cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Anti-competitive agreements: The meaning of ‘agreement’

In the classic cartel, supposed competitors meet in the proverbial smoke-filled hotel room and agree to fix prices at supra-competitive levels. Even though the “agreement” is unlikely to be legally binding on the parties (i.e., the agreement could not be enforced against one of the cartelists that began to “cheat” by offering lower prices), virtually all modern economies would treat such a cartel as unlawful under their national antitrust laws.Despite the effectiveness of leniency programs in encouraging confessions from cartel members, there are still cartels (both domestic and international) that operate under a cloak of secrecy, and therefore governments must continue to use more conventional tools to seek them out and prosecute them. Sometimes these traditional investigatory tools will yield the confession or the hot documents that will make prosecution easy, but not always. So the question arises: in the absence of a video-taped cartel meeting, a cooperating participant, or incriminating documents, can a cartel be successfully prosecuted based primarily on “circumstantial” evidence? However, it is not just a question of what kind of circumstantial evidence can be used to establish the existence of a hard-core cartel – that question might best be described in these circumstances as akin to an economic detective story. A more complicated substantive question underlies the effort to describe the type and quantity of the circumstantial evidence necessary to obtain a successful prosecution, namely, what precisely do we mean to include under the category of an illegal “agreement” or “conspiracy” or “concerted practice?” The plan of this chapter is to begin by describing how the U.S. treats classic cartel behavior when proof of the existence of a cartel agreement is not an issue. Then we turn to the task of establishing the existence of an illegal agreement primarily or entirely through circumstantial evidence. This will quickly get us into the question of what constitutes an unlawful agreement under U.S. law and in particular, the recently renewed debate about whether classic oligopoly behavior can be prosecuted as an unlawful agreement. In the process, we will refer to how similar issues are dealt with in other jurisdictions, most notably the European Union.
Packet-Symbol Decoding for Reliable Multipath Reception with No Sequence Numbers

This paper presents a new decoding method inspired by Mitzenmacher's idea of adding a different pseudo-random number to each packet, in a packet-symbol (n, k) code, for verification-based decoding low density codes with packet deletions or errors, or out-of-order receptions, and no sequence numbers. The new method has less decoding complexity and is not restricted to low density codes. In multipath reception, the same packet may be received more than once, correctly or incorrectly, packets may be received out of order, or with error. Despite this and despite using no sequence number overhead and very limited error detection overhead, the decoder can decode the packet-based code and re-order the data as long as the errors and deletions do not come within 2 of covering the positions of any code word. If order is preserved, the constraint is not to come within one of covering any code word. Also, it is shown how convolutional codes can further simplify decoding.
Purification and characterization of an NADP+-linked alcohol oxido-reductase which catalyzes the interconversion of gamma-hydroxybutyrate and succinic semialdehyde

— An NADP+ -linked enzyme, capable of interconverting γ-hydroxybutyrate and succinic semialdehyde, has been isolated from hamster liver and brain. The enzyme which was isolated from liver has been purified 300-fold and exhibits a single band by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The molecular weight of the enzyme is - 31,000 as estimated from gel filtration and 38,000 as estimated from sodium dodccyl sulfate gel electrophoresis. The enzyme is inhibited by amobarbital, diphenylhy-dantoin, 2-propylvalerate, and diethyldithiocarbamate, but not by pyrazole. The enzymes from brain and liver appear to be very similar with regard to their molecular weights and their kinetic constants for γ-hydroxybutyrate and succinic semialdehyde.
Assessment of Biological Target Volume Using Positron Emission Tomography in High-Grade Glioma Patients

High-grade gliomas (HGG) are the most challenging brain tumors to treat. Even though various sophisticated options exist to treat patients with gliomas, the disease invariably leads to death over months or years. The major obstacles encountered in treating gliomas are in determining the exact location, extent, and metabolic activity of the tumor. Molecular imaging of energy metabolism, amino acid transport, cell proliferation and cell death have been found helpful in identifying the biologically active tumor tissues for therapy. It allows a better understanding of pathology at the molecular level. This ability is especially useful in brain tumors where tissue sampling in vivo is associated with significant risks. Positron emission tomography (PET) is one of the most prominent molecular imaging modalities utilized for imaging pathophysiology of tumors at an early stage. In this chapter, the applicability of PET in assessing the biologically active tumor volumes in high-grade glioma patients for radiation therapy treatment planning and therapy monitoring will be reviewed. We will focus on the concept of biological target volume (BTV) and associated methods of image segmentation available for delineating tumor volumes in connection with their applicability in high-grade gliomas.
Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury: Potential Therapeutic Interventions for the Future

