cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Clinical Utility of Chromosomal Microarray Analysis

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that chromosomal microarray analysis frequently diagnoses conditions that require specific medical follow-up and that referring physicians respond appropriately to abnormal test results. METHODS: A total of 46 298 postnatal patients were tested by chromosomal microarray analysis for a variety of indications, most commonly intellectual disability/developmental delay, congenital anomalies, dysmorphic features, and neurobehavioral problems. The frequency of detection of abnormalities associated with actionable clinical features was tallied, and the rate of physician response to a subset of abnormal tests results was monitored. RESULTS: A total of 2088 diagnoses were made of more than 100 different disorders that have specific clinical features that warrant follow-up. The detection rate for these conditions using high-resolution whole-genome microarrays was 5.4%, which translates to 35% of all clinically significant abnormal test results identified in our laboratory. In a subset of cases monitored for physician response, appropriate clinical action was taken more than 90% of the time as a direct result of the microarray finding. CONCLUSIONS: The disorders diagnosed by chromosomal microarray analysis frequently have clinical features that need medical attention, and physicians respond to the diagnoses with specific clinical actions, thus arguing that microarray testing provides clinical utility for a significant number of patients tested.
Graduate Level Research Methods and Statistics Courses: The Perspective of an Instructor

The goal of an educational system or degree program is to "educate" students. This immediately raises the question of what does it mean to "educate" students. All academic institutions, degree programs and content areas are typically expected to answer this question and establish appropriate academic expectations both within the classroom and as part of their specific academic programs. The theme of this special edition is to provide insight on the challenges of improving graduation rates in both undergraduate and graduate education. As a statistics professor, on many occasions the authors have been part of both college and university committees on research methodology, statistics, and other academic requirements associated with graduate education. The purpose this article is to provide an overview of these experiences and the authors' perspective on how to improve success of students in methodology and statistics courses associated with successfully completing a graduate degree.
Shared execution of recurring workloads in MapReduce

With the increasing complexity of data-intensive MapReduce workloads, Hadoop must often accommodate hundreds or even thousands of recurring analytics queries that periodically execute over frequently updated datasets, e.g., latest stock transactions, new log files, or recent news feeds. For many applications, such recurring queries come with user-specified service-level agreements (SLAs), commonly expressed as the maximum allowed latency for producing results before their merits decay. The recurring nature of these emerging workloads combined with their SLA constraints make it challenging to share and optimize their execution. While some recent efforts on multi-job optimization in MapReduce have emerged, they focus on only sharing work among ad-hoc jobs on static datasets. Unfortunately, these sharing techniques neither take the recurring nature of the queries into account nor guarantee the satisfaction of the SLA requirements. In this work, we propose the first scalable multi-query sharing engine tailored for recurring workloads in the MapReduce infrastructure, called "Helix". Helix deploys new sliced window-alignment techniques to create sharing opportunities among recurring queries without introducing additional I/O overheads or unnecessary data scans. And then, Helix introduces a cost/benefit model for creating a sharing plan among the recurring queries, and a scheduling strategy for executing them to maximize the SLA satisfaction. Our experimental results over real-world datasets confirm that Helix significantly outperforms the state-of-art techniques by an order of magnitude.
Why the Left Hemisphere Is Dominant for Speech Production: Connecting the Dots

Evidence from seemingly disparate areas of speech/language research is reviewed to form a unified theoretical account for why the left hemisphere is specialized for speech production. Research findings from studies investigating hemispheric lateralization of infant babbling, the primacy of the syllable in phonological structure, rhyming performance in split-brain patients, rhyming ability and phonetic categorization in children diagnosed with developmental apraxia of speech, rules governing exchange errors in spoonerisms, organizational principles of neocortical control of learned motor behaviors, and multi-electrode recordings of human neuronal responses to speech sounds are described and common threads highlighted. It is suggested that the emergence, in developmental neurogenesis, of a hard-wired, syllabically-organized, neural substrate representing the phonemic sound elements of one’s language, particularly the vocalic nucleus, is the crucial factor underlying the left hemisphere’s dominance for speech production.
Computer Based Memory Training and Memory Prosthesis in Older Adults

Human aging is associated with a fundamental slowing of central nervous system processes. The evidence is based on changes, often decrements, in the function of a wide range of perceptual, motor, cognitive and memory processes. Two of the most vulnerable processes are the short-term storage of information and the transition of new information to and from long-term memory storage. It has been estimated that about 10–20 percent of older adults show additional, often disease related, impairments in these processes. Behavioral and neuropharmacologic interventions have been proposed and to some extent tested for the remediation of memory deficits. The application of computer technology to these and related problems of the elderly offers considerable promise, but thus far has generally lagged behind applications in younger populations.
Intramolecular [3 + 2] Cyclocondensations of Alkenes with Indolidenes and Indolidenium Cations

