cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Abstract 383: In vitro effects of PI3K/mTOR inhibition in canine hemangiosarcoma

While extremely rare in humans, hemangiosarcoma (HSA) accounts for nearly 2% of canine neoplasia, and is characterized by both aggressive local growth/invasion and a high rate of metastasis. Both canine and human HSA exhibit sustained aberrant PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway signaling. The purpose of this study was to examine the in vitro effects of a novel dual PI3K/mTOR inhibitor, VDC-597, in canine HSA cells. Three canine HSA cell lines (DEN-HSA, CIN-HSA, and SB-HSA) were employed in multiple in vitro assays. Western analysis evaluated activation (phosphorylation) of key downstream pro-survival proteins in the PI3K/mTOR pathway. Changes in tumor cell growth/apoptosis were assessed using both bioreductive assays (Alamar Blue) and in vitro live-cell imaging (IncuCyte), in the presence and absence of doxorubicin, a standard-of-care cytotoxic drug for canine and human sarcomas, as well as in the presence and absence of U-0126, an inhibitor of the MEK pathway. Migration was assessed using both Boyden chamber and scratch assays, via live-cell imaging (IncuCyte). Matrigel invasion was assessed using traditional Boyden chambers. Finally, ELISA was utilized to quantify relative expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). VDC-597 suppressed activation of both Akt and 4eBP1 in canine HSA cells in a dose- and time-dependent fashion, with an IC50 of approximately 0.3 uM, a concentration predicted to be clinically achievable based on preliminary early-phase canine and human studies. VDC-597 dose-dependently reduced proliferation, migration, invasion, and VEGF expression in HSA cells, while promoting tumor cell apoptosis. VDC-597 demonstrated additive antiproliferative effects when combined with doxorubicin and U-0126. Together, these results suggest that inhibitors of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway may act against multiple components of the neoplastic process, including proliferation/apoptosis, chemosensitivity, invasion/migration and angiogenesis, and justify the evaluation of PI3K/mTOR inhibitors in canine, and eventually human, HSA. Experiments to examine the effect of VDC-597 in reducing tumor burden and metastasis in a rodent model are ongoing. Citation Format: Alex A. Pyuen, Douglas H. Thamm. In vitro effects of PI3K/mTOR inhibition in canine hemangiosarcoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 383.
Habit-Taking, Final Causation, and the Big Bang Theory

Peirce’s habit-taking relates primarily to formal causes. Leaving aside human purposes, finality in nature has been identified as both natural tendency and function. I propose that true finality should be viewed as a pull from the future rather than as a tendency to maintain a continuing present. This disqualifies function as a finality. I claim that true finality in nature is exemplified by the Second Law of thermodynamics. Assuming that the universe is a thermodynamically isolated system, the Second Law qualifies in the context of the Big Bang scenario because it references the pull of a continually receding future of ever sparser energy density. The attractor here is universal thermodynamic equilibrium, which could only be attained in an ever-receding long run.
Transformation of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Lactuca sativa can be routinely transformed using Ti plasmids of Agrobacterium tumefaciens containing a chimeric kanamycin resistance gene (NOS.NPTII.NOS). Critical experimental variables were plant genotype, bacterial concentration, presence of a nurse culture and timing of transfers between tissue culture media. Transformation was confirmed by the ability to callus and root in the presence of kanamycin, nopaline production, and by hybridization in Southern blots. Transformation has been achieved with several Ti vectors. Several hundred transformed plants have been regenerated. Kanamycin resistance was inherited monogenically. Homozygotes can be selected by growing R2 seedlings on media containing G418.
Conservation Of Deciduous Tree Species in Europe: Projecting Potential Ranges and Changes

Conservation in settled fragmented landscapes, especially with climates changing, requires planning as well as physiological information not yet available. In the absence of the latter, climatic envelopes provide an initial means of projecting possible range changes, as well as potential range expansions on other continents. In this paper, climatic envelopes for major European tree species and hypothetical counterparts in eastern North America are evaluated, projected and cross-projected in order to demonstrate a hopefully useful methodology but also to suggest some initial questions of importance to conservation efforts in Europe, especially the Balkan region. Cross-projections of some counterpart species to the other continent are shown and may help improve understanding of limiting mechanisms and values, thus improving the robustness of climatic envelopes under change scenarios. Potential range displacements in Europe are also shown for selected tree species, based on a warming-only scenario (no net drying) that appears plausible, based on new warming estimates.
Line-by-Line Pulse-Shaping at GHz Modulation Frequencies With an Injection-Locked VCSEL Array