Perinatal hypoxic-ischemic (HI) brain injury is a common problem with potentially devastating impact on neurodevelopmental outcomes. Although therapeutic hypothermia, the first available treatment for this disease, reduces the risk of death or major neurodevelopmental disability, the risk of major neurologic morbidity after HI remains significant. Basic research has identified cellular mechanisms that mediate neuronal death. This article reviews the cellular processes induced that lead to brain injury after HI, and identifies treatments currently under investigation for potential translation to clinical trials.
Designing for Appropriate Degrees of Automation: A Practice Innovation Framework Applied to Home Energy Management

Designing next generation human-automation systems—novel technologies—is challenging because there are many unknowns. The needs and expectations of end users and the complexity of scenarios can vary considerably. Such needs, expectations and complexities must be addressed by designing for appropriate degrees of automation. Technology designed with these considerations should enhance user experience if it matches user expectations and information processing needs. In this exploratory case study, a practice innovation framework was proposed and applied to a novel system that manages energy use in smart homes. Twelve potential usage scenarios were created to systematically test four stages of automation, which were embedded within the system as feature options for participants to interact with during the study. Results revealed appropriate stages of automation and automation trust was captured in a posttest survey. These results, leveraged by proposed framework, were instrumental to the functional design of ...
86. Head-to-Head Comparison of Subcutaneous Abatacept Versus Adalimumab on Background Methotrexate in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Blinded Two-Year Results from the Ample Study

malignancies, and death were 13.9%, 4.6%, and 2.1%, respectively. 12.3% of pts had 1 injection-site reaction. Of 388 pts with available samples, 31 (8.0%) tested positive for antibodies to GLM. Conclusion: GLM efficacy was maintained through 5 years among pts with refractory RA who continued treatment. The long-term safety of GLM is consistent with other anti-TNFa agents. Disclosure statement: J.S.S. hs received grants/research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. J.K. has received grants/research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. R.L. has received grants/research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. E.K.M. has received grants/research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. N.G. has received grants/ research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. J.W. has received grants/ research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. F.T.M. has received grants/ research support from Janssen R&D, LLC. C.H. has received grants/research support from Janssen R&D, LLC and owns Janssen R&D, LLC stock. T.G. is an employee of Janssen R&D, LLC and may hold stock or stock options. S.X. is an employee of Janssen R&D, LLC and may hold stock or stock options. Y.Z. is an employee of Janssen R&D, LLC and may hold stock or stock options. E.C.H. is an employee of Janssen R&D, LLC and may hold stock or stock options. M.K.D. is a former employee Janssen R&D, LLC.
Time-optimal ranking algorithms on sorted matrices

Answering rank queries is a recurring operation in various application domains including geographic data processing, information retrieval, database design, information management, and medical image processing. Many of these applications involve data stored in a matrix satisfying a number of properties. One property that occurs time and again in applications specifies that the rows and the columns of the matrix are independently sorted. It is customary to refer to such a matrix as sorted. An instance of the Batched Ranking problem, (BR, for short) involves a sorted matrix A of items from a totally ordered universe, along with a collection Q of queries of the following type: for a query q/sub j/ one is interested in the number of items in A that are smaller than q/sub j/. The BR problem asks for solving all queries in Q. In this work, we consider the BR problem in the following context: the matrix A is pretiled, one item per processor, onto an enhanced mesh of size /spl radic/n/spl times//spl radic/n; the m queries are stored, one per processor, in the first m//spl radic/n columns of the platform. Our main contribution is twofold. First, we show that any algorithm that solves the BR problem must take at least /spl Omega/(log n+/spl radic/m) time in the worst case. Second, we show that this time lower bound is tight on meshes of size /spl radic/n/spl times//spl radic/n enhanced with multiple broadcasting, by exhibiting an algorithm solving the BR problem in O(log n+/spl radic/m) time on such a platform.
Symmetry Breaking in Soft Clustering Decoding of Neural Codes

Information-based distortion methods have been used successfully in the analysis of neural coding problems. These approaches allow the discovery of neural symbols and the corresponding stimulus space of a neuron or neural ensemble quantitatively, while making few assumptions about the nature of either the code or of relevant stimulus features. The neural codebook is derived by quantizing sensory stimuli and neural responses into a small set of clusters, and optimizing the quantization to minimize an information distortion function. The method of annealing has been used to solve the corresponding high-dimensional nonlinear optimization problem. The annealing solutions undergo a series of bifurcations, which we study using bifurcation theory in the presence of symmetries. In this contribution we describe these symmetry breaking bifurcations in detail, and indicate some of the consequences of the form of the bifurcations. In particular, we show that the annealing solutions break symmetry at pitchfork bifurcations, and that subcritical branches can exist. Thus, at a subcritical bifurcation, there are local information distortion solutions which are not found by the method of annealing. Since the annealing procedure is guaranteed to converge to a local solution eventually, the subcritical branch must turn and become optimal at some later saddle-node bifurcation, which we have shown occur generically for this class of problems. This implies that the rate distortion curve, while convex for noninformation-based distortion measures, is not convex for information-based distortion methods.
Basal buoyancy and fast-moving glaciers: in defense of analytic force balance