C(2)–C(3) cyclopentannelated indole constructs are prepared by either (a) a cyclization cascade of an alkenyl sulfide tethered to a 2-azido-1-allenylbenzene core or (b) cationic cyclization of a tethered alkenyl sulfide with a putative 2-indolidenium cation. In both cases, issues of C–C versus C–N bond formation emerge, and the results indicate that the former is favored.
Surface-induced anisotropic orientations of interfacial ethanol molecules at air/sapphire (1-102) and ethanol/sapphire (1-102) interfaces

Sum frequency vibrational spectroscopy was used to study the interfacial arrangement of ethanol molecules at the vapor/α-Al2O3(1102) and α-Al2O3(1102)/ethanol liquid interfaces. The spectra in the C–H range show that ethanol molecules adsorbed from vapor onto an α-Al2O3(1102) surface have a well-defined anisotropic arrangement following the structure of the α-Al2O3(1102) surface. The arrangement can be explained by the formation of two specific hydrogen bonds between the adsorbed ethanol molecule and hydroxyls on the sapphire surface. At the α-Al2O3(1102)/ethanol liquid interface, the first ethanol monolayer assumes a similar anisotropic arrangement as in the case of an ethanol monolayer on the dry sapphire surface. The second monolayer has a rather broad orientation distribution that is azimuthally nearly isotropic but with molecules flipped 180° with respect to those in the first monolayer.
FOOD INSECURITY AND PROGRAMS TO ALLEVIATE IT: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE HAVE YET TO LEARN

Fourteen percent of households in the United States faced some level of food insecurity in 2014. This study provides a review of the state of knowledge on food insecurity in the United States and the programs designed to combat the problem. A household decision-making model is used to frame the discussion. The study also provides suggestions for future research.
Why Kill the Passenger Train

Is the passenger train getting a “fair break” in the U.S. travel market? No, says the author of this article, an expert on transportation.He charges that railroad passenger-service losses have long been exaggerated by obsolete accounting rules of the Interstate Commerce Commission.However, some railroads that refuse to be deluded by “phantom” bookkeeping deficits are successfully marketing travel by train. If others would do likewise, the author points out, the results would be profitable both to the railroads and their customers.
Phosphorescent probes for two-photon microscopy of oxygen(Conference Presentation)

The ability to quantify oxygen in vivo in 3D with high spatial and temporal resolution is much needed in many areas of biological research. Our laboratory has been developing the phosphorescence quenching technique for biological oximetry - an optical method that possesses intrinsic microscopic capability. In the past we have developed dendritically protected oxygen probes for quantitative imaging of oxygen in tissue. More recently we expanded our design on special two-photon enhanced phosphorescent probes. These molecules brought about first demonstrations of the two-photon phosphorescence lifetime microscopy (2PLM) of oxygen in vivo, providing new information for neouroscience and stem cell biology. However, current two-photon oxygen probes suffer from a number of limitations, such as sub-optimal brightness and high cost of synthesis, which dramatically reduce imaging performance and limit usability of the method. In this paper we discuss principles of 2PLM and address the interplay between the probe chemistry, photophysics and spatial and temporal imaging resolution. We then present a new approach to brightly phosphorescent chromophores with internally enhanced two-photon absorption cross-sections, which pave a way to a new generation of 2PLM probes.
The Use of Line Arrester in Transmission Line Lightning Shielding Failure Protection

Line arrester is considered as an effective mean of line lightning shielding failure protection. In actual use, it is often found that the next insulator string flashover when arrester action in concerned tower. the shielding lightning current of typical 500 kV line under the influence of different terrain is studied based on electric geometry model, analysis is carried out on high potential transfer mechanism under high shielding lightning current by using ATP-EMTP, the method that continuous installation of line arresters on multi-base tower to prevent high potential transfer is proposed. Studies show that the high potential transfer led by large current shielding failure can be prevented through continuous installing the line arresters on the tower which prone to large current shielding failure as well as its adjacent towers
Research on the production technology of clarified pear juice concentrates

The differences between the concentrated pear juice and the concentrated apple juice were studied. By comparing the different product qulity made by dif-ferent production technologies, the concentrated pear juice's processing conditions is optimized so as to meet the requirments duringthe production, transportation and marketing.
Thrombogenic Activity of Leukocytes