A 12-channel linear vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array emitting at ~1540 nm is used as a modulator array for rapid-update ultrashort pulse shaping. Each VCSEL is injection locked with an individual comb line from a 12.5-GHz optical frequency comb. Pulse shaping is achieved by modulating the current to each VCSEL. Two regimes are demonstrated: 1) static pulse shapes, where the dc bias to the array is set to generate some of the canonical pulse shapes and 2) dynamic pulse shapes, where the currents to the array are modulated at frequencies up to 3.125 GHz, and the resultant pulse shapes change on a sub-ns timescale.
AZPharm MetaAlert: A Meta-learning Framework for Pharmacovigilance

Pharmacovigilance is the research related to the detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse drug events. Despite the research efforts in pharmacovigilance in recent year, current approaches are insufficient in detecting adverse drug reaction (ADR) signals timely across different datasets. In this study, we develop an integrated and high-performance AZ Pharm MetaAlert framework for efficient and accurate post-approval pharmacovigilance. Our approach extracts adverse drug events from patient social media, electronic health records, and FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) and integrates ADR signals with stacking and bagging methods. Experiment results show that our approach achieves 71% in precision, 90% in recall, and 80% in f-measure for ADR signal detection and significantly outperforms the traditional signal detection methods.
Bioethical Perspective of Charlie Gard Case

This short commentary is about the ethical, rather bioethical, issues of the Charlie Gard case in the United Kingdom. The commentary tries to analyse the case from bioethical perspective and outlines some of the pertinent bioethical issues.
The Chemical Elucidation of Slow-Reacting Substance: Bronchospasm and Beyond.

In 1860, H.H. Salter first noted the importance of bronchial smooth muscle contraction in asthma ([1][1]). Eighty years later, Kellaway et al. ([2][2]) recognized a distinctive bioactivity whose release following Ag challenge of sensitized lung elicited a contractile response that was slower in
Upfront surgery versus definitive chemoradiotherapy in patients with human Papillomavirus-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell cancer.

Abstract Objectives Currently, human papillomavirus-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPV-A OPC) is managed with either primary surgery or definitive chemoradiotherapy (CRT), despite the lack of supporting randomized prospective data. We therefore assessed the outcomes of each treatment strategy using the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Methods The NCDB was used to identify patients diagnosed with cT1 N2a-2b or cT2 N1-2b HPV-A OPC from 2010 to 2013 who underwent treatment with primary surgery or CRT. Demographic and clinicopathologic predictors of treatment were analyzed by the chi-square test and logistic regression. Overall survival (OS) was evaluated using multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression, Kaplan-Meier, log-rank test, and propensity score-matched analysis. Results We identified 3063 patients; 1576 (51.5%) received CRT and 1487 (48.5%) underwent primary surgery. Median follow up was 32 months. 972 (65.4%) surgical patients received adjuvant CRT. On multivariable Cox regression, 3-year OS was comparable between surgery and CRT (hazard ratio [HR] 1.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.83–1.41, P = 0.58). Inferior OS was significantly associated with increasing clinical T and N stage, older age, and non-private insurance. Propensity score-matching yielded a 2526 patient cohort and redemonstrated similar OS (HR, 1.09; 95% CI 0.81–1.47; P = 0.55). Comparable outcomes persisted in a subset analysis of patients with margin-negative resection, with 3-year OS 90.8% in CRT patients vs. 93.6% in surgery patients (log-rank P = 0.27). Conclusions Upfront surgery and CRT yielded comparable 3-year OS outcomes in this cohort. In this national sample, 65.4% of surgical patients received trimodal therapy with adjuvant CRT, highlighting the need for improved patient selection for primary surgery.
Increased Body Mass Index Associated With Reduced Risk of Delayed Cerebral Ischemia and Subsequent Infarction After Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage.

BACKGROUND Increased body mass index (BMI) may be protective against cerebral ischemia in certain clinical contexts. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether increased BMI was associated with delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) and subsequent infarction after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the clinical course of patients presenting to our institution for management of aSAH. Patient were segregated according to BMI< or ≥29.4, a value determined by Classification and Regression Tree analysis. Predictors of DCI and delayed infarction were identified using stepwise multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS There were 161 patients included for analysis. Average BMI within our patient cohort was 28.9, with 67 patients presenting with a BMI of ≥29.4 on admission. DCI occurred in 50 patients (31.1%) and was complicated by delayed infarction in 15 patients (9.3%). On stepwise multivariate analysis, BMI ≥ 29.4 was independently associated with reduced likelihood of DCI (odds ratio [OR] 0.42, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.18-0.92) and delayed infarction (OR 0.13, 95% CI 0.02-0.61; P = .008). Increasing maximum flow velocity on transcranial Doppler ultrasound was independently associated with increased odds of both DCI (Unit OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.09-1.30; P < .001) and delayed infarction (Unit OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.13-1.56; P < .001), while intracerebral hemorrhage was independently associated with increased odds of delayed infarction (OR 6.99, 95% CI 1.82-30.25; P = .005). CONCLUSION We report an association between elevated BMI and reduced incidence of DCI and delayed infarction, suggesting a protective effect of increasing BMI on the risk of ischemic complications after aSAH.
PERTURBATIONS OF LIÉNARD SYSTEMS WITH SYMMETRIES