Abstract. The geometric approach to force balance advocated by T. Hughes in a series of publications has challenged the analytic approach by implying that the latter does not adequately account for basal buoyancy on ice streams, thereby neglecting the contribution to the gravitational driving force associated with this basal buoyancy. Application of the geometric approach to Byrd Glacier, Antarctica, yields physically unrealistic results, and it is argued that this is because of a key limiting assumption in the geometric approach. A more traditional analytic treatment of force balance shows that basal buoyancy does not affect the balance of forces on ice streams, except locally perhaps, through bridging effects.
Building Wave Response Rates in a Longitudinal Survey Essential for Nonsampling Error Reduction or Last In–First Out?

In national health care surveys, significant amounts of resources are allocated to obtaining the participation of households that constitute the last 5–10% of the overall survey response rate. This...
The problems and origins of belief in Big Gods

Once in a great while, an intellectual comes along and provides a story that makes sense of the “big” questions within a discipline. We are fortunate enough that Norenzayan (2013) has done just tha...
Handheld reflectance confocal endomicroscope for imaging of the oral cavity (Conference Presentation)

The abstract is not available © (2016) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Design analysis on the filament-wound toroidal pressure vessel

Based on the netting theory,the balance equations of the filament-wound toroidal pressure vessel under the internal pressure were derived.By solving the balance equations,the results show that the equilibrium wound angle and the fiber thickness are the reduction function of the parallel circle radius R,namely there exists the minimum equalization wound angle and fiber thickness on the outside edge of the circle.The fiber stress is the increment function of the parallel circle radius R,namly there exists the maximum fiber stress on the outside edge of the circle.According to the maximum stress strength criterion,the burst pressure formula for the single spiral and the spiral with hoop filament-wound toroidal pressure vessel were obtained.In order to make the calculated burst pressure coincide with actual value,the developed fiber strength value must be determined by the simulation test.
Identification of hogwash oil through animal-original genes detection with real-time PCR

Objective Common gene fragments from multiple animal genomes were selected as specific targets for accurate and quick identification of hogwash oil. Methods Target gene fragment was screened by analyzing multiple databases and validated by real- time PCR(RT- PCR) to testify the specificity,sensitivity and serviceability in samples of common animal and plant tissues,normal vegetable oils and six hogwash oils. Results HOXC5 gene fragment was found amplification in all the 7 animal tissues while none in the 11 plant tissues. All 8 normal vegetable oil samples showed negative,while all 6 hogwash oil samples showed positive by the RT- PCR. Conclusion The screened gene fragment could differentiate normal vegetable oil from hogwash oil with multiple animal- tissues specificity,and the sensitivity was the same as the previous detection method with species- specific gene from animal.
Perceptions of side effects following axillary block used for outpatient surgery.

Background and Objectives. The study evaluated patient perceptions of side effects related to axillary block (AB) and how they might influence a patient9s decisions about subsequent ABs. Methods. A questionnaire concerning the occurrence and duration of side effects following AB and patient preference for a subsequent AB was completed and returned by each of 1,149 patients. All ABs were performed using a 22 gauge short bevel needle. In all 86.5% had orthopedic surgery, with the remainder vascular access procedures. Three AB techniques and two anesthetic solutions were used. Results. Patient-reported incidences of side effects were bruising, 19.1%; soreness, 39.7%; persistent numbness, 11.0%; and nausea, 10.8%. Bruising was reported more frequently by female patients, those undergoing orthopedic procedures, and those between 20 and 30 and over 80 years of age. Soreness was reported more frequently in orthopedic procedures and by those aged 20 to 30. Technique used did not affect the incidence of side effects or patient willingness to have a repeat AB. Ninety-three percent expressed willingness to have another AB; this was affected by whether the patient experienced a side effect, the duration of the side effect, and by the number of side effects experienced. Those between the ages of 20 and 40 were less willing to have another AB. Conclusions. Even though 51% of the patients reported at least one side effect, 93% would choose to have another AB, indicating a high overall satisfaction with AB anesthesia, which significantly decreased as the number and duration of side effects increased.
The Lessons of Art Theory for Pastoral Theology

This essay applies art theory to pastoral theology, using Rudolf Arnheim's views on the compositional structure of paintings to propose models for expressing the relationship of theology and psychology. From a structural feature of paintings, namely, their possession of a depth dimension and a frontal plane, two primary models are derived, convergence and juxtaposition. The viability of a third, structural uniformity, is also recognized. The larger purpose of the essay is to contend for a recovery of pastoral theology's mid-century emphasis on perception.
Towards parallel implementation of associative inference for cogent confabulation