Peritoneal leukocytes from rabbits that had been pretreated with endotoxin have a considerable procoagulant activity in vitro. To determine whether these leukocytes were thrombogenic, the leukocytes were infused into normal rabbits. When the leukocytes were infused intravenously, pulmonary emboli and death occurred. When similar numbers of leukocytes derived from control rabbits were infused, no thrombi were found. To investigate the effect of an infusion of leukocytes into the arterial circulation leukocytes were infused into the aorta. When leukocytes from control rabbits were infused, minimal renal cortical necrosis was observed in two out of nine cases; no other thrombi were found, and coagulation changes were minimal. When peritoneal leukocytes derived from endotoxin-primed rabbits were infused into the aorta, renal cortical necrosis occurred in six out of ten cases, and infarction or thrombosis occurred in the lung, liver, spleen, and myocardium. Coagulation test showed changes compatible with the defibrination syndrome, including a fall in the platelet count, fibrinogen level, and levels of factor V and factor VIII, and prolongation of the prothrombin time and partial thromboplastin time. Very high doses of heparin were required to prevent the thrombogenic effect of leukocytes. The relative ineffectiveness of heparin is attributed to an antiheparin effect of the leukocyte. Infusion of rabbit brain thromboplastin extract, which had a tissue factor activity similar to that of infused leukocytes from endotoxin-treated rabbits, caused renal cortical necrosis in 9 out of 15 cases, but the coagulation changes were slight.
Bibliographic instruction for study abroad programs

Composantes a integrer a la formation bibliographique des etudiants destines a etudier a l'etranger
Surgical Approaches for Symptomatic Cerebral Cavernous Malformations of the Thalamus and Brainstem.

OBJECTIVE Surgical resection of thalamic and brainstem cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) is associated with significant operative morbidity, but it may be outweighed, in some cases, by the neurological damage from recurrent hemorrhage in these eloquent areas. The goals of this retrospective cohort study are to describe the technical nuances of surgical approaches and determine the postoperative outcomes for CCMs of the thalamus and brainstem. MATERIALS AND METHODS We reviewed an institutional database of patients harboring thalamic or brainstem CCMs, who underwent surgical resection from 2010 to 2014. The baseline and follow-up neuroimaging and clinical findings of each patient and the operative details of each case were evaluated. RESULTS A total of eight patients, including two with thalamic and six with brainstem CCMs, were included in the study cohort. All patients had progressive neurological deterioration from recurrent CCM hemorrhage, and the median modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at presentation was 3. The median CCM maximum diameter and volume were 1.7 cm and 1.8 cm3, respectively. The thalamic CCMs were resected using the anterior transcallosal transchoroidal and supracerebellar infratentorial approaches each in one case (13%). The brainstem CCMs were resected using the retrosigmoid and suboccipital trans-cerebellomedullary fissure approaches each in three cases (38%). After a median follow-up of 11.5 months, all patients were neurologically stable or improved, with a median mRS of 2. The rate of functional independence (mRS 0-2) was 63%. CONCLUSION Microneurosurgical techniques and approaches can be safely and effectively employed for the management of thalamic and brainstem CCMs in appropriately selected patients.
Structure and mechanisms of action of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors

An elevated low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol concentration is a major risk factor for the development of coronary heart disease (CHD) [1], which remains the leading cause of death in our society [2]. The efficacy of LDL reduction in the prevention of CHD has clearly been demonstrated in a number of primary and secondary intervention trials (reviewed in reference [3]). Inhibitors of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, the rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis, constitute the most powerful class of hypolipidemic drugs currently available. Treatment with HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, or statins, has been shown to reduce plasma LDL cholesterol, apolipoprotein (apo) B, and triglyceride concentrations in a variety of hypercholesterolemic subjects [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], while modestly increasing levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol [3].
Abstract 049: Role of Smooth Muscle BMAL1 in Time-of-day Vasoconstriction Variation and Blood Pressure Circadian Rhythm

The blood pressure circadian rhythm was believed to be primarily controlled by the central pacemaker suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This dogma was challenged by the discoveries that each of the clock genes present in the SCN are also expressed and function in peripheral tissues. But whether, and if so how, the peripheral clock genes are involved remains uncertain. The current study investigates the role of Bmal1, an obligatory core clock gene, plays in smooth muscle and blood pressure regulation by using a smooth muscle specific BMAL1 knockout mouse model (SM-Bmal1-KO). The results show: 1) Smooth muscle specific deletion of BMAL1 does not affect the clock genes in SCN but drastically suppresses the amplitude and the time-of day differences in vasoconstriction in response to various agonist stimulation and to perfusion pressure increase in isolated small mesenteric arteries and pressor responses in anesthetized mice; 2) The inhibition of agonist-induced vasoconstriction is associated with suppression of MLC 20 phosphorylation, ROCK2 mRNA and activity. Moreover, BMAL1 directly binds to ROCK2 promoter in a time-of-day dependent manner in mesenteric arteries and is required for ROCK2 promoter activity in cultured vascular smooth muscle cells; 3) Mice lacking smooth muscle BMAL1, but not those lacking cardiomyocyte BMAL1, exhibits alterations in blood pressure. SM-Bmal1-KO mice have moderately but significantly decreased blood pressure under 12:12 light/dark cycle, constant dark, and constant light conditions. The blood pressure circadian rhythm in SM-Bmal1-KO mice has diminished amplitude, forward shifted acrophase, but normal period length and normal locomotor activity; 4) interestingly, pulse pressure is markedly elevated and the pulse pressure circadian rhythm is abolished in the SM-Bmal1-KO mice. These data provide novel mechanistic insights into the daily control of vasoconstriction and blood pressure, which are fundamentally significant for the elucidation of pathogenesis of diseases involving blood pressure circadian rhythm disruption.
Citrate-Coated Silver Nanoparticles Growth-Independently Inhibit Aflatoxin Synthesis in Aspergillus parasiticus

