on their perceptions of the program and strategies to improve its nutritional impact. Methods This study surveyed 387 individuals via Amazon Mechanical Turk, of whom 118 were SNAP participants and 269 were food insufficient but not enrolled in SNAP (nonparticipants). Open-ended questions were coded and analyzed for thematic content. For closed-ended questions, response frequencies were compared using chi-square tests. Data were analyzed in 2016. Results SNAP participants reported that the program successfully served its primary purpose: to allow individuals to buy enough food to make ends meet and reduce food insecurity. Importance was placed on buying food for their children/families and the ability to allocate money for other expenses. To improve the nutritional impact, SNAP participants suggested more nutrition education, increasing the benefit allotment, incentivizing healthful foods, and excluding unhealthful foods for purchase with SNAP. When participants and nonparticipants were asked to choose between SNAP and a nutritionally enhanced program combining healthy incentives with exclusions for sugary beverages (i.e., SNAP+), 68% of participants and 83% of nonparticipants chose SNAP+. Of those who initially chose SNAP, 68% of participants and 64% of nonparticipants chose SNAP+ if paired with a 50% increase in total benefits. Conclusions SNAP participants and food-insufficient nonparticipants support policies that facilitate purchases of healthful foods and limit purchases of unhealthful foods, specifically sugary beverages.
Is computer science dying

This talk discusses some positive and negative trends in the field. It briefly examines some case studies, and finally discusses things that we as a community could do better.
Mortality Within Five Years After Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury

Purpose Mortality in the combined population with incident traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) of South Carolina and Colorado is compared to expected five-year mortality. The two states collect similar data on incidence and prevalence of TSCI. These data systems allow population-based estimates of TSCI and provide scientific findings to community partners that bolster advocacy efforts. Methods This retrospective cohort study linked all 1996 and 1997 hospital discharges of incident TSCI cases to the state Multiple Cause of Death Dataset to determine vital status and causes of death by the end of 2002. The National Death Index captured cases that died after establishing residence in other states. Standardized mortality ratios (SMR) were generated for all-cause and specific-cause mortality in the TSCI population relative to the mortality expected in the age-adjusted 1999 U.S. population. Results Five-year mortality after TSCI in the two states was not significantly different. 735 cases of incident TSCI with 103 deaths (14%) were identified in the two states. The majority of cases were uninsured white males 20 to 44 years old. Seventy-five percent of cases were classified as moderate or severe TSCI and 85% occurred with other injuries. The SMR for all-cause mortality was 15.9 (13.0–19.0). Underlying causes of death included vascular disease (SMR 18.3; 12.8–14.4), respiratory disease (SMR 21.6; 10.8–35.0), diabetes (SMR 32.4; 11.8–61.1), and non-TSCI injury (SMR 72.0; 43.3–105.0). Contributing causes of death reported included heart disease (45%), respiratory disease (32%), non-TSCI injury (25%), and diabetes (9%). Conclusion The population discharged from acute care facilities after incident TSCI shows higher incidence of all-cause and specific-cause mortality within 5 years than expected in the general population after adjustment for age.
Busemann Functions and Infinite Geodesics in Two-Dimensional First-Passage Percolation

We study first-passage percolation on \({\mathbb{Z}^2}\), where the edge weights are given by a translation-ergodic distribution, addressing questions related to existence and coalescence of infinite geodesics. Some of these were studied in the late 1990s by C. Newman and collaborators under strong assumptions on the limiting shape and weight distribution. In this paper we develop a framework for working with distributional limits of Busemann functions and use it to prove forms of Newman’s results under minimal assumptions. For instance, we show a form of coalescence of long finite geodesics in any deterministic direction. We also introduce a purely directional condition which replaces Newman’s global curvature condition and whose assumption we show implies the existence of directional geodesics. Without this condition, we prove existence of infinite geodesics which are directed in sectors. Last, we analyze distributional limits of geodesic graphs, proving almost-sure coalescence and nonexistence of infinite backward paths. This result relates to the conjecture of nonexistence of “bigeodesics.”
Functional equations and their related operads

Using functional equations, we define functors that generalize standard examples from calculus of one variable. Examples of such functors are discussed, and their Taylor towers are computed. We also show that these functors factor through objects enriched over the homology of little n-cubes operads and discuss the relationship between functors defined via functional equations and operads. In addition, we compute the differentials of the forgetful functor from the category of n-Poisson algebras in terms of the homology of configuration spaces.
Provable Self-Representation Based Outlier Detection in a Union of Subspaces

Many computer vision tasks involve processing large amounts of data contaminated by outliers, which need to be detected and rejected. While outlier detection methods based on robust statistics have existed for decades, only recently have methods based on sparse and low-rank representation been developed along with guarantees of correct outlier detection when the inliers lie in one or more low-dimensional subspaces. This paper proposes a new outlier detection method that combines tools from sparse representation with random walks on a graph. By exploiting the property that data points can be expressed as sparse linear combinations of each other, we obtain an asymmetric affinity matrix among data points, which we use to construct a weighted directed graph. By defining a suitable Markov Chain from this graph, we establish a connection between inliers/outliers and essential/inessential states of the Markov chain, which allows us to detect outliers by using random walks. We provide a theoretical analysis that justifies the correctness of our method under geometric and connectivity assumptions. Experimental results on image databases demonstrate its superiority with respect to state-of-the-art sparse and low-rank outlier detection methods.
Scalable Annotation of Fine-Grained Categories Without Experts

We present a crowdsourcing workflow to collect image annotations for visually similar synthetic categories without requiring experts. In animals, there is a direct link between taxonomy and visual similarity: e.g. a collie (type of dog) looks more similar to other collies (e.g. smooth collie) than a greyhound (another type of dog). However, in synthetic categories such as cars, objects with similar taxonomy can have very different appearance: e.g. a 2011 Ford F-150 Supercrew-HD looks the same as a 2011 Ford F-150 Supercrew-LL but very different from a 2011 Ford F-150 Supercrew-SVT. We introduce a graph based crowdsourcing algorithm to automatically group visually indistinguishable objects together. Using our workflow, we label 712,430 images by ~1,000 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers; resulting in the largest fine-grained visual dataset reported to date with 2,657 categories of cars annotated at 1/20th the cost of hiring experts.
How birds direct impulse to minimize the energetic cost of foraging flight

Birds frequently hop and fly between tree branches to forage. To determine the mechanical energy trade-offs of their bimodal locomotion, we rewarded four Pacific parrotlets with a seed for flying voluntarily between instrumented perches inside a new aerodynamic force platform. By integrating direct measurements of both leg and wing forces with kinematics in a bimodal long jump and flight model, we discovered that parrotlets direct their leg impulse to minimize the mechanical energy needed to forage over different distances and inclinations. The bimodal locomotion model further shows how even a small lift contribution from a single proto-wingbeat would have significantly lengthened the long jump of foraging arboreal dinosaurs. These avian bimodal locomotion strategies can also help robots traverse cluttered environments more effectively.