The superb efficiency and noise resilience of human cognizance comes from the extensive highly associative memory. For example, it is easy for human to recognize occluded or incomplete text images based on its context. Associative inference in the neocortex system is a concurrent process. Serial implementation of this concurrent process not only hinders its performance, but also limits the quality of recall. This paper investigates parallel implementation of associative inference using cogent confabulation model, which is a highly cross-dependent and cyclic knowledge network that supports probabilistic inference. By breaking the fixed processing order, which is typical in sequential processing, and introducing randomness generated from the race conditions in parallel processing, we do not only reduce the runtime, but also improve the accuracy. Further improvement can be achieved by scheduling the lexicon processing intermittently, which provides time for the changes to settle down. Using sentence construction as a case study, we demonstrate that the parallel implementation provides up to 93.4% reduction in computation time and 5% improvement in recall accuracy.
Encouraging interaction and striving for reciprocity: The challenges of community-engaged projects in teacher education

Abstract Opportunities for experiential learning in teacher education are increasingly important as the demographics of teachers and students diverge. I draw on place-conscious pedagogies, funds of knowledge, and teacher development theories to inquire into pre-service teachers' developing conceptions of community as they engaged in a project meant to introduce them to the local communities. Findings suggest that PSTs’ experiences with communities growing up limit their understanding of reciprocity between communities and schools as teachers. The findings have implications for the ways that teacher educators incorporate experiential learning into their programs.
Performance of Highway Design-Bid-Build and Design-Build Projects by Work Types

AbstractThe design-build (D-B) project delivery method has been used increasingly by state departments of transportation (DOTs) because of its documented benefits. Many studies have shown the super...
Technology, the Surgeon, and Surgical Innovation: An Introduction

The daily work of the surgeon relies heavily on technology for both efficiency and enablement. Outside the operating room, surgeons rely on technology to make diagnoses with sophisticated imaging equipment, to quickly transmit patient information, and to monitor patients. In the operating room, the use of technology is obvious: the Bovie, the videoscopic equipment used in laparoscopy and endoscopy, staplers, and, most recently, robots.
Foundations of Geometry in the School of Peano

The question that motivated this paper — why Pieri made an analogy to Peano’s affinities when he introduced segmental transformations — revealed several plausible answers. But perhaps more importantly, seeking to answer the question provided an opportunity to explore the commonalities and differences about the scholars’ views and treatments of projective geometry and its transformations. In this regard, there is one more avenue to explore. What is not evident from his axiomatizations, but is clear from his lectures37 to students, is the evolution of Pieri’s thoughts about projective geometry. In his (1891) notes for a course in projective geometry at the Military Academy — prior to writing his first axiomatization, but after he had translated Staudt (1847) — Pieri took the same approach to projective geometry as had Peano38. But in his notes for the University of Parma (1909–10), after he had written all his foundational papers in projective geometry, Pieri alerted students to the more “desirable” direction of Staudt as opposed to that pursued by J. Poncelet, Mobius, J. Steiner and Chasles, who studied projective geometry as an extension of elementary geometry.
Control Mechanisms in the Sympathetic Nervous System

Ever since the science of neurobiology emerged from the more general field of biological sciences, the main effort has been directed to gaining information on the laws which control growth and differentiation of its 10 billion nerve cells and on the factors which operate in the building of the immensely complex wiring system between neurons and between these cells and their highly diversified end organs. It is fortunate that the first students in this field perhaps did not even realize the magnitude of the problem which they were facing and the impossibility of solving it with the primitive tools and techniques which were then available, for otherwise they would have invested no further efforts along this line.
OPTIMAL DESIGNS AND SPLINE REGRESSION

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the optimal designs and spline regression. Spline polynomials have received considerable attention from mathematicians, working especially in approximation theory. These functions seem to be extremely suitable for interpolating or approximating data in real world situations as in many cases, the underlying functional from s(x) is different on different parts of X . The term spline usually refers to a piecewise polynomial. The spline polynomials are the least oscillatory functions for interpolating data. For the D-optimal designs, one has the equivalence theorem of Kiefer and Wolfowitz, which shows that the D-optimal and minimax designs are equivalent.
Temperature Dependence of the Exchange Interaction in K 2 Cu Cl 4 · 2 H 2 O

The electron spin resonance of ${\mathrm{Cu}}^{2+}$ in ${\mathrm{K}}_{2}$Cu${\mathrm{Cl}}_{4}$ \ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{} 2${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$0 has been observed to change from a two-line spectrum at room temperatures to a single-line resonance at 77 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K. A detailed analysis of the Zeeman anisotropy indicates that the symmetry of the crystal field does not change with temperature. Analysis of the temperature and frequency dependence of the resonance spectrum indicates that the exchange interaction between nearest-neighbor inequivalent ions varies from $\frac{{J}_{1}}{k}$ approximately 0.27 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K at 77 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K to $\frac{{J}_{1}}{k}$ of the order of 0.05 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K at 300 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K. The anomalously large temperature dependence of the exchange cannot be ascribed to the effect of thermal expansion. Instead, there exists evidence that it may well be associated with the presence of a low-lying optical phonon. In contrast to the pronounced decrease of the nearest-neighbor exchange with increasing temperature, the exchange coupling between equivalent next-nearest-neighbor ions is observed either to be temperature independent or possibly to increase slightly with increasing temperature.
An Integrated Approach to Personality Assessment Based on the Personality Systems Framework