This chapter discusses the perturbations of Lienard systems with symmetries. It focuses on the existence of T -periodic solutions of the Lienard-type nonlinear differential system x" + (d/dt) U 1 (x,t) + h 1 (x,t) = ɛ((d/dt) U 2 (x,t) + h 2 (x,t)), where U i : R n+1 → R n , h i : R n + 1 → R n , and x = (x 1 ,x 2 , …, x n ), satisfying the symmetric conditions U i (−x, t + T/2) = − U i (x,t) and h i (−x, t + T/2) = −h i (x,t). Under suitable growth conditions on U 1 (x,t) and h 1 (x,t), equation x" + (d/dt) U 1 (x,t) + h 1 (x,t) = ɛ((d/dt) U 2 (x,t) + h 2 (x,t)) has T-periodic solutions. Such a system will still have periodic solutions when symmetric perturbation terms are added with no growth restriction on the terms. The chapter presents a few applications of some theorems to several classical nonlinear equations and also discusses the forced Hill equation.
Special Techniques in Mammography

Conventional film-screen mammography has proven to be a highly effective procedure for the diagnosis of a variety of breast diseases. However, there are several specific factors that limit image quality and the ultimate sensitivity of the examination. In many instances, the objects (calcifications, soft-tissue masses, etc.) associated with pathologic processes produce low-contrast images which might be near the threshold of visibility. Therefore, any modification of the procedure that can increase object contrast has the potential of increasing examination sensitivity.
High Blood Glucose and Damage to Neuronal Tissue

Type-1, type-2, and gestational/embryonic diabetes are all damaging and impair the nervous system. All three forms of diabetes cause oxidative stress, apoptosis, and neuropathy. In type-1 and type-2 diabetes (T2D), oxidative stress and apoptosis involve excessive release of glutamate, activation of N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, increased cytoplasmic Ca+2 levels, and complex signaling pathways leading to apoptosis. Neuropathy has also been associated with a reduction in a number of neurotrophic factors, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), and the use of exogenous BDNF and GDNF in ameliorating type-1 and type-2 diabetic symptoms has been reported. While several regions of the brain are affected, the hypothalamus and hippocampus are key areas of neuropathy. While less understood, gestational diabetes also causes oxidative stress and apoptosis within fetal brains and embryonic hyperglycemia is associated with hyperhomocysteinemia and subsequent apoptosis. Elevated embryonic homocysteine (HoCys) levels promote membrane lipid peroxidation, apoptosis, and are teratogenic in chicks. Data presented in this review indicate that embryonic hyperglycemia inhibits both the remethylation pathway, which is largely dependent on 5-methyltetrahydrofolate levels, and the transsulfuration pathway, which removes HoCys ultimately to α-ketobutyrate, glutathione, and taurine. HoCys is of interest because HoCys is both an agonist and antagonist of NMDA receptors.
Mechanisms of Resistance to Targeted Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors

The recent surge in the development of targeted kinase inhibitors as therapies for cancer was spurred from the success of imatinib (Gleevec®, STI571) for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukemia. This drug, for the first time, showed that a small molecule could be designed to inhibit an oncogenic tyrosine kinase (BCR-ABL) that was responsible for inducing malignant transformation of a particular cell type. Targeted inhibitors against the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), gefitinib and erlotinib, soon followed for the treatment of certain forms of lung cancer. While these drugs can effectively treat disease without many of the unwanted side effects associated with more traditional chemotherapeutic agents, it has become clear that some patients become resistant to these agents due to the development of mutations in the kinase domains of their target proteins. This review discusses the development of these inhibitors as well as the mechanisms associated with resistance to them. Second-generation kinase inhibitors aimed at overriding resistance to these therapies are also discussed.
The sequelae of accidentally injecting sodium hypochlorite beyond the root apex: Report of a case

Abstract During irrigation of the root canal of a maxillary right cuspid with sodium hypochlorite, some of the chemical agent was accidentally forced beyond the apex into the periapical tissues. An acute reaction ensued. The patient experienced extreme pain, edema, and hematoma formation. After palliative treatment, the root canal was filled at a later appointement, with no permanent sequelae evident.
Safety Ramifications of A Change in Pedestrian Crosswalk Law: A Case Study of Oregon, USA

Abstract Pedestrians are some of the most vulnerable road users as they are not protected by safety devices, and must also share the road with vehicles traveling at dangerous speeds, particularly during road crossings. In 2011, the state of Oregon changed their traffic laws to be more accommodating to pedestrians by giving right of way to pedestrians using a crosswalk, regardless if whether the crosswalk is marked or unmarked. This paper estimates a panel logit model to evaluate the efficacy of the law in preventing pedestrian fatalities. Pedestrian fatalities are shown to decrease over time, with smaller likelihood of a fatality outcome in the years following the change in pedestrian crossing laws. To the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time panel logit models have been used in evaluating pedestrian safety. Results indicate that panel logit models are an alternative to using Box-Tiao intervention models to analyze the long term effects of policy changes, as they allow for the consideration of crash exposure factors as well as temporal effects.
Protocolizing Work-up for Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus Improves Evaluation and Outcomes (P5.200)

Objective: Improving the evaluation of patients suspected of having normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) by having a consistently implemented protocol for assessing these patients and their candidacy for ventriculoperitoneal shunt. Background: The work-up for NPH can be difficult to coordinate and determining appropriate patients for shunting can be challenging, so we hypothesized that implementing a formalized protocol can improve patient selection for shunt. In conjunction with neurology and neurosurgery, we instituted a standardized means of assessing patients whose presentation is concerning for NPH and compared their work-up with similar patients seen without the protocol (i.e., “pre-protocol”) regarding baseline characteristics, assessment, and outcomes. Design/Methods: Thirty pre-protocol patients were compared with 40 protocol patients on various measures, including baseline deficits, components of work-up, neurosurgical evaluation, and response to shunt. Results: Average age was similar between groups and percentage of patients who had a decline in gait, cognition, and/or incontinence was not statistically different (p>0.05). Significantly more protocol patients underwent high-volume lumbar puncture (LP; 97.5%; pre-protocol, 60%; p Conclusions: Implementing an NPH protocol leads to standardized and more extensive assessment and better patient selection for and subsequent outcomes from shunting, specifically regarding gait. Disclosure: Dr. Acosta has nothing to disclose. Dr. Stubblefield has nothing to disclose. Dr. Cooper has nothing to disclose. Dr. Espaillat has nothing to disclose. Dr. Koons has nothing to disclose. Dr. Konrad has nothing to disclose. Dr. Fang has nothing to disclose. Dr. Kirshner has nothing to disclose. Dr. Davis has nothing to disclose.
College Students’ Perception of Current and Projected 30-Year Cardiovascular Disease Risk Using Cluster Analysis with Internal Validation

Cardiovascular risk factors in young adults at a national level are less than ideal specifically for hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and diabetes. Explore college students' perception of their 30-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk using cluster analysis technique with internal validation. This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. A total of 133 college students, aged 20-36 with no known history of CVD, were recruited and used to perform cluster analysis with internal validation. The mean age of the sample was 24.85 and predominately female (59.5%). The mean score for perception of cardiovascular risk factors was 21.20 ranging from 12 to 34 points on a Likert scale. The mean score for the 30-year CVD risk assessment was 5.23 ranging from 1 to 22%. Five clusters emerged from the cluster analysis. However, two of the clusters, the highest risk with moderate perception and low risk and lowest perception, were identified as areas for potential intervention as there were discrepancies between subjects' perceived risk and their actual 30-year risk. The national data and literature has indicated a lack of awareness of CVD risk among this population which our study also concurred. Identifying the discrepancies between the perceived and projected CVD risk are useful for researchers and clinicians such as nurses to take the initiative to focus on and begin to intervene in this population to reduce potential adverse events of CVD.
What's in a moon?

What would life on our planet be like if the Moon were to vanish; or perhaps if we had multiple moons? Earth wouldn't be the same without its constant lunar companion, as Ethan Siegel explains
Sandia Line of LWKs

Sandia NationalLaboratories has been engaged in operating systems research for high-performance computing for more than two decades. The focus has always been extremely parallel systems and the most efficient systems software possible to complete the scientific work demanded by the laboratories’ mission. This chapter provides a chronological overview of the operating systems developed at Sandia and the University of New Mexico. Along the way we highlight why certain design decisions were made, what we have learned from our failures, and what has worked well. We summarize these lessons at the end of the chapter, but hope that the more detailed explanations in the text may be useful to future HPC OS designers.
Providers' Perspectives on Adolescent Confidentiality and the Electronic Health Record: A State of Transition

Abstract Purpose Electronic health records (EHRs) have led to more transparency and improvements in patient safety, yet electronic access to personal health information can pose significant threats to maintaining confidentiality for adolescents. To date, no studies have explored clinicians' perspectives on EHR functionality and institutional policies related to confidentiality and health information sharing for adolescents aged Methods A Web-based survey was sent out via the national listserv of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. All English-speaking members practicing in the U.S. were eligible to participate. The survey included questions about demographics, EHR functionality, information sharing, and attitudes about confidentiality within the EHR. Results Participants included 212 clinicians who consented to the survey and used an EHR to document clinical visits with minors. Most participants were physicians and nurse practitioners (96.5%), and 60.0% had been on their institution's EHR for >5 years. Positive findings included high levels of experience and comfort using the EHR and awareness of confidential features within their EHR. However, providers reported lack of training related to confidentiality within the EHR, low confidence in their EHR's ability to maintain confidentiality, and variation in approaches to portal access for adolescents and their adult proxies. Conclusions Despite high comfort levels and robust EHR functionality at many institutions, significant concerns about adolescent confidentiality remain. Varying institutional approaches to protecting confidentiality underscores the need for a standardized and comprehensive framework to enable providers and institutions to take better care of adolescents in the age of EHRs.
Impedance Modulation for Negotiating Control Authority in a Haptic Shared Control Paradigm.

Communication and cooperation among team members can be enhanced significantly with physical interaction. Successful collaboration requires the integration of the individual partners' intentions into a shared action plan, which may involve a continuous negotiation of intentions and roles. This paper presents an adaptive haptic shared control framework wherein a human driver and an automation system are physically connected through a motorized steering wheel. By virtue of haptic feedback, the driver and automation system can monitor each other actions and can still intuitively express their control intentions. The objective of this paper is to develop a systematic model for an automation system that can vary its impedance such that the control authority can transit between the two agents intuitively and smoothly. To this end, we defined a cost function that not only ensures the safety of the collaborative task but also takes account of the assistive behavior of the automation system. We employed a predictive controller based on modified least square to modulate the automation system impedance such that the cost function is optimized. The results demonstrate the significance of the proposed approach for negotiating the control authority, specifically when humans and automation are in a non-cooperative mode. Furthermore, the performance of the adaptive haptic shared control is compared with the traditional fixed automation impedance haptic shared control paradigm.
Anesthesia for Intravitreal Injection: A Systematic Review.

Background The intravitreal injection has become one of the most commonly performed procedures in ophthalmology; however, there is no standardized approach to anesthesia during the procedure. The goal of this systematic review is to review approaches to anesthesia for intravitreal injection and look at comparative efficacy between these different anesthetics. Methods A systematic review of literature was performed in the MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Clinicaltrials.gov databases using the key words "anesthesia", "pain management", and "intravitreal injection". Of the initial 239 search matches, 30 articles were found to be relevant to the topic. 18 studies were excluded as they did not include primary data or did not include the visual analog scale as a primary outcome. The remaining 12 articles were assessed to look at the comparative efficacy of anesthesia and adverse events. Results The anesthesia techniques reported include topical methods such as anesthetic eyedrops, anesthetic gels, and anesthetic-soaked pledgets as well as subconjunctival injection of anesthetic. Ultimately, no single anesthetic or delivery mechanism was shown to be superior to the others in a statistically significant way and adverse events were largely insignificant. Limitations of these studies include relatively small sizes of the studies, as well as the lack of masking which may introduce bias. Conclusion In the current literature, no type of anesthetic method was found to be superior to another for intravitreal injection. Future studies in this area may lead to new insights into the efficacy of different forms of intravitreal anesthesia.
Identifying therapeutic drug targets for rare and common forms of short stature

Abstract While GWAS of common diseases has delivered thousands of novel genetic findings, prioritizing genes for translation to therapeutics has been challenging. Here, we propose an approach to resolve that issue by identifying genes that have both gain of function (GoF) and loss of function (LoF) mutations associated with opposing effects on phenotype (Bidirectional Effect Selected Targets, BEST). Bidirectionality is a desirable feature of the best targets because it implies both a causal role on the phenotype in one direction and that modulating the target activity might be safe and therapeutically beneficial in the other. We used height, a highly heritable trait and a model of complex diseases, to test our approach. Using 34,231 individuals with exome sequence data and height, we identified five genes (IGF1R, NPPC, NPR2, FGFR3, and SHOX) with evidence for bidirectional effects on stature. Rare protein-altering variants significantly increased risk for idiopathic short stature (ISS) (OR=2.75, p= 3.99×10−8). These genes are key members of the only two pathways successfully targeted for short stature: Growth Hormone/Insulin-like growth factor 1 axis and C-type Natriuretic peptide (CNP) for Achondroplasia, a monogenic form of dwarfism. We assayed a subset of NPR2 mutations and identified those with elevated (GoF) and diminished (LoF) activity and found that a polygenic score for height modulates the penetrance of pathogenic variants. We also demonstrated that adding exogenous CNP (encoded by NPPC) rescues the NPR2 haploinsufficiency molecular phenotype in a CRISPR-engineered cell line, thus validating its potential therapeutic treatment for inherited forms of short stature. Finally, we found that these BEST targets increase the probability of success in clinical trials above and beyond targets with other genetic evidence. Our results show the value of looking for bidirectional effects to identify and validate drug targets.
Soil moisture sensors based estimation of hybrid bermudagrass quality using remote sensing technology (Conference Presentation)

In recent years, applied irrigation has been reduced to comply with California’s mandated water use restrictions. In an effort to increase water conservation, employing new technologies such as soil moisture sensors (SMS) in the agriculture system is imperative. The overall goal of this project is to estimate bermudagrass quality, managed under SMS based irrigation scheduling at Cal Poly Pomona’s Center for Turf, Irrigation and Landscape Technology (CTILT). UAV mounted Hyperspectral sensor and hand-held spectroradiometer are being used to determine vegetation indices such as water band index (WBI) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and are compared with water and chlorophyll content of bermudagrass. The UAV platform used is a multicopter, which is equipped with GPS and autopilots for autonomous flight and data capture over the turfgrass plots. The visual turf quality ratings, remote and proximal sensor data are collected once every two weeks during the growing season. The handheld spectroradiometer is a hyperspectral devise and is used to validate UAV mounted hyperspectral sensor data. A general linear model analysis of variance for a randomized complete block design will be conducted for each date to test SMS based irrigation effect on the visual ratings and clipping yield. Comparisons among visual quality ratings, percentage green cover, NDVI and WBI are analyzed with the general linear model of correlation (Pearson’s). Differences between means were separated by Fisher’s protected least significant difference (p = 0.05).
Automated Vehicle Control at Freeway Lane-drops: a Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

This study develops an optimal, real-time and adaptive control algorithm for helping a Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV), navigate a freeway lane-drop site (e.g. work zones). The proposed traffic control strategy is based on the Deep Q-Network (DQN) Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm, and is designed to determine the driving speed and lane-change maneuvers that would enable the CAV to go through the bottleneck, with the least amount of delay. The DQN RL agent was trained using the microscopic traffic simulator VISSIM, where the learning focused on how the CAV may be able to optimally maneuver the lane drop site while driving as close as possible to the freeway speed limit. VISSIM was also used to compare the performance of the DQN-controlled AV, as opposed to a human-driven vehicle with no intelligent control, in terms of the driving speed or travel time needed to traverse the lane drop site, under a congested, real life-like traffic scenario. The research findings demonstrate the promise of DQN RL in allowing the CAV to intelligently, and optimally navigate, through the lane drop site. Specifically, for the scenario for which the agent was trained, the reduction in the CAV travel time was around 96 percent, compared to the base case. The robustness of the RL agent was further tested on various scenarios different from the training case. For those cases, the mean and standard deviation of the reductions in the travel of the DQN-controlled CAV travel times, compared to the base case, were around 31% and 61%, respectively.
Unpacking within- and between-person effects of unstructured socializing and differential association on solo- and co-offending

Abstract Unstructured socializing and differential association are two key explanations of peer influence. Unstructured socializing serves as a situational context that promotes antisocial behavior, whereas differential association with delinquent peers leads to learned behavior. Building on these perspectives and prior research, the present study models persons as contexts and examines the impact of unstructured socializing and peer delinquency on solo- and co-offending. Specifically, we use generalized linear mixed models to separate within, between, and person-context effects on offending alone and with peers, and test for interaction effects. Key findings include significant within-individual and between-individual effects of unstructured socializing and peer delinquency on co-offending, significant person-context effects of peer delinquency on co-offending, and significant within, between, and person-context effects of peer delinquency on solo-offending. Among comparable significant relationships, peer delinquency effects were notably stronger than unstructured socializing effects. Finally, interaction models revealed that within-individual effects of unstructured socializing and peer delinquency were attenuated among those with high average peer delinquency over time. The findings hold important implications for future empirical tests of theories of peer influence and for policies and programs aimed at controlling peer influence processes on offending alone and with peers.
Blockchain Technology for Improving Transparency and Citizen’s Trust

Public service organizations are always driven by goals to uplift the living standard of citizens. Transparency of information and procedures plays vital role for gaining the citizens’ trust. This article is a study about Blockchain Technology’s roles in managing the transparency, trust, citizen’s satisfaction and minimizing corruption so as to improve the efficiency of public service delivery. Transparency and trust have close relation to corruption and citizen’s satisfaction with public services. Various case studies and analysis clarifies the necessity of additional layer in the e-services delivered by public organization. Based on some case studies of ongoing Blockchain-based public services, the potential benefits as well as the existing challenges when introducing blockchain technology in the public sector is presented. Findings show that blockchain technology has the capacity to enable transparency and build citizen’s trust in public service delivery while maintaining a sufficient level of privacy. Therefore, keeping the transparency and trust as an important driver, blockchain technology could be the promising technology.
External Stimuli on Neural Networks: Analytical and Numerical Approaches.

Based on the behavior of living beings, which react mostly to external stimuli, we introduce a neural-network model that uses external patterns as a fundamental tool for the process of recognition. In this proposal, external stimuli appear as an additional field, and basins of attraction, representing memories, arise in accordance with this new field. This is in contrast to the more-common attractor neural networks, where memories are attractors inside well-defined basins of attraction. We show that this procedure considerably increases the storage capabilities of the neural network; this property is illustrated by the standard Hopfield model, which reveals that the recognition capacity of our model may be enlarged, typically, by a factor 102. The primary challenge here consists in calibrating the influence of the external stimulus, in order to attenuate the noise generated by memories that are not correlated with the external pattern. The system is analyzed primarily through numerical simulations. However, since there is the possibility of performing analytical calculations for the Hopfield model, the agreement between these two approaches can be tested—matching results are indicated in some cases. We also show that the present proposal exhibits a crucial attribute of living beings, which concerns their ability to react promptly to changes in the external environment. Additionally, we illustrate that this new approach may significantly enlarge the recognition capacity of neural networks in various situations; with correlated and non-correlated memories, as well as diluted, symmetric, or asymmetric interactions (synapses). This demonstrates that it can be implemented easily on a wide diversity of models.
Almost Drowning: Data as a Troubling Anchor in an Arts/Social Science Collaboration

This article highlights fissures between the disciplines of dance and social sciences in approaching and valuing data and offers creative solutions for dancers and choreographers working collaboratively with scholars and artists in other disciplines. We locate our challenges in our divergent relationships with social science data, using the divergence as a framework for exploring discipline-specific practices as unintended roadblocks in collaborative, transdisciplinary research. We propose that the structure of our collaboration, particularly our unique pairing of dance and social science, and our emergent discoveries have implications beyond our home disciplines and promise to advance the growing enterprise of transdisciplinary collaboration.
Limit pressure of a circumferentially reinforced SiC/Ti ring

Limit loads under plane stress and plane strain are found for a circumferentially reinforced elastoplastic ring subjected to interior pressure. These are used as bounds on an estimate of the failure pressure of a SiC/Ti test rig that is being fabricated and tested. The ring is to serve as a benchmark against which deformation and failure analysis methods can be assessed. An anisotropic perfect plasticity idealization of the SiC/Ti ring material is made and used in the limit load calculations. An estimate of the failure pressure of the NASA/PW benchmark test ring is given.
Predicting Signal Peptides with Support Vector Machines

We examine using a Support Vector Machine to predict secretory signal peptides. We predict signal peptides for both prokaryotic and eukaryotic signal organisms. Signalling peptides versus nonsignaling peptides as well as cleavage sites were predicted from a sequence of amino acids. Two types of kernels (each corresponding to different metrics) were used: hamming distance, a distance based upon the percent accepted mutation (PAM) score trained on the same signal peptide data.
Mutual coupling effects in through-the-wall imaging of targets behind wall structures

In this paper, we investigate the mutual coupling effects between complex wall structures and the target for through-the-wall imaging applications. We propose a hybrid technique, which is more efficient in terms of computational resource requirements than the full-wave numerical solutions, i.e., FDTD, MoM, to model the scene.
Level of detail based behavior control for virtual characters

We take the idea of Level of Detail (LOD) from its traditional use in computer graphics and apply it to the behavior of virtual characters. We describe how our approach handles LOD determination and how we used it to reduce the simulation quality of multiple aspects of the characters' behavior in an existing application.
Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2003 conference on Programming language design and implementation

The PLDI conference is one of the premier forums for the presentation of new and exciting research in the areas of programming language design and implementation. The conference attracts a wide audience including researchers, practitioners, and educators. The program committee is pleased to present this proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation which contains a collection of 28 technical papers covering a wide range of exciting topics.This year a total of 131 manuscripts were received from 20 countries. We received 96 submissions from North America, 17 submissions from Europe, 16 submissions from Asia, and 2 submissions from Australia. A total of 36 papers had at least one author from industry. From the 131 submissions, the program committee selected 28 submissions for inclusion in the program.The submission and review process worked as follows. Each submission was assigned to three program committee members for review. In addition, one external review was solicited for each paper. For papers with conflicting reviews email discussions preceded the program committee meeting. For papers with low confidence reviews additional reviews were sought from experts before the program committee meeting. The program committee meeting was held in New Orleans on January 19 and 20. Early in the meeting, the 131 papers were narrowed down to 75 papers whose discussion occupied the rest of the meeting.
Extension to three dimensions of a holographic moire technique to separate patterns corresponding to components of displacement

The holographic-moire technique to obtain separate patterns for the Cartesian components of the displacement vector is extended to curved surfaces. An initial pattern which is often required for the observation of the displacement fringes is analyzed for this case. Criteria are established for the localization of this initial pattern to follow close to the contour of the object surface. A PVC pipe subjected to torsion demonstrates the proposed technique and, when analytical arguments are checked experimentally, a close correlation is observed.
Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts

Large-scale communications blackouts, such as those carried out by Egypt and Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012 and 2013, have motivated a series of projects that aim to enable citizens to communicate even in the face of such heavy-handed censorship efforts. A common theme across these proposals has been the use of wireless mesh networks. We argue that such networks are poorly equipped to serve as a meaningful countermeasure against large-scale blackouts due to their intrinsically poor scaling properties. We further argue that projects in this space must consider user safety as first design priority and thus far have failed to preserve user anonymity and to rely only on innocuous hardware. From these two insights, we frame a definition of dissent networks to capture the essential requirements for blackout circumvention solutions.
A survey of consecutive patterns in permutations

A consecutive pattern in a permutation π is another permutation \(\sigma\) determined by the relative order of a subsequence of contiguous entries of π. Traditional notions such as descents, runs, and peaks can be viewed as particular examples of consecutive patterns in permutations, but the systematic study of these patterns has flourished in the last 15 years, during which a variety of different techniques have been used. We survey some interesting developments in the subject, focusing on exact and asymptotic enumeration results, the classification of consecutive patterns into equivalence classes, and their applications to the study of one-dimensional dynamical systems.
Collegiate Athletic Directors as Entrepreneurs

One can define entrepreneurship, at its most basic level, as rent-seeking behavior. This behavior can be productive, as when firms innovate to create new or better products or when they enter a market to increase output where price exceeds marginal cost. Rent-seeking can also be unproductive, particularly when it interfaces with the public sector. In such cases, firms may try to create or preserve rents by securing monopoly power from the government. Traditionally, economists have analyzed rent-seeking behavior solely in the private and government sectors of the economy. I extend the concept to the not-for-profit sector, in particular to the sphere of higher education. Specifically, I construct a simple model of rent-seeking behavior by colleges and universities, as seen by their decisions to fund some sports and not fund others. While I associate the funding decision with the collegiate athletic directors, one can just as easily attribute the decisions I describe to the president or board of trustees of the university. The findings show why football and, to a lesser extent, men?s basketball tend to dominate intercollegiate athletics. They also demonstrate why schools sometimes differ in the sports they offer and why Title IX poses such a dilemma for college athletics. Finally, they show that appealing to â€œgovernmentâ€ â€“ in the form of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) â€“ may result in productive rent-seeking behavior rather than unproductive behavior. In the next section, I introduce the notion of the athletic director as entrepreneur. In Section II, I present the basic model of how athletic directors behave. In Section III, I extend the model to show how the NCAA and Title IX affect the basic model. A conclusion follows.
Symbolic execution and timed automata model checking for timing analysis of Java real-time systems

This paper presents SymRT, a tool based on a combination of symbolic execution and real-time model checking for timing analysis of Java systems. Symbolic execution is used for the generation of a safe and tight timing model of the analyzed system capturing the feasible execution paths. The model is combined with suitable execution environment models capturing the timing behavior of the target host platform including the Java virtual machine and complex hardware features such as caching. The complete timing model is a network of timed automata which directly facilitates safe estimates of worst and best case execution time to be determined using the Uppaal model checker. Furthermore, the integration of the proposed techniques into the TetaSARTS tool facilitates reasoning about additional timing properties such as the schedulability of periodically and sporadically released Java real-time tasks (under specific scheduling policies), worst case response time, and more.