cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effects of added dietary urea on the utilization of maize stover silage by growing beef cattle

The effects of varying the ruminal ammonia-nitrogen (NH3-N) concentration with urea on the utilization of maize stover silage were studied. In a 4 × 4 Latin Square digestion experiment, 4 Holstein steers (mean weight 250 kg), fitted with ruminal and duodenal cannulae, were fed on maize stover silage as 700 g kg−1 of the dry matter (DM) with one of four protein supplements at 4-h intervals. Supplements contained a maize and formaldehyde-treated soya-bean meal base [109 g metabolizable protein (MP) kg−1 DM; 0 g urea fermentation potential (UFP) kg−1 DM] and 14.3, 24.7, 34.7 or 44.7 g urea kg−1 DM. Increasing the dietary urea concentration increased (linear effect, P < 0.05) ruminal NH3-N and total volatile fatty acid concentrations. Increasing the concentration of urea in the diet increased (linear effect, P < 0.05) intake and total tract digestibility of DM. Increasing the urea concentration did not affect the amount and efficiency of bacterial protein synthesis. In an 84-day growth experiment, 60 Charolais×Angus heifers (mean weight 212 kg) were group-fed, once daily, on a diet containing maize stover silage as 700 g kg−1 of the DM with one of six supplements. These included the four supplements used in the digestion experiment, a negative control supplement (109 g MP kg−1 DM; 0 g UFP kg−1 DM) containing formaldehyde-treated soya-bean meal, and a positive control supplement (106 g MP kg−1 DM; −25 g UFP kg−1 DM) containing non-treated soya-bean meal. Increasing the concentration of urea in the diet increased ruminal NH3-N concentrations (linear effect, P < 0.05), DM intake (quadratic effect, P < 0.05) and average daily gains (quadratic effect, P < 0.01), and decreased (quadratic effect, P < 0.01) feed-to-gain ratios of the heifers.
Stem Cell Maintenance of the Mammary Gland: It Takes Two

Transplantation assays suggest that multipotent stem cells maintain the two lineages of the mammary gland. Recently in Nature, Van Keymeulen et al. (2011) used lineage tracing to discover unipotent stem cells that maintain the bulk of the mouse mammary gland after birth and during pregnancy.
Are open standards good business

The debate about the relative merits of open vs. proprietary standards is long and ongoing. Proponents of open standards argue that they are good for society as they encourage adoption, have lower risk, and increase interoperability between technologies. On the other hand, proponents of proprietary standards maintain that monopolistic returns are justified given huge upfront and ongoing investments. While there are merits to both sides of this debate, we take a more objective approach in evaluating whether it makes sense to develop or invest in open standards. We collect investors’ reactions to Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema announcements and compare these with estimated returns for the same stock to determine whether the returns were above or below normal. We find that investors prefer proprietary XML schemas to open XML schemas by as much as 28,000%. We also find that this preference has been stable over time except in 2001 – the period of the dot com bubble burst - when investors temporarily preferred open standards. We attribute these results to two things. First, expected returns from monopoly control of proprietary standards, even though uncertain, are often worth more than those expected from open standards. Second, it seems that the markets are still unsure of the monetary benefits of open standards to the firm. Thus, companies that embrace open standards will have to better communicate to the investors the value proposition of open standards if they want to generate positive reactions on their open standardization efforts.
Breadth of loss due to manipulation

We identify the maximal number of people who are harmed when a social choice rule is manipulated. If there are n individuals, then for any $$k$$ greater than 0 and less than n, there is a neutral rule for which the maximal number is $$k$$ , and there is an anonymous rule for which the maximum number is $$k$$ . If the rule selects the majority winner when there is one and satisfies the Pareto criterion, then the maximal number is $$(n-1)/2$$ . Maximal numbers are also calculated for the Borda rule and other scoring rules, and for rules for which the selection depends only on which individuals have which alternatives ranked at the top. We also calculate the maximum number for rules that satisfy the Pareto criterion, but not the Condorcet criterion, and for rules that satisfy the Condorcet criterion, but not the Pareto criterion.
Pregnancy: A social stigma?

Experimental evidence is presented which explores the social stimulus value of pregnancy. It was found that, for men especially, the pregnant woman elicits avoidance and staring and that these responses occur primarily because pregnancy is a novel visual stimulus. For women, avoidance seems to be tied less to the stimulus aspects of the pregnant woman than to role expectations about her behavior. The pregnant woman is expected to be passive, but is simultaneously rejected for being so. It is argued that this constellation of responses may produce discomfort and withdrawal in the pregnant woman herself, since avoidance and staring are easily interpreted as negative reactions. How these reactions fit into the cultural response to pregnancy is discussed.
A reexamination of conversational repair