Manufactured silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) have long been used as antimicrobials. However, little is known about how these NPs affect fungal cell functions. While multiple previous studies reveal that Ag NPs inhibit secondary metabolite syntheses in several mycotoxin producing filamentous fungi, these effects are associated with growth repression and hence need sublethal to lethal NP doses, which besides stopping fungal growth, can potentially accumulate in the environment. Here we demonstrate that citrate-coated Ag NPs of size 20 nm, when applied at a selected nonlethal dose, can result in a >2 fold inhibition of biosynthesis of the carcinogenic mycotoxin and secondary metabolite, aflatoxin B1 in the filamentous fungus and an important plant pathogen, Aspergillus parasiticus, without inhibiting fungal growth. We also show that the observed inhibition was not due to Ag ions, but was specifically associated with the mycelial uptake of Ag NPs. The NP exposure resulted in a significant decrease in transcript...
Reducing VTE event rates in complex abdominal cancer surgery: A retrospective, single institute comparison of dextran vs heparin.

e18102Background: VTE rates in cytoreductive surgery (CRS) for peritoneal metastasis (PM) without prophylaxis are high, 30-50%. Many factors in this population promote VTE events including tumor bu...
The effect of district magnitude on turnout: Quasi-experimental evidence from nonpartisan elections under SNTV

The relationship between district magnitude and turnout remains hotly debated, and previous studies suggest positive, negative, and nonlinear effects depending on other institutional characteristic...
The Rhetorical Construction of U.S. Latinos by American Presidents

Latino political integration into the American body politic is a theme that has entered the public agenda recently. Political leaders, researchers, activists, and media organizations have devoted t...
A phase I dose-escalation trial of intraperitoneal oxaliplatin with systemic capecitabine and bevacizumab following cytoreduction in patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis from appendiceal or colorectal cancer.

746Background: Peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC) is the intraperitoneal spread of cancer. Optimal treatment for PC is controversial. Systemic chemotherapy offers limited benefit (Franko, 2011). Intrap...
Bison Freezers and Hunter-Gatherer Mobility: Archaeological Analysis of Cold Lava Tube Caves on Idaho’s Snake River Plain

Archaeological evidence indicates that cold storage of bison meat was consistently practiced on the eastern Snake River Plain over the last 8000years. Recent excavations in three cold lava tube caves have revealed a distinct artifact assemblage of elk antler tines, broken handstones, and bison bone in associa tion with frozen sagebrush features. Although the archaeological faunal assemblages from the eastern Snake River Plain refute Julian Steward s arguments that bison were not an important resource to the region's prehistoric inhabitants until acquisition of the horse, the evidence suggests that only a few bison were acquired during a single hunting event. Successful acquisition may have required a natural 'fun nel" or other narrow topographic feature, indicating that bison were not present in large numbers. In fact, bison and cold storage caves were likely a single component in a highly mobile seasonal round that apparently persisted for thousands of years. Understanding how bison and cold caves were possibly integrated in the seasonal round may prove to be very useful in elucidating aboriginal foraging strate gies on the eastern Snake River Plain.
Determinants of prenatal care use in Hawaii: Implications for health promotion

This study examines the association between maternal sociodemographic characteristics and the receipt of different levels of prenatal care use (no care, inadequate, intermediate, adequate) in order to determine different patterns in the relationships between maternal characteristics and these distinct categories of prenatal care use. Using the 1979–1992 Hawaii live birth vital record file, single live births to Hawaii resident mothers of white, Hawaiian/part-Hawaiian, Filipino, or Japanese ethnicity, who did not indicate on the birth certificate that either parent was active duty military, were selected. Over one quarter of this study population did not initiate prenatal care in the first trimester. Given the high level of insurance coverage found in Hawaii, this finding is disconcerting, particularly in relation to the U.S. Year 2000 Objective of 90% initiation in the first trimester. Overall, the factors that predicted receipt of any prenatal care predicted more adequate use of prenatal care as well. Noteworthy exceptions were maternal age and ethnicity. Identifying these exceptions is important for the development of a more detailed understanding of risk factors related to use of prenatal care to better target program responses aimed at improving prenatal care use. In addition, these data suggest that removing financial barriers to access to care does not guarantee universal use of disease prevention and health promotion services.
RNA Polymerase II Elongation Control in Eukaryotes

During the 1990s, it became clear that the elongation properties of RNA polymerase II are regulated and the factors responsible play a critical role in controlling gene expression in eukaryotic cells. One set of factors helps RNA polymerase II to negotiate pause and arrest sequences in the template, and to maintain an elongation rate of 1000–1500 nucleotides per minute. The initiation factor TFIIF (transcription initiation factor IIF) reduces RNA polymerase II pause times and stimulates the rate of elongation. The elongation factor S-II or transcription initiation factor IIS (TFIIS) rescues polymerase molecules that are blocked from further elongation at arrest sites. Another set of factors is responsible for an elongation control process that regulates the fraction of initiated polymerases that enter productive elongation to generate messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Negative transcription elongation factors (N-TEFs), such as 5,6-dichlororibofuranosyl benzamidizole (DRB) sensitivity inducing factor (DSIF) and negative elongation factor (NELF), slow the rate of elongation and restrict the polymerase to promoter proximal sequences. The positive transcription elongation factor, P-TEFb, overcomes the effect of the negative factors and allows the production of full-length transcripts. The function of P-TEFb is regulated through interactions with many other transcription factors and the amount of active P-TEFb in the cell is precisely regulated through a reversible inhibition by the small cellular RNA, 7SK.
Tallysomycin, A Third Generation Bleomycin Analog

The bleomycins, discovered in 1966 by Umezawa and colleagues [12], have been the focus of intense interest for a number of years. Unique molecular pharmacologic, clinical pharmacologic, and toxicologic characteristics, and substantial clinical activities have resulted in significant analog development efforts. At present more than 300 analogs of bleomycin have been reported, and these analogs can be divided into three generations. First generation analogs can be thought of as the initial 13 bleomycins isolated. Second generation analogs are those that differ from the initial bleomycins only by changes in the terminal amine structure, or by very minor modifications in the bleomycinic acid portion of the molecule. Third generation analogs can be thought of as those differing significantly from the bleomycins in the bleomycinic acid portion of the molecule. The tallysomycins are third generation bleomycin analogs.
Psychological Maturity Predicts Different Forms of Happiness

Are more mature people happier? Do they experience a different form of happiness? The current mixed-methods study explored these questions by recruiting 35 adults at different stages of adult psychological maturity as operationalized by Robert Kegan’s subject-object theory. Happiness was measured quantitatively in both hedonic and eudaimonic forms, and qualitatively as the structure of an adult’s conceptualization of happiness. Psychological maturity was measured with the subject-object interview. Quantitative findings revealed a curvilinear relationship between maturity and happiness, such that participants near the 4th stage of adult maturity (self-authoring mind) reported greater levels of happiness than those closer to the 3rd stage (socialized mind) and 5th stage (self-transforming mind). The qualitative findings suggest that participants at or near each of the three adult maturity stages described a structurally different form of happiness. Combined, the results suggest that: (1) happiness may change qualitatively as an adult matures psychologically; (2) extant quantitative measures of happiness may be inadvertently capturing one of several possible qualitative forms of the construct in adulthood. The implications for the current understanding of wellbeing, and its measurement, are discussed.
Investigating Digital Humanities: A Domain Analysis of Conference Proceedings Published in Taiwan, 2009-2016

The study reports on an analysis of a chosen corpus in the emergent domain of digital humanities (DH). In contrast to other studies of the DH literature that focus on publications in the west, this study examines 129 papers published in the proceedings of the International Conferences of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities that were held in Taiwan between 2009 and 2016. In all, 236 individual authors from 15 countries contributed at least one paper; 50 domains were represented. Three East Asian countries (Taiwan, China, and Japan) show a dominating presence, and top three domains (computer science, history, and Chinese) have the highest numbers of participants and highest numbers of first authors. Unlike their counterparts in the humanities, the papers in the study have a much higher percentage of collaborative works. More than half of the papers that are collaborative works are interdisciplinary, but only one-fifth involve international collaboration. Proportionally, computer scientists’ participation rate decreases and humanists’ rate increases, however modestly, from 2012 onward. The study also investigates digital technology’s impact on DH in various stages of the information lifecycle. More than two-thirds of the papers discuss technology’s impact in the area of consuming data from digital collections for various purposes, with the impact on building retrieval systems/online platforms coming in second at 26.6%. Among different years, the first year is exceptional in showing high interest in the impact on building digital collections, building knowledge organization systems, and building retrieval systems but low interest in the impact on data consumption. Humanists in general are more attentive to the impact on consumption than technologists, while the latter lean toward the impact on building retrieval systems. Without any claim to comprehensiveness or representativeness, the study provides a snapshot of the DH literary output.Keywords: Domain Analysis; Digital Humanities; International Conference of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities (Taipei, Taiwan)
Future Perspectives: Microbiome, Cancer and Therapeutic Promise

A homeostatic balance exists between a host and its commensal microbes. Disturbance of this homeostasis, a finely tuned system can result in diseases including cancer. Investigating the imbalance of such host-microbiome interactions by comparing the healthy and dysbiotic disease states is important for understanding the pathophysiology of the associated diseases. Evidence is mounting in the field which demonstrates that the dysbiotic microbiome can trigger oncogenic activities and that the microenvironment of different types of cancers allows a distinct microbiome to thrive with the potential for having direct or indirect consequences on the disease progression. An in-depth understanding of the microbial changes and their contribution to disease will provide an informed approach to early diagnosis of these cancers, as well as development of more personalized treatment strategies, and the potential for establishment of normobiosis with microbe-associated cancers.
Freeze-dried Whole Grapes Lower Serum Triglycerides in Postmenopausal Women (OR22-04-19)

After the onset of menopause, the risk of cardiovascular disease increases drastically due to ovarian hormone deficiency. Grapes are high in polyphenolic compounds that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The present study examined the effects of freeze-dried whole grape powder (GP) in reducing cardiovascular disease risk factors. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 40 postmenopausal women (1 to 5 years past menopause), not on hormone therapy, were randomly assigned to consume either 46 g of GP or grape placebo powder for 12 weeks. Fasting blood samples, anthropometrics, blood pressure, physical activity, and dietary data were collected at baseline and after 12 weeks of the intervention. A mixed-effects model (PROC MIXED) was used to examine the effects of time, group, and the interaction between time and group. Paired t-tests were performed to compare changes from baseline within the group. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Thirty-two women successfully completed the study. There was a significant time x group interaction effect observed for serum triglyceride (TG) (P < 0.05) and a borderline significant time x group interaction effect observed for serum total cholesterol (TC) (P = 0.06). In addition, a significant main effect of group was found in fasting glucose (P < 0.05), but without significant impacts of time and time x group interaction. Within-group analysis showed that the serum levels of TG significantly decreased by 26% (P < 0.05), while the serum levels of TC and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol numerically decreased by 8% and 11%, respectively after 12 weeks of GP consumption compared with corresponding baseline values. Neither GP nor placebo powder significantly altered body weight, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin or homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance. Our findings show that daily consumption of grapes lowers serum levels of TG in postmenopausal women. Larger follow-up studies are needed to ensure the validity of these findings. This research was funded by the California Table Grape Commission. Funders had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis or interpretation, or writing of the abstract.
A MULTICENTER STUDY EVALUATING PERCEPTIONS AND KNOWLEDGE OF INPATIENT GLYCEMIC CONTROL AMONG RESIDENT PHYSICIANS: ANALYZING THEMES TO INFORM AND IMPROVE CARE.

ABSTRACT Objective: In this descriptive study, we evaluated perceptions and knowledge of inpatient glycemic control among resident physicians. Methods: We performed this study at four academic medical centers: the University of Mississippi Medical Center, University of Virginia Health System, University of Louisville Health Sciences Center, and Emory University. We designed a questionnaire, and Institutional Review Board approval was granted at each institution prior to study initiation. We then administered the questionnaire to Internal Medicine and Medicine-Pediatric resident physicians. Results: A total of 246 of 438 (56.2%) eligible resident physicians completed the Inpatient Glycemic Control Questionnaire (IGCQ). Most respondents (85.4%) reported feeling comfortable treating and managing inpatient hyperglycemia, and a majority (66.3%) agreed they had received adequate education. Despite self-reported comfort with knowledge, only 51.2% of respondents could identify appropriate glycemic targets in critically ill patients. Only 45.5% correctly identified appropriate inpatient random glycemic target values in noncritically ill patients, and only 34.1% of respondents knew appropriate preprandial glycemic targets in noncritically ill patients. A small majority (54.1%) were able to identify the correct fingerstick glucose value that defines hypoglycemia. System issues were the most commonly cited barrier to successful inpatient glycemic control. Conclusion: Most respondents reported feeling comfortable managing inpatient hyperglycemia but had difficulty identifying appropriate inpatient glycemic target values. Future interventions could utilize the IGCQ as a pre- and postassessment tool and focus on early resident education along with improving system environments to aid in successful inpatient glycemic control. Abbreviations: DM = diabetes mellitus; Emory = Emory University Healthcare; IGC = inpatient glycemic control; IGCQ = Inpatient Glycemic Control Questionnaire; IRB = Institutional Review Board; PGY = postgraduate year; UMMC = University of Mississippi Medical Center; UVA = University of Virginia Health System; UL = University of Louisville Health Sciences Center
The #MeToo Moment: A Rhetorical Zeitgeist

When editor Kristen Hoerl approached me to help edit this special issue on #MeToo, I told her that we would need to have a lengthy phone chat because my perspective on the #MeToo moment was far les...
The Future of Education: Transforming higher education with integrated competency-based education

Over the past several years, competency-based education has been on the rise for offering vocational education, which prepares people to work in a variety of jobs such as a craft, a trade, or as a technician. However, little progress has taken place and few resources exist that show how to incorporate competency-based education into traditional bachelor's degree programs. The purpose of this article to highlight one university's new approach to transforming global higher education and eLearning with competency-based education. The article provides lessons learned and recommendations for others interested in getting on the higher education transformation bandwagon.
The Impact of Home Health Physical Therapy on Medicare Beneficiaries With a Primary Diagnosis of Dementia

BACKGROUND Dementia is a leading cause of disability for adults older than 65 years. Exercise intervention slows functional decline and improves balance; however, the efficacy of physical therapy (PT) services for persons with dementia is unknown. The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of home health PT services on physical function for Medicare beneficiaries with a primary diagnosis of dementia. DESIGN Observational cohort study using a combined Medicare data set of home health beneficiaries; we performed augmented inverse probability weighted regression with demographic, comorbidity, and symptom-level characteristics analyzed as covariates. SETTING Home healthcare, United States, 2012. PARTICIPANTS Medicare beneficiaries who had a primary diagnosis of dementia and home health function evaluations at discharge (n = 1477). INTERVENTION PT treatment, examined by (1) any PT and (2) PT visit number. MEASUREMENT Improvement in composite activity of daily living (ADL) scores from home health admit to discharge. RESULTS Any PT increased the probability of improvement in ADLs by 15.2% (P < .001). Compared to 1 to 5 PT visits, 6 to 13 visits increased the probability of ADL improvement by 11.6% (P < .001). CONCLUSION PT intervention is beneficial for ADL function improvement in Medicare home health beneficiaries with a primary diagnosis of dementia. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:867-871, 2020.
Geometric confinement governs toughness and strength in defective diamond nanowires

Using classical molecular dynamics simulations and the virial description of atomic stress, this paper reveals that effective toughness and strength in defective diamond nanowires (NWs) are governed by the geometric confinement of atoms at the critical sites of the NWs. Results suggest existence of five characteristic regimes in defective NWs under applied deformation. They include the defective regime, the surface regime, the core regime, the surface-core intersection regime, and the defect-core intersection regime. The defective regime and the surface regime soften the NW and carry the maximum angular deformation at the expense of breaking local symmetry of atomic structure. On the other hand, the intersecting regimes tend to preserve the symmetry, carry the most aggressive linear deformation, and act as the critical sites for localization of atomic stress. In the defect-core intersecting regime, the differential response of its neighboring regimes to linear and angular deformations as well as the elastic fields emanating from its critical sites impose an intricate effect comprising geometric confinement and propensity to retain local symmetry. Consequently, the highest localization of elastic energy and atomic stress takes place at the critical sites of the defect-core regime and it controls the effective toughness and strength behavior of the defective nanowires. Although size-dependent variation in strength and toughness is controlled primarily by surface softening, defect-induced alteration of strength and toughness is governed by the geometric confinement. Furthermore, an atomistic analysis reveals that the localized stress fields grow radially outward from the defective regime for defective NWs, whereas in defect-free NWs they evolve inward from the surface.
Chapter 16 – Species Management

When protected areas and connectivity cannot adequately conserve a species, management to prevent extinction and restore populations to healthy levels is required. International, national, and state/provincial mechanisms exist to identify species at risk. Some of these mechanisms also trigger required actions to halt the decline of species. Artificial translocation to help species keep pace with climate change is one option, but it carries serious biological consequences which must be weighed carefully.
Comparison of Design Approaches for Low-Cost Sampling Mechanisms in Open-Source Chemical Instrumentation.

Abstract Robotic positioning systems are used in a variety of chemical instruments, primarily for liquid handling purposes, such as autosamplers from vials or well plates. Here, two approaches to the design of open-source autosampler positioning systems for use with 96-well plates are described and compared. The first system, a 3-axis design similar to many low-cost 3D printers that are available on the market, is constructed using an aluminum frame and stepper motors. The other system relies upon a series of 3D printed parts to achieve movement with a series of linker arms based on Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) design principles. Full printer design files, assembly instructions, software, and user directions are included for both samplers. The positioning precision of the 3-axis system is better than the SCARA mechanism due to finer motor control, albeit with a slightly higher cost of materials. Based on the improved precision of this approach, the 3-axis autosampler system was used to demonstrate the generation of a segmented flow droplet stream from adjacent wells within a 96-well plate.
Towards explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) for early anticipation of traffic accidents.

Traffic accident anticipation is a vital function of Automated Driving Systems (ADSs) for providing a safety-guaranteed driving experience. An accident anticipation model aims to predict accidents promptly and accurately before they occur. Existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) models of accident anticipation lack a human-interpretable explanation of their decision-making. Although these models perform well, they remain a black-box to the ADS users, thus difficult to get their trust. To this end, this paper presents a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) network that learns spatio-temporal relational features for the early anticipation of traffic accidents from dashcam video data. A post-hoc attention mechanism named Grad-CAM is integrated into the network to generate saliency maps as the visual explanation of the accident anticipation decision. An eye tracker captures human eye fixation points for generating human attention maps. The explainability of network-generated saliency maps is evaluated in comparison to human attention maps. Qualitative and quantitative results on a public crash dataset confirm that the proposed explainable network can anticipate an accident on average 4.57 seconds before it occurs, with 94.02% average precision. In further, various post-hoc attention-based XAI methods are evaluated and compared. It confirms that the Grad-CAM chosen by this study can generate high-quality, human-interpretable saliency maps (with 1.42 Normalized Scanpath Saliency) for explaining the crash anticipation decision. Importantly, results confirm that the proposed AI model, with a human-inspired design, can outperform humans in the accident anticipation.
Faith Community Nursing: Identifying and Combating Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults.

ABSTRACT: The number of older adults worldwide is growing; the incidence of social isolation and loneliness among this population is also increasing. Social isolation and loneliness can have significant physical, mental, and spiritual impacts. Faith community nurses are in an optimal position to identify and intervene to help faith communities reduce the social isolation and loneliness among community-dwelling older adults. Risk factors and tools to identify both circumstances are discussed along with interventions and a case study.
A targeted solution for estimating the cell-type composition of bulk samples

BACKGROUND To avoid false-positive findings and detect cell-type specific associations in methylation and transcription investigations with bulk samples, it is critical to know the proportions of the major cell-types. RESULTS We present a novel approach that allows for precise estimation of cell-type proportions using only a few highly informative methylation markers. The most reliable estimates were obtained with 17 amplicons (34 CpGs) using the MuSiC estimator, for which the average correlations between the estimated and the true cell-type proportions were 0.889. Furthermore, the estimates were not significantly different from the true values (P = 0.95) indicating that the estimator is unbiased and the standard deviation of the estimates further indicate high precision. Moreover, the overall variability of the estimates as measured by the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), which is a function of both bias and precision, was low (mean RMSE = 0.038). Taken together, these results indicate that the approach produced reliable estimates that are both unbiased and highly precise. CONCLUSION This cost-effective approach for estimating cell-type proportions in bulk samples allows for enhanced targeted analysis, which in turn will minimize the risk of reporting false-positive findings and allowing for detection of cell-type specific associations. The approach is applicable across platforms and can be extended to assess cell-type proportions for various tissues.
CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration Strategies

Offering practical treatment strategies for CO2 emission generated from various energy-related sources, CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration Strategies emphasizes carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) with special focus on methods for each component of the strategy. While other books mostly focus on CCS strategy for CO2, this book details the technologies available for utilization of CO2, showing how it can be a valuable renewable source for chemicals, materials, fuels, and power instead of a waste material damaging the environment. Highlights current and potential future commercially viable CCUS strategies Discusses applications for direct and the more complex indirect utilization of CO2 streams Examines viability of the mineral carbonation process and biological treatments to convert CO2 into useful biochemicals, biomaterials, and biofuels Explores heterogeneous catalysis for thermal and electrochemical conversion and solar energy-based thermal, photo-thermal, and photocatalytic conversion of CO2 Presents the rapidly growing concept of plasma-activated catalysis for CO2 conversion CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration Strategies is a valuable reference for researchers in academia, industry, and government organizations seeking a guide to effective CCUS processes, technologies, and applications.
Brain stimulation: current clinical indications and future prospects.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the current clinical indications and future prospects of brain stimulation. While the most well-established clinical indication for brain stimulation remains the treatment of movement disorders, recently the application of deep brain stimulation (DBS) technology has expanded to other disease conditions, including epilepsy, chronic pain, psychiatric disorders, and other emerging indications. Brain stimulation exerts its effects through a number of differing but interrelated mechanisms, which come in to play depending on the site being stimulated, the disease entity being treated, and the stimulation parameters used. The clinical effects seen with brain stimulation reflect the complex combination of inhibition and the activation of cell bodies and axons and depend on the orientation of the electrode, the cytoarchitecture of the structure being stimulated as well as the frequency, pulse width, and duration of stimulation. Localization of the stimulation site is achieved through a combination of anatomical and physiologic methods, the exact details of which vary from center to center.