Psychologists who carry out personality assessments must be conversant in diverse technical languages to describe their clients' social contexts and inner personality function. The clinician needs to understand a person's family, gender role, ethnic identity, religious beliefs, and similar qualities, and also a client's inner personality functioning, including the workings of motives, emotions, cognition, and self-control: These can be characterized by relevant psychiatric symptoms, personality traits, and individual test scores such as those on the MMPI-2-RF and Rorschach-Performance Assessment System. The Personality Systems Framework for Assessment (PSF-A) can support the assessment process by organizing information about both an individual's context and personality function, freeing professionals to optimally focus on characterizing their clients.
The Next Generation Science Standards and the Quest towards Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Perceptions of K-12 Educators

The K-12 education system is increasingly becoming more culturally diverse. Due to this change in student population diversity, the public, policy makers, employers, and educators agree on the need to change how science is taught in classrooms. Answering this call, states are rushing to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in K-12 public schools. However, there is need to assess how culturally responsive teaching (CRT) can be meshed with NGSS to achieve desired results. This study explored teachers’ views on the benefits and implications of using CRT in K-12 science education under NGSS. Survey data were collected from K-12 teachers in 18 states in the US using an online questionnaire. Based on our data, 86.36% of the respondents had a positive view of the potential impact of integrating CRT with NGSS. However, connecting CRT and NGSS to the science content emerged as one of the major concerns among the teachers. The study also found that teacher training programs on the awareness and adoption of both NGSS and CRT are still needed. Based on these findings, three major recommendations were proposed: 1) phased-adoption and re-assessment of the CRT-NGSS combination on student success; 2) immersive professional development for in-service teachers on how to include NGSS in the existing science curricula; and 3) evaluation of how CRT fits into the new science standards.
Impaired Postural Control and Altered Sensory Organization During Quiet Stance Following Neurotoxic Chemotherapy: A Preliminary Study

Individuals diagnosed with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) demonstrate impaired balance and carry an increased risk of falling. However, prior investigations of postural instability have only compared these individuals against healthy controls, limiting the understanding of impairments associated with CIPN. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to better isolate postural control impairments that are associated with CIPN. Twenty cancer survivors previously diagnosed with breast or colorectal cancer participated. Participants were separated into 3 groups: no prior chemotherapy exposure (CON, n = 6), and recent treatment with taxane- or oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy with no/mild symptoms of CIPN (-CIPN, n = 8) or moderate/severe symptoms of CIPN (+CIPN, n = 6). Postural control was assessed by measuring center of pressure during standing balance conditions that systematically interfered with somatosensory, visual, and/or vestibular information. The presence of CIPN sensory symptoms was associated with impaired postural control, particularly during eyes-closed balance conditions ( P < .05). Additionally, medial-lateral postural instability was more pronounced in the +CIPN group compared with the -CIPN group and CON participants ( P < .05). Greater postural instability during eyes-closed balance in individuals with CIPN is consistent with impaired peripheral sensation. Balance impairments in cancer survivors with CIPN demonstrate the unique challenges in this population and motivate the need for targeted efforts to mitigate postural control deficits that have previously been associated with fall risk.
Students’ Perceptions of Best and Worst Aspects of Design Courses: A Qualitative Analysis of 87 Courses and 5591 Students

This Full Paper presents the results of qualitative analysis of students’ perceptions of the best and worst aspects of 87 courses related to design such as engineering design, product design, biomedical engineering innovation and design, and Mechanics-Based Design. The total enrollment in the courses was 5591 students at a Research-Intensive University in the US. Iterative close readings of the comments and open and axial coding were applied to the comments to generate codes that represent students’ comments. Codes were grouped in categories that represent students’ opinions about teaching. Students reported the best and worst aspects of design courses related to the following categories: course planning and logistics, teaching strategies, learning experiences, assessment and evaluation, mentoring and modeling, and encouragement and motivation. This work suggests that careful design of all aspects of teaching is important. Special attention should be given to aspects of design courses such as project-based learning, teamwork, and hands-on applied learning.
Washington Geography and the Birth of HarDCore, 1979–1983

This chapter discusses how the geography of Washington, DC, informed the birth of new wave and ultimately hardcore punk via Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Government Issue, and more. It also discusses the role of gender in that scene as well as its relationship with other underground movements like Go-Go.
On social optima of non-cooperative mean field games

This paper studies the connections between mean-field games and the social welfare optimization problems. We consider a mean field game in functional spaces with a large population of agents, each of which seeks to minimize an individual cost function. The cost functions of different agents are coupled through a mean field term that depends on the mean of the population states. We show that under some mild conditions any ∊-Nash equilibrium of the mean field game coincides with the optimal solution to a convex social welfare optimization problem. The results are proved based on a general formulation in the functional spaces and can be applied to a variety of mean field games studied in the literature. Our result also implies that the computation of the mean field equilibrium can be cast as a convex optimization problem, which can be efficiently solved by a decentralized primal dual algorithm.
The Sharp Corners of ACA Premium Tax Credit Provisions

The Tax Court has started issuing more and more opinions dealing with disputes over the proper application of the Premium Tax Credit Provisions in §36B. Those opinions show that the Court views §36B as containing no wiggle room to deal with reasonable taxpayer errors in calculating their Premium Tax Credit (PTC). Multiple times one sees the Court writing phrases such as “We are not unsympathetic to petitioners’ plight; however, we are bound by the statute,” and “we cannot ignore the law to achieve an equitable end.” The Court's doggedly textualist reading results in taxpayers getting hit with really big deficiencies, even when the error is someone else’s fault. Recent cases have done this, turning receipt of lump sum SSDI payments into a “gotcha” game that even reasonable taxpayers will lose if they make the §86(e) election to attribute a lump sum payment ratably over prior years. In the recent fully reviewed case of Johnson v. Commissioner, the question was whether an SSDI lump sum catch-up payment had to be counted in calculating PTC eligibility when the taxpayers had made an election under §86(e) to reallocate the lump-sum payment from current year into prior years. The Court looked at the text of §36B and said “yep, gotta include the lump sum.” This article argues that a closer look at the §36B language suggests there is room for an interpretation consistent with the §86(e) policy. While the interpretive choice made by the Court was understandable, it was not inevitable. This article explains why.
Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia and institutional prophylaxis practices in CLL patients treated with BTK inhibitors

Opportunistic infections (OIs), such as Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP), have been reported in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients treated with ibrutinib, and are an important cause of morbidity and mortality. Currently, there are no international consensus guidelines regarding the use of antimicrobial prophylaxis for OIs, and in particular PJP, in CLL patients treated with Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTKi's). We evaluated the frequency of PJP in CLL patients at our institution who were treated with BTKi's, and assessed the impact of prophylaxis on reducing the risk of PJP. We identified 217 patients treated with BTKi's, consisting of 3 cohorts: 143 patients on either BTKi monotherapy with ibrutinib or acalabrutinib, 17 patients receiving ibrutinib combination therapy with umbralisib as part of a clinical trial, and 57 patients receiving ibrutinib in combination with standard chemotherapy, also as part of a clinical trial. Forty-one percent of patients on BTKi monotherapy received prophylaxis, which was given at the discretion of the treating physician. The prevalence of PJP in all patients not on prophylaxis was 3.4% (3 of 87), and, specifically in BTKi-monotherapy patients not on prophylaxis, the PJP prevalence was 2.4% (2 of 85). PJP prophylaxis was effective, as there were no cases of PJP in patients on prophylaxis (0 of 130). The relatively low prevalence of PJP in our study population suggests that routine prophylaxis may not be indicated in CLL patients on BTKi therapy.
Updated staging and patient outcomes in low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasms.

Low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasms (LAMNs) exhibit drastically different clinical course and prognosis depending on tumor stage, particularly as it relates to the extent and cellularity of peritoneal involvement. In this context, recent changes in staging guidelines have sought to clarify criteria for pT and pM categories. This study’s aim was to identify clinicopathological features associated with patient outcomes, especially as they pertain to updated stage groups. We reviewed LAMNs from 192 patients (mean age: 56.9 years, 119 (62.0%) women). The tumors consisted of 66 (34.4%) pTisM0, 16 (8.3%) pT3M0, 16 (8.3%) pT4aM0, 27 (14.1%) pTxM1a, and 67 (34.9%) pTxM1b cases. In multivariate analysis, only gross perforation was significantly associated with higher TNM group stage (p = 0.001; OR 3.3, 95% CI: 1.7–6.4). Of 165 (85.9%) patients with clinical follow-up, 51 (30.9%) had disease progression (over a mean 33.7 months, range: 4.7–121.7), whereas over significantly longer follow-up (mean 48.7 months, range: 3.1–143.9; p = 0.004), 114 (69.1%) patients did not. In multivariate analysis, higher TNM stage was significantly associated with disease progression (p = 0.029; OR 18.3, 95% CI: 1.4–246.0). In Kaplan–Meier analysis, none of 74 patients with disease limited to the appendix (pM0), 6 of 27 (22.2%) cases with peritoneal involvement by acellular mucin only (pM1a), and 45 of 64 (70.3%) tumors with intraperitoneal deposits containing neoplastic cells (pM1b) showed disease progression (p < 0.001). These differences in progression-free survival among TNM groups persisted when limiting the analysis to patients who had undergone successful cytoreductive surgery (p = 0.050). Finally, in four patients (all with pM1b disease) death was attributed to disease progression whereas there was no disease-specific mortality in the pM0 and pM1a groups (p = 0.020). These data support the designation of LAMNs with acellular peritoneal mucin as having an intermediate prognosis between cases limited to the appendix and those with intraperitoneal deposits containing neoplastic epithelium.
Trans traveling and embodied practices: Panopticism, agency, dress, and gendered surveillance

Abstract We examined trans individual's enactments of gender authenticity negotiations with a unique perspective considering the intersections of dress and travel. We drew upon the concepts of power, agency of the body, and dress and ambivalence to examine relationships between embodied practices, traveling, and society by conducting 15 semi-structured interviews with trans individuals. Through our work we argue that dress and appearance-related practices while traveling play an integral part of negotiating gender identities in ways that feel authentic to the self for trans individuals. Part of these authenticity negotiations sometimes involve moments of lacking authenticity through self-surveillance in order to manage liveable and safer lives in unknown or even familiar spaces.
Lipid-lowering Therapies in Myositis

The use of lipid-lowering therapies in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) is complicated and there are no guidelines for diagnosing, monitoring, or treating atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) in this group of patients. The use of lipid-lowering therapies, especially statins, is recommended in patients with increased risk for ASCVD, which includes patients with inflammatory diseases, based on recent American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines for ASCVD management. There is accumulating evidence that patients with IIM are at increased risk for ASCVD, similar to other inflammatory diseases. Lipid-lowering therapies have side effects that may be pronounced or confounding in myositis patients, potentially limiting their use. Statins are specifically contraindicated in patients with anti 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGCR) antibodies. Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors have been shown to be safe and potentially beneficial in patients with IIM. Here, we propose a framework for (1) ASCVD risk assessment and treatment based on ACC/AHA ASCVD primary prevention guidelines; (2) myositis disease monitoring while undergoing lipid-lowering therapy; and (3) management of statin intolerance, including, indications for the use of PCSK9 inhibitors.
Short-term Effects of Canceled Elective Procedures Due to COVID-19: Evidence From the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether delayed or cancelled elective procedures due to COVID-19 resulted in higher rates of emergency department (ED) utilization and/or increased mortality. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: On March 15, 2020, the Veterans Affairs (VA) issued a nationwide order to temporarily pause elective cases due to COVID-19. The effects of this disruption on patient outcomes are not yet known. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study used data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse. Surgical procedures cancelled due to COVID-19 in 2020 (n = 3,326) were matched to similar completed procedures in 2018 (n = 151,863) and 2019 (n = 146,582). Outcome measures included 30- and 90-day VA ED use and mortality in the period following the completed or cancelled procedure. We used exact matching on surgical procedure category and nearest neighbor matching on patient characteristics, procedure year, and facility. RESULTS: Patients with elective surgical procedures cancelled due to COVID-19 were no more likely to have an ED visit in the 30- (Difference: -4.3% pts; 95% CI: -0.078, -0.007) and 90âdays (-0.9% pts; 95% CI: -0.068, 0.05) following the expected case date. Patients with cancellations had no difference in 30- (Difference: 0.1% pts; 95% CI: -0.008, 0.01) and 90-day (Difference: -0.4% pts; 95% CI: -0.016, 0.009) mortality rates when compared to similar patients with similar procedures that were completed in previous years. CONCLUSIONS: The pause in elective surgical cases was not associated with short-term adverse outcomes in VA hospitals, suggesting appropriate surgical case triage and management. Further study will be essential to determine if the delayed cases were associated with longer-term effects.
SARS-CoV-2 and Portal Vein Thrombosis: A Rare Gastrointestinal Manifestation of COVID-19

Portal vein thrombosis is defined as a clot within the trunk or intrahepatic branches of the portal vein. Sequelae involves either partial or complete recanalization. However, in patients with liver disease, it can progress to a cavernoma instead of recanalization. This can result in gastrointestinal bleeding and intestinal infarction. Its rising incidence in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is an important clinical aspect that needs to be addressed and treated.
XPL-CF: Explainable Embeddings for Feature-based Collaborative Filtering

Collaborative filtering (CF) methods are making an impact on our daily lives in a wide range of applications, including recommender systems and personalization. Latent factor methods, e.g., matrix factorization (MF), have been the state-of-the-art in CF, however they lack interpretability and do not provide a straightforward explanation for their predictions. Explainability is gaining momentum in recommender systems for accountability, and because a good explanation can swing an undecided user. Most recent explainable recommendation methods require auxiliary data such as review text or item content on top of item ratings. In this paper, we address the case where no additional data are available and propose augmenting the classical MF framework for CF with a prior that encodes each user's embedding as a sparse linear combination of item embeddings, and vice versa for each item embedding. Our XPL-CF approach automatically reveals these user-item relationships, which underpin the latent factors and explain how the resulting recommendations are formed. We showcase the effectiveness of XPL-CF on real data from various application domains. We also evaluate the explainability of the user-item relationship obtained from XPL-CF through numeric evaluation and case study examples.
A Sugarcane G-Protein-Coupled Receptor, ShGPCR1, Confers Tolerance to Multiple Abiotic Stresses

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is a prominent source of sugar and serves as bioenergy/biomass feedstock globally. Multiple biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, and cold, adversely affect sugarcane yield. G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are components of G-protein-mediated signaling affecting plant growth, development, and stress responses. Here, we identified a GPCR-like protein (ShGPCR1) from sugarcane and energy cane (Saccharum spp. hybrids) and characterized its function in conferring tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses. ShGPCR1 protein sequence contained nine predicted transmembrane domains connected by four extracellular and four intracellular loops, which could interact with various ligands and heterotrimeric G-proteins in the cells. ShGPCR1 sequence displayed other signature features of a GPCR such as a putative GTP-binding domain, as well as multiple myristoylation and protein phosphorylation sites, presumably important for its biochemical function. Expression of ShGPCR1 was upregulated by drought, salinity, and cold stresses. Subcellular imaging and calcium (Ca2+) measurements revealed that ShGPCR1 predominantly localized to the plasma membrane and enhanced intracellular Ca2+ levels in response to GTP, respectively. Furthermore, constitutive overexpression of ShGPCR1 in sugarcane conferred tolerance to the three stressors. The stress tolerance phenotype of the transgenic lines corresponded with activation of multiple drought-, salinity-, and cold stress marker genes such as Saccharum spp. LATE EMBRYOGENESIS ABUNDANT, DEHYDRIN, DROUGHT RESPONSIVE 4, GALACTINOL SYNTHASE, ETHYLENE RESPONSIVE FACTOR 3, SALT OVERLY SENSITIVE 1, VACUOLAR Na+/H+ ANTIPORTER 1, NAM/ATAF1/2/CUC2, COLD RESPONSIVE FACTOR 2, and ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE 3. We suggest that ShGPCR1 plays a key role in conferring tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses and the engineered lines may be useful to enhance sugarcane production in marginal environments with fewer resources.
Worlds of Food: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain

In Worlds of Food, Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch present a compelling compilation of recent contributions to our knowledge of the rapidly changing and contested food systems tha...
Adenocarcinoma in Barrett Mucosa Treated by Endoscopic Mucosal Resection

Abstract Adenocarcinoma and dysplasias are recognized complications of Barrett mucosa. In the past, the treatment for this carcinoma was esophagectomy. However, new techniques, including endoscopic mucosal resection, sometimes replace esophagectomy and are becoming standard procedures in clinical practice, not just in major medical centers. Pathologists must learn to handle these specimens, which have extensive artifacts. Also, Barrett mucosa has duplicated stromal layers beneath the mucosa that include a new lamina propria and a new muscularis mucosae. We must be aware of these peculiarities because of staging implications. Regardless of new technology, the diagnostic approach to dysplasia depends on the light microscopic interpretation, which is not as reliable or consistent as one would wish. Hopefully, better diagnostic criteria will arise, and perhaps a new histologic stain or a molecular or genetic test will emerge that complements “our eyeballs.”
RDS: a primitive for the maintenance of replicated data objects

A reliable data server (RDS) is a distributed system that encapsulates replicated data objects (either main memory or secondary storage copies on different sites) and their maintenance primitives. RDS is seen by its clients as a single entity regardless of the number of sites that constitute it. Since different applications may have different reliability requirements, RDS can provide uninterrupted service while tolerating a user-defined number of failures. To achieve a desired degree of resiliency free sites may be dynamically incorporated into RDS to bold additional copies of data objects. Under this approach, a site failure does not cause the abortion of transactions in progress and the availability of the replicated data is not limited during recovery. The design of the system is presented and some preliminary results of the evaluation of its performance are discussed. >
Dependence of DOP-based DGD monitors on the optical power spectrum of equal-pulse-width data formats

We demonstrate that the DGD monitoring range and sensitivity of PMD monitors is optical-spectrum-dependent in 10-and-40-Gbit/s CSRZ, ACRZ and RZ signals even when the pulse-widths are identical, and introduce a method to monitor PMD in CSRZ and ACRZ systems.
Design and implementation of a multimedia database server

The paper summarizes the requirements necessary for the management of multimedia objects. It also analyzes the issues related to these requirements and proposes solutions that permit a high degree of media integration in a data model. The authors show how some of the requirements can be implemented using concepts from the object oriented paradigm and database systems. A brief description of the storage model MEDIAFILE is given. Finally, the authors illustrate the proposed solutions by describing the multimedia database servers architecture.