Conversational repair is a communication phenomenon which helps to sustain social interaction by allowing conversants mutually to handle problems which arise as they communicate. In this sense, conversational repair is a form of alignment talk. In the present study, conversations were examined to assess the preference system for self‐repair over other‐repair said to exist in conversation. Problem Type, Initiation Type, and Relationship History were also included in the analysis. The structure of repair episodes was found to be sensitive not only to sequencing determinants such as Initiation Type but also to content determinants such as Problem Type and to social, contextual determinants such as Relationship History. These findings suggest that approaches to conversation based primarily on sequencing and turn organization are limited. Conversational repair is also related to other conversational phenomena such as coherence.
IMPACT OF THE NIH CONSENSUS DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE ON CORTICOSTEROIDS FOR FETAL MATURATION: CHANGE IN OBSTETRIC ATTITUDES. † 1506

IMPACT OF THE NIH CONSENSUS DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE ON CORTICOSTEROIDS FOR FETAL MATURATION: CHANGE IN OBSTETRIC ATTITUDES. † 1506
Height prognosis of children with true precocious puberty and growth hormone deficiency: effect of combination therapy with gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist and growth hormone.

We evaluated height prognosis and therapeutic efficacy of long-term, combination therapy with gonadotropin releasing-hormone agonist and growth hormone (GH) in five children (three girls) with coexistent precocious puberty and GH deficiency. Their clinical characteristics and growth response were compared with those of 12 girls with idiopathic true precocious puberty and eight prepubertal GH-deficient children (one girl). Precocious GH-deficient subjects were older than the precocious GH-sufficient children (9.5±1.8 years vs 6.5±1.3 years; mean±SD), but bone ages were comparable (12±3.7 years vs 10±0.9 years); their chronologic age was similar to that of the prepubertal GH-deficient children (9.6±2.1 years), but bone age was significantly more advanced (6.9±2.3 years). The mean height velocity of the prepubertal GH-deficient children (3.8±1.5 cm/yr) was lower than that of the precocious GH-deficient subjects (6.7±1.6 cm/yr) and the precocious GH-sufficient children (9.5±2.9 cm/yr). Baseline adult height prediction z scores were significantly lower in the precocious GH-deficient children (−3.7±1.0) than in either the precocious GH-sufficient children (−2.2±1.0) or the prepubertal GH-deficient subjects (−1.5±0.8). During therapy with gonadotropin releasing-hormone agonist, growth rates slowed to an average of 3.7 cm/yr in the precocious GH-deficient children but increased after the addition of GH to 7.4 cm during the first year of combination therapy. After 2 to 3 years of combination therapy, height predictions increased an average of 10 cm, compared with an increase of 2.8 cm in the precocious GH-sufficient group treated with gonadotropin releasing-hormone agonist alone. We conclude that combination treatment with gonadotropin releasing-hormone agonist and GH improves the height prognosis of children with coexistent true precocious puberty and GH deficiency, but falls short of achieving normal adult height potential.
Solubilization of Fe(III) oxide-bound trace metals by a dissimilatory Fe(III) reducing bacterium

Trace metals associate with Fe(III) oxides as adsorbed or coprecipitated species, and consequently, the biogeochemical cycles of iron and the trace metals are closely linked. This communication investigated the solubilization of coprecipitated Co(III) and Ni(II) from goethite (α-FeOOH) during dissimilatory bacterial iron reduction to provide insights on biogeochemical factors controlling trace-element fluxes in anoxic environments. Suspensions of homogeneously substituted Co-FeOOH (50 mmol/L as Co0.01Fe0.99OOH; 57Co-labeled) in eight different buffer/media solutions were inoculated with a facultative, metal-reducing bacteria isolated from groundwater (Shewanella putrefacians CN32), and incubated under strictly anaerobic conditions for periods up to 32 days. Lactate (30 mmol/L) was provided as an electron donor. Growth and non-growth promoting conditions were established by adding or withholding PO4 and/or trace metals (60Co-labeled) from the incubation media. Anthraquinone disulfonate (AQDS; 100 μmol/L) was added to most suspensions as an electron shuttle to enhance bacterial reduction. Solutions were buffered at circumneutral pH with either PIPES or bicarbonate buffers. Solid and liquid samples were analyzed at intermediate and final time points for aqueous and sorbed/precipitated (by HCl extraction) Fe(II) and Co(II). The bioreduced solids were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and field-emission electron microscopy at experiment termination. Ni-FeOOH (Ni0.01Fe0.99OOH) was used for comparison in select experiments. Up to 45% of the metal containing FeOOH was bioreduced; growth-supporting conditions did not enhance reduction. The biogenic Fe(II) strongly associated with the residual Fe(III) oxide as an undefined sorbed phase at low fractional reduction in PIPES buffer, and as siderite (FeCO3) in bicarbonate buffer or as vivianite [Fe3(PO4)2 · 8H2O] when P was present. Cobalt(III) was reduced to Co(II) in proportion to its mole ratio in the solid. The release of bioreduced Co(II) to the aqueous phase showed complex dependency on the media and buffer composition and the fractional reduction of the Co-FeOOH. In most cases Co(II) was solubilized in preference to Fe(II), but in select cases it was not. These differences were rationalized in terms of competitive adsorption reactions on the residual Fe(III) oxide surface and coprecipitation in biogenic Fe(II) solids. The bioreduced Co-FeOOH surface showed unexpectedly high sorption selectivity for the biomobilized Co(II). The bioreductive solubilization of Ni(II) from Ni-FeOOH was comparable to Co-FeOOH. Our results indicate that Fe(III)-oxide-entrained trace metals can be mobilized during bacterial iron reduction leading to a net increase, in most cases, in aqueous metal concentrations. The enhancement in trace-metal aqueous concentration, e.g., in groundwater, may proportionally exceed that of Fe(II).
Temporal alterations in cellular Bax:Bcl-2 ratio following traumatic brain injury in the rat.

Cell death/survival following CNS injury may be a result of alterations in the intracellular ratio of death and survival factors. Using immunohistochemistry, Western analysis and in situ hybridization, the expression of the anti-cell death protein, Bcl-2, and the pro-cell death protein, Bax, was evaluated following lateral fluid-percussion (FP) brain injury of moderate severity (2.3-2.6 atm) in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. By 2 h post-injury, a marked reduction of cellular Bcl-2-immunoreactivity (IR) and a mild decrease in cellular Bax IR were observed in the temporal and occipital cortices, and in the hippocampal CA3 ipsilateral to the site of impact. These decreases in Bcl-2 and Bax IR appeared to precede the overt cell loss in these regions that was evident at 24 h. Immunoblot analysis supported the immunohistochemical data, with a modest but significant reduction in the intensities of both the Bcl-2 and Bax protein bands at 2 h (p < 0.05 compared to sham levels). However, the Bax:Bcl-2 ratio increa...
JUNB Is a Key Transcriptional Modulator of Macrophage Activation

Activated macrophages are crucial for restriction of microbial infection but may also promote inflammatory pathology in a wide range of both infectious and sterile conditions. The pathways that regulate macrophage activation are therefore of great interest. Recent studies in silico have putatively identified key transcription factors that may control macrophage activation, but experimental validation is lacking. In this study, we generated a macrophage regulatory network from publicly available microarray data, employing steps to enrich for physiologically relevant interactions. Our analysis predicted a novel relationship between the AP-1 family transcription factor Junb and the gene Il1b, encoding the pyrogen IL-1β, which macrophages express upon activation by inflammatory stimuli. Previously, Junb has been characterized primarily as a negative regulator of the cell cycle, whereas AP-1 activity in myeloid inflammatory responses has largely been attributed to c-Jun. We confirmed experimentally that Junb is required for full expression of Il1b, and of additional genes involved in classical inflammation, in macrophages treated with LPS and other immunostimulatory molecules. Furthermore, Junb modulates expression of canonical markers of alternative activation in macrophages treated with IL-4. Our results demonstrate that JUNB is a significant modulator of both classical and alternative macrophage activation. Further, this finding provides experimental validation for our network modeling approach, which will facilitate the future use of gene expression data from open databases to reveal novel, physiologically relevant regulatory relationships.
An analysis of single item inventory systems with returns

Inventory systems with returns are systems in which there are units returned in a repairable state, as well as demands for units in a serviceable state, where the return and demand processes are independent. We begin by examining the control of a single item at a single location in which the stationary return rate is less than the stationary demand rate. This necessitates an occasional procurement of units from an outside source. We present a cost model of this system, which we assume is managed under a continuous review procurement policy, and develop a solution method for finding the policy parameter values. The key to the analysis is the use of a normally distributed random variable to approximate the steady-state distribution of net inventory. Next, we study a single item, two echelon system in which a warehouse (the upper echelon) supports N(N ⩾ 1) retailers (the lower echelon). In this case, customers return units in a repairable state as well as demand units in a serviceable state at the retailer level only. We assume the constant system return rate is less than the constant system demand rate so that a procurement is required at certain times from an outside supplier. We develop a cost model of this two echelon system assuming that each location follows a continuous review procurement policy. We also present an algorithm for finding the policy parameter values at each location that is based on the method used to solve the single location problem.
Focal Energy Deprivation Underlies Arrhythmia Susceptibility in Mice With Calcium-Sensitized Myofilaments

Rationale: The Ca 2+ sensitivity of the myofilaments is increased in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and other heart diseases and may contribute to a higher risk for sudden cardiac death. Ca 2+ sensitization increases susceptibility to reentrant ventricular tachycardia in animal models, but the underlying mechanism is unknown. Objective: To investigate how myofilament Ca 2+ sensitization creates reentrant arrhythmia susceptibility. Methods and Results: Using hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mouse models (troponinT-I79N) and a Ca 2+ sensitizing drug (EMD57033), here we identify focal energy deprivation as a direct consequence of myofilament Ca 2+ sensitization. To detect ATP depletion and thus energy deprivation, we measured accumulation of dephosphorylated Connexin 43 (Cx43) isoform P0 and AMP kinase activation by Western blotting and immunostaining. No differences were detected between groups at baseline, but regional accumulation of Connexin 43 isoform P0 occurred within minutes in all Ca 2+ -sensitized hearts, in vivo after isoproterenol challenge and in isolated hearts after rapid pacing. Lucifer yellow dye spread demonstrated reduced gap junctional coupling in areas with Connexin 43 isoform P0 accumulation. Optical mapping revealed that selectively the transverse conduction velocity was slowed and anisotropy increased. Myofilament Ca 2+ desensitization with blebbistatin prevented focal energy deprivation, transverse conduction velocity slowing, and the reentrant ventricular arrhythmias. Conclusions: Myofilament Ca 2+ sensitization rapidly leads to focal energy deprivation and reduced intercellular coupling during conditions that raise arrhythmia susceptibility. This is a novel proarrhythmic mechanism that can increase arrhythmia susceptibility in structurally normal hearts within minutes and may, therefore, contribute to sudden cardiac death in diseases with increased myofilament Ca 2+ sensitivity.
Let’s Burn Them All A Librarian’s View

In this rejoinder to “Let’s Burn Them All,” a librarian supports the author’s case for eliminating textbooks in the teaching of management and organizational behavior. A move away from textbooks would free libraries from worrying about whether and to what extent to provide expensive textbook access to students, a long-standing dilemma. Students could be newly exposed to the rich array of resources that the library provides. Professors and librarians could work more closely together in creating collections that support classroom learning. And faculty could be inspired by and become involved in the Open Access movement, an outcome greatly desired by the academic library world.
Empirically Supported Treatment: A Commentary

Generating and updating lists of empirically supported treatments serves the public interest. Such lists force advocates to test the accuracy of their claims and serve to inform the public regarding the relative benefits of different interventions. Such efforts should cover the full array of types of interventions used to treat a given disorder and be multidisciplinary in nature to guard against bias related to guild identification. I wholly endorse the authors' call for Division 12 to update their list of empirically supported treatments.
Endodontic Applications of Cone-Beam Volumetric Tomography

The ability to assess an area of interest in 3 dimensions might benefit both novice and experienced clinicians alike. High-resolution limited cone-beam volumetric tomography (CBVT) has been designed for dental applications. As opposed to sliced-image data of conventional computed tomography (CT) imaging, CBVT captures a cylindrical volume of data in one acquisition and thus offers distinct advantages over conventional medical CT. These advantages include increased accuracy, higher resolution, scan-time reduction, and dose reduction. Specific endodontic applications of CBVT are being identified as the technology becomes more prevalent. CBVT has great potential to become a valuable tool in the modern endodontic practice. The objectives of this article are to briefly review cone-beam technology and its advantages over medical CT and conventional radiography, to illustrate current and future clinical applications of cone-beam technology in endodontic practice, and to discuss medicolegal considerations pertaining to the acquisition and interpretation of 3-dimensional data.
The Expression of Sprouty1, an Inhibitor of Fibroblast Growth Factor Signal Transduction, Is Decreased in Human Prostate Cancer

A considerable body of evidence indicates that alterations of fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) and their receptors contribute to prostate cancer progression. Recently, a new family of regulators of FGF activity has been identified. The Sprouty gene family negatively regulates FGF signaling in a variety of systems and could potentially limit the biological activity of FGFs in prostate cancer. Immunohistochemical analysis of normal and neoplastic prostate tissues using tissue microarrays revealed that Sprouty1 protein is down-regulated in approximately 40% of prostate cancers when compared with matched normal prostate. By quantitative real-time PCR analysis, we found that Sprouty1 mRNA levels were significantly decreased in prostate cancers in vivo in comparison with normal prostate. In prostate cancer cell lines, there is loss of the normal up-regulation of Sprouty1 mRNA and protein in response to FGFs. The decrease in Sprouty1 expression in the human prostate cancer, despite elevated levels of FGF ligands and FGF receptors, implies a loss of an important growth regulatory mechanism in prostate cancers that may potentiate the effects of increased FGF and FGF receptor expression in prostate cancer.
Comparison of oral and intraperitoneal iron supplementation in anaemic rats: a re-evaluation of the mucosal block theory of iron absorption

To evaluate the extent to which daily oral Fe supplements may block Fe absorption from a subsequent dose, we compared effects of oral and intraperitoneal (i.p.) Fe supplementation on Fe status in anaemic rats (haemoglobin (Hb) 90 g/l). A ligated duodenal loop technique was used to assess the effects of the Fe supplements administered either orally or i.p. at different frequencies on Fe absorption from a subsequent test dose. Anaemic Sprague-Dawley rats were assigned to seven groups of eight rats each and received either oral or i.p. Fe supplements for 3 d as follows: (1) 4 mg oral supplement daily (three doses in 3 d); (2) 4 mg oral supplement once (one dose on day 1, low-Fe dose on days 2 and 3); (3) 12 mg oral supplement once (one dose on day 1, low-Fe dose on days 2 and 3); (4) 3.2 mg i.p. supplement daily (three doses in 3 d); (5) 3.2 mg i.p. supplement once (one dose on day 1); (6) 9.6 mg i.p. supplement once (one dose on day 1); (7) low-Fe diet (control). The effectiveness of the supplements in treating Fe deficiency on each of the two test-factors, i.e. route of administration and frequency of dose, was assessed by determining Hb-Fe gain and liver-Fe stores after the 3 d test period. Oral supplementation was as effective as i.p. in improving the Fe status of the anaemic animals. However, a 15 min absorption of a radio-Fe test dose from a ligated loop in i.p.-supplemented groups was significantly higher (11.68 (SD 1.70)%, 17.49 (SD 4.59)%, 16.71 (SD 3.39)%) than in orally supplemented groups (3.24 (SD 1.35)%, 2.45 (SD 1.05)%, 1.80 (SD 0.35)%) despite equal body Fe stores. No significant difference in intestinal Fe absorption efficiency was detected within the oral groups but those supplemented only once were more effective than or as effective as the group receiving daily supplements for 3 d in improving Fe status as indicated by Hb-regeneration efficiency. We conclude that there is a mucosal block with the administration of oral Fe supplements but the extent of this blocking effect during oral Fe supplementation is not as dramatic as currently thought in the context of the poor efficacy of daily Fe supplementation programmes.
The Relative Buffering Capacities of Saliva and Moist Snuff: Implications for Nicotine Absorption

Commercial moist snuff products are used by placing a portion of tobacco inside the mouth between the inner cheek or lip and gum. Nicotine is absorbed into the blood stream via transfer across various oral membranes including the buccal mucosa (cheek lining). The resulting salivary pH when a given moist snuff product is placed in the mouth is an important factor for nicotine absorption because it will affect the proportion of free base nicotine that is readily available for absorption. The resulting salivary pH for a given moist snuff product will be determined in part by the relative acid-base buffering capacities of the saliva and moist snuff, as well as the pHs of the saliva and moist snuff prior to coming in contact with one another. In the current study, the acid-base buffering capacities (mu eq/g) of a series of commercial moist snuff products were determined and compared to the acid-base buffering capacity for unstimulated, whole human saliva. The buffering capacities of the moist snuff products were determined to be 10-20 times higher than the buffering capacity of human saliva. The resulting salivary pH ranges after contact between an artifical saliva and the various moist snuff products were also determined; the results were used to predict the proportion of free base nicotine that can be expected to occur in the mouth during the first few minutes of product use. These studies provide a basis for examining and understanding the effects that moist snuff product pHs and buffering capacities may be expected to have on nicotine absorption.
The effect of medicaments used in endodontic regeneration on root fracture and microhardness of radicular dentine

Aim To investigate the effect of medicaments used in endodontic regeneration on root fracture resistance and microhardness of radicular dentine. Methodology The root canals of mandibular premolars (n = 180) were instrumented and randomized into three treatment groups and an untreated control group. Each treatment group received either triple antibiotic paste (TAP), double antibiotic paste (DAP) or calcium hydroxide paste [Ca(OH)2] intracanal medicament. Teeth were kept in saline for 1 week, 1 month or 3 months. After each time-point, 15 teeth were randomly selected from each group and two root cylinders were obtained from each tooth. One cylinder was subjected to a fracture resistance test, and the other cylinder was used for a microhardness test. Two-way anova and Tukey's pairwise comparisons were used for statistical analysis. Results For the microhardness test, the two-way interaction between group and time was significant (P < 0.001). The intracanal application of TAP and DAP caused significant and continuous decrease in root dentine microhardness after one (P < 0.05) and 3 months (P < 0.001), respectively. The three-month intracanal application of Ca(OH)2 significantly increased the microhardness of root dentine (P < 0.05). The time factor had a significant effect on fracture resistance (P < 0.001). The three intracanal medicaments caused significant decreases in fracture resistance ranging between 19% and 30% after 3-month application compared to 1-week application. Conclusion In this laboratory study, the 3-month application of triple antibiotic paste, double antibiotic paste or calcium hydroxide paste medicaments significantly reduced the root fracture resistance of extracted teeth compared to a 1-week application.
A study of culinary quality in white potatoes

A mealy, flaky, white flesh cooked potato is the standard of quality preferred in this country. The exact degree of quality is rather difficult to measure, but the score card used gave rather consistent differences in quality when taken as the average opinion of several judges. All three quality characteristics are closely related. The evidence from cooking and chemical tests seems sufficient to conclude that good cooking quality is closely associated with high starch and dry matter content of the tuber, and low nitrogen content. There probably are a large number of factors which influence potato quality. Some of these are difficult to determine since many growing conditions cannot be controlled. This experiment shows that temperature and variety are the most important factors. Lower temperature, sufficient rainfall, and an adapted variety are essential for best cooking quality tubers if the ordinary cultural factors are properly managed.
The Consequences of the Internet for Politics

Political scientists are only now beginning to come to terms with the importance of the Internet to politics. The most promising way to study the Internet is to look at the role that causal mechanisms such as the lowering of transaction costs, homophilous sorting, and preference falsification play in intermediating between specific aspects of the Internet and political outcomes. This will allow scholars to disentangle the relevant causal relationships and contribute to important present debates over whether the Internet exacerbates polarization in the United States, and whether social media helped pave the way toward the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Over time, ever fewer political scientists are likely to study the Internet as such, as it becomes more and more a part of everyday political life. However, integrating the Internet's effects with present debates over politics, and taking proper advantage of the extraordinary data that it can provide, requires good causal arguments and attention to their und...
Healthspan, Translation, and New Outcomes for Animal Studies of Aging

Dramatic advances in understanding mechanisms of aging have recently been made in model systems. Interventions have been devised that successfully enhance survival. Major issues still in need of resolution include whether these interventions not only increase survival but also enhance function, delay frailty, and can be translated into clinical application. It seems there are basic biologic findings close to being ready for translation. However, a number of barriers exist to translating these findings into realistic clinical interventions. Steps and resources needed include measuring not only survival but also impact of interventions on age-related disability, frailty, and onset of disease in model systems; development of clinically relevant measures of disability, frailty, and disease for each animal model and genetically tractable animal models of frailty; training and career-long funding mechanisms for geriatricians in basic science research and for basic scientists in geriatric issues; translationally capable review and funding mechanisms; emphasis on studies of interventions that can be initiated in later life for preventing or reversing disability; genetic association studies in humans to identify new candidate genes and pathways that correlate with disability, frailty, and age-related disease onset as well as longevity; study of exposure to environmental agents or toxins early in life on survival, disability, frailty, and disease in later life.
Radiation therapy treatment planning in supratentorial glioblastoma multiforme: An analysis based on post mortem topographic anatomy with ct correlations

Abstract In a previous study of the brains of 15 adults with glioblastoma multiforme who received minimal or no radiotherapy we determined the topographic distribution of tumor cells. All 15 brains had been fixed and then cut in the coronal or horizontal plane. The distribution of neoplastic cells was determined and entered onto tracings of the whole mount histologic sections. The last CT scans obtained prior to death of 11 of the patients were reviewed independently by a neuroradiologist who traced, on the CT scans, the outer edge of both the contrast-enhancing area and the peritumoral low density “edema”. Presented with the neuroradiologist's assessment of the contrast enhancing rim of tumor and of the “edema”, a radiotherapist and a radiation dosimetrist, in the present study, prepared treatment plans for a 6 MeV linear accelerator. In 9 of the 11 cases in which immediately antemortum CT scans were available, radiation treatment of the contrast enhancing area alone with a 1 cm margin would have missed portions of the histologically identified tumor. Treatment of the contrast enhancing area along with the peritumoral “edema”, with a 1 cm margin, would have covered histologically identified tumor in six of the 11 cases. Treatment of the contrast enhancing area, all “edema”, and a 3 cm margin around the “edema” would have covered histologically identified tumor in all cases. Tumors tended to track along nerve pathways. In those lesions near the midline it was common for tumor to cross the corpus callosum. We conclude that radiotherapy with fields designed to treat the contrast enhancing region alone or this region plus “edema” with a tight margin will frequently miss tumor which can be histologically identified by our technique.
Environmental value considerations in public attitudes about alternative energy development in Oregon and Washington.

The 2013 Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy signed by the Governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the Premier of British Columbia launched a broadly announced public commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through multiple strategies. Those strategies include the development and increased use of renewable energy sources. The initiative recognized that citizens are both a central component in abating greenhouse gas emissions with regard to their energy use behaviors, and are important participants in the public policymaking process at both state and local levels of government. The study reported here examines whether either support or opposition to state government leadership in the development of alternative energy technologies can be explained by environmental values as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). The research results are based on mail surveys of randomly selected households conducted throughout Oregon and Washington in late 2009 and early 2010. Findings suggest that younger and more highly educated respondents are significantly more likely than older and less educated respondents to either support or strongly support government policies to promote bioenergy, wind, geothermal, and solar energy. Those respondents with higher NEP scores are also more supportive of government promotion of wind, geothermal, and solar technologies than are those with lower NEP scores. Support for wave energy does not show a statistical correlation with environmental values, maybe a reflection of this technology’s nascent level of development. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of these findings for environmental management.
Enhanced precision, accuracy, efficiency, and spatial resolution of U-Pb ages by laser ablation-multicollector-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

Abstract The transition from Laramide syntectonic sedimentation of the lower Eocene Willwood Formation to the post-Laramide volcanogenic sedimentation of the middle Eocene Wapiti Formation was studied in the upper South Fork Shoshone River Valley, Wyoming. To better understand the regional age, paleogeography, and provenance of volcaniclastic sandstones in the lower stratified member of the Wapiti Formation, we sampled three units for detrital zircon U/Pb geochronology (n=241). The maximum depositional age for the sandstone units within the lower-most, middle, and upper-most units are 49.03 Ma, 49.44 Ma, and 48.99 Ma, respectively, which is consistent with previous geochronologic and paleontologic studies. These ages also are consistent with rocks deposited immediately prior to the emplacement of the Heart Mountain slide. Detrital-zircon age spectra show a transition from a mixed (recycled?) provenance, consistent with drainage from the west, composed of minor primary Eocene volcanic contributions to one dominated by primary Eocene and Archean contributions from the northern Absaroka volcanoes and the Laramide Beartooth Uplift. Thus, uplift and unroofing of the Beartooth Plateau was occurring during the deposition of the oldest members of the Wapiti Formation.
Safety of Deep Enteroscopy and Capsule Endoscopy in LVAD Patients: Case Report and Literature Review

Patients with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) have increased risk of gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding. They are prone to develop angiodysplasia of the small intestine, and have a higher risk of bleeding as these patients are all required to be on permanent therapeutic anticoagulation. Here we report a case of a critically ill 55-year-old male on pressors and inotropes with an LVAD, who successfully underwent an antegrade double balloon enteroscopy (DBE).
Germline Mutation of T790M and Dual/Multiple EGFR Mutations in Patients With Lung Adenocarcinoma.

Introduction The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M mutation remains one of the major mechanisms of resistance to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) treatment. Cases of de novo EGFR T790M mutations prior to TKI treatment have been reported, but most of them were somatic mutations. In this study, we report a case of primary de novo dual EGFR mutations containing a germline T790M mutation in a NSCLC patient. We further describe a case series of NSCLC patients who had primary dual or multiple EGFR mutations. Methods EGFR mutation status was analyzed in 427 patients with lung adenocarcinomas. Clinical, demographic data and sequencing electropherograms were collected on patients with two or more EGFR mutations identified prior to EGFR TKI treatment. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were sequenced for germ-line EGFR mutation on two patients with primary T790M mutation. Results 55 out of 427 (13%) patients with lung adenocarcinomas were found to have EGFR mutations; twelve of which were identified to have either dual or multiple EGFR mutations. Five of these 12 patients (42%) had primary de novo T790M mutation and three of them showed similar heights of the mutant and wild-type peaks on sequencing electropherogram, suggesting the possibility of germline mutation. One case of germline EGFR T790M mutation was confirmed via sequencing a peripheral blood sample. Conclusions Dual or multiple EGFR mutations comprised 2.8% of lung adenocarcinomas in our study. Primary de novo EGFR T790M mutation are presented with high frequency (5/12; 42%) in patients carrying dual or multiple EGFR mutations.
An Emotional Process Theory of How Subordinates Appraise, Experience, and Respond to Abusive Supervision Over Time

With empirical research on abusive supervision flourishing, there is an increasing need for an integrative framework that accounts for how and why individuals vary in their perceptions, experiences, and responses to abuse over time. To address this need, we integrate theories of emotions to present a multiphase, episodic process model explaining how initial attributions and appraisals combine to give rise to three distinct emotions—anger, fear, and sadness—that, in turn, drive a range of behavioral responses. We build on this foundation to offer new propositions on how various person and situational factors combine at each phase to produce different emotional and behavioral pathways, and we further conceptualize how feedback loops linking the behavioral responses in one episode to the next can result in emotional modulations and increasing (or decreasing) trajectories of adaptation to abuse. We advance the abusive supervision literature by providing a dynamic framework that integrates and organizes existi...
Do sensation seeking, control orientation, ambiguity, and dishonesty traits affect financial risk tolerance?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine relationships between financial risk tolerance and the personality traits of sensation-seeking, locus of control, ambiguity tolerance, and financial dishonesty. Design/methodology/approach – A pretested questionnaire was used to gather information from 255 respondents. With risk tolerance as a criterion variable and the four personality traits as predictor variables, a regression procedure was performed to determine which variables contributed to the variability of the criterion variable and the extent of such contribution. An analysis was also done to find out whether gender, age, GPA, and academic standing had an influence on each personality trait’s contribution to risk tolerance. Findings – Risk tolerance is directly related to sensation-seeking and the link is so strong that it is not mitigated by the effects of gender, age, GPA, and college academic standings. As for locus of control, the more one believes one has control over one’s outcome, the hi...
Treatment of late bone marrow relapse in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia : a pediatric oncology group study

Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who have completed 2.5 to 3 years of initial chemotherapy have an off-therapy relapse rate of approximately 20%. In an attempt to improve the survival of children with a late bone marrow (BM) relapse (ie, occurring greater than 6 months after cessation of primary therapy), the Pediatric Oncology Group designed a randomized study to compare the efficacy of doxorubicin/prednisone and cytarabine/teniposide in a multidrug retreatment chemotherapy program. Treatment consisted of remission reinduction with vincristine, prednisone, and doxorubicin, central nervous system prophylaxis with triple intrathecal chemotherapy, and continuation therapy (for 132 weeks) with alternating cycles of oral 6- mercaptopurine/methotrexate and intravenous vincristine/cyclophosphamide. Patients received intermittent courses of either prednisone/doxorubicin (regimen 1) or teniposide/cytarabine (regimen 2) during continuation therapy and a late intensification phase with either vincristine, prednisone, and doxorubicin (regimen 1) or teniposide and cytarabine (regimen 2). One hundred two of 105 evaluable patients (97%) achieved a second complete remission. Twenty- eight of 50 patients on regimen 1 have failed compared with 28 or 52 patients on regimen 2 (log-rank analysis, P = .68), indicating that this trial was inconclusive as to which treatment regimen was superior. The overall 4-year event-free survival for children with a late BM relapse was 37% +/- 6%. Age less than 10 years at initial diagnosis (P < or = .001), white blood cell count less than 5,000/microL at relapse (P = .036) and duration of first remission greater than 54 months (P = .039) were independently associated with a more favorable outcome. While the randomized trial was inconclusive, prolonged second complete remissions were secured in more than one-third of children with a late BM relapse of ALL. The prognostic factors identified may help select children with a late BM relapse who can be successfully retreated with chemotherapy alone.
Counseling Families with Homosexual Children

AbstractHomosexuality generally has been considered a moral, medical and social issue. Much more recent effort has extended this view to include personal and relationship considerations; this paralleling increased awareness, understanding and acceptance of homosexuality in the context of a total human being.Family approaches to counseling homosexual young people (when not a search for the “cause” or “fault,” or an attempt to force family members to accept “homosexuality” per se) may be beneficial to all involved on levels far beyond the obvious presenting issue.This study explores the feelings, needs, motivations and fears of both the parents of young homosexual children and these young people.
Enhancing the Value of Population-Based Risk Scores for Institutional-Level Use

Background We hypothesized that factors associated with an institution's residual risk unaccounted for by population-based models may be identifiable and used to enhance the value of population-based risk scores for quality improvement. Methods From January 2000 to January 2010, 4,971 patients underwent aortic valve replacement (AVR), either isolated (n = 2,660) or with concomitant coronary artery bypass grafting (AVR+CABG; n = 2,311). Operative mortality and major morbidity and mortality predicted by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) risk models were compared with observed values. After adjusting for patients' STS score, additional and refined risk factors were sought to explain residual risk. Differences between STS model coefficients (risk-factor strength) and those specific to our institution were calculated. Results Observed operative mortality was less than predicted for AVR (1.6% [42 of 2,660] vs 2.8%, p p p p Conclusions Scores derived from population-based models can be enhanced for institutional level use by adjusting for institution-specific additional and refined risk factors. Identifying these and measuring differences in institution-specific versus population-based risk-factor strength can identify areas to target for quality improvement initiatives.
Dreams, Dramas, and Scepticism

In this paper, I propose to discuss Descartes' dreaming problem. Descartes supposed that this problem, at least prior to the invocation of quite a bit of philosophical machinery, plunges one into scepticism. The most plausible rebuttal to Descartes' argument has been made by Malcolm;' but the sharp attacks in the last decade on Malcolm's assumptions have led some philosophers to suppose that Descartes' dreaming problem is a cogent support for scepticism.2 In this paper, I hope to dispose of the problem without using controversial assumptions of the sort used by Malcolm. Like many influential statements of philosophical problems, Descartes' statement of the problem of dreaming is surprisingly brief; it is contained in the fifth paragraph of the first Meditation. Descartes recalls that he is accustomed to "imagine" implausible things in his dreams. "How many times", he asks rhetorically, "has it occurred that the quiet of the night made me dream of my usual habits: that I was here clothed in a dressing gown, and sitting by the fire, although I was in fact lying undressed in bed?"3 While it seems apparent to Descartes that he is not now merely dreaming that he is writing this fifth paragraph, he should nevertheless "recall having been misled, while asleep, by similar illusions".4 He concludes that "there are no conclusive indications by which waking life can be distinguished from sleep".6 To see why Descartes considered this an astonishingly powerful ground for scepticism, we must be clear about several points in the way he frames the problem. First, it is merely in having the dream, and not in subsequent mental episodes, that one makes the mistake. Secondly, one makes the mistake whenever one dreams that some person-oneself or another-is located in a certain place or doing certain things when, at the time the dreaming occurs, that person is somewhere else or not doing those things. Descartes would have avoided the mistake had he, while being naked and asleep in bed, dreamt that he was naked and asleep in bed. (He implies that one also might avoid the mistake by embracing at all times a thorough-
Paths of Movement of Body Members in Aircraft Cockpits

This paper describes an effort to study the simultaneous motion trajectories of a large number of human body landmarks of a pilot during upper limb motions typical of those necessary to fly an aircraft. The objective is to gather engineering anthropometric data necessary, from a human engineering point of view, in the design of aircraft cockpits and other similar manned work stations. Twenty subjects participated in an experiment conducted to record the movements. A photographic procedure combining slow speed motion picture and interrupted light photography was employed to record the movements. This paper describes the procedure and also presents a set of typical paths of movement obtained through such recording. Also mentioned are some of the preliminary findings regarding the motion characteristics of parts of the human body.