cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A mixture model to detect edges in sparse co-expression graphs with an application for comparing breast cancer subtypes

We develop a method to recover a gene network's structure from co-expression data, measured in terms of normalized Pearson's correlation coefficients between gene pairs. We treat these co-expression measurements as weights in the complete graph in which nodes correspond to genes. To decide which edges exist in the gene network, we fit a three-component mixture model such that the observed weights of 'null edges' follow a normal distribution with mean 0, and the non-null edges follow a mixture of two lognormal distributions, one for positively- and one for negatively-correlated pairs. We show that this so-called L2 N mixture model outperforms other methods in terms of power to detect edges, and it allows to control the false discovery rate. Importantly, our method makes no assumptions about the true network structure. We demonstrate our method, which is implemented in an R package called edgefinder, using a large dataset consisting of expression values of 12,750 genes obtained from 1,616 women. We infer the gene network structure by cancer subtype, and find insightful subtype characteristics. For example, we find thirteen pathways which are enriched in each of the cancer groups but not in the Normal group, with two of the pathways associated with autoimmune diseases and two other with graft rejection. We also find specific characteristics of different breast cancer subtypes. For example, the Luminal A network includes a single, highly connected cluster of genes, which is enriched in the human diseases category, and in the Her2 subtype network we find a distinct, and highly interconnected cluster which is uniquely enriched in drug metabolism pathways.
System for Informatics in the Molecular Pathology Laboratory: An Open-Source End-to-End Solution for Next-Generation Sequencing Clinical Data Management.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) diagnostic assays increasingly are becoming the standard of care in oncology practice. As the scale of an NGS laboratory grows, management of these assays requires organizing large amounts of information, including patient data, laboratory processes, genomic data, as well as variant interpretation and reporting. Although several Laboratory Information Systems and/or Laboratory Information Management Systems are commercially available, they may not meet all of the needs of a given laboratory, in addition to being frequently cost-prohibitive. Herein, we present the System for Informatics in the Molecular Pathology Laboratory (SIMPL), a free and open-source Laboratory Information System/Laboratory Information Management System for academic and nonprofit molecular pathology NGS laboratories, developed at the Genomic and Molecular Pathology Division at the University of Chicago Medicine. SIMPL was designed as a modular end-to-end information system to handle all stages of the NGS laboratory workload from test order to reporting. We describe the features of SIMPL, its clinical validation at University of Chicago Medicine, and its installation and testing within a different academic center laboratory (University of Colorado), and we propose a platform for future community co-development and interlaboratory data sharing.
Adaptive Power Controlled Routing for Underwater Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency and mobility robustness are two of the main performance metrics to be addressed when designing any routing protocol for underwater sensor network (UWSN). Energy efficiency leads to a prolonged network life time, while mobility robustness ensures high and stable delivery ratio. Most of the routing strategies designed for UWSN require a full knowledge of the three dimensional location of nodes. In this paper, we introduce an energy efficient routing schema that does not require any location information, and achieves high packet delivery ratio for both static and mobile scenarios in sparse or dense networks. In our routing strategy, nodes assign themselves to concentric layers. A node to layer assignment is determined by signal power of a received interest packet broadcast by sink nodes. Routing paths are determined on the fly, and a forwarder is chosen based on its layer number and residual energy. Nodes are assumed to be able to adjust their transmission power to a finite set of values. Low power level is most likely selected by nodes when the network is dense, whereas a higher power level is selected when the network is sparse or when nodes at layers closer to the sink has more residual energy. Simulation results shows that our routing protocol achieves a high delivery ratio and a low energy consumption while reducing the delay when compared with other routing strategies for both sparse and dense networks.
Quantum-Well and Superlattice Lasers: Fundamental Effects

Besides the improvements that can be effected in laser design and operation by the use of a quantum-well (QW) or superlattice (SL) configuration, various fundamental effects also can be observed. Some of these are: 1) electron-hole asymmetry (mass and velocity and its use to measure band-edge discontinuities, 2) identification of phonon-sideband laser operation, 3) alloy clustering and reduction off “band-to-band” (e+h) recombination energies, 4) impurity-induced layer disordering, 5) high pressure measurements that permit observation of the behavior (pressure coefficients) of the “inside” of an energy band, and 6) a quantum-well or size-induced “direct-indirect” transition (in the A1As-A1GaAs-GaAs system) higher in energy than the bulk value of the disordered alloy.
Vagueness and Meaning

One natural thought to have about vagueness is that the indeterminacy or imprecision inherent in vague expressions is intimately tied to the meanings of these expressions. If this is right, then important tool for studying vague predicates will be meaning theories. There are three critical issues that must be addressed by any such theory: the incompatibility of vague predicates with the ‘governing view’ of semantic theorizing, the relation between the meanings of vague expressions and the use we make of them, and the fact that vague predicates are open textured. This chapter explores the prospects for dealing with each of these from the perspective of three approaches: contextualist theories, epistemicist theories, and indeterminist theories. We conclude by looking at a variation of the first problem that applies, not to meaning theories, but to formal logics for vagueness: the problem of inappropriate precision.
Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy, and Social Support as Predictors of Communicative Participation in Adults Who Stutter.

Purpose This study aimed to identify contributors to communicative participation in adults who stutter. Specifically, it was of interest to determine whether psychosocial variables of self-esteem, ...
Improving MapReduce Performance through Complexity and Performance Based Data Placement in Heterogeneous Hadoop Clusters

MapReduce has emerged as an important programming model with clusters having tens of thousands of nodes. Hadoop, an open source implementation of MapReduce may contain various nodes which are heterogeneous in their computing capacity for various reasons. It is important for the data placement algorithms to partition the input and intermediate data based on the computing capacities of the nodes in the cluster. We propose several enhancements to data placing algorithms in Hadoop such that the load is distributed across the nodes evenly. In this work, we propose two techniques to measure the computing capacities of the nodes. Secondly, we propose improvements to the input data distribution algorithm based on the map and reduce function complexities and the measured heterogeneity of nodes. Finally, we evaluate the improvement of the MapReduce performance.
Recent Developments and Perspectives

During the two years elapsed since writing the first pages of this volume peptide chemistry continued to grow. Only a part of the publications which appeared in this period could be incorporated into chapters already completed and it seemed to be desirable to mention, at least, some more important new contributions to the methodology of peptide synthesis. The author tries also to use this opportunity to include some procedures or aspects which have been overlooked in the discussion of topics of sometimes almost intractable complexity. Also, an attempt will be made in this chapter to assess the present stage of development of peptide synthesis. It would be even better to chart the future course of this discipline, but general failures in futurology warn against such an endeavor and we will confine ourselves to a vague indication of trends, hopes and expectations.
Practical Feeding—Channel Catfish

Culture of channel catfish (Figure 7.1) is the largest aquacultural industry in the United States. It grew from insignificance in the late 1960s to an annual production of near 150,000 tons in 1986 (USDA 1987). The freshwater catfish carries a stigma in the eyes of many consumers in the United States. However, energetic market development has increased the demand for this fish in many areas. The flesh is mostly white muscle, is free of intramuscular bones, and has a mild flavor.
A Unified Framework for Decentralized Control Synthesis

This paper deals with the problem of decentralized control synthesis. We seek to find structured controllers that are stably realizable over the underlying network. We address the problem using an operator form of discrete-time linear systems. This allows for uniform treatment of various classes of linear systems, e.g., Linear Time Invariant (LTI), Linear Time Varying (LTV), or linear switched systems. We combine this operator representation for linear systems with the classical Youla parameterization to characterize the set of stably realizable controllers for a given network structure. We show that if the structure satisfies certain subspace like assumptions, then both the stability and performance problems can be formulated as convex optimization and more precisely as tractable model-matching problems. Furthermore, we show that the structured controllers found from our approach can be stably realized over the network.
Estimation of Study Time Reduction Using Surrogate End Points Rather Than Overall Survival in Oncology Clinical Trials.

Importance Surrogate end points in oncology trade the advantage of reducing the time needed to conduct clinical trials for the disadvantage of greater uncertainty regarding the treatment effect on patient-centered end points, such as overall survival (OS) and quality of life. Objective To quantify the amount of time saved through the acceptance of surrogate end points, including response rate (RR) and progression-free survival (PFS). Design, Setting, and Participants This retrospective study of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oncology approvals and their drug registration trials based on actual publication analyzed the original and updated clinical trials data that led to FDA-approved drug indications in oncology from 2006 to 2017 by using existing publications, conference abstracts, and package inserts from the FDA. Data related to cancer type, line of therapy (first-line, second-line, and third- or later-line treatment of advanced or metastatic disease), FDA approval type, end point basis for approval (RR, PFS, or OS/quality of life), sample size, accrual rate, and drug RR were extracted by March 23, 2018. All data were analyzed by July 13, 2018. Main Outcomes and Measures The main outcome was the study duration needed to complete the primary end point analysis used for each drug indication approval. This was estimated from reported enrollment dates, analysis cutoff dates, time to response, median duration of response, median PFS, and median OS. Results In total, 188 distinct indications among 107 cancer drugs were identified. The RR was more often used for FDA approval in subsequent lines of therapy (17 of 71 drug indications [24%] in first-line therapy vs 34 of 77 drug indications [44%] in second-line therapy vs 19 of 24 drug indications [79%] in third- or later-line therapy,P Conclusions and Relevance From the findings of this study, an estimated 11 months appeared to be needed (ie, approximately 12% longer in the drug development cycle) to assess the OS benefit of a cancer drug. This study’s findings suggest that this must be weighed against the downside of increased uncertainty of clinical benefit arising from using surrogate end points.
Big data skipping in the cloud

According to today's best practices, cloud compute and storage services should be deployed and managed independently. However, this generates a problem for big data analytics in the cloud: potentially huge datasets need to be shipped from the storage service to the compute service to analyse the data. To address this, minimizing the amount of data sent across the network is critical to achieve good performance and low cost. Data skipping is a technique which achieves this for SQL style analytics on structured data. Data skipping stores summary metadata for each object (or file) in a dataset. For each column in the object, the summary might include minimum and maximum values, a list or bloom filter of the appearing values, or other metadata which succinctly represents the data in that column. This metadata can then be indexed to support efficient retrieval, although since it can be orders of magnitude smaller than the data itself, this step may not be essential. This metadata can be used during query evaluation to skip over objects which have no relevant data. False positives for object relevance are acceptable since the query execution engine will ultimately filter the data at the row level. However false negatives must be avoided to ensure correctness of query results. Unlike fully inverted database indexes, data skipping indexes are much smaller than the data itself. This property is critical in the cloud, since otherwise a full index scan could increase the amount of data sent across the network instead of reducing it. In the context of database systems, data skipping is used as an additional technique which complements classical indexes. It is referred to as synopsis in DB2 [6] and zone maps in Oracle [9], where in both cases it is limited to min/max metadata. Data skipping and the associated topic of data layout, has been addressed in recent research papers [7, 8] and is also used in cloud analytics platforms [3,4]. Data skipping can also be built into specific data formats [1]. We implemented data skipping support for Apache Spark SQL [2] without changing core Spark, in the form of an addon Scala library which can be added to the classpath and used in Spark applications. Our work applies to storage systems which implement the Hadoop FileSystem API, which includes various object storage systems as well as HDFS. Metadata is stored in Elasticsearch (ES) [5], and additional metadata stores can be supported in future using a pluggable API. Our approach prunes the list of candidate objects for any given Spark SQL query according to the associated data skipping metadata, stored and indexed in ES. Our technique applies to all Spark supported native formats e.g. JSON, CSV, Avro, Parquet, ORC, and can benefit from the latest optimizations built in to those formats in Spark. Unlike approaches which embed data skipping metadata inside the data format itself [1], which require reading at least part of the object, our approach avoids touching irrelevant objects altogether.
Skin and superficial soft tissue neoplasms with multinucleated giant cells: Clinical, histologic, phenotypic, and molecular differentiating features

Multinucleated giant cells (MGC) are commonly seen in an array of neoplastic and non-neoplastic conditions, to include: granulomatous dermatitis, fibrohistiocytic lesions such as xanthogranulomas, and soft tissue tumors such as giant cell tumors of soft tissue. In addition, multinucleated giant cells are infrequently seen in melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and atypical fibroxanthoma. There are many different types of MGCs and their presence, cytologic, and immunohistochemical features within these pathologic entities vary. Thus, correct identification of the different types of MGCs can aid the practicing pathologist in making the correct diagnosis of the overall pathologic disease. The biologic diversity and variation of MGCs is currently best exemplified in cytologic appearance and immunohistochemical profiles. However, much remains unknown about the origination and evolution. In this review, we i) reflect on the various types of MGCs and the current understanding of their divergent development, ii) describe the histologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular (if previously reported) differentiating features of common skin and superficial soft tissue neoplasms that may present with multinucleated giant cells.
Of limited length

Continuously improving precision in length measurements increases understanding of our world and its phenomena, both at small and large scales, as Leo Gross reveals.
Adolescence as a Biocultural Life History Transition

While the categories of adolescence and puberty are often treated as one, the existence of two distinct terms points to different kinds of maturation in humans. Puberty refers to a period of coordi...
Design of β-Titanium microstructures for implant materials.

Abstract The present work addresses the design of β-Titanium alloy, TNTZ, microstructure to be used in biomedical applications as implant materials. The TNTZ alloy has recently started to attract interest in the area of biomedical engineering as it can provide elastic modulus values that are comparable to the modulus of the human bone. Such a match between the implant and bone significantly increases the compatibility and functionality of the implant material with the human body. Experimental studies reveal that the modulus of TNTZ varies around 55–60 GPa, whereas the bones typically have modulus around 25–30 GPa. Therefore, to achieve a better match in modulus values and further improve the compatibility of the implant, we present a computational design study. As the properties of materials are significantly affected by the underlying microstructure, we focus on identifying the optimum microstructures. Our goal is to minimize the difference between the elastic modulus values of the microstructure and the bone. To ensure the manufacturability of such an optimum design solution, we analyze the microstructural evolution during deformation processing to obtain the optimum microstructure that can be processed. The outcomes of our analysis demonstrated that the elastic modulus of TNTZ can be as low as 48 GPa.
Chapter 3 – Nanocharacterization

Morphological, elemental and structural analyses of nanostructured mateirals were carried out using electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic method. These methods collectively provide information on morphology, particle size and element composites of different type of materials produced in our group. Series selected materials include noble metal used in electronic, electrocatalysts used in the fuel cells and photovoltaic solar cell; and core-shelled nanoparticle used in cancer theranostics. The nanostructure analyses provide guideline for improvement of materials design and enhancement of their diversified application.
Intonational effects on English scopally-ambiguous sentences

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much prior literature on the relationship between the fall-rise intonation and availability of inverse scope with quantifier-negation configurations. The present study has two objectives: (1) to examine whether the role of intonation in facilitating inverse scope is restricted to this configuration, or whether it extends to double-quantifier configurations as well; and (2) to examine whether fall-rise intonation fully disambiguates the sentence, or only facilitates inverse scope. These questions were investigated experimentally, via an auditory acceptability judgment task, in which native English speakers rated the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in contexts matching surface-scope vs. inverse-scope readings. The results provide evidence that fall-rise intonation facilitates the inverse-scope readings of English quantifier-negation configurations (supporting findings from prior literature), but not those of double-quantifier configurations.
Do sub-daily temperature fluctuations around the freezing temperature alter macro-scale snowmelt simulations?

Abstract Climate-driven temperature variations manipulate the snowmelt process and affect various aspects of aquatic and terrestrial life. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of sub-daily temperature fluctuations around the freezing temperature on the quantity and spatial distribution of macro-scale snowmelt simulations (i.e., over macro-scale basins and monthly or annual temporal scales). A macro-scale snow accumulation and ablation model was developed to account for sub-daily temperature fluctuations. Unlike other existing macro-scale models that rely upon a single daily average temperature, the new model incorporates minimum and maximum temperatures and their occurrence timing within the day in a hybrid temperature index method (HTIM). The model was applied to the Missouri River Basin (MRB) to simulate grid-based snowmelt for water years 2011 and 2012 and compared with the monthly snowmelt data from the SNOw Data Assimilation System (SNODAS), which is a physically-based energy and mass balance snow model. Also, the HTIM was compared with a standard TIM, in which only a daily average temperature was used for snowmelt simulations. Although the HTIM provided simulations comparable to the SNODAS snowmelt data (R2 = 0.9), overall results indicated that the TIM slightly outperformed the HTIM. When minimum temperatures fluctuated around the freezing temperature, HTIM underestimated the snowmelt over the MRB. However, HTIM showed a better performance particularly in the months when maximum temperatures fluctuated around the freezing temperature. Results suggested that the role of refreezing in the generation of snowmelt was overestimated by HTIM, which led to a more significant discrepancy between the SNODAS and HTIM snowmelt values in specific months. The findings from this study highlight the influence of sub-daily temperature fluctuations on macro-scale snowmelt simulations.
Special Elective Rotations as a Means of Teaching Dairy Production Medicine Skills to Veterinary Students

A series of curriculum-driven clinical rotations in dairy production medicine has been developed at the University of Wisconsin for fourth year veterinary students. The courses emphasize dairy herd problem identification, mastitis problem solving, and applied dairy nutrition. Investigations of real dairy herds and problems provide case materials, and all courses make significant use of computers to analyze data. While participation in the rotations is elective, student enrollment has been substantial.
Performance Assessment of Cygnss High Wind Retrieval for the Improved EIRP Calibration

The CYGNSS Level 2 wind speed retrieval will be updated to a newer version within the next few months. These updates are based on accurate measurements of the Normalised Bistatic Radar Cross-Section (NBRCS) using the improved estimates of the Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) of the GPS along the direction of the specular point. This calibration will result in considerable increase in the number of measurement samples (~37% more) by including the block IIF GPS measurements which were previously filtered out due to poor estimation of its antenna gain patterns. In this work the new Level 2 CYGNSS winds will be matched to HWRF hurricane simulated winds for major hurricanes from 2017 and 2018 and their performance will be assessed using different figures of merit. Additional intelligent quality control filters are also planned to be developed that will improve the quality of the CYGNSS data product for reliable operational purposes.
Occupational Therapy for Physical Dysfunction, by Diane Powers Dirette and Sharon Gutman: Occupational Therapy for Physical Dysfunction, by Diane Powers Dirette and Sharon Gutman, Philadelphia, PA, Wolters Kluwer, 2021, 1120 pp. (hardcover), $111.99, ISBN: 9781975110550

Surpassing its 40th year and in its 8th Edition, Occupational Therapy for Physical Dysfunction is highly regarded as a foundational text for educational programs and practitioners. The purpose of t...
The future is ours to build: Asian American abolitionist counterstories for Black liberation

Since Claire Jean Kim’s theory of racial triangulation was first published two decades ago, we have witnessed a new generation of Asian American activist formations emerge. Despite this timelapse, ...
Milestones in the History of Probability

Probability has a colorful history beginning with the throwing of bones, sticks, and dice. Progress was in fits and starts because several examples led to paradoxes. Combinations were confused with permutations, means were confused with probabilities, infinite moments were rejected, and measures were ambiguous. Several of these pitfalls and paradoxes are reviewed.
Morphological correlates of river velocity and reproductive development in an ornamented stream fish

Adaptive phenotypic divergence can arise when environments vary in ways favoring alternative phenotypic optima. In aquatic habitats, the costs of locomotion are expected to increase with water velocity, generally favoring a more streamlined body and the reduction of traits that produce drag. However, because streamlining in fish may come at the cost of maneuverability, the net benefits of drag reduction can differ not only among habitats, but also among individuals (or classes of individuals) that rely on locomotion for different uses (e.g., males vs. females or adults vs. juveniles). We tested these predictions by exploring relationships among river velocity, body streamlining, ornamental fin size, and male reproductive condition in the steelcolor shiner (Cyprinella whipplei), a small-bodied North American cyprinid. Overall, males in peak reproductive condition (defined by the development of sexually dimorphic tubercles) had less streamlined bodies and larger ornamental fins than males in lower reproductive condition or individuals lacking these secondary sexual characters (females and immature males). There was a relationship between river velocity and body streamlining only for males in peak reproductive condition, but it was in the opposite direction of our predictions: these males were less streamlined in faster rivers. We found only weak support for the prediction that ornamental fin size would be negatively associated with river velocity. Overall, these results suggest either that drag is not an important selective pressure in these habitats, or that the sexual selection advantages of a deep body and large fin compensate any natural selection costs for C. whipplei males. This study highlights the often overlooked diversity of selective pressures acting on streamlining in fishes, and can offer novel insights and predictions allowing a more nuanced understanding of fish ecomorphology.
Comparative risk of cerebrovascular adverse events in community-dwelling older adults using risperidone, olanzapine and quetiapine: a multiple propensity score-adjusted retrospective cohort study.

Background Atypical antipsychotic agents have been associated with cerebrovascular adverse events, particularly in elderly dementia patients. However, limited evidence exists regarding comparative cerebrovascular profiles of individual atypical agents, particularly in community settings.
Organizations and the Law

The relationship between organizations and the law is rich and complex. Organizations encounter law in at least three guises: Law as a facilitative arena for interaction; law as a regulative code for conduct; and law as a constitutive schema for experience. In each of these guises, law is simultaneously an independent variable affecting organizational activity and a dependent variable reflecting organizational activity. Moreover, whether as cause or as consequence, law operates simultaneously through material incentives and through cultural beliefs. This article explores the diverse body of scholarship on organizations and law that has emerged to make sense of this varied terrain.
Tubulin as a major cell surface protein in human lymphoid cells of leukemic origin.

Abstract Suface-exposed proteins of vinblastine-sensitive human lymphoid cell line of leukemic origin (CCRF-CEM) were examined by the lactoperoxidase-catalyzed iodination and two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis methods. Spots which comigrate with bovine brain tubulin and rabbit muscle actin were prominently labeled in the whole membrane but not in the high-speed supernatant fraction of the disrupted cells. Mild trypsinization of labeled cells removed the iodinated tubulin and actin without significantly affecting the protein staining pattern. Iodination of normal human lymphocytes resulted in no labeling of the tubulin or actin. The presence of surface-exposed tubulin in this leukemic cell line suggests a possible mechanism for their enhanced sensitivity to the cytotoxic action of vinblastine.
Case Adaption Using an Incomplete Causal Model

This paper describes a technique for integrating case-based reasoning with model-based reasoning to predict the behavior of biological systems characterized both by incomplete models and insufficient empirical data for accurate induction. This technique is implemented in CARMA, a system for rangeland pest management advising. CARMA's ability to predict the forage consumption judgments of 15 expert entomologists was empirically compared to that of CARMA's case-based and model-based components in isolation. This evaluation confirmed the hypothesis that integrating model-based and case-based reasoning through model-based adaptation can lead to more accurate predictions than the use of either technique individually.
The Discrete Memoryless Channel

Let w (j | i), i, j = 1, ... , a, be nonnegative numbers such that $$ w\left( {\left. \cdot \right|i} \right) = \left( {w\left( {\left. 1 \right|i} \right),...,w\left( {\left. a \right|i} \right)} \right) $$ is a probability a-vector. The function w (· | ·) will now play the role of a “channel probability function” (c.p.f.).
Stable ASCT2 and LAT1 Suppression in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells Fails to Measurably Affect Proliferation, Anchorage-independent Growth and mTORC1 Signaling

Amino acid transporters ASCT2 and LAT1 are coordinately enhanced in human cancers where, among other roles, they are thought to drive mammalian target-of-rapamycin (mTOR) growth signaling. To asses...
DART Model for Irradiation-Induced Swelling of Uranium Silicide Dispersion Fuel Elements

Models for the interaction of uranium silicide dispersion fuels with an aluminum matrix, for the resultant reaction product swelling, and for the calculation of the stress gradient within the fuel ...
A New Method for Starch Gel Electrophoresis of Human Hemoglobins, with Special Reference to the Determination of Hemoglobin A2

A method for starch gel electrophoresis of hemoglobins is presented in which a modified Lintner starch is used for the preparation of the gel. A discontinuous buffer system of tris-EDTA-borate/barbital is used as the electrolyte medium because of its superior resolving power. Hemoglobin A2 values, obtained with this method, of healthy individuals, patients with thalassemia, and those with various anemias of nonthalassemic origin are presented.
Comparison of a novel one-step percutaneous nephrolithotomy sheath with a standard two-step device.

Objectives Percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) is the treatment of choice for large renal calculi. The most widely used access sheath for PCNL involves two steps including placement of a high-pressure balloon catheter (HPBC) followed by advancement of a sheath over the balloon. A novel PCNL balloon/sheath combination (NSS) has been developed that allows for both dilation and sheath placement in a single step. The objective of this study was to compare the safety and efficacy of the NSS to the HPBC in a porcine model. Methods Six farm pigs underwent placement of a standard HPBC in one kidney and the NSS on the contralateral side. We obtained access in the upper pole in 2 animals, middle pole in 2 animals, and lower pole in 2 animals. We obtained data on insertion time, difficulty of insertion, estimated blood loss (EBL), ability to visualize the collecting system, and gross and histopathologic analysis. Results There was no statistical difference in degree of difficulty in placing the NSS (3 easy, 3 moderate) versus HPBC device (1 easy, 5 moderate; P = 0.07), estimated blood loss ( P = 0.10), or the ability to visualize the collecting system ( P = 0.32). There was a significantly shorter insertion time in the NSS group compared with the HPBC group (1:37 versus 2:26 minutes, P = 0.04). Conclusion This study demonstrates that the NSS is safe and effective in the porcine model. Trials in patients are currently under way.
AACSB International: An Update and Perspective

ABSTRACT : AACSB International has been through a transformational process since 2000 expanding its focus as solely a business school and accounting accreditation body to a broader member services organization. Business and accounting accreditation remain cornerstones of the mission of the organization but its expanded services in support of business schools and accounting program are designed to enhance the value of AACSB accreditation and to foster continuous improvement on a global basis. This paper provides an overview of the different areas of AACSB's activities and outlines current initiatives that will influence the organization's activities for the next 10 to 20 years.
Commonsense Knowledge Representation Based on Fuzzy Logic

The approach to the representation of commonsense knowledge described in this article is based on the idea that propositions characterizing commomsense knowledge are for the most part, dispositions -- that is, propositions with implied fuzzy quantifiers. To deal with dispositions systematically the author uses Fuzzy-Logic -- The logic underlying approximate or fuzzy reasoning
Relationship between Patient Safety and Hospital Surgical Volume

With the Institute of Medicine's 1999 landmark report, To Err Is Human (Kohn, Corrigan, and Donaldson 1999), patient safety became a key component of health care quality. Patient safety is measured by monitoring preventable adverse events (PAEs), which are injuries caused by medical management rather than by the underlying disease of the patient (Brennan et al. 2004). Numerous studies have shown an association between PAE and increased mortality, length of stay, and readmissions (Zhan and Miller 2003; Rivard et al. 2008; Friedman et al. 2009). To monitor PAE in hospitals, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) established a set of patient safety indicators (PSIs) to identify populations at risk and potential cases using administrative inpatient databases. Patient safety indicators are based on ICD-9-CM and codes and diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and each PSI has specific inclusion and exclusion criteria (McDonald 2002; Romano et al. 2003; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 2003a). These data are used for hypothesis generation and give insight to areas in need of focused quality improvement efforts. Hospitals performing higher numbers of certain surgical operations have demonstrated significantly lower operative mortality and morbidity, presumably through increased experience and selective referral patterns (Luft, Hunt, and Maerki 1987; Dudley et al. 2000; Birkmeyer et al. 2002). Specifically, evidence supports a sizable volume-outcomes relationship in abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair (Birkmeyer, Finlayson, and Birkmeyer 2001; Birkmeyer et al. 2002), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) (Birkmeyer, Finlayson, and Birkmeyer 2001; Adogwa et al. 2009), and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RNYGB) (Nguyen et al. 2004; Alami et al. 2005). The Leapfrog Group, a consortium of health care purchasers and providers, estimates that performing all of these procedures at high-volume hospitals would save thousands of lives a year (Birkmeyer, Finlayson, and Birkmeyer 2001; Allareddy, Ward, and Konety 2010). While the surgical volume-mortality association is well supported for certain high-risk procedures, little is known about the relationship between hospital volume and adverse events. The primary aim of this study is to examine the association between hospital volume and quality health care delivery, using surgical adverse events as a measure of quality.
Screening tests for assessing the anaerobic biodegradation of pollutant chemicals in subsurface environments

Abstract Screening methods were developed to assess the susceptibility of ground water contaminants to anaerobic biodegradation. One method was an extrapolation of a procedure previously used to measure biodegradation activity in dilute sewage sludge. Aquifer solids and ground water with no additional nutritive media were incubated anaerobically in 160-ml serum bottles containing 250 mg·l −1 carbon of the substrate of interest. This method relied on the detection of gas pressure or methane production in substrateamended microcosms relative to background controls. Other screening procedures involved the consumption of stoichiometrically required amounts of sulfate or nitrate from the same type of incubations. Close agreement was obtained between the measured and calculated amounts of substrate bioconversion based on the measured biogas pressure in methanogenic microcosms. Storage of the microcosms for up to 6 months did not adversely influence the onset or rate of benzoic acid mineralization. The lower detection limits of the methanogenic assay were found to be a function of the size of the microcosm headspace, the mean oxidation state of the substrate carbon, and the method used to correct for background temperature fluctuations. Using these simple screening procedures, biodegradation information of regulatory interest could be generated, including, (i) the length of the adaptation period, (ii) the rate of substrate decay and (iii) the completeness of the bioconversion.
A decentralized MRAC-based PSS for multimachine power systems

ABSTRACT A digital PSS design technique for multimachine power systems suitable for easy integration into the power system computer control hierarchy at the generating plant level is presented in this paper. The adaptive PSS design algorithm is based on a decentralized model reference adaptive control concept using a Lyapunov function technique. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated on a multi-machine power system using computer simulation studies. Results obtained show an improvement in the overall system damping characteristics.
Understanding the Tribological Chemistry of Chlorine- and Sulfur- and Phosphorus-Containing Additives

Chlorine- and sulfur- and phosphorus-containing compounds are commonly added to the base fluid to synthesize lubricants used under extreme-pressure (EP) conditions. Analyzing the resulting tribological films on iron reveals that chlorinated hydrocarbons thermally decompose forming a layer that consists of iron chloride (FeCl2 ) or carbide (Fe3 C), and that dialkyldisulfides react to form FeS and Fe3 C. Alkyl phosphates thermally decompose on iron oxide to form alkyl and alkoxy, as well as POx species, on the surface. The alkyl and alkoxy species thermally decompose on heating to evolve gas-phase products and deposit carbon onto the surface. The POx species rapidly diffuse into the oxide forming a film that consists of a carbonaceous layer covering a phosphate film. The tribological properties of evaporated and reactively grown thin films have been investigated in ultrahigh vacuum. This strategy eliminates contamination and allows films of known composition and structure to be grown on well-characterized substrates. Three tribological regimes are identified depending on film thickness. In the first regime, an initial rapid decrease in friction is found when a film that is a few nanometers thick (corresponding to a monolayer) covers the surface. The friction coefficient increases once again in the second regime as the film becomes thicker, due to the increased contact area between the film and the rough tribotip, and the behavior is well described by a modified Greenwood-Williamson model. A third regime is found when the film becomes thicker than the interfacial roughness, where the surfaces are completely separated by the film. Finally, measuring the friction coefficients of thin halide films deposited onto various substrates, where the local pressure at the asperity tips depends on the substrate hardness, shows that the shear strength of the “monolayer” films depends on pressure.Copyright © 2005 by ASME
Development of sibling inbred sea urchins: Normal embryogenesis, but frequent postembryonic malformation, arrest and lethality

Inbred lines of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus descended from a single pair of wild animals were constructed by sibling mating. We describe results from a systematic series of crosses in which eggs from F2 and from F3 females were fertilized respectively with sperm from their sibling males. Observations were also made on self-fertilized cultures derived from several naturally occurring hermaphrodites. Morphological development, survival efficiency, and expression of three territorial embryonic markers were assayed in the embryos developing from these crosses. Unexpectedly, out of > 90 controlled crosses, we observed no developmental failures whatsoever, up to the end of embryogenesis (i.e., onset of feeding) that could be attributed to homozygous, zygotically acting recessive genes. However, during postembryonic larval development, lethality, morphological malformation, and arrest are observed in inbred cultures at a high frequency. The incidence of these zygotic developmental failures is such that it appears that there is at least one recessive genetic defect affecting larval development per haploid parental genome. The relative imperviousness of the basic embryonic process to defects arising from homozygosity is consistent with other evidence implying that territorial specification in sea urchin embryogenesis is controlled by maternally rather than zygotically expressed gene products.
Faster top-k document retrieval using block-max indexes

Large search engines process thousands of queries per second over billions of documents, making query processing a major performance bottleneck. An important class of optimization techniques called early termination achieves faster query processing by avoiding the scoring of documents that are unlikely to be in the top results. We study new algorithms for early termination that outperform previous methods. In particular, we focus on safe techniques for disjunctive queries, which return the same result as an exhaustive evaluation over the disjunction of the query terms. The current state-of-the-art methods for this case, the WAND algorithm by Broder et al. [11] and the approach of Strohman and Croft [30], achieve great benefits but still leave a large performance gap between disjunctive and (even non-early terminated) conjunctive queries. We propose a new set of algorithms by introducing a simple augmented inverted index structure called a block-max index. Essentially, this is a structure that stores the maximum impact score for each block of a compressed inverted list in uncompressed form, thus enabling us to skip large parts of the lists. We show how to integrate this structure into the WAND approach, leading to considerable performance gains. We then describe extensions to a layered index organization, and to indexes with reassigned document IDs, that achieve additional gains that narrow the gap between disjunctive and conjunctive top-k query processing.
Evidence that Neural Aromatization of Androgen Regulates the Expression of Sexual Behaviour in Female Musk Shrews

Abstract The experiments reported on here were conducted to test the hypothesis that sexual behaviour in the female musk shrew (Suncus murinus) is regulated by the neural aromatization of testosterone to oestradiol. In the first experiment ovariectomized animals received subcutaneous hormone implants containing either an aromatizable androgen (testosterone or androstenedione), a non-aromatizable androgen (dihydrotestosterone or methyltrienolone), or cholesterol. Only females that received an aromatizable androgen exhibited significant amounts of sexual behaviour as compared with controls (cholesterol). To examine the role of the oestrogen receptor, the anti-oestrogen, tamoxifen (200 or 400 mug daily) was given to ovary intact or ovariectomized females treated with testosterone. Tamoxifen treatment had significant negative effects both on female sexual behaviour and on the weights of several peripheral tissues as compared with control treatments. A similar set of experiments was conducted to examine the effect of an anti-androgen on female sexual behaviour. The androgen receptor blocker, flutamide, had no effect on sexual behaviour or weights of peripheral tissues. To determine whether flutamide can act as an anti-androgen in this species two final experiments were conducted in male musk shrews. Flutamide treatment in males did affect several measures of sexual behaviour. In summary, these data demonstrate that the oestrogen receptor is involved in the control of female copulatory behaviour. The androgen receptor plays a role in the expression of male, but not female, sexual behaviour. Female musk shrews display copulatory behaviour in advance of follicular development when oestradiol concentrations in plasma are very low. Thus, they may have evolved a strategy of aromatizing peripherally produced androgens in the brain to concentrate the oestrogen required for the expression of sexual behaviour.