cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The influence of personal and group racism on entry into prenatal care among African American women.

Background: Racism has been hypothesized as a barrier to accessing health care. No quantitative study has directly assessed its influence on women’s initiation of prenatal care (PNC). We examined the relationship between PNC entry and experiences of personal and group racism among low-income, African-American (AA) women. We also examined whether the use of denial of racism as a coping mechanism was associated with a delay in accessing PNC. Methods: Using a prospective/retrospective cohort design we collected data from 872 AA women (prenatally, n ¼ 484; postpartum, n ¼ 388). Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between the overall denial of racism index and PNC initiation. Findings: PNC entry was not associated with personal experiences of racism (p ¼ .33); it was significantly associated with group experiences (p < .01). Conclusion: Denial of racism experienced by other AAs was a barrier to early PNC among low-income, AA women. Delayed access to PNC may be rooted in the avoidance of racialized experiences among less empowered women when faced with discrimination. Our findings have important implication for the engagement of AA women into the PNC delivery system and the health care system postpartum. Copyright 2013 by the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Modeling hydraulic actuator mechanical dynamics from pressure measured at control valve ports

The goal of this article is to formulate and validate a model for the prediction of the mechanical dynamics of hydraulic actuators controlled by means of proportional directional valves (PDVs). The model inputs are the pressure at the PDVs ports and the current to the solenoids: no further input is required even when additional elements are installed in the line between PDV and actuator. The model finds application in closed-loop control of mobile electrohydraulic machines for load handling, construction and agriculture. These machines are typically based on open-loop control of the actuator speed. Nevertheless, these machines are often characterized by non-cyclical operation, large disturbances (e.g. drive on uneven ground) and time-varying parameters (e.g. load mass). Due to these features, closed-loop control has potential to improve the machine dynamics with consequent benefits in terms of productivity and operation safety. However, because of the harsh working conditions, the installation of feedback...
Hydrogenated Fat High in Trans Monoenes with an Adequate Level of Linoleic Acid Has no Effect on Prostaglandin Synthesis in Rats

Our study was designed to determine whether hydrogenated fat high in trans monoenes concentration affected prostaglandin synthesis. Corn oil (CO), butter (B), hydrogenated vegetable oil (HF) and coating fat (CF) were used in this study. These fats were fed to rats for 10 wk at 10 g/100 g diet. The phospholipid (PL) fatty acid content of platelets, aorta and heart was determined by gas liquid chromatography, and the in vitro aorta production of prostacyclin (PGI2) from exogenous or endogenous arachidonic acid (AA) was measured using the radioimmuno-assay (RIA) method. Serum thromboxane B2 (TXB2) released by platelets as thromboxane A2 (TXA2) during incubation of whole blood was also measured by this method. In the group fed CF, AA was significantly lower in the PL of aorta, platelet and heart, and the ratio 20:3(n-9)/20:4(n-6) was greater than in the groups fed CO, B or HF, indicating that the group fed CF was essential fatty acid (EFA) deficient. Although AA was significantly lower in the aorta and platelet PL of the group fed HF compared to the group fed CO, that difference did not affect the amounts of PGI2 or TXB2 produced in these groups. The group fed CF had significantly less PGI2 and TXB2 released by aorta and platelets than the other groups. This was the result of the reduced level of AA and the presence of higher amounts of 20:3(n-9) acid in the PL, which might act as a competitive inhibitor for cyclooxygenase. The aortic production of PGI2 from exogenous AA did not differ among the groups indicating that prostaglandin synthetase was not affected by the dietary fat. We conclude that the consumption of hydrogenated fats high in trans 18:1 acids with adequate amount of linoleic acid had no effect on the amount of thromboxane or prostacyclin produced by platelet or aorta in vitro.
Closed reduction and percutaneous pin fixation of fractured phalanges.

Twenty-six displaced fractures of the proximal phalanx of a finger were treated by closed reduction, percutaneous pin fixation, and early motion, which was obtained by taping the injured finger to an adjacent one. The major advantages of the method are that no external immobilization is required and that patients are able to return to their jobs sooner. In this series, eighteen of twenty-one patients (twenty-six fractures) regained a full range of motion within eight weeks following injury.
Black-box test reduction using input-output analysis

Test reduction is an important issue in black-box testing. The number of possible black-box tests for any non-trivial software application is extremely large. For the class of programs with multiple inputs and outputs, the number of possible tests grows very rapidly as combinations of input test data are considered. In this paper, we introduce an approach to test reduction that uses automated input-output analysis to identify relationships between program inputs and outputs. Our initial experience with the approach has shown that it can significantly reduce the number of black-box tests.
Effect of Zooid Spacing on Bryozoan Feeding Success: Is Competition or Facilitation More Important?

Most Recent bryozoan species are encrusting sheets, and many of these colonies have densely packed feeding zooids. In this study, I tested whether tight packing of feeding zooids affects food capture. Colonies of a bryozoan with an encrusting sheet form (Membranipora membranacea) were dissected to produce individuals whose feeding zooids were (1) closely packed, (2) more widely spaced, or (3) isolated. For each type, rates of particle ingestion were measured in still water and in a freestream velocity of 2.7 cm s−1. Ingestion rate increased when zooids were closest together, probably because of reduced refiltration and increased feeding current strength farther from the lophophores. The mean incurrent velocity within 0.02 cm above the center of the lophophore was 0.28 cm s−1 regardless of zooid spacing; however, when the incurrent velocity was measured more than 0.1 cm from the lophophores, zooids that were close together or spaced one zooid’s width apart had significantly faster incurrent velocities than...
Block diagrams and soil profile characteristics in soil genesis and classification courses.

One objective of a soil morphology, genesis, and classification course is to teach students how to generate reasonable hypotheses to explain soil distributions on landscapes. By the end of the course, students can begin to make predictions regarding changes in soil properties as a function of landscape elements and how different groupings of soils are indicated by mapping unit definitions or soil taxa. The block diagram problem is an exercise that helps the students to teach themselves about the relationships between taxonomic names, soil properties, and soil distributions on three-dimensional landscapes. The students' task in the block diagram problem is to match a list of soil series to a list of taxonomic names using a block diagram and soil series descriptions. The student is provided with the following information; family names from Soil Taxonomy, block diagrams, and soil series descriptions. Block diagrams help students visualize areas of water spreading or concentration, the relative stability of geomorphic surfaces, and distribution of parent materials. Soil series descriptions give morphological clues to the extent to which soil-forming processes have taken place, such as horizon differentiation. Students use principles of soil morphology, genesis, and geomorphology to relate series names to soil taxa. Block diagram problems help evaluate whether the objectives of the course have been met and make excellent homework and final examination questions.
SHAPE OF THE RIGHT VENTRICULAR OUTFLOW TRACT DOPPLER ENVELOPE IS A SENSITIVE PREDICTOR OF ALTERED PULMONARY HEMODYNAMICS IN PEDIATRIC PATIENTS

The shape of the RV outflow tract (RVOT) Doppler velocity envelope (DVE) has been shown to be a sensitive marker of altered pulmonary hemodynamics in adults, but this has not been validated in children. Systolic deceleration or ‘‘notching’’ of the RVOT DVE relates to the pathologic wave
Analysis of Pear Psylla (Homoptera: Psyllidae) Populations and Associated Damage in a Pennsylvania Pear Orchard

On insecticide-free pear trees in an orchard in central Pennsylvania, there was a low correlation between milligram fructose equivalents of foliar honeydew and numbers of pear psylla, Psylla pyricola Foerster, nymphs per leaf, with the exception of 2 weeks in mid-July when little rainfall occurred (0.13 cm/week). The percentage of sooty-mold-damaged pears was significantly correlated with the seasonal average of nymphs per leaf but not with the seasonal average of foliar honeydew levels. In addition, the seasonal history of pear psylla was monitored on the same trees and early-season pear psylla development was related to pear tree phenology. There were three generations of pear psylla, the second being the largest and most important in regard to fruit development and damage.
TEACHER-PSYCHOLOGIST INTERSCORER RELIABILITY OF THE MCCARTHY DRAWING TESTS

Reynolds (1978) indicated that the McCarthy Drawing Tests, Draw-A-Design and Draw-A-Child, can be useful in preschool screening and correlate significantly with achievement measures when adm~rustered in a group format. The utility of these tests in preschool screening would be enhanced if teachers could be trained to score the cwo drawing tests accurately. T o make this determination, the author conducted a 2-hr. training session on the proper scoring procedures with 20 kindergarten teachers. One week later 322 kindergarten children (90 white females, 86 white males, 73 black females, 73 black males) whose mean age was 5-10, were administered the two drawing tests by their teachers. The teachers then scored all drawing tests they administered. Each booklet was then rescored, blindly, by a doctoral level school psychologist. The Metropolitan Achievement Test was administered to the same chldren 1 yr. later at the end of the first grade. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between teachers' and psychologist's scorings of the drawings and between the drawing test scores obtained by each group of scorers and the achievement test scores. Teacher-psychologist interscorer reliability for N = 322 was .76 for Draw-A-Design and .87 for Draw-A-Child. The correlations between scorers were similar within each of the four race/sex groupings of children as well. Teacher-psychologist scorings of Draw-A-Design and Draw-A-Child correlated significantly with first grade achievement, correlations being in the mid .40's for the total sample and also within each race/sex grouping. A value of .90 is typically required for determining adequate interxorer reliability. Since the present values are not of that magnitude, considerable caution should be used when interpreting scores from protocols scored by teachers. Psychologists should score these two drawing tests whenever possible. If teachers are allowed to score the two tests when the outcome may affect the educational programming of individual children, substantial training beyond the 2-hr. session employed here should be provided. However, with the brief 2-hr. session, teachers appear to score with adequate accuracy to allow group comparisons in research srudies when the outcome does not affect individual children. In all cases, however, psychologists' scoring of these tests is preferable.
For the Title IX Civil Rights Movement: Congratulations and Cautions

The Yale Law Journal's September 25, 2015 Conversation on Title IX confirmed the existence of a new civil rights movement in our nation and our schools, led by smart, courageous survivors of gender-based violence and joined by multiple generations of anti-gender-based violence activists, attorneys, leaders, and scholars. Movement leaders have wisely chosen Title IX as their particular banner and organizing point. As a civil rights statute, Title IX guarantees broad rights to an equal education, and although schools' compliance with Title IX and the statute's enforcement still require significant improvements, today's movement can build upon a legal foundation established by previous waves of the pro-equality and anti-gender-based violence movements. But in doing so, the Title IX movement must remain vigilant against pushes to criminalize Title IX. Suggestions that gender-based violence which violates Title IX can be punished like criminal offenses and that Title IX proceedings should therefore follow the procedures of the criminal justice system conflate Title IX with criminal laws against rape and sexual assault. This conflation fundamentally undermines Title IX's central purpose: to protect and promote equal educational opportunity for all students, including both the alleged perpetrators and the victims of gender-based violence. This push to criminalize Title IX is evident in three groups of recent state and federal legislative proposals, including efforts (1) to import criminal due process requirements into campus disciplinary and grievance proceedings, (2) to mandate that school officials refer all reports of sexual violence, including through the school's Title IX system, to law enforcement, and (3) to require colleges and universities to adopt "affirmative consent" or so-called "yes means yes" policies. The first two proposals conflict with and dangerously undermine Title IX's equality mandate, but the effect of the third is more equivocal. This Essay considers closely each one of these criminalization efforts and briefly propose two methods of retaining the benefits of affirmative consent policies while minimizing the damage they could do to Title IX rights.
Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces that Prevent Bacterial Surface Fouling and Inhibit Virulence Phenotypes in Surrounding Planktonic Cells.

Surfaces that can both prevent bacterial biofouling and inhibit the expression of virulence phenotypes in surrounding planktonic bacteria are of interest in a broad range of contexts. Here, we report new slippery-liquid infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) that resist bacterial colonization (owing to inherent “slippery” surface character) and also attenuate virulence phenotypes in non-adherent cells by gradually releasing small-molecule quorum sensing inhibitors (QSIs). QSIs active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa can be loaded into SLIPS without loss of their slippery and antifouling properties, and imbedded agents can be released into surrounding media over hours to days depending on the structures of the loaded agent. This controlled-release approach is useful for inhibiting virulence factor production and can also inhibit bacterial biofilm formation on nearby, non-SLIPS-coated surfaces. Finally, we demonstrate that this approach is compatible with the simultaneous release of more than one type of QSI, enabli...
200–280GHz CMOS RF front-end of transmitter for rotational spectroscopy

A 200–280 GHz RF front-end of transmitter is demonstrated in 65-nm CMOS. Saturated EIRP is greater than −5dBm over a frequency range of 60GHz. When the input power is −20dBm, EIRP is greater than −10dBm for most of the frequency range, and achieves 3-dB and 6-dB bandwidths of 24% and 33%. The front-end was integrated with a fractional-N synthesizer to form a transmitter operating at 208–255GHz with EIRP of −18 to −11dBm. The transmitter and a CMOS receiver are used for rotational spectroscopy and to detect ethanol in human breath.
Evidence for Tackling the Complexities of Water Governance

Water policy and management decisions are increasingly challenged by uncertainties associated with climate change, changing demographics, and social values. This article discusses how research by water governance scholars supports and complements Rob M. Skinner's arguments about the complexities of water planning and policy making and the importance of stakeholder engagement. Specifically, it focuses on how this decision-making context shapes the ways in which evidence is used and understood in water governance. To conclude, this article draws lessons for practitioners about the limitations of using evidence in water governance.
Grazing moderates increases in C3 grass abundance over seven decades across a soil texture gradient in shortgrass steppe

Questions How does long-term exclusion of cattle grazing influence plant community composition in a semiarid grassland? Can spatial variation in the effects of cattle grazing exclusion be explained by variation in soil texture? Location The shortgrass steppe of northeastern Colorado, USA, located in the North American Great Plains. Method We used 16 long-term (72 yr) cattle exclosures to examine the effects of grazers on plant communities, and evaluate whether grazer effects interact with soil texture. Results Although shortgrass steppe communities are relatively unaffected by grazing in the short-term (1-2 decades), exclusion of cattle grazing for seven decades caused a compositional shift from dominance by a C4 shortgrass (Bouteloua gracilis) to co-dominance by a C3 midgrass (Pascopyrum smithii) and B. gracilis. The strength of this shift was highly variable across sites. Soil texture was correlated with the abundance of certain plant species, but did not explain variation in the magnitude of grazer effects. Grazed communities contained perennial and annual growth forms with a diversity of strategies to coexist with grazers and B. gracilis. Ungrazed communities included increased abundance of annual, ruderal forbs and three woody plant species. Grazing effects occurred against a backdrop of changing plant communities: during the past seven decades, C3 perennial graminoids and subshrubs have increased in relative abundance in both grazed and ungrazed communities. Conclusions Our long-term experiment shows that community responses to grazing in this semiarid grassland occur very slowly, but are predictable, with C4 shortgrasses eventually giving way to taller C3 grasses and ruderal forbs. Spatial variation in grazing effects across sites (and lack of a relationship with soil texture) may reflect the importance of fine-scale heterogeneity in C3 grass abundance, and the slow rate at which taller C3 grasses can coalesce into monodominant patches that outcompete C4 shortgrasses. Increased abundance of C3 species over the past seven decades, both in the presence and absence of grazing, may be related to recovery from the severe drought and dust storms of the 1930s as well as enhanced growth of C3 plants under increasing atmospheric [CO2]. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Developing a peer-based healthy lifestyle program for people with serious mental illness in supportive housing

Overweight and obesity disproportionally impact people with serious mental illness (SMI). Healthy lifestyle interventions can improve the health of people with SMI but may need to be adapted for this population. The aims of this study were: to (1) examine the feasibility and acceptability of delivering the Peer-based Group Lifestyle Balance (PGLB) intervention and (2) describe intervention adaptations for people with SMI in supportive housing. Peer specialists and social workers co-facilitated 12 weekly PGLB sessions for 14 supportive housing clients. We conducted structured interviews and collected qualitative data through field notes and two focus groups. Frequencies and measures of central tendencies were used to describe participant characteristics and PGLB feasibility and acceptability measures. Qualitative data was analyzed using directed content analysis. Participants on average attended 8 of 12 sessions, and reported that services were satisfactory and helpful. Intervention adaptations, ongoing throughout the study, focused on adding peer-specialists as co-facilitators, increasing individualized support and developing strategies to address socioeconomic barriers impacting participants' ability to engage in healthy lifestyle changes. Study findings suggest that participants with SMI in supportive housing perceived PGLB as feasible and acceptable. Expanding the relevance and reach of peer-based healthy lifestyle interventions in community settings serving people with SMI requires careful adaptations to the socioeconomic realities of this population and the complexities of living with co-morbid health and mental health conditions.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSICS OF THE EARTH’S INTERIOR.Second Edition, by Jean-Paul Poirier Cambridge University Press, 2000 312 pp. ($80 hardback, $34.95 paper)

The theme of this small book is elementary, covering classical solid state physics applied to some problems of the Earth’s interior. The level of coverage is aimed at advanced undergraduate or early graduate students. This book can also be considered as an update of Francis Birch’s classic 1952 paper on “Elasticity and …
Evolution of Technique in Laparoscopic Donor Nephrectomy: A Single Center Experience.

Abstract Background: Renal transplantation is the most successful therapy for improving survival and quality of life for end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Living donor kidney transplantation (LDKTx) has been used as an alternative to reduce the stay on the waiting list of patients with ESRD. Laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (LDN) has become the standard procedure for LDKTx. Objective: This study aims to describe evolution of surgical technique with LDN at our institute. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed our experience with LDN performed from January, 2003 to November, 2016, focusing on describing modifications of the surgical technique and devices made during those years. Demographics, operative factors, and postoperative complications of donors were reviewed. Results: From the beginning of our experience with LDKTx we have performed 185 cases. From 2003 to 2016, 144 LDN were performed. Modifying our technique in response to the learning curve, complications encountered, and technological adv...
Dynamic behavior of composite marine propeller blades

This chapter provides an assessment of the literature dealing with the use of composite materials in relatively recent applications to marine structures. The analysis of the behavior of the blade is complex because of the geometry, the effects of the rotation of the propeller, the interaction with the water, and the anisotropic nature of the material. These issues are discussed in details, recent results from analyses of the structure-hydrodynamics problem are assessed and recommendations for future work are presented.
Teachers and Administrators as Lead Professionals for Democratic Ethics: From Course Design to Collaborative Journeys of Becoming

The heightened level of attention being afforded to “teacher leadership” is palpable in the United States. At a national level, proprietary organizations are receiving funds from large philanthropic organizations (e.g., the Gates and the Wallace Foundations) to promote the development of teacher leaders. State departments of education are accommodating the federal push finding various ways to incentivize the efforts of teachers to lead from the classroom. Our institutions of higher education are also adjusting and accommodating by taking up the charge of preparing teacher leaders, theorizing, and researching the potential of teacher leadership through academic study. As professors of education in the United States, we are mindful of the contextualizing neoliberalism infused throughout our policy environment and are deeply concerned about the habits of competition, rigidness, bureaucratization, and overspecialization. Not surprisingly, such ways of thinking, acting, and being infiltrate our educational institutions and can have a dehumanizing effect on local teachers, their pedagogies, and their students (Noddings 2007; Nussbaum 2010). Such habits of mind and body can additionally reinforce a sense of isolation between teachers and their profession (Eisner 2001), perhaps even a loss of vocational calling (Hansen 1995; Palmer 2007). Along with this can come a sense of alienation from colleagues and administrators (Macdonald and Shirley 2009) as well as a loss of individual and collective voice and autonomy (Apple 2006; Ayers 2010; Miller 1990). This chapter reports on an action research project designed focused on teacher leadership and reconceptualist curriculum theorizing as an alternative to the Tyler Rationale.
Characterization of transgenic cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) over-expressing Arabidopsis thaliana Related to ABA-insensitive3(ABI3)/Vivparous1 (AtRAV1) and AtABI5 transcription factors: improved water use efficiency through altered guard cell physiology

We investigated select transgenic lines of Gossypium hirsutum that over-express AtRAV1 or AtABI5 transcription factors. The hypothesis is that these lines have enhanced responses to abscisic acid (ABA) resulting in greater water use efficiencies (WUE). We measured leaf surface temperatures (LST), stomatal density, absolute and relative sizes of guard cell apertures, and ABA concentrations in cotyledons. We characterized transgene protein expression and activities in transient assays in Nicotiana benthamiana, in transgenic cotton seeds by immunoblot and by endogenous expression in leaves of an effector of ABA responses (GhDREB). AtRAV11-1-5 and AtABI51-1-1 over-expression lines had trends of lower levels of ABA in well-watered and drought-stressed cotyledons, and all events tested had higher leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthesis rates under drought in greenhouse, and lower LSTs than control Coker 312 under drought stress conditions. Notably, AtRAV11-1-5 cotyledons had significantly higher stomatal densities and 26% smaller guard cell apertures than Coker 312 under drought stress, providing a plausible explanation why LSTs across lines were lower concordant with smaller stomatal apertures. These traits may contribute to intrinsic WUE and assimilate traits of larger leaf areas and longer boll fibers previously shown in these and several independent AtRAV1 and AtABI5 events in the greenhouse and field. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that over-expression of AtRAV1 results in an ABA-hypersensitive phenotype manifest as reduced expression of endogenous GhDREB effector, and lower levels of endogenous ABA in cotyledons associated with greater reductions in pore apertures during stress and increased stomatal density.
Comment on “Stability of the wobbling motion in an odd-mass nucleus and the analysis of Pr 135 ”

The claim of Tanabe and Sugawara-Tanabe [Phys. Rev. C 95, 064315 (2017)] that transverse wobbling is unstable is contradicted. Examples for stable transverse wobbling are provided. It is demonstrated that the alternative scenario suggested in the commented paper violates fundamental properties of the nuclear many-body system.
Effect of Pulsed Radio Frequency Stimulation on Wound Healing: A Double-Blind Pilot Clinical Study

Chronic pressure ulcers are a well recognized problem in persons with spinal cord injury, stroke, the elderly and other individuals who may be bedbound or wheelchair bound. The National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel estimates the prevalence of pressure ulcers to be between 2.7% and 29.5% in acute care facilities, between 2.4% and 23% of patients in skilled care facilities and nursing homes and between 7% and 12% of patients in the home care setting1. Various studies estimate the cost to heal an ulcer range from $5,000 to more than $25,000 and the total financial cost runs over $5 billion annually2.
An empirical evaluation of o(1) steepest descent for NK-Landscapes

New methods make it possible to do approximate steepest descent in O(1) time per move for k-bounded pseudo-Boolean functions using stochastic local search. It is also possible to use the average fitness over the Hamming distance 2 neighborhood as a surrogate fitness function and still retain the O(1) time per move. These are average complexity results. In light of these new results, we examine three factors that can influence both the computational cost and the effectiveness of stochastic local search: 1) Fitness function: f(x) or a surrogate; 2) Local optimum escape method: hard random or soft restarts; 3) Descent strategy: next or steepest. We empirically assess these factors in a study of local search for solving NK-landscape problems.
Echocardiographic Evaluation of Patients Before and After MitraClip Mitral Valve Repair

Edge-to-edge mitral valve repair improves mitral leaflet coaptation and reduces mitral regurgitation (MR) by approximating the middle scallops of the mitral valve. The percutaneous transcatheter MitraClip™ system emulates edge-to-edge surgical repair. The MitraClip™ repair system has been shown to be effective in selected patients with either degenerative or functional MR. As with surgical mitral repair, the echocardiographic assessment of mitral valve anatomy and the determination of the mechanism and severity of MR are required to select appropriate patients who may benefit from percutaneous intervention and to tailor the repair strategy to the individual pathology. High quality transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography as well as real-time 3D imaging is essential to evaluate the mitral valve for percutaneous repair, as well as to evaluate the efficacy of the repair after it has been performed. This chapter will cover the echocardiographic assessment of the mitral valve in patients who are being considered for percutaneous edge-to-edge repair, both with regard to assessing the severity of MR as well as anatomic inclusion and exclusion criteria that has been used in the US trials and outside the US clinically. It will also cover the echocardiographic assessment of patients following percutaneous edge-to-edge mitral repair.
Using an automated reasoning program as a CS application in discrete mathematics

Connections between topics in discrete mathematics and applications to computer science could enhance the discrete mathematics course. Showing students these connections through good interesting examples bridges the theory with application. This paper is in keeping with the objective of the ITiCSE 2002 working group "Materials Development in Support of Mathematical Thinking" to provide materials to educators so that they might be able to make connections between mathematics and computer science topics [3]. SIGCSE Workshops in 2004 [6] and 2005 [7] continued this effort by illustrating nifty examples connecting the two areas. This paper demonstrates how elementary first-order logic principles found in a discrete mathematics course are applied to automated reasoning to generate programs to solve problems through proof.
Oracle Data Mining

Oracle has completed a major research and development effort to add native Data Mining and pattern recognition algorithms to the Oracle RDBMS. As a result, Oracle Data Mining (ODM) provides a comprehensive collection of Data Mining analytics as part of the Oracle database environment that supports the development, integration and deployment of Data Mining applications. This Data Mining infrastructure has a native SQL and PL/SQL API but can also be accessed from a Java API or the ODM user interface. ODM enables data analysts and developers to discover insights hidden in their data and create advanced Data Mining applications that extend the benefits of DMa Mining to many users throughout an organization. ODM leverages the powerful and feature-rich Oracle RDBMS environment including comprehensive capabilities for data storage, data preparation and processing, information retrieval, scalability, security, transaction control, parallelism, versioning, workflow, and reliability. In this article, we describe the functionality and algorithms behind ODM and the advantages of the Data Mining in the database paradigm. We conclude with two examples of the use of ODM: a SVM methodology for tumor classification and the integration of Naive Bayes predictive models in Oracle’s marketing business application (Oracle Marketing).
An Experimental Analysis of Hot Aisle Containment Systems

In recent years, various airflow containment systems have been deployed in data centers to improve the cooling efficiency by minimizing the mixing of hot and cold air streams. The goal of this study is the experimental investigation of passive and active hot aisle containment (HAC) systems. Also investigated, will be the dynamic interaction between HAC and information technology equipment (ITE). In addition, various provisioning levels of HAC are studied. In this study, a chimney exhaust rack (CER) is considered as the HAC system. The rack is populated by 22 commercial 2-RU servers and one network switch. Four scenarios with and without the presence of cold and hot aisle containments are investigated and compared. The transient pressure build-up inside the rack, servers’ fan speed, inlet air temperatures (IAT), IT power consumption, and CPU temperatures are monitored and operating data recorded. In addition, IAT of selected servers is measured using external temperature sensors and compared with data available via the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI). To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first experimental study in which a HAC system is analyzed using commercial ITE in a white space. It is observed that presence of backpressure can lead to a false high IPMI IAT reading. Consequently, a cascade rise in servers’ fan speed is observed, which increases the backpressure and worsen the situation. As a result, the thermal performance of ITE and power consumption of the rack are affected. Furthermore, it is shown that the backpressure can affect the accuracy of common data center efficiency metrics.
Is the use of Stereotactic Electroencephalography Safe and Effective in Children? A Meta-Analysis of the use of Stereotactic Electroencephalography in Comparison to Subdural Grids for Invasive Epilepsy Monitoring in Pediatric Subjects.

Background Stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) is an alternative addition to subdural grids (SDG) in invasive extra-operative monitoring for medically refractory epilepsy. Few studies exist on the clinical efficacy and safety of these techniques in pediatric populations. Objective To provide a comparative quantitative summary of surgical complications and postoperative seizure freedom associated with invasive extra-operative presurgical techniques in pediatric patients. Methods The systematic review was conducted following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). A literature search was conducted utilizing Ovid Medline, Embase, Pubmed, and the Cochrane database. Results Fourteen papers with a total of 697 pediatric patients undergoing invasive SDG monitoring and 9 papers with a total of 277 pediatric patients undergoing SEEG monitoring were utilized in the systemic review. Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) leaks were the most common adverse event in the SDG studies (pooled prevalence 11.9% 95% confidence interval [CI] 5.7-23.3). There was one case of CSF leak in the SEEG studies. Intracranial hemorrhages (SDG: 10.7%, 95% CI 5.3-20.3; SEEG: 2.9%, 95% CI -0.7 to 10.8) and infection (SDG: 10.8%, 95% CI 6.7-17) were more common in the SDG studies reviewed. At the time of the last postoperative visit, a greater percentage of pediatric patients achieved seizure freedom in the SEEG studies (SEEG: 66.5%, 95% CI 58.8-73.4; SDG: 52.1%, 95% CI 43.0-61.1). Conclusion SEEG is a safe alternative to SDG and should be considered on an individual basis for selected pediatric patients.
Estimation of the distribution of longitudinal biomarker trajectories prior to disease progression.

Most studies characterize longitudinal biomarker trajectories by looking forward at them from a commonly used time origin, such as the initial treatment time. For a better understanding of the relationship between biomarkers and disease progression, we propose to align all subjects by using their disease progression time as the origin and then looking backward at the biomarker distributions prior to that event. We demonstrate that such backward-looking plots are much more informative than forward-looking plots when the research goal is to understand the shape of the trajectory leading up to the event of interest. Such backward-looking plotting is an easy task if disease progression is observed for all the subjects. However, when these events are censored for a significant proportion of subjects in the study cohort, their time origins cannot be identified, and the task of aligning them cannot be performed. We propose a new method to tackle this problem by considering the distributions of longitudinal biomarker data conditional on the failure time. We use landmark analysis models to estimate these distributions. Compared to a naive method, our new method greatly reduces estimation bias. We apply our method to a study for chronic myeloid leukemia patients whose BCR-ABL transcript expression levels after treatment are good indicators of residual disease. Our proposed method provides a good visualization tool for longitudinal biomarker studies for the early detection of disease.
Antimicrobial efficacy of plant essential oils and extracts against Escherichia coli

The efficacies of 11 plant-derived antimicrobials were evaluated against Escherichia coli in vitro in solution at room temperature. These included lemongrass, cinnamon, and oregano essential oils a...
IGBT Applications: Other

The insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is being used for large variety of applications that do not fit into the previous chapters. Smart homes are being enabled with improved communication systems and power management using IGBTs. The IGBT is used to control heating in printing and copying machines to fix the toner. Inductive power transfer systems using IGBTs are used for stage lighting and embedded electric vehicle chargers. The power supply for airport security scanners uses IGBTs to regulate the X-ray tube voltage for high-quality imaging. Pulse power supplies utilize IGBTs to generate very high voltages for ion implantation and particle accelerators. The European Council for Nuclear Research Large Hadron Collider uses IGBTs for the bumper magnets in the Low Energy Ion Ring. The IGBT is used to generate high electric fields for sterilization of food and for treatment of water. The desalination of water is performed using IGBT-based motor drives. It is used in the power supplies for heating the oil pipes during extraction of petroleum from the ground. Standby power generators used in emergencies use IGBTs in their inverters. NASA has made use of IGBTs for the space shuttle main engine thrust control, the orbital maneuvering system, and power distribution network. It is used for the many DC–DC converters and DC–AC inverters inside the International Space Station.
Murine Surgical Model of Topical Elastase Induced Descending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm

According to the Center for Disease Control, aortic aneurysms (AAs) were considered a leading cause of death in all races and both sexes from 1999-2016. An aneurysm forms as a result of progressive weakening and eventual dilation of the aorta, which can rupture or tear once it reaches a critical diameter. Aneurysms of the descending aorta in the chest, called descending thoracic aortic aneurysms (dTAA), make up a large proportion of aneurysm cases in the United States. Uncontained dTAA rupture is almost universally lethal, and elective repair has a high rate of morbidity and mortality. The purpose of our model is to study dTAA specifically, to elucidate the pathophysiology of dTAA and to search for molecular targets to halt the growth or reduce the size of dTAA. By having a murine model to study thoracic pathology precisely, targeted therapies can be developed to specifically test dTAA. The method is based on the placement of porcine pancreatic elastase (PPE) directly on the outer murine aortic wall after surgical exposure. This creates a destructive and inflammatory reaction, which weakens the aortic wall and allows for aneurysm formation over weeks to months. Though murine models possess limitations, our dTAA model produces robust aneurysms of predictable size. Furthermore, this model can be used to test genetic and pharmaceutical targets which may arrest dTAA growth or prevent rupture. In human patients, interventions such as these could help avoid aneurysm rupture, and difficult surgical intervention.
Mechanism-Based Design of a High-Potential Catholyte Enables a 3.2 V All-Organic Nonaqueous Redox Flow Battery.

Nonaqueous redox flow batteries (RFBs) represent a promising technology for grid-scale energy storage. A key challenge for the field is identifying molecules that undergo reversible redox reactions...
Repair in Translation

In this article, the author juxtaposes writing and conversation about care for, with, and in spite of technology in Cambodia. The scene is medical care, and the actors are radiologists, engineers, ...
Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, ed. A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1850 to the Present.

A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1850 to the Present is a thoughtful selection of excerpted writings by some seventy theatre practitioners, playwrights, and critics, representing vari...
Using a Resuscitation-Based Simulation Activity to Create an Interprofessional Education Activity for Medical, Nursing, and Pharmacy Students.

Introduction To achieve high-quality, patient-centered care, teaching programs across health professions must prepare their learners to work in effective teams. We created a simulation activity to ...
Automating Compositional Analysis of Authentication Protocols

Modern verifiers for cryptographic protocols can analyze sophisticated designs automatically, but require the entire code of the protocol to operate. Compositional techniques, by contrast, allow us to verify each system component separately, against its own guarantees and assumptions about other components and the environment. Compositionality helps protocol design because it explains how the design can evolve and when it can run safely along other protocols and programs. For example, it might say that it is safe to add some functionality to a server without having to patch the client. Unfortunately, while compositional frameworks for protocol verification do exist, they require non-trivial human effort to identify specifications for the components of the system, thus hindering their adoption. To address these shortcomings, we investigate techniques for automated, compositional analysis of authentication protocols, using automata-learning techniques to synthesize assumptions for protocol components. We report preliminary results on the Needham-Schroeder-Lowe protocol, where our synthesized assumption was capable of lowering verification time while also allowing us to verify protocol variants compositionally.
Early Detection of Plant Viral Disease Using Hyperspectral Imaging and Deep Learning.

Early detection of grapevine viral diseases is critical for early interventions in order to prevent the disease from spreading to the entire vineyard. Hyperspectral remote sensing can potentially detect and quantify viral diseases in a nondestructive manner. This study utilized hyperspectral imagery at the plant level to identify and classify grapevines inoculated with the newly discovered DNA virus grapevine vein-clearing virus (GVCV) at the early asymptomatic stages. An experiment was set up at a test site at South Farm Research Center, Columbia, MO, USA (38.92 N, −92.28 W), with two grapevine groups, namely healthy and GVCV-infected, while other conditions were controlled. Images of each vine were captured by a SPECIM IQ 400–1000 nm hyperspectral sensor (Oulu, Finland). Hyperspectral images were calibrated and preprocessed to retain only grapevine pixels. A statistical approach was employed to discriminate two reflectance spectra patterns between healthy and GVCV vines. Disease-centric vegetation indices (VIs) were established and explored in terms of their importance to the classification power. Pixel-wise (spectral features) classification was performed in parallel with image-wise (joint spatial–spectral features) classification within a framework involving deep learning architectures and traditional machine learning. The results showed that: (1) the discriminative wavelength regions included the 900–940 nm range in the near-infrared (NIR) region in vines 30 days after sowing (DAS) and the entire visual (VIS) region of 400–700 nm in vines 90 DAS; (2) the normalized pheophytization index (NPQI), fluorescence ratio index 1 (FRI1), plant senescence reflectance index (PSRI), anthocyanin index (AntGitelson), and water stress and canopy temperature (WSCT) measures were the most discriminative indices; (3) the support vector machine (SVM) was effective in VI-wise classification with smaller feature spaces, while the RF classifier performed better in pixel-wise and image-wise classification with larger feature spaces; and (4) the automated 3D convolutional neural network (3D-CNN) feature extractor provided promising results over the 2D convolutional neural network (2D-CNN) in learning features from hyperspectral data cubes with a limited number of samples.
Improving NFA-based signature matching using ordered binary decision diagrams

Network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) make extensive use of regular expressions as attack signatures. Internally, NIDS represent and operate these signatures using finite automata. Existing representations of finite automata present a well-known time-space tradeoff: Deterministic automata (DFAs) provide fast matching but are memory intensive, while non-deterministic automata (NFAs) are space-efficient but are several orders of magnitude slower than DFAs. This time/space tradeoff has motivated much recent research, primarily with a focus on improving the space-efficiency of DFAs, often at the cost of reducing their performance. This paper presents NFA-OBDDs, a symbolic representation of NFAs that retains their space-efficiency while improving their time-efficiency. Experiments using Snort HTTP and FTP signature sets show that an NFA-OBDD-based representation of regular expressions can outperform traditional NFAs by up to three orders of magnitude and is competitive with a variant of DFAs, while still remaining as compact as NFAs.
Object recognition with pictorial structures

This thesis presents a statistical framework for object recognition. The framework is motivated by the pictorial structure models introduced by Fischler and Elschlager nearly 30 years ago. The basic idea is to model an object by a collection of parts arranged in a deformable conguration. The appearance of each part is modeled separately, and the deformable con guration is represented by spring-like connections between pairs of parts. These models allow for qualitative descriptions of visual appearance, and are suitable for generic recognition problems. The problem of detecting an object in an image and the problem of learning an object model using training examples are naturally formulated under a statistical approach. We present eAEcient algorithms to solve these problems in our framework. We demonstrate our techniques by training models to represent faces and human bodies. The models are then used to locate the corresponding objects in novel images. Thesis Supervisor: W. Eric L. Grimson Title: Bernard